Diablo 4 is getting its first bird pet in Season 7

A raven holding a charm in its beak
(Image credit: Blizzard)

There's a lot of new stuff in Diablo 4 Season 7, AKA the Season of Witchcraft, like the suite of witch abilities including one that lets you summon poison frogs. But the thing that leaped out at me in Blizzard's blog post about the upcoming season is that there's a new pet, and for once it's not another adorable cat or dog. Instead, it's a gloriously mangy bird that reminds me of the pigeons I saw on my lunch break, pecking at a moist loaf of bread in the gutter.

Dorian the raven, to give the bird its proper name, isn't the first raven in Diablo 4. Druids have a spell that lets them summon a whole unkindness of ravens—yeah, that really is the proper collective noun for ravens—who can attack their enemies. But Dorian is a noncombat pet like the ridiculously cute tiger kitten everyone who forked out for the ultimate edition of Vessel of Hatred owns, only he looks like he's waiting for you to die so he can eat your delicious eyes.

As with all pets in Diablo 4, the raven can pick up crafting materials and currencies for you, sparing your finger the hassle of clicking on gold yourself. To unlock him you have to complete the entire seasonal journey with your freshly minted seasonal character, which means ticking off a checklist of objectives in return for Grim Favors—a currency I'd say ranks about a 6/10 on the Malfeasance Token scale.

As mentioned, the big-ticket feature of Season 7 is the witchcraft powers. There are 25 of them, including Poison Frog Servant, Firebat Servants, and the gloriously named Piranhado. Anyone who played the summoner-themed witch doctor class in Diablo 3 will find these powers familiar, and this season feels like a way of sneaking that class in via the back door, at least temporarily.

The Season of Witchcraft update also brings an armory that will let players save and swap between builds, something else Diablo 3 players will find familiar, and a new enemy type called the headrotten. It kicks off on January 21 at 10am PST.

Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.

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