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In the current ARPG genre, Diablo 4’s biggest competitor, besides Diablo 2 in the same series, is Path of Exile 2, which has been hyping up since the second half of last year. Their similar loot-driven gameplay, character customization features, and fast-paced combat features attract very similar player groups.
However, the design concepts and core concerns held by Diablo 4 and Path of Exile 2 are completely different, such as the design of the game world and the adaptability of the gameplay and environment, which has led to the fact that their player groups are essentially very different: D4 players value the open world exploration experience more, while POE 2 players pay more attention to the challenges in the game.
In fact, when comparing the two games, many players are calling on the developers of POE 2 to learn from Diablo 4 and create an open world in the game. But in all aspects, POE 2 is not suitable for porting this feature from D4 to the game. If you’re interested, you can find all the reasons for this guide, which may deepen your understanding of both games.
Although Diablo 4 and Path of Exile 2 are both loot-driven, Diablo 4 focuses more on wide accessibility and immersive storytelling. Given the many mysterious and story-filled quests in D4, the open game world provides players with a large area to explore in order to better understand the background and story settings of the entire game.
This allows players to enjoy the specific content throughout the game world that the developers have created for them while exploring the game, while also enjoying the fun of loot that comes with combat. In addition, compared to other MMO games, D4’s unique streamlined game mechanics, such as farming Diablo 4 Gold and some loot, combined with these highly story-based game experiences, will make it faster for both new and old players of this type of game to get started.
For Path of Exile 2, the depth, complexity, and re-playability of the story in the game are the key points, which discourage players who prefer to define their gaming time as leisure time. For example, the very large passive skill tree, more than 10 available classes, and those very complex builds will bother those players with lower levels.
Coupled with the fact that most of the game content in POE 2 is more challenging than D4, players gradually give up the game because of too many deaths and rebirths in it. If an open world is added in this case, the difficulty of player exploration will be greatly increased, and the player base will gradually decrease, and even weaken the market share of this game in the ARPG space where the update is very fast.
In Diablo 4, the open game world means that players can explore multiple locations at the same time, which is very convenient for targeted farming and gaining more experience points.
For example, when summoning Uber Bosses, after you have collected all the summoning materials in other locations, you can rely on the teleportation portal in the open world to reach the location directly where you can summon and immediately fight the boss, which greatly reduces the time spent on shuttling between exploration areas and speeds up the game process.
However, for POE 2, the maps are all generated by instance areas and programs, and you need to use Waystones to unlock them. Although this item is very common in the game, it will incur a lot of unnecessary costs for those maps that need to be entered repeatedly.
In addition, because all maps are generated by programs, most maps outside of major towns are randomly generated each time you enter, which means that the location where you fight or farm on the second day differs completely from the first day, and you may need to start exploring again.
Although this situation can ensure that players are fresh about the game content and the environment they explore, it is very disadvantageous for those players who have limited game time every day, because they need to spend the same or more time to familiarize themselves with the new map when they explore again. This also determines that POE 2 cannot adopt an open world, because resetting an open world is completely impossible.
Read More: Does Diablo 4 Season 7 Indicate The Return Of Doctor Witch In The Next DLC?
When you explore the battle in Diablo 4, you will find that you are far away from the enemy, whether you are using the melee-focused Barbarian or the ranged spell damage-focused Sorcerer. Thanks to the open world in this game, the strategies you can use in combat are very diverse - whether it is advocating evasion or attacking, suitable for players of various game styles.
However, in Path of Exile 2, because of the diligence and awareness advocated by the developers, you can only complete the battle in the close-range world. This means that you may not have enough places to escape or dodge, but must bite the bullet and fight the enemy, and use a lot of flasks and potions to continue the entire battle, which is very unfriendly to some players who are willing to use a defensive game style.
Although both D4 and POE 2 will face the situation of fighting against group enemies, in D4, if you are not interested in the loot they drop, you can completely bypass them or not fight with them, because in the open world, as long as you leave the attack range of these enemies, they will no longer challenge you. Killing them in POE 2 is more useful than avoiding them, as defeating them is the mark in completing a run on a limited map.
But you can still feel the benefits of an open world in POE 2. You can complete the operation of the entire map and various mechanisms in a very difficult endgame. In general, the open world in Diablo 4 provides an excellent platform for those players who are trying this kind of large-scale game for the first time; and the complex map mechanisms and game mechanisms in POE 2 are more suitable for players who have a certain game foundation and an independent game consciousness. I wish you a happy game!
If you are a die-hard Diablo 4 player, you will know that there are a variety of items in the game that can benefit you in different ways. Some of them are gear that can be upgraded and utilized directly after obtaining, and some are more special items.
It is worth noting that when Diablo 4 is updated with a season, sometimes new buff items are added for the new season. In Season 9, this item is undoubtedly Horadric Jewels.
But it should be noted that Horadric Jewels cannot be obtained directly through combat drops like Diablo 4 gold or unique items. Instead, you need to farm Horadric Phials and gem fragments separately and craft them to obtain them.
Among them, Horadric Phials has been introduced to you in other guides and is also a seasonal item in Season 9, but gem fragments are a regular Diablo 4 material that has existed for a long time.
In fact, before Season 9, although gem fragments can also provide you with attribute bonuses by being processed into gems, they are not so eye-catching compared to the role of other powerful gear. Now the emergence of Horadric Jewels has obviously changed this situation.
Based on this, we will explain to you in detail why you should increase your efforts to farm gem fragments in Season 9, as well as the relevant farming methods.
Generally speaking, after finding a jeweler in Diablo 4, you can consume existing gem fragments to craft gems, and then embed them into gear according to the corresponding gear type of the gem to obtain benefits. And the higher the gem level, the better the benefit provided.
But the tricky thing is that if you want to craft the highest level of gems, you need to collect 100,000 fragments of a specific type! This is undoubtedly a long and torturous farming process.
Although low-level gems also have a certain role, if you want to unlock new levels for all low-level gems embedded in all gear later, you also need to consume a lot of materials and gold. Therefore, you will not choose gems or gem fragments as the first choice when looking for buff items.
In order to avoid gem fragments being ignored as much as possible, other seasonal jewelry that can be crafted and inlaid with gem fragments has been introduced in other seasons of Diablo 4, such as Occult Gems in S7, but it seems that none of them are as good as S9 Horadric Jewels.
First, to unlock Horadric Jewels in Season 9, you need to complete Horadric Strongrooms in Torment 1+ difficulties to obtain Horadric Tomes, and then consume it at Wayfinders to learn the crafting method of Horadric Jewels.
Next, you need to get enough Horadric Phials as the first material for crafting Horadric Jewels through the following methods:
The second Horadric Jewels crafting material is gem fragments, and we will introduce you to its specific acquisition method later. Now you need to know that crafting a Horadric Jewel consumes 45,000 gem fragments and 3,000 Horadric Phials.
It is worth noting that these 45,000 gem fragments must come from three different fragment types, which means you need to collect 15,000 fragments of each type.
Although it is also a lot of work to earn gem fragments for Horadric Jewels, it is at least easier than crafting grand-level gems, and the role that Horadric Jewels can play in Season 9 is no less than that of high-level gems.
In addition, in Season 9, the chance of you getting gem fragments is also improved, because in addition to the existing farming methods, this season brings more affixes to Nightmare Dungeon in the form of Escalating Nightmares.
When clearing Escalating Nightmares, you need to complete three built-in nightmare dungeons connected together, each with a corresponding affix effect, and can be carried over to the next dungeon.
Horadric Gem Reserve affix among these affixes allows you to get more gem fragments than usual when clearing dungeons, thus completing the accumulation of materials for Horadric Jewels crafting faster. This was not possible in other seasons before.
In addition to Escalating Nightmare Dungeons and the utilize related affixes already introduced, you can also obtain gem fragments in the following ways:
The above is the information about farming and utilizing gem fragments in Season 9. I hope it’s helpful to you. I hope you can craft Horadric Jewels you want as soon as possible!
July is about to be halfway through, and Diablo 4 Season 9, which was launched at the beginning of the month, is naturally in full swing. Although it did not bring more breakthroughs to Diablo 4 in 2025, it is still worthy of being your first choice for playing ARPG.
However, although the previous 2.3.0 PTR showed some problems, Season 9 was not fully adjusted when it was officially launched. Therefore, the first major patch of this season, 2.3.1, will optimize these issues and fix other bugs after it goes online on July 15.
Based on this, we will introduce to you what changes patch 2.3.1 will make to the seasonal content and class experience of Diablo 4 Season 9 based on known information.
As you know, based on the experience in the first half of the month, it is obvious that the best class in S9 should be Sorcerer or Spiritborn, and their main builds have become more powerful after combining with Horadric Spells.
In comparison, other classes are somewhat weak. If you choose to play them, you may encounter difficulties in accumulating Diablo 4 gold in the early stage, which will hinder your progress.
Therefore, in order to avoid this problem and ensure the overall balance of the game’s class experience as much as possible, patch 2.3.1 has enhanced all classes except Spiritborn. Some are aimed at skills, while others are gear represented by new unique items.
While Spiritborn remained unchanged in Season 9 of the base game, they have been buffed in Vessel of Hatred. If you have been playing DLC recently, you will notice the following changes:
From the above, it can be seen that Barbarian has received the most enhancements. This not only makes up for the long-term lack of interest in this class in Diablo 4, but also may cause a new dominant class competition in the second half of Season 9.
The main seasonal content of Season 9 is Horadric Spells. It can be used as a buff to bring more exploitable power to your characters and builds. At the same time, the game also sets up items such as Horadric Phials & Knowledge to help you upgrade this power.
In addition to the new power, Sins of the Horadrim also brings new dungeons Horadric Strongrooms and Escalating Nightmares. They are not only worthy of being explored, but also your main source of loot in Season 9.
Overall, the above mechanisms are working well, but there are also some minor issues. In order to give you the best experience in Season 9, patch 2.3.1 has made the following optimizations:
In addition, Forgotten Wisdom affix of Nightmare dungeons itself has also received exclusive adjustments. If you unlocked this affix while completing Escalating Nightmares, please note the following changes:
In addition to normal content optimization, major bug fixes are also one of the major features of the patch. Among the fixes that deserve your attention include:
Those are the main things to watch for in patch 2.3.1. It’s worth noting that after the patch is released until 10am on July 19, you can get Rogue transmog item Arbalest crossbow by watching any streamer play Diablo 4 for three hours on Twitch! Don’t miss it!
You may have discovered that Druid has not been sufficiently enhanced for several consecutive Diablo 4 seasons, so that his experience in the game is not as good as other classes, even in Season 9.
But this does not mean that Druid should be abandoned. At least, some players still like to play this class. Therefore, instead of complaining, you should find a way to make Druid play its power as much as possible.
To this end, in addition to mastering the basic class skills, you should also build your own Season 9 combat style as soon as possible through the best Druid leveling build in the early stage of the game, and Werebear Druid is a good choice.
Although Druid and this build will be partially limited by inherent mechanisms, fortunately, the addition of Season 9 seasonal power Horadric Spells can solve this problem well. Next, we will introduce the crafting plan of Werebear Druid to you in detail.
As the main class in Diablo 4, Druid can utilize 3 primary forms in combat, namely Human, Werewolf, and Werebear, and they all have their own unique skills. Werebear Druid build is undoubtedly based on Werebear form.
In contrast, the strength of this build is that it can output high damage, and the weakness is that it is slow, just like a real bear. But if your damage output is high enough, even if the speed is slow, it will not affect your Diablo 4 gold farming efficiency.
Like all Diablo 4 builds, the available skills of Werebear Druid are divided into active and passive. They work differently and the skill point allocation scheme is different.
In general, the damage source skills of this build are mainly active skills Pulverize and Trample, and the overpower and critical hits derived from this can further amplify this damage. Of course, it’s also important to upgrade your active skills in time:
I believe you should also have noticed that Innate Blood Howl brings you extra benefits through Werewolf form. This is because Druids don’t have to be limited to a single form, especially during leveling, and it’s important to combine them to achieve the best effect.
The right passive skills can not only increase your damage and survivability, but also provide bonuses when fighting poisoned enemies:
It should be noted that the passive choices of Defiance and Natural Disaster require you to obtain and equip Aspect Of The Ursine Horror, otherwise you cannot utilize them.
While these aren’t really a skill class, they’re Druid-specific buffs that only provide passive effects, so they’re only useful when paired with a good combination of skills. The best Spirit Boons for this build are:
Horadric Spells include Catalyst, Infusion, and Arcana, which provide additional bonuses in different ways, and as you progress through Season 9, you’ll unlock more spells and get more spell combination options.
If you want to provide targeted assistance to Werebear Druid Build through Horadric Spells, the following are worth prioritizing in combat:
First, when farming gear, since Werebear Druid will frequently trigger overpower in combat, you need to prioritize getting Maces that can enhance this effect. There are no fixed recommendations for other gear, just make sure they have the following types of affixes:
As for legendary aspects, in order to maximize the power of your passive skills, the previously mentioned Aspect Of the Ursine Horror is naturally indispensable. Other aspects worth having include:
They can greatly increase the power of Pulverize and enhance your survivability when you activate Grizzly Rage. Therefore, if you have the ability and time, it is best to farm all of them by clearing dungeons or killing bosses.
The above is the main way to craft the best Druid leveling build Werebear Druid in Season 9. If you insist on playing Druid in this season, this content should help you!
In any Diablo 4 season, the real challenge starts when you enter the endgame. This final stage not only means an increase in the quality and quantity of loot, but also more dangerous enemies.
Therefore, after entering the endgame, in addition to the information you already know about the current season, you should also master additional self-improvement abilities and knowledge to successfully pass the level.
It has been more than a week since Season 9 was launched. If you progress quickly enough, you should have entered or will enter the endgame of this season. Next, we will provide you with key suggestions to help you complete these endgame contents.
When facing stronger enemies, in order to ensure your own survival, in addition to improving your attack power, you should also improve your defense as much as possible from multiple aspects. For example, get stronger armor or improve your elemental resistance.
The first thing to do is to work hard to farm mythic and unique items, and in the process, you can also get more Diablo 4 gold to get more usable items for subsequent battles.
Some of these mythic or unique items are armor in themselves, while others can increase your defense and resistance through their affix effects or exclusive powers, improving your ability to fight dangerous bosses.
Incense is actually a craftable buff in Diablo 4. After utilizing it, you will gain the corresponding buff effect, which can be enjoyed by you and others around you who can access Incense.
All Incense in the game can be divided into Type I, Type II, and Type III, and the effects of each Incense are unique. Some of them can increase your armor or health to help you survive, such as Song of the Mountain or Reddamine Buzz.
When you are able to enter Diablo 4 Season 9 endgame, you should have reached the maximum level 60. After that, although you can no longer continue to become stronger through upgrading, Paragon board will provide you with additional ways to upgrade.
After that, you will get a Paragon point for each Paragon level you upgrade, up to level 300, which means you will get 300 Paragon points to unlock various nodes in Paragon system.
All nodes can be divided into four degrees of rarity: normal, magic, rare, and legendary, but all the main effect is to provide you with attribute/damage ability/defense ability bonus.
If you are confident in your damage ability, you can prioritize unlocking nodes that can ensure your survival. It should be noted that the path to unlocking Paragon nodes suitable for you will vary depending on your class.
Barrier is also one of the status effects that can be utilized in Diablo 4. It can block damage for you for a certain period of time, and sometimes this effect can even affect NPCs.
More specifically, the barrier can absorb damage from all sources for a certain period of time, up to a certain amount of damage. The sources of the barrier include the skills of the three classes of Barbarian, Druid, and Sorcerer, as well as certain item affixes.
It should be noted that currently other classes can only obtain the barrier ability through related items. Don’t confuse barrier with immune, which only provide full protection in a certain area for a certain period of time and cannot be removed.
Another skill that needs to be introduced is Earthen Bulwark, which can provide barrier effects for Druids. As you know, Druids are the weak class in Season 9, so any available help should be valued.
This skill allows you as a Druid to summon protective rocks around you to form a barrier, absorbing a certain percentage of your damage for a short period of time. However, to fully utilize it, you need 300 offering, and the relevant runes can help you.
As the exclusive power and item of Season 9, you should find ways to use Horadric Spells & Jewels to provide you with reliable assistance in all stages.
Among them, Horadric Spells uses three rich elements, Catalyst, Infusion, and Arcana, allowing you to create your own power with maximum freedom to protect yourself while attacking enemies.
Among them, the one that can bring you the protection is represented by Magic Arcana Bottled Wind. After summoning Catalyst, Bottled Wind will bring you a barrier, which is equivalent to 30% of your maximum health and lasts for 4 seconds.
On this basis, you can consume the obtained Horadric Phials and Gem Fragments to craft Horadric Jewels. Although the specific effects of different Horadric Jewels vary, except for possible negative effects, they can all increase your armor and elemental resistance, such as:
It should be noted that Horadric Jewels can only be socketed in jewelry and can only work after you equip Horadric Spells. In addition, you can only equip 1 Catalyst, 1 Infusion and 3 Arcanas in each battle.
The above are Diablo 4 Season 9 endgame survival tips we provide for you this time, I hope it can help your gaming experience. Thank you for reading.
After the nerfs in the first two seasons to achieve class balance, although now Spiritborn no longer has the outstanding advantages like it in Season 6 and DLC, it still shows extraordinary combat effectiveness in the latest Season 9 through new unique item.
According to the powerful thorn damage provided by Balazan’s Maxtlatl, you can output a lot of damage in Season 9 with the related Quill Volley, Rake or Poison Thorns Spiritborn builds, but the premise is that you can complete the character upgrade.
In fact, the utilization of most advanced builds and the unlocking of more game content are based on your character level reaching the maximum level. We have introduced you to several ways to upgrade in S9 before, and you should also master the appropriate leveling builds base on them.
Therefore, if you want to harvest more Diablo 4 gold and other rare rewards as a Spiritborn in the later stage of the game through more powerful builds, you need to master the appropriate leveling build in the early stage.
Unlike mature Spiritborn builds that emphasize thorns or poison damage, leveling builds focus on ending battles quickly to complete the upgrade, so Evade Spiritborn Build will be a suitable leveling choice.
This build is not only fast, but more importantly, it can well integrate the new power Horadric Spells brought by Season 9. And when you finish upgrading and transform to more advanced builds, the similarity between Evade and Rake Build will allow you to adapt faster.
For Evade Spiritborn Build, the choice of active and passive skills is equally important. The focus of active skills is the rotation order, and the passive skills are the allocation of skill points.
First, you should unlock the following active skills for this build:
The core idea behind this active skill set is to allow you to stab enemies and throw feathers while swiftly moving across the map, or more specifically, to utilize Evade and attack enemies while moving through Thunderspike.
The main damage skill is Storm Feathers, which you can activate when you reach level 15 and unlock Eagle as your main Spirit Hall. This skill causes you to fire feathers while evading, and Evade reset caused by Thunderspike will increase the frequency of feather firing.
This is exactly where Spirit Hall’s choice comes in. Eagle Spirit Hall is the best for this build, not only because it provides enough damage, but also because it can apply vulnerability to enemies, and your critical hit chance increases for every four meters you move.
If you want to focus on evading, you can also replace Concussive Stomp with other skills such as Armored Hide or Toxic Skin. You can also utilize Ravager in between attacks.
The rule of thumb for choosing passive skills for this build is to provide damage buffs and additional evade chance, and then it is best to upgrade them to the highest level in order of importance as soon as possible.
When allocating skill points to them, you can decide based on your actual combat needs, but if you want to ensure your survivability is reliable enough, prioritize the ultimate passive skill.
As an extra boost for Season 9, the right Horadric Spells can make the builds more powerful than usual. As you know, Horadric Spells include 3 elements, each with 10-20 options, and the ones suitable for Evade Spiritborn builds include:
The combination of Thunderous Particle and Celestial Surge can help you quickly clear enemy-dense areas represented by Horadric Storerooms to farm gold and XP.
If you replace Catalyst choice with Cosmic Anomaly, it will reduce the clearing speed while increasing the sustainability of the build. Invigorating Helix and Volatile Crystal and most Arcanas can improve your survivability.
Since the main damage source of this build is Storm Feathers, in order to trigger it more frequently, you need to improve the basic skills mainly based on Thunderspike, and the following legendary aspects can do this:
As for the choice of specific weapons or armor, please give priority to those that can provide the following attribute bonuses:
Also, although this build does not need to be played by runes, if you have the time to farm runes, CirGar and Cem ritual runes will be good choices. They can increase the critical damage of the build and allow you to refresh Evade more frequently.
The above is all you need to know about the craft Evade Spiritborn Build. If you are playing Spiritborn in Season 9, you might as well follow the guide to practice it in the game!
For each Diablo 4 season, which has not changed much from one to another, the exclusive seasonal powers, dungeons and items should be the most worthy of priority experience, and some items can only be obtained in seasonal dungeons.
In Season 9, the new dungeons include Horadric Strongrooms and Escalating Nightmares. Among them, Horadric Strongrooms is a limited-time micro-dungeon, the entrance is hidden in Escalating Nightmares, and completing it can get seasonal rewards.
Based on this, we will introduce you how to get the required Horadric Spell’s power or other seasonal items by completing Horadric Strongrooms.
As a limited dungeon in Season 9, you can find the entrance to Horadric Strongrooms in Escalating Nightmares or regular nightmare dungeons, but the premise is that you have to obtain Nightmare Sigil to unlock these two nightmare dungeons.
It is worth noting that Escalating Nightmare Sigil will unlock random affixes that can increase the difficulty of the game and earn you more Diablo 4 gold. Witchwater Nightmare Sigil is a guaranteed Horadric Strongrooms encounter.
Once you have unlocked a Horadric Strongroom, you can utilize Wayfinder to find its portal entrance more quickly, marked by special flashes and sounds nearby. But before entering the portal, you will need to defeat the surrounding enemies guarding it.
In addition to working hard to obtain the relevant Nightmare Sigil, you can also increase your chances of finding the portal by:
After entering Horadric Strongrooms, you need to activate Horadric Artifact Pillar and kill the enemies that appear to activate the ritual. After that, please continue to click on the pillars in the new room to generate more waves of enemies to earn more reward drops.
It is worth noting that the higher the game difficulty you choose, the more pillars you can choose, and you can activate as many pillars as allowed. In the end, you will get Horadric Attunement to redeem rewards by completing the dungeon.
In the process of clearing the dungeon, Arcana, a more important element in Horadric Spells, will also drop randomly. If you want to get as many of these drops as possible, it is recommended that you choose pillars that will generate additional ambushes to increase the density of monsters and thus produce more loot.
Among the selectable pillars, some have the effect of providing you with items that can be carried to increase the percentage of coordination, but it should be noted that if you utilize potions or dodge, the items will become invalid.
If you have fast builds and can manage them well with attunement buffs, you should be able to get the most attunement from each clear of Horadric Strongrooms.
You will also get more attunement from defeating larger monsters, or from killing bosses that spawn after reaching attunement level 3. If you interact with multiple pillars to form a circle, you can also get extra attunement from defeating monsters that spawn inside the circle, as well as a group of elite monsters.
Don’t forget to activate Sacrifice Shrines, too. They are similar to pillars, but more like side quests. Activating Sacrifice Shrines will spawn more enemies, and while defeating them will not directly drop Horadric Attunement, they will provide other rewards.
Arcana is actually a type of Horadric Spell, and there are 20 of them in three rarities, including magic, rare, and legendary. Arcana of different rarities are obtained in different ways:
Even if you unlock all the above rarities, the actual drop of these Arcanas is random. So if you want to get as many Arcana as possible, you can only keep farming Horadric Strongrooms. These Arcanas include:
In addition to attunement and Arcana drops, you can eventually get Horadric chests, and defeating the final boss of the dungeon will also reward you with a Grand Horadric Cache.
After opening these chests, you have a chance to get Horadric Phials and Horadric Tomes, and the more attunement you have before, the better the chest reward quality.
Horadric Phials can upgrade your Horadric Spells and can be used as materials for crafting Horadric Jewels together with gem fragments. Horadric Tomes will provide you with more of these two materials.
As for Horadric Jewels, you can think of them as additional benefits for Horadric Spells, which can further bring you benefits such as increased armor value and all elemental resistance, which is worth crafting!
If you think that the content we provide should be helpful for your experience of Diablo 4 Season 9 Horadric Strongrooms, please implement them one by one according to the suggestions! Thank you for reading!
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