The test servers for Diablo 4’s massive 2.0 update have revealed some tantalizing new items that just might be the key to finally unlocking the secret cow level in Blizzard’s ARPG.
Players have been on the hunt for the secret level since Diablo 4’s launch. Despite Blizzard insisting it doesn’t exist (as is tradition), players have continued to search every nook and cranny of Sanctuary for the secrets needed to unlock it.
Diablo 4’s Vessel of Hatred expansion might finally give players the keys to the cow kingdom. As spotted by the dataminers over at Wowhead, several curious items have been found in the test build for the game’s 2.0 update, which will be released alongside Vessel of Hatred in October.
One of those items, the Rusted Bardiche, will look familiar to those who have experienced Diablo 2’s secret cow level, as it is the weapon wielded by the bi-pedal cow enemies found there. In Diablo 3, transmuting the Bovine Bardiche item in Kanai’s Cube granted access to Diablo 3’s cow level, the “Not the Cow Level.”
That’s not the only datamined item that may lead to a secret level. Four others–the Unusual Key, the Rusted Old Bell, the Jabbering Gemstone, and the Crooked Staff–have also been datamined. These items (excluding the key) seem like fairly obvious references to Diablo 3’s Wirt’s Bell, Staff of Herding, and Gibbering Gemstone, which when used together opened a portal to Whimsyshire, aka the “pony” level.
Just because all these items have been datamined, however, doesn’t mean players know where to actually find them in-game just yet, or the steps that might be required to put all the pieces together to finally gain access to the cow level, Whimsyshire, or something entirely new. Judging from past secrets in Diablo 4, finding the cow level will still require some serious sleuthing and experimentation on the part of players.
The last major cow-level breakthrough came in October 2023, when a player collected a trio of secret items, killed exactly 666 cows, and cleansed the items at the mysterious ox statues in the city of Ked Bardu, all to acquire a Strange Key that unlocked a previously inaccessible area. That location, the Forlorn Hovel, housed a group of cows that when killed, dropped a Stamina Potion–a nod to Diablo 2’s Cow King. Consuming the potion grants a buff that has no obvious effect, and so the hunt for the cow level has continued.
Diablo 4’s 2.0 update will bring huge changes to the ARPG on October 8, including a complete re-work of the game’s difficulty system and a reorganization of its endgame. That will be in addition to all the new features coming as part of the Vessel of Hatred expansion on that same day, which includes the new Spiritborn class, Diablo 2-style Runewords, Mercenary companions, and a “first-of-its-kind” endgame dungeon.
