Diablo 4: Tempering and Masterworking, explained

With all the new Diablo 4 Season 4 PTR changes it’s hard to take in everything that Blizzard is implementing. There are two new crafting systems called Tempering and Masterworking arriving in Diablo 4, but how do they work?

What is the Tempering crafting system in Diablo 4?

As described in this Blizzard blog post, Tempering is a crafting system coming to the Season 4 PTR that will allow you to add affixes to items using a new reusable item through a Blacksmith. This reusable item is a Temper Manual, and they can drop from practically anything.

You can use Temper Manuals an unlimited amount of times, and they come with more than just one affix, although you can attach them one at a time. If you’re unhappy with the affixes, you can reroll them up to their Temper Reroll limit.

Each Temper Manual is categorized like the Codex of Power, and while most items can only have Tempered affixes from one category, Ancestral items can have two affixes from different categories. As you can see from the image above, you place the item you want to add affixes to into the slot, then you pick which Temper Manual category you want.

Masterworking system, explained

Not only are we getting the Tempering system, but a Masterworking system as well. Masterworking in Diablo 4 is a late-game crafting system that allows you to use materials earned from The Pit to upgrade your items even further. The Pit is also a new feature arriving with Season 4 for World Tier 4 players.

What Masterworking does is essentially improve the value of your affixes instead of adding new ones. You can reach up to 12 upgrade ranks, and for every four ranks, one of your affixes gets a huge upgrade. All other ranks will just give a slight increase to your affix values.

You’ll use this system through a Blacksmith, and through the image above we can see a new item required for the upgrade from The Pit. It’ll also cost you some gold and some additional common materials.

That’s everything we know so far about Tempering and Masterworking in Diablo 4! These aren’t the only big changes coming to Diablo 4 Season 4, since we’re also getting changes to the Helltide event.