Diablo 4 Story Campaign

In Diablo 4, besides upgrading characters and Paragon Board, another crucial way to enhance a character's overall capabilities is by continuously acquiring better gear and upgrading it.

To ensure your gear always has room to improve throughout the season, Diablo 4 introduced several gear upgrade mechanisms, primarily Tempering and Masterworking.

However, these two mechanisms have long been criticized for their excessive randomness, meaning that even consuming a large amount of upgrade materials may not yield the desired gear benefits.

To address this, Diablo 4 plans to radically change these two mechanisms starting with Season 11 and add a new Sanctification mechanism, further raising the room for gear upgrades.

We will now introduce these changes based on their performance in 2.5.0 PTR and analyze whether this overhaul is necessary.

What Is Masterworking?

This is an endgame crafting mechanic in Diablo 4. You need to farm gold and available materials beforehand and then craft them at the blacksmith to upgrade your gear's affixes by 8-12 levels.

It's generally not recommended to Masterworking items below level 750, as they are easily replaceable, and Masterworking them wastes materials.

Furthermore, Diablo 4 items between 750 and 800 can have their affixes upgraded by eight levels, and those above 800 can be upgraded by 12 levels. Therefore, the rarer and higher the level of your gear, the greater the value increase after Masterworking it.

However, this valuable mechanic has a tricky aspect: every four levels, only one random affix receives a 25% upgrade. This means that if you're unlucky, you might end up with useless affixes applied in three such upgrades.

While you can reset Masterworking by salvaging the gear, you only get a portion of the crafting materials back, not including gold, which is undoubtedly a waste of your resources.

What Changes Will Season 11 Bring?

To avoid potential waste from random upgrades, starting with Season 11, Masterworking will no longer boost gear affix effects, but will directly increase the gear's base stats.

Based on this, each Masterworking will randomly increase the gear's stats by 2-5 levels, up to a maximum of 20 levels. After that, you can perform one last Masterworking to obtain the ultimate affix bonus.

This ultimate bonus will upgrade a random non-high-level affix on the gear to Greater Affix. This upgrade result is changeable and will not affect the gear's existing Masterworking bonuses.

What Is Tempering?

This mechanism is more widely applicable than Masterworking. You can add relevant affixes to your gear by finding Tempering Manuals during your exploration. Furthermore, Tempering only requires materials, not gold.

The randomness of this mechanism lies in the fact that the affixes included in each Tempering Manual appear randomly. You might perform multiple Tempering runs but still fail to obtain your desired affix.

If you don't intend to waste time and materials gambling and think that obtaining an affix is ​​enough to "make do," you're mistaken, because a meaningless affix will actually lower the value of your gear.

Changes In Season 11

After the update, when Tempering your gear in Season 11, you can directly specify the affixes you want each time using the recipe in Tempering Manual, eliminating the frustration of randomness!

However, to balance this, a gear can now only have one Tempering affix instead of the previous maximum of three. But honestly, getting the best one faster is always better than endless gambling, isn't it?

What Is Sanctification?

This system, added in Season 11, allows your gear to continue to improve after Tempering and Masterworking! Once sanctification is complete, the gear is permanently "finished" and cannot be modified further.

The benefits of sanctification are random; they might include gaining a Sanctification affix or new powers, or even making your gear's durability never deplete. Regardless, they are well worth the investment.

How Are These Changes Reviewed?

While the performance and experience on PTR may not fully represent Season 11, it's sufficient to evaluate these new mechanics.

With the reduced randomness of the benefits from Tempering and Masterworking, you'll notice a subtle decrease in the amount of materials dropped, such as Obducite.

This is understandable, as the reduced or eliminated randomness means a lower chance of needing to reset Tempering and Masterworking results, while the materials required to complete the upgrade haven't increased.

Therefore, from this perspective, these changes allow the updated Tempering and Masterworking mechanics to function better, preventing imbalances.

Furthermore, Season 11 will allow you to craft some Tempering materials yourself. For example, Veiled Crystals and Forgotten Souls.

As for Sanctification system, because its buffs are random and the gear cannot be changed after completion, player opinions are mixed. After all, if you randomly get a useless Sanctification affix, you can't even reset it.

However, before 2.5.0 PTR ended, according to the player community and other statistics, the percentage of unlucky players was not large; most people could obtain the desired buffs through Sanctification.

Therefore, after Season 11 goes live, if these gear upgrade mechanisms in PTR don't undergo significant changes, you will be able to upgrade your gear and even your entire build more efficiently, resulting in a better season experience.

Season 11 is expected to officially launch on Tuesday, December 9th. At that time, you will be able to personally verify whether these new mechanisms will bring positive effects! Let's look forward to it!

Diablo 4 Season 11 introduces several new Capstone Dungeons. These dungeons return as key challenges, serving as the path to higher difficulty levels and unlocking rewards through the new Season Rank system.

Unlike previous dungeons, these Capstone Dungeons no longer have fixed levels or difficulties, but instead possess unique mechanics and themes. Now, players must complete an ultimate dungeon to advance their Season Rank. Therefore, it's easy to imagine these new dungeons becoming a hub for leveling in the new season.

Here, we'll examine how these returning Capstone Dungeons work in Season 11 and how they affect player leveling.

Capstone Dungeons Explained

As mentioned before, you won't be able to advance to the next rank in your seasonal journey until you complete the required Capstone Dungeons. This slows down leveling, forcing players to complete these dungeons to continue their seasonal journey and become stronger.

Capstone Dungeons unlock important mechanics, such as The Pits or The Tower, which allow for rapid leveling.

There are a total of 5 Capstone Dungeons in Diablo 4 Season 11:

• Torrid Menagerie: Level 30 | Difficulty Tier: Hard
• Hellish Descent: Level 50 | Difficulty Tier: Penitent
• Unseen Awakening: Level 60 (Pit Tier 15) | Difficulty Tier: Torment 1
• Tempest Oasis: Level 60 (Pit Tier 30) | Difficulty Tier: Torment 2
• Sins of the Many: Level 60 (Pit Tier 45) | Difficulty Tier: Torment 3

The first two are the most important because they unlock The Pits, allowing you to unlock Torment difficulty levels. The last three dungeons represent challenges at Torment 1-3 difficulty levels. Since Season Journey has been changed to Season Rank, you now only gain full skill points and paragon points by completing the objectives for each rank. Therefore, you need to complete all five dungeons. Each Capstone Dungeon guards the next dungeon; for example, you need to clear Torrid Menagerie before you can see and complete the next dungeon, Hellish Descent.

Next, let's take a closer look at the two Capstone Dungeons that unlock Torment difficulty. They are the foundation for experiencing higher difficulties, and it's recommended that you focus on conquering them early in the game. Of course, if you are confident in your abilities, you can try the ultimate dungeon before reaching the recommended difficulty level, but this will also bring higher risks.

Torrid Menagerie

The first is Torrid Menagerie, a dungeon with three levels.

The first level looks similar to any other dungeon you've completed before, except that there will be volcanic eruptions. In addition, you need to kill elite monsters to collect Animus. After collecting it, you need to put it into Animus Urn to enter the next area, where the first Shadowclaw boss is guarded.

After defeating the boss and finding the exit, you'll discover a new type of pillar that cools you down and grants you Cold Aura. Because of the fire barrier ahead, you can't pass through unless you go past the cooling pillar.

Entering the second level, you'll find that due to the high temperature, the numerous ice pillars will damage you. You need to use these ice pillars to fight your way through. This mechanic is very similar to the levels in Dark Citadel, but here Death Aura will be fatal.

At the end of this level, you'll see the last ice pillar, next to which is the entrance to the third level of the dungeon. This is the arena where The Curator resides. Once you enter, you'll immediately notice two ice pillars; you need to use them to avoid the high-temperature damage. Unfortunately, you can't stay on the ice pillars indefinitely, or you'll become The Curator's sitting duck.

When The Curator's health drops to about half, another werewolf boss, Emberclaw, will join the battle. This dual-boss battle is quite challenging, so we do not recommend you attempt it if you are not level 30, unless you have enough Diablo 4 gold to fully upgrade your gear and give you a huge advantage in the early game.

After defeating both of them, you will complete Torrid Menagerie and unlock the next rank and Capstone Dungeon.

Hellish Descent

The next dungeon is Hellish Descent, recommended level 50.

On the first level of this dungeon, you need to kill 5 door wardens. After defeating the 5th doorkeeper, the gate to Hellfire Adherent will unlock. Defeating the boss will allow you to enter the second level, Corrupted Jail.

Here, you need to charge 5 Sacrificial Altars. They function similarly to the pillars found in Dark Citadel or the spires found in Helltide. After activating the altars, you need to stay within the circle and defend against enemy attacks.

The highlight of the second level is that Butchers will spawn approximately every 30 seconds. Basically, each altar corresponds to one Butcher, so you will encounter at least five. After destroying the last altar, the path to the final level, Burgening Hatred, will open.

In the final level, you need to destroy five demonic corruptions. Like the previous level, Butcher can appear at any time, and you also need to watch out for the persistent hellfire that runs throughout the dungeon.

Once you've cleared everything, the door to the arena will open, where you'll find Elias. Here, you only need to be wary of a powerful attack that can damage half the arena - a massive wave of fire unleashed by Elias.

When Elias's health drops to around 50%, Butcher will reappear. Now you need to defeat both of them simultaneously. However, during PTR, we found through multiple attempts that we could only successfully defeat Elias after killing Butcher; otherwise, the dungeon couldn't be completed.

Therefore, we recommend killing Butcher first, then Elias. Trust me, this will be an absolutely thrilling battle, and it will eventually unlock The Pits.

That's all we know about Capstone Dungeons in Season 11 so far. The remaining three dungeons are left for brave warriors willing to push their limits. If you want to learn more, stay tuned to IGGM!