Season 4 is bringing a massive amount of change to Diablo 4. One of the big additions is the new permanent Greater Rift activity, similar to Season 2’s Abattoir of Zir.
What Is the Artificer’s Pit?
The Pit is pretty much what you’d expect with a Greater Rift-type activity. It’s a timed randomized multi-level dungeon, with a boss spawn when you kill enough enemies. Deaths cost you time (30 seconds). You can also fail to summon the boss and finish the Pit. If you fail to meet the timer you will still get rewards, just not the Mastery rewards, which tie in to the new masterworking system (which we talk about later in this article).
After completing a Tier 45 Nightmare Dungeon, players will get a quest and start receiving Rune Shards. This material will drop pretty much everywhere and will be needed to open up the Artificer’s Pit. This will be done at the Artificer’s Obelisk in Cerrigar, very similarly to how Rifts work in Diablo 3.
Rewards and Masterworking
Aside from the usual loot, the Pit will also drop Stygian Stones, which are materials required to summon more powerful versions of Uber Bosses (Duriel, Lord Zir etc.), called Tormented bosses, which are level 200. It will also be your main source of masterwork materials (Obducite, Ingolith and Neathiron). You will need to reach higher ranks in the Pit to be able to fully masterwork your items.
Masterworking is a new feature being added in Season 4, and it is used to improve your gear. Each piece of gear will have 12 upgrade levels. Each level will slightly improve all affixes on an item, and every 4 levels one specific affix will get a big upgrade.
This endgame activity will be added to Eternal realms as well, and on Seasonal realms will be in addition to the new Seasonal activity (which hasn’t been revealed yet).
