Every season has its own unique events, and while the core gameplay loop usually don’t change much, the varying themes can be a breath of fresh air. Season of Hatred Rising adds two such events - Realmwalkers and the Infernal Hordes, and while the former is good if you want to harvest Seething Opals, boost your favor with the Zakarum Remnants and maybe file your taxes while you want for the Realmwalker to stomp its way to its destination, Infernal hordes get you what you really want - loot and crafting materials. This page will cover the Infernal Hordes in Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred, including how to unlock them, how to find Infernal Hordes Compassses, and how to farm enough Ether to claim the best rewards.

Page Breakdown¶

Unlocking Infernal Hordes¶

The Infernal Hordes gameplay mode is locked behind the story for Season of Hatred Rising - to start, talk to Captain Cireska in Zarbinzet to advance the quest Eyes of the Enemy, and once it’s complete you’ll need to finish a series of related quests that mostly involve following a cultist named Locran around and killing demons. The quests you’ll need to complete includes Inside the Black Tomb and To the Edge of the Abyss. All told this should take well under an hour to complete, maybe half an hour if you skip dialog. Once the aforementioned quest are over you’ll be rewarded with an Infernal Hordes Compass and the next quest, The Infernal Hordes will begin… but since this quest is basically just your first Infernal Hordes run, you’ve functionally unlocked the event at this point.

Infernal Hordes Compasses¶

To create Infernal Hordes events you must use Infernal Hordes Compass items. These are functionally similar to Nightmare Sigils in that they’re items with varying properties that are stored in the “Dungeon Keys” tab of your inventory that will create a specific gameplay event when consumed. They can be dropped from Ubers, World Bosses, Helltide chests, Tree of Whispers caches and more - basically all sources of high-end loot can and likely will drop one or two Infernal Hordes Compasses as supplemental loot.

Rounds, Rewards and Aether¶

Once you score a Infernal Hordes Compass you’ll be able to consume one to open a portal to an Infernal Hordes event. The only real difference between compasses is how many rounds the Infernal Hordes event will last - either 6, 8 or 10 rounds. Each round lasts a minute and there’s a boss fight against the Fell Council, and during each round you’ll need to complete various objectives in order to obtain Aether, which will be spent to open various rewards chests at the end of the Infernal Hordes run.

During the Infernal Hordes run itself you’ll gain very little in the way of drops - expect gem fragments and the odd material, and nothing more. You will, however, accumulate a resource called “Aether”, and at the end of the run you’ll get a proper boss drop for defeating the Fell Council as well as three chests you can spend Aether on, as follows:

Infernal Hordes Aether Rewards¶

Generally you’re going to want to get 200 Aether during a run, open the Spoils of Greater Equipment chest for the gear and materials that drop. This almost always includes some Ancestral legendary or unique gear, so unless your build is perfect, this chest is worth opening. With the remaining Aether you can then open the Spoils of Material or Spoils of Gold chest, the former of which gets you Gem Fragments and Obducite while the latter rewards you with gold. The amount of the rewards in these last two chests yield are determined by the difficulty level and the Aether spent, but extra drops you’ll get by ignoring the Spoils of Greater Equipment chest generally isn’t worth it. Naturally this make 6-round Infernal Hordes runs ideal for farming loot quickly, with 8-round and 10-round runs being better for supplementing this gear with Obducite via the Spoils of Material chest.

Aether Events¶

Kill the Aether Fiend in the middle of the arena to start the first round, and you’ll get one minute to go around killing demons and accumulating Aether. Generally you’ll earn Aether by killing - the faster the better - but there’s some nuance that can make your grinding more or less efficient.

Not everything you kill earns you Aether - most kills only generate progress towards spawning Aether Events, which appear on the edges of the arena in each cardinal direction. You can spot them by the white rings that appear on your minimap indicating they’re about to spawn, or the white aether-flame icon that appears when they manifest:

Aether Events Types¶

Kill enough enemies and an Aether Event will spawn. Aether Fiends appear in a bloody cyst, emerging after a moment, Aether Masses are vile growths that must be destroyed, and Soulspires have a radius around them within which you must kill a certain number of enemies (usually 30). You will generally gain two Aether for each Aether event you clear.

Aether Totems¶

If this sounds slow and tedious… well, it can be. A lot of the gameplay is spamming AoEs while looking at the minimap for the site of the next Aether Event, and killing your way towards that. Once you clear a round, however, a trio of totems will emerge from the ground in the center of the arena and you’ll get to interact with one to enjoy a mix of boons and banes, with each totem granting you one boon and one bane. Individually these are usually fairly minor, but over the course of 6-10 rounds they can have some intriguing cumulative effects.

Aether Totems and Effects¶

Which three totems will appear at the end of each round are random, and it’s worth noting that some can only be picked once (and once picked will not appear again on the same run) while others have cumulative effects. Generally you should expect most boons and banes picked to be in play the rest of the run. In the case of Hellborne and Aether Lord spawns, these become new Aether events that can randomly spawn alongside the three base Aether events.

For optimal Aether earning you want to ignore any totems that do not grant you Aether, either immediately or in the future. If you’re not strong enough to clear these Infernal Horde runs with 200+ Aether without these boons, you should just lower the difficulty, if possible. Once those are excluded, you want to focus on a single source of Aether, if at all possible - stacking Hellborne or Aether Fiend gains are arguably the best ways to get Aether, but RNG will often force you to make suboptimal picks.

During a lucky 10-round run you can earn over 1,000 Aether, but anything over 200 Aether on any run is just icing on the cake. Avoid picking totems that won’t give you Aether, try to avoid doubling up on the same types (Hellborne, Aether Fiends, etc), and just be wary that RNG won’t always be on your side.