What Is Helltide in Diablo 4 Explained

Once you’ve played through the Diablo 4 campaign, reached level 50, and completed the Capstone Dungeon quest to unlock Nightmare difficulty, you’ll gain access to a whole range of new endgame-focused activities. One of these is an excellent way to get some great loot right out in the open world called Helltide. Here, we’ll explain in full what Helltide is in Diablo 4 and how Aberrant Cinders factor into it.

Get Started with Helltide and Get the Best Loot from it in Diablo 4

After entering World Tier 3 Nightmare, you’ll periodically have a Helltide event appear on the map. You’ll know it’s the case because a large area of the map will turn deep red and a Helltide icon will appear. The event will be active for only an hour at a time, so best get involved as soon as you spot an active Helltide. These events are purely out in the open world and span the entire area highlighted in deep red across your map that indicate the area demons are crawling up from Hell to ravage the area.

Head to the area of the Diablo 4 map that has the active Helltide and simply start killing any groups of demons that you find and joining in any of the regular events that will be specially influenced by the Helltide event. All monsters that you kill and even certain chests and resources that you open to gather throughout the Helltide area have a chance to drop Aberrant Cinders. These are the key currency you’ll be farming throughout the Helltide event, and you’ll want to be accumulating as many of these as quickly as you can because they are the key to the good loot in the event.

Spread out across the Helltide event area, you will see several different Tortured Gift Chests, and if you hover your mouse over them, they will indicate which type of specific gear that they contain, such as Amulets or Chest Armor. There are also Tortured Gift Mystery Chests, which are the most rare, won’t appear on your map, and will only show up on your minimap when you’re close to them. These contain a variety of different gear types and often drop quite a few Legendaries, usually three, which is very nice.

The different Tortured Gift Chests also require varying amounts of Aberrant Cinders to open. Ring Chest requires 75 for example, and it can range all the way up to 175 for the Mystery Chests. So you better be farming quickly so that you can open up multiple chests per Helltide event to get the most loot possible out of it!

That’s everything there is to know about Helltide events and how to make the most out of them in the Diablo 4 endgame. Make sure you give them a try when you spot them — they are quite fun to do, and you really do get some great loot out of them!