Once you get deep into Diablo 4’s endgame, you start to realise that picking up a random Legendary doesn’t move the needle anymore, and that’s usually when you turn to Tempering. It feels a bit like giving your gear a second life, especially once you’ve got a few solid drops from farming Diablo 4 Items along the way. You can’t do it out in the wild, though. You’ve got to head back to a main hub or a cleared stronghold, usually straight to the blacksmith, where that Tempering station becomes somewhere you visit far more than you’d like to admit. Understanding What You’re Working With The idea behind Tempering sounds simple enough, but once you lean into it, it’s a bit more fiddly than you expect. You need proper Tempering Materials, and these don’t just fall into your bag for free. They come from tougher mobs, certain chests, or those crafting tasks that sit in your log until you finally bother finishing them. You also need a piece of gear that’s worth upgrading. Most players learn pretty quickly that throwing materials at a weak Rare is basically lighting your resources on fire. When you slot the gear into the station, you pick a recipe, and that moment always feels like a small gamble. Maybe you need extra damage, or maybe you’re getting chunked by poison clouds and want more resist. The choice is yours, but the game isn’t always kind. The Cost That Sneaks Up On You What catches most people off guard is how quickly the cost climbs. Every upgrade taps into your gold and your mats, and the higher the item’s power, the faster the numbers ramp up. You can farm for hours thinking you’ve got enough, only to blow through everything in minutes because the rolls just won’t go your way. Plenty of players try to force better stats, hit the button too fast, and end up broke. The system rewards patience, and being picky saves you from a lot of frustration. Sometimes it feels like you’re playing a game within the game—one where the odds aren’t always on your side. Keeping Your Materials in Check On top of all that, there’s the success rate tied to both item level and material quality. Better mats help, but you still need to watch what you stash and what you scrap. Players often hoard the good stuff because running out right before a perfect piece drops is one of the worst feelings in the game. When everything lines up, though—the right item, the right recipe, the right roll—it’s a huge power jump, the kind that actually makes tough bosses feel manageable. And that’s why people keep coming back to Tempering, even if it drains time and gold faster than anything else. It’s the grind players accept if they want a real shot at pushing late‑game content, especially once they’ve stocked up through Diablo 4 materials buy.Take your build to the next level with U4GM’s curated Diablo 4 items, crafted for peak performance and efficiency.