Item Farming, Tempering & Masterworking — The Gear Roadmap

Half of Diablo 4's endgame is gear. Two characters running the same build can differ several times over in damage purely from how the gear was refined. This guide walks the whole flow: picking items → tempering → masterworking.

1. Which items to keep

• Ancestral first — Ancestral items are the endgame baseline. Higher item power is better.
• Read the affixes — Count how many affixes match your build's stat priorities. Each build guide lists the priority affixes per slot in its Gear tab.
• Greater (starred) affixes — Items that rolled an affix at its maximum are especially valuable.
• Uniques and legendary aspects — Look up your build's key aspects in the aspect codex and its uniques in the item codex beforehand; sorting loot gets much faster.

2. Imprinting aspects — moving legendary power

An aspect extracted from a legendary (or collected in the Codex of Power) can be imprinted onto the item you want. The order is:

1. Find an item with good affixes
2. Imprint your build's key aspect over its empty or unwanted aspect
3. Aspects roll within a range too, so re-imprint when you find a higher roll

3. Tempering — adding affixes

Tempering adds extra affixes to an item. You learn tempering manuals, pick the category you want, and the item gains one random affix from that category.

• Offensive tempers on offensive slots, survivability tempers on defensive slots is the default. Follow the tempering section of your build guide.
• There is a limited number of rerolls. If you burn them all without hitting the affix you want, the item is effectively dead — so only temper items whose base affixes were already good.
• Manuals accumulate naturally while farming and are learned automatically when found.

4. Masterworking — amplifying the numbers

Masterworking is the final upgrade: it amplifies every stat on a finished item in steps. Materials come mainly from The Pit.

• Every rank raises all of the item's affixes by a set percentage.
• At certain ranks one affix gets a large boost (highlighted). Which affix is random, so resetting and retrying until your key affix is the one boosted is the heart of final gearing.
• Sequencing: masterwork only after the item's affixes and aspect are settled. Spending materials on gear you are about to replace is the most common waste.

5. Upgrade priority

1. Secure your build's key uniques and aspect items first (largest damage gain)
2. Temper and masterwork weapons → gloves and jewelry → armor
3. Take every slot to a low rank evenly first, then push key slots to the top once the right affix gets boosted

When you run short on materials

• The Pit — Main source of masterworking materials. Repeat at a tier you clear comfortably.
• Helltide and Nightmare Dungeons — Tempering manuals, gold and sundries. See the Helltide guide.
• Salvage what you do not use — Salvaging generally beats selling; it returns rare materials.