Diablo 4 Season 5: How To Maximize Burning Aether Farming In Infernal Hordes? - Ways & Usage

Spiritborn has been silent for too long in Diablo 4. The most powerful Spiritborn was in Season 6, and in Season 7 and Season 8, Spiritborn was basically reduced to the same status as Rogue.

In Season 9, Spiritborn received a new unique item, which changed the situation for Spiritborn. At least in PTR, this build can deal hundreds of billions of damage. Let’s have a look at what exactly makes Spiritborn so much better.

Spiritborn In Season 9

First, let’s have a look at the changes to Spiritborn in Season 9. The new unique item is undoubtedly the reason for the qualitative change in his damage. Here are the properties and effects of this unique item:

Balazan’s Maxtlatl

• Increases Dexterity by 107–121
• Increases Max Health by 424–457
• Increases Thorn Damage by 268–373
• Increases Bastion Rank by 2–3

Unique Power:

• Each attack deals the damage equal to 200-300% of your Thorns to close enemies, and poisons them for 100% of that damage over 3 seconds.
• Each time you use Thorns to counterattack, the poison damage doubles over 5 seconds, up to a maximum of four times.

In terms of skills, Thrash, Withering Fist, Thunderspike, Rock Splitter, and Exalted Hunter have received damage or cooldown increases. Spiritborn’s Passives also received a damage increase.

Compared to other classes, Spiritborn is the biggest beneficiary of the basic skill balance in patch 2.3.0.

Thorns Spiritborn Pros and Cons

Pros

• Can deal the amazing damage
• No Mythic Items required
• Farms gold quickly

Cons

• Takes time to stack damage
• Low survivability
• Requires melee to deal damage

Thorns Spiritborn Equipment

• Helm: Loyalty’s Mantle (Ahu + Qax)
• Chest Armor: Razorplate (Poc + Que)
• Gloves: Conceited Aspect
• Pants: Balazan’s Maxtlatl (Diamond)
• Boots: Duelist’s Aspect
• Weapon: Aspect of Plains Power (Amethyst + Amethyst)
• Amulet: Vehement Brawler’s Aspect
• Ring 1: Ring of Starless Skies (Seal of Denial)
• Ring 2: Rebounding Aspect (Idol From Below)

The two most important unique items in this set are Razorplate and Balazan’s Maxtlatl, they are the core equipment that increases the damage of Thorns. The most important one is Balazan’s Maxtlatl, and even if Razorplate’s attributes are slightly worse, you can still stack hundreds of billions of damage.

Although Ring of Starless Skies is a Mythic Item, its importance is not that high. You can make it after you have enough Resplendent Sparks and Diablo 4 gold. Before that, you can use other rings instead.

Thorns Spiritborn requires you to have a high attack speed to continuously trigger the effect of Balazan’s Maxtlatl. The attack speed higher, the faster the damage stacks. Therefore, when you choose to replace equipment, the first choice of affix is attack speed, followed by critical strike.

Skills

• Quill Volley: Rank 1
• Toxic Skin: Rank 1
• Armored Hide: Rank 1
• The Hunter: Rank 1
• Ravager: Rank 1
• Vortex: Rank 1
• Primary Spirit: Jaguar
• Secondary Spirit: Jaguar

Thorns Spiritborn build is all about combining poison damage with thorn damage, so Quill Volley is the core skill you want to use. After you use Vortex to group enemies together, you can use Quill Volley to quickly harvest them. Even the enemies in The Pit on Torment 4 difficulty cannot resist your damage, which is why the Thorns Spiritborn build is fast in farming gold and materials in any dungeon.

Horadric Spells

Catalyst

Disintegrate: Arcane Magic. Disintegrate creates an Arcane Conductor, which will shoot a continuous beam between you and it, damaging enemies passing through it over 8 seconds.

Infusion

Corrosive Vapor: Your Catalyst now deals poison, and poison damage equal to your character’s highest damage type bonus. And applies once every three seconds to each enemy, and the damaged enemy will take 150% poison damage over 4 seconds.

Arcana

• Fractured Core: Your Catalyst temporarily disables the damage resistance aura of the monster, but you will take some stacking damage for the same time.
• Bottled Wind: After using Catalyst, you will gain a barrier for 4 seconds, which is equivalent to 30% of your character’s maximum health.
• Reactive Ooze: After Catalyst skill is activated, the character will gain more resources per second for the next 10 seconds.

Horadric Spells can play a strong auxiliary role. They can help you gather monsters and provide you with damage reduction, which can make up for the weaknesses of this build to a certain extent.

Besides this, in this Season we have Horadric Jewels which can further increase the damage of Horadric Spells. I recommend you to choose Tyrant Bane which can permanently damage the enemy with DoT, which is very suitable for this build.

Thorns Spiritborn build can at least help you reach over than 110 floors in The Pit. Don’t forget that you can also use Paragon and mercenaries to further increase your damage. Paragon can provide you with a good damage increase, but it is best to plan your route in advance, otherwise you will have to use gold to reset Paragon.

This build is probably the best Spiritborn build at present. If you give it some time to accumulate damage, it can even cause up to 1 trillion damage, but don’t forget that this build is actually very fragile.

What? Is it already the second anniversary of the game? Yes, Diablo 4 was released on June 5, 2023, and you are now in the eighth season of the game. The developers released a trailer to celebrate with players.

The developers are sincere this time, and they launched a free Reliquary, or almost free. Players can use Diablo 4 gold to unlock new appearances, and gold is a consumable item that players can hardly use up. It seems that these developers have heard the player community’s dissatisfaction with their monetization strategy.

Date

2 Year Anniversary lasts for two weeks, starting on June 3 and ending on June 17.

Event Content

Anniversary Event Reliquary

• Sunflame Lantern Mount Trophy
• Burning Dawn Banner Mount Trophy
• Sunraiser Sword Cosmetic
• Sunflame Sword Two-Handed Sword Cosmetic
• Burning Barbs Polearm Cosmetic
• Burning Dawn Bow Cosmetic

Diablo 4 2nd Anniversary last for two weeks, players can use gold to unlock items in Anniversary Event Reliquary. In previous events, it was not so easy to get these new appearances, and you need to collect event tokens, defeat monsters, or even use platinum. This event omits these useless steps, which is commendable.

Many players don’t know where to get Anniversary Event Reliquary, and you can go into the Reliquary tab, and it's to the right of "Battle Pass" tab on top, same place as Berserk event.

Each item is worth about 10,000 to 40,000 gold. It takes about 200,000 Diablo 4 gold to get all the rewards. You can use the gold of the eternal character to unlock the rewards.

Mother’s Blessing

Mother’s Blessing will also return during the 2 Year Anniversary event, a classic event that will benefit both your Season and Eternal characters. Mother’s Blessing provides all players with a buff that increases experience and gold:

• Experience: +35%
• Gold: +50%

This buff is stackable, and players can use elixirs to get more XP bonuses to speed up your leveling of different classes.

During Mother’s Blessing, players can also offer Grim Favors to Tree of Whisper to receive Gift of the Tree cache, which contains a variety of items. The higher the world difficulty, the better the rewards.

Are Players Satisfied With The 2 Year Anniversary?

You know that players will not be satisfied with these little 2 Year Anniversary content (except for Anniversary Event Reliquary, which is indeed a pleasant change). As one of the most famous IPs in the history of games, it is also a talent and courage to make the anniversary event so boring.

Even the 1st anniversary event has much more playable content than the 2nd anniversary event. At least players could kill some treasure goblins. After watching the 2nd anniversary trailer, my impression was: That’s it? That’s the end? I believe most players have the same idea.

In sharp contrast to Diablo 4 is Diablo Immortal, a mobile game released a year earlier than Diablo 4, and now it is its 3 Year Anniversary.

Diablo Immortal 3 Year Anniversary not only includes a wealth of free gifts including pet transmogrification, anniversary avatar frame, Legendary Crests, random set items, and random legendary items. Players can also challenge rotating bosses such as Tutcher, Baal, Skarn, etc.

It can only be said that the production team of Diablo Immortal is more attentive than Diablo 4. In addition, Diablo Immortal and Diablo 4 are not completely operated by the same company. It is a joint development of Diablo 4 and a Chinese company, and the team size is much smaller than that of Diablo 4. However, in terms of the frequency of game updates and the output of new content, Diablo Immortal is far better than Diablo 4.

Before the release of Diablo Immortal, the spokesperson once asked: “Do you guys not have phones?” He won boos from the audience. Now Diablo 4 is even worse than a mobile game in terms of new content, which is really sad.

This does not mean that Diablo Immortal is a better game than Diablo 4. As a mobile game with continuous operation services, Diablo Immortal has serious P2W shortcomings. Unless you are a whale player, you can’t get happiness from this game.

Players hope that the production teams of Diablo Immortal and Diablo 4 can communicate or even merge to speed up the development of new content for Diablo 4. The current update method of updating a little bit of content every few months makes players feel painful.

In short, the anniversary event of Diablo 4 is not only just simple, but also there is nothing amazing about it. Each event is very ordinary, so ordinary that it is surprising. Players can’t feel the enthusiasm of the production team for Diablo 4 at all, and can only feel their perfunctory attitude towards the 2 Year Anniversary, and this is also one reason why Diablo 4 players are constantly losing.

Anniversaries with almost no new activities are almost not appeared in any other games. Anyway, I still hope that any player who still loves this game can have fun at this anniversary event.

The developers of Diablo 4 never figured out math, so they needed PTR to find out what mistakes they made in numerical calculations, which is why PTR is much more fun than the official game, and you can experience some OP builds that you would never play under normal circumstances.

Recently, a particularly interesting gameplay appeared in PTR. With the help of Horadric Spells in Season 9, your character can teleport on the map or in the dungeon non-stop.

How Does It Work?

Teleporting non-stop on the battlefield is not a new gameplay. As early as Season 5, Sorcerer players were such a group of battlefield shuttles.

But the funny of this gameplay is based on the fact that it is not limited to class and is completely driven by Horadric Spells. Every class can farm dungeons at an extraordinary speed and earn Diablo 4 gold, but this construction method is not suitable for dealing with bosses.

Here are the Horadric Spells needed for this gameplay:

• Propulsion (Catalyst): Creates a blast of mana that deals tremendous damage and knocks back all enemies. Enemies hit a second time will take extra damage.
• Floaty Bobble (Arcana): Allows you to flash once when using Catalyst and becomes unstoppable.
• Bloody Charm (Arcana): Catalyst can hit non-boss enemies below 20% health, and resets Catalyst after a successful execution.
• Gleaming Conduit (Arcana): Catalyst has a range of 150% of its original.

When you use Propulsion, you deal heavy damage to an enemy and immediately execute a low-health enemy. Because of Bloody Charm, you can immediately reset Propulsion and teleport to the next monster area.

You can basically teleport and trigger Propulsion all the time. You can also use it with AOE skills to help you reduce monster health faster and trigger executions.

To enable controller players to use the arrow keys to quickly move in the direction you want to move, and non-controller players to disable mouse aiming in the game settings, this will make the game automatically aim at the nearest enemy you are facing and set it to WSAD movement. This will make you move even faster.

Any class can use this Horadric Spells combination, and in actual combat testing, the speed of teleporting is even faster than Sorcerer, which can almost subvert the gameplay of the character. Because of this, this gameplay will hardly make it out of PTR alive, and the developers will definitely make some adjustments to it.

Maybe Floaty Bobble will get a CD, or Bloody Charm’s execution cap will be reduced, but in any case, if you want to try this gameplay, you’d better try it on PTR now.

Recommended Builds

This gameplay can help you speed through dungeons, The Pit, or Infernal Hordes. The more monsters there are, the more fun this gameplay will be. Here are two builds that take advantage of this mechanism.

Speed ​​Hack Necromancer Build (S9 PTR)

Equipment

• Helm: Heir of Perdition (Neo+Qax)
• Chest Armor: Shroud of False Death (Cir+Jah)
• Glove: Aspect of the Damned
• Pants: Blood Moon Breeches (Topaz)
• Boots: Aspect of the Cursed Aura
• Amulet: Ebonpiercer
• Ring 1: Aspect of Ultimate Shadow (Scornful Light)
• Ring 2: Osseous Gale Aspect (Elemental Brand)
• Weapon: Sacrificial Aspect (Emerald)
• Offhand: Lidless Wall (Topaz)

Skills

• Blight (Rank 1)
• Corpse Explosion (Rank 1)
• Sever
• Bone Storm (Rank 5)
• Decompose (Rank 1)
• Reap (Rank 5)

Horadric Spells

• Catalyst: Propulsion
• Infusions: Corrosive Vapor
• Arcana: Propulsion, Bloody Charm, Gleaming Conduit

Lunging Strike Barbarian Build (S9 PTR)

Equipment

• Helm: Ugly Bastard Helm (Ruby+Ruby)
• Chest Armor: Rage of Harrogath (Ruby+Ruby)
• Gloves: Fists of Fate
• Pants: Tibault’s Will (Ruby+Ruby)
• Boots: Hooves of the Mountain God
• Amulet: Aspect of Adaptability
• Ring 1: Ring of Starless Skies (Luminate Eye)
• Ring 2: Bold Chieftain’s Aspect (Idol From Below)
• Slashing Weapon: Aspect of Earthquakes (Moni+Qax)
• Bludgeoning Weapon: Aspect of the Moonrise (Igni+Tec)
• Dual-Wield Weapon 2: Ramaladni’s Magnum Opus (Emerald)
• Dual-Wield Weapon 1: Shard of Verathiel (Emerald)

Skills

• Lunging Strike (Rank 5)
• War Cry (Rank 1)
• Challenging Shout (Rank 1)
• Rallying Cry (Rank 1)
• Wrath of the Berserker (Rank 5)
• Ground Stomp (Rank 5)

Horadric Spells

• Catalyst: Propulsion
• Infusions: Smoldering Ember
• Arcana: Propulsion, Bloody Charm, Gleaming Conduit

Barbarian and Necromancer are two of the most commonly used classes by players. Although their performance in Season 9 is slightly inferior to that in Season 8, they still retain quite interesting gameplay.

Players who use these two classes can prepare the above two builds in your arsenal to experience the pleasure of rapid farming gold. They have low requirements for Diablo 4 items, and even if you don’t have the above weapons and equipment, you can still quickly make a patchwork version. As one producer said, we only need “It just works”.

The above is the latest news about Horadric Spells in PTR. This method can be used in all classes. You can find any leveling builds, and then put Propulsion and other Horadric Spells. Then finally, you can flash in the monster pile and make some explosions!

The best build for Sorcerer in Season 9 has already appeared, and it is Hydra Sorcerer. In PTR, Hydra Sorcerer build shows amazing damage and speed of clearing dungeons. But in season 8, Hydra was not a very powerful skill, even Fire Bolt Sorcerer build and Flame Wall Sorcerer build did not always carry this skill.

Why Is Hydra Sorcerer Build So Powerful?

There are two reasons why it has become very strong in PTR. The first is naturally that it has been strengthened. The damage of Hydra has increased from 23% to 35%. This is equivalent to the damage caused by this skill being 150% of the previous damage.

The second is naturally the improvement brought by the new unique item of Season 9, Ophidian Iris. It can make the three-headed Hydra have two more heads, and the Hydra with over than three heads will have a larger head, causing double the damage, and the enlarged head can create explosions when attacking.

After you equip this item, Hydra becomes a core skill, which means it can get more amplification.

In the endgame, if you equip two one-handed weapons and upgrade them with Masterworking, you can summon up to 12 heads to deal 1200% AoE damage. But this is a theoretical value, and most of the time you can deal 700% to 800% damage. Hydra is basically constantly making damage bombs, and you can imagine how fast it will farm Diablo 4 gold.

However, it is worth noting that in season 9, releasing Hydra no longer just consumes your 20 mana, but will continue to consume your mana. As the mana consumption increases, the damage of Hydra will also increase. There is a cap on this increase, so you need to increase the maximum mana of Hydra Sorcerer or prepare some way to restore mana.

Horadric Spells

Catalysts

Propulsion: Create a shock wave to push enemies away, and make enemies that hit the surrounding terrain suffer second damage.

While Astral Pillar is probably stronger, the reason to choose it is that it has a short cooldown, allowing you to trigger the effect more often and fill in some skill gaps. It can also help avoid some melee attacks from enemies that are afraid of getting close to you.

Infusions

Smoldering Ember: Allows Catalysts to deal Fire damage, and has a chance to set enemies on fire, creating a burning area under their feet.

Hydra Sorcerer deals primarily Fire damage, so this is pretty much the only choice.

Arcana

• Reactive Ooze: After using a Catalysts skill, increase resource regeneration for 10 seconds.
• Frigid Heart: Freezes enemies that collide twice.
• Siphoning Gizmo: Lucky hits from Catalysts consume damage over time and deal 100% damage directly.

Arcana acts like Boss Powers modifier from Season 8. The reason for choosing these three is that they can increase resource recovery speed, control monsters, and increase the damage of Catalysts.

In addition to the above Season Powers, Season 9 also has Horadric Jewels that can increase the power of Horadric Spells. Among them, the most noteworthy is Tyrant Bane, which will make the enemy suffer DoT damage forever. At present, this Horadric Jewel has not been weakened. In theory, you can keep stacking until a very scary DoT damage.

But it is expected that it will definitely be weakened by the developers, perhaps by setting a stacking limit. But at present, it is still one of the best Horadric Jewels for poison and burning builds. You need to enter the dungeon in Torment Difficulty to get Horadric Strongrooms to unlock Horadric Jewels.

After that, you need to use gold and materials to make it. Horadric Jewels will not drop in the dungeon.

Skills And Equipment

Skills

• Basic: Fire Bolt
• Core: Elemental Dominance/Ice Shards
• Ultimate: Inferno (Prime, Supreme)
• Teleport (Enhanced, Shimmering)
• Ice Armor (Enhanced, Shimmering)
• Conjuration: Hydra (Enhanced, Invoked)
• Key Passive: Esu’s Ferocity

Hydra Sorcerer builds have a relatively fixed skill selection, but you can also switch the core skill from Elemental Dominance to Ice Shards in exchange for different elemental damage. And you also need to make some adjustments to your equipment.

Equipment 1

• Weapon: Serpentine Energy Staff
• Helm: Harlequin Crest
• Armor: Shroud of False Death
• Gloves: Runic Gloves of Three Curses
• Pants: Tibault’s Will
• Boots: Runic Cleats of the Bounding Conduit
• Amulet: Ophidian Iris
• Ring: Tal Rasha’s Iridescent Loop and Battle Caster’s Soulwatch Hoop

Equipment 2

• Weapon: Serpentine Aspect
• Helm: Hail of Verglas
• Armor: Shroud of False Death
• Gloves: Sidhe Bindings
• Pants: Tibault’s Will
• Boots: Aspect of the Orange Herald
• Amulet: Ophidian Iris
• Ring: Tal Rasha’s Iridescent Loop, Battle Caster’s Aspect

One of the two sets of equipment focuses on the balance between crit and summoning hydras, and the other focuses on crit. You need to pay attention to your mana consumption. Hydra Sorcerer builds are very much based on Diablo 4 items. You can use other leveling builds as a transition until you get Ophidian Iris.

PTR is running now, so you can check out the damage cap of Hydra Sorcerer build, and it will definitely not disappoint you.

After Diablo 4 Season 8 significantly enhanced each class, many builds were weakened again in Season 9. Although many class skills have been strengthened, the changes to Overpower mechanism and Tempering affixes have caused most builds to be substantially weakened.

In particular, the builds that relied on Overpower mechanism in Season 8 have almost all declined in Season 9. The following builds rank is based on the changes in season 9 combined with the builds data of season 8. The real ranking can only be obtained after the players participating in the PTR have experienced it.

Tier S

• Flay Bleed Barbarian Build
• Pet Twister Barbarian Build
• Pet Earthquake Barbarian Build
• Hydra Sorcerer Build
• Quill Volley Spiritborn Build
• Thorns Spiritborn Build

This may be a bit beyond your belief, but Barbarian is indeed not greatly affected by this change. Barbarian’s Ugly Bastard Helm was nerfed in Season 9, so you can look for some alternatives, but it’s still the best choice in most builds. In terms of damage, two builds that use summons for damage output are not affected by Overpower nerf.

Hydra Sorcerer has received a huge buff. In Season 8, Hydra was just one skill of Fire Sorcerer builds. But in Season 9, Hydra has not only been buffed, but we also have a Unique Amulet Ophidian Iris that greatly increases the fire damage and critical strikes dealt by Hydra. Hydra Sorcerer Build has the potential to be one of the Meta builds in Season 9, which can help you farm Diablo 4 gold and reach The Pit above 100, so Hail Hydra!

Spiritborn also does not rely on Overpower, so it has hardly been nerfed. So Quill Volley Spiritborn Build is probably the same level as Season 8, while Thorns Spiritborn’s ranking rise is because of the increase brought by the new unique pants Balazan’s Maxtlatl.

Tier A

• Summon Mage Necromancer Build
• Bone Blood Spear Necromancer Build
• Chain Leveling Sorcerer Build
• Blizzard Sorcerer Build
• Ice Shards Sorcerer Build
• Lightning Spear Sorcerer Build
• Machine Gun Smelly Druid Build
• Cataclysm Druid Build
• Shred Druid Build
• Boulder Druid Build
• McFlurry Rogue Build
• Firestorm Evade Spiritborn Build

In Tier A, most of the reasons for Necromancer builds falling from Tiers are because of Overpower nerf. The new glove The Hand of Naz greatly enhances Skeleton Mage, allowing Summon Mage Necromancer to gradually replace Blood Wave Necromancer and Bone Spear Necromancer Builds. Great Skeleton Mage is more powerful and more survivable than before. Necromance may even farm Diablo 4 gold faster in the early stages.

Druids have always been strong, but they received a lot of nerfs in Season 9, especially Cataclysm Druid Build. The nerfs to Overpower and Cataclysm-related items basically cut into the arteries of Cataclysm Druid Build, leaving it on the verge of death, and it is impossible to be as simple and violent as season 8 and 7.

Tier B

• Death Trap Rogue Build
• Lugging Strike Barbarian Build
• Double Swing Barbarian Build
• Whirlwind Barbarian Build
• Bash Barbarian Build
• Mighty Throw Barbarian Build
• Blood Wave Necromancer Build
• Bone Spirit Necromancer Build
• Blood Lance Necromancer Build
• Blood Surge Necromancer Build
• Companion Druid Build
• Earth Spike Druid Build
• Stone Bust Druid Build
• Razor Wings Spiritborn Build
• Payback Spiritborn Build
• Rushing Claw Spiritborn Build
• Meteor Sorcerer Build
• Fire Ball Sorcerer Build
• Incinerate Sorcerer Build
• Rapid Fire Rogue Build
• Rain of Arrows Rogue Build
• Poison Death Trap Rogue Build

Necromancer and Druid are most affected by Overpower’s nerf, but what about Rogue? It’s a shame that Rogue will be hurt worse than both of them in Season 9.

Although Rogue got a new unique helmet in this update, the helmet is a very important part of Rogue builds, and there are many helmets that can compete, and this new helmet may not be the best.

In addition, Death Trap has been set to a 10s CD, and Flurry’s healing has also been changed to delayed healing. There are also some other nerfs in terms of damage, which are like punching Rogue players in the face. The damage of Death Trap Rogue Build takes time to accumulate, and now its damage starts slower, and Diablo 4 items from it have also been weakened. Rogue players may have a painful time playing in Season 9.

Tier C

• Frenzy Barbarian Build
• Frozen Orb Sorcerer Build
• Ball Lightning Sorcerer Build
• Twisting Blades Rogue Build
• Dance of Knives Rogue Build
• Barrage V Rogue Build
• Landslide Druid Build
• Hurricane Druid Build
• Upheaval Barbarian Build
• Pure HotA Barbarian Build
• Deathblow Barbarian Build
• Bash Barbarian Build
• Steel Grasp Barbarian Build

Tier C builds don’t perform well in The Pit. They can be played as entertainment builds in the endgame, but in other aspects, they have various defects such as low damage cap and long farming time, so they are not recommended.

The above is the Season 9 PTR builds rank. Players can try Tier S builds to test their damage. You can also adjust them to develop more gameplay and builds.

Diablo 4 Season 9 will be released in a month, and it will bring changes to dungeons. There are various dungeons in Diablo 4, and some of them have unique mechanisms and rewards.

Dark Citadel is a unique dungeon, or more precisely, a Citadel. This is a multiplayer PVE Citadel. This dungeon cannot be played alone, and requires at least two players. Its rewards include gold, materials, unique items, and appearances.

How To Enter Dark Citadel?

Dark Citadel is part of Vessel of Hatred, and only DLC players can enter this area.

Dark Citadel is part of the endgame content. Only when you reach level 60 and the world difficulty reaches Torment I can you unlock the quest to unlock Dark Citadel: Crater of Lost Souls. After you complete this quest, you can find Dark Citadel in Kurast.

How To Play Dark Citadel?

Dark Citadel consists of three parts:

• Labrinth of Souls (Right Wing)
• Enclave of Strife (Left Wing)
• Dominion of Zagraal (Center Wing)

These three parts are independent, and players who enter them need to cooperate with each other to solve puzzles. In this area, you will encounter some special mechanisms:

• Soul Siphons: Touch Soul Siphon to activate it, and then a circle will appear around it. You need to kill enemies in the circle to recharge Soul Siphon.
• Sealing Wards: Defeat a Ward Guardian to get a Ward Stone. You can place it in the sealing barrier to contact the seal.
• Pressure Switches: Standing on the pressure switch has different colors corresponding to different doors. Standing on it will open the door, and leaving it will close the door.
• Gateway Charge: Kill Realm Guardians and collect Realm Shards which they drop when they die, which can be used to recharge Gateway. When the energy bar is full, Gateway is fully charged.
• Impending Doom/ Soul Entanglement/ Souls Consumed: Complete the quest before the progress bar is full.
• Realm of Oblivion: The area will stack debuffs over time. When the debuffs stack to 100 layers, you will die. The debuffs will stop stacking when you are in the range of Soul Dampener. Path Indicators will guide you out of Realm of Oblivion.
• Door Barrier: Barrier Guardians have different symbols. Defeating them will unlock the corresponding door barrier.
• Barrier Ward: Activate Barrier Ward to create a safe area.
• Counterspell: Kill a Spell Guardian to get a Counterspell Stone. When a Soul Orb is about to hit you, you can use the skill to bounce its Soul Orb back to the caster.
• Teleporter: All players must be standing inside the teleporter to activate it.

Dark Citadel Rewards

• Dark Citadel Merchants: Dark Citadel merchants sell unique cosmetic weapons and Scrolls of Restoration
• Weekly Chests: Complete 3 wings to receive Ancestral Gear rewards.
• Khazra Treasury: Kill Khazra’s Treasury Guardians at the end of certain Trials to collect Citadel Coins.
• Torment 4: Complete Dark Citadel at this difficulty to receive exclusive gear sets, mounts, and cosmetic rewards.

Khazra Treasury

After killing guards in Khazra Treasury, you can get Citadel Coins, Khazra Horn, Murmuring Obolss. There is more than one Khazra Treasury, so look for them while exploring.

Merchant Items

The merchant in Dark Citadel will sell some consumables, but he does not accept Diablo 4 gold, only Citadel Coins. You can earn Citadel Coins while exploring Dark Citadel.

• Scroll of Abundance (800 Citadel Coins)
• Scroll of Forging (1750 Citadel Coins)
• Scroll of Generosity (1500 Citadel Coins)
• Scroll of Grave Oil (400 Citadel Coins)
• Scroll of Restoration (2000 Citadel Coins)
• Elixir of Swift Revival (800 Citadel Coins)
• Elixir of Tailwind (800 Citadel Coins)
• Incense of Khazra Power (1600 Citadel Coins)
• Incense of Fortitude (1600 Citadel Coins)
• Incense of Rushing Wind (1600 Citadel Coins)
• Incense of Capacity (1600 Citadel Coins)

These items can increase the amount of experience gained by the player, or improve the player’s attributes, damage, potion recovery, etc.

Dark Citadel Cache

• Dark Citadel Gear Cache (1200 Citadel Coins): Contains random gear, with a chance to get unique items.
• Dark Citadel Gem Cache (1100 Citadel Coins): Contains gold, random gems, and gem fragments.
• Dark Citadel Crafting Cache (900 Citadel Coins): Contains random crafting materials.

Weapon Appearance

• Doom Mace (15000 Citadel Coins)
• Hooked Piercer (15000 Citadel Coins)
• Ritual Impaler (20000 Citadel Coins)
• Sculpted Quarterstaff (20000 Citadel Coins)
• Twisted Spirit Wand (15000 Citadel Coins)

Cosmetic Sets

Armor of the Khazra

Complete Dark Citadel area quests in Torment 1-3, and the fragments of Armor of the Khazra will drop from treasure chests and bosses.

• Helm: Helm of the Khazra
• Chest: Chestplate of the Khazra
• Gloves: Gloves of the Khazra
• Pants: Leggings of the Khazra
• Boots: Boots of the Khazra
• Greater Armor of the Khazra

The following items will only drop on Torment 4 difficulty:

• Helm: Greater Helm of the Khazra
• Chest: Greater Chestplate of the Khazra
• Gloves: Greater Gloves of the Khazra
• Pants: Greater Leggings of the Khazra
• Boots: Greater Boots of the Khazra

Dark Citadel is a fun raid in Diablo 4 that offers some pretty wonderful rewards as part of the endgame, so invite your friends to explore it together!