Diablo 4 Power Leveling

In Season 9, every Diablo 4 character will initially be equipped with only their starting outfit. However, as you progress through the season, you'll earn more wearable gear through combat.

This gear not only enhances your appearance but, more importantly, provides unique buffs, making your character stronger and more resilient.

However, it's important to note that often, you focus solely on powerful or attractive gear, neglecting whether it's suitable for you or whether farming it is too difficult for you, resulting in a chaotic gear build.

To this end, we'll provide a comprehensive guide to utilizing and farming gear based on Season 9 gear system.

Gear System Overview

From the very beginning, Diablo 4 has categorized all gear in the game by rarity and quality, allowing you to more intuitively understand the value of a particular piece of gear.

• Gear rarity: Common, Magic, Rare, Legendary, Unique
• Gear quality: Common, Sacred, Ancestral, Mythic, Unique

Rarity generally determines the base number of affixes on an item, and higher rarity means stronger stats. Gear quality, on the other hand, determines the item's base power and stat range.

Note that weapons in the gear category change more significantly during upgrades than other types of gear. Therefore, to increase your damage output and progress faster through the season, it's recommended to prioritize upgrading weapons.

The Difference Between Salvaging And Selling Gear

As you progress through the game, you'll gain access to new gear, but the amount you can equip is limited, so you'll eventually find yourself with a lot of unused gear in your inventory.

For items of lower rarity or quality, you can sell them directly for more Diablo 4 gold. However, salvaging rare, legendary, or unique items will yield greater returns.

To salvage gear, you need to find a blacksmith in any town - they're represented on the map by a hammer and anvil. You can salvage individual items manually, as well as salvage specific rarities and all items marked as "junk."

After salvaging, the gear is broken down into materials that can be used to upgrade other gear. These materials are far more valuable than gold.

What Is Codex Of Power?

Besides leveling up, there are many ways to enhance your gear in the game, and Codex of Power is one of them. It's essentially a collection of legendary aspects that you can imprint onto your gear at The Occultist.

This makes your rare or legendary gear more powerful, and in turn, improves your overall character's abilities. The codex is typically earned by clearing dungeons.

It's important to note that the legendary aspect roll granted by a Codex of Power is always the lowest. For example, if an inscribed legendary aspect grants you 10-20% poison damage to enemies, the final imprint value will only be 10%.

The Relationship Between Difficulty Level Settings And Gear

Once your character reaches the max level of 60, all new gear you'll receive will be at a base level of 750. At this point, it's best to completely upgrade all your gear.

Of course, reaching max level also means you can begin challenging Torment difficulty. This difficulty setting has four levels, and starting at Torment 1, you'll begin to obtain ancestral gear, while your common, magic, and rare items will automatically be salvaged.

This not only means you'll earn more powerful and rare gear through the true challenges of Diablo 4, but also allows you to automatically salvage a large amount of gear upgrade materials at once, allowing you to quickly make your new items more reliable.

How To Farm Gear?

In Season 9, there are still many ways to farm gear, primarily through clearing dungeons and bosses. The key isn't the specific method (which veteran players should already understand), but rather how to multitask and maximize farming efficiency.

Currently available gear farming channels include:

• Kurast Undercity: Killing bosses and opening chests offers a chance to farm ancestral gear. However, access to this dungeon requires DLC.
• Infernal Hordes: Unlock this dungeon with Infernal Compass as the key and enter. Kill enemies to earn Burning Aether, which can then be exchanged for Spoils of Hell chests to obtain gear.
• Nightmare and Escalating Nightmare: Completing dungeons on Torment difficulty offers a chance to get rare gear.
• Helltides: Each event lasts one hour, during which you must collect Aberrant Cinders to exchange for the final loot.
• The Pit of Artificers: As the most important endgame dungeon in D4 S9, The Pit has 150 floors. You must kill as many monsters and bosses as possible within 15 minutes.

Tree of Whispers also deserves special mention. This mechanic is essentially a bounty system. You collect Grim Favors by completing its quests, and every 10 you collect can be turned in for a reward.

Rewards typically require you to choose one of three collection options, each with a random rarity of Normal, Greater, or Ancestral. This gives you a chance to obtain rare gear through these options.

What's unique about Tree of Whispers is that some of its quests are actually required to be completed within the aforementioned dungeons or events. Therefore, you can definitely target specific Tree of Whispers quests to maximize your chances of receiving gear.

We hope that the information we've provided will help you better plan your character's gear acquisition and usage plans. In fact, this information should still be useful in Season 10!

Diablo fans, the news is in! Bartuc, the Warlord of Blood, will be returning in Diablo 4 Season 10 as an optional boss inspired by the mythical Diablo lore.

Here, we'll explain why so many players are so excited about the return of this optional boss. We'll cover Bartuc's origins and background, as well as how to find and defeat him.

Backstory - Mage Clan Wars

First, Bartuc lived in Anno Kehjistani during the third century BCE, during a period known as Mage Clan Wars.

At that time, Kehjistani had several different clans, the three most prominent of which were Vizjerei Clan, Ennead Clan, and Ammuit Clan.

Ennead Clan are masters of transmutation, capable of creating items such as Clockwork Golem, Horadric Cube, and Kanai's Cube. Zoltun Kulle is one of their infamous members.

Ammuit Clan are masters of illusions. In Act II of Diablo 3, you can see walls and bridges hidden by illusions, which Eirena the Enchantress helps dispel.

Finally, there are Vizjerei Clan, who are convinced that spirits reside within Sanctuary and beyond. While Mage Clan cannot communicate directly with these beings, they believe such a connection is possible. Over the years, Vizjerei Clan has experimented with Priests of Rathma and Druids, all of whom have successfully communicated with spirits in their own ways.

However, one day, a mage named Jere Harash from Vizjerei Clan, during an angry altercation, summoned a creature unlike anything Sanctuary had ever seen before: a demon.

Indeed, Vizjerei Clan was the key to the demons' introduction into Sanctuary and their discovery. At this point, Vizjerei began summoning large numbers of demons and using them in battle, sparking intense resentment among the other Mage Clans.

Eventually, this sparked Mage Clan Wars, which embroiled all clans.

It is said that Druids and Necromancers may also have been involved, uniting to fight against Vizjerei and their demons. One of Vizjerei commanders, and their most brutal, was particularly feared: Bartuc, nicknamed Warlord of Blood.

Origin

Bartuc was a powerful and brutal demon, yet lacked control over himself. Once unleashed upon the battlefield, he would destroy everyone and everything, innocent and guilty alike.

As the battlefield spread, Bartuc began to lose his mind, slashing at every enemy before him, human and demon alike. This led to him acquiring unholy powers and cursed his armor with a near-sentient nature.

Bartuc's association with these demons became increasingly frequent, and his mind became increasingly deranged. He even came to believe that demons were superior to humans and should be worshipped for the rich reward of ruling Hell.

At this point, Bartuc's brother, Horazon, another Great Mage of Vizjerei Clan, expressed his concerns to the Council, which unanimously removed Bartuc from his ranks.

However, this action did not deter Bartuc. He simply turned his war against his former Vizjerei Clan, summoning demons to ruthlessly destroy the villages surrounding castle towns, cutting off their supplies, and then laying siege to these towns, leaving no survivors.

Finally, Bartuc stormed Vizjerei capital, Viz-jun, where his brother Horazon was hiding in Arcane Sanctuary. Although Bartuc was ultimately defeated there, the battle cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Vizjerei within the capital.

Bartuc's death made Horizon realize that his brother's blood was tainted with corruption and evil, and even death could not stop Bartuc's vengeance. Therefore, he demanded that Bartuc be beheaded and buried away from humanity.

How To Find Bartuc?

In Diablo 4, Bartuc has reappeared in Season 10 as Warlord of Chaos. After you defeat all waves in Infernal Horde, he will appear as an alternative final boss.

You can spend 666 Aether to fight Bartuc instead of going to The Council.

Bartuc, Warlord of Chaos, is a key source of Chaos Unique item drops introduced in Season 10. If you enjoy exploring Diablo's story and lore, and want a greater chance of earning generous Diablo 4 gold and rare unique items while defeating bosses, challenging Bartuc is your best option.

Bartuc's Attacks

• Fireball: The boss throws a series of fireballs that deal low damage and are easily dodged, but don't underestimate them, as they can become difficult to track once Bartuc combines them with other attacks.
• Lightning Wave: Bartuc randomly creates a lightning wave from the left or right side of the screen. These attacks travel across the screen and are impossible to dodge, so use the blue portals in time to avoid damage.
• Ball Portal: Bartuc has one blue and one red portal, from which he launches a green ball. If the ball enters the blue portal, it disappears; if it enters the red portal, it continues to move across the screen.
• Ball Cascade: Once the boss reaches the center of the arena, he creates portals of different colors, launching balls that sweep across the arena. Each portal has a different effect: blue portals direct the ball close to him, while red portals cause it to appear near the edge of the arena. Therefore, you'll need to stay in the center of the arena to avoid both balls.
• Spell Cascade: Again, this attack only activates once the boss reaches the center of the arena. During this time, he becomes invincible and begins unleashing waves of flames that sweep across the arena. Remember to stay on the move and use the blue portal to dodge them until the attacks are over.

Boss Battle Tips

Depending on your current position, some of Bartuc's attacks may be difficult to dodge. Therefore, it's recommended that you use the blue portal to reposition yourself to the sides of the arena to avoid some of the boss's melee or combo attacks.

Additionally, we know that the difficulty in dealing with Bartuc is when he starts to use combinations of attacks, which makes it very difficult to dodge. Therefore, to maintain a prolonged fight with him, we recommend prioritizing builds with high mobility and spending more Diablo 4 gold on your character's boots for increased movement speed.

Notably, if your damage is high enough, you can defeat Bartuc before he begins using his mechanics. This significantly reduces the time required to repeatedly attack him, as it eliminates the risk of dealing with Bartuc during his Spell Cascade invincibility phase.

In conclusion, the return of Bartuc from Diablo 4 as a new optional boss in the remastered Infernal Horde content not only gives us a chance to rediscover Diablo's lore, but also adds more combat options, preventing boss battles within Infernal Horde from becoming a boring grind after a few cycles.