In Diablo 4 Season 4, one of the major highlights introduced is the tormented bosses, which are torment versions of all the Uber bosses. These bosses offer greater rewards and present more challenging encounters. However, to summon these tormented bosses, players need Stygian Stones, which can enhance the excitement of the boss fight.
How To Obtain?
When it comes to obtain Stygian Stones, there are a few ways available. You can obtain a handful through the season journey, specifically in the last two chapters, which reward a total of 11 Stygian Stones. Completing Iron Wolves Reputation grind up to Level 18 can give you 4 Stygian Stones. However, this process is time-consuming and not very efficient for farming Stygian Stones.
Players may gather around 1 and a half to 2 dozen of Stygian Stones through regular gameplay. After exhausting these initial sources, players are left with grinding the Pit, where the issue becomes apparent. Although expectations of Stygian Stones dropping deep in the Pit, they're elusive.
Even after extensive grinding, Stones are scarce, with drop rates seemingly inconsistent across different Pit levels. While some players report finding Stygian Stones as early as Pit Level 50, others, like myself, have had no luck below Level 61. The drop rate doesn't seem to scale significantly with higher Pit levels.
The rarity of Stygian Stones is a significant obstacle, hindering players from accessing tormented bosses as intended. The discrepancy between drop rates for Stygian Stones compared to other boss materials exacerbates the issue, leaving players questioning the intended design and seeking alternative methods to acquire these elusive resources.
Low Drop Rate
The drop rate for Stygian Stones in the Pit seems to be extremely low, roughly around 2% per time, equating to about a one in 50 drop rate. After countless runs, players like myself have only obtained a handful of these Stones, contrasting sharply with the abundance of other boss materials obtained from similar efforts.
The introduction of tormented bosses was intended to ease the pain of repeatedly farming lower-level bosses like Varshan or Duriel. Despite the promise of enhanced loot from tormented bosses, the reality is disappointing. These tormented bosses don't yield more materials, making them less appealing compared to their normal counterparts.
There is a noticeable difference in the drop rates between tormented bosses and regular Bosses. While larger bosses like Andariel and Duriel boast a 2% drop rate for Uber , smaller bosses only offer a meager 0.5% drop rate in normal versions. Even when multiplied by 5 for tormented versions, it only amounts to a 2.5% drop rate. This disparity undermines the notion of equal difficulty among tormented bosses deserves the developer's attention.
The rarity of Stygian Stone creates a significant obstacle to our intended access to tormented bosses. Rectifying this issue and ensuring equitable drop rates across boss encounters would enhance the gameplay experience and promote diversity in boss farming strategies.
Boss Farming
For now, I can only recommend focusing on farming Uber bosses as much as possible with those Stygian Stones if you have any. It seems to be the safest in terms of Uber Unique drops, and the encounter is relatively easy compared to some of the others. However, you don't really want to farm Grigoire because of the lower drop rates and potential issues with materials. Instead, you should focus on farming Duriel as much as possible.
That being said, the tormented versions are also a good way to obtain level 925 unique drops. However, with the changes to item power and the availability of 925 loot, it's not as critical as it was in the past. Tormented Grigoire versus normal Grigoire might give you an edge in terms of getting certain weapons, but it's not a significant concern anymore.
Greater Affixes
There's also another very strange phenomenon that maybe you have not noticed yet or heard yet. Every time you defeat one of those bosses on the boss ladder, the Unique that drops cannot have Greater Affixes. At least, I have not gotten a single item that has a Greater Affix that is unique from those bosses. But the normal , all these like Tibault's Will, Flickersteps and X'Fal rings, they all have zero Greater Affixes.
So, that may be intended because the bosses are kind of like the easy way to get your build going, to get those that you may want for your build, but they just don't have Greater Affixes. This is kind of strange, so you can't really go find them and try to hope for like a really big drop or something like that.
Final Thought
I must express some disappointment in how low the Stygian Stone drop rate is. I expected to obtain more, not necessarily every run in the Pit. Especially when compared to the abundance of other boss materials dropping. It's impossible to catch up to those materials with Stygian Stones. This means I'll always have to go back and farm the low-level versions repeatedly, which is tedious and inefficient.
I hope that Blizzard will reconsider this and buff the Stygian Stone drop rate, as well as the drop rates of all the tormented versions, to the same level. This would allow us to farm any of them and obtain Uber Uniques, as well as potentially acquire any other we may want from those bosses. Currently, it seems pointless to do anything besides boss farming, as it's easier and more rewarding than the other tormented bosses. This imbalance needs to be addressed.
