Tempering is a new crafting feature in Diablo 4, introduced in season 4, that lets players customize their gear. At the blacksmith, you can add two affixes, or stats, to an item using various manuals. Following this, you can further enhance these stats through Masterworking, an advanced endgame crafting system that requires effort and resources to optimize.
Before you can begin Masterworking, your items must be fully Tempered. Masterworking materials are found in The Pit, a set of endgame dungeons similar to Greater Rifts in Diablo 3. Masterworking can significantly boost your item's stats, enabling powerful and flexible builds.
How Tempering Works
Tempering allows you to add a selection of affixes to non-Unique gear. Traditionally, weapons and armor would drop with preset affixes, and you could reroll one affix at the Occultist. Now, you can add two affixes to a piece of gear, chosen randomly from two Temper Manuals you select.
Temper Manuals are like collections of available affixes. They are primarily obtained by defeating bosses, world bosses, and completing Nightmare Dungeons. Consuming a manual unlocks its affixes for Tempering or enhances the affix stat range if you've already consumed a lower rarity version. You can view unlocked manuals in the Tempering Recipes section of your Codex of Power.
Temper Manuals cover a variety of affixes, including class-specific skill buffs, and fall into six categories:
- Weapons: Applicable to weapons.
- Offensive: Applicable to weapons, amulets, gloves, and rings.
- Defensive: Applicable to shields, helms, chest armor, pants, and amulets.
- Utility: Applicable to shields, helms, chest armor, pants, amulets, gloves, and boots.
- Mobility: Applicable to amulets and boots.
- Resource: Applicable to amulets and rings.
During Tempering, you can select two manuals and roll for their affixes using gold, Veiled Crystals, and materials salvaged from gear (Baleful Fragments or Coiling Wards). If you don't get the desired affix, you can reroll, reducing the item's Temper Rerolls count. Once exhausted, rerolling is no longer possible, making this process risky.
Fortunately, the first roll on either manual doesn't use Temper Rerolls, ensuring that you can always add a second affix, though rerolling may not be an option if you've exhausted the rerolls on your first affix. Once Diablo 4 Items an item has two affixes, it is ready for Masterworking.
Masterworking Your Gear
With a fully Tempered item and upon reaching world tier four, you can start Masterworking at the blacksmith. This twelve-level process boosts affixes by 5% per level and randomly buffs an affix by 25% at levels four, eight, and twelve. Unique materials from The Pit are required for this process.
A priority quest will direct you to unlock The Pit, where you must obtain a Runeshard—the currency to access The Pit. Runeshards can be acquired through Whispers, Legion or Helltide chests, and Nightmare Dungeons.
In The Pit, you must quickly kill enemies to fill a yellow bar, opening a portal to the final boss when the bar is filled. Defeating the boss rewards you with Masterworking materials, and your Pit tier increases based on your speed.
For the first four Masterworking levels, you’ll need Obducite, then Ingolith for levels five to eight, and Neathiron for levels nine to twelve. Higher rarity materials require raising your tier in The Pit and gathering more Runeshards for repeated runs. Higher rarity materials can also be converted into lower rarity ones at the Alchemist.
Through Tempering and Masterworking, Diablo 4 players can significantly enhance their gear, allowing for more powerful and versatile builds.
