How to get a Puzzle Ring in Diablo 3 Season 28 for your Altar of Rites

Puzzle Rings have been used in Diablo 3 to open portals to Greed’s realm since patch 2.3.0. But with the recent release of Diablo 3 Season 28, you now need two of the legendary ring — one for your Greed kill in the  Season’s Journey (don’t bank on goblin portals for the pet), and an Ancient version to sacrificer additional player power from the Altar of Rites.

But this is a hard ask. No matter the version, Puzzle Rings do not grow on trees — these rare drops are extremely hard to come by. If you’re stuck trying to find your first (or your second) Puzzle Ring in Diablo 3 Season 28, we have advice on farming this valuable item.

Spend Blood Shards to gamble with Kadala

A simple — but slow — way to get a Puzzle Ring is by gambling with Kadala, who will sell you rights that might turn out to be a Puzzle Ring. Items you buy from Kadala have a 1 in 10 chance of being legendary quality, but it’s random as to which legendary right you’ll get: you could get any of the legendary rings available for your class, which changes your odds significantly. However, there’s a handy little workaround, at least for the non-Ancient ring to go after Greed — the Puzzle ring becomes available at level 31 from Kadala, when your pool of legendary rings is closer to three or four. This means a much smaller number of Blood Shards is needed.

Your best chance? Level a Demon Hunter, Witch Doctor, Monk, or Crusader to 31, then gamble. These four classes only have three rings available from Kadala at level 31. I was able to obtain the ring within 2500 Blood Shards — higher than the average, but still much lower than the level 70 average of 11,875 Blood Shards that the Kadala Gamble Calculator from Maxroll/D3Planner suggests. But remember: you won’t get an Ancient Legendary at level 31.

Craft random legendary rings with Kanai’s Cube

Another relatively easy — and relatively slow — way of getting your Puzzle Ring involves Recipe 3 in Kanai’s Cube, “Hope of Cain.” This option upgrades a level 70 rare (yellow) ring using 25 Death’s Breaths, 50 Reusable Parts, 50 Arcane Dust, and 50 Veiled Crystals to convert the ring to a legendary item. You can craft a level 70 ring at the Jeweler with one Marquise Diamond, one Marquise Amethyst, and 18,000 gold. Take your shiny new rare to the cube, flip to Hope of Cain, and two button clicks later you hopefully have yourself a Puzzle Ring.

This method also works fantastically in combination with the first at level 70. When you’re gambling with Kadala, you have a large pool of rings you’re going through, and only a 1 in 10 chance for legendary — so you’ll wind up with a lot of extra rings. First, mass salvage any blue (magic) rings for Arcane Dust, then take all the rare ones to the cube and run them through Recipe 3. Between Kadala and the cube, a Puzzle Ring is bound to show up eventually.

Run Rifts to farm for your Puzzle Ring

The fastest — and potentially most random — method for getting a Puzzle Ring involves good old fashioned loot. Rift guardians in Greater Rifts, monsters, chests, and destructible items… technically, they all have a chance to drop a legendary item. That said, don’t waste your time on bounty caches — while you’ve got a chance for the ring to drop while completing the bounties, the caches each have a set pool of legendary items and none include the Puzzle Ring.

The best “guarantee” for legendary drops come from rift guardians at the end of Greater Rifts. When farming for the Puzzle Ring, get as close as you can to completing a GR90. This is basically the magic difficulty for breaking even on loot: at GR90, 12 items items drop from the Rift Guardian, and they’re all legendary quality. That many legendaries gives your best possible chance at a puzzle ring.

But what about getting an Ancient Puzzle Ring?

So far we’ve focused on just getting a Puzzle Ring, but the Altar of Rites wants an Ancient Puzzle ring — which is a slightly greater challenge. Legendary items have roughly a 10% chance to be Ancient. So when you gamble with Kadala, not only is does this effectively turning your gambling rate from 1 in 10 to 1 in 100 just to get any Ancient Legendary, there’s no guarantee it will be a Puzzle Ring. Frustrating, no?

There’s a work around to the randomness of it all, but the cost can be a little hefty. Recipe 2 (Law of Kulle) in Kanai’s Cube reforges legendary items, and yes, it can reforge your regular Puzzle Ring to an Ancient. Each reforge costs 5 of each Act’s resource (Khanduran Runes, Caldeum Nightshade, Arreat War Tapestries, Corrupted Angel Flesh, and Westmarch Holy Water), plus an additional 50 Forgotten Souls. Now assume you end up having to re-roll 10 times; that’s a lot of salvaged legendaries and bounty mats, especially when you also need them for the Altar of Souls!

Puzzle Rings may not be as thick on the ground as Blood Shards, but ideally they’re faster to acquire than your Staff of Herding. Loot your two for the Season’s Journey kill and Altar of Rites (with maybe a few extras for gem farming) and you should be all set for Season 28. Happy (item) hunting!