Diablo 4‘s mid-Season 10 patch 2.4.1 addresses some of the biggest issues players have with the Season of Infernal Chaos. In addition to buffing some underpowered gear and Chaos Perks like the Rogue’s Orphan Maker Unique and the Barbarian’s Single-Minded Fury Chaos Perk, Diablo 4 patch 2.4.1 also addresses the issue with Soulspires in Infernal Hordes that have been the bane of many players’ existence this season. However, the game is still in dire need of an overhaul to one of its most controversial endgame systems.
The endgame grind for Diablo 4 can get frustrating for players, even without farming Lair Bosses for Mythic drops. Tempering and Masterworking are two ways Diablo 4 players can push their best gear to its limits by optimizing the power of their affixes, but both require some degree of resource investment and luck to perfect. These endgame features have been a sore spot for the game since their introduction in Season 4, but it seems that Blizzard will finally be setting its sights on them as the focus of Diablo 4‘s next major systems rework.
Tempering and Masterworking Are Set for a Rework After Diablo 4 Update 2.4.1
Diablo 4‘s Director of Social & Content Marketing Adam Fletcher recently took to social media to assure players that big things are on the way for the game in the coming weeks. He mentions that PTR changes are coming sooner than usual this season because there are a lot of reworked features to test out, including Tempering, Masterworking, Combat, and Renown. While it remains to be seen how these features will evolve in future updates, the fact that Diablo 4 is finally addressing the issues with Tempering and Masterworking is a promising sign for the game’s longevity.
Why Tempering and Masterworking Have Been So Controversial in Diablo 4
- Tempering’s RNG can result in bricked items.
- Masterworking can be very costly if players have to repeatedly reset for optimal rolls.
For players who have gone through the heartbreak of bricking a piece of gear by getting bad rolls when Tempering in Diablo 4, this update will be music to their ears. While Tempering an item can vastly increase its utility by imprinting useful new affixes, the fact that players can’t control which affix gets imprinted and only have a limited number of rolls to get the one they want can make this process extremely frustrating. Seeing a 4GA Legendary become virtually useless because of bad Tempering RNG is enough to make one quit a season of Diablo 4 altogether.
Players can technically reset an item’s Tempers with a Scroll of Restoration, but these items are hard to come by and can be a headache to farm for a feature that could just be baked into the Tempering system to begin with.
While not quite as frustrating, Masterworking is its own beast that can be a massive gold and Obducite sink if players are unlucky with RNG. The purpose of Masterworking is to improve the quality of an item’s affixes by a blanket 5% increase each time it is Masterworked. But like Tempering, the affix that gets improved by 25% every fourth Masterwork is RNG-dependent, meaning that players hoping to optimize a particular affix may be left resetting a Masterworked item and spending even more resources to Masterwork it all over again until they get the roll they want.
Unlike Tempering, Masterworks can be reset without the need for a specific item like a Scroll of Restoration.
How Diablo 4 Can Improve Tempering and Masterworking
With so much of the frustration surrounding Tempering and Masterworking coming from their randomness, Diablo 4 can drastically improve the mechanics by dialing back the RNG. For example, introducing a new currency like Obducite that players can spend to guarantee a certain affix gets Tempered or Masterworked would relieve a lot of the stress of gambling on a desired roll and would take pressure off of having to find a Scroll of Restoration just to reset Tempers. Even simply allowing Tempered items to be reset like Masterworked gear would be a helpful way to ensure players aren’t accidentally bricking their gear when trying to craft items worthy of tackling Diablo 4‘s Torment 4 tier difficulty.