What happens to your ladder characters
When Ladder Season 14 ended on August 17, every ladder character was transferred to its respective non-ladder group: softcore ladder characters became normal softcore characters, hardcore ladder became hardcore non-ladder. Blizzard states this plainly in the official Season 15 announcement — nothing is deleted in this step.
Everything the character wears, holds in inventory, and stores in its personal stash tab goes with it untouched. Your level, quests, waypoints and mercenary all carry over. The only thing you lose is the ladder itself: the leaderboard wipes and everyone starts Season 15 from level 1 on fresh ladder characters. The character simply stops being "ladder" — which mainly matters for runewords and trading, covered below.
What happens to your shared stash
This is where items actually die. The three shared stash tabs do not follow your characters directly. Instead, at the season change:
- All items in the ladder group's Shared Stash moved into a separate set of Withdraw Only tabs, marked by a checked Past checkbox on the stash tab.
- Anything Season 13 had left sitting in those Withdraw Only tabs was permanently deleted the moment Season 14 ended.
- You now have all of Season 15 to withdraw your Season 14 items. When Season 15 ends, those tabs will be overwritten with Season 15's shared stash — and anything still inside is gone forever.
Withdraw Only means exactly that: you can take items out, but you can never put anything back in. The only deadline that matters is the next ladder reset — there is no reason to panic, but there is also no reason to wait.
What happens to ladder-only runewords and items
Runewords you already made keep working. A Mosaic, Hustle or Metamorphosis that exists on your gear stays fully functional after the conversion — the runeword does not break or lose stats when the character turns non-ladder. What you cannot do anymore is create new copies of the current season's ladder-only runewords on non-ladder characters.
The other half of the rotation: with Patch 3.3, the previous seasons' ladder-only items become available in non-ladder, so non-ladder players finally get access to gear that was ladder-exclusive before. Meanwhile Season 15 brings its own refreshed ladder-only lineup — see the Season 15 patch notes for the exact rotation, and our runewords database for the current ladder flags on all 100 runewords.
What to do with your Season 14 gear
Work through this checklist once, and the reset stops being stressful:
- Empty the Withdraw Only tabs first. Move anything worth keeping onto a character's inventory or personal stash. Create a mule character if you run out of space — mules are the standard long-term storage on non-ladder.
- Keep what has lasting value: high runes, perfect or near-perfect uniques, good runeword bases, crafted amulets and gloves, and any runewords you still use.
- Trade the leftovers while demand exists. Non-ladder prices drop fast right after a reset because everyone's stash floods the market at once — sell early if you plan to sell. Our trading sites guide covers where and how.
- Don't hoard out of habit. Non-ladder economies are saturated from a dozen past seasons; mid-tier gear that felt precious on ladder is usually worth nothing there. If you won't equip it or trade it, let it go.
- Decide your Season 15 main now. Everything above is housekeeping — the fresh race starts August 21, and our Season 15 start date guide has the exact regional launch times.
Season 15 timeline
Blizzard adjusted the patch-and-ladder cadence this season, and this is the format going forward:
- Ladder Season 14 ended: Monday, August 17, 11:00 a.m. PDT — characters and stash converted at this moment.
- Patch 3.3 rollout: Tuesday, August 18.
- Ladder Season 15 starts: Friday, August 21, 5:00 p.m. PDT (North America); August 22, 1:00 a.m. BST / 2:00 a.m. CEST (Europe); August 22, 8:00 a.m. CST / 9:00 a.m. KST (Asia).
The gap between the old season ending and the new one starting is normal — use it to do the stash housekeeping above, so Season 15 starts with clean tabs and a full set of mules.