How to conquer the revamped Helltide in Diablo 4 Season 4

Diablo 4 Season 4: Loot Reborn is now live, and part of its patch 1.4.0 involved a significant glow-up for the hourly Helltide event. Helltides have been progressively improving since the game launched, and they no longer resemble the launch versions’s confusing chaos of rotating mystery chest locations every two hours.  Today, Helltides are up (almost) all the time, and patch 1.4.0 introduced some new features — inspired by Season 2’s Blood Harvests — that turn an already profitable event into your very own loot pinata.

Here are our tips and tricks for making the most out of the revamped Helltides in Diablo 4 Season 4.

Changes to Helltides in patch 1.4.0

The Helltide information block in the top-right of your screen has a few new pieces of information. Instead of only tracking the Helltide timer and your Aberrant Cinders, you’ll also see Baneful Hearts and Helltide Threat.

The hearts are used at Accursed Ritual sites to summon waves of demons and spawn a Blood Maiden (more on this in a bit). Helltide Threat mimics Season 2’s Blood Harvests: you become more interesting to the armies of Hell as you murder swathes of demons and open Tortured Gifts. The three threat tiers in the meter indicate progressively higher monster density and difficulty.

Max out your threat meter and you’re Hell-Marked — the threat meter begins draining as you’re assaulted by waves of demons and finally, a Hellborn. The Hellborn is “one of Sanctuary’s most formidable fallen warriors, now an immensely powerful agent of Hell” — an embodiment of one of D4‘s classes. Your threat fully resets either when the Hellborn spawns or if the waves of mobs kill you.

And never fear — unlike Cinders, your threat level and Baneful Hearts persist between Helltides.

Helltides are a great way to level

Helltides are now available immediately on World Tiers 1 and 2 (though you have to complete the or skip campaign first). They’re amazing for leveling from level 1, whether you’re on an Eternal or Seasonal realm. These scaled down versions have no wandering Helltide bosses and only spawn Tortured Gifts of Mystery (available for 100 Cinders), but the gifts provide solid gear upgrades and 100 Wolf’s Honor on the Seasonal realm. You’re slowing yourself down if you do not participate — particularly on the seasonal realm, where you’ll need to run a lot of Helltides to finish the Season Journey.

That Wolf’s Honor is also important for Seasonal players because Helltides are integrated into the Season 4 Wolf’s Honor questline with the Iron Wolves. There are 18 reward ranks for the Wolf’s Honor rep, and you can check your current status with Soudeh the Anvil at the Iron Wolves Encampment in Kehjistan. Killing Helltide enemies, participating in events, and completing Tree of Whispers quests grant you varying levels of rep for the Iron Wolves. Whisper events in Helltides grant one to three Grim Favor and are tied into Helltide activities, such as:

• Assisting Ironwolves
• Opening Tortured Gifts
• Disrupting Cultist Rituals
• Slaying Harbingers, Hellborne, or hundreds of demons.

New Helltide event: Accursed Rituals

Accursed Rituals shows up as a demon skull with a broken horn on the world map. The rituals call to mind the Sanguine Altars of Season 2’s Blood Harvests and Braziers of Season 3’s Arcane Tremors. Accursed Rituals are where you use all those Baneful Hearts you’ve been collecting from Tortured Gifts and Hellborn enemies throughout the Helltide.

Use a Baneful Heart at each of the three altars to trigger the event; it kicks off with a waves of enemies spawning to try and end your interference and ends with the Blood Maiden spawning. Blood Maidens are quite strong and will summon other Hellborn to their assistance, but drop pretty fantastic loot if you take them down. You’ll receive additional rewards if you use a Baneful Heart to initiate the event, which is a nice bonus for contributing instead of arriving to soak the spawns of others.

Seasonal consumables

Helltide now comes with some interesting consumables to support it. There are two rare-quality Seasonal elixirs which last for 15 minutes and increase XP gain by 6% (instead of the standard 5%) in addition to their unique buffs. These have a chance to drop from the very beginning:

• Elixir of Momentum — After killing an enemy, increase Movement Speed by 3% for 5 seconds, stacking up to 15 times.
• Elixir of Holy Bolts — After killing an enemy, holy bolts fire from the corpse of that enemy.

Additionally, if the Helltide just feels too easy for you, keep your eyes peeled for the Profane Mindcage (which are a guaranteed drop after killing Hellborne). The Profane Mindcage is technically an elixir (just ignore that creepy brain icon) and lasts for an hour. Instead of directly providing an experience boost, the Profane Mindcage increases the level of Helltide Monsters by 10 and boosts both Aberrant Cinder drop rates and threat gain. Monsters at WT1 and WT2 are capped at level 50, so make sure to save them during those last few levels before World Tier 3.

The Profane Mindcage is unique for Season 4: Loot Reborn, so you can’t collect them and keep the bonus up indefinitely.

Tips for Helltide success

While the Helltide is a general free-for-all event, you may develop a preferred order of completing activities. We came up with the following during our first days of leveling:

1. Kill demons (especially if a surprise Hellsworm pops up and spews a wave at you — it’s excellent mob density) and participate in all events (both local events and Helltide-specific like the Accursed Rituals) for a slew of Aberrant Cinders and Baneful Hearts.
2. Use your Cinders as they accrue — every 100 in WT1 or WT2, find a Tortured Gift of Mysteries and crack it open. They do not persist between events (unlike the Hearts).
3. Use Tempering Manuals to learn them as they drop — they will take up precious bag space!
4. Do a normal gear scrapping run as your bags fill up — remember, magical (blue) and rare (yellow) items now have fewer stat affixes. Early on you’ll want this gear but keep your eyes peeled for legendary drops.
5. When you finish a season journey chapter or get a rep level with the Wolves, immediately grab the reward cache! It’s worth doing this to check out the legendary and unique gear you’ll receive rather than pawing through drops.

Folks, I hit 50 on my Necromancer after what was maybe 10 hours of casual gameplay — 90% of which was Helltide and the associated Iron Wolf mercenary questline. It’s pretty absurd how quickly this scoots you along the first half of the game and into endgame farming of Paragon points and glyph leveling.

And these changes here to stay on both Seasonal and Eternal servers (at least until we see a nerf), so dive in now and enjoy. Happy hunting!

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