Less than 2 months after the successful release of long awaited Diablo 4, the first season of the game is on the rise : The Season of the Malignant! Similar to late Diablo 3 seasons, each Diablo 4 season delivers a special theme which let players a new mechanic to discover and play around.

The main mechanic is seeking out Malignant Monsters, which are corrupted Elites with specific affixes in the world. Once killed, these Partly Corrupted Monsters drop a Malignant Heart which stays on the ground for a few minutes. In order to cleanse the malignance out of it, the player must use the Cage of Binding device received from the Seasonal Questline (Burning from Within). This ritual spawn a powerful Fully Corrupted Monster alongside some minions for the player to defeat and once this is done, a Caged Heart will drop.

Caged Hearts are items that can be socketed into Jewelry slots (Rings & Amulet) and grants special powers whether it's offensive, defensive or a utility one. In higher World Tier difficulties, Malignant Monsters become more powerful but also drop better quality Malignant Hearts. Note that some Malignant Hearts can only drop in World Tier III or even IV difficulties.

All Jewelry will roll with an Infested Socket color, even when you add one to a piece of gear via the Jeweler. You can't control which color you get, so best of luck! In addition, Caged Hearts can NOT be unsocketed - you've been warned! You can replace them with a better one as you find stronger Hearts when leveling and progressing your character through higher difficulties. Don't worry, those lower level Hearts can still be useful, so don't sell them off to the vendor!

The Malignant Hearts are split into four categories, each with a corresponding color and unique keyword: Vicious (Orange, Offensive power), Brutal (Blue, Defensive power), Devious (Pink, Utility power), and Wrathful (Black, Super). Defeated Malignant Monsters will drop a Heart that corresponds to the monster’s color.

Below you’ll find a full list of each Malignant Heart broken out by Class. For this example, the stats you see reflect what a Level 20 character would receive as a drop. As your Seasonal character grows in Level, so too will the power of the Malignant Hearts that drop for them. Unless specified, the Heart can be acquired by playing in any World Tier in the Seasonal Realm.

As you encounter more menacing Malignant Creatures, so too will the strength of their Malignant Hearts grow. Any Heart that you don’t wish to keep can be salvaged at Cormond’s Wagon for Ichor of a corresponding color. Malignant Ichor is a resource that allows for the creation and upgrade of Malignant Hearts and can also be harvested from lesser Malignant Monsters. Salvaging each Vicious, Brutal, and Devious Heart will provide you with 5-15 Ichor, with Wrathful hearts providing 2-5 Ichor of all other Heart types.

Creating a random Heart of a specific type costs 35 Ichor of the other two primary-colored Hearts. Hence we got:

The Heart you receive is a random heart that scales with the Level of your character. The random Heart you create will always either be for your specific Class or Class-agnostic.

One of the best places to acquire Malignant Hearts are in the new Malignant Tunnels. These are highly replayable Dungeons teeming with fearsome foes to eradicate. Once inside you'll need to risk life and limb to defeat feral Malignant Monsters while navigating this dank system of tunnels.

There are 6 dungeons spread across Sanctuary that make up the Malignant Tunnel system. After putting mobs of Malignant Monsters down, you’ll find a room with a special event that contains two Outgrowths—one will always be Wrathful (Black) and the other will be a different Heart type depending on the dungeon.

Malignant Invokers are items that can either be crafted at Cormond’s Wagon or dropped randomly from monsters in Dungeons. Using Malignant Invokers, players can interact with Outgrowths of the same type, causing them to summon a Fully Corrupted enemy. If you can overcome the summoned foe, you’ll receive a Malignant Heart that matches the monster's type, allowing you to focus Malignant Hearts of the type you want.

Varshan the Consumed is a new boss to fight for Season 1. You can fight him at the end of the Seasonal Questline. His purpose is to end the seasonal questline and unlock the Invoker of Varshan that is used in Malignant Tunnels to open a door at the end of the dungeon to fight an Echo of Varshan. The Invoker of Varshan is consumed on use.

To fight this boss on higher difficulties, you need to use either a Foul (Tier 3) or Tormented (Tier 4) Invoker of Varshan. While the recipe for the default Invoker of Varshan is a reward from the seasonal questline, the Foul & Tormented versions of the recipe are dropped by Echo of Varshan himself (In World Tier 1 or 2 for the Foul one; In World Tier 3 for the Tormented one which unlocks the boss in World Tier 4).

Echo of Varshan is a good source of Caged Hearts, dropping on average 1.5 Caged Heart per kill and a decent amount of random Ichors to craft using Cormond's Wagon. He also drops 1-2 random items with a static Item Power, which is set to 800 in World Tier 4.

Written by Chewingnom & Dredscythe
Reviewed by Raxxanterax