How to craft a Staff of Herding in Diablo 3 Season 28 for your Altar of Rites

Season 28 of Diablo 3 adds some gameplay twists befitting the Rites of Sanctuary Season theme — including ritual sacrifice on the Altar of Rites of expensive items, like the Staff of Herding. The Seals and Legendary Potion powers that players will unlock with the Altar all require sacrifices of some kind — crafting materials, blood shards, even Petrified Screams, or lost souls, or a book you can only get in your Set Dungeons. The Staff of Herding is the most difficult and onerous of them all.

This isn’t because the Staff has potent magical powers or costs much gold to make, but rather the sheer random chance that is involved in its creation. In order to make a Staff of Herding, you will have to go on the hunt for a variety of items that randomly spawn in the world, and often will not be there when you reach the area where they appear. This will mean you must leave and reset the area by completing other tasks — such as an Adventure Mode bounty — before trying your luck again. If playing the game in Story Mode, your best bet is to load a chapter of the game in that takes you to the item location and if the item is not there, leave the game entirely and restart that act again, and again, and again until the item finally spawns.

And worse still, if you manage to craft the thing then sacrificing it to the Altar means you can’t use the staff for its original purpose: to go to Whimsyshire and farm up all that sweet technicolor treasure.

Getting the Staff of Herding will require an epic scavenger hunt

To craft the Staff of Herding, you’ll need 50,000 gold and a collection of unusual items. You’ll also need the plan for the Blacksmith, which is a random drop from Izual in Act 4 in the Great Span, accessed from the Silver Spire. The items that make up the Staff and their locations are as follows:

• Black Mushroom — found in Tristram Cathedral level 1 in Act 1. It can spawn in multiple locations, so your best bet is to scour the entire Cathedral first level for a sign of it.
• Leoric’s Shinbone — you can find this item in the fireplace of the entry hall of Leoric’s Manor, also in Act 1. Unlike the Black Mushroom, there is only one spawn location for this item, so if it’s not in the fireplace you’ll need to leave the game and reload the level or go and do another Adventure Mode bounty Act to reset the manor.
• Wirt’s Bell — the easiest of all items, you can purchase this from Squirt in Act 2. It costs 100,000 gold and is always available once you reach the camp in Caldeum in Act 2, so just save up your gold, no reloads necessary.
• Liquid Rainbow — this item is an Act 2 drop in the Dahlgur Oasis, specifically found in the Mysterious Cave area. It requires that a specific man, Zaven the Alchemist, has spawned in the Oasis which is not always the case. There are two locations he can spawn into — either close to the entrance to the Oasis to the south, or along that southern wall from his first location as far east as you can. If he is there at either location, save him from his imminent death and he’ll open a cave for you that leads to the Liquid Rainbow in a chest. However, sometimes the chest containing the Liquid Rainbow may not spawn, and so, you’ll have to repeat the entire process until Zevan spawns again in the Oasis.
• The Gibbering Gemstone — Act 3 drop from the Caverns of Frost. You’ll only be able to acquire this if the Caverns of Frost is the dungeon available on the Fields of Slaughter in Act 3 — if you see Icefall Caves, you can’t get the Gemstone and have to reset the zone either by leaving the game and re-entering Act 3 or doing a different set of Adventure Mode bounties. Now, even if the Caverns of Frost are there, that doesn’t mean the Gemstone will be. You still have to find a Lacuni named Chiltara and kill her, and then she may drop the Gemstone. If she doesn’t? Reset and try again.

Note: if you’re playing on console, the gold total is far lower, and you won’t need Leoric’s Shinbone or the Liquid Rainbow to craft it.

So all you need to do to craft this item for the Altar is a measly 50,000 gold (which won’t really be a lot of gold for most characters in Diablo 3 by the time the Altar demands it) and four incredibly rare items that may or may not spawn and which will likely require quite a lot of persistence and luck to acquire. Then, instead of using the Staff to attain treasure, you just feed it to a hungry Altar. Still, that’s one extra Seal down for Season 28, so get ready to say Icefall Caves again in an exasperated voice quite frequently.

Originally published February 3, 2023. Updated March 7, 2023.