Say goodbye to RNG, and hello to real item control! Blizzard is completely reworking Tempering and Masterworking in Diablo 4 for Season 11! Get ready for one of the biggest crafting updates the game has ever seen. The new system will give you complete control over your items, removing most of the RNG frustration that has been tied to those two systems.
A New Item Journey
According to Blizzard, these changes aim to make the “item journey more rewarding and skill-driven“. Tempering and Masterworking have now been refocused around their two core pillars, “customization and prestige“.
Players will be able to directly pick the affixes they want, refine items toward perfection, and chase a new Capstone bonus for ultimate upgrades.
Tempering – Choose Your Own Affix
Tempering has been fully redesigned, and the best part is simple, no more random rolls. Players can now select which specific affix they want to apply to an item from a Tempering Recipe. If you have learned a Tempering Manual, you can directly pick the exact stat you are after instead of hoping RNG blesses you.
Here is how it works now:
- Tempering Affix selection is no longer random. You pick it directly.
- Items can now only have one Tempered affix (down from two).
- Tempering Charges can be restored indefinitely using Scrolls of Restoration.
- Scrolls of Restoration now restore one charge at a time, but there is no limit on how many times you can use them.
Tempering material costs have also been adjusted:
- Rare items: 25 Common Salvage + 5
Veiled Crystal - Legendary: 15 Veiled Crystal + 5 Legendary Salvage
- Ancestral Legendary: 25 Legendary Salvage + 25
Forgotten Soul
This simplified approach lets you focus on one perfect affix instead of juggling two random ones. Being able to infinitely restore Tempering Charges means you can keep refining without the fear of wasting a good roll, or rendering your item unusable.
Masterworking: Quality Over Quantity
Masterworking has been reworked even more dramatically. It no longer boosts affix values! Instead, it now increases a new stat called Refinement, and this improves the base damage, armor, or resistance of an item.
Each Masterwork level adds a random 1-3% Refinement, up to a maximum of 20%. For example:
- A chest piece with 100 armor would have:
- 0% Refinement = 100 Armor
- 5% Refinement = 105 Armor
- 20% Refinement = 120 Armor
Once an item reaches maximum Quality (20%), you can perform a Capstone Masterwork. This will upgrade a random non-Greater Affix into a Greater Affix.
If you do not like the result, you can re-roll the Masterworked Greater Affix without resetting your item’s Quality. This costs 
Obducite and 
Neathiron. The last one is a returning material in Season 11.
Additionally:
- Items no longer need to be Tempered to be Masterworked.
- Obducite drop rates have been reduced by 85%, but all recipes that use it now require far less.
- Non-unique items will now have four base affixes instead of three, giving more room for customization.
A More Meaningful Grind
The new system makes upgrading items more straightforward, strategic, and “prestige-driven“. Instead of praying to RNG gods, you can actively craft the stats you want, then refine items to perfection through Masterworking.
Between infinite Tempering restoration, refined Quality scaling, and the ability to upgrade into Greater Affixes, Season 11 is going to deliver the most player-friendly item system Diablo 4 has ever had.
If you are hopping into the PTR, this is definitely one of the systems worth testing out. It is not just a change, it is a full overhaul of how items grow with you in Diablo 4.
