Infernal Hordes – First Week Impressions

Hello there! It's time to talk Infernal Hordes, the new game mode introduced in Season 5. It's been a little over a week since season started and we, the Maxroll Diablo 4 Team, are eager to share our findings, impressions, and little tips related to the Hordes so that you can make the most out of it!

Are Infernal Hordes Good?

Yes. In fact, Infernal Hordes are too good. To the point that several other end-game activites such as The Pit and partially Whispers are not even worth doing. So what exactly are they good for?

Low tier Infernal Hordes

Low tier Infernal Hordes are very good for leveling. You get a ton of monsters to kill, you don't need to go anywhere and you can easily adjust their level (by changing the tier) to be exactly what you need for optimal EXP. On top of that you get a whole bunch of items at the end of it so your gear always stays up to date.

High tier Infernal Hordes

High tier Infernal Hordes provide ridiculous amounts of rewards from Spoils of Hell. All three types of chests (Items, Materials and Gold) are the best sources of it in the game:

• Items are about twice as good as Helltide.
• Gold is roughly 20x as good as Whispers.
• Materials are 3x as good as The Pit.

The only resource you don't get from Infernal Hordes are the Boss Summoning Materials which are needed to farm specific Uniques. If you have all Uniques you need for your build, then it's just Hordes all day every day.

What tier of Infernal Hordes is best to farm?

For leveling purposes, the answer is very simple: just pick the highest tier you can handle out of the first 4. Always prioritize kill speed over hihger monster level as long as they are higher level than you.

For endgame farming, it gets a little more complicated. First you need to follow the #1 rule of farming Infernal Hordes: NO RISK. Like in Nightmare Dungeons, you can revive a limited amount of times in an Infernal Hordes run. If you die with 0 revive left, your run is over and you get no rewards.

Unlike Nightmare Dungeons however, Infernal Hordes always take a long time to finish, regardless of how strong and fast your build is. And the most dangerous part of Infernal Hordes is at the very end of the run - the fight against the Fell Council. If you die in this fight you effectively waste the entire 15 minutes you spent to get to that point. Needless to say, that would make any type of farming very inefficient, so above everything else you should pick a tier where you are very safe. If you die more than once every 3 runs, you should probably farm a lower tier.

Rewards from Spoils of Hell grow steadily with each tier:

• Tier 5: 2,000,000 Gold or 20 Masterwork Materials
• Tier 6: 2,300,000 Gold or 23 Masterwork Materials
• Tier 7: 2,500,000 Gold or 25 Masterwork Materials
• Tier 8: 3,000,000 Gold or 30 Masterwork Materials

However, there's a huge jump between tiers 6 and 7, specifically when it comes the to materials chest. The masterworking materials you get there change from Ingolith to Neathiron. Since the latter is 3x more valuable, effectively that means your material payout goes up from 23 to 75! This is the point where Infernal Hordes go from being slightly worse than The Pit to significantly better. You also get significanlty higher chance to drop Stygian Stones from Materials chest in tier 7+. Going from tier 6 to tier 7 while farming materials is the only point where you can break rule one, because you will still get more mats, even if you fail every other run.

In comparison, the jump from tier 7 to 8 is nowhere near as big. You get 20% more rewards and you get slightly more Burning Aether because it has 1 more wave. But if this significanlty lowers your kill speed, then you end up getting less Aether for more time spent and your efficiency plummets. In most cases, you should be farming tier 7 for maximum efficiency. Tier 8 is only good for fully-optimized characters and/or overpowered builds.

How do I get that Aether?

Apart from the obvious advice of "Kill everything you see as fast as possible", there's one more part of Infernal Hordes that requires some strategy - Infernal Offers. Picking the right Infernal Offers can be very complicated and build-dependent. J/k, you just go for Hellborne every time. Hellborne and their upgrades are ridiculously overpowered and should be prioritized over everything else. Follow this simple list to maximize your Burning Aether Gains:

• Pick these above everything else
  • Summoned Hellborne - lets you fight Hellborne in the first place
  • Surging Hellborne - dramatically increases the payout each time you trigger Hellborne
• These are very good
  • Exalted Hellborne - increases the payout each time you trigger Hellborne
  • Exalted Hordes - increases the number of events you can trigger each wave
  • Invigorating Hellborne - gives you a massive buff that helps you kill enemies faster. If you're oneshotting every enemy and don't need any buffs, still pick this because it makes Hellborne more likely to spawn on the next wave.
• Avoid these like the plague
  • Summoned Lords and Teeming Masses - only worth it if you can kill all the bosses in less than 5 seconds (which probably means you should farm higher tier). When bosses are present on the field, the spawn rate of normal mobs goes down dramatically, meaning you trigger less events and thus get less Aether.
  • Stalking Devil - 25 Aether seems like a decent reward but he has the same problem as Aether lords, on top of being one-time event. In earlier waves, even something as unimpressive as +1 to Aether Masses will net your more Aether. Not to mention that The Butcher is very dangerous and can easily kill you.
• For the rest of choices, just pick whatever promises the most Aether. These won't make a significant impact on your run.

How to survive?

By far the most dangerous enemy in the Infernal Hordes that can end your run or even your character (in hardcore) is the Desecrator Aether Fiend. It's one of the two possible types of "large" Aether Fiends that can appear at the start before you begin wave 1 and from the Aether Fiend event spawns. They frequently use a slam that sends out a trio of fireballs that do massive amounts of damage. Whenever you engage one of these, pay special attention to their fireball attack and try to side-step, evade or immune it.

Aside from Desecrators, you can be in danger from crowd control of regular enemies if your build doesn't have great Unstoppable uptime. Enemies like Knights that knock you around or cold-infused Corpse Bows that freeze you in a few shots are the most noteworthy enemies here. If you can, include a frequent source of Unstoppable in your setup in order to reduce the frustration with these types of enemies.

Video Guide

Summary

Infermal Hordes are fun and sliiiiightly overpowered way to farm Items, Gold, and Materials. Generally, you should work on getting to tier 7, as tier 8 doesn't offer significantly more rewards. Pick the right Infernal Offerings and stack up that Burnig Aether!

• Pick Hellborne
• Slay Hellborne
• ???
• Profit!

Season 5 Updates

We hope you enjoy the Season of the Infernal Hordes with the aid of our guides. The Maxroll Diablo Team is always monitoring Diablo 4 and Season 5 metagame to bring you the most updated content and build guides. Our focus for the start of Season 5 is to make sure our Build Guides are solid with all the new Item updates and crafting changes. We're continuing to work on more updates for D4Planner!

With that said, head over to our Discord to stay up to date with our content development and to make the most of your Season 5 experience! Also don't forget to check out our Youtube channel!

Written by: Northwar
Reviewed by: Chewingnom