In this guide, I want to talk about 8 important tips that you need to know early on when you play Diablo 4 Season 4. Whether you are a new player or a veteran returning to the game, you will find them valuable. Without further ado, let’s get straight to it!
1. Turn On Your Auto-Cast
You can auto-cast abilities in Diablo 4. Auto-casting skills do not require any macro, special mouse or external software. You can turn on an auto-cast with the simple use of your keyboard.
First, go to Options, then Controls window and assign the secondary button for the skill you want to auto-cast to one of the number pad buttons.
Next, with Numlock function turned on, hold down the designated number key and press Numlock button to turn the function off, and there you go. Your character will now auto-cast skills when they are ready! To disable auto-cast, simply turn on Numlock and press the skill button again.
2. Collect Season Journey & Iron Wolves Rewards
The second thing I want you to know early on is that Season Journey rewards are account-wide, while Iron Wolves rewards are character-based. So when you level up your first character, you might be wondering which Seasonal rewards to claim now, and which to save for later, or for your alts? You certainly want to claim all of Iron Wolves rewards as soon as you unlock them.
Each character can level up and claim their own rewards from this vendor. Iron Wolves reward tier also seems to be tied to your tier when you unlock them, not your tier when you open the box. So basically there’s no need to hesitate.
When it comes to Season Journey rewards, things are a little trickier, because they’re account-wide. This means that if you pick up some Season Journey Chapter rewards for your first character, but let’s say you decide to switch classes, you won’t be able to get Season Journey rewards on that new character.
Generally, this isn’t a big deal, except for the cool Legendary and Unique items that might drop from rewards caches. Luckily, there are a ton of Diablo 4 items dropping in Season 4, so don’t lose any sleep over it.
3. Favorite Feature
My third tip for you is this: use Favorite feature. You can mark Aspects and Items as Favorites. When you mark that Aspect as a Favorite, and you select Legendary Aspects from Codex of Power, it will show up first. This is a big quality of life thing, because you’ll be switching Legendary Aspects repeatedly over time. Here’s how I like to use this feature.
When I start a new character and have an idea for a skill or build I want to use, I go to Collection section in the pause menu. This is the only place you can mark an Aspect as a Favorite. On PC, marking is done with the space bar, by the way.
I then go through all the available Aspects and mark the ones that seem to work for my build. This takes a little of upfront work, but can make your life a lot easier in the long run. So you don’t have to search for specific Legendary Aspects every time you want to switch items. That’s a lot of hassle.
Now let’s talk about a piece of gear. You can also mark them as Favorites to avoid accidentally selling good items to vendors or to stop you from mass salvaging items at Blacksmith.
To mark a piece of gear, hover over the item and press the button that marks the item as junk twice! The first press marks the item as junk, while the second press marks it as Favorite.
Personally, I like to mark all of my current gear as Favorites to prevent accidentally losing items when trying different gear.
4. Making Seasonal Potions
Moving on to the next tip, you can make Seasonal Potions with Murmuring Obols. If you haven’t used Seasonal Potions yet, definitely give it a try!
Holy Bolt is a particularly powerful elixir, as it turns you into a permanent artillery machine. Obols are the currency you normally used to gamble for items. You can get Obols from Helltide Chests.
Considering you’ll probably be using Helltide all the time, you’ll accumulate a lot of Obols pretty quickly. Once you have a pleasant set of gear, it’s a good time to spend some Obols on making potions.
Be aware though, at 350 Obols per potion, the cost is pretty high. But I still recommend using Holy Bolt. Despite the high cost, the power gain justifies the cost as they can greatly increase your damage, especially when playing as a Minion Necromancer.
5. Pay Attention To The Symbols On The Items
The next tip I have for you is to pay attention to the symbols on the items at Blacksmith. A lot of people have questions, with an inventory full of legendary items. How can you easily know which ones to sell and which ones to salvage?
Go to Blacksmith and salvage items that have a white icon on them. This icon means that Legendary Aspect on this piece of gear is either not unlocked in your Codex of Power, or the value of legendary power on the item is higher than what you have unlocked in Codex of Power. So in either case, you definitely want to salvage the item unless you don’t want to use it.
There is another red icon, which means that salvaging the item will unlock a new appearance. Unfortunately, these icons aren’t very easy to see when you have your inventory open, unless you go to an NPC like a Blacksmith or a Vendor.
Without going to an NPC, you have to hover over an item and look for an icon with a text description at the bottom of the item description. Unfortunately, this is easy to miss, especially when you have the compare feature turned on. As such, the item description rarely fits on the screen and requires scrolling down to see the icon. This is a bit annoying and I hope they change it in the future.
6. Checking Enchanting Affixes
Continuing with tip number six, you can check possible affixes when enchanting an item! If you get a nice piece of gear but want to change one of its affixes, then you’ll need to go to Occultist and enchant that stat.
But how do you know if you should keep that new affix or keep rolling? That’s where the icon located in the top right corner of Enchanting Window comes to the rescue. It shows a list of all the possible affixes that can be rolled and their ranges! You can actually access this information on the console as well. To do this, just press “Triangle” or “Y” button in Enchanting Window.
7. Spam Blood Maiden
Coming to tip seven, spam Blood Maiden in Helltides for tons of XP and loot!
Helltide is a great place to both level up and get tons of loot in the process. I highly recommend checking out each Helltide invaded area. There is an altar with three pillars that can be activated by inserting Baneful Hearts dropped in Helltide.
By the way, you get to keep Baneful Hearts after Helltide ends, while any unused Cinders are lost after the current Helltide event ends.
When all three pillars are activated, waves of enemies will spawn at that location. When enough demons have been defeated, a boss, Blood Maiden, will spawn. She is a tough enemy with three main mechanics:
First, she spawns Disciples, which are stronger elite monsters. You definitely want to deal with them quickly so you don’t get overwhelmed later.
She will also throw Fire Rings around random players. When you get hit by a Fire Ring, stay away from the boss and other players to avoid being killed in one hit.
Finally, she creates an ever-expanding circle that deals pretty high damage, but you can just dodge it. After defeating Blood Maiden, she will drop a lot of items, including some legendary items and crafting materials.
Just a reminder that players who contribute more Baneful Hearts to activate the pillars may get more loot. So don’t be stingy.
8. Profane Mindcage
Since we are talking about Helltide, let’s talk about the last tip we need to know, which is to use Profane Mindcage to increase XP and Cinders you get.
Profane Mindcage increases the level of enemies in Helltide by 10 levels for 60 minutes! As far as I know, being 10 levels higher than you is the upper limit of extra XP you can get in Diablo 4, so this boost works well.
Using Profane Mindcage is a great way to level up faster and get a lot of Cinders. Don’t be too stingy, because you’ll be dropping Profane Mindcage in Helltide, anyway.
Here are a few things to consider: First, the boost lasts for 60 minutes, so activate it when you’re planning on having a longer session.
Next, dying while Profane Mindcage is activated will disable the boost, so use it when the current Helltide enemies don’t pose much of a threat.
Also, enemy level caps at 50 in World Tier 1 and 2. So if you’re in that tier and level is above 40, there’s no point activating this boost.
These are the 8 things I wish I’d known when I started playing Diablo 4 Season 4 a few days ago. Regardless, hopefully these tips will save you precious time and make your journey through Loot Reborn season smooth and frictionless.
