In Diablo 4, upgrading gear is an important part of character progression. During your adventures, you will come across a variety of items that may be improved in several ways, one of which is Tempering!
What is Tempering?
Tempering allows you to add one custom affix to your non-unique gear. This is done by using Temper Manuals, which are items that provide a list of potential affixes that can be applied to your gear. Once a Temper Manual has been used, it will register as a recipe inside the Codex of Power and can be used for Tempering gear at the Blacksmith.
You should focus on tempering Legendary items, as Rare items are not worth the resources you would lose for tempering them. Legendary items have four base affixes, with the ability to add one more through tempering. You will be able to select from a variety of affixes based on what is needed for the build you are playing. Tempering your gear will be important not only during the endgame but also while leveling, as it will help you progress more quickly.
How to Unlock Tempering
Tempering becomes available as soon as you unlock the Blacksmith and get one or more Tempering Manuals. You will then be able to use the manuals to register them as recipes inside your Codex of Power and start tempering items.
How to Get Temper Manuals
Temper Manuals start dropping at Level 30 and can be obtained from various types of content and in-game activities across Sanctuary, such as:
- The Pit
- Helltide Chests
- Whisper Caches
- Nightmare Dungeons
- Infernal Hordes
- World Bosses:
- Boss Ladder Bosses:
After looting a Tempering Manual, it will be located in your inventory. Temper Manuals can drop in three rarities: Magic, Rare, and Legendary. The rarity will depend on your level and the world difficulty you are in, and drop chances also increase in later difficulties. The available affixes within a temper manual will not change, but the values of the affixes will be better in a legendary manual. After acquiring a legendary manual, the increased values will be updated in your Codex of Power and overwrite the lesser magic or rare values you had registered inside the codex before.
How to Temper
When you have a Temper Manual in your inventory, you can use it to add the recipe to your Codex of Power. Similar to Legendary Aspect Powers, once the Temper recipe is saved in your codex, you can use it indefinitely.
Rare and Legendary items can be tempered once at a time, but can be re-tempered infinitely using Scrolls of Restoration. You can choose the exact Tempering Affix you want at the Blacksmith.
Tempered affixes can upgrade into Greater Affixes on Ancestral items. This is a rare bonus, but extremely powerful.
To temper:
- Go to the Blacksmith
- Open the Tempering tab
- Insert the item you want to upgrade
- Choose the Temper affix you want to apply
- Temper the item
You can temper one affix on a single piece of gear.
The required amounts and materials will depend on the rarity of the item:
- Rare items:
25 Common Salvage + 5
Veiled Crystal - Legendary:
15Veiled Crystal + 5 Legendary Salvage - Ancestral Legendary:
25 Legendary Salvage + 25
Forgotten Soul
Rerolling Tempered Gear
A gear item that has been tempered will display the new affix based on the Temper recipe used. The newly added tempered affix is then highlighted in the item tooltip with a small anvil icon next to them, indicating which affixes have been tempered.
You can add tempered affixes to all your gear using the different Temper Manuals found during gameplay. It is possible to reroll a tempered item at all times.
You can reset tempering a certain number of times in function of the rarity of the item.
- Rare: 1 Temper roll total
- Legendary, Ancestral Legendary: 3 Temper rolls
- +1 Temper Roll per Greater Affix on the item
- You pick your exact affix from the Temper Manual each time
Once you reach the maximum attempts, the affix on the item will be locked in.
If an item’s temper roll is locked, use a Scroll of Restoration to restore 1 Temper Roll. These scrolls can be purchased at the Dark Citadel or obtained in the Infernal Hordes. There is no limit to the number of times you can use a Scroll of Restoration.
Tempered gear can be improved with Masterworking, and you can also reroll the tempered affix on a gear item that has already been masterworked. The new tempered affix will automatically gain the same Masterworking rank.
Greater Affixes
Once you reach Torment 1, search for items with your preferred Greater Affixes and temper them to create more powerful items.
Greater Affixes are more powerful affixes that will drop on Ancestral Legendaries and Unique items starting in Torment 1. An Ancestral item will have at least one Greater Affix. They are 1.5x more powerful than normal affixes. Moreover, any Ancestral Legendary or Unique item can have up to 4 greater affixes.
When tempering, you can also upgrade the tempered affix into a Greater Affix.
When an item with a greater affix drops, you will hear a distinct sound and see an icon (both above the gear piece itself and in your inventory) indicating that the item that just dropped has a greater affix.
It is important to know that you cannot enchant an affix into a greater affix; they can only be discovered either from dropping randomly during gameplay or from gambling at the Purveyor of Curiosities.
Tempering Recipes
Learning Manuals (right-clicking on the item) will register it inside the dedicated Tempering tab within the Codex of Power. Within the codex, you can then browse and find the perfect Temper Recipe to improve your gear.
The Codex of Power Tempering tab is sorted into 6 different categories:
| Category | Can Be Applied To | Example Affixes |
|---|---|---|
| Weapons Weapon damage and attack speed. | Weapons | Lucky Hit: Up to a x% chance to deal additional physical damage |
| Offensive Offensive stats like critical hit chance and damage. | Weapons, Amulet, Gloves, Rings | +60% Damage to Close Enemies |
| Defensive Defensive stats such as armor and elemental resistances. | Offhand, Helm, Chest, Pants, Amulet | +38% Lightning Resistance |
| Utility Utility affixes such as cooldown reduction and resource cost reduction. | Offhand, Helm, Chest, Pants, Amulet, Gloves, Boots | 20% Increased Cooldown Reduction [to specific Skills] |
| Mobility Movement-related stats like movement speed and dodge chance. | Amulet, Boots | +12% Movement Speed for 4 Seconds After Killing an Elite |
| Resource Resource management, like increased resource generation or reduced resource costs. | Amulet, Rings | +10% Resource Generation |
Note that the Tempering Affix, which increases the maximum size for various skills and effects, such as Dust Devils or 
Bone Spirit, is capped at 100% so that the skills do not cover the entire screen.
Once you have upgraded your gear by tempering one additional affix, the next step is to Masterwork your items. This advanced crafting option unlocks at the Blacksmith only during the late stages of the endgame, specifically after reaching Torment 1. Check out our Masterworking Guide for more information on how to further improve your gear.
Masterworking Guide