News Tag: Diablo 4 Items

Sanctuary in Diablo 4 has been ravaged by demons for far too long. Signs in Season 11 suggest that the angels may be about to launch a counterattack, and the unique mechanics of this season are Sanctification and Divine Gifts.

Divine Gifts are somewhat similar to Chaos Perks and Boss Powers from previous seasons, but far less powerful. They can bring both benefits and penalties. Let’s take a look at how to acquire and utilize them.

Divine Gifts Interface

Divine Gifts system interface consists of an inner and outer circle. Divine Gifts have two states: Purified and Corrupted. Their effects depend on whether they are placed in the inner or outer circle. A total of 8 Divine Gifts can be placed, 4 in the inner circle and 4 in the outer circle.

The position of each Divine Gift is fixed and cannot be placed arbitrarily. Specific gifts can only switch between purified and corrupted states in specific locations and cannot be swapped with gifts in other locations. Players cannot freely choose to place all four Divine Gifts on the purified or corrupted side, as the system has predefined settings for each location.

How To Get Them?

Divine Gifts interface is divided into four main areas, each representing a significant boss in Diablo 4. Defeating these demons and their Lesser Evils unlocks the corresponding Corrupted Essence.

Once you obtain a Corrupted Essence, use the angel-colored portal on the map to find Hadriel (the angel guy), who will convert it into two Divine Gifts. Continue defeating these enemies to upgrade your Divine Gifts.

Duriel In Helltide

• Essence of Squalor: Defeating Duriel in Helltide unlocks Socketables Diablo 4 items.
• Essence of Pain: Defeating Maggots in Helltide will drop experience orbs.

Belial In The Pit

• Essence of Lies: Allows for additional upgrades in The Pit.
• Essence of Shadows: Grants more gold in The Pit.

Azmodan In The Overworld

• Essence of Sin: Surviving World Boss battles grants additional Activity Keys.
• Essence of Hellfire: Grants additional Lair Boss Keys in World Boss battles.

Andariel In The Undercity

• Essence of Anguish: Completing Undercity grants additional Obols.
• Essence of Screams: Completing Undercity grants additional Salvage Materials.

Divine Gifts Mechanism

After Hadriel obtains Corrupted Essence, you will unlock the corresponding two Divine Gifts.

• Purified state: Provides a buff that benefits the character.
• Corrupted state: Inflicts a negative effect or increases difficulty, but also provides additional rewards.

Furthermore, regardless of which slot you activate, you will receive the corresponding reward buff, and activating Purified grants double the rewards.

You might find this strange, as normally you should receive double rewards after activating Corrupted Divine Gifts to increase the game difficulty, but Season 11 doubles the rewards after using Purified Divine Gifts to decrease the game difficulty.

The developers don’t want to artificially increase the game’s difficulty in this way, but rather let players choose for themselves. However, Purified Divine Gifts slots aren’t unlocked at the start, and they unlock gradually as the game progresses, depending on your Divine Favor ranks:

• Rank II: Duriel
• Rank IV: Andariel
• Rank VI: Azmodan
• Rank VIII: Belial

Therefore, if you want to reduce the game’s difficulty, use Purified Divine Gifts more and Corrupted Divine Gifts less in the later stages.

How To Choose Divine Gift?

Essence Of Sin

Purified Divine Gifts provide a 20% increased armor value, making it the most powerful gift in the entire game, as armor is crucial in Diablo IV.

Essence Of Lies

Purified Divine Gifts provide Fortify for 1% of maximum health per second. This enhancement is one of the best choices for builds that don’t easily obtain enhancement mechanics. Combined with the changes to the enhancement mechanics this season, it provides strong survivability.

Essence Of Hellfire

Corrupted Divine Gifts will cause meteors to fall when challenging World Bosses, but reward additional Lair Boss Keys. Its Purified effect is weaker, only having a chance to stun enemies. The main reason to choose it is its decent reward.

Essence Of Squalor

Purified status grants potions, with mediocre effects, while Corrupted status causes you to lose potions when attacked by maggots. Its greatest use is providing experience orbs, which are very useful during leveling.

Essence Of Screams

Purified Divine Gift provides a 20% increase in all resistances. Since Season 11 resistance system changed to a direct stacking of values instead of percentage reductions, this bonus is calculated based on existing values and is effective, but usually less important than armor.

Essence Of Pain

The reward of Essence of Pain is increased gem and rune drops. Purified Divine Gift is very useful when you need top-tier gems and runes for upgrades or trading, but you can consider switching to it later.

Essence Of Anguish

Purified Divine Gift provides a 30% movement speed boost, which is useful during leveling, but may be less effective than other gifts later on.

Essence Of Shadow

Corrupted Divine Gifts amplify Baal illusions, and their attacks can blind or knock back players, resulting in strong negative effects. Purified Divine Gift occasionally grants the unstoppable status, but its impact is not significant. If you don’t need double gold, you can consider skipping this gift slot.

Since the overall strength of Divine Gifts this season is not high, you don’t need to worry too much about whether you’ve collected them all or chosen the wrong ones, as your character is strong enough even without them.

At 11:00 AM PDT on December 3rd, Diablo 4 held its latest developer interview, revealing the official name of the season and introducing more changes to the new season's content based on 2.5.0 PTR.

Based on this, we'll summarize the main points revealed in this livestream, allowing you to quickly adapt to the gameplay of Season 11 upon its release.

Season 11 Overview

The official name of this season is Season of Divine Intervention, and it will officially launch at 8:30 PM PDT on Thursday, December 11, 2025. Interestingly, this timing coincides with The Game Awards, leading players to speculate that D4 might be planning something big.

However, focusing on Season 11 itself is clearly more important than worrying about the still-vague second DLC or other plans.

This season's main seasonal mechanics are Divine Gifts and Sanctification. Along with new dungeons, seasonal events, and unique items, several fundamental mechanics have been adjusted, including:

• Tempering and Masterworking system upgrades
• Defense system changes
• Monster mechanics changes
• Season Journey replaced by Season Rank
• Removal of Renown system's cross-seasonal trait

News From This Developer Livestream

2.5.0 PTR only provides an opportunity to experience the prototype of Season 11 and does not represent the final form of the new season. Developers must continue to optimize based on player feedback to present a better Season 11.

Tempering And Masterworking

After the changes, Tempering allows you to directly select the affixes you want to apply from the recipe instead of random assignment. While this also limits the number of affixes that can be upgraded, the upgrade results for Diablo 4 items will be more consistent.

Masterworking will no longer randomly increase affix effects but will directly affect item quality. This means it will more effectively enhance items based on their gear type, such as directly increasing armor resistance or defense.

Each subsequent Masterworking will randomly increase the item's quality and slightly improve the stats of all affixes. Upon reaching the highest quality, you can perform a final enhancement, increasing one random affix on the current gear by 50%.

More Changes To Monster Mechanics

First, starting with Season 11, monsters in the game become more intelligent in combat, making their subsequent actions less predictable and resulting in a more realistic and engaging combat experience.

Furthermore, more monsters with affixes will appear, or the difficulty of monsters that already have affixes will be further increased - even before entering Torment difficulty, these situations may occur, enriching the overall game experience.

For players who excel at dealing AoE damage, be aware that monster gathering frequency will decrease in the new season, so you won't be able to use previous tactics and must quickly develop new strategies.

New Boss Azmodan Combat Mechanics

This boss is not only a new permanent world boss but also one source that allows you to obtain Divine Gifts, corresponding to Essence of Sin and Essence of Hellfire.

You can find and defeat this boss in Capstone Dungeon after reaching Season Rank V, or you can summon him by collecting materials at Summoning Altar. Note that each summon will grant Azmodan a power belonging to another Lesser Evil.

Given the uncertainty and unknown nature of this new boss, we recommend that you be fully prepared before summoning Azmodan. At least unlock some Divine Gifts by defeating the other three demons, Belial, Andariel, and Duriel.

Other Systemic Changes

Regarding the defense system, Season 11 will introduce a new concept called Toughness. You can think of it as a new metric for measuring your defensive capabilities, representing the total amount of damage you can withstand after using all damage reduction methods.

Because of this, you'll need to consider more factors when acquiring and upgrading gear. While it may be a bit more troublesome, it's a good thing to improve overall defensive capabilities.

The existing armor and resistances will be calculated based on the level system, and the armor and resistance penalties from Torment difficulty have been removed. If you choose Torment difficulty, the game will default to recommending Toughness level.

Regarding the healing mechanics, Season 11 reduces the base capacity of lootable potions to 4, and potion healing is now based on percentage-based instant healing, restoring approximately 35% of your total health.

While the number of lootable potions has decreased, one potion slowly regenerates every 30 seconds. To balance the overall reduction in quantity, the original Life on Hit effect has been changed to an affix that can be added to other items.

It's worth noting that the change in the healing mechanics means that Fortify also needs to be modified to work in tandem with the other potions. Therefore, Fortify's function will change from damage reduction to allowing you to store additional health.

In other words, starting with Season 11, Fortify can stack onto your maximum health. When the cap is reached, it restores a percentage of your maximum health per second, along with an equal amount of Fortify effect.

Twitch Drops This Time

Although the stream has ended, it's still worth mentioning. If you watch the livestream for a full 30 minutes and ensure Twitch Drops are enabled, you'll have a chance to win Unhilted Striked one-handed sword cosmetic.

If you unfortunately miss the livestream, you'll miss out on the cosmetic, but you can still catch up on the content by watching the replay on Diablo YouTube or Twitch channels.

To claim your drop rewards on time, please note the following:

• Rewards can only be claimed on the livestream channel you watched and through Drops Inventory menu on Twitch.
• Link your Battle.net and Twitch accounts within 7 days.
• Make sure you're using a PC web browser or Twitch app for Android/iOS to claim your rewards.

These guidelines should also apply to future Diablo 4 Twitch Drops releases via other livestreams, so it's best to remember them to avoid your prizes expiring or becoming un-claimable.

That concludes this guide. With Season 11 drawing ever closer, let's look forward to it and any other new Diablo 4 developments that may emerge!

Diablo 4 Season 11 will feature a significant overhaul, and based on PTR data, it's nerfed in many ways compared to Season 10. Regardless of your build, your DPS will be noticeably lower.

Survivability is also crucial in Season 11, especially in the early game. You'll need to focus more on defense due to stronger monsters. So, how should you adjust your gear in Season 11?

Season 11 Nerfs

Due to the loss of Greater Affixes and the damage bonuses from the old Masterworking set, player DPS is significantly reduced.

Players will also lose the survival attributes provided by these systems, such as health and armor. Furthermore, the entire game has undergone a survivability overhaul; monster damage is higher, and elite monster control effects will be more pronounced.

The drop rate of Legendary gear will be nerfed early in the season and will only increase later. Amulet slots will no longer have higher affixes for primary attributes, further reducing damage.

Overall movement speed has been nerfed, affecting map clearing efficiency and positioning. Resource generation has been changed to a fixed value instead of a percentage, significantly impacting builds that rely on skill rotations.

Survivability Building Strategies

Ensuring sufficient survivability is extremely important in Season 11, as you can only deal damage if you're alive. Below are some general suggestions regarding builds.

Skill Selection

Each class has mobility skills or crowd control break skills, such as Rouge's Shadow Step and Necromancer's Blood Mist. You must carry these skills to quickly escape monster encirclement or deal with elite monster crowd control.

The skill tree offers several options that provide damage reduction, even if they sacrifice some DPS. You can also carry crowd control abilities, using effects like chill to slow or freeze enemies, creating opportunities for yourself to deal damage.

Attributes

First, you need to stack Life and Maximum Life affixes on more equipment slots. After the rework, Armor remains a primary stat, but Resistances should also be maximized. Aspect of Disobedience and Juggernaut's Aspect are recommended for maximizing armor.

Cooldown reduction becomes more important because it allows you to use survival skills more frequently. In Season 11, Cooldown reduction will be available on new slots such as gloves.

Life on hit, especially percentage-based Life on hit, is an important means of recovery because its benefit increases with maximum life.

Recommended Equipment

Season 11 has adjusted or even reworked many unique items, especially mythic items. Below are some recommended unique Diablo 4 items for Season 11.

Helm

Harlequin Crest provides significant damage reduction and cooldown reduction, making it a top choice for many builds in Season 11. While Heir of Perdition offers a significant damage boost, Harlequin Crest is a better option until survivability is a priority.

Andariel's Visage provides life on hit in Season 11, and its recovery effect will be even more pronounced when combined with high attack speed builds.

Chest Armor

Shroud of False Death remains a top choice, offering comprehensive stat boosts and resource generation, which is invaluable for any build. Tyrael's Might is no longer as useless in Season 11 as before; while not as good as Shroud of False Death, it provides considerable survivability.

Pants

Tassets of the Dawning Sky, while not unique to mythic builds, are very useful in Season 11. They provide all stats, resistances, maximum resistances, and movement speed, effectively compensating for the losses in stats, resistances, and movement speed in the new season.

Gloves

Endurant Faith provides an effect similar to Progenesis Amethyst Flask in Path of Exile, converting a portion of damage into damage over time, buying time to regenerate health. However, many players in Diablo 4 don't use this unique item because its direct resistance boost isn't very strong. Therefore, you should only use it when you desperately need survivability.

Boots

Rakanoth's Wake isn't a mythic unique item either. However, it provides up to 35% all elemental resistances and cooldown reduction, allowing your other gear to stack attack affixes, making it highly recommended.

Weapons

Doombringer, as a mythic item, provides a significant amount of maximum life, making it a good defensive choice.

Rings And Amulets

Starlight Aspect provides primary resources when health regenerates. Combined with items like Undying Aspect, it can solve both survivability and resource issues.

While the Melted Heart of Selig is still under adjustment, if it doesn't receive too many nerfs, it will be the preferred amulet for many builds.

Eternal Realm

Season 11's seasonal power provides additional defensive stats such as resistances, armor, and fortify, for example, increasing Fortify by 1% of maximum health or adding 20% ​​to all resistances. These bonuses are vastly different in terms of damage output compared to the better affixes provided by Chaos Armor from Season 10.

The nerfs to Tempered and Masterworking in Season 11 will have a significant impact on player builds. Players will lose approximately 40% of their power simply due to the changes to Masterworking.

However, if gear with higher affixes and Masterworking from Season 10 is retained in Eternal Realm after the update, Eternal Realm characters will be objectively stronger. This is because these items provide a significant damage multiplier and stat boost that Season 11 characters cannot obtain.

For players seeking maximum power or wanting a smoother experience with new content, using a character from Eternal Realm in Season 11 might be a better choice, especially for those already possessing high Paragon levels and endgame gear.

If you're considering continuing with your Eternal Realm character instead of creating a Season 11 character, it's recommended to immediately max out some key defensive unique items using the current Masterworking system. If this gear is retained, its power will far surpass that of the new season's equipment.

That's a general overview of how to improve survivability in Season 11. Remember, don't blindly pursue maximum DPS; survival should be your top priority.

While the official release of Season 11 is still some time away, Diablo 4 has already revealed most of its major content, including the new unique items available to each class. This has led to a surge in new builds crafted around these items.

Among them, the new gear for Necromancer is Gravebloom. As a unique weapon, besides its basic attributes, its biggest highlight is its ability to summon golems to deal damage, and these golems respawn very quickly.

Based on this, we'll introduce crafting tips for a golem summoning build centered on Gravebloom.

What Is Golem?

In Diablo 4, besides skills and gear, each class has a unique mechanic that not only serves as a buff but also reflects the class's characteristics. For Necromancer, Book of the Dead is the exclusive mechanic.

This mechanic allows you to summon an assistant for Necromancer and customize its usage. Available types include skeletal warriors and mages, and a golem. Each type has three variants, and each variant has two upgrade opportunities.

Note that you can only choose one of the two upgrade methods: upgrade or sacrifice. Choosing sacrifice means that your summoned creature cannot be summoned again afterward, but it will retain a permanent buff.

The golem introduced here is a massive, ferocious-looking creature with three variants: bone, blood, and iron. Their main functions are:

• Bone golem: Taunts enemies, forcing them to attack the golem.
• Blood golem: Drains the life force of nearby enemies to heal and strengthen itself.
• Iron golem: Becomes a fused steel entity, stunning enemies by slamming the ground.

Gravebloom Introduction

As the core Diablo 4 item of the build introduced here, Gravebloom's most important item effect is that it allows you to summon three small golems, each dealing 40-60% of normal damage, while also providing a 30% attack speed bonus and a 50% golem respawn speed bonus.

Other attributes include:

• 298 Damage Per Second
• + 10% Attack Speed
• + 94 Intelligence
• + 457 Maximum Life
• + 50% Chance for Golem to hit twice
• + 2 Golem Mastery

Gravebloom Golem Build Overview

Based on this mechanic and item, to craft this build and make it effective, you first need to activate two golems as quickly as possible to allow them to deal damage, and then you must add Aspect of Fel Gluttony.

This item, as a Necromancer-exclusive Legendary Aspect, not only allows golems to trigger a second instance of damage upon activation, but also directly increases the golem's damage multiplier.

This, combined with the significant changes to key passive skills in Season 11, means that regardless of the number of summoned minions, everyone will uniformly gain higher attack speed and damage.

How To Choose The Golem Type?

As we've already discussed, Necromancer can summon three golem types, but not all are suitable for crafting Gravebloom Golem Build - the blood golem is the best.

Why this conclusion? We'll analyze it for you.

First, compared to the iron golem, while its active damage is slightly higher than the blood golem, the blood golem has a damage multiplier against single targets.

Furthermore, the iron golem's attack speed is more than 50% slower than the blood golem's, and the blood golem's attack speed is 50% slower than the bone golem's.

Therefore, in terms of overall attack pattern, speed, and any buffs, the iron golem's performance is not outstanding, making it the quickest to pass.

As for the bone golem, it spawns five corpses upon activating its skill and can taunt enemies.

However, its problem is that its normal activation skill doesn't actually deal damage, and AoE damage characteristic that originally belonged to the bone golem is now present in all golems.

In contrast, the blood golem has two advantages: it provides a 50% damage bonus and reduces damage taken by the target, while also restoring your health when activated. More importantly, it deals three times the damage of a normal attack to a single target.

While its speed is slower than the bone golem, this shortcoming is negligible given the significant damage bonus. Furthermore, the blood golem's activation itself deals damage, although this isn't displayed in its skill description.

Based on this, after deciding to choose the blood golem, you can further upgrade it at level 28. The upgrade and sacrifice effects are as follows:

• Upgrade: Your Blood Golem will absorb 15% of the damage for you. When your Blood Golem is healthy, it has 25% damage reduction and a 50% damage bonus.
• Sacrifice: Your maximum health is increased by 10%, but you will no longer be able to summon golems.

More Crafting Tips

To make this build deal high damage and repeatedly sacrifice summons, you need to unlock Hulking Monstrosity legendary node. This increases golem's maximum health by 40% and deals double damage.

In addition, for the two other Book of the Dead variants, skeletal warriors and mages, you need to select their sacrifice effects. Combined with Memento Mori and Sacrificial Aspect, this will grant an additional 60% golem damage bonus.

Furthermore, Gravebloom mace itself is clearly designed specifically for golems. While you can also use it in regular summoning builds, ultimately, the attribute slot it occupies doesn't increase the damage of all summons, only benefiting certain golems.

Overall, this build fully utilizes the value of the new unique items and gives the classic Book of the Dead mechanic a chance to shine in the new season.

If needed after Season 11 goes live, you can also use your creativity to further enrich the skills and gear options of this build based on the guide we have provided, making it more complete and effective!

Diablo 4 Season 11 PTR brought many changes, such as leveling, crafting, and new leaderboards, but the experience wasn't as good as Season 10.

However, Season 11 hasn't officially launched yet (its release date is December 9th), so there's still plenty of time to fine-tune it. In a recent developer interview, the developers discussed their plans for Season 11 and future updates, even hinting at the next expansion for Diablo 4.

Sanctification

Sanctification is one of the seasonal features of Season 11. Its operation is similar to Vaal Orb in Path of Exile. Using it on an item might give it better affixes or remove its useful affixes, rendering it worthless, and the item cannot be sanctified further. This feature is mainly for trying to upgrade items that are close to their endgame value; players can also choose not to use it.

The developers understand that players don't want to destroy valuable and unique gear and Mythic items, but they also feel that a completely risk-free experience would reduce player excitement. They believe that ideal sanctification should allow for an unlimited number of sanctifications of the same item, rather than a single, decisive result.

They plan to protect very high quality Diablo 4 items; for example, sanctifying Ancestral and Mythic items will not remove their affixes and will yield better results. Sanctifying rare items, however, still carries risks.

Masterworking

In PTR 2.5.0, Masterworking has been significantly modified. It now only increases the item's base stats, such as weapon damage, jewel resistances, and armor values. This prevents players from acquiring significant amounts of key modifiers like cooldown reduction, attack speed, crit, and skill levels through Masterworking, resulting in a substantial decrease in character strength.

The developers believe the current Masterworking system is similar to Blacksmith's Whetstone and Armourer's Scrap in Path of Exile; the gear-up process is monotonous and uninteresting, simply clicking to upgrade until the maximum level, failing to provide players with surprise and satisfaction.

They mentioned adding a new Masterworking bonus on top of the existing one, though they didn't specify what it would be. Any change, however, would be beneficial.

The Towers Rewards

The Towers is a new leaderboard system with more detailed rankings than The Pit, but it lacks rewards, resulting in a lack of player motivation. According to PTR data, even the strongest classic Barbarian builds are far from reaching floor 150 in The Towers, and after the new patch, even reaching floor 100 may be difficult.

The developers have reduced the HP of the Towers bosses and shortened the reward interval from every 10 floors to every 5 floors, up to floor 150. They believe that even with these changes, reaching floor 150 will still be extremely difficult. They speculate that players' progress in The Towers will typically be about 10 floors lower than in The Pit.

They plan to design The Towers as a more competitive endgame mode, differentiating it from the more diverse and fun-filled Pitfalls mode. This will involve optimized map generation rules, such as prioritizing upward routes, reducing unnecessary dead ends, and preventing important enemies from spawning in remote corners.

Finally, based on player feedback, they plan to offer rewards for players challenging The Towers. For individual players, rewards based on clearing specific floors will be introduced, such as gear and transmogs. Players who rank high on the leaderboard will receive functional rewards, prestige titles, and halos (cosmetics).

Finally, a Build Viewer will be added, making all builds on the leaderboard public and transparent, while also optimizing the leaderboard UI and notifications.

Future Update Plans

The development team stated that the future focus is on adding depth to existing content, rather than simply bloating the game with a large number of new events. They don't rule out adding new content but prefer to refine the existing systems.

Magic Item Upgrades

The developers mentioned considering giving magic items affixes and making them upgradable. This could make more types of items valuable in the endgame. This isn't without precedent; at least in Diablo II, magic items proved useful due to their potentially high specific skill bonuses.

However, to encourage players to forgo some legendary aspects in favor of magic items, their affix strength would need to be five to six times greater than it is now. This change is expected to be implemented as early as Season 12.

Chaos Uniques Items

Season 10 Chaos Unique items, including Chaos Perks and Chaos Rifts, are highly popular mechanics among players. The developers are happy to integrate them into the game, but they need to find a suitable way to avoid disrupting long-term balance and diversity. They mentioned that some Chaos Perks might return as Legendary Aspects.

Gold And Material

The developers' long-term goal is to ensure that gold primarily comes from killing monsters rather than selling items. They have already significantly increased the amount of gold piles dropped by monsters in Season 11.

They are also considering changing Boss Materials to a currency, so they don't take up inventory space, but the trade-off might be that they will become untradeable.

The Next Expansion

Finally, Zaven, the game's Associate Director of Expansion, hinted that all Diablo fans should pay attention to The Game Awards on December 11th. He strongly suggested that there would be an announcement about Diablo IV expansion pack, and perhaps we'll even see an exciting trailer.

That concludes the main content of this developer interview. Overall, the official team has listened to player and community feedback while also having its own update plans, and Season 11 experience should be better than the PTR.

Since its launch, Diablo 4 has released a new season every 2-3 months, accompanied by various updates and new seasonal content related to the season's theme, ensuring there's always something new to play and keeping the game fresh and dynamic.

However, besides this type of new content, sometimes the release of a new season brings long-term, historical changes that will have a profound impact on the future development of Diablo 4.

Take Season 11 as an example. Although it won't be available until December 9th, a month later, 2.5.0 PTR has already largely confirmed the new content it will bring, as well as the long-term updates we're talking about.

We've previously introduced the seasonal content of Season 11 in several articles; this time, we'll bring you the overall changes that will begin with the new season and analyze their impact.

Skip The Campaign, Unlock Waypoints Directly

If you choose to play the new season, you'll need to create a new character. This means that everything, from leveling up to farming available Diablo 4 items, will have to start from scratch.

Furthermore, at the start of each season, you had to traverse the map on horseback or on foot to clear the fog, unlocking corresponding areas and waypoints so you could teleport directly to specific locations later.

While this process wasn't difficult, repeating it every season was incredibly tedious and time-consuming, even if you knew the map and waypoints by heart.

Fortunately, after two years of this "torture," Diablo 4 finally decided to remove this mechanism starting with Season 11!

This means that once you've completed the campaign before, you can skip the process of unlocking basic waypoints to get them directly. At least in Season 11, you can immediately start farming XP and gold, reaching endgame faster.

As for the waypoints added in Vessel of Hatred DLC, once you've completed the campaign within it, you can also skip them and directly enjoy the full map and travel experience.

This way, veteran players no longer need to endure the pointless fog of war cleanup every season, while new players can still experience the campaign and gradually explore the game's areas.

More importantly, if you're a veteran player who has completed campaign at least one time, you'll be able to complete farming much faster in all new Diablo 4 seasons than before (before Season 11), allowing more time to enjoy the new season's exclusive gameplay.

Frankly, this change should have been implemented a long time ago, as the player community has been complaining about the repetitive fog of war cleanup for a long time. But regardless, it's finally here.

The Impact Of The New Mechanism On Eternal Realm

As you should know, the entire game is divided into the seasonal realm and Eternal Realm. The former is used to experience the new season, while the latter is a relatively stable realm storing all characters from previous seasons.

Generally, most players will prioritize experiencing the seasonal realm, but if you really like a character and their builds created in a particular season, or if you want to delve deeper into the game's fundamental mechanics and general events, Eternal Realm is a better choice.

Since seasonal content is not carried over to Eternal Realm, it's essentially unaffected by seasonal updates, except for character additions. However, Season 11's adjustments to the gear upgrade mechanism seem to change this.

First, Tempering and Masterworking mechanics have reformed the way affix upgrades affect gear, either by reducing the randomness of selected affixes or by directly influencing the upgrade's effect on the gear itself.

Second, Season 11 will add a new mechanic called Sanctification, allowing you to further enhance your gear after utilizing other mechanics. Once Sanctification is complete, your gear cannot be altered further.

Based on 2.5.0 PTR, these updates have received mixed reviews from players, and whether they are truly worthwhile remains to be seen after the new season launches. However, you'll find that they will definitely impact build usage in Eternal Realm.

Builds are essentially combinations of skills, gear, and other combat bonuses, such as Season 10 Chaos Perks, tailored to a specific class or combat scenario to maximize offensive/defensive damage.

Related: Diablo 4 Players Debate Chaos Armor Removal | Should This Mechanism From Season 10 Be Retained In Season 11?

Since Eternal Realm doesn't retain seasonal mechanics, builds are essentially the same regardless of which season's character you play, except for class differences.

However, Sanctification introduced in Season 11 means that the gear component of your builds will undergo a fundamental change. Previous gear will become obsolete due to the inability to obtain Sanctification.

This means that after Season 11 ends, if you want to play in Eternal Realm at your strongest, all the builds you crafted during Seasons 1-10 will be ineffective, as they cannot compare to builds affected by Sanctification and the updated Tempering and Masterworking.

Overall, this change won't negatively impact your Diablo 4 experience too much, as Eternal Realm's playability is inherently lower. However, this is a historic change for Diablo 4 itself.

Besides the confirmed changes Season 11 will bring to Diablo 4, the specific release date of the second DLC should also be revealed soon. Previously, it was only known to be in 2026.

Last year, the development team hoped to release the second DLC in 2025, but ultimately postponed this plan by a year when releasing the roadmap. With 2025 drawing to a close, players' curiosity is even stronger.

In short, Diablo 4's performance throughout 2025 has been relatively uneventful, but the changes brought by Season 11 may mean that the game will bring you new surprises in 2026. Let's look forward to it!

Diablo 4 Season 11 PTR has ended. Based on the official announcements, while the core gameplay remains unchanged, many key systems have been completely overhauled.

Current feedback suggests that Season 11 changes have slowed down the game's progression. The developers have adjusted monster difficulty and early gear drop rates. It's difficult to say whether these changes improve the experience, but they have certainly had a significant impact on every class.

Season 11 Changes

In addition to numerous class balance changes, Season 11 also introduced seasonal content, significantly revamped Tempering and Masterworking systems, and added Tower activity to replace The Pit.

This ranking uses the new Tower activity instead of The Pit as the benchmark. This is because Tower has a complete Leaderboard system, providing a reliable data source. All data is currently based on the PTR, so adjustments are likely to be made before release on live servers.

Class Rank

No.6 Rogue

• Highest Leaderboard Record: Tier 94 Tower clear.

Dance of Knives Rogue build was too powerful in the early PTR, so it was subsequently nerfed, resulting in mediocre performance in high-level content. Currently, the best performing build is Death Trap Rogue, a common top-tier build for several seasons. Other potential builds include Heartseeker Rogue and some other Basic Skill Rogues.

Melted Heart of Selig, after its rework, increases the main resource cap by 3% per point of primary attribute. When injured, resources are deducted first, then health, but maximum health is reduced by 75%. Recovering full resources within 3 seconds after 6 seconds of no damage is deducted.

This allows the resource cap to exceed 500, enabling Death Trap to receive its full damage boost after becoming a core skill with other Diablo 4 items. Beastfall Boots allow Rogue's next skill after using their ultimate to increase damage by consuming resources, thus utilizing the abundant resources provided by Melted Heart of Selig.

No.5 Sorcerer

• Highest Leaderboard Record: Tier 103 Tower clear.

Sorcerer is currently in a somewhat awkward position. Firstly, Teleport Enchantment has been nerfed, meaning its cooldown on the live server will be longer than on the PTR. Chaos Powers, such as Mana Shield, which were relied upon last season, have been removed, returning damage output to normal levels.

Sorcerer's new unique item in Season 11, Orsivane, allows defensive skills not on the skill bar to activate their enchantments and also provides increased damage. While this frees up skill bars, the benefits cannot fully compensate for the loss of Chaos Power and Teleport enchantments.

The another top Sorcerer build in PTR 2.5.0 is Crackling Energy. Esadora's Overflowing Cameo and Galvanic Azurite Ring can significantly increase the damage and generation of Crackling Energy.

Other promising builds include Hydra Sorcerer build and Frozen Orb Sorcerer, and these builds benefit from the reworked Banished Lord's Talisman.

No.4 Necromancer

• Highest Leaderboard Record: Tier 103 Tower clear, but slightly faster than Sorcerer.

Necromancer has consistently been in the upper-middle tier for several seasons, demonstrating remarkable stability. The current leaderboard is dominated by traditional builds built around Shadow Blight and its key passive, while Bloodwave Necromancer build, reliant on Chaos Perks, has weakened in Season 10.

Necromancer gains a new unique item in Season 11, Gravebloom, which replaces a single Golem with three smaller Golems, offering higher attack speed and a chance to deal double damage, significantly boosting golem damage. Therefore, Golem Summoner Necromancer build is a strong contender for the new season's S-tier build.

No.3 Druid

• Highest Leaderboard Record: Tier 105 Tower clear.

Cataclysm Druid Finally, it's back! This is the result of a combination of multiple mechanics and items. First and foremost is the effect of the reworked Melted Heart of Selig combined with Ancestral Guidance legendary Paragon Node.

Melted Heart of Selig allows Druids to easily acquire tens of thousands of Spirit resources, causing Cataclysm damage to inflate dramatically. Ancestral Guidance, based on the amount of Spirit resources available at the time of casting an ultimate ability, increases ultimate ability damage by 1% per point of Spirit.

Combined with the snapshot mechanic, if you pre-stack a large number of buffs before casting a long-duration ability, ensuring they take effect throughout their duration, Cataclysm damage will reach an incredibly high level.

Cataclysm Druid's current damage is too high, but the developers will probably, like with other similar combinations, set a cap on the buff resources from Ancestral Guidance to limit the build's strength.

No.2 Spiritborn

• Highest Leaderboard Record: Tier 109 Tower clear.

Evade Spiritborn, which performed exceptionally well in Season 10, remains very powerful in PTR 2.5.0. Thanks to the armor system changes, the late-game Evade Spiritborn build can easily achieve extremely high armor. Aspect of Unyielding Hits provides additional weapon damage based on total armor, easily maximizing the weapon's effectiveness and freeing up other equipment slots.

This build has a defensive bug in PTR 2.5.0, making the character nearly immortal. This is expected to be fixed before the live release, but even so, its damage remains top-tier across all classes.

Other classic builds such as Quill Volley Spiritborn, Crushing Hands Spiritborn, and Rake Spiritborn have good balance among their different playstyles.

No.1 Barbarian

• Highest Leaderboard Record: Tier 124 Tower clear.

The current top-tier build is Hammer of the Ancients Barbarian, thanks again to the reworked Melted Heart of Selig. Because Barbarians have four weapon slots, they can stack the highest primary stats of all classes, thus gaining an extremely high resource cap through Melted Heart of Selig.

Their damage primarily comes from one piece of equipment and one skill. Ramaladni's Magnum Opus one-handed hammer increases skill damage proportionally to the current resource amount. Furious Hammer of the Ancients provides critical hit chance and critical hit damage proportionally to the resource amount at the time of skill activation. The injection of thousands of resources into these two scaling sources results in an explosive increase in damage.

Barbarian's strength significantly surpasses other classes, making it highly unlikely that Barbarians in the PTR will survive to the live server. It is expected that the developers will also set the resource gain cap for these two scaling sources at 500 points.

Currently, the various classes shown in PTR 2.5.0 Their rankings may be adjusted on the live server, but overall their damage is far inferior to that of season 10, so players may need some time to adapt.

If you've been playing Diablo 4 since at least the beginning of this year, you're probably aware that starting with Season 8, the game's most dangerous endgame bosses (also known as ladder bosses) have been fully upgraded to lair bosses.

This change isn't just in name; more importantly, the mechanics shift from gathering materials to summoning a boss to starting the fight, to allowing you to directly fight them, but you must first collect lair keys to unlock the boss's corresponding hoard upon victory.

To ensure you're getting the right lair keys, lair bosses are now divided into three different tiers: initiate, greater, and exalted. Higher-tier lair keys may require killing lower-tier lair bosses, while others can be obtained by completing regular Diablo 4 events.

The reason you should continue farming lair bosses in Season 10 is that they drop Unique or Mythic Uniques. While some may not be as powerful as Chaos Armor, the overall value is still worth the effort.

So how should you farm lair bosses in Season 10, and what tips should you keep in mind? We'll explain below.

Lair Bosses And Related Keys

There are nine lair bosses in Season 10, each with its own lair key and loot pool. While you can theoretically farm a specific set of lair bosses, you'll need to complete other gameplay or boss battles to obtain the keys needed to unlock their hoards.

One thing worth noting and encouraging is that after defeating an initiate lair boss, in addition to the higher-level lair keys, Stygian Stones will also drop. This item can be converted 1:1 into any desired greater lair key.

All lair bosses and the lair keys/Stygian Stone drops they can provide are as follows:

• Varshan (initiate): Required 12x Malignant Heart, drops Shard of Agony or Stygian Stone
• Grigoire (initiate): Required 12x Living Steel, drops Shard of Agony or Stygian Stone
• Beast in the Ice (initiate): Required 12x Distilled Fear, drops Pincushioned Doll or Stygian Stone
• Lord Zir (initiate): Required 12x Exquisite Blood, drops Pincushioned Doll or Stygian Stone
• Urivar (initiate): Required 12x Judicator's Mask, drops Abhorrent Heart or Stygian Stone
• Duriel (greater): Required 3x Shard of Agony
• Andariel (greater): Required 3x Pincushioned Doll
• Harbinger of Hatred (greater): Requires 3x Abhorrent Heart
• Belial (exalted): Requires 2x Betrayer's Husk

In addition to defeating low-level bosses, you can also earn specific lair keys by completing the following Diablo 4 events or gameplay:

• Malignant Heart: Whispers or Helltides
• Living Steel: Helltides Chests
• Distilled Fear: Nightmare Dungeons
• Exquisite Blood: Legion Events, Helltides, and World Bosses
• Judicator's Mask: Helltides, Whispers, and World Bosses
• Betrayer's Husk: Belial's Ambush

What Is Belial's Ambush?

Belial's Ambush is essentially an ambush that randomly triggers after defeating any initiate or greater boss, ensuring you have a chance to unlock Belial's hoard.

While this small Belial isn't as dangerous as a full-fledged boss, you must remain vigilant during the fight. During battle, it will attack you with a combination of blood and poison magic, requiring you to dodge quickly and carry gear with appropriate resistance.

How To Find Lair Bosses?

While you no longer need to collect summoning materials in advance, it's recommended to wait until your character level is high enough to handle endgame content before finding and challenging a Lair Boss.

You can find the corresponding lair boss on the map by its unique icon. Right-clicking it will teleport you to the boss and begin the fight. However, before doing so, you'll need to understand the boss's lair keys and drop information and find reliable allies.

Lair Boss Loot Patterns

First, all lair bosses have the potential to drop either Uniques or Mythic Uniques. These drops are categorized as general available to all classes, and gear specific to each class.

When you defeat a boss and receive your first Unique drop, it will be a class-exclusive item. If you obtain other Unique loot or defeat the boss later, your chances of receiving general or exclusive loot are equal.

In addition, it's recommended to complete the lair boss fight in a group, not only because it's more efficient, but also because each additional team member increases the boss's chance of dropping additional Unique loot by 33%.

Alternatively, you can increase the boss's loot drop rate by increasing the difficulty. Typically, at Torment 3 difficulty, the current lair boss will drop one additional Unique loot. At Torment 4 difficulty and with enough players, the boss may even drop seven.

Best Season 10 Lair Keys Farming Strategy

In addition to lair keys, you'll also need to complete other tasks to earn gold and other crafting materials. Therefore, it's not recommended to directly challenge initiate boss after entering the endgame. Instead, first obtain Undercity Tributes through Helltides.

To do this, you must first own Vessel of Hatred DLC, which qualifies you for entering and farming Kurast Undercity. You can then earn more Undercity Tributes by repeatedly defeating Blood Maidens in Helltides.

The more Tributes you use before entering Kurast Undercity, the greater the rewards you'll ultimately receive, significantly increasing your chances of obtaining lair keys by completing Kurast Undercity.

That's all you need to know before farming Diablo 4 lair bosses in Season 10. While you're doing the quests, don't forget to challenge the new boss Bartuc in Infernal Hordes to obtain Chaos Armor!

If defeating lair bosses to obtain Unique or Mythic Uniques on your own is too tedious or difficult, you can also trade safe Diablo 4 items at D4GOLD! Simply enter the name of the Unique item you want to instantly retrieve and buy it!

Although it's only been less than a month since Diablo 4 Season 10 officially launched, the development team has already begun preparing for a new round of Sanctuary Sitdowns for Season 11, previewing information about the new 2.5.0 PTR.

To be honest, this seems a bit rushed compared to the pre-release schedules of past seasons. After all, Season 11 is typically released in January of the next year, while pre-release Sanctuary Sitdowns typically take place only about a month in advance.

Therefore, we can speculate on two possibilities for this sitdown: either Season 11 holds special significance for Diablo 4 (such as being the final season), or further plans for the game in 2026 will be announced through this discussion stream.

Below, we'll combine the official information already released about Diablo 4 Season 11 Sanctuary Sitdown to provide you with an introduction and speculation.

When Will The New Sanctuary Sitdown Take Place?

Sanctuary Sitdown event for Season 11 and 2.5.0 PTR will take place on October 16th at 11:00 AM PDT, and the format will differ from previous events.

Before the release of 2.4.0 PTR, Diablo 4 switched from its traditional Campfire Chats, livestreamed on Twitch or YouTube, to a Sanctuary Sitdown, a Q&A format held on Discord. You had to join Sanctuary Discord group to ask questions.

This upcoming Sanctuary Sitdown will combine the two approaches. The development team will first broadcast live on Twitch and YouTube, announcing the next steps for the game through a conversation with the host, followed by an additional Q&A session in Sanctuary Discord.

What Does This Format Change Mean?

While it's still unknown what new Diablo 4 developments of this Sanctuary Sitdown will reveal, or how satisfied players will be, the combination of a livestream and Q&A will undoubtedly provide a more comprehensive answer to your questions about Season 11 or 2.5.0 PTR.

If you're familiar with or participated in Sanctuary Sitdown on August 14th, you'll know that it was quite restricted. You had to log in to Diablo Discord server and click "Interested" on Sanctuary Sitdown Event page to ask questions.

Furthermore, August 14th Discord Q&A didn't feature a recording or replay feature. This means if you missed it, you'll only be able to access relevant content through screen recordings or summaries uploaded by other players.

The upcoming 2.5.0 PTR Sanctuary Sitdown will initially feature a livestream similar to Campfire Chats, hosted by veteran ARPG player and creator Rhykker.

This means he'll ask more specialized questions, allowing you to gain key insights from the development team's answers. After the livestream, you'll have a clearer idea of ​​what you'd like to learn more about, allowing you to better utilize Q&A session.

This shift in format suggests that Diablo 4 development team is, at least for now, more attentive to player feedback and suggestions than before. It also suggests that the upcoming Sanctuary Sitdown may reveal even more content than before.

Will This Sanctuary Sitdown Preview Anything Else?

While this Sanctuary Sitdown is likely to focus on previewing and introducing Season 11 and 2.5.0 PTR, the content of both the livestream interview and Q&A will not be strictly limited.

Therefore, it's reasonable to assume that both the host and players will raise popular questions about the second DLC and the number of seasons Diablo 4 will have. However, how the developers will respond remains unknown.

The second DLC, originally scheduled for 2025, has been delayed to 2026. With 2026 less than three months away, it's honestly worth it to tease some information to pique player interest.

How To Get Twitch Drops?

Whenever Diablo 4 hosts a content preview livestream before a new season or PTR, and Twitch is included, you have a chance to receive a drop - usually new gear or cosmetics - by watching the livestream on Twitch.

Twitch Drop for Sanctuary Sitdown on October 16th is Rogue class-exclusive, one-handed cosmetic Penitent's Poniard. To receive it, you'll need to meet the following requirements:

• Watch at least 30 minutes of exclusive Diablo 4 content on Twitch between 11:00 AM and 2:00 PM PDT on October 16th.
• Link your Battle.net and Twitch accounts.
• To claim the drop, watch through a PC browser, Android, or iOS Twitch app.
• Claim your rewards manually on the livestream's Twitch channel or through your Twitch inventory (rewards will not be automatically added to your game account).
• Claim your rewards within 7 days and ensure they are successful, otherwise the drop will be lost.

This concludes our understanding of the new Sanctuary Sitdown. Since the livestream will take place mid-week next week, if you don't have time to watch, you can watch the replay or other people's summaries to get a head start on the next PTR.

While staying up to date on game developments is important, now your primary focus in Diablo 4 Season 10 is still farming! This is especially important if you want to become stronger or unlock enough hoards for the lair boss.

To this end, D4GOLD Buy Diablo 4 Items page provides nearly every item you need for Season 10, ensuring a secure and convenient shopping experience!

As you enter a new season in Diablo 4, you need to quickly acquire rare and powerful gear to ensure your character is strong enough to face more dangerous enemies and challenging content.

In Season 10, while Chaos Armor is a valuable seasonal item for quickly boosting your combat power, classic mythic items are still worth farming. They boast 800 item power and come with at least one high-level affix, significantly improving their stats.

So, with Chaos Armor so popular in Season 10, what are the best ways to obtain mythic items? This time, we'll introduce the four most efficient methods.

1. Defeating Echo Of Lilith

In addition to direct drops, mythic items can also be crafted by consuming Resplendent Spark as a material at a blacksmith or jeweler.

To ensure you have enough Resplendent Sparks, there are many ways to obtain them. Defeating the boss Echo of Lilith on Torment difficulty is one such option.

However, it's important to note that you can only obtain one Resplendent Spark per season by this way.

As one of the most dangerous bosses since Diablo 4's launch, Lilith presents a challenge every season, but as long as you master her attack patterns and power up as much as possible, obtaining this Resplendent Spark is easy.

First, you need to travel to the southwestern Fractured Peaks to complete the quest Echo of Hatred. Once you obtain Lilith's lair keys, you can begin the boss fight to unlock the final loot (this is a mechanic change from Season 8).

The fight is divided into two phases, each with Lilith's health bar at full strength. In general, during both phases, you should aim to increase your movement speed to avoid being hit by Blood Orb abilities and also increase your Shadow resistance.

Phase 1

During this phase, Lilith will generate Blood Orbs through Blood Blisters. To avoid them, you must stay within the boss's attack range. If you are hit, you will be inflicted with a stacking debuff.

In addition, the boss will unleash several wavelike abilities during this phase. You must remain vigilant and observe their movements to dodge them. Towards the end of this phase, the boss will summon Oppressors to assist her, which you must destroy.

Phase 2

At the beginning of Phase 2, the boss will create four Blood Pools and continue to generate Blood Orbs. She will then gradually destroy three sections of the platform that serve as the arena: the top third, the top right corner, and the top left corner.

As she begins to destroy the platform, you must move away from the affected section, avoid damage from Void Orbs generated by Blood Pools, and prevent the boss from pulling you towards her after destroying the platform.

After defeating Lilith in Phase 2, you will receive loot, one of which is Resplendent Spark.

2. Obtaining The Final Season Journey Rewards

To ensure you have a purposeful approach to your gameplay and a clearer focus for your efforts, Diablo 4 introduces a Season Journey system for each season. This system assigns various objectives based on the main storyline, and rewards are awarded upon completion.

The rewards for the final chapter of Season Journey typically include a Resplendent Spark, which you can use to craft a mythical item of your choice.

In Season 10, Season Journey chapter that rewards you with Resplendent Spark is Destroyer Chapter. By completing the objectives for this chapter, you can earn the following cache rewards:

• Challenge Journey Cache from Lootmaster
• Challenge Journey Cache from Chaos in Hell
• Challenge Journey Cache from Entropy
• Challenge Journey Cache from Bloodstained Chaos
• Challenge Journey Cache from Mastery Maker
• Challenge Journey Cache from With Sand to Spare
• Challenge Journey Cache from Pinnacle of Chaos

Complete all objectives within the chapter to earn the following rewards:

• Guardian of the Sanguine Grove (Emblem)
• Chaotic, Warlord (Player Titles)
• 1 Resplendent Spark
• 4 Smoldering Ashes

3. Farming Mythic Chaos Rifts

Chaos Rifts are a seasonal event exclusive to Season 10. Farming them will yield a variety of rare loot, including Chaos Armor and Chaos Perks. Chaos Rifts come in four different rarities, with higher rarity yielding better rewards.

The raciest are Mythic Chaos Rifts, and each one you complete guarantees a mythic item drop. Of course, the chance of these Chaos Rifts appearing is also very low, requiring you to repeatedly farm Helltides or Nightmare Dungeons to find one or two.

When a Chaos Rift icon appears on the mini-map, hover your mouse over it to view detailed information about the event. If it's mythic, you can then travel to the designated location and kill the enemies surging from the rift to obtain loot.

4. Obtaining Infernal Chests

In Season 10, when you farm Infernal Hordes, in addition to the chance of receiving loot during combat, you can also exchange Infernal chests by Burning Aether, a special currency you collect. Opening these chests also has a chance of receiving mythic items.

To maximize farming efficiency, we recommend teaming up with friends and completing the challenge on Torment 1+ difficulty.

In addition, Infernal Hordes is a wave-based game mode. Before each wave begins, you can select an Infernal Offer, which provides a random bonus (either positive or negative).

Season 10 introduces Chaos Waves as the fourth offer, which have random effects and are very beneficial for collecting Burning Aether. You can also take advantage of this opportunity to obtain more Infernal chests and increase the drop rate of mythic items.

This concludes the guide to obtaining mythic items or crafting materials in Diablo 4 Season 10. I hope it helps you complete the season! Have fun!

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