Once you Unlock World Tier 3 you’ll be able to indulge in a variety of new activities, one of which is running Nightmare Dungeons. Check out the linked page for more information, but to be brief these empower existing dungeons, giving them random beneficial or harmful modifiers (mostly harmful), stronger monsters, and consequently, better loot drops, in addition to the rewards Dungeons typically yield.

To turn a normal Dungeon into a Nightmare Dungeon, you need a Nightmare Sigil. These, like most things in Diablo 4 are random drops with random stats that determine what Dungeon will be converted, what random modifiers will be applied to said Dungeon and, most interestingly, what difficulty Tier this created Nightmare Dungeon will be. A Nightmare Sigil’s difficulty Tier also impacts the number of mods will be in play, as well as the level of monsters that will spawn in the Nightmare Dungeon, and as with most things in Diablo, the higher the level, the better the rewards.

While the primary ways of getting Nightmare Sigils involves defeating World Bosses and completing tasks for the Tree of Whispers, you will most regularly obtain new Nightmare Sigils as random drops within Nightmare Dungeons themselves - once you’ve broken into a Nightmare Dungeon, creating more becomes relatively simple. But there’s a catch: most of the Nightmare SIgils that drop will be at or below the current Nightmare Dungeon difficulty tier, with higher ones being somewhat infrequent drops with only a marginal tier increase. You can bootstrap these minor increases together - and you’ll have to, to some degree, but since the max difficulty tier is 100, you’ve a long road ahead… if only there was a shortcut?

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(1 of 2) You can salvage Nightmare Sigils for Sigil Dust,

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You can salvage Nightmare Sigils for Sigil Dust, (left), which can then be used to craft new - potentially higher Tier - Nightmare Sigils. (right)

How to Craft Nightmare Sigils in Diablo 4¶

The Occultist offers a variety of services, but two of them will remain grayed out for most of the game. These extra services are “Craft Sigils” and “Salvage Sigils”, and if you’re astute you’ll notice that you may randomly find Sigil Powder in Nightmare Dungeons. This is used to craft Nightmare Sigils, and obtained when you salvage Nightmare Sigils. There’s a catch, however - you cannot craft Nightmare Sigils until you clear a Tier 3 Nightmare Dungeon. The game doesn’t tell you this at any point, and there’s no clear means of progression from lower-tier Nightmare Dungeons to higher ones. You just have to run Nightmare Dungeons, kill World Bosses and perform Grim Favors for the Tree of Whispers until a tier 3+ Nightmare Sigil drops. Leveling up may increase the tier ceiling of Nightmare Sigil drops, but it can still involve a lot of luck. If you can piggyback on a tier 3+ Nightmare Dungeon run, you can potentially skip the tier 1-2 grind.

Visit an Occultist after completing a tier 3+ Nightmare Dungeon and you’ll find two new options: Craft Sigils and Salvage Sigils. The latter allows you to break down unwanted Nightmare Sigils (perhaps their Tier is too low, or they have unwanted Dungeon Affixes?) and convert them into Sigil Powder, which you can use to craft new Nightmare Sigils. Aside from destroying existing Nightmare Sigils to render Sigil Powder, creating new Nightmare Sigils out of Sigil Powder will consume gold, albeit a fairly marginal fee. Higher-Tier Nightmare Sigils yield more Sigil Dust when salvaged.

When creating new Nightmare Sigils, you can choose what Tier you want to shoot for - Sacred Tier Nightmare Sigils (World Tier 3) run from Tier 1-20 and Ancestral Tier Nightmare Sigils run from Tier 21-100 (World Tier 4). The number of Dungeon Affixes ranges from 3-5 and increases by Tier, and while the number of Dungeon Affixes that will appear on a Nightmare Sigil are static, the exact type of Dungeon Affixes are random, as is the exact Tier (within the range you’ve selected) and the exact Dungeon affected.