Since Diablo 4‘s launch last year, Blizzard made tons of changes and added content in seasonals to keep players engaged. With its Vessel of Hatred expansion now out in the wilds, for new and returning players, there have been major changes to how the endgame works especially if you have only played for two months since the base game’s launch in June 2023.
Coming from a returning player, here are some of my Diablo 4 Vessel of Hatred Tips & Tricks to help you out in your journey in Sanctuary to beat Hatred itself.
Salvaging Is Key to Success
It’s important to understand that gold in Diablo 4 is as important as the crafting materials needed for tempering and changing fixes. However, there is a misconception that selling higher-tiered gears is the fastest way to farm gold. No, it does not give you gold faster. Salvaging is the most important direction if you ever decide to dispose of all of your gear items you don’t use anymore.
Salvaging can give you the materials you need, and more importantly, the Legendary Aspects you can imprint on gears. With the massive revamp in how the Codex of Power and Legendary Aspect work back in March, it’s highly advisable to salvage them gears for crafting materials and upgrading Legendary aspects as you won’t have to keep a lot of the same Legendary Aspects with different stats. They are now upgraded every time you salvage a Legendary gear with better affixes.
Nightmare Dungeons to Farm Gold and Obducites
From what we have talked about gold, Nightmare Dungeons is the go-to place for farming lots of them. Nightmare Dungeons, or NMD in short, can only be accessed when you have a Nightmare Sigil, in which there will be modifiers like getting 30% more gold during your run.
Obducites are also equally important as they are the most needed material required to upgrade Legendary, Ancestral variants, and Mythic gears to their maximum potential through Masterworks. You will find yourself going through NMDs a lot more than you think. Aside from the amount of gold you get, and the potential gear you loot, you will also get the offerings you need to summon specific Tormented Bosses. So, if you’re looking for Distilled Fear bottles to unlock the Tormented Boss in the Glacial Fissure dungeon, then NMD runs are your answer for a guaranteed loot of at least one.
Helltides, Helltides, Helltides…
Blizzard also made major changes to Helltides, the endgame timed event where waves of demons wreak havoc in areas of Sanctuary. Helltides now spawn demons in larger numbers in Vessel of Hatred. It has never been this fun to farm through Helltides as looting for Aberrant Cinders is a lot faster now too, making it easier for you to open those Tormented chest boxes!
It’s crucial to engage in Helltide events as frequently as you can as it does offer tons of loot potential and gold farming, plus it’s fun as hell (no pun intended!).
Never Ignore the Whispers of the Tree
The Tree of Whispers is also as good as NMDs and Helltide events when it comes to Legendary Gears and loot. As you do Grim Favors more frequently, the easier it is to get loot a lot quicker. You just need to complete 10 Grim Favors at a time, but be warned, you can’t stack them. Meaning, if you’ve already gotten 10 Grim Favors, you will have to use them from the Tree of Whispers before you can begin to receive Grim Favor points again. So don’t forget to redeem them!
Efficiently Level Up Through Quests in Lower Difficulty Tiers
Another misconception of how leveling works in Diablo 4 is playing quests in higher-difficulty tiers to get more experience points after the end of each quest. While this is technically true, the amount of experience points (XP) you get for finishing a quest is the same in all difficulty tiers — whether you’re playing in Normal or Torment 4.
The reason why you get a bit more XP than usual in quests is because of the boost of XP you receive when killing enemies. Yes, you get more XP if you kill a lot of enemies in higher-difficulty tiers. To level up quickly in higher Torment tiers, you need gear that lets you kill enemies faster. If your gear isn’t good enough, you’ll take longer to finish quests than on Normal difficulty, but get the same amount of XP, making it inefficient.
So, if you want to kill more enemies to level up, go for Helltides in higher difficulty, but if you think it’s faster to level up by doing campaign and side quests, then do it in Normal mode to complete them faster.
Keep Stat Caps in Mind
Stat caps are real in Diablo 4. You can’t have 100% resistance to all elements nor get 100% damage reduction from physical attacks. So here are some of the most important stat caps in Diablo 4 so you will know what affixes to prioritize:
Armor: 1,000
All Resistances: 70%
Attack Speed: 200%
Cooldown Reduction: 75%
Some may argue that Armor can go beyond 1,000. That is correct. The Armor stat can show you can go beyond 1,000. However, the max physical damage reduction is only 85% once you reach Level 60. Even if you add more Armor from your gears, the physical reduction will always stay at 85%, not including any buffs from abilities.
However, you still need to go beyond the cap of 1,000 to optimize your armor in Torment difficulty tiers. Here’s the optimized Armor cap for each Torment tier:
- Torment I: 250 Armor Reduction, recommended over-cap is 1,250.
- Torment II: 500 Armor Reduction, recommended over-cap is 1,500.
- Torment III: 750 Armor Reduction, recommended over-cap is 1,750.
- Torment IV: 1,000 Armor Reduction, recommended over-cap is 2,000.
The same thing goes for Resistance. However, you sometimes get a total of 85% resistance from elemental damage from your abilities. While you won’t benefit from going beyond 70% in lower difficulty tiers from gear affixes, it’s still important to know that over-capping in Torment difficulties can be beneficial. Here’s the optimized Resistance over-cap for each Torment tier:
- Torment I: 25%Armor Reduction, recommended over-cap is 95%.
- Torment II: 50% Armor Reduction, recommended over-cap is 120%.
- Torment III: 75% Armor Reduction, recommended over-cap is 145%.
- Torment IV: 100% Armor Reduction, recommended over-cap is 170%.
That’s all of my advice for you returning and new players out there, trying to fight the Mother of Sanctuary and the Lord of Hatred!
Diablo 4 Vessel of Hatred is now available on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
