Diablo 3 Holiday Event Guide

Blizzard just released a brand new Diablo 3 Holiday Event that bestows Holiday Gifts upon us until February 5, 11:00 a.m. PST. This is a golden opportunity to find the rarest Pets, Wings & Transmogs in the game while simultaneously powering up your character with Bounty Materials! This guide covers everything you need to know to bring the most elusive treasures to your account before Diablo 4 arrives. Let's jump in!

Holiday Gift Basics

Holiday Gifts have been stolen across the Diablo 3 Realm by Treasure Goblins and Greater Rift Guardians that we need to recover. Greater Rift Guardians have a much higher chance to drop them than the Goblins. Here is what you receive from any recovered Holiday Gifts:

Each Holiday Gift always contains the following items:

Each Holiday Gift could also contain one of the following items:

Holiday Gift Drop Rates & Loot Chances

The first piece of good news is any Goblin can drop a Holiday Gift, including those inside a Vault spawned by a Puzzle Ring. This is our best option in finding them by far. Take note that only Greater Rift Guardians can drop a Holiday Gift, meaning you won't get one from the Bosses in T16 Key Farming. In our findings, the difficulty level (Normal through Torment 16) and the Greater Rift Levels had no impacts on how many Holiday Gifts drop. Finally the drops can occur in any version of the game: Seasonal, Non-Season, Hardcore or Softcore.

While we are not 100% sure on the drop rates, after 60 runs of each this is our best guess:

Goblin Drop Chance: ~6.7% or 1 in 15.
Greater Rift Guardian Drop Chance: ~50% or 1 in 2.

Then comes the real question: when a Holiday Gift Drops, what are the odds to get the Pets, Wings & Transmogs? We can say for sure that the Transmogs are the most common, followed by the Pets, with the rarest by far being the 2 Wings. Taking a wild guess at the drop rates looks something like this:

Transmogs: ~10% or 1 in 10.
Pets: ~5% or ~1 in 20.
Wings: ~.1% or 1 in 1,000.

Holiday Gift Farming Strategies

Now that we know how Holiday Gifts drop, we can develop a few strategies to maximize our profits:

Strategy 1: Share Ancient Puzzle Rings. (Best Option)

This is the best way to acquire Holiday Gifts, especially in Seasonal play. Gather your friends (and every Level 70 Puzzle Ring you can find) and Sanctify them using Angelic Crucibles. These will open an Ancient Vault with many Goblins to slaughter. Depending on the density you should walk away with about 1.5 Holiday Gifts per person per run. Some have reported getting up to 6 Gifts in a single clear!

Strategy 2: Detonate Greater Rift Level 2.

You're probably wondering why we don't tell you to farm Level 1? Well they are are equally easy to obliterate, but for some annoying reason the Greater Rift Obelisk won't remember your previous selection if you select GR 1. Picking GR 2 solves this problem and leads to very easy clears. Use any build with insane movement speed, like the ones on our T16 Tier List. Focus on sub 60 second clears to maximize Holiday Gift drop rates. The downsides to this strategy are it devours your keys quickly, and you won't gain any meaningful XP or items from it.

Strategy 3: Efficiently Farm Higher Greater Rifts.

Last but not least we have the trusty-old method for farming everything else in the game: efficiently farming higher Greater Rifts. This focuses on 1.5-3 minute runs depending on your build of choice, but also gains you massive XP, items and Blood Shards. Remember that every Puzzle Ring you gamble for or find can be used in the best strategy at the top, so the value here is quite high. Choose any build from our Solo XP Tier list and start blasting!

Video Guide

Summary

• Holiday Gifts drop from Goblins and Greater Rift Guardians until February 5th.
• They contain always Bounty Materials and Crafting Mats, and rarely contain Pets, Wings and Transmogs.
• This is one of the only events ever to get the rare Falcon & Cosmic Wings!
• The best strategy to farm them is to Sanctify Puzzle Rings and share them with friends.
• When you run out of Puzzle Rings, either detonate GR 2 in 60 seconds or a higher GR in under 3 minutes.
• Enjoy all the rare loot you could never find before with Diablo 4 on the horizon!

Credits

Written by Raxxanterax.
Reviewed by wudijo.