In Season 1, it’s all about the corruption, wicked monsters, and their wicked hearts, which represent the new gems in Diablo 4. On MeinMMO, you will learn how to obtain the wicked hearts and what each heart can do.
What are these new “gems”?
- Wicked hearts are the special gameplay mechanic in Season 1. They are dropped by wicked monsters after a tough battle.
- You can socket the hearts like gems into color-matching sockets in amulets and rings, instead of the gems you would otherwise use.
- There are 32 different hearts in 4 colors. The respective color of the heart can only be used in the corresponding color socket and only in jewelry.
The new quest line in Season 1 introduces the new wicked hearts for your builds into the game. Here you will learn how to access the quest and the hearts in Diablo 4 and what they bring you.
How to get the wicked hearts
How do I start the quest? To start the new quest line in Season 1, you need to have completed the campaign. In Kyovashad, you will meet Cormond, where you will start the quest. He will accompany you on your journey against the latest threat.
How do I obtain the wicked hearts? Throughout your journey, you will encounter new wicked elite enemies. When you defeat them, they drop a wicked heart. By clicking on the heart, the special opponents are reborn, and you must fight them again. As a reward, they will then drop the “caged heart” that you can pick up and use.
Mostly, the corrupted, wicked monsters can be found in the new tunnels of wickedness. On the map, these tunnels look like a dungeon but are marked with a small green leaf.
In one tunnel, you can farm 4–5 hearts. One of the wicked monsters can be summoned by using a so-called caller in the tunnel, which you obtain during the quest line.
There are 32 different wicked hearts in 4 categories
What types of wicked hearts are there? There are 32 different wicked hearts (via blizzard.com) in four different colors. Each provides bonuses for your build and represents four categories:
- Orange: wicked heart – attack strength
- Blue: brutal heart – defense strength
- Pink: cunning heart – versatility
- Black: wrathful heart – super strength
- the respective color of the heart only fits into the same color socket in jewelry
- the black hearts are very rare and fit into any socket
All effects that hearts can have
General
- Arc lightning (Wicked, Attack): Critical hits charge the opponent for 0.75-2.50 seconds electrically, causing lightning to jump to all other charged enemies, dealing 68-136 lightning damage.
- Dark dance (Wicked, Attack, World Tier III): At over 60% health, base skills cost 68-51 health every 5 seconds instead of your primary resource. Skills that consume health deal 10-20% more damage.
- Enticing fate (Wicked, Attack, World Tier III): You gain 40-60% critical hit damage, but your non-critical hits deal 20-15% less damage.
- Lionheart (Brutal, Defense): You gain 10% barrier generation. With an active barrier, you heal 3-7 health per second.
- Revenge (Brutal, Defense, World Tier III): 10-20% of the damage taken is suppressed instead. When you use a defensive, deceptive, or macabre skill, all suppressed damage is amplified by 250% and explodes, dealing up to 1360-2040 fire damage to nearby enemies.
- Calm heart (Brutal, Defense, World Tier III): You become immune for 2.0-4.0 seconds when you lose more than 20% health after a single hit. This effect can occur only every 110 seconds.
- Persistence (Cunning, Versatility): Resource deprivation effects are 40-50% less effective. Additionally, you gain a bonus of 3.0-8.0% to resource generation.
- Retribution (Cunning, Versatility, World Tier III): Each time a control loss effect affecting you is removed, you deal 510-680 fire damage to nearby enemies.
- Calculation (Cunning, Versatility, World Tier III): After consuming 150-200 of your primary resource, your next attack stuns hit enemies for 2 seconds.
- Wicked pact (Wrathful, Super): After every 20 enemies killed, you receive another wicked bonus:
- Wicked: You gain 20% attack speed.
- Cunning: Core and base skills have a 15% chance to fully restore your primary resource.
- Brutal: You gain a barrier every 21 seconds that absorbs 85-102 damage.
- Stealthy death (Wrathful, Super): Your damage-over-time effects are 30-40% stronger for each different control loss effect on the target. Unstoppable monsters and staggering bosses automatically suffer 110-130% bonus damage from your damage-over-time effects instead.
- Barber (Wrathful, Super, World Tier III): Critical hits and all subsequent damage within 2.0-4.0 seconds are absorbed by your target. The absorbed damage then discharges onto nearby enemies. The stored damage increases by 10% per second.
Barbarian
- Focused rage (Wicked, Attack): If you consume 60-100 rage within 2 seconds, the critical hit chance of your next skill that is not a base skill is increased by 20-30%.
- Recurring life (Brutal, Defense): At less than 40-60% health, you receive 50-60% more healing from all sources.
- Punishing speed (Cunning, Versatility): Your skills have a 20-30% chance to knock down all enemies for 1.25 seconds if the attack speed of the respective skill is higher than 20-35%.
- Suppress pain (Wrathful, Super, World Tier IV): There is a 5-15% chance that incoming damage is ignored, and you are instead healed for 17-68.
Druid
- Moon wrath (Wicked, Attack): When you kill enemies, there is a 5% chance that a wolf companion will be summoned to assist you for 20-30 seconds. Additionally, you gain +3 for wolves.
- Angered winds (Brutal, Defense): If 8-13 enemies are near you, you automatically cast cyclone armor. This effect can occur only once every 10-20 seconds.
- Unavoidable power (Cunning, Versatility): While you have an active ultimate skill, up to 30-50 distant enemies are drawn to you.
- Unbound beast (Wrathful, Super, World Tier IV): If you are hit by a stun, freeze, or knockdown effect, there is a 40-60% chance that grizzly wrath will automatically activate for 3 seconds.
Necromancer
- Sacrilege (Wicked, Attack): When you get close to a corpse, a equipped corpse skill is automatically activated every second but deals 30-40% less damage.
- Aging aura (Brutal, Defense): When there are at least 5 enemies near you, you gain an aura that automatically curses nearby enemies with aging for 5-15 seconds.
- Frost terror (Cunning, Versatility): Lucky strikes: There is a 10-20% chance that you scare enemies for 2.5 seconds. Enemies seized by fear freeze for 20% per second.
- Great feast (Wrathful, Super, World Tier IV): Each servant siphons 1.0-2.0 essence per second but deals 50-75% bonus damage. Without servants, you benefit from this bonus yourself and siphon 5 essence per second.
Hunter
- Scattershot (Wicked, Attack): Lucky strikes: You have a chance of up to 20% to fire 3 flashbang grenades that deal 26-32 physical damage and stun enemies for 0.5 seconds.
- Misleading (Brutal, Defense): When you use a deception skill, you leave behind an unstable shadow bait trap that lures enemies. The shadow bait trap explodes after 6.0 seconds, dealing 680-1020 shadow damage. This effect can occur only once every 5 seconds.
- Striking (Cunning, Versatility): Lucky strikes: There is a chance of up to 20-40% that your assassination skills slow targets by 40% for 3 seconds and your precision skills push back enemies.
- Abhorrent apothecary (Wrathful, Super, World Tier IV): Your attacks have a 5-15% chance to apply all infusion effects with 40-50% of their normal strength.
Sorcerer
- Tal’Rasha (Wicked, Attack): For each unique element you damage with, you deal 7-12% more damage for 3-10 seconds.
- Breaking the ban (Brutal, Defense): After taking elemental damage, you gain 20-40% resistance to the corresponding element for 5 seconds.
- Malediction (Cunning, Versatility): If you are affected by a control loss effect from an enemy, there is a 20-40% chance that that enemy and all nearby enemies will be affected by the same effect for 3 seconds.
- Omnipotence (Wrathful, Super, World Tier IV): Core skills that fire a projectile consume all your mana. For every 35-45 additional mana consumed, you fire an additional projectile and the damage increases by 3.0-5.0%.
Developer’s comment: Caged hearts can be traded among players because we want hearts to feel like success for defeating the challenging wicked monsters. However, jewelry with wicked sockets can be traded to ensure that there are multiple sources for jewelry with wicked sockets that match the caged hearts players have earned.
via blizzard.com
Unfortunately, the wicked hearts cannot be stacked, making them quickly fill your chest and inventory. However, there are a few things you can do to continue collecting important loot without everything being clogged up with the new gems.
Breaking down, exchanging & crafting hearts
Can I break down hearts? You can break down wicked hearts at Cormond’s workbench and receive wicked secret. You can initially find Cormond’s workbench in Kyovashad, marked on the map with a table symbol and a small green leaf.
Since hearts cannot be stacked and you will get many hearts with the same properties, breaking them down makes sense.
From the wicked secret, you can craft new hearts and callers:
Do I get the wicked hearts back when breaking down jewelry? No. If you break down amulets and rings with wicked hearts in the sockets, you will not get them back. This is now different from the previous gems.
You also cannot unsocket them. When you find a new, better heart, you can socket it in your jewelry, but you “overwrite” the old heart. Alternatively, you can hope for better jewelry if you also want to keep the old heart.
Once you reach the endgame, you may not switch your build as often, so you don’t have to worry about a lack of hearts. In addition, you get quite a few hearts in the tunnels, only the black ones are rare.
Along with the new gems, Season 1 also introduced the battle pass in Diablo 4. Here’s more about the new content:
Diablo 4: Season 1 is live – Everything about the release, content, mechanics, and battle pass




