Diablo 4 has gone through several mechanical changes throughout its seasons and the biggest one yet is in Season 6. Equipment quality, Item Power, and tier are among those huge changes. Here’s how Equipment works now for Diablo 4 Season 6 onwards, regardless of whether you own the Vessel of Hatred expansion or not. Additionally, we’ll provide some tips on how to farm them with the new itemization changes in mind.
Item Power Change Explained D4 Season 6
Prior to the expansion and Season 6, the max gear score or Equipment score in Diablo 4 was Item Power 925 which dropped from Level 90+ enemies. Now, the enemies have no level anymore and are based on the game’s difficulty.
Starting in Diablo 4 Season 6, the max “gear score” is now:
- Item Power 750 for Non-Ancestral Equipment
- Item Power 800 for Ancestral (Greater Affix) Equipment
This is regardless of whether you have Vessel of Hatred or not. We’ll explain the fundamental change to the term “Ancestral” below.
So your old items will then be rendered nearly useless at endgame (if you’re playing on Eternal servers) because they’ll be reduced to Item Power 540 (even the Mythic pieces that have Greater Affixes). This won’t matter much if you’re restarting in Seasonal servers, but if your preferred gameplay mode is Eternal, you’ll have to grind again for your stuff.
Ancestral Item Overhaul
As for the item tiers in Diablo 4 Season 6, they’ve also received a big overhaul. Here’s the rundown:
- Sacred items no longer exist.
- Ancestral items only start dropping from Torment I difficulty or higher.
- Ancestral items will always have a Greater Affix.
- Ancestral items have Item Power 800 (as opposed to Item Power 750 of non-Ancestral items)
Basically, Ancestral is now a new term and a new item tier that’s used to define equipment with Greater Affixes (or just Affix). Thus, the items in Diablo 4 are subdivided into two tiers: Ancestral and Non-Ancestral. Even Mythic Uniques (Uber Uniques) fall under this tier classification.
This isn’t to be confused with item rarity levels, which have mostly remained the same:
- Common
- Magic
- Rare
- Legendary (can be Ancestral)
- Unique (can be Ancestral)
- Mythic (can be Ancestral)
D4 Season 6 Equipment Farming Guide
That’s a lot to take in, isn’t it? If you’re feeling daunted with farming items again with this setup, you can use our guidelines and tips to maximize your effort.
- Reach Level 60 before you grind for Item Power 750 gear. They only drop consistently at Level 60.
- Aim to gear up for Torment I difficulty or higher so you can start farming Ancestral items.
- Save your Seething Opal of Equipment for Torment I or higher.
- Use the Seething Opal of Equipment when farming gear.
- Reserve your upgrade materials and Gold for Item Power 800 or Ancestral gear if possible.
- After a certain point, you can likely ignore Non-Ancestral items.
