How to get and customize Pact Armor in Diablo 4 to activate your Vampiric Powers

If you’re playing Diablo 4’s Season of Blood, you’ve no doubt noticed that your 22 new vampiric powers have requirements to power them — shown simply as symbols — called Vampiric Pacts. Every power requires anywhere from 1 to 6 of these Pacts, requiring various combinations of types of Pacts to keep them powered on. Luckily, you won’t have to search very hard to find Pacts, although finding the right combination of Pacts can be trickier.

Every piece of armor in Diablo 4 Season 2 — that is, helmets, chestpieces, gloves, pants, and boots, but not jewelry or weapons — has a number of Pacts on it automatically, from a minimum of 1 to a maximum of 3 to 5 Pacts (depending on what slot the gear is in). All you need to do to get those Pacts to count towards your total, and thus turn on your Vampiric Powers, is equip the armor.

The three different Pact types are:

• Ferocity, symbolized by the red spiked helmet. Pacts of Ferocity are most common on gloves and boots.
• Divinity, symbolized by the golden cup. Pacts of Divinity are most common on helms.
• Eternity, symbolized by the white skull. Pacts of Eternity are most common on chests and pants.

However, take “most common” with a grain of salt here — in practice, any piece of gear can have any kind of Pact, in any combination of types and in any number up to the slot’s maximum; helmets and boots have a maximum of 3 Pacts, pants have a maximum of 4 Pacts, and gloves and chests have a maximum of 5 Pacts. Also, with the aid of some consumable items, Vampiric Pacts can be fully customized.

By participating in the Blood Harvest world events (including summoning enemies with Vampiric Lures and opening coffins with Seeker’s Keys), fighting the Blood Seekers when they ambush you in a dungeon, or opening the rare Opulent Coffins — in other words, all the same activities that earn you Potent Blood to power up with — you will earn four types of consumable items as well: Pacts of Ferocity, Divinity, and Eternity, and Cleansing Acid. Using the Pacts will let you add a Pact of that type to a piece of armor, if it is not at its maximum Pacts yet. If it is, that’s where the Cleansing Acid comes into play.

By default, Cleansing Acid removes all Pacts from a piece of armor, leaving it a blank slate for you to set up with your consumable Pacts. Alternatively, at the alchemist, you can now refine Cleansing Acid with some additional materials (none of which are hard to find — it’s just ordinary crafting materials) to attune the Cleansing Acid to a specific type of Pact, although it will now only remove two of a given type. For example, Cleansing Acid — Eternity will remove two Pacts of Eternity from a piece of armor, leaving the other Pacts on that item untouched.

With number and type of Pacts being just as random as the other stats on gear, this adds another level of consideration of upgrading your armor — not just “is this combination of stats an improvement for me?” but also “will my Vampiric Powers remain activated if I swap to this new armor?” It’s possible that that new pair of gloves that just dropped is amazing for you, but if you equip it, two of your powers will turn off because you won’t have enough Pacts! Thankfully, unlike some other aspects of earning power in Diablo 4, some fairly easy farming of consumable items can allow you to fine-tune the Pact portion of your armor to your vampiric heart’s content.