Diablo 4: Malignant Hearts Guide
27.07.2023 - 12:51:43
Diablo 4 , Game Guides , Gameplay Guides
Diablo 4 season 1 is now live. As promised, the first season will bring new quests, new challenges, and new loot to collect. Blizzard also said before that there will be new season-exclusive features for each major content drop. For Season of the Malignant, that feature is the Malignant Hearts.
What Are Malignant Hearts?
Malignant Hearts are basically a new type of socketed item that can offer unique perks. To put it simply, they work very closely with how Gems and Aspects work in the game. As per Blizzard, the key to making the craziest builds in the game is by utilizing Malignant Hearts to their extent.
How To Get Malignant Hearts
The similarities between Gems and Malignant Hearts end with how they function. Getting Malignant Hearts isn't as simple as picking up Gems from chests and defeating enemies. First, you'll have to get the Cage of Binding.
Where To Get a Cage of Binding?
To get the Cage of Binding, you'll need to complete the Season 1 questline. Fortunately, the questline isn't as long as the base campaign of Diablo 4. In fact, it's actually quite short and it's something you can do in one sitting.
Keep in mind, to get access to the new questline, you need to have beaten the main game first. If you've beaten the game with your Eternal Realm character, then you can skip it with your Seasonal Character.
With that out of the way, head to the center of Kyovashad and start the quest, Burning From Within. This initiates the seasonal questline. Quest giver Vytan will report corrupted monster sightings throughout Fractured Peaks. You'll be tasked with investigating this new phenomenon.
After talking to him, you should head to one of the nearby sightings which is the Forest Clearing Cellar southeast of Menestad. Head inside and rescue Cormond who's under attack from the corrupted monsters. This will also be your first encounter with Malignant monsters.
These are more dangerous than Elite monsters as they can have unique and deadly modifiers. Malignant monsters also have a higher health pool than Elite monsters.
Once you defeat the monsters, head outside and speak to Cormund again. He'll give you the Cage of Binding as a means to kill the Malignant plaguing Sanctuary.
To get Malignant Hearts, you'll first need to kill partly corrupted monsters. These are found throughout the world but your best bet at farming them is by going through Malignant Tunnels.
If you kill the monsters as they are, they'll only drop regular hearts. However, if you use the Cage of Binding to perform a ritual, the monsters will return to life but now, they're more powerful and fully corrupted. Kill this new monster and you'll get a Malignant Heart!
Aside from this, you can also craft Malignant Hearts on Cormond's Wagon. You need unwanted hearts to create an Ichor for the type of Malignant Heart that you want.
There are four types of Malignant Hearts. Vicious, Brutal, Devious, and Wrathful. If you salvage Vicious, Brutal, and Devious Hearts, you'll be rewarded with 5-15 Ichor for that specific heart type. On the other hand, salvaging Wrathful Hearts will give you 2-5 Ichor for all Heart Types.
Creating a new heart will require Icor from the other two types of Hearts you're not planning on making. For example, if you want to create a Brutal Heart, you'll need 15 Vicious Hearts and 15 Devious Hearts each.
Hearts that you can finally use are called Caged Hearts.
How To Use Malignant Hearts
Once you have a Malignant Heart, you can socket it to any of your equipment as you would a regular Gem. However, Malignant Hearts can only be socketed on corresponding slots in armor.
Vicious Heart in red sockets, Brutal Heart in blue sockets, and so on.
Unfortunately, Caged Hearts cannot be unsocketed like regular Gems. As such, you need to be very mindful about where you put your rare heart.
What Happens To Hearts After Season 1?
Malignant Hearts are only usable in Season of the Malignant. Once the season ends, all of your Malignant Hearts - socketed or unsocketed are going to disappear forever.
Diablo 4: Malignant Hearts List
Malignant Hearts will play a huge role in your character's progress in Diablo 4 season 1. There are 32 Malignant Hearts right now. Of course, not all of them are worth grinding for your specific character. Here's a look at the list of all Malignant Hearts.
| The Picana | All | Vicious, Offensive | Critical Strikes electrically charge the enemy for 0.72-2.50 seconds, causing lightning to arc between them and any other charged enemies dealing 68-136 Lightning damage. |
| The Dark Dance | All | Vicious, Offensive | Every 5 seconds while above 60% Life, Core Skills cost 68-51 Life instead of your Primary Resource. Skills that consume Life deal 10-20% increased damage. |
| Tempting Fate | All | Vicious, Offensive | You gain 40-60% Critical Strike Damage but your Non-Critical Strikes deal 20-15% less damage. |
| The Lionheart | All | Brutal, Defensive | You gain 10% Barrier Generation. You heal 3-7 Life per second while you have an active Barrier. |
| Revenge | All | Brutal, Defensive | 10-20% of incoming damage is instead suppressed. When you use a Defensive, Subterfuge, or a Macabre skill, all suppressed damage is amplified by 250% and explodes, dealing up to 1360-2040 Fire damage to nearby enemies. |
| Prudent Heart | All | Brutal, Defensive | You become Immune for 2-4 seconds after you lose more than 20% Life in a single hit. This effect can only occur once every 110 seconds. |
| Determination | All | Devious, Utility | Resource draining effects are 40-50% less effective. In addition, gain 3-8 increased Resource Generation. |
| Retaliation | All | Devious, Utility | Deal 510-680 Fire damage to surrounding enemies whenever a Crowd Control effect is removed from you. |
| The Calculated | All | Devious, Utility | After spending 150-200 of your Primary Resource, your next attack Stuns enemies hit for 2 seconds. |
| The Malignant Pact | All | Wrathful, Super | Cycle through a Malignant bonus every 20 kills:
|
| Creeping Death | All | Wrathful, Super | Your damage over time effects are increased by 30-40% for each different Crowd Control effect on the target. Unstoppable monsters and Staggered bosses instead take 110-130% increased damage from your damage over time effects. |
| The Barber | All | Wrathful, Super | Critical Strikes and all subsequent damage within 2-4 seconds is absorbed by your target. Then, the absorbed damage erupts onto surrounding enemies. Stored damage is increased by 10% per second. |
| Focused Rage | Barbarian | Vicious, Offensive | After spending 100-60 Fury within 2 seconds, your next non-basic skill's Critical Strike Chance is increased by 20-30%. |
| Resurgent Life | Barbarian | Brutal, Defensive | While below 40-60% Life, you receive 50-60% more Healing from all sources. |
| Punishing Speed | Barbarian | Devious, Utility | Your skills have a 20-30% chance to knock down all enemies for 1.25 seconds when that skill's attack speed is higher than 35-20%. |
| Ignoring Pain | Barbarian | Wrathful, Super | Incoming damage has a 5-15% chance of being ignored and instead Healing you for 17-68 Life. |
| The Moonrage | Druid | Vicious, Offensive | Kills have a 5% chance to summon a Wolf Companion to your side for 20-30 seconds. In addition, gain +3 to Wolves. |
| The Agitated Winds | Druid | Brutal, Defensive | When 8-13 Close enemies, automatically cast Cyclone Armor. This cannot occur more than once every 10-20 seconds. |
| Inexorable Force | Druid | Devious, Utility | Up to 30-50 Distant enemies are pulled toward you while you have an Ultimate Skill active. |
| The Unconstrained Beast | Druid | Wrathful, Super | When you are hit with a Stun, Freeze or Knock Down effect, there is a 40-60% chance to automatically activate Grizzly Rage for 3 seconds. |
| The Sacrilegious | Necromancer | Vicious, Offensive | Walking near a Corpse automatically activates an equipped Corpse Skill every second, dealing 40-30% reduced damage. |
| The Decrepit Aura | Necromancer | Brutal, Defensive | When at least 5 enemies are near you, gain an aura that automatically curses surrounding enemies with Decrepify for 5-15 seconds. |
| Frozen Terror | Necromancer | Devious, Utility | Lucky Hit: Up to a 10-20% chance of inflicting Fear for 2.5 seconds. Feared enemies are Chilled for 20% every second. |
| The Great Feast | Necromancer | Wrathful, Super | Each Minion drains 1.0-2.0 Essence per second but deals 50-75% increased damage. With no Minions, this bonus applies to you and drains 5 Essence per second. |
| Cluster Munitions | Rogue | Vicious, Offensive | Lucky Hit: You have up to a 20% chance to launch 3 Stun Grenades that deal 26-32 Physical damage and Stun enemies for 0.50 seconds. |
| Trickery | Rogue | Brutal, Defensive | When you use a Subterfuge Skill, leave behind an unstable Shadow Decoy Trap that Taunts enemies. The Shadow Decoy Trap will explode after 6.0 seconds dealing 680-1020 Shadow damage. Cannot occur more than once every 5 seconds. |
| The Clipshot | Rogue | Devious, Utility | Lucky Hit: Up to a 20-40% chance for your Cutthroat Skills to Slow by 40% for 3 seconds and your Marksman Skills to Knock Back enemies. |
| The Vile Apothecary | Rogue | Wrathful, Super | Your attacks have a 5-15% chance to apply all Imbuement effects at 40-50% of normal potency. |
| Tal'Rasha | Sorcerer | Vicious, Offensive | For each unique element you deal damage with, you deal 7-12% increased damage for 3-10 seconds. |
| Spellbreaking | Sorcerer | Brutal, Defensive | After taking Elemental damage, gain 20-40% Resistance to that element for 5 seconds. |
| Spite | Sorcerer | Devious, Utility | When you are afflicted with a Crowd Control effect, there is a 20-40% chance that the same enemy and enemies around you are also afflicted with the same effect for 3 seconds. |
| Omnipower | Sorcerer | Wrathful, Super | Core Skills that launch a projectile consume all of your Mana. For every 45-35 extra Mana consumed, you launch an additional projectile, and the damage is increased by 3.0-5.0% |
Time To Start Farming
Malignant Hearts are the core of Diablo 4 season 1's progression system. If you want to create those insanely overpowered builds Blizzard promised, you'll need to start grinding for hearts as early as now. The first season will end in October, so you still have a lot of time to build your character.
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