Hello, everyone. I hope you can upgrade items during the leveling process in Diablo 4 Season 4. The following information in this guide will be useful for you before you reach World Tier 4.

If you start to your endgame build tinkering, I will explain what tempering is and how to use it in the game. We will also discuss enchanting your gear.

When it comes to Tempering or Enchanting the gear you own, investing in Diablo 4 Gold will make your gear even more perfect.

And lastly, I will share with you my logic when it comes to the order of upgrading mechanics. Make sure to check out this last chapter of this passage so you don’t waste tons of gold in the process.

So let’s get into it.

How Tempering Works in Diablo 4?

First, what is tempering? Diablo 4 Season 4 changed a lot of stuff around the loot stats and upgrading items. One of such changes is the addition of tempering, which is a new system of upgrading your items.

Prior to Season 4, you would find loot with all the stats already available on the item. And then you would just change one single stat through the enchanting process and upgrade the item to make the stats higher.

In Season 4, however, you drop items with less amount of stats available on them than before. Rare items have 2 Affixes, 3 legendaries, and 4 Uniques but then you can add powerful Affixes on an item with tempering.

So what tempering does is basically add up to two new powerful affixes to item. However, before you reach World Tier 4 and start dropping in Ancestral item Rarity. You will be able to add only one Affixes.

The number of times you can temper an item is limited. And depends on Rarity of the item. Early items will have a limit of three attempts and then we have Ancestral items which drop at World Tier 4. And those allow us to temper 5 times. Important to note is that tempering can be done only for rare and legendary items.

Uniques cannot be tempered also bear in mind that when you roll tempered Affixes, you do not have an option to keep the old one. The new Affixes always override the old one. And so there is a risk factor here, especially when you are on your last temper attempt available.

So starting the tempering process, you have to go to Blacksmith and click the first tab. The process does not cost any gold but requires a couple of materials. You will get tons of necessary materials as you play the game.

I salvage most of my rares and Legendaries I also temper a lot so far. And I was never short on materials for tempering my gear. Whenever I wanted to change my stuff during the leveling process, besides materials, you also need manuals, which are a list of few stat outcomes for tempering.

One of the Affixes from the manual will be randomly added during the tempering process. You find manuals by just simply playing the game. They drop just like any other loot. These manuals have different Rarities. And these Rarities is impact the range of values of the stats available with the manual.

Basically, the higher Rarity of manual, the better the stats possible manuals are also split into six categories. And these categories work like categories of aspects. Every item type has different possible tempering categories. So for gloves, you can add a utility or offensive category. For pens, you have only defensive or utility categories and so on.

The good thing is that once you find the manual, it’s unlocked permanently. So you don’t need to search for it again and again, which is neat.

Enchanting in Diablo 4 Season 4

Now let’s briefly discuss enchanting your items. Enchanting is a process which modifies one Affixes available on your gear. To this process cannot change the row-based stats of item like damage dealt on weapons or base armor on gloves. Affixes to be changed are marked with dots and are located under this horizontal line.

To enchant your item, you need to go to the occultist and click on the fourth tab. Once you put the item you want to enchant, you can click the icon in the top right corner of enchanting window. To see the potential outcomes of the process. This is super useful to help you understand what stats you can actually get and what are the ranges.

When you enchant any item, you get three choices, two new stats and an option to retain the initial Affixes. The enchanting process takes few materials and a substantial amount of gold, the tricky case that every time you enchant the same item. The cost of the process increases, the price of gold can reach insane amounts. So be mindful of it.

Upgrading Gear Efficiently During Leveling

And let me explain the thought process I use for upgrading any item that I want to use. I think applying this logic may save you a lot of gold during the leveling process. Since we can modify our gear a lot in Season 4.

I look mainly for Legendary item drop with good base row power and two out of free stats that are fitting my build. I don’t care for Legendary Power since I can change it easily now with Codex of Power.

By the way, the aspects are now permanently unlocked when salvaging an item. And the highest value salvaged will be always available in a Codex of Power, not just the lowest base value like before.

I also don’t need perfect free out of free stats because I can swap out one Affixes with an enchanting process. I will always start the process of tinkering an item with tempering. This is because we have a limited number of tempering attempts and the stats available through the tempering process are particularly powerful for build crafting.

So if we don’t get the stat from the manual that we wanted with tempering, the item is potentially a bust. This is especially the case for weapons and other item types with offensive category manuals available on them. They are game changers for items, at least for my build.

So now let me give you a specific example to showcase this process. I am playing a Frozen Orb build with my Sorceress. Let’s say I found gloves that I want to use that have two good stats on them. First, I go to Blacksmith for tempering.

On gloves I can put stats from either utility or offensive category, I found a manual from offensive category called Frost Finesse which has amazing damage boost potential for my build. Especially cold damage and vulnerable damage are very good stats for me. Since Frozen Orb has a 40% chance to make enemies vulnerable and is, of course, cold-based skill.

So if I don’t manage to get either of these stats with tempering. I would not use those glows. Similarly to weapons, I want to get a specific stat in tempering that gives me a chance to cast Frozen Orb twice. So by not enchanting nor swapping Legendary Powers first. I potentially save a lot of gold on an item that I wouldn’t use, anyway. But let’s say, I get the tempering that I wanted.

I start with the enchanting process to try to get the first start on gloves to improve my build. In case I have bad luck and enchanting gets too expensive. I have done three options.

First, I can settle for the sub powerful stat. Next, I can just continue investing gold or I can just stick to gloves that I already have.

And lastly, if I get the stats that I wanted on the item. I swap the legendary power to the one I want. Modifying legendary powers should be done last. As it involves no RNG and it’s quite an expensive process to begin with.

These are my detailed instructions on how to do Tempering, Enchanting and Upgrading Gear in Diablo 4. I hope these are useful to you.