Diablo 4 Tempering Guide: Everything you need to know (2024)

Introduced in Diablo 4’s Season 4, Tempering is a crafting mechanic that provides a ton of character power. This guide breaks down the system and the best ways to use it.

What is Tempering

Tempering is a crafting system in Diablo 4 that allows you to augment any Rare or Legendary item with a Tempered Affix. All Rare and Legendary items can be given one Tempered Affix, except for Ancestral Legendaries which can have up to two Tempered Affixes instead.

Applying these Tempered Affixes requires the use of a Tempering Manual, in addition to some resources, and can be done at any Blacksmith.

How to Unlock Tempering

We’ll be able to unlock Tempering as soon as we reach Kyovashad for the first time. This will be the same, regardless of whether we skip the campaign.

We’ll get our first Tempering Manual from a chest next to the Blacksmith in Kyovashad, and with that, we’ll be able to Temper any time we have the resources to do so. This is only a Magic Rarity Tempering Manual that grants an assortment of generic Damage Affixes.

Tempering Manuals

Tempering Manuals are the heart of the Tempering system, with a variety of generic and Class-specific Affixes grouped to better suit specific builds or archetypes for a given class. These are permanently learned recipes, with higher rarity Tempering Manuals replacing lower tiers.

These drop in a variety of content as Tempering Manuals will often drop from defeating Elite Enemies. However, once in World Tiers 3 and 4, Nightmare Dungeons and the Boss Ladder become much more reliable sources of them.

Tempering Manual Rarities

Tempering Manuals come in three rarities: Magic, Rare, and Legendary. Magic and Rare Tempering Manuals will be seen more often in World Tiers 1 and 2, while Legendary Tempering manuals become available in World Tiers 3 and 4.

A Tempering Manual’s rarity influences how powerful the affix it applies will be. For example, below is the difference between the three rarities of the first Tempering Manual we get, Natural Finesse.

It’s worth noting that many affixes have ranges that overlap slightly. This does slightly alleviate any immediate need to upgrade if you high-roll the previous tier but doesn’t do much else.

Tempering Categories

Much like Legendary Aspects, Tempering Manuals also have categories applied to them, which influences which gear pieces they can be applied to. In this case, they fall into 6 Categories: Defense, Mobility, Offense, Resource, Utility, or Weapon.

Each category is straightforward about what it offers, but here’s a quick way to remember what each does.

• Defensive improves survivability. (Life, Resists, Armor)
• Mobility helps us get around. (Movement Speed, CDR for Mobility Skills)
• Offensive improves damage.
• Resource affects Resource Cost or Generation.
• Utility provides bonuses to utility skills or Lucky Hit effects.
• Weapon modifies the behavior of various skills.

Each of these has restrictions as to which slots it can be applied. Below is a table for quick reference regarding which categories can be used for each item slot.

How to Temper Your Items

Now that we’ve covered what Tempering does and what is needed to perform Tempering, let’s go into the process and the best ways to use it.

Once you’ve collected your desired Tempering Manual it’s time to apply it to an item. We’ll start by heading to the Blacksmith, and opening the Tempering UI.

Once placing your item in, the categories below will light up to indicate which categories of Tempered Affixes can be applied. We’ll need to select one of the Categories, which will greet us with a list of our available Manuals.

Once selected, we’ll be able to press the Temper Item button and it will apply one of the stats from the manual, chosen at random.

From here, if we don’t get the result we wanted, we can choose to re-roll it. Re-rolling a Temper can only be done a maximum of five times per item. This re-roll is also random and does not guarantee a new affix.

While this system does make the min-max, keep in mind this is always the first step of crafting and provides the most character power.

For more information on crafting, check out our Diablo 4 Crafting Guide. This guide breaks down the crafting process and the best way to utilize them as a cohesive package.

Best Uses of the Tempering System

Tempering without a doubt grants the most character power of any crafting system in Diablo 4. This leaves the obvious question, “What are the best ways to use it at every stage of the game?”

How to use Tampering in Early to Mid-Game

The early leveling process in Diablo 4 is faster than ever thanks to the Tempering System. It gives very early and easy access to not only damage boosts but mobility and defensive bonuses as well.

While it may be unlikely to see many variations of the lower-end Tempering Manuals, there are a couple that are incredibly helpful if we luck into find them. Alternatively, the Legendary Variations of these will be great for making multiple characters. We’ll want to hope we find Natural Motion, Natural Resistance, and Worldly Endurance as soon as we can.

Natural Motion is exceptionally good for the Mobility it provides, giving easy access to both Movement Speed and Mobility Skill Cooldown Reduction. Natural Resistance allows us to easily fill gaps in our Resistances that our Rings and Gems don’t cover. Wordly Endurance is similarly great for boosting our Maximum Life as well as Armor.

These in addition to the Natural Finesse we can pick up near the Blacksmith in Kyovashad give every class what they need to not only survive but deal plenty of damage.

How to use Tampering in Late to Endgame

Once we reach World Tier 3 and 4, we’ll start getting access to the Legendary version of the Tempering Manuals. As a result, this is when we get the most power from the system.

In particular, we’ll want to be on the hunt for the Tempering Manuals that support the build we’re playing. Any build that can make use of a Chance for Projectiles to Cast Twice or Skill Size Tempered Affix absolutely should. These alone can drastically boost the skills that have them.

In addition to this, all of the Tempered Affixes mentioned in the section above for boosting our defenses also become much stronger. Worldly Endurance in particular gets exceptionally strong, giving large chunks of Maximum Life and Armor.

Tempered Affixes get even better in World Tier 4, as Ancestral Legendary Items get to have two of them. This removes a lot of the choice of which particular category of Tempered Affix we want to put on the item, as most items only have two to begin with. We’ll still need to choose what we want from each category, but typically that’s not a hard choice.

This often just means stacking Maximum Life, and capping out on Armor and Resistance with the extra slots. In most cases, however, we’ll just be adding Utility second which can range from effects like Skill Charges, Skill Cooldown, or Skill Size.

With that, That’s erything about the Tempering System in Diablo 4.