Use Ancestral Tempering in Diablo 4 to add new powers to your weapons & armour

Ancestral Tempering is a new mechanic in Diablo 4 Season 4, letting you add fantastic new powers and stat boosts to your weapons and armour, making them even stronger than they already are.

Numbers are very much the aim of the game after all, so having an easy way to significantly boost your damage output, enhance your defence, or even reduce your cooldowns can really go a long way when facing nightmarish enemies like the Blood Maiden.

What is Ancestral Tempering?

Ancestral Tempering is a new way to enhance your weapons and armour, adding different affixes gained through different Temper Manuals.

These boosts can include damage enhancements, increased resistances, reduction of cooldowns, and improvements to your character's movement speed. Each Temper Manual has a number of different enhancements within a specific category, and every time you Temper an item it will roll between these to give you a random one.

You can get some really potent enhancements through this new system - especially when using any of the Legendary Temper Manuals, as I was able to put multiple instances of 30%+ damage boosts across my weapons and armour, which made a huge difference.

How to Temper weapons and armour

The first thing you'll need to do is find a Temper Manual and use it, as that will give you the basis for Tempering your gear. These can be dropped from most content in Season 4, so make sure to keep an eye out for any on your travels.

Click to enlarge

Once you've found one, make sure to right-click it in your inventory to 'Use' it, which will send it into an archive where it can be utilised an unlimited number of times - much like the Codex of Power.

Click to enlarge

Now that you've got a Temper stored, you'll want to head to a Blacksmith. Select the new third tab at the top to navigate to the 'Tempering' tab, and then place the item you want to Temper into the slot.

You'll then be able to choose between typically two of six different categories which define the boosts that your item will receive. You will need to have a Temper stored in one of these categories to use it though, so you might not be able to initially enhance every item you own.

Click to enlarge

Then, just select the Temper that you wish to desire and press the 'Temper Item' button, ensuring that you have enough of the required resources. This will then add the randomised enhancement to the item.

You can typically only add one Tempered affix to an item, and reapplying will instead replace the previous affix. Ancestral items can have two Tempered affixes at any one time, but they must be from separate categories.

Master the Helltide with all the tips on our Diablo 4 homepage, letting you know how to get more Aberrant Cinders, how to raise Helltide Threat, and where to find more Baneful Hearts to fight the Blood Maiden.