News Tag: Diablo 4 Season 9

When Season 9 launched, Sorcerer and Spiritborn were the undisputed dominant classes. However, after adjustments in Patch 2.3.1, the class experience in Diablo 4 has become more balanced.

So, if you’re looking to play a new character now, other classes are also good choices. Of course, you still need to choose and craft the right build to maximize the power of each class.

Based on this, if you’re creating a Necromancer character, facing a wide variety of Necromancer builds, Blood Surge is actually a more reliable option in Season 9, especially if you combine it with Drain Vitality passive ability.

Below, we’ll first explain why Drain Vitality is so important and how it fits into Blood Surge Necromancer Build.

What Is Drain Vitality?

As one of Diablo 4 Necromancer’s passive skills, Drain Vitality primarily grants you a lucky hit, granting you a chance to gain additional Fortify upon hitting an enemy.

However, to trigger Drain Vitality, you must ensure you hit an enemy with your active blood skills. Drain Vitality then grants you a Fortify effect of 2.5% to 7.5% of your health, reducing the damage you take.

If you ultimately have an amount of Fortify equal to your health, your total damage taken can be reduced by up to 15%.

However, this skill is located on the fifth tier of Necromancer skill tree, meaning you’ll need to consume a considerable amount of skill points to gradually unlock additional skills until you “reach” Drain Vitality.

Luckily, earning skill points isn’t difficult. You typically earn them when you are farming Diablo 4 gold and character XP at the same time, or by completing quests issued by the reputation system.

What Is Blood Surge Necromancer Build?

While Drain Vitality is helpful in boosting this build’s effectiveness, its core skill is undoubtedly Blood Surge. Combined with other skills and gear, this build is highly effective in clearing groups of enemies or single-target attacks.

As for defensive mechanics, this build can boost health while stealing enemy health and heal itself with Blood Orbs. Additionally, you can curse enemies with Decrepify and Cursed Aura Aspect, reducing their damage.

Although Blood Surge Necromancer build’s overall effectiveness has decreased in Season 9 due to a significant damage reduction to Overpower, it’s still a good choice for clearing dungeons. Of course, it’s best to upgrade to a better build once you reach the endgame.

How Does Drain Vitality Improve This Build?

While Drain Vitality isn’t a panacea, it does provide a solid boost to Blood Surge build. When using Blood Attacks with this build and pairing it with the unique gloves Cruor’s Embrace, you can deal bonus damage from Coalesced Blood while also gaining a shield bonus.

In contrast, Blood Wave Build doesn’t rely on Drain Vitality to increase damage. Instead, you must continuously enhance this skill until you obtain Mutilator Plate to truly enhance the entire build.

It’s important to note that when unlocking the prerequisite skills for Drain Vitality, it’s best to prioritize skills that complement it, such as Coalesced Blood, which allows you to deal more damage while you’re healthy.

To maintain your health, you need to maintain 80% or more of your remaining health. If you already have a wealth of enhancements, Coalesced Blood may not be very useful, but if you’re in urgent need of additional boosts, it can be very helpful.

How To Further Craft This Build?

In addition to Drain Vitality and other related skills, crafting a Blood Surge Necromancer Build also requires other class mechanics and appropriate gear. We’ll explain each of these.

Exclusive Mechanic Book Of The Dead

Book of the Dead, a Necromancer-exclusive mechanic, unlocks at level 5 and allows you to customize your available minions and how they’re deployed.

Since the primary purpose of Blood Surge build is to ensure you can sustain continuous enemy attacks, and Blood Surge itself causes enemies to scatter, using minions in this build is essentially a waste.

Therefore, it’s recommended to sacrifice them directly:

• Melee Skeletons: Skirmisher [Sacrifice] - Increased Critical Strike Chance.
• Mage Skeletons: Bone [Sacrifice] - Increased Overpower Damage.
• Golem: Iron [Sacrifice] - Increased Critical Strike Damage.

Available Legendary Aspects

In addition to Cursed Aura Aspect, there are other aspects of the game that can benefit this build. As for how to obtain them in Season 9, it’s recommended to farm Helltides or gamble with Obols.

• Aspect of the Embalmer
• Aspect of Hardened Bones
• Cruor’s Embrace
• Blood Moon Breeches
• Cadaverous Aspect
• Blood-bathed Aspect
• Cursed Aura Aspect
• Aspect of the Great Feast
• Sacrificial Aspect
• Aspect of Rathma’s Chosen

Best Gear Affixes

After acquiring reliable gear, besides improving your character, Diablo 4 allows you to enhance it by acquiring additional affixes, making it even more beneficial in combat.

Note that different gear slots are suited for different affix types. Here are some recommendations:

• Helm: Maximum Life, Essence per second, Intelligence
• Chest: Maximum Life, Essence per second, All Resist
• Gloves - Cruor’s Embrace Cruor’s Embrace: Blood Surge Drains, X Times from Elites
• Pants - Blood Moon Breeches: Critical Strike Chance
• Boots: Armor, Essence per second, Movement Speed
• Amulet: Ranks to Tides of Blood, Intelligence, Attack Speed
• Rings (2x): Attack Speed, Maximum Life, Overpower Damage
• 1H-Weapon (Mace): Maximum Life, Intelligence, Lucky Hit
• Off-hand (Focus): Maximum Life, Critical Strike Chance, Intelligence

If you find the above information useful, try combining all the gear and skills, including Drain Vitality, to craft and enhance a Blood Surge Necromancer build! I wish you success!

As one of the leading ARPGs, it’s fair to say that Diablo 4’s performance since the start of 2025 has been rather lackluster: delayed DLC and a near-unchanging seasonal update format can make you tired of it.

While anticipation for the second expansion may keep you playing until next year, it’s more important to ensure that Diablo 4 doesn’t disappoint again in the second half of 2025.

While the game hasn’t yet revealed further details about Season 10, the final regular season of 2025, you’ll notice that Diablo 4 has recently made some changes during Season 9, which may be a sign of better service.

Based on this, we’ll introduce the major recent changes and events in the game and speculate on what changes might be coming in August and Season 10.

Patch 2.3.2

Approximately two weeks have passed since the release of Season 9’s previous patch, 2.3.1. To further optimize the seasonal experience, Diablo 4 released Patch 2.3.2 on July 29th. This update is available regardless of whether you own Vessel of Hatred.

Please note that Patch 2.3.2 primarily addresses bug fixes for general gameplay and does not include the class balance adjustments included in 2.3.1. However, we recommend keeping an eye on this update primarily because of its impact on dungeon experience.

Patch 2.3.2 primarily addresses issues related to Season progression and rewards, some Escalating Nightmares affixes, and skill mechanics, minimizing issues like missing Diablo 4 gold or incorrect gear quality when checking loot.

In addition, this patch improves overall game stability, performance, user interface, and visuals, ensuring a smoother than ever experience in Diablo 4 regardless of your device.

The following patch notes are worth noting:

Dungeon Bug Fixes:

• Fixed an issue where you couldn’t obtain Horadric reward cache after completing Escalating Nightmares with Equipment Delve affix.
• Fixed an issue where Cultist Horde Escalation affix wasn’t correctly applying the health bonus to monsters.
• Fixed an issue where Lesser Aegis Escalation affix was applying incorrect barrier values to monsters.
• Fixed an issue where Escalating Nightmares wouldn’t progress properly if Strongroom and the base dungeon had the same boss.
• Fixed an issue where Butcher could get stuck on Horadric chests.
• Fixed an issue where Animus could disappear if too many items were placed on the ground.
• Fixed an issue where you couldn’t obtain the reward chests after completing Ravenous Soul event Mastery.

Specific Combat Experience Bug Fixes:

• Fixed an issue where Endurant Faith gloves could cause you to land a lucky hit on yourself. Fixed an issue where you could get stuck in the first stage of the boss fight if Lilith’s health depleted too quickly.
• Fixed an issue where, in some cases, you couldn’t reach Guardian’s Lair in The Pit.

New March Of The Goblins Event

This event was last held in March 2025, during Season 7. March of the Goblins event was popular for its simplicity and rich rewards, so Diablo 4 brought it back to the game to spark renewed enthusiasm for the lackluster Season 9.

March of the Goblins event was originally a special one-week event held in June 2024 to celebrate the game, but its high drop rate for Diablo 4 gold kept it in the game.

If you participated in March of the Goblins event, you’ll know that Diablo 4 has made significant improvements to it, with a wider variety of rewards and amounts. We expect this event to retain the same mechanics and gameplay.

Season 9 March of the Goblins event began at 10:00 AM PT on July 29th and will run until 10:00 AM PT on August 5th, approximately one week. During this time, the spawn rate of Treasure Goblins will be significantly increased across all world tier events.

You can track your progress by checking the goblin statue in Kyovashad, and have a chance to receive loot chests, treasure bags, and even rare items like Resplendent Spark.

What New Changes Might Diablo 4 Introduce In August?

Based on the schedule, Season 10 is likely to launch in mid-to-late September or early October, so Season 9 should at least provide a reliable base gameplay experience through August.

Besides bugs, the most common criticism of Diablo 4 recently has probably been the seemingly lower loot drop rate. Honestly, as a combat-and-loot-focused ARPG, while combat needs to be challenging, a low drop rate is only detrimental.

On the one hand, this will prevent you from properly powering up your character and unlocking lair boss hoards, and on the other hand, it will further disrupt the game’s item and gold trading markets.

Therefore, if Diablo 4 doesn’t launch other new activities with Season 9 in August, the most likely new measure will be adjusting loot drop rates. Otherwise, if this leads to a loss of players before Season 10 launches, it would be more harm than good.

I hope the above information is helpful for you as you play Diablo 4, and I wish the game continued success. Thank you for reading.

Although the second Diablo 4 DLC, originally scheduled for 2025, has been delayed to 2026, if you are a new player, the first DLC, Vessel of Hatred, plus the existing seasons are enough for you to play for a long time.

Generally speaking, DLC is not a mandatory choice for you to play Diablo 4. You can play the seasons of the base game smoothly without it, but you can’t experience the classes or other mechanisms exclusive to the expansion.

But it must be said that Vessel of Hatred’s exclusive content can sometimes make your regular season experience easier and more interesting, making you choose to get the expansion, especially in Season 9.

So what exclusive content of this DLC performs well in Season 9 and is recommended for you to get it? We will introduce it to you.

DLC-Exclusive Class Spiritborn

As you know, Diablo 4 added the sixth class, Spiritborn, to the game when the DLC and Season 6 were launched simultaneously last year, but it was actually exclusive to the DLC, not directly added to all game content.

Of course, if you are not a new class fan or game blogger, you can save this investment and continue to play other old classes. But when you enter Season 9, you will find that Spiritborn is indeed stronger than most classes in that season.

Basic Performance Of Spiritborn

When it was first launched, this class showed a relatively prominent advantage. With the power of skills such as Quill Volley and gear such as Rod of Kepeleke Unique, it showed amazing lethality in DLC and Season 6.

Although in Season 7&8, the development team weakened Spiritborn appropriately due to its overly prominent advantages, in S9, perhaps because the new Spiritborn unique items work well with the season mechanism, this class once again showed an unstoppable momentum.

Unique Pants Balazan’s Maxtlatl

As the main reason Spiritborn is so difficult to replace in Season 9, the main affix effects and combat functions of Balazan’s Maxtlatl are:

• + 309 - 430 Thorns.
• + 489 - 526 Maximum Life.
• + 107 - 121 Dexterity.
• + 2 - 3 to Bastion.
• Each attack will cause damage equal to 100-150% of the number of your thorns to close enemies and cause poisoning effect equal to 100% of this damage within 3 seconds.
• Each time you use thorns to counterattack, the poison damage will be increased by 100% within 5 seconds, up to 300%.

The fact that you’re using Balazan’s Maxtlatl right now has been nerfed by the patch doesn’t stop it from working reliably with already powerful Spiritborn abilities or builds, such as:

• Rake Spiritborn
• Crushing Hand Spiritborn
• Quill Volley Spiritborn

More importantly, Balazan’s Maxtlatl and related builds are more than enough to get you through most of the endgame content in Season 9, especially when clearing the new Nightmare Dungeon Escalations.

Take Quill Volley Spiritborn Build as an example. AOE damage from this build combined with Balazan’s Maxtlatl’s Thorns + Poison can quickly kill many enemies, earning countless Diablo 4 gold, as well as rare other loot in a short time.

DLC-Exclusive Mercenary Mechanic

Since the release of Vessel of Hatred, you’ll find that many Diablo 4 builds will start to add Mercenaries to their lineups. This mechanic first appeared in Diablo 2, and it’s still reliable after being introduced to D4.

Diablo 4’s mercenary mechanic allows you to set up a primary mercenary and a reinforcement mercenary for yourself, the former providing main support in battle, and the latter only appearing briefly after a trigger and using a onetime skill.

These triggers are usually tied to your actions in battle, such as controlling an enemy or using a specific skill. So you need to choose the right combination of the following four mercenaries as your helpers according to the characteristics of your class or builds:

• Raheir, the Shieldbearer
• Varyana, the Berserker Crone
• Aldkin, the Cursed Child
• Subo, the Drunken Archer

And in Season 9, especially in Nightmare Dungeon Escalations, since you have to complete three built-in dungeons and kill the final boss Astaroth, your builds must have enough durability, and the support of mercenaries can do it.

The combination of primary mercenaries and reinforcement mercenaries can make the dungeon clearing process, especially the final boss battle, easier, allowing you to get cover when you are attacked by Amalgam of Hatred and Astaroth himself at the same time.

If you don’t have Vessel of Hatred DLC and can’t get the support of the mercenaries, although the reliable character strength and rare gear should also help you complete the battle, the risk is higher and the process will be more difficult.

DLC-Exclusive Bosses

Among all the lair bosses in Season 9, Urivar and Harbinger of Hatred are exclusive bosses that can only be challenged if you have Vessel of Hatred. Defeating them can get new unique items or regular gear.

Although the loot they provide can also be obtained by challenging other bosses, more bosses mean you have more farming options and higher loot drop rates.

In addition, the hoard of the lair boss must be unlocked through the relevant keys, and these keys can only be dropped by killing other bosses. So if you can’t unlock Urivar and Harbinger Of Hatred, it may affect your challenge of other bosses.

In general, you can play Diablo 4 normally without DLC, but it does add more valuable details to your overall experience. So if your budget allows, it’s a good idea to get Vessel of Hatred now!

Usually in any game type, except for the occasional popular game, most of the time the competition is formed by several top-level games in the type. In ARPG, the most intense competition in recent years undoubtedly comes from Diablo and Path of Exile series.

After Diablo 4 was launched in 2023, it seems to have more advantages, but since POE 2 was launched at the end of 2024, although it is still at early access stage, it still took away a lot of attention.

For Diablo 4, what’s worse is that the plan for the second DLC has also been postponed to 2026. Therefore, in 2025, Diablo 4, which has entered a flat period, has to face the competitive pressure from Path of Exile 3.26 and the continuous large patches of POE 2.

Coincidentally, the release time of Diablo 4 Season 9 is just between POE 3.26 and POE 2 patch 0.3.0 (not yet released). Based on this, we will analyze how Diablo 4 should deal with this crisis.

How Does Diablo 4 Season 9 Perform?

Although players have complained about the lack of novelty for several consecutive seasons, Diablo 4 still has not changed the basic mode of new season power + new boss + season-limited dungeon.

Fortunately, with a solid content foundation, the overall performance of Season 9 is not too bad even so: Horadric Spells brings new exploitable power, and Escalating Nightmares and Horadric Strongrooms provide more Diablo 4 gold farming options.

On the other hand, this season also optimizes the class experience as much as possible by adding new class-specific unique items and related patches, although there are still weak classes.

Based on the above and other performances, Season 9 may not be novel enough for Diablo 4 itself, but at least it is not a terrible season. However, it is hard to say for Path of Exile 1&2.

POE 3.26 Was Launched In Mid-June

In the past, the first game of Path of Exile usually maintained a relatively stable league update frequency, but because of the focus on the development of POE 2, after the release of 3.25 league in July 2024, 3.26 was repeatedly postponed until June this year.

Fortunately, the returning Mercenaries of Trarthus league brings a lot of new content. Although there are bugs and QoL problems that make you dissatisfied, it is also a qualified Path of Exile league.

The Main Opponent Should Be POE 2 0.3.0

POE 2 early access was released at the end of last year, and patch 0.2.0 was launched in April this year-in fact, it had already fought with Diablo 4 Season 8 at that time, and the competition also included Last Epoch Season 2 at the same time.

Since 0.2.0 brings a lot of new content and a new class, Huntress, it poses an enormous threat to Diablo 4 Season 8, but it does not have an absolute advantage.

The reason 0.3.0, which will be launched around August 29, may be more worrying for Diablo 4 is that POE 2 will use this patch to launch Druid as a new class.

The Competition Is Concentrated On Druid Class

As a classic ARPG class category, most games will add Druid, and Diablo 4 and Path of Exile 1 both do so. Since the latter has many classes, Druid’s popularity seems to be higher in Diablo 4.

The tricky thing is that in recent seasons, for some reason, Diablo 4 has always intentionally or unintentionally ignored the development of Druid. Whether for fun or strength, you may not want to play this class in Season 9.

On the contrary, POE 2 had planned to launch Druid as a new class before 0.2.0 patch was launched, but it was abandoned because it was not yet perfected. Therefore, the new class in 0.3.0 is likely to be Druid.

Compared with POE 1, there are not so many existing classes in POE 2, and Druid is a new class, so it will definitely receive more attention. And given the average performance of this class in D4 S9, the focus shift from Druid fans will put pressure on D4 to lose players.

Get To Know POE 2 Druid In Advance

At last year’s Gamescom, POE 2 showed a 13-minute Druid game video. With the development and improvement of the game, POE 2 should show more related content at this year’s Gamescom, and the exhibition time is just before the release of 0.3.0 patch.

It can be imagined that if Path of Exile 2 Druid gameplay shown at that time is attractive enough, the next few months will be enough for Diablo 4 to “headache”.

How Will Diablo 4 Deal With It?

Since the roadmaps of major games are fixed for the current year, Diablo 4 cannot add more new seasons or DLCs to compete with POE 2, but at least it can add new limited-time events to the existing Season 9 as an attempt.

In addition, according to the time calculation, Diablo 4 will launch Season 10 in September-October. At that time, it can optimize Druid to attract fans who have been diverted, or innovate the season mechanism to compete with Path of Exile 2.

To be honest, the competition between games is endless. No matter which side should not be troubled by the temporary lag, the important thing is to always focus on improving the quality of the game to retain loyal players.

In addition to the newly available Horadric Spells, the biggest highlight of Diablo 4 Season 9 should be Escalating Nightmares and the miniature dungeons Horadric Strongrooms hidden in them through related affixes.

Among them, Horadric Spells are the main gold farming assistant, the two new dungeons are the best sources of Diablo 4 gold in Season 9, and Horadric Strongrooms can also help you get more Horadric Arcana.

But to fully clear Horadric Strongrooms to maximize its value, you need to master some additional and more targeted tips instead of treating it as a regular Diablo 4 dungeon. Based on this, we will bring you relevant help.

How Do Horadric Strongrooms Work?

First, to enter the dungeon, you need to get Nightmare Sigils with the associated affix to unlock Escalating Nightmares, and then follow the direction of Horadric Wayfinder to find the portal to Horadric Strongrooms.

There are usually guards at the portal, defeat them and choose Horadric Pillar buffs to continue to explore Horadric Strongrooms. After that, all you have to do is kill enemies to collect more attunement, so that the quality of the chests you finally get is better.

So, in fact, improving the clearing of Horadric Strongrooms is how to increase the attunement value you can get, which is closely related to your combat efficiency.

Choose The Best Horadric Pillar Buffs

This choice is related to what benefits you can get in Horadric Strongrooms, and it cannot be changed later, so you must treat it carefully, especially those pillars that provide both benefits and disadvantages.

Generally speaking, if you can, it is recommended that you give priority to those pillars that only provide benefits. Although the benefits from the pillars which have both of buffs & debuffs may be better, they will also bring more dangers and cause additional losses.

Based on this, pillars that increase the frequency of enemy appearances or bring more Swiftness Motes will be the safest choice. They allow you to kill more enemies faster, farm a large amount of attunement in a short period of time, and these pillars have almost no negative effects.

Don’t Pay Too Much Attention To Shrines

In addition to Horadric Pillar, you will also encounter interactive shrines in dungeons. They work similarly to pillars, but the difference is that pillars provide you with additional benefits besides spawning enemies, while shrines can only increase the number of enemies.

If the pillars in Strongrooms you have currently unlocked provide wonderful benefits, then it is recommended that you don’t pay too much attention to shrines. Otherwise, you can consider activating shrines as appropriate.

Choose The Right Class And Builds

If the first two tips are about the enemy settings, then the next thing you need to consider is the improvement of your own strength - the stronger your character is, the more enemies you can kill in the specified time and range.

Unless you are very good at playing a certain class, we recommend that you choose to play classes with additional advantages in advance in any Diablo 4 season based on the PTR or other information.

For Season 9, Sorcerer, Spiritborn, or the 2.3.1 patch-enhanced Barbarian are all good. On this basis, the following builds should play a greater role in Horadric Strongrooms:

S Tier

• Hydra Sorcerer Build
• Lightning Spear Sorcerer Build
• Pulverize Druid Build
• Minion Necromancer Build

A Tier

• Spiritborn Builds (Focus On Thorns Damage)
• Blood Bone Spear Necromancer Build
• Blood Wave Necromancer Build

B Tier

• Poison Pool Druid Build
• Death Trap Rogue Build
• Dance Of Knives Rogue Build

Among them, the reason why S tier builds are the top builds for clearing Strongrooms is mainly because they all have powerful AOE damage characteristics, which can clear a large number of enemies faster and allow you to gain more attunement.

Choose A Higher Game Difficulty As Much As Possible

As you know, the game difficulty levels of Diablo 4 include Standard and Torment, each of which includes 4 levels. Although you can enter Horadric Strongrooms at any difficulty, it is true that the dungeons above Torment 3 are the most valuable.

Because only when you enter the dungeon at Torment 3 or 4 difficulty, the available Horadric Pillars may spawn an additional demon boss with Tier 3 attunement, which can be defeated to gain a large amount of attunement.

This boss may be an elite enemy or a Butcher that appears randomly in the dungeon. Although it is more challenging, more attunement means that everything is worth it.

What Rewards Do Horadric Strongrooms Provide?

In the process of clearing the dungeon, you will get regular rewards such as gold, as well as special Horadric Arcanas and attunement.

More Arcana can enrich your Horadric Spells and builds, and enough attunement can improve the quality of Grand Horadric Cache you finally get.

After opening this cache, you will get Horadric Phials and Horadric Tomes, which will help you upgrade spells and craft Horadric Jewels, giving your Season 9 character more combat benefits.

If you haven’t obtained all Arcanas yet, or are short of basic resources such as gold, please follow the above suggestions to clear more Horadric Strongrooms as soon as possible! Good luck!

Gold is the most basic and important currency resource in Diablo 4. Whether you are in the early game or the endgame stage, whether you want to exchange for other items or repair damaged gear, you can’t do without it.

Therefore, when you enter a new Diablo 4 season, in addition to getting familiar with the new content as soon as possible, another important task is to start farming Diablo 4 gold (and XP), and there is no upper limit, the more the better.

However, it is worth noting that although there are many ways to get gold, it has always been difficult to say which one is the best gold farming channel until Season 9 brings you Escalating Nightmares.

What Are Escalating Nightmares?

Escalating Nightmares, also known as Nightmare Dungeon Escalations, is an “upgraded version” of the traditional Nightmare Dungeon launched in Season 9 based on Diablo 4.

This dungeon is a combination of three normal Nightmare Dungeons. Although the overall combat mode is similar to the normal version, it brings a new boss, Astaroth, and it can only be unlocked by obtaining Escalation Sigils.

In addition, each of the three dungeons will have their own positive and negative affixes, just like the normal Nightmare Dungeons, but all affixes will stack as you progress. This means that you will carry the affixes of the previous dungeon into the next dungeon.

After defeating the boss of each Escalating Nightmares built-in dungeon, you will see a special pillar in the arena, which will teleport you to the next built-in dungeon and show you all the affixes that will work in the next dungeon.

Farming Gold In Escalating Nightmares

Of all Nightmare Dungeon affixes that can be unlocked, the most important one is of course Horadric Strongrooms, because carrying it into the dungeon will have a chance to farm the high-rarity Arcana in Season 9 seasonal power Horadric Spells.

But in fact, the appearance of more Horadric affixes is also the reason why Season 9 provides the best gold farming method, because the positive effect brought by Horadric Gold Reserve affix can make you get tons of Diablo 4 gold in a short time!

When you fight in Escalating Nightmares after obtaining this affix, it will generate more gold chests for you than fighting in regular Nightmare Dungeons to quickly complete gold farming while exploring new dungeons and farming Horadric Spells.

It is worth noting that Season 9 also added another regular affix, Gold Find, which works when you get or find gold in any way. The amount of gold you get in the end will increase by 30%. If the two affixes can be used together, the effect will definitely surprise you!

How To Complete Escalating Nightmares?

Of course, even with the help of affixes, in order to successfully take away all the gold you get, you must complete all Nightmare Dungeon Escalations. If you fail due to character death in the middle of the process, everything will become a waste of talk.

Most of the enemies in Escalating Nightmares are not difficult to deal with, as long as you make sure your abilities and gear strength are equal to the current game difficulty level. The real danger is the final boss Astaroth in Torment 1+.

In order to complete this difficult boss battle, in addition to equipping the best gear possible, you also need to pay attention to the following guidelines:

• In the first stage of the battle, the mounted Astaroth will dismount and fight in the middle of the battle. It is best to kill and merge as soon as possible, otherwise it will be more troublesome to wait for it to revive.
• If you find that the boss is breathing, it means that he is shooting fireballs. You can use this as a sign to move in advance to avoid this attack.
• When the boss is wielding fire and slashing at you, try to avoid it by going around behind him.
• Astaroth sometimes drops an expanding ring of fire in the center of the arena. Don’t stand in it.
• In the later stages of the battle, the boss will place meteorites outside the arena. Avoid being hit by them by moving flexibly.

Other Gold Farming Methods Available

While activating relevant affixes and clearing Escalating Nightmares should be your primary gold farming method in Season 9, other reliable sources should not be ignored. After all, the more gold, the better in the game.

• Trade with other players: If you get duplicate or unwanted items while completing quests, you can also get gold by selling them to other players who need them.
• Complete the main quests: Advance the story without missing any gold rewards.
• Complete as many side quests as possible: You may trigger new side quests at any time, and they will also reward you with small amounts of gold.
• Complete major challenges such as Whispers bounties or Infernal Hordes: These challenges are the core gameplay of Diablo 4 and the main source of various resources.
• Possible Treasure Goblins event: Diablo 4 will hold this event from time to time. Killing goblins with gold affixes in it can quickly obtain a large amount of gold. Although it is not clear whether it will be held in Season 9.

If you happen to be in urgent need of gold, just refresh and complete Nightmare Dungeon Escalations, and start farming after trying your best to get gold-related affixes! I wish you success!

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.

Most Classes Are Generally Enhanced

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.

Barbarian

• Battle Trance: Lucky Hit Chance increased from 10% to 20%; Damage bonus increased from 15%-30% to 30%-60%.
• Double Swing: Damage increased from 66% to 85%.
• Hammer of the Ancients: Damage increased from 110% to 175%.
• Rend: Bleeding damage increased from 120% to 135%.
• Upheaval: Damage increased from 132% to 200%.
• Whirlwind: Damage increased from 52% to 76%.
• Barbed Carapace: Thorns damage increased from 100% to 120%.

Druid

• Pulverize: Damage increased from 150% to 175%.
• Greatstaff of the Crone: Claw, in addition to being a storm skill, casts damage by 100-250% with Storm Strike.

Necromancer

• Hulking Monstrosity Passive: Additional Golem damage sacrifice bonus increased from 35% to 60%.

Rogue

• Deathmask of Nirmitruq: Damage bonus increased from 70% to 100%.
• Breakneck Bandit’s Aspect: Damage increased from 25%-45% to 35%-55%.

Sorcerer

• Meteor: Impact damage increased from 120% to 140%.
• Aspect of Frozen Orbit: Frozen Orb damage increased from 30%-50% to 50%-70%.
• Aspect of Frozen Memories: Avalanche vulnerable damage bonus increased from 50%-75% to 75%-100%.

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:

• Aspect of Pestilence: Damage bonus increased from 35%-75% to 50%-90%.
• Payback: Damage increased from 125% to 150%.
• Razor Wings: Damage increased from 75% to 95%.

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.

Optimization Of Seasonal Content

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:

• Arcana drops obtained through combat can be automatically picked up.
• Myriad Stone can provide a temporary attack speed bonus, which stacks with permanent attack speed sources.
• For Nightmare dungeons with Equipment Delve affixes, the channeling time of Horadric Artifact has been reduced from 0.75 seconds to 0.25 seconds. In addition, the channeling process is no longer interrupted when you take damage.
• The completion rewards of Legion activities include more recycled materials; if completed on Torment difficulty, more Forgotten Souls will be included.
• Completing Nightmare dungeons with Horadric Materials Reserve affixes and obtaining Horadric Chests will give more recycled materials and Forgotten Souls.

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:

• Motes now grant XP to all members of the entire combat party, rather than just to the player who picked it up.
• The maximum number of Motes that can spawn throughout the dungeon has been increased, while the drop frequency of Experience Motes has been slightly reduced.
• Each Mote grants more XP.
• Motes no longer drop when summoned by other monsters.
• Motes will no longer drop through Horadric Strongrooms.

Major Bug Fixed

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:

• Fixed an issue where Astaroth’s voice lines were barely audible when you are beginning his boss fight.
• Fixed an issue where Horadric Gateways could unexpectedly disappear and reappear when you are doing A Wanderer, Into Flames quest.
• Fixed an issue where Visions of Pain and Beastmaster’s Bane Season Journey objectives and the requirements for Truths that Line Within quest were inconsistent with their descriptions.
• Fixed an issue where teammates could not see your Cosmic Anomalies.
• Fixed an issue where Horadric Phials were sometimes incorrectly listed as Horadric Wayfinders.
• Fixed an issue where Barbarian’s Iron Maelstrom skill would not consistently trigger Catalysts.
• Fixed an issue where Druid’s Nature’s Fury skill would not trigger its cooldown after gaining Catalysts.

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!

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.

Evade-Centric Leveling Build

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.

Which Skills Should Be Chosen?

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.

Active Skills

First, you should unlock the following active skills for this build:

• Accelerated Thunderspike (5/5)
• Measured Vortex (1/5)
• Measured Soar (1/5)
• Reinforced Counterattack (1/5)
• Reinforced Concussive Stomp (1/5)
• Exalted Hunter (5/5)

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.

Related: Diablo 4 Season 9 Brings Some Quality Of Life Improvements To Players But There Are Still Some Shortcomings

Passive Skills

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.

• Follow Through
• Mirage
• Unrestrained Power
• Apex
• Swift
• Brilliance
• Acceleration
• Vital Strikes

What Horadric Spells Should You Pair With The Build?

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:

• Infusion - Thunderous Particle
• Catalyst - Celestial Surge or Cosmic Anomaly
• Arcana - Invigorating Helix and Volatile Crystal

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.

How To Choose Gear?

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:

• Aspect of Disobedience
• Aspect of the Moonrise
• Aspect of Adaptability

As for the choice of specific weapons or armor, please give priority to those that can provide the following attribute bonuses:

• Dexterity
• Cooldown Reduction
• Vulnerable Damage
• Crit Chance and Crit Damage
• Storm Feather Potency

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.

What Are 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.

How To Find Horadric Strongrooms?

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:

• Choosing a higher difficulty.
• Clearing the entire Escalating Nightmare dungeon.
• Utilize the seasonal currency Horadric Phials to upgrade your Wayfinder.

How To Maximize The Benefits Of Horadric Strongrooms?

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.

How To Get More Horadric Attunement?

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.

How To Get More Horadric Arcana?

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:

• Magic Arcana: Completing Horadric Strongrooms.
• Rare Arcana: Completing Horadric Strongrooms after acquiring “Rare Arcana” from Horadric Knowledge.
• Legendary Arcana: Completing Horadric Strongrooms after acquiring “Legendary Arcana” from Horadric Knowledge.

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:

• Bottled Wind
• Invigorating Helix
• Jagged Bramble
• Luminous Gem
• Murky Essence
• Reactive Ooze
• Shifting Powder
• Tendrilous Bundle
• Tranquil Stone
• Volatile Crystal
• Fractured Core
• Gleaming Conduit
• Potent Alloy
• Sapping Crux
• Siphoning Gizmo
• Bloody Charm
• Floaty Bobble
• Frigid Heart
• Nightmare Orb
• Pressurized Steam

What Do Horadric Chests Do?

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!

As you know, the seasonal power of Diablo 4 Season 9 is Horadric Spells. You can combine the three elements of Catalyst, Infusion and Arcana as needed to create your own unique power for Season 9.

At the same time, as a large and complete ARPG, every new gameplay launched by Diablo 4 actually hides an exclusive mechanism network behind it.

Take Horadric Spells as an example. In order to successfully utilize it to assist in combat, you also need to understand and obtain Horadric Phials & Knowledge. They belong to “Horadric” system, but their specific functions are different.

We have already introduced the combat functions of various Horadric Spells to you in other previous guides. What we want to tell you next is the relevant information about Horadric Phials and Horadric Knowledge.

What Are Horadric Phials?

As you complete seasonal quests or clear the new dungeon Horadric Strongrooms, you will unlock different Horadric Spells in addition to the basic Diablo 4 gold rewards.

All currently known Horadric Spells and how to unlock them are:

Catalysts

• Astral Pillar: Earn by completing the seasonal quest Bearing the Weight of Ghosts.
• Cosmic Anomaly: Earn by completing the seasonal quest The Unseeable Demands Their Gaze.
• Propulsion: Earn by completing the seasonal quest To Walk Where Spirits Tread.

Infusions

• Glacial Nimbus: Earn by completing the seasonal quest Keepers of the Glen.
• Smoldering Ember: Earn by completing the seasonal quest To Walk Where Spirits Tread.
• Nebulous Extract: Earn by completing the seasonal quest The Unseeable Demands Their Gaze.

Arcana

• Bottled Wind: Earned by completing Horadric Strongrooms.
• Gleaming Conduit: Earn by completing Horadric Strongrooms after acquiring Rare Arcana from Horadric Knowledge.
• Floaty Bobble: Earn by completing Horadric Strongrooms after acquiring Legendary Arcana from Horadric Knowledge.

These spells have unique combat benefits, but as you progress through the game, both your character and your enemies will become more powerful, so Horadric Spells must be upgraded - and Horadric Phials are the only item that can do this.

How To Farm This Item?

To keep Horadric Spells available, most elite enemies or bosses in the world map will drop Horadric Phials after being defeated. But if you want to focus on farming, focusing on Helltides is your best choice in the early game.

Because Helltides contains multiple quests that drop Horadric Phials, and each is easy to do, you can maximize your farming efficiency in a short period of time. Specifically, they include:

• Obtained by collecting Aberrant Cinders to open chests.
• Complete Helltides quests in Tree of Whispers to collect Grim Favor in exchange for rewards.
• Consume Baneful Hearts to summon and defeat Blood Maiden to obtain loot.
• Increase the threat bar to summon stronger enemies to get more rewards.

However, as you enter the later stages of the game, Nightmare Dungeons and Horadric Strongrooms should be better sources of Horadric Phials. They will bring more high-rarity treasure chests through stronger enemies, and you can get more Phials after opening them.

In fact, all chests and caches you can get throughout Season 9 may bring Horadric Phials, including reward caches brought by increasing Horadric Knowledge.

How To Utilize Horadric Phials?

As you know, its main function is to upgrade Horadric Spells. It should be noted that as you complete more game content, you will also get more Horadric Spells, but not all of them are suitable for your class/builds/game habits.

So after getting a certain amount of Horadric Phials, don’t rush to upgrade by them. Instead, after determining your Season 9 battle builds, prioritize upgrading Horadric Spells that are most suitable for you to avoid waste.

What Is Horadric Knowledge?

If Horadric Phials is the upgrade currency for Horadric Spells, then Horadric Knowledge is more like the reputation system of the entire Horadric mechanism. The increase of Horadric Knowledge can unlock more relevant rewards and seasonal tasks/stories for you in Season 9.

Compared with Horadric Phials, Knowledge is not a must-have for completing all seasonal content, but the rewards it provides can really help you. In particular, some reward caches will also have Horadric Phials.

How To Get It?

First of all, it should be noted that Horadric Knowledge does not exist in the game as loot, so no matter how you get it, you will not receive a notification when you get it, and you will only see relevant prompts when it is upgraded.

At present, the channels for obtaining Horadric Knowledge in Diablo 4 Season 9 are basically the same as farming Horadric Phials (you can farm at the same time), mainly including:

• Complete Helltide events.
• Redeem rewards by Grim Favor by completing quests related to Tree of Whispers in Helltides.

In addition, while you gain some Horadric Knowledge by completing the above, you can unlock more seasonal quests, which can also bring you Horadric Knowledge.

Another way to gain Horadric Knowledge is to consume Horadric Phials to exchange. But to be honest, this method is not very practical, because upgrading Horadric Spells is the key role of Phials, and the rewards brought by improving Knowledge are not very prominent in comparison.

That’s all for this time. I hope this information can help you better master Horadric Spells in Season 9 to solve those tricky quests or bosses as soon as possible. Have fun!