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.
