Nightmare Dungeons are among the oldest endgame content to exist in Diablo 4, but thanks to War Plans, they have now become a very lucrative source of farming gear.
War Plans can help you spawn additional Elite monsters, reward extra chests on dungeon completion, and increase the chance of encountering Treasure Goblins. Let’s take a look at the different nodes and how to use them to earn higher rewards.
First, let’s take a look at the left side path, which focuses on providing extra rewards upon completion:
- Waking Spoils: This provides us with an extra War’s Bounty Chest upon dungeon completion, granting additional rewards.
- Gauntlet: This lets you trap the soul of any enemy you kill while you have a Shrine buff active. When the buff expires, all trapped souls are released, and you can kill them again for extra loot.
- Nemesis: This causes 7 Elites to ambush you when you activate a Shrine, which provides very strong synergy with the previous node, as the Elites can now be killed a second time for more rewards.
- Rewarded Faith: Grants an additional buff when activating a Shrine.
- Fearless Conviction: Killing Elites and Champions grants stacks of Convictions, while getting hit by them removes a stack. At the end of the dungeon, a Conviction Chest appears, which grants rewards for each remaining Conviction.
Our goal with this side of the tree is to kill as many Elite enemies as possible by utilizing Shrines and the respawn mechanic from the Gauntlet node to get as many stacks of Conviction as possible and open the chest at the end.
Next, the middle path, which focuses on Nightmare Escalation synergies:
- Dread Revival: This gives a small chance for the final Boss to revive when slain, providing extra loot.
- Recurring Nightmare: This increases the Monster Power of Bosses in Nightmare Dungeons by +1 while also giving them a chance to drop Escalation Sigils. Monster Power increases a Monster’s Life, Damage, Experience, and Rewards.
- Branching Pathways: This gives additional options when advancing to the next dungeon of a Nightmare Escalation, allowing us to customize our run and better suit our needs.
Nightmare Escalations are extremely rewarding, and this part of the War Plan tree helps us with further increasing their rewards, as well as making them more available by providing Sigils.
And lastly, the right side path, which increases the chance to encounter Treasure Goblins:
- Goblinfall: This gives Treasure Goblins a small chance to drop a Nightmare Sigil that has the Treasure Breach affix. Treasure Breaches are Nightmare Dungeons packed with Goblins. While they are extremely rare to find, they provide a great deal of loot and rewards.
- Horadric Hunter: Killing 20 Elites in Nightmare Dungeons reveals a Horadric Altar which, when activated, can summon Elites, Treasure Goblins, the Butcher, and more.
- Altar of Avarice: This makes Horadric Altar always summon Treasure Goblins, further empowering the Goblin synergies provided with this side of the tree.
- Cipher Maps: This causes two Horadric Altars to be revealed instead of one. This is a choice node with Altar of Avarice, so only one can be selected.
- Greed is Good: This gives a small chance to spawn a portal that takes you to the Goblin’s Retreat upon killing a Treasure Goblin. While this is extremely rare, the rewards can be massive.
Overall, the right side of the tree can be more RNG-dependent compared to the left side of the tree due to the low chance of Goblin and Goblin Portal spawns.
Whether you choose the safer and steadier strategy of spawning Elites and killing them for Conviction stacks on the left side of the tree, or the more random and wildly varying nature of Treasure Goblins, Nightmare Dungeons are sure to provide massive rewards.
