…and Cuddles is already close to 700 paragons now. So he’s doing Super it seems.
The correct way to be prepared before the season starts is to do the challenge rift but not complete it. Just spawn the boss and fail it. Some pet builds will probably auto kill the boss so be careful and stop your progress earlier. You are prepared for, when the season starts, if you memorize elite locations and stuff and learn the execution in some awkward builds. When a new season starts you create a character and log in once in adventure mode (probably ?) so the game registers it as a new seasonal characters and do the challenge rift after.
This time I also messed up by accidentally opening mine by force of habbit, but that’s on me. Thankfully it’s not that bad because I leveled up faster and I won’t be playing the following weeks due to irl. I still have some other nodes to collect and I will be back after some time to do another CR and unlock it.
Friendly advice: you can still prepare for some of the upcoming altar nodes that take some time: like staff of herding, the set pages, lvl 125 whisper, ancient puzzle ring, ancient hellfire amulet, and so on. Keep all the necessary items in your stash all tidy and clean, to save time when you are ready. That way, when you sacrifice the cache next week, you won’t be stuck again and you can unlock one seal after another.
… and once you have gotten the Challenge Rift Cache be careful not to accidentally open it while moving it around!
Sorta, but I’ve had to work on a school project all weekend, and I’ve been power leveling a bunch of people. I still have to wait even longer now for the stupid challenge rift cache for the Altar. Oh well
Actually the only requirement is that you finish the CR (kill the CR RG) after the season starts, you do not have to create a seasonal character prior to running the CR.
I did it numerous times this way - CR first (of course after there was a “Season started” popup), then create seasonal hero. Always worked.
Friendly tip - to be on the safe side (not accidentally opening it) put the Cache to the Stash. You do not have to actually bring it to the Altar - it can be sacrificed from the Stash (the Altar “sees” it).
It’s okay now I did the CR today and finished the altar