Season 3 of Diablo 4 introduces the Lightning Storm Druid, providing a visceral experience of harnessing the power of the Thunder God. Playable at level 25, this build excels in both substantial Area of Effect (AOE) and single-target prowess.

While relatively straightforward to play, mastering this build demands a touch of finesse and adept resource management for optimal effectiveness. If you want to make this build, be prepared with plenty of Diablo 4 Gold.

Skill Trees

Examining our primary skills, Wind Shear is a crucial choice for resource generation. Opting for Fierce Wind Shear as a modifier enhances your run speed every time it hits something.

In terms of core skills, it's advisable to maximize Lightning Storm. Personally, I chose Raging Lightning Storm for the rune to add a bit more Area of Effect (AOE) while leveling, although the recommended choice is Primal Lightning Storm.

Exploring the abundance of passives, Abundance boosts your Spirit, while Wild Impulses utilizes your Spirit for increased damage.

For summoning skills, using all of them is recommended, and the Ferocious passives are ideal for each:

• Ferocious Wolf Pack
• Ferocious Poison Creeper
• Brutal Ravens

Technically, Ferocious Ravens are recommended for the Vulnerable ability.

In Wrath Skills, Trample serves as a primary source of resource generation during mid-combat and between fights.

Regarding Storm passives, there is flexibility to choose based on personal preference. I particularly favor a passive that causes lightning bolts to fall on targets, reducing the need for constant striking.

In the ultimate section, the selection includes all of the nature-oriented passives, namely:

• Defiance
• Circle of Life
• Resonance
• Natural Disaster

As for the key passive, the preference is for Nature's Fury, appreciated for its effectiveness each time one of your storm skills is employed, eventually incorporating an Earth skill.

Upon reaching level 25, key passives become essential. Shepherd's Necklace, for instance, enhances storm skill damage for every pet present. Band of Inner Calm boosts damage the longer you remain stationary. Adventure's Gloves of Retaliation increase damage based on fortify, with wolves triggering fortify on striking.

Aspects

Lastly, you have Overcharge Aspect that gives you a chance to overload your targets, dealing even more AOE damage around them.

If you find yourself taking more damage than you desire, Aspect of Disobedience is going to give you a ton of armor, while Aspect of Might offers 20% damage reduction every time you're using an auto-attack, which is pretty common because that's how you generate your spirit on a Druid.

Stats

The primary offensive statistics you should focus on are fairly standard, including crit chance, crit damage, storm skill damage, and willpower.

Similarly, the preferred defensive attributes are quite conventional, encompassing life, armor, and resistances.

Tips

As mentioned earlier, executing this build isn't overly challenging, but it does involve a few peculiarities and strategies.

For instance, when using Lightning Storm, you might be tempted to spam clicks, but you'll observe that the number of bolts doesn't increase. Instead, the recommended approach is to hold the skill down, resulting in the generation of more bolts.

Furthermore, by enhancing your spirit, holding down the skill again allows for a more controlled and efficient tapping technique—generating spirit, tap, tap, tap, tap—leading to the demise of the entire room.

The minions associated with this build effectively keep adversaries occupied, leveraging their cooldowns strategically for comprehensive room clearing or even boss melting. As previously stated, this build offers a highly enjoyable experience and seamlessly propels you into Tier 3 and Tier 4 without complications, featuring a well-structured end-game setup.

As you surely know, the new content of Diablo 4 in December will also bring a new legendary glyph into the game, which is called Tears of Blood. If you know how to use this new glyph, your character can deal more damage, and you’ll get more Diablo 4 Gold and loot!

It boosts rare nodes in range and gives a multiplicative damage bonus that scales on your main stats. Main stats are the main attributes for the different classes:

• Strength for the Barbarian
• Willpower for the Druid
• Dexterity for the Rogue
• Intelligence for Sorcercer and Necromancer

When reaching level 50, the glyph has one field more radius than other glyphs when having final size and you can level it up to level 200. The boost for the rare nodes increases by 10% every 10 levels and a damage bonus by 0.1% per level.

So, at level 200, the glyph gives 21.9% increased damage per 5 attribute points and increases the rare nodes by almost 250%. And the + 10 attributes become + 35. And since every class has 2 rare nodes in reach on every Paragon Board, that’s always a total of + 70, which also scales to the damage of the glyph when using it there.

I got the picture from the max roll planner, whereas the glyph has already been added, but the damage increase is not displayed correctly yet. So, I have created an overview for you.

For each class and each board, you can see how many attribute points you can get on the boards for maximum and below you find the resulting damage increases.

We can see a regularity in the table: boards number 2 and 3 are the strongest for most classes, except for the Sorcerer. There, it’s board number 3 and 5. Of course, it also plays a role how easily you can get to the attribute points.

Ideally, you have to activate only a few other notes to get to all the main stat points. I have analyzed all the boards and conveniently the strong boards are also the ones where you can get to the desired notes very easily.

If you’re playing a build that doesn’t use any of the top boards, you can still use the table, but you should definitely look by yourself to see on which board you can reach the corresponding points without too much effort.

Ultimately, this also depends on which other notes will skill on the boards. If possible, however, you should put the glyph into one of the top boards. Each allows up to 4 attribute points, which results in a damage bonus of over 600% at maximum glyph level.

You will probably notice that the Paragon Boards for the different classes always have the same structures. For balancing and to keep things simple, the developers have used the same 8 basic patterns and just added slight variations for the different classes.

For the Necromancer, I also have a 135 board in the recommendations. Here you can also get to the notes very easily. Some of the comparable boards from the other classes only reach 130 points or fewer, but they could also be worth considering.

Here, we are putting two titans against each other. We are comparing the most popular build of Diablo 4 Season 2, which is of course Ball Lightning, and its competitor, one of the best crowd control builds in the game at the moment, the mighty Blizzard Ice Spikes to see who has what it takes to stand the top the mountain as the best Sorceress build for Season 2.

But what you need to know is that a powerful build cannot be separated from the support of Diablo 4 Gold! If you want to strengthen your character quickly and powerfully, you need to prepare enough gold.

These two titans are squaring off in three very important categories: damage, crowd control and defense. These are the three most important aspects of having a well-rounded build to tackle the toughest content in Diablo 4. 

Damage

Let’s jump right into it, starting off with damage. Ball Lightning really specializes in single target damage. It basically deletes anything it touches up close. 

However, it’s not the best with AOE damage, because of the way Ball Lightning intrinsically works. You need to be up close and personal with your blue balls. 

Ice Spike specializes in AOE damage with incredible crowd control. Combined with high damage. You can sit in the middle of the screen, cast Blizzard mindlessly, and destroy everything on the screen without moving, if you so choose. 

On top of that, the single target damage is good, not as good as Ball Lightning, but it can definitely hold its own. 

Ball Lightning gets a 10 for damage and Ice Spike gets a solid 9.

Crowd Control

The second category of a well-rounded build is crowd control. 

For Ball Lightning, this is not a strong category, because of the way that Ball Lightning is played. You are typically dropping your blue balls directly on the enemy’s face, which means you have to be up close in personal. 

Now, I’m sure you’ve seen many Ball Lightning Sorcerers during your travels, zip zapping all over the map. That’s because in order to maximize the damage of the build, you need to touch the enemies with your balls. 

Ice Spike works in a very different way. You can be up close, mid-range or far away, so you have more versatility in the ability, which provides a much different play style. The Ice Spike build is the best crowd control Sorceress build in the game. 

When combining Frozen Orb, Blizzard and Ice Spikes, almost every enemy is instantly frozen or highly chilled, of which you can make quick work of, because they literally can’t move. Or, if they are chilled, you do massive damage to them. 

Ball Lightning gets a respectable 8.5 for crowd control and Ice Spike gets a solid 10.

Defense

The third and final category is defensive abilities. 

Now, defensive abilities become very important when pushing Nightmare Dungeons 90 +. You want to have as many options as possible to escape danger in iffy situations. 

Both builds have the standard Flame Shield and Ice Armor. Ball Lightning also comes with Chain Lightning, which can stun everything on your screen. 

But that’s about where it stops in regards to defensive abilities. 

Ice Spike uses one of the best defensive abilities in the game, the ultimate Deep Freeze. Encapsulate yourself in ice and become immune for 4 seconds, and on top of that, continually chill everything on your screen while you are invincible. It’s the best get out of jail ability in the game. 

You also have on top of that Blizzard, which chills enemies. And when you are in your own Blizzard, you take up to 38% less damage. 

Ball Lightning gets a very respectable 8.5 and Ice Spike comes in with another solid 10.

Conclusion

Ball Lightning comes in with a final score of 27 and Ice Spike comes in with a total score of 29. Both of these builds are very capable of tackling the toughest content in Diablo 4 and both of them are extremely fun to play, while they provide very different play styles.

Season 2 of Diablo 4 is here with a new world event called Blood Harvest.

Blood Harvest is similar to a Helltide Event, where there is an increased monster density and currencies specific to that event. It’s the best way to earn Potent Blood to unlock and upgrade Vampiric Powers, so we will be spending a lot of time in these areas early on.

One of the first noticeable things about Blood Harvest events is that there are two new currencies shown towards the top right of our screen: Blood Lures and Seeker Keys.

Blood Lures are used to attract Blood Seekers, which drop Potent Blood, rare gear, and consumable packs, among other things.

Blood Seekers are these enemies that are roaming around in the Blood Harvest. And they can also just randomly seek you out when you’ve killed enough enemies, making it so you don’t have to constantly use the Blood Lures to bring them out.

We can spend as little as 15 Blood Lures on single altars and chales or as many as 150 on this altar trifecta in the event. 

I only did this one once, so I’m not sure if it’s worth saving up the 150 Blood Lures yourself or it’s just more for encouraging multiplayer and joining up with a group.

Seeker Keys are used to open these Seeker cash coffins, which, like the Blood Seekers, give us packs, rare Diablo 4 items, Potent Blood, among other things.

One thing I noticed with these coffins is that for each one, at least on World Tier 1, they drop at least two rares and one to three packs every time.

After the Blood Harvest has been sitting in an area for 60 minutes, it will immediately relocate to a different area on the map. So, this isn’t like Helltides, where you have to wait another hour and a half for the next one. 

The best part is that your Blood Lures and Seeker Keys don’t disappear at the end like how a Barren Cinders do. After a Helltide Event, simply teleport to the new area and continue where you left off with the same amount of lures and keys.

While you are running or trotting towards the city exit to the new Blood Harvest, there is a Hunter’s Claim Board that can be accessed to unlock rewards. 

A Hunter’s Claim is a new system in Season 2 that is increased from literally just killing enemies in the Blood Harvest. You can also rescue villagers from cells, lay souls to rest, and burn corpses.

There are 18 different tiers, each rewarding a separate cash with better rewards the further your claim level reaches, with some of these tiers giving access to Vampiric Powers that are only accessible through raising your Acclaim level.

Lastly, another great reason to spend time on these Blood Harvest is for completing Grim Favors for the Tree of Whispers. With the version 1.2 update, buffing the Tree of Whisper rewards via more Diablo 4 Gold, higher level Nightmare Dungeon, sigils, and more focused gear. Just by running around the Blood Harvest and slaying enemies, you will be unintentionally completing Grim Favors as well.

All in all, Blood Harvest event is a welcome addition to the game to help keep everyone outside in this open world that Blizzard created instead of just grinding dungeon after dungeon at least in the early game.

Are you having trouble setting up force move and attacking with shift click? Well, don’t worry. In this guide, I am going to show you how to set up your settings where you will force move slash in track with just left clicking on your mouse and you will only attack when you hold shift and left click. So, let’s check this out.

Now, first I do want to mention that this works with every class (Barbarian, Rogue, Sorcerer, Necromancer, and Druid). And whatever skill you want to use to hold shift and attack with, it has to be your fifth skill slot.

So, for example, on my Sorcerer, the skill I have on my fifth skill slot is Ice Shards. And right now, I’m just left clicking and I’m force moving. I can still interact with my left click. And to attack, I have to hold Shift and then left click. And you can see I attack with my Ice Shards.

Specific Steps

So, to set this up, what you want to do is go to your Options. Then, on the top, go to the Control settings. And then once here, scroll down and then you’ll see this section called Gameplay.

Now, I already have everything set up, but I’m going to reset to default so I can show you.

So, if you reset to default, your settings should now look like this.

And what you want to do is first click on this section and uncheck the Combine Move, Interact and Basic Skill Slot. Once this happens, your Basic Skill Slot will be empty. Your force move will be your left click and your Move and Interact will be empty. 

Now, you want to switch the left click from move to move to interact. So just click here and then left click again. And now, your left click is Move & Interact. And then, save changes and then you’re all set.

Now personally, what I like to do is for the Basic Skill Slot. I like to put F1. And the reason why is just in case something happens. And if I can attack by shift clicking, I can still use F1 to use my Basic Skill.

Okay, so once everything’s set up, let us exit out. And as you can see on force moving, I can interact with the Statue. And the only way for me to attack now is by holding shift and then left clicking.

And like I mentioned, since I put F1 as a backup, if I push F1, I also use my Ice Shards.

Outro

Alright, so that’s pretty much the best way to set up force move and attacking with shift click. If you follow this setup, your combat in Diablo 4 will be much smoother. You’ll even find it easier to defeat some monsters. You can also get a lot of Diablo 4 Gold for this.

Learn to set up Shift-Click Attack in Diablo 4 and unlock precision and power at your fingertips. Master the key bindings for devastating attacks and dominate battles with ease. Revolutionize your gameplay and become a force to be reckoned with!

Now that patch 1.1.1 notes are officially in the wild. And as you just saw up on screen, they did carry forward with the move to increase the monster density, navigating back to the original campfire chat. 

Now, one of the things that’s actually been bothering me is the lack of specificity in terms of what percent increases are we going to see specific to Nightmare Dungeons. And there also is a general lack of ambiguity around the Elite increase in density. 

However, back to the secondary Campfire Chat as part of the monster density increases, they actually pulled up an example of Nostrava Deepwood on screen where they actually showcase the pre-density and post-density buffs. 

Pre VS Post Monster Density Buff Comparison

Now, while we know this is not necessarily final and we don’t know with definitive certainty that every single dungeon is going to see the same blanket increase. What I wanted to actually do and take matters into my own hands was to do a pre versus post side by side count of all the individual monsters and the Animus Elites that we could see, since they actually provided us that image. 

So, what you’re actually seeing up on screen is on the left-hand side. You’re looking at the pre buff Nostrava Deepwood prior to this change. And you can see that I counted about 120 monster density, including the Animus Elites. 

Now, as we look over at the right, image you now see 181 total count, again, in the same exact area. Now this translates almost exactly to about an approximate fifty percent increase in monster density. The increase in monster density means that we will be able to get more Diablo 4 Gold and more loot by killing monsters.

So, while this is not a hundred percent definitive, and this is a theoretically educated guess, I do generally stand behind that I do expect to see a 50 percent increase. I don’t think that they would have actually gone through showing us the pre versus post visual if you weren’t going to be able to artificially dissect that ourselves. 

Monster Density Closing Thoughts

Again, to caveat, we know that it’s not final. I’m being very clear that we don’t know if it’s across every dungeon. But I would think that we’re probably going to see someone of a cascaded blanketed increase. 

The only thing that they were more clear on is that Helltides where they’re going to see a little bit of a buff. We shouldn’t expect the same increase outright as a Nightmare Dungeon. Because they do believe that certain zones, certain Helltide sequences already are fairly sufficient. 

In general, I do hope we see an overall increase in Elites. But we’re gonna have to wait and see until next week when this is officially released into the wild on August 8th. 

With Season 1 of Diablo 4, Blizzard added in a Battle Pass. But the most important part of the Battle Pass isn’t the outfits, the name titles, or the 666 Platinum given in the pass that doesn’t allow you to buy anything significant in the shop. 

The most important part of the Battle Pass is the Smoldering Ashes that can be acquired. These ashes are a type of currency that can give you one of five blessings that can stack up to four times.

The good news is that all of the Smoldering Ashes are in the free version of the Battle Pass. No need to pay the 10 premium. The bad news is, and this is me assuming that because Blizzard came out with the Ultimate Edition that allows players to skip 20 tiers. They didn’t want people to complain about quote pay to win and be able to gain access to the ashes earlier than non-ultimate Edition owners.

I know no one cares about pay to win in a PVE game. But you’d be surprised how many people complain about literally everything on the Diablo subreddits. What they could have done was put the Smoldering Ashes in the Season Journey for completing the different chapters.

Instead, Blizzard’s solution was to restrict the access to the ashes until reaching a certain level. It’s interesting to see how drastically they changed the level of requirement for the ashes. We can see an original screenshot shows them at level 10 and 20. But actually, they aren’t even unlocked until Level 40. 

This just becomes annoying because the Battle Pass does not scale correctly with the ashes unlocking, making it so you will be pages ahead in the Battle Pass and could forget about the ashes.

As mentioned earlier, there are five different blessings that can be gained from using the Smoldering Ashes:

• Earn more XP from killing monsters 
• Gain more gold from selling to vendors 
• Boost the chance of rare materials from salvaging 
• Boost the duration of all Elixirs 
• Boost the chance for more powerful Malignant Heart drops 

We are even told what plus percentage is given when selecting that blessing. 

For me, the clear winner is the XP boost, especially because of all the ashes themselves are locked behind getting to a certain level. Level up faster, get more ashes faster. Next would be more gold from vendors and then Malignant Heart chance. Getting a chance for more rare materials isn’t worth taking in my opinion and there’s a 15% boost to Elixir time on the first upgrade. 

But doing the math, we see that this only makes them last four and a half minutes longer for that five percent XP boost. So, we might as well just get a permanent three percent XP boost instead. 

The good news is that you can reallocate your ashes for a cost. Right clicking on a blessing will refund it with a starting cost of one Diablo 4 Gold. This price will triple each time the ashes are reallocated, probably to keep with the by three they come theme in the game.

Some final notes are that the smoldering ashes and blessings earned from them are only usable for this first season of Diablo 4. Once this season ends, the boosts and ashes will disappear. On the other hand, we still get to keep any Cosmetics that were earned during the season through the Battle Pass.

With the nerfs to XP from the Season 1 patch, it’s now obvious that Blizzard intended for people to quote buy back the original experience gained with these ashes. So, really, it’s just punishing anyone who is staying in the Eternal Realm and not creating a seasonal character. 

As a quick recap, Smoldering Ashes is a currency that gives you bonuses from XP boost to salvaging more rare Diablo 4 Items. There are 20 ashes altogether, giving you the opportunity to max out all five blessings. 

With a new season or ladder, you typically start fresh with everyone on the same playing field, meaning your characters and most unlocks are set aside in a non-seasonal realm. If you want to be ahead of other players at the beginning, then you must prepare enough Diablo 4 Gold in advance.

Now, with seasons comes, all kinds of new stuff in the form of themes, game mechanics, achievements, Battle Pass cosmetics for both free and paid, and even the potential for season-specific gear. We may actually see some form of seasonal bosses or challenges as well.

But there’s two things to remember here:

*One is that the paid season Battle Pass is strictly for cosmetics as of right now. So, don’t feel like you’re missing core mechanics of the game if you don’t pay for this. The most important thing from the Battle Pass in general will probably be the Smoldering Ashes, as these add to your character’s overall power. And the paid Battle Pass allegedly doesn’t unlock these any sooner or get any more of them than the free one.

*The second thing to remember is again that most things won’t transfer to your new season and yes, for right now, that includes the dreaded Renown grind.

But there is hope. Altars of Lilith are one of the most important things in this game and one of the few things that will actually carry over season to season.

I would highly recommend using any online tool that you can find to go out and touch every single altar when possible. From what we know so far, the stat bonuses and the Renown that you gain from these will stay with your account. So, you’ll be able to start each season with super strong stats and with a healthy initial boost to your regional Renown. Now, the Renown part wasn’t originally in the plan. They just recently added that, so that’s why I’m saying more things can change in the future.

The other thing that we know that will stay forever so far is whatever you have already uncovered on the map, which is a huge deal. As of right now, if you make a new character, you actually have to go and uncover every part of Sanctuary again, aside from four or five other main city waypoints. But you can harvest a lot of Diablo 4 Items and loot.

But again, this won’t be the case for Season 1. You’ll retain all vision on the map, which will be fantastic. But you’ll still need to re-obtain most or all of the waypoints out there.

Remember, though, that this contributes a bunch towards your Renown and so do all the strongholds that you’ll have to take over again. Before Season 1 hits, you should make sure you’re decently familiar with the map and how Renown gains work as this eventually contributes a good portion to your overall power.

In summary, the Battle Pass is not the evil demon everybody makes it out to be, and you can play the game just fine on the free one. It’s imperative that you get all of your Altars of Lilith done and out of the way follow that up with uncovering all or most of the map and finally getting as familiar as you can with where everything is like strongholds and other waypoints.

And that should be everything you need to know to get started with this upcoming season.

In a livestream yeterday, the folks at Blizzard announced the first details for Season 1 of its hit ARPG Diablo 4. You won’t have to wait long to play it as the season will debut on July 20th. Now that we’ve had time to soak in all the gory details, here’s everything that you need to know about Season 1 of Diablo 4. 

Season Of The Malignant Overview 

The first season is called Season of the Malignant and will focus on a zombie-like outbreak. That’s sweeping across Sanctuary in a side story that takes place after the events of Diablo 4’s campaign.

Players will meet up with a new character named Corman, a former priest of the Cathedral of Light, who’s trying to put an end to the plague sweeping across the land to do. So, players will embark on a seven-chapter Season Journey that guides your hero through some new activities, including a new type of dungeon called Malignant Tunnels and a new boss fight against Diablo 4 Varshan the Consumed. 

The entire season journey questline and new activities are free to all players, though Blizzard did strongly suggest that players make sure they’ve completed the campaign at least once. Because some of the seasonal activities won’t be available until players have resolved the Lilith conflict in Sanctuary. 

How Does The New Season Mechanic Work? (Malignant/Caged Hearts) 

Like Diablo 3, seasons before it Diablo 4 will once again require players to create new seasonal characters to participate in seasonal content.

Your normal characters are fine, safely saved on what Blizzard calls the Eternal Realm. But those heroes won’t be able to access seasonal content asides from the few new Diablo 4 Items and abilities that are being added to the sandbox on the 18th.

Armed with a new seasonal character, you’ll be able to dive into the season of the malignant and make use of a whole bunch of new features and abilities.

In season 1, the big new mechanic is called Caged Hearts, a new mod that can be slotted into your jewelry like a gem, but which is far more powerful. 

In fact, the livestreams panel claims that players will be able to create a quote stupidly broken builds with these souped-up equipment addons with 32 new powers coming with Caged Hearts. There should be plenty of new ways to wage war against the armies of Hell. 

To get Caged Hearts, you’ll need to search for Elite Malignant enemies throughout the world. Killing them will cause a powerful mini boss and zombie thralls to spawn. And if you’re able to defeat them, you’ll claim a Caged Heart.

Malignant Tunnel dungeons serve as a way for players to target farm Caged Hearts once they reach the seasonal endgame. Caged Hearts come in three different colors and can only be slotted into seasonal equipment that has a slot with a matching color type. This means you’ll need to search for the right combination of equipment and Caged Hearts to get exactly the build that you’re working towards.

However, there’s also a fourth kind of Caged Heart that can be slotted into equipment slots of any color. But Blizzard says that these are rare drops. So, don’t expect that kind of freedom to be a common occurrence. 

How Does Diablo 4’s Battle Pass Work?

Season 1 will also have a Battle Pass. 

This 90-rank seasonal progress bar will unlock a whole slew of cosmetics for paying players. Or, if you’re looking to Dungeon Crawl on the cheap will have 27 unlocks for free players that will grant Smoldering Ashes.

Smoldering Ashes is a new currency that can be spent on Seasonal Blessings, which is a new way for players to unlock seasonal perks like XP boosts, and increased Diablo 4 Gold when selling items to vendors for all of their season 1 characters. This will allow us for faster leveling and a more efficient seasonal grind. 

How To Prepare For Season 1? 

Before Season 1 comes out, a pre-season patch will be available on July 18th, two days before the season begins. That will add some new unique drops and get the sandbox ready for the arrival of the scourge of the Malignant. 

Blizzard recommends that players log on to your character with the most progress after the patch on the 18th and before starting Season 1. This is because Diablo 4’s Renown is shared between characters. But their servers need to check in with your characters after the patch.

Doing so will ensure that your new seasonal characters begin with up to 5 extra skill points, 9 potions, and the complete revealed map of everything you’ve discovered already. 

Otherwise, you may find yourself starting a seasonal character with zero Renown. And unless you’re excited by the prospect of hunting for all of those Altars of Lilith again, we’d suggest skipping that particular headache. 

Here, we will talk about a few basic mechanics of the game that you should know. You will learn what you can do at the various NPCs.

Recycling & Upgrading (Blacksmith)

Merchant at Blacksmiths should be clear to everyone. Here, you can make repairs, recycle items, or upgrade your equipment. 

The first two or three levels are quite cheap and always worthwhile, but each further upgrade becomes more expensive. So, it is not worth it for items that you will soon replace. 

When recycling items, you gain different materials depending on the type and rarity. And you also get the look of the item available in the wardrobe. 

With useless items, there is always the question of whether you should sell or recycle them. I have done well so far selling one half and recycling the other. Whereby, you should also pay attention to the selling prices. Sell more expensive items and recycle the cheaper ones. 

When needing certain materials, you will, of course, recycle more stuff, especially if you have lots of Diablo 4 Gold yet. By the way, you can still buy back items that you sold by mistake.

Gems & Sockets (Jeweler) 

At the Jeweler, you can upgrade gems. This also works while they are in your stash.

You can also unsocket items here or add sockets to Diablo 4 Items. Gems can be used as often as you like. When you unsuck them, they go into your inventory.  

Gamble (Curiosity Vendor) 

At the Curiosity Vendor, you should always use your Obols to gamble because there is a maximum that you can collect. And if you die, you lose your Obols.

Pots, Elixiers & Mixtures (Alchemist) 

At the Alchemist, you can upgrade your Healing Potions and craft different Elixirs and mixtures, which give different buffs for yourself or the whole group.

The different potions also give an XP bonus and work for half an hour. So, it’s always good to have some.

For everything you mix at the Alchemist, you need different herbs that you collect in the world. You can also convert some basic materials here but usually at the loss. The collected materials can be found at the top of the inventory under materials and statistics.  

Imprint & Extract Aspects (Occultist) 

At the Occultist, we can imprint aspects on items or extract aspects from them.

For adding aspects, you can either use one of your unlocked aspects or some from the inventory that you previously extracted from other items. There is an extra tab for the aspects. An aspect can only be imprinted on certain types of items. 

For weapons, you use others and 4 armors. But this is also indicated in each case. We can imprint aspects on rare or legendary items. In the latter case, the previous aspect is simply overwritten.

By extracting, you can destroy an item to get out the aspect, so you can imprint it onto another item. However, this doesn’t work with items that have already been imprinted once. For the aspects that you have unlocked by dungeons, it doesn’t matter. You can use them as often as you like. But if you have extracted a very good aspect from an item, you should think well about where to imprint it. You can’t get it out of the item afterwards.  

Craft & Recycle Sigils (Occultist) 

You can also craft sigils at the Occultist or recycle the ones you don’t need. You collect sigils in the Consumables tab. They are used to open high level Nightmare Dungeons on world level 3 and 4. 

The area level always becomes 43 plus the level of the sigil. With the level 17 sigil, you get level 60 monsters. In these Nightmare Dungeons, you can find more sigils and also glyphs for the Paragon Board. And after finishing, you can upgrade your glyphs.

The sigils are activated by right clicking, and they modify an existing dungeon by the described attributes. On the map, you can recognize the dungeon by its special symbol.

What is enchanting in Diablo 4?

Enchanting is completed by the Occultist and is a way to re-roll one of your items affixes into something more desirable.

How To Enchant?

Click on the far right tab and we get to the enchant items section. Here, we can insert an item into the slot and choose which one of the four affixes we want to change.

Select the affix and click on Enchant. There will be a little warning message that pops up saying: after enchanting the item, it will no longer be tradable.

Click on accept and then we are given three options on what the affixes can become. Two new options or a no change, which keeps the original affix.

Select the most desirable option. Click on replace affix. Close. And then, that’s it. The enchantment is complete.

One thing to be aware of is that once an affix is re-rolled, only that affix can be re-rolled again on that item. The game no longer allows us to choose an affix like the first time and we are instead only given the option to start the enchantment.

If possible, we want to enchant items that haven’t been upgraded and don’t have an aspect on them. So, if we look at the two items here, neither of them has been enchanted before.

They both have two open sockets. But the legendary chest armor has been upgraded five times and obviously has an aspect already. It will cost 150,000 Diablo 4 Gold to change one of the affixes on this item. Compare that to another chest armor that hasn’t been upgraded doesn’t have an aspect, and it only costs 71,000 gold to change in affix, which is less than half the price.

The rare chest armor also has a 772 base item power compared to the legendary chest armor which has a 703 base item power, showing that the upgrades and aspect equipped are what is making the enchanting cost more for the legendary.

Another thing to notice is that the rare items with the legendary aspect also cost a Fiend Rose to re-roll the affix. Fiend Roses and Forgotten Souls are found in Helltides.

There is some speculation that choosing to use no change will make the next enchantment cost less than if you were to choose one of the two different affixes. But I don’t believe this is true. The second re-roll will always be a huge jump from the original re-roll cost.

So, even though we selected no change on the legendary aspect chest piece, it still jumped from 150,000 gold to 750,000 gold compared to choosing a different affix on the rare chest piece, jumping from 71,000 gold to 356,000 gold.

When To Enchant?

So, now we know how to enchant. The question is, when do we want to enchant?

Since most Diablo 4 Items only have four affixes that can be changed, we want at least two but more preferably three of those affixes to already be set to what we want for our build.

So, for my build, I found an amulet (Necklace of Serration) with movement speed after killing Elites.

Important Stats

+1 Rank of all Macabre Skills & 5.8% Cooldown Reduction

The only thing I was missing was base movement speeds. So, I took the fourth affix and kept re-rolling it until I got the movement speed boost that I was looking for. Even though this amulet is on the range for most of the affixes, having these specific affixes is still better than having four max roll random ones that don’t work with the build.

Hopefully, this explained enchanting in Diablo 4 or at least gave you some tips on the most cost-efficient ways to enchant your items.

We’ll talk about paragon levels, what they are, as well as the boards, glyphs, and getting briefly into Nightmare Dungeons. 

Paragon Board Explained

Once a character hits level 50, we start earning Paragon Points. Paragon is like an alternate leveling system within the game. The Experience bar is now broken into four sections and at each section a paragon level is given. No longer are we learning actual abilities, we are instead raising our stats or attributes through these nodes.

There are four types of nodes: normal (gray), magic (blue), rare (yellow), and legendary (orange). There are only four normal nodes and they give basic stat increases, such as +5 Willpower, Intelligence, and Dexterity. 

Magic nodes are just like normal nodes except that they give more stats per node, for example, a +7 willpower and +7 Dexterity instead of the +5 normal nodes. They can also increase a wide variety of things, such as +2% maximum life, +2% resistance to all elements and +5% damage.

Rare nodes give two stat increases as well as a bonus to one of those stats as long as the requirements are met. So, in this example, we have knowledge of a rare node that offers +10% damage, +10 intelligence and another +10% damage bonus. If we can get at least 170 willpower on the Paragon Board.

We can gain Willpower from nodes on the Paragon Boards, Diablo 4 Items that are equipped, like these gloves here that are giving me +14 all stats and Altars of Lilith. 

Every time an Altar clicked on, we gain a +2 in any of the four core stats, more Obols or Paragon Level. So, for this rare node, we are five short, so we only get the +10% damage boost. But, if we click on this +5 Willpower, we now see that the rare node jumps up to that plus 20% damage. 

There’s also a glyph socket towards the middle of the board. We can place a glyph in this socket, which creates this red radius. This glyph exploit says that forever every five dexterity purchased within range, which is the red radius here. You deal +2.3% increased damage to vulnerable targets and then the same thing with the rare nodes.

There’s a bonus given if the requirement is met. Purchase 25 dexterity in the red radius and dealing damage to a vulnerable enemy increases your damage by one percent X for six seconds up to ten percent X. Without getting into the math, basically you deal a lot more damage.

Where To Find Glyphs & How To Upgrade Them?

So, that is cool and all, but where do we find glyphs? They are just random drops. I’ve gotten some just roaming around and completing the Tree of Whisper favors. They most consistently drop in Nightmare Dungeons.

Nightmare Dungeons are basically more difficult versions of regular dungeons that are only in Tier 3 and Tier 4 difficulty, and they add in some stipulations to the dungeon. The reason I’m bringing them up in this article is because after a Nightmare Dungeon is complete, we are able to use the Awakened Glyphstone, which upgrades our glyphs.

So, we can see here that upgrading exploit from level 9 to level 10 increases the damage by 0.15%. It is incredible.

Once we upgrade a glyph to level 15, the red radius expands around other nodes. Looking at this glyph, it needs three more dexterity to meet the requirement. I have a +7 dexterity ready to go. But it’s not inside the radius. Once this glyph hits level 15 and expands, I’ll get this bonus. Once we get to the end of a Paragon Board, we click on the gate node to select which board we want to attach to the starting one.

There are eight boards per class and you want to pick the one that will support your build the most. For my Necromancer using a Bone Spear build, I want to select the Bone Graft boards so that I can deal more damage with the spear. Each of these class specific boards has a legendary node that can be unlocked. They don’t have any prerequisite stats needed. Just click on the node and get the bonus.

And then, it’s the same thing as before. Click on nodes. Get more powerful. Click on another gate. Attach more boards until you just run out of Paragon Points.

Notes

There are just a couple of other things. Rare glyphs give more bonuses than magic glyphs, so focus on upgrading those. 

And there isn’t a mass Paragon Refund like with skills, for some reason. So, if you want to reset your Paragon Board, you need to refund each individual node. Of course, when doing this process, you need to prepare enough Diablo 4 Gold. Hope this guide can help you.