Helltide Event And Rewards Explained
Completing the campaign isn’t the end of your Diablo 4 playthrough. Finishing every Act will unlock Diablo 4’s extensive range of endgame activities and harder World Tier difficulties to further push your build. The Helltide is one such activity, pitting your character against the forces of Hell to earn slot-specific rewards.
Compared to most endgame activities, the Helltide is an accessible source of powerful items for virtually all builds. Nearly any character can participate in this unique world event and get something useful. This guide will cover what the Helltide is, how it works, and the rewards you can expect from participating.
We updated this guide on June 6 to include information about the best Helltide chest – the Tortured Gift of Mysteries.
What Is The Helltide?
The Helltide is a unique world event that lasts for one hour, morphing a region of Sanctuary into a hellish landscape. Zones affected by the Helltide feature Demonic enemies, spawn meteors as environmental hazards, and increase the monster level of everything in the zone by two above your character’s level. For example, if your character is level 50, every monster in the Helltide will be at least level 52.
Defeating monsters within the Helltide will grant Aberrant Cinders, a unique currency that’s only obtainable and usable during a Helltide event. These cinders can be spent to open Tortured Chests scattered across the Helltide region, guaranteeing items of a certain slot type. A Tortured Amulet chest will always drop an amulet, Tortured Weapons chests always drop weapons, etc. Aberrant Cinders expire once the Helltide ends, so be sure to spend all of your hard-earned currency before the Helltide subsides.
Participating In The Helltide
Before you can participate in a Helltide event, you must complete the Diablo 4 campaign and unlock World Tier 3 difficulty. Once you’re on World Tier 3 difficulty, you will be notified on your HUD whenever a Helltide begins in Sanctuary. Similar to World Bosses, Helltides aren’t always active, so don’t be alarmed if one isn’t highlighted on your map.
Helltides will be marked with a dark red outline on your map, similar to how PvP zones are displayed. A Helltide lasts for 60 minutes, so you’ll want to farm these whenever they appear. The Helltide’s current timer can also be viewed on your map by hovering over the Helltide’s unique event icon (shown above).
Collecting Aberrant Cinders
The top-right corner of your HUD shows how many Aberrant Cinders you’re currently holding. You lose half of your currently-held cinders if you die at any point during the Helltide.
Demons slain in the Helltide have a fairly high chance of dropping an Aberrant Cinder. This acts as a unique currency item you can use to unlock Tortured Chests scattered across the map. Chests take anywhere from 75 to 150 Aberrant Cinders to open. While there’s no limit to how many chests you can open, collecting thousands of Aberrant Cinders is going to be time-consuming.
That is why we recommend you farm world events while in a Helltide. Events can still spawn inside a Helltide and tend to have high enemy density, allowing you to collect massive sums of Aberrant Cinders just by killing monsters. Some other good sources include Strongholds and Elite monsters that roam around the Helltide; they drop multiple Aberrant Cinders when slain. Focus on farming world events, and you should be able to accumulate a large sum of Aberrant Cinders in a few minutes.
Opening Tortured Chests
Once you’ve acquired 75 or more Aberrant Cinders, it’s time to open a Tortured Chest. Unopened Tortured Chests are marked on your map while in the Helltide. The name of the chest denotes what kind of items it will drop. For example, a Tortured Gift of Amulets chest is guaranteed to drop at least one amulet. On World Tier 3, this item will always be Sacred, increasing its affix stat ranges.
Tortured Chests have a fairly high chance of dropping Legendary items, making this a fantastic way of earning Sacred and Ancestral Legendaries for virtually all builds. In general, it’s best to farm the Helltide when you need slot-specific upgrades. If your build needs a full set of new gear, Nightmare Dungeons are generally better since they drop far more items. But if you are looking for a specific slot upgrade, you can’t beat Tortured Chests.
Best Tortured Chest To Open
One of the most efficient ways to spend your Aberrant Cinders is to open the Tortured Gift Of Mysteries – this costs 175 cinders which makes it the most expensive chest.
These are not shown on the world map until you are very close to them, and they are usually hidden in certain areas of the map. It’s a good idea to spend a bit of time exploring the entire zone and then farming nearby to one of these chests.
More than one of these chests can spawn in the zone, so if you’ve already opened one and have to time to find the other, you can use the remaining Helltide to discover this chest.
Here is an example of the good rewards (not specific) that you can get from opening this chest.
