Tempering Guide

The Tempering system enables players to customize their characters by adding powerful, build-defining affixes to their Legendary equipment. Legendary equipment can be given two Tempering Affixes, but Unique items cannot be Tempered. By using Tempering Manuals that are found randomly throughout the world of Diablo 4, players can learn Tempering Recipes that can be used unlimited times.

After selecting a piece of equipment, selecting the Tempering Recipe, and supplying the materials to a Blacksmith, a random Tempering Affix from the selected Tempering Recipe is rolled on the equipment. Players can reroll these Affixes up to 5 times if they are unhappy with the results. However, if you are lucky enough to find an item with a Greater Affix (GA), you can re-roll an item an additional time for each Greater Affix on the item.

The Tempering system makes use of new items called Tempering Manuals. Use a manual to permanently learn its Tempering Recipe. There is no limit to how many times players can reuse a recipe once they've learned it. Each Manual teaches a Recipe that contains between 3 to 5 different Tempering Affixes.

Tempering Manuals can drop from most content in-game. Players are likely to find these Manuals in Boss Rotations and Tree of Whispers caches. But they also have a high chance of frinding them from completing events and defeating monsters in Helltides, defeating world bosses, completing dungeons, Nightmare Dungeons, the Pit of Artificers, and other significant activities. Here's where they can be found:

• Magic quality Temper Manuals in Standard Difficulties.
• Rare quality Temper Manuals in Torment Difficulties.
• Legendary quality Temper Manuals in Torment Difficulties.

Tempering Manuals are class-bound (e.g., only Rogues will find Rogue Temper Manuals) when being discovered, and Tempering your equipment with another class' Tempering Manual will cause the tempering to be inactive on other classes. You cannot temper your equipment with, say, Cold Damage from a Sorcerer and use it on a Rogue.

The Tempering Manuals and Tempering Recipes are categorized similarly to Legendary Aspects in the Codex of Power (eg: Resource, Mobility, etc). Each of the six categories corresponds to a subset of item types:

• Weapons: Can only be applied to Weapons and Off-hand.
• Offensive: Can be applied to Amulets, Weapons, Off-hand, Rings and Gloves.
• Defensive: Can be applied to Amulets, Helms, Chest Armor, Pants, and Shield.
• Utility: Can be applied to Amulets, Boots, Gloves, Helms, Chest Armor, Pants, and Shield.
• Mobility: Can be applied to Amulets and Boots.
• Resource: Can be applied to Amulets and Rings.

Legendary items can have two Tempering Affixes, while Rare items can only have one. However, each Tempering Affix added to Legendary equipment must belong to a different category. For example, a Legendary Helm can have two Tempering Affixes, but one must be a Defensive Tempering Affix and the other must be a Utility Tempering Affix. Rearranging the above list, we can see the full list of compatible Recipe categories for each equipment type:

• Helms: Defensive and Utility
• Chest: Defensive and Utility
• Gloves: Offensive and Utility
• Pants: Defensive and Utility
• Boots: Mobility and Utility
• Amulets: Defensive, Utility, Offensive, Mobility and Resource
• Rings: Offensive and Resource
• Weapons: Offensive and Weapon
• Off-hand: Offensive and Weapon
• Shield: Defensive and Utility

The cost is based on the Item Power of the selected equipment. The more powerful the item, the more materials it requires. This cost is the same for all equipment types given that they are the same Item Power, but certain material like Baleful Fragments changes depending on the item type. For example, tempering an Ancestral Legendary piece of equipment has the following cost:

• 40 x Iron Chunks or Rawhides
• 15 x Veiled Crystals
• 2 x Baleful Fragments or Coiling Wards or Abstruse Sigils (depending on the item being Armor, Jewelry, or a Weapon/Off-hand
• 1 x Forgotten Soul

When tempering an item, a single Tempering Affix is picked randomly from the selected Recipe. This means that you are less likely to get the Tempering Affix you desire if the Recipe has a lot of options on it. Players can reroll Tempering Affixes multiple times, up to the item’s Tempering charge limit, a maximum of 5 times (or 8 times if the item has three Greater Affixes on it). Tempering doesn't allow you to keep the previous result so you should never try to get a better roll on good affix unless you're comfortable with bricking the item.

If you do brick an item, you have the possibility to use a Scroll of Restoration once on the item. This ONLY restores your Tempering Charges, allowing you more attempts to get the Affix you desire within the same Tempering Cathegory previously applied on the item. You can obtain this powerful scroll from the Dark Citadel and the equipment chest at the end of the Infernal Hordes. This scroll can only be used if all Tempering Charges has been spent, and you can check if a scroll has been previously applied to an item by using the Scroll before all charges has been depleted:

• The error message "Scroll of Restoration cannot be used on this item until all Tempering Charges have been used." is shown if you can restore the Tempering Charges on the item.
• The error message "Scroll of Restoration has already been used on this item" is shown if you have already restored the charges on the item.

These error messages can only be seen if you have the "Error Notifications" option turned on under Options > Gameplay > Error Notifications.

Players would be wise to anticipate that they won't get exactly the affixes they want, especially if the recipes contain a large number of affixes. An otherwise perfect item can be "bricked" by the process of rerolling Tempering Affixes if the player has bad luck. For example, if a player wants one affix from a recipe with 4 affixes, and another affix from a recipe with 5 affixes, there is only a 49% chance of getting both acceptable affixes using 5 or fewer rerolls.

For that reason, it is advisable for players to pick at least 1 recipe that has a very low number of affixes, or multiple acceptable affixes. For example, if a player would be happy with either of two affixes from a recipe with 2 affixes, and 2 other affixes from a recipe with 3 possible affixes, there is a 99.9% chance of being satisfied with the results after using 5 or fewer rerolls.

Summary

• The Tempering system enables players to customize their characters by adding powerful, build-defining affixes to their equipment.
• Players learn Tempering Recipes from Tempering Manuals found randomly throughout their journeys.
• Rare items can have 1 Tempering Affix added to them, Legendary equipment can have two Tempering Affixes, and Unique items cannot be Tempered.
• The Tempering menu can be accessed at a Blacksmith.
• After selecting an item and a recipe and supplying the materials, a random Tempering Affix is picked from the selected Tempering Recipe and added to the selected equipment.
• Players can reroll Tempering Affixes up to 5 times if they are unhappy with the results, with an additional re-roll allowed per each Greater Affix on the item.
• You can obtain Scroll of Restoration from the Dark Citadel and the equipment chest at the end of the Infernal Hordes.

Credits

Written by Avarilyn