Diablo 4 Season 6 Masterworking Guide

Diablo 4 Season 6 Masterworking is a must if you want to get the best gear possible in the game. With our guide, we’ll help you become an expert in this aspect of Diablo 4. It’s perfect for maxing out your stats and making sure that you’re always well-equipped.

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How Does Masterworking Work In Diablo 4 Season 6

In this guide, we're diving into some newly discovered details about masterworking in Diablo 4—specifically how skill ranks and passive ranks work. Players often upgrade D4 items without understanding when exactly a skill or passive rank goes up.

Unlocking Masterworking in Diablo 4

To unlock Masterworking in Diablo 4, you must first access the Pit of the Artificer. This requires completing a Tier 45 Nightmare Dungeon. Once you've done that, a priority quest will appear, guiding you to the Pit on the map. It's located in Kagar, in the northern section of Scen.

Rune Shards and the Pit Challenge

Before you can enter the Pit, you'll need to gather Rune Shards. These can be obtained by completing various in-game content, but remember, they only drop after you've unlocked the Pit.

Once you've completed the Tier 45 Nightmare Dungeon and accepted the quest, you'll head to the Pit. Here, you'll face a 15-minute timer to clear waves of enemies, much like a Greater Rift in Diablo I. Kill monsters efficiently to reach the final boss room.

Elite monsters yield more points, while trash mobs contribute less, so speed is key. Your build should be able to handle both monster density and the final boss.

Two Systems at Play: Legendary vs. Unique Items

There are two separate systems for masterworking in Diablo 4: one for legendary items and one for unique items, each with its own mechanics. Let's break them down.

Legendary Items

For legendary items, the upgrade behavior is consistent, regardless of the starting point of the skill or passive rank. So, whether you have an amulet with +2, +3, or +4 to a skill, the upgrade progression remains predictable:

• Upgrades: Each time you upgrade an item to rank 12, you get exactly one upgrade to a skill or passive unless you land a masterwork critical (crit).
• Masterwork Crits: These crits can add additional levels:
  • No crit: +1 to skill rank.
  • One crit: +2 to skill rank.
  • Two crits: +3 to skill rank.
  • Three crits: +4 to skill rank.

For instance, if you have an amulet with +3 to a skill, upgrading to rank 12 will increase that skill rank by one unless you get a crit.

Important Breakpoints for Legendary Items

You don’t always need to max out at rank 12. Some specific breakpoints can save you resources:

• A skill rank upgrade happens after a combined 30% of total upgrades. Regular upgrades increase stats by 5% each, while crits add 25%.
• Max achievable buffs based on crits:
• Triple crit: 120% boost.
• Double crit: 95% boost.
• Single crit: 70% boost.
• No crit: 45% boost.

This is useful for min-maxing, especially when you don’t plan on pushing the item to max rank immediately.

Save Resources by Stopping at Key Ranks

If your item has hit key crits or breakpoints, you can stop at ranks like 8, 9, or 10 to save materials. For example, reaching rank 10 with a few crits might get you the desired effect without needing those final, costly upgrades to 12.

Unique Items: A Different Approach

Unique items follow a unique upgrade path that is separate from legendaries:

• Rounding Mechanic: Upgrades on unique items apply a direct multiplier to the base value of the skill, but they always round down. This means that even after upgrading, you might not see a rank increase if the multiplier rounds back to the base number.

• Breakpoints for Unique Skills: To achieve rank boosts on unique items, you generally need to hit at least one crit for an upgrade to occur. For example, upgrading with one crit can result in a rank up earlier, around rank 6.

Important Note: Be mindful with masterwork crits on unique items—sometimes additional crits don’t provide any extra benefit unless you’re going all-in for a triple crit.

This breakdown should help you understand when your skills and passives will rank up and how to allocate your resources effectively during the masterworking process.

With these insights, you’ll have a clearer strategy for boosting your character’s power without wasting precious materials.

Rare items in Diablo 4 are mostly useful for progression in the early stages, specifically in World Tiers 1 and 2. You’ll quickly outgrow them as they can only have two affixes, compared to the three affixes found on legendary gear.

If you're wondering whether rare items can be enhanced, adding an aspect to a rare item at the occultist will not give it that third affix, making it weaker than legendary items.

So, why bother with rare items?

1. Gold Farming: Rare items can be sold for around 27,000 gold. The economy of Diablo 4 has a huge demand for gold, so selling rare items can be a good source of income.

2. Salvage for Resources: While you don't need to worry about keeping rare items in your inventory, salvaging them provides useful resources to help you upgrade legendary gear. It's a good idea to salvage rare gear to stock up on materials.

Legendary Gear and the Codex of Power

The rework of the Codex of Power has made legendary items even more important. Previously, aspects you unlocked were low-powered and quickly outclassed.

Now, when you salvage a piece of gear with an aspect, that aspect is permanently added to your Codex of Power, making it available for imprinting on future gear.

The aspects in your Codex will have a rank, representing their power. You can continue to enhance aspects as you level up and find better versions.

What’s the deal with ranks?

• Aspects can drop within a range of values. The higher the rank, the more powerful the aspect is. Some aspects can be upgraded to their highest potential as you progress, so it’s worth farming for the best rolls. If you’re in World Tier 4 and farming monsters at level 95, you can expect to see item power of 925, which is the highest in the game.

Greater Affixes: What's the Star About?

Legendary and unique items can have greater affixes, represented by a star symbol on the item. A greater affix means the affix is rolled at its maximum value and is 50% stronger than a normal affix.

For example, intelligence on an item with a greater affix will have the highest possible value for that affix.

What’s the catch? Greater affixes cannot be rolled at the occultist. They must be found on items as loot drops. If you find an item with multiple greater affixes that aren’t helpful to your build, consider trading it on third-party sites like Trader.com or Diablo.trade.

Tempering: Adding Stats to Gear

Tempering is a new feature that allows you to add two additional stats to ancestral legendary pieces of gear. However, sacred gear can only have one stat added. To temper your gear, head to the blacksmith and select the tempering tab.

You can pick from different temper types, including weapon affixes, defensive affixes, and utility affixes.

How does it work?

• You’ll need tempering manuals, which drop from various content such as Hell Tide, Dungeons, and Nightmare Dungeons. These manuals contain recipes for different temper affixes, ranging from magic to legendary rarity.
• Tempering offers you five attempts to roll a new stat. If you don't get the desired result, you may be stuck with the outcome. It's important to choose your temper wisely, as rolling a stat that doesn't benefit your build could mean wasted resources.

Be cautious: bricking your item

Sometimes, you might end up with an undesirable roll. If you don’t like your temper result, you’ll need to use one of your remaining attempts to try again.

If you keep getting unlucky, you may end up with a bricked item—an item that no longer serves its intended purpose for your build. However, you can still use these pieces as a transitionary piece of gear or even trade them.

The Masterworking Process

Once you complete a Pit run, you'll receive a Mystery Chest that may contain Obsidite, the first tier of crafting materials for Masterworking.

As you progress through higher Pit tiers, you'll encounter materials like Inth and Neath Iron, which are required for more advanced Masterworking.

At the Blacksmith, you can begin the Masterwork process by applying the materials you've collected. This will improve your gear’s affixes by 5%. For example, applying Masterwork to a sword increases its intelligence.

You can also crit on Masterwork upgrades after hitting the threshold for a crit. These crits can increase stats like intelligence by an additional 25%.

Advanced Masterworking

You can Masterwork an item up to 12 times. After 4 upgrades, you will receive a crit, adding extra benefits to your gear. But, this requires higher-tier materials, so running higher-tier Pit levels (such as Tier 31+) is necessary.

You can also transmute crafting materials at the Alchemist to help manage your inventory. Just be mindful of the gold cost involved, as it's significant.

Maximizing Gear Efficiency

Masterworking can be expensive, and some players may be frustrated by the gold cost. But the key is to avoid wasting materials and time. Here’s a pro tip: temper your gear first. Tempering ensures that you can reset the item’s progress if you don’t like the affix rolls.

For example, if you have a piece of gear with a greater affix on life per second, but you want to maximize Thorns damage instead, temper the gear first. Then, you can keep rerolling other stats until you get the desired outcome.

The Most Efficient Crafting Process

To avoid wasting resources when crafting gear, always start by tempering the item. Tempering doesn’t "brick" the item, so if you're unhappy with the results, you can simply reset and try again.

Once the tempering is complete, move on to rolling your stats with the Occultist to refine your build further.

In this system, the goal is to avoid locking yourself into bad stats too early. By tempering first, you're ensuring that you won’t lose the item and can keep optimizing it.

Once you have a good baseline, you can start adding those additional crafting perks with materials you collect from the Pit.

Obucite Farming

Infernal Hordes are not all the same! You have the option to choose between Infernal Hordes with 6, 8, or 10 waves. So, should you focus on Infernal Hordes with 6 waves? The short answer is no, especially if you’re aiming for Masterworking.

Infernal Hordes with 6 waves offer lower obesite rates per hour than Nightmare Dungeons. Additionally, the flat 200 ather cost for the equipment chest cuts into the ather you gather from a shorter run.

Does this apply to lower difficulties?

No, the chest drops vary by difficulty. In Torment 3, the chest gives obesite in sacks of 160, while in Torment 4, the sacks are 320.

Weighing Infernal Hordes Against Nightmare Dungeons

You might be tempted to ignore Nightmare Dungeons if Infernal Hordes seem better. However, this is not a full scientific study of OBD drops. The runs I conducted didn’t include the Seething Opals buff, which can impact the drops.

Infernal Hordes don't use the Seething Opals buff very well since you get all drops at the end. It’s possible that Nightmare Dungeons, with the Seething Opal buff for materials, could yield higher obesite per hour.

But, even if they didn’t, Nightmare Dungeons offer more perks, such as:

• Steal fears from completing the dungeon.
• Loot from Goblin and Butcher drops.
• Maximizing the Seething Opal buff.

While obesite per hour in Nightmare Dungeons may be slightly lower, the benefits of the Seething Opal buff, along with the extra loot and materials, could make the tradeoff worth it.

Infernal Hordes, on the other hand, don’t give you any boss materials, which are available from Nightmare Dungeons.

Should You Skip Nightmare Dungeon Events and Treasure Rooms?

If you're planning to dive into Nightmare Dungeons, here are a few things you should keep in mind:

• Should I skip the events?
  No! Events are a great source of obesite. Completing an event will grant you around 2-300 obesite, so skipping them means you’ll miss out on a good chunk of materials.

• Should I ignore the treasure room?
  Again, no! The treasure room is a good source of Masterworking materials. Completing optional objectives in the Vessel of Hatred Dungeons and opening the treasure room will net you around 2-300 obesite.

• Should I ignore the chests?
  Chests drop obesite, so don’t skip them! You shouldn’t go out of your way to open them, but definitely grab them when it’s convenient.

Vessel of Hatred Dungeons vs. Classic Dungeons

Are the Vessel of Hatred Dungeons better than the D4 Classic Dungeons?

Not really. There’s only a small difference in stats between the two, and any difference is likely within the margin of error. We haven't done extensive testing to verify this further, but the difference isn't game-changing.

Max Out With Masterworking

Masterworking in Diablo 4 Season 6 can help you max out your builds further. If you lack the resources to do this, head over to RPGStash's D4 store to buy Diablo 4 gold, items, and everything you need.