Masterworking is an endgame system that allows you to improve the quality of your gear. Special crafting material are used to apply Masterworking on your items at the Blacksmith. This system is extremely important at endgame and when trying to push through the hardest content in Diablo 4.
What is Masterworking?
Masterworking, like Tempering, is a crafting system that will upgrade the Quality of a piece of gear, which gives a bonus to the base damage, armor, or resistance of an item as well as any affixes on the item.
Each time you Masterwork an item at the Blacksmith, its Quality increases by a random amount between 2 and 5.
Each +1 Quality adds +1% to all affix values and +1% to the item’s base stats (weapon damage, armor, resistances). Quality has a maximum cap of 25.
Once an item reaches Quality 25, you can perform a final upgrade called a Capstone Bonus, which increases one random affix by +50%. This can apply to Regular affixes, Tempered affixes, or Greater Affixes. The boosted affix will be visually highlighted on the item.
You can Masterwork any Ancestral Legendary or Unique item. Unlike the old system, Tempering is NOT required to Masterwork.
How to Unlock Masterworking
Similar to Tempering, you will unlock Masterworking at the Blacksmith after you find the base material 
Obducite needed to improve an item through Masterworking.
How to Masterwork
In order to use this system, you will need specific materials that you can find by doing Nightmare Dungeons, Infernal Hordes, or Kurast Undercity, as well as gear that can be masterworked, such as tempered Ancestral Legendary items or Uniques.
Head to the Blacksmith, open the Masterworking tab, insert the gear item you want to improve, and then confirm the upgrade.
The upgrade will cost you:
- Gold
- Base materials such as:
- Unique crafting material found within Nightmare Dungeons:
As listed above, each Masterwork upgrade costs Gold, Obducite, and a small amount of legendary salvage materials. Furthermore, the amount of Obducite required scales with the current Quality of the item, so higher-quality items get increasingly expensive to upgrade.
How to Get Masterworking Materials
The unique crafting material needed for Masterworking can all be dropped in Nightmare Dungeons, Kurast Undercity, or in the Spoils of Materials at the end of the Infernal Hordes event.
After completing one of these endgame activities, you will be rewarded with Obducite.
We recommend farming Nightmare Dungeons for a decent amount of materials first before attempting to Masterwork, as well as making sure you are using your materials on a perfect or close-to-perfect item.
Masterworking Ranks
You can masterwork your item up to Quality 25 and give it a capstone bonus.
Any affix on the item will be improved by Masterworking, including Greater Affixes. Additionally, the Occultist can Enchant (reroll) these Masterworked affixes to a new affix with the same increased Quality rank. Moreover, re-tempered items will also retain their previously obtained Masterworking rank.
A Masterworking upgrade never fails. The material needed for Masterworking depends on the rank and the type of armor (armor, weapon, jewelry).
Obducite costs will now scale with Quality:
When your item reaches Quality 25, you unlock a final Masterwork option that applies a 50% bonus to a random affix. This final step costs a larger amount of Obducite and Gold compared to normal upgrades.
If you are unhappy with the affix that got boosted, you can reroll this Capstone bonus. Rerolling the Capstone uses a big chunk of Obducite, as well as 
Neathiron and Gold. Neathiron drops from late-game content such as World Bosses, Bartuc in Infernal Hordes, Astaroth in Escalation Dungeons, and Belial.
Can You Reset Masterworking?
Yes! Once an item has been fully improved through Masterworking, you have the possibility to reroll the Capstone Bonus on the piece of gear, but be aware that the materials used in the process will not be refunded. This can help if you are trying to go for a specific 50% roll on an affix.
Please note, you cannot reset Quality levels on the item.
The following items are required to reroll the masterworked Capstone Bonus:
- 1000 Obducite
- 1 Neathiron
- 1,000,000 Gold
