Diablo 4 Helltide farm

Besides yourself and other players, Diablo 4 features many NPCs, which can be divided into three categories based on their function: vendors, mercenaries, and story characters.

The first two are closely related to your actual combat experience. Four mercenaries can act as allies to provide combat assistance, while different vendors offer various services to obtain or upgrade gear.

In Diablo 4 Season 11, there are currently 5 vendors you can encounter: Blacksmith, Alchemist, Occultist, Jeweler, and Purveyor of Curiosities. While each of them is important, this time we will focus on introducing Jeweler.

How To Find Jeweler?

After your Diablo 4 character reaches level 20, the system will give you a priority quest called Gem Crafting. Completing this quest will unlock Jeweler.

The main Jeweler's permanent location is Tree of Whispers, but you can also find and visit other Jewelers in the following cities by looking for the diamond-shaped icons on the map:

• Kyovashad
• Ked Bardu
• Cerrigar
• Zarbinzet
• Gea Kul
• Kurast Bazaar

Jeweler Function Overview

This vendor's services mainly relate to runes and gems, more specifically:

• Salvage, craft, and unsocket gems
• Add more gem slots to gear
• Craft new runes
• Consume runes and other materials to craft specific Mythics
• Craft jewelry

Next, we will introduce the mechanics of these services in detail, and what you need to do or pay to access them.

Gem Services At Jeweler

There are 7 types of gems in Diablo 4, which, when inserted, provide different buffs to your weapons, armor, or jewelry. Each Diablo 4 gem has 6 levels, which you can upgrade by consuming gold and the corresponding type of gem fragments.

Gem Types:

• Amethyst
• Diamond
• Emerald
• Ruby
• Sapphire
• Skull
• Topaz

Gem levels and required materials for upgrading:

• Crude (Base Level)
• Chipped - Level 1: 10 Gem Fragments + 1,000 Gold
• Base - Level 15: 100 Gem Fragments + 10,000 Gold
• Flawless - Level 20: 1,000 Gem Fragments + 100,000 Gold
• Royal - Level 25: 10,000 Gem Fragments + 1,000,000 Gold
• Grand - Level 30: 100,000 Gem Fragments + 30 Forgotten Souls + 10,000,000 Gold

Regarding the removal function, all socketed items on gear, including gems, can be removed at Jeweler, and it's free. If you have too many gems of a certain type, we recommend salvaging them to avoid cluttering your inventory.

If the salvaged gem has been upgraded, the gold and Forgotten Souls used during the upgrade will not be returned. Therefore, it's best to prioritize salvaging initial gems.

How To Obtain Other Types Of Gem Fragments?

All gem fragments will drop when you complete any event challenge or quest, but the specific type that drops is random.

Therefore, after farming gem fragments, if you find that you have fewer of the type you urgently need, you can consume 100 fragments of three different types to obtain 200 fragments of a specific single type.

Rune Services At Jeweler

Regarding rune removal, we have already mentioned it when discussing gem removal. The remaining services are crafting new runes and Mythic Uniques.

Mythic Uniques Crafting

As the rarest type of gear in Diablo 4, Mythic Uniques can be obtained through combat drops and crafting.

Crafting can be done at both Jeweler and Blacksmith. The difference is that the former allows you to specify the crafting result, while the latter only crafts random Mythics. The required materials are:

• Jeweler: 2 Resplendent Sparks, 6 legendary runes, 6 rare runes, 6 magic runes, and 5,000 gold
• Blacksmith: 2 Resplendent Sparks and 50,000,000 gold

New Runes Crafting

This mechanism essentially involves reforging existing runes. You can consume three runes of the same rarity to reforge them into a new rune - the rarity may be the same or better.

All runes are divided into three rarities, each with a corresponding color: magic (blue), rare (yellow), and legendary (orange). The corresponding reforging materials are as follows:

• 3 Magic Runes + 4,000 Gold: 85% chance to produce 1 Magic Rune, 15% chance to produce a Rare Rune.
• 3 Rare Runes + 4,000 Gold: 85% chance to produce 1 Rare Rune and a 15% chance to upgrade to 1 Legendary Rune.
• 3 Legendary Runes + 4,000 Gold: 100% chance to produce 1 Legendary Rune.

How To Add Slots To Gear?

Diablo 4 gear slots allow you to insert gems or runes to enhance your gear. If some gear doesn't have slots or you want to add slots to gear with a maximum of 2 slots, you can do so at Jeweler - gloves and boots cannot gain additional slots.

The following are all the materials required to add slots and their corresponding gear types:

• Iron Chunk - Weapons and Jewelry
• Rawhide - Armor
• Veiled Crystal - All Gear
• Abstruse Sigil - Legendary Jewelry
• Baleful Fragment - Legendary Weapons
• Coiling Ward - Legendary Armor
• Scattered Prism - Ancestral Gear

How To Craft New Jewelry?

After your character reaches level 60, you can consume 30,000 gem fragments of any type, 60 Forgotten Souls, and 3,000,000 gold at Jeweler to craft Jewelry Caches.

Opening these caches will give you usable legendary or unique amulets or rings based on your current character's class. If you receive duplicate or less useful jewelry for your character, you can sell it for other necessary items.

The above is an introduction to all the functions of Diablo 4 Jeweler. You need to combine the functions of this NPC and other vendors to strengthen your character from multiple angles and enjoy the game. Have fun!

Since the introduction of Rune system in Diablo 4, runes have been a coveted resource for almost every player. This is not only because they can activate powerful Runewords, providing synergistic buffs for character builds, but more importantly, they are essential consumables for crafting specific Mythic Uniques.

With the developers significantly increasing monster strength and readjusting defensive mechanisms in Diablo 4 Season 11, the days of clearing Pits 100+ without requiring Mythic items may be over. Therefore, runes have become crucial for improving survivability in the endgame, often surpassing the power of support gems, especially in armor sockets.

So, here we introduce a new Legendary Rune farming method introduced in Season 11, which is likely the fastest way to obtain runes in Diablo 4 currently. We will explain step-by-step how to set it up and how to farm efficiently. Let's begin.

Step-by-Step Guide

Upgrading Essence Of Pain

First, you need to upgrade your Essence of Pain Divine Gift to level five. This allows players to have a chance to obtain dropped Socketables such as Royal Gems, Gem Fragments, and Legendary Runes when defeating Pangs of Duriel. However, this is not the only reason we choose this Divine Gift; we will explain later.

To upgrade this Divine Gift, you need to kill monsters in Helltide. When monsters in Helltide die, there is a chance they will provide experience points for this Divine Gift.

However, a more efficient way to upgrade it is to kill as many Duriel bosses as possible in Helltide, as he is guaranteed to provide experience points for this Divine Gift.

Collecting Corrupted Horn Of Duriel

While upgrading your Divine Gift, it is recommended that you collect as many Corrupted Horns of Duriel from the Duriel boss as possible, as you will need them later.

However, please note that each person can only carry a maximum of 20 Corrupted Horns of Duriel. So, if you find that Duriel is no longer dropping this item, it may be because your inventory is full. It's time to clear your inventory.

Once you have upgraded your Divine Gift to the maximum level five, you should place it in the Purified Gift slots. 

Defeat Azmodan & Open Duriel's Chest

Next, head south of Zarbinzet to summon the open-world version of Azmodan. There are usually many players farming there, so defeating him shouldn't be too difficult.

After defeating the boss, three chests will drop for you to choose from. Open Duriel's Hoard chest, which requires five Corrupted Horns of Duriel. However, since the newly upgraded Essence of Pain Divine Gift also works on this chest, it guarantees you at least one Legendary Rune. This is your main source of runes.

Farming Loop

Next, we'll discuss how to continuously open this chest.

These chests also contain boss materials, more specifically, a large amount of Living Steel. Some players have even obtained over 40 Living Steels from a single Duriel chest, which is a considerable amount of wealth. Therefore, in addition to aiming for Diablo 4 Legendary Runes from this chest, Living Steels are also important items worth collecting.

Why? Because we need to use these Living Steels to obtain more Corrupted Horns of Duriel.

After opening all the Duriel chests, you should have a large amount of Living Steel in your inventory. Next, we will use all of this Living Steel to open Grigoire's Hoard chest.

Travel to Grigoire's lair, defeat him, and open his chests as many times as possible, using up all your Living Steel. During this process, you will obtain a large amount of Shards of Agony and some Stygian Stones. You should convert these Stygian Stones into Shards of Agony, and then head to Duriel's lair. Note that this is not the Duriel in Helltide, but the Lair version of the Duriel boss. After defeating him, you can use your Shards of Agony to open the Hoard chests as many times as possible.

We do this because the Duriel Lair boss also drops Corrupted Horns of Duriel. This allows you to collect enough materials without too much effort and provides the motivation to continue farming.

In short, once you have replenished your stock of Corrupted Horns of Duriel, immediately summon Azmodan boss, defeat him, and open as many Duriel chests as possible. Each time you open a chest, you are guaranteed to get a Legendary Rune. This creates a complete farming cycle:

1. Use your Corrupted Horn of Duriel to open the Duriel chest at the Azmodan boss location to obtain a large amount of Living Steels and Legendary Runes.
2. Use these Living Steels to summon and defeat Grigoire, which will grant you a large number of Shards of Agony. You can then use these to summon a higher difficulty version of Duriel to obtain some dropped Corrupted Horns of Duriel.
3. Then, return to the open-world version of Azmodan and use the Corrupted Horn of Duriel to open the chest for guaranteed runes.
4. If you don't get enough Living Steels from the chest, you can supplement them from Helltide chests.

Duriel Chest vs. Kurast Undercity Farming

Finally, some players might question whether this farming method is as good as farming the Tribute of Harmony in the Kurast Undercity. Diablo 4 Season 11 significantly enhanced the Kurast Undercity, especially Tribute of Harmony and Tribute of Mystique, greatly increasing the drop rate of Legendary Runes and other valuable loot. So why would we choose the more cumbersome Duriel boss chest farming method to obtain runes?

The reality is that Tribute of Harmony is difficult to find and limited in quantity, while this farming cycle is sustainable and unlimited. Therefore, it definitely has many advantages.

In short, this is a currently viable and relatively easy rune farming method that allows you to obtain endless Legendary Runes in the early stages of D4S11. If you are lacking specific runes, why not give it a try!