With “Tempering”, you can enhance your equipment in Diablo 4, but some players are struggling with it and consequently lose one item after another.
The Crafting system “Tempering” came with Season 4 in Diablo 4 and allows you to imprint 1–2 additional affixes on items. This way, you can create really strong items without having to endlessly hope for perfect loot drops. Players even said: The system makes the “best” items useless; everything else is better.
- For tempering, you need crafting materials, a bit of gold, and a portion of luck because: You “roll” affixes with it.
- Once you improve an item at the blacksmith with tempering, you select an affix group. It can even consist of 6 affixes, and you get a random result from it.
- If you are unlucky, you get the affix you can’t use multiple times in a row. Since your attempts per item are limited, the item becomes useless for you.
Currently, players are discussing on Reddit about the “Scrapping” of items through tempering. The fact that the crafting system runs on a random basis seems to bother many of them, as really good items get lost. The limited chances to temper do not seem to be the biggest problem for many players, but the fact that individual affixes can appear multiple times in a row.
This drives players to despair: In a post on Reddit, “Apprehensive_Wedgie” states that tempering should not reroll the same affix 3–4 times in a row. He had “bricked” 5 bows in a row because tempering consistently gives the same 2 affixes.
Other players know the problem too. “Temporary-Spell3176” writes: “I once tried to roll critical hit damage and got vulnerability damage 6 times in a row. So stupid.”
With Season 5, the tempering attempts for items with major affixes (1.5 times stronger than normal affixes) have been increased. They now have an additional chance per existing major affix (GA) since Patch 1.5.0. But even then, the attempts will eventually run out. “wrathofroc” writes: “I found a cool double GA one-hander last night and scrapped it.”
In the comments, “A_Confused_Cocoon” writes: “I have nothing against the limited rolls, but if they could just prevent you from getting the same affix again, it would resolve all my negative feelings regarding the tempering system.”
“Ok-Calligrapher1345” shares his idea on how tempering could work better:
A simple solution might be to invest 2x rerolls to roll within the current affix (possibly for a better version) or roll again with a 0% chance of the current affix. Something like that. Basically, spend more tempering rerolls to get what you want.
Why are there no infinite attempts? Infinite tempering chances would mean that players could keep rolling affixes as long as they have enough materials and gold. This would prevent the “dopamine rush” from rare drops, says “Yodan”:
Tempering is a method to “consume” items so that you farm more items. Otherwise, we would keep 3GA for every slot and endlessly reroll them until they are perfect. Diablo is a game based on rare items dropping and getting a dopamine rush. It would destroy endgame farming if you stopped farming items and just went through one or two content loops for masterworking resources repeatedly.
However, some players say that strong, usable items with 3 major affixes do not drop that frequently. “rcanhestro” states: “It’s not like you get a 3GA with the desired values every 10 minutes.”
And “AnotherPreciousMeme” replies: “Exactly, the dopamine should actually come from the rare drop, but it doesn’t anymore because you have to pray to get the right [affixes when tempering]. Then you feel relief, not excitement.”
Other players wish for a way to simply reset the tempering, just like with masterworking. Some say one should be able to choose from certain affixes right away. The post creator states: “It would be nice to find a compromise that satisfies everyone.” But that’s probably nearly impossible – especially since the feedback is virtually divided on every topic, depending on the type of player.
In another Reddit post, players discuss the drops in the new endgame activity. One player believes the community is shortsighted with their feedback. A bit of grind for an item is simply part of it – after all, you play an action RPG and not Candy Crush. Diablo 4 is already “disgustingly easy”, but the players can never get enough.
