It’s been well known that there have been some sort of secret levels in Diablo series since Diablo 1, secret hidden areas that you can access through a strange process. In Diablo 2, this would put you on a level where all the enemies were just cows. It was a pretty crazy thing and caused quite a stir on the internet at the time, at least.
In Diablo 3, this extended to Whimsyshire, an Easter egg level that was a direct homage to the previous Secret Cow Level.
As you can see, the developers tried to push the concept of hidden levels, with the visual theme and enemy theme being the exact opposite of how Diablo usually works, instead of scary evil demons, it’s just a bunch of colorful areas, which is a very interesting concept.
And considering that the base game of Diablo 4 has been out for over a year now and the developers still haven’t revealed the possibility of secret areas, it’s going to be quite a journey to find out if there is a Secret Cow Level in Season 6.
Here we will summarize all the progress on this topic, including how the player’s discoveries are connected to it reasonably, what this leads to, and some topics worth discussing. Let’s take a look!
How Did Secret Cow Level Work Before Season 6?
The recent breakthrough happened after Season 6 and the release of the expansion, and the new content introduced in the game reminded many players of the original three Relics and Cleansing process.
The three Relics in the previous game were Bloody Wooden Shard, Intricate Metallic Fragment, and Musty Tome, all of which came from killing cows. Specifically, if you kill 666 cows, you will get one of the above Relics, depending on the region you are in. Hawezar and Kejhistan will give you Bloody Wooden Shard when you kill the last cow, Musty Tome will drop from Scosglen or Fractured Peaks, and Metallic Fragment can only be found in Dry Steppes.
Then you have to go to Ked Bardu in Dry Steppes. The main town has a fountain, and to the east there are four bull statues. If you throw all the items into the fountain to cleanse and interact with each statue, then offer Relics to them. You will get an item called Strange Key.
A lot of players get stuck here for a long time before finding the next step. Actually, this Strange Key can open a place called Forlorn Hovel, which is located on the head of a bull to the east of Scosglen area. There is a secret seller here, and by spending your Diablo 4 Gold, you can get some key items that advance the level. Did you notice that this piece of the map looks a bit like cows? If you look from the top down, this is why so many people are looking for answers here, and they are correct.
If you have the key, then you can enter through this door and you will find a house filled with a lot of cows, and if you kill all of them, you will get Stamina Potion. This is not a noteworthy thing in itself, but considering the way the previous steps work, all assumptions are that this will lead to another step of Cow Level being unlocked, that is, this is where the clues are temporarily exhausted.
New Cow Level Clues
After nearly a year of nothing new to say about the mystery of Cow Level in the game, people just accepted the fact that, at least at that point, Secret Cow Level was simply inaccessible in Diablo 4 and that all the steps that could be taken had already been tried.
With the release of Season 6, data miners have discovered more steps that could eventually lead to Cow Level. Specifically, there’s an entire set of new Relics and a last reward, like Stamina Potion. All of Relics come from the new zone in this update, Nahantu, and are also much more complex than the original Cow Kill Counter. You can do it faster, though, if you know how.
Those new Relics are Rusted Old Bell, Gibbering Gemstone, and Crooked Staff.
Rusted Old Bell
Players must travel through Five Hills subzone, visiting 12 different bird statues before Rusted Old Bell appears as a drop from the last statue.
Gibbering Gemstone
Gibbering Gemstones can be obtained fairly quickly, and players only need to make a Thank emote in front of the three separate statues southwest of Kurast Docks.
Crooked Staff
This is one of the most difficult clues to get. To obtain Crooked Staff, players must defeat Elite Blood Lightning on the east side of Den in Great Shelf. The trick is that you can’t just defeat this fierce Lacuni and walk away with Relic. You have to completely reset your skills and abilities and disband your Mercenary, using only the basic attack skills that a level 1 character knows. If you want to buy D4 Gold make things easier, you can lower your difficulty level, as there are no negative effects on doing so.
How To Corrupt Relics?
Then, in contrast to the original Relics, you are not cleaning them; you are corrupting them. Doing this is also a process. It is recommended to do it on the normal difficulty level as well, and get rid of your Mercenary so that they don’t automatically kill the things you want to keep.
After that, you need to head to the location north of Ichorfall on the map to specifically get aggro from the enemies here called Cordycepic Zombie. Most enemies will lose aggro if you get too far from their spawn location, but these specific enemies will keep following you as long as you stay within their aggro range.
So basically you just have to slowly pull them from the first enemy on the map to the second identical enemy, and then take those two to the third.
If all three Cordycepic Zombies are following you, you need to gather them together and then kill them in the shortest time possible. You then have to throw all three Relics in your inventory onto their bodies and then Corrupt them. You’ll notice that after you do this, a kind of purple flame starts glowing from them, which means it was successful.
Rusted Bardiche
You then need to take them to a brazier puzzle at a specific location on the map. They don’t look too interactable when you get here, but if you have the corrupted item, you can actually interact with them to give the item and receive Unusual Key at the end.
This allows you to break down a hidden wall in a cellar located at a specific location on the map. When you enter the cellar, click on the wall in the last room and you’ll find a hidden extra room full of murderous cows, as there are also a bunch of killed villagers next to them. Once you kill the cows, you’ll receive Rusted Bardiche.
So that’s the new step for potential Secret Cow Levels in Diablo 4, and it’s obviously tied to the previous Relics step. So in theory, if you have Stamina Potion and Rusted Bardiche, be prepared for any new developments, as you can pretty much do any future developments.
Is Secret Cow Level Still Possible?
Anyway, that’s as far as we can go for now. Now that you know everything there is to know about Cow Levels in Diablo 4, that brings us to another important topic, which is why there’s currently no Cow Level in Diablo 4.
Despite the worrying amount of data mining that seems to have revealed some clues, everything so far proves that Diablo 4’s secret level simply doesn’t exist, or at least if it’s coded to exist, we don’t have a way to access it yet.
As a player, we are now almost a year and a half past the release of the game, and while there are a lot of dangling clues and puzzle pieces that point to the existence of a Cow Level, functionally speaking, this often resonates throughout Diablo 4, especially the new stages.
Although they may want to expand Secret Cow Level into multiple expansions, making you actually pay for each expansion to actually get Cow Level. So who knows when we will actually get Cow Level? If we do get it, maybe it will be a year later, maybe it will be two years later, maybe we will never actually get Cow Level and it will just be a gimmick to rediscover the attention.
What do you think about this? Do you think it is possible for us to wait for the real Secret Cow Level in Diablo 4? If you have any related ideas, why not discuss it with like-minded partners in MMOEXP? More importantly, there are often some giveaways held here, and the latest one will be revealed on November 11th. If you want to join in, please leave your favorite reaction emoji here!
