The Pit of the Artificer – Diablo 4 Guide
Welcome to our guide on The Pit of the Artificer, Demon Slayer! Here you can find all the necessary information to learn everything about the newest pinnacle content in Diablo 4.
Introduction
We will start with general information about this new endgame addition and compare it to related content. Next, we will explain why this new system is necessary and discuss both the materials needed and obtained from it. We'll also present a list of the best builds you can utilize to clear the highest tiers of The Pit to obtain the biggest amount of rewards and complete the tiers as fast as possible.
By the end of this guide, you will know all the mechanics of this new addition and all the pro tips and tricks to help you dominate the highest floors. Are you ready?
Table of Contents
Here is a little breakdown of our Diablo IV Artificer's Pit guide:
- Artificer's Pit Overview
- The Pit Particularities
- Artificer's Pit Requirements
- How to prepare for The Pit
- Artificer's Pit Difficulty
- The Pit Rewards
- Best Builds for The Pit
What is The Pit of the Artificers in Diablo 4?
The Pit of the Artificer is the newest addition to the Diablo 4 endgame, being a timed dungeon where you must fill up a progress bar by slaying enemies. Upon entering The Pit, the progress bar and the countdown timer will appear on the right side of the screen, so slaying everything inside as fast as possible is imperative.
Upon reaching 100% on the progress bar, every creature in the dungeon will disappear, making way for the boss portal. After teleporting, you will be placed in the arena, fighting one of the bosses to complete the run. At this point, the timer is still counting, so staying in the safe zone will only cause you more trouble.
Note: Clearing The Pit tier faster is very important because you will have milestones, and when you reach them, you will gain extra rewards. More on this in the Rewards section of our guide.
Comparison between The Pit and Greater Rifts in Diablo 3
There are not many differences between The Pit in Diablo 4 and Diablo 3's Greater Rifts, considering that The Pit is clearly inspired by the Greater Rifts. The core mechanics and design are the same, but there are also a lot of differences.
Indeed, there are similarities, but The Pit has more mechanics attached to it, incorporating the masterworking materials and summoning mats for Tormented Bosses. Compared to the Greater Rifts, which have a few floors that you can clear monsters on, The Pit only has two, making the completion of the progress bar harder if you miss a small percentage of monsters or elites.
Comparison between The Pit and Nightmare Dungeons
There are many differences between The Nightmare Dungeons, which once represented the most challenging content in the game, and The Pit. The main differences are the monster level and the way you complete each activity, but there are also many similarities.
The Pit tier 1 contains level 100 monsters, equal to Nightmare Dungeon level 46. Even if the way to progress through them differs, they both end with a boss fight. The Pit does not award the player a glyph upgrade but offers masterworking materials.
Why should you play The Pit?
The Pit is the pinnacle of the endgame content in Diablo 4. With 200 tiers to complete, it is the newest challenge for players & their builds and comes with great rewards.
Aside from being an excellent test for the player, the rewards include Tormented boss summoning materials and masterworking materials.
Who can play The Pit?
The Pit is available for everybody, and there is no restriction on how you can play or how many players can join the same session; it simply has the same restrictions as any other activity. The type of gameplay has a few differences, as follows:
- Solo - The most used playstyle ensures the monsters will not have increased powers while getting 100% of the loot for yourself. You are not dependent on other players and will not be penalized for their mistakes.
- Group - A bit more rare, group play surely is more accessible, even with the monster power increase. The downside is that the rewards for players that do not open the run will receive only 50% of the rewards, favoring the one who opens the Pit run. Also, given the very high level of the monsters in the later tiers, their one-shot potential also increases, the penalty for dying being group-wide.
Materials will be divided between the group members as follows:
- The player which opens the Pit run will receive 100% of the rewards, but will also be the only one to receive Stygian Stones.
- Any other player in the party will receive only 50% of the rewards, excepting Stygian Stones, which won't be awarded.
As we can see, only the player that starts the Pit run will receive the full amount of materials awarded at the end of it, favoring them. For this reason, we strongly recommend playing in groups only if the materials you earn exceed those you receive when playing solo.
Is The Pit of the Artificer on both eternal and seasonal realms?
With the current information available, both Eternal realm and seasonal realm characters can access The Pit, being a permanent addition to the endgame content in comparison to the Abattoir of Zir.
Where is The Pit in Diablo 4?
The Pit Location is Cerrigar — The Emerald Chase, Scosglen. It can be accessed by interacting with the Artificer's Obelisk, which is found in the middle of the settlement. Click on it and choose the desired tier.
How to unlock & access Artificer's Pit?
In order to access The Pit, there are a few requirements that must be met. Here's a list of what you need to do before your first Pit run:
- Have a decent level, tier 1 has level 100 monsters.
- Must play on World Tier IV.
- The Pit quest must be completed.
- You must have at least 3 Runeshards.
- Your elemental resistances should be capped or close to. This is not one of The Pit's requirements; it is just a suggestion, considering the power of the monsters you'll fight.
When you have accomplished these requirements, you are free to access The Pit through the Obelisk found in Cerrigar and do as many runs as you want, as long as you have the Runeshards required.
Runeshards
Runeshards are a new type of material needed to access The Pit of the Artificer. When first entering World Tier IV, the player will receive a priority quest to complete a Tier 46 or higher Nightmare Dungeon. Once completed, the player can collect Runeshards from most endgame activities and use them to access The Pit.
The best activities to farm Runeshards in Diablo 4 are:
- Whisper of the Dead
- Nightmare Dungeons
- Helltide
- Legion Events
As we have mentioned, Runeshards are ancient tokens used as a key to The Pit of the Artificers. The number of Runeshards required will vary from tier to tier.
How to prepare for Pit of the Artificers
Before trying to attempt even the first tiers of The Pit, make sure you check out the following list so you can be prepared for what is waiting on the other end:
- Get your level as high as possible, at least level 90.
- Try capping out all the elemental resistances.
- Reach the armor cap of 9230, receiving the 85% damage mitigation.
- Temper all your items.
- Pick an S-tier build.
How to play The Pit
Since everything from the layout to the monsters residing in the run is randomly generated, clearing tiers will be more challenging than other activities, so having a good, optimized build with adequate elixirs & incense will be essential.
Once inside, time matters very much, but so does completely clearing every mob found on the floor. If the player does not clear most, if not all the mobs on the first floor, the second floor will not provide enough enemies to fill the progress bar, and they will have to go back.
Mechanics
Considering that time is the most important dynamic of this endgame system, there's a mechanic directly related to it. With only 10 minutes at your disposal, if you complete The Pit run sooner, in a specific set time, you will receive an extra reward, as follows:
- You unlock three tiers if you complete the run in under 4 minutes.
- If you manage to finish the Pit run with 4 to 6 minutes of remaining time, you unlock two tiers.
- If killing the boss takes more than 6 minutes, you will only unlock 1 tier.
- If the 10-minute timer expires, you will still receive loot but won't receive the masterworking materials as a reward from the chest spawned by the boss kill, or an additional tier unlock.
Penalties
Compared to the Abbatoir of Zir, dying in The Pit will not result in the run ending but will result in a penalty, removing a set amount of seconds from your time, like so:
- The first death will remove 30 seconds from your time.
- The second death will take away 60 seconds from the Pit timer.
- Every other death will cut 90 seconds from the timer, with no limit to the death number.
Even if the timer running out will not kick you out of The Pit run, it will remove the chest reward from the boss kill. This means you will not be getting the masterworking materials at the end of the run, resulting in a "fail".
Considering that time is essential for unlocking the higher tiers of The Pit, dying will significantly impact the player's progress.
The Pit Difficulty
The Pit starts with a difficulty equivalent to Nightmare Dungeon tier 46, meaning it will be populated with monsters of level 100. As we go higher into the tiers, every few tiers will raise the monster level by 1, capping at level 199 for the moment.
How many tiers does The Pit have?
In its initial phase, Artificer's Pit featured 200 tiers, each with its own entrance fee. We expect this to remain the same for quite some time until the developers decide whether to add more.
Can you solo The Pit?
Yes. From our experience in the game, we strongly recommend playing Artificer's Pit solo for a few reasons:
- Monsters have their standard power, not increased by extra players. This means less one-shot potential, removing the loss of time due to deaths.
- You don't need to rely on other players to survive, slay their side of the map, or kill monsters.
- You can play on your own time for as long as you want.
Is The Pit harder than Abbatoir of Zir?
In the initial phase of testing for The Pit, the difficulty was not a problem, not even when it came to tier 200. The gear, combined with the tempering and masterworking, was enough to sustain the enemies' attacks while dishing out more than enough damage to kill them quickly.
The Pit Bosses
After filling the whole progress bar by slaying most of the enemies in the two floors of The Pit of the Artificers run, a new portal will appear at the current location, teleporting the player to the randomly chosen boss.
The boss "chamber" will also be randomly chosen, but it will feature a small safe zone where the player can wait for the skills to finish their cooldown period, use new elixirs or incense, or prepare any other way. However, beware: the timer is still ticking while outside of the fight.
How many bosses are in The Pit?
When it comes to the bosses, they are the same ones that can be found in any type of Diablo 4 dungeon, but with a very interesting twist. Even if these bosses might not seem that strong or have one-shot potential, they have a trick up their sleeve.
The new mechanic of the bosses is that they can spawn shades of Uber bosses to get help. These shades will use different skills that have tremendous damage, some with crowd-control, ready to kill the player at any time, so a lot of focus must be put into the fight.
The Pit Rewards
Aside from the normal loot you will receive from killing huge packs of monsters and elites, completing the run will reward the player with Rare and Legendary items with 925 item power, random materials, and a chance to obtain Stygian Stones.
Stygian stones are used to summon the ultimate form of some of the hardest bosses in the game, called Tormented bosses or Tormented Uber bosses. All of these endgame bosses are a level 200 version of their usual form, with more mechanics, higher one-shot potential, and additional drops at the cost of more Uber boss summoning materials.
When completed under the 10-minute threshold, a Mastery Chest will be provided to the player containing masterworking materials, as follows:
- Obducite - Will be provided only in the early tiers, from 1-30.
- Ingolith - This will only be included in the mastery rewards from tiers 31 to 60.
- Neathiron - The most important material for masterworking, it is dropped from the mastery chest in tiers 61 - 200.
Neathiron and Ingolith can be transmuted into their lower form at The Alchemist, so the players will not have to run lower tiers of The Pit if they need them.
Masterworking
The Masterwork system alongside the Tempering system have completely replaced the old upgrade feature, overhauling the five steps with 12 ranks, each one either providing 5% upgrade to all affixes or 25% to just one of them, every four ranks.
Masterworking will be required to unlock the true power of any build, min-maxing their capabilities, so you can complete any endgame activity and compete with any Uber or Tormented boss in the game.
For more information on this topic, we have prepared the following guide: Diablo 4 Tempering & Masterworking Guide, which dives deep into all the details available about these endgame systems.
Can you get Uber Uniques from The Pit?
Yes, you can surely get Uber Unique items from The Pit, but the chances of dropping one will be the same as the other open-world activities and nightmare dungeons.
Best builds for The Pit
When Season 4 will finally be released, we will update the guide with at least two builds for each class, one for pushing and one for speed-clearing. Make sure to come back and check this guide out!
The Pit of the Artificer - F.A.Q.
1. What is The Pit in Diablo 4?
The Pit is a new endgame activity added in Season 4, with 200 tiers ready to be conquered.
2. What is needed to enter The Pit of the Artificers?
Aside from an adequate level to fight level 100 monsters and higher, the only requirement is having Runeshards.
3. What is a Runeshard, and how can you find them?
Runeshards are the materials needed to enter The Pit and can be obtained everywhere after completing the quest that is available after cleraing a nightmare dungeon of tier 46 or higher.
4. What rewards can you obtain from The Pit?
The rewards include rare and legendary equipment of item power 925, Masterworking materials, Stygian Stones, and more.
5. Is The Pit of the Artificers the hardest content in Diablo 4?
Considering the amount of tiers available and the monster's level in the last ones, we can say that it is true.
6. Can you obtain Uber Unique items in The Pit?
Yes, you can obtain Uber Uniques in Artificers Pit, but the chances are the same as in the other open-world activities, so they are low.
7. What is the best build for Artificer's Pit?
The best build for The Pit is one that can sustain high amounts of damage, while also dealing a ton of it.
Update Log
08.05.2024 - Updated all the information in the guide to match the new pre-Season 4 information.
Final Thoughts
In conclusion, Diablo 4's endgame systems are constantly evolving, with new content added every now and then. By using our guide, you'll be ready to face the newest endgame content called Artificer's Pit and clear every tier available with ease.
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