The promised Thursday update has arrived on the official Diablo III site, and it features a new monster, along with 4 new screenshots and artworks. The monster is the Dune Thresher, a large, reptilian beast that appears to swim beneath the surface, crocodile-like, before emerging to attack.
[BLUE=“http://www.blizzard.com/diablo3/world/bestiary/dunethresher.xml”]The news that a rogue burrower had killed a citizen just outside the city gave me the wonderful opportunity to see firsthand one of the more disturbing creatures we share this world with � the savage dune thresher.
Long ago driven away from settled locales to the deep desert wastes of the Borderlands, the dune thresher is rarely seen by city dwellers. Every so often, however, whether due to injury or old age, one of these unholy beasts ventures to the edge of civilization to feast on the frail human animal. [/BLUE]
As the lore makes clear, these demons are found in sandy, desert areas. We’ve seen plenty of pieces of concept art of such settings (including one of today’s new batch), but never seen any in screenshots yet. We still haven’t; all four of today’s new screenshots feature the same Tristram dungeons/monsters/characters we’ve seen since the WWI, but they do show some nicely-bloody action scenes.
- Screenshot #1: A female Barbarian uses Warcry, near some very gory corpses.
- Screenshot #2: Beasts graze near an unfortunate NPC.
- Screenshot #3: A witch doctor firebombs some ghouls.
- Screenshot #4: A whirlwinding Barbarian scores some critical hits and reduces cultists to clouds of gore.
- Monster Art #1: Colorful concept art of the Sand Thresher.
- Monster Art #2: More sand thresher concept art..
- Monster Art #3: Concept art of another new monster, one of the Crater Assault Troops.
