In Diablo 4, Helltides are special endgame events in Sanctuary that provide you with very useful items like Forgotten Soul to enhance your gear. Helltides are great for farming some Legendaries and Uniques while making your builds more powerful. During each Helltide, you will encounter stronger enemies. Although your battles with them are full of unknown challenges, this is definitely the best way for you to get some better gear and more XP.

But I need to remind you that if you are a newcomer to Diablo 4, or a player who has not tried Helltides for a long time, you don’t have to rush to run it. Because it is a little difficult, it is only suitable for some high-level players to use for leveling up. But those players need not worry, as this guide will provide strategies and locations for running Helltides in Season 5 so you can best prepare yourself to maximize your loot.

What’s Different About Helltides In Season 5?

In previous seasons, we all know that Helltides are intense demonic invasions that attack different areas of Sanctuary every hour. They not only change the landscape of the entire area, but also bring hordes of powerful enemies.

These activities include special activities, boss fights, and exclusive loot in all World Tiers. In Season 5, you can level up your character to level 100 quickly with the use of Helltides.

What Are Aberrant Cinders?

Aberrant Cinders are your major currency in Helltides, just like your Diablo 4 Gold in the game, you can find it by defeating enemies or in treasure chests throughout the area. You can use Aberrant Cinders to unlock Tortured Gifts with the loot and materials you want.

But you need to be aware that Aberrant Cinders can only exist in the current Helltides. If you are defeated by an enemy during a Helltide, you will lose half of Aberrant Cinders you lost. Most importantly, they cannot be restored after you enter again.

So, making the most of Helltides, you need to move strategically during different Helltides events and fight more large groups of enemies to collect numerous Aberrant Cinders. This way, you can open multiple Tortured Gifts before Helltides ends.

How To Open Tortured Gifts?

After you have collected enough Aberrant Cinders, you can open Tortured Gifts you want. At this time, you should still be vigilant about Aberrant Cinders to prepare for unnecessary risks.

In World Tier 1 and World Tier 2, all Tortured Gifts are Tortured Gifts of Mystery, and the loot in them can be placed in any gear slot. In World Tier 3 and World Tier 4, Tortured Gifts will be categorized by gear slot type, and you can also open a specific gear you want. For example, if you want the powerful Tuskhelm of Joritz the Mighty, then you’ll want to look around for Tortured Gift of Boots.

How Does Unlock Helltides In Season 5?

In Season 5, Helltides is now available in all World Tiers, including Tier 1 and Tier 2. You just need to reach Kyovashad to participate in the exciting events that follow.

But before you can officially unlock Helltides, you need to complete Priority Quest The Helltide Rises, which can be found by opening your map and viewing Priority Quest in Journal. Once you have the quest, go directly to World Tier Statue in Kyovashad and talk to Doomsayer Pira to the left of it.

After completing this quest, you will gain some experience and Diablo 4 Gold, but most importantly, access to Helltides. Here are some details about Helltides in each World Tier.

World Tier 1 And World Tier 2

In this lower World Tier, all Tortured Gifts are unassignable, and there are no Living Steel Gifts. Also, in World Tier 1 and World Tier 2, there are no bosses wandering around, and no meteor showers, so you can explore them safely. Incidentally, the density of monsters in them is also very low, so you can use them for training.

World Tier 3

In World Tier 3, you can specifically look for Tortured Gifts with Standard Armor, Weapons, or Jewelry, and Living Steel Gifts will drop in sets of 3. Living Steel is used when you fight Uber Bosses.

In this higher level Helltides, you will encounter some bosses wandering around, and there will also be some meteor showers that increase chaos. The fights in them will be a little more challenging, so don’t rush them.

World Tier 4

As with World Tier 3, you can also find Tortured Gifts with specific Diablo 4 Items in Helltides of World Tier 4. Here, Living Steel Gifts will drop in sets of 5, and you will get more Living Steel.

In addition, you have a chance to get additional sets in Living Steel Gifts. The roaming bosses and meteor showers in World Tier 4 are more powerful. So before you challenge them, make sure your build is strong enough.

Locations And Timer Of Helltide

Helltide in Season 5 spawns once every hour and lasts 55 minutes. This means you only have 120 minutes of the day without encountering Helltide. This will greatly increase the chances of getting into Helltide for many players who don’t have time to commit to a long game.

However, besides the excitement, you need to know that the location of Helltides is random. But when a Helltides is taking place, you can recognize its location by the special burgundy block on the map.

To join a Helltide, teleport to the nearest waypoint and head to the event location. Keep an eye out for Helltide Timer, Aberrant Cinders, Baneful Heart, and Helltide Threat Meter that appear near your mini-map.

All Locations Helltide Zones

• Hawezar (Dismal Foothills & Fethis Wetlands & Ruins of Rakhat Keep & Eriman’s Pyre)
• Kehjistan (Amber Sands & Ragged Coastline & Southern Expanse & Dilapidated Aqueducts)
• Dry Steppes (Khargai Crags & Temple of Rot & Untamed Scarps & Onyx Watchtower)
• Scosglen (Northshore & Deep Forest & Túr Dúlra & Hope’s Light)
• Fractured Peaks (Sarkova Pass & Frigid Expanse & Kor Dragan & Malnok)

These are some of the running strategies and locations of Helltides in Diablo 4 Season 5. I hope you can have fun in this new season!

Most players have been having fun with the newly released Season 2 of Diablo 4, where one of the few endgame goals is summoning and killing Duriel for a chance for an extremely rare Diablo 4 Item, such as Uber Unique item. In order to get to Duriel though, players need to complete several steps. One of them involves gathering Living Steel from Helltides. 

Unfortunately, Helltides have been largely unchanged in Season 2, and players are voicing their complaints about it being too grindy, time restrictive and boring. 

So, in this guide, I’ll try my very best to guide you though the optimal way of farming Helltide, with many practical tips that you can use to make your Living Steel grind easier and faster. 

Before Entering The Helltide

When you enter the Helltide, you have to look at 2 things immediately: which zone is affected by the Helltide and how much time do you have until the top of the hour? 

The first question is important because the zone determines to number of Living Steel chests present at any given time. If the affected zone is Kehjistan, then there are 3 Living Steel chests, in any other case, there are 2 chests present on the map. 

The second thing, the time until the top of the hour, determines how much time you have until the chests change positions. In case you didn’t know, both the Living Steel chests and the Mystery chests disappear at the top of the hour, and respawn at different locations. 

For example, if the Helltide starts at 11:15 in a zone that is not Kehjistan, meaning we have 45 minutes until 12:00 to open 2 Living Steel chests, and then another 15 minutes until the Helltide ends, to open 2 more of them. These mechanisms are really important to understand, because your entire strategy revolves around them.  

Tips About Finding Helltide Events

Next, you should try to find an area in the Helltide, where 2 or 3 events are relatively close to each other. In order to maximize your Aberrant Cinder collection rate, you should do an event, and then move to check if another event is up. But you shouldn’t just rush between event locations. You should kill all the packs of monsters that are on the way. 

So, ideally, you should be moving between events and killing all monsters in between them. In case an event is not up, don’t wait for it to come back, always continue moving. 

To check for the locations of the events, I suggest using D4armory. You should be doing as many events as possible, and during the events, you should maximize the number of monsters spawned, and not the fastest possible completion. Because this way you can collect a lot of Diablo 4 Gold and XP. These are very important resources.

For example, on the Jar of Souls or the Blood collection events, you can get a lot more Aberrant Cinders if you only complete the objectives towards the end of the timer. So, try to maximize mob spawns instead of completion.  

It is possible to reset an event by relogging and changing the world tier, or teleporting to town and back. I do not recommend using this method. Because it doesn’t always work, and you can waste a lot of time by relogging or teleporting instead of actual farming.  

Also Read: S Tier Chain Lightning Build Can Dominate Diablo 4 Season 2!

Tips About Collecting Cinders

While you are collecting Cinders, there are a few things to keep in mind:

Number 1: do not open intractable objects. In general, they are not worth the time and don’t contain much useful stuff. There are only two exceptions to this: objects that have the red glow around them - these contain several Aberrant Cinders, which makes them worth opening. You should also click on Fiend Roses for both the crafting materials and the Cinders. 

Number 2: group up if you can. Collecting Cinders is much faster in a group. And even if you’re not, you can get Cinders from mobs that other players kill near your location. 

Number 3: do not die. This might be trivial, but dying is something that seriously sets you back by making you lose half of your cinders. Therefore, you should build your character in a way that minimizes the chance of death. 

Once you’re closing the top of the hour, you should look up the locations of the Living Steel chests. I suggest the map on D4armory to this as well. Make sure to start going for the chests with enough time, because there is a possibility that you get the bug affecting Living Steel chests where the chest simply does not appear for you. 

For example, you may encounter this situation, that is, D4armory may have told you where a certain chest is, but you did not find it. The way to fix this is to either log in and log out, or teleport to town and back to the location of the chest. You may have to try these solutions multiple times in order to make the chest appear, and this takes a relatively long time. So, calculate this into your route. 

Once you have opened the chests before the top of the hour, go back to the original farming method of completing events and killing monsters in between them. 

One additional thing to note is that you should unlock the Seaonal Blessing, the Urn of Helltides. Because it makes Living Steel chests have a small chance of containing 5 instead of 3 pieces of Living Steel. 

Lastly, when you have enough Cinders to open all the remaining chests on the map, go for them. Altogether, the maximum Living Steel you can collect from a Helltide ranges from 6 to 18. 6 being the worst-case scenario where there are 2 chests and the Helltide starts and ends at the top of the hour and there is no chest respawn, and 18 being the best-case scenario with a Kehjistan Helltide a good respawn timing.