Diablo 4 Tempering is about using Temper Manuals and crafting materials to add specific affixes to Rare and Legendary gear with a certain degree of randomness. This system debuted in season four, and you can start using it as soon as you find a Blacksmith. Here’s our guide to it.
What is Tempering in Diablo 4 season four?
Tempering is the process of adding a Temper Manual’s stat affix to a gear piece at random in the Blacksmith during Diablo 4‘s season four. When you select your gear piece and your Temper Manual, the game will randomly select one of the Manual’s affixes and add it to your gear within its value range.
For example, if you’re using a Natural Resistance Temper Manual with Magic rarity on a Helmet, the Tempering process will randomly choose one of the five elemental resistance affixes from the Manual to add to your gear, and the final percentage value will be within the Manual’s range of 36.5 to 50 percent. So your result could be something like +42 percent Fire Resistance, or it could be +37.5 percent Poison Resistance. Rare and Legendary gear can only get one Tempering affix, with the exception of Ancestral Legendaries, which can get two Tempering affixes from different manuals. You can’t temper Common, Magic, or Unique items.
If you don’t get a stat affix you want from the Manual, you can Temper the item again up to its Tempers limit, usually between three and five. A gear with exhausted Tempers will keep the last Tempered affix forever.
How to use Tempering in your Diablo 4 season four gear
You need to talk to a Blacksmith in any major city in Diablo 4 season four to use Tempering in your gear. It’s unlocked by default, and you can start using Tempering as soon as you get any Temper Manual. Once you select the gear and the Temper Manual to use, you have to pay the material cost, usually Crafting Materials, to start the process above.
Temper Manuals come in six categories and have restrictions to what kind of gear piece they can be used on. These types and restrictions are:
| Temper Manual category | Compatible with |
|---|---|
| Weapons | Any weapon |
| Offensive | Amulets, Weapons, Gloves, and Rings |
| Defensive | Shields, Helmets, Armor, Pants, and Amulets |
| Utility | Shields, Helmets, Armor, Pants, Amulets, Gloves, and Boots |
| Mobility | Boots and Amulets |
| Resource | Amulets and Rings |
How to get Temper Manuals and Recipes in Diablo 4 season four
You can get Temper Manuals in the Helltides as drops from chests and mobs, as well as from Dungeons, The Pit, and pretty much any endgame content in Diablo 4 season four. The higher your World Tier and the difficulty of the content you’re completing, the more likely you are to drop a Legendary Temper Manual, which offers the best stat ranges of that type of Manual.
You can consume the Temper Manual to learn its Tempering Recipe, which will be added to your Codex of Power to be used indefinitely in the Blacksmith.
What gear should you temper in Diablo 4 season four?
In Diablo 4 season four, Temper every gear piece you use as soon as possible before Masterworking, imprinting Aspects, or slotting Gems, and use Manuals with the affixes that best suit your build. Since Temper Manuals are in your Codex of Power, they are permanent and never consumed, so you can use them an infinite number of times as long as you have the Crafting Materials to do so, often Veiled Crystals for Rare gear. On your leveling to 100, I recommend you upgrade all your gear pieces with Tempering whenever you stop by a major city with a Blacksmith. This way, you can get massive stat boosts that will make you stronger without even leveling up.
As you start dropping better gear in the endgame, such as Uniques and Uber Uniques, be more careful about what you Temper and which Temper Manuals you use. That’s because every piece of gear has a limit on how many times you can Temper or reroll it. If you don’t hit the affix you want, you may brick your item and not be able to change that bad affix ever, ruining your gear optimization for good.
When you drop items that are the cornerstone of your endgame build, make sure you only use Tempering on them when you have the Legendary Temper Manual of the affix you want to add to it. Otherwise, hold off on Tempering until you get the Legendary version.
