Players think they might be on the trail of Diablo 4's cow level

The Diablo 4 cow level still probably doesn’t exist, but that hasn’t stopped fans of the action game from trying to find it. After killing 666 in-game cows, a group of dedicated players thinks they have some evidence that might suggest Blizzard has something bovine up its sleeve – or is just toying with people (thanks, PC Gamer).

Discord user and YouTuber Grampa Joe posted an update in the Not Finding A Cow Level Discord server (yes, it’s a thing) about an unusual event that happened when they dispatched their 666th cow.

“Uh hey, so I just got the Musty Tome from a cow after killing about 666 of them (it was hard to count),” they said. “The cow died with a red curse effect and the tome dropped from it.”

That might sound like a lame reward for so much bloodthirsty effort, but there’s some historical Diablo significance attached to the nasty book. It and a few other items are tied to cow levels in previous Diablo games.

That’s a tantalizing clue in itself, but the mystery goes even deeper. You can continue collecting relics – seemingly at random – from other dead cows, and eventually, you’ll have a trio: the Musty Tome, the Metallic Fragment, and the Bloody Wooden Shard, the latter two of which were also important in previous Diablo games.

If you use these relics at Ked Bardu, near the ox statues, you get a key that unlocks the Forlorn Hovel cellar, a mini-dungeon full of cows. Defeating them earns you a stamina potion, another nod to past cow levels. Diablo 2’s cow king dropped eight stamina potions.

All that, combined with the fact that Blizzard actually removed a quest called The Oxen Gods in July 2023 has players convinced that some kind of cow trickery is afoot. Maybe it’s true, and Blizzard has some kind of labyrinthine plan for Diablo 4’s cows in one of the upcoming expansions.

Or maybe the team just wants to see how long people keep looking for something that isn’t there.

Written by Josh Broadwell on behalf of GLHF