This guide will cover the different vendors that you will encounter and utilize in towns, as well as Diablo 4 items that you will use to equip your hero as you battle your way through Sanctuary.
Vendors
In Diablo IV, vendors are NPCs that you can interact with to buy, sell, or craft items to enhance your character’s journey through the dark and dangerous world of Sanctuary. Each major city and many of the smaller towns and encampments have these vendors. If you open your map, you can look at the different waypoints and see what services are offered, and then zoom in to see where they are located in the town.
So, who are these vendors, and what do they do?
The Blacksmith
After completing the first quest of the game and reaching Level 10, you will be directed to visit the Blacksmith in the capital city of Kyovashad, where you will be prompted to upgrade a piece of gear which will give you experience points and Diablo 4 Gold.
The Blacksmith is one of the most important vendors in the game, and one that you will visit regularly. He can salvage the loot that you don’t need from materials, repair your gear, and also upgrade your equipment.
With a cost of D4 Gold for sale and materials, each piece of gear can be upgraded up to five times, based on its rarity. Each time you upgrade your gear, you will receive +5 to Item Power. Be sure to upgrade your weapons as much as possible and go for the highest damage while leveling.
The Alchemist
Next, you can visit the Alchemist.
In Diablo IV, we don’t have one potion, which we can engage in battle to gain life and which has a cooldown. Instead, you carry a number of potions which increase in number and size, based on experience level, some gear, and from Renown, which can increase the amount of potions you can carry.
The Alchemist can also craft elixirs, which give you elemental resistances and buffs, like Attack Speed or Cold Resist, along with an experience boost. This is also where you can refine some of the many materials that the game has, including herbs, minerals and magical items.
So if, for instance, you don’t have enough Lifesbane but you have more Gallowvine and a small amount of Diablo 4 Gold, you can refine the materials to get what you need.
Additionally, at the Alchemist, you can craft incense. Incense can give stat increases and buffs to you and everybody nearby. The elixirs and incense will be stored in your Consumables tab. You can find the available materials and how many you currently have in the Materials tab on your character screen.
The Purveyor Of Curiosities
The next vendor that you can utilize in early leveling is the Purveyor of Curiosities.
You can collect Obols from dungeons and zone events, and by completing quests and receiving a cache. The default amount that you can carry is 500, though you can increase that limit as you go by collecting Altars of Lilith and Renown.
This special in-game currency can only be used by the Purveyor of Curiosities, where you gamble for items you need an upgrade for. And as you can see, if you’ve ever played Diablo III, she can be as difficult to work with as Kadala.
The Occultist
Once you have either reached Level 25 or have acquired the Codex of Power by completing a dungeon, you can unlock the Occultist.
As you make your way through Sanctuary, you will encounter and complete dungeons, which can grant you Aspects that are stored in your Codex of Power. The Occultist can then imprint these Aspects onto your gear, imbuing them with special powers.
However, it’s important to know that it will always imprint with the lowest stat percentage. So, while useful, especially in early game, you will still want to continue to farm and look for Legendary drop with a higher percentage for the Aspects you want for your build.
And if you acquire an Aspect for, say, a Barbarian while you’re on your Rogue, you can then use that on a Barb alt and make the leveling process easier. As we all know, the leveling process is very long and boring. If you are struggling with leveling, you may wish to take a look at Diablo 4 Boosting service. In this way, you can face more challenging game content more quickly. The Occultist can also extract Aspects from Legendary items, destroying it in the process. Unlike the Codex of Power Aspects, which will always imprint with the lowest stat, one that you extract from a Legendary item will retain its stat percentage.
When you have extracted an Aspect from a Legendary item, you can find it in your Aspects tab. Hovering over it will show you what items it can be imprinted on. Once you’ve extracted an Aspect you want to use, you can then imprint it onto a different Legendary item if you’ve found one with good stats but the wrong power, or onto a Rare item, which will make it Legendary.
I like to think of Rare items as Legendaries, which don’t have a Legendary Aspect yet. So, always check the stats on a Rare item before selling or destroying. It might be your best new item after you imprint it.
One thing to consider is that, as you’re leveling your character, you change out your gear often as you level up and find better items. So, if you find an especially powerful Aspect that is critical to your build, you might want to hold on to it and put it on a different item than your weapon, at least in early game.
Another function the Occultist can provide is enchanting an item. If you have a useless affix on an item but it’s otherwise well-rolled, you can replace that with a new one. You will be given the option of two different affixes, and even if you don’t choose one, you’ll lose your Diablo 4 Gold and materials. Enchanting is quite expensive, so that’s something to consider before enchanting an item early on, when you might not be feeling very rich.
The Occultist can also craft and salvage Sigils, which can be used in the endgame to open Nightmare Dungeons.
The Jeweler
The Jeweler is a vendor who unlocks when you reach Level 20. This is where you will upgrade your gems, socket items, remove gems from sockets, and upgrade your jewelry. The first thing you will do with her is to upgrade a gem. Gems can be found by exploring the world and by killing enemies, and it will take three of one type of gem to upgrade it to the next level.
In order to add a socket to an item, you will need a Scattered Prism, which you can receive from killing a World Boss or from Treasure Goblins. You can also upgrade your jewelry here. Diablo 4 Rare items can be upgraded three times, and Legendary items can be upgraded five times.
There are several other less important vendors in many of the towns, where you can purchase armor, weapons, rings and amulets, and the Stable Master and where you can purchase and upgrade your mount. Be sure to visit the Vendors as you come across new towns as you explore the world of Sanctuary.
Items And Gear
In Diablo IV, acquiring powerful gear through looting is a high priority as you make your way through the dark world of Sanctuary. So, let’s look at how your gear plays a powerful role in shaping your character’s power and customization.
First, our rarity categories. Items in Diablo IV have five different categories on their rarity. Common, which has no special affix; Magic, which has a single affix; Rare, which is usually better than Magic and can have at least three affixes; and Legendary items, which have four affixes and one randomly rolled Legendary Aspect, which is a Legendary Power. The final category is Uniques, which are the highest level in the game and begin dropping in World Tier 3.
Uniques come in Sacred or Ancestral, with Ancestral having the higher power. This is very similar to Diablo III, with Legendary, Ancient Legendary, and Primal Ancient items.
The stats that roll on your gear will include random generic affixes, as well as ones specific to the piece of equipment that it comes on.
Weapons determine your Damage Per Second, or DPS, affecting Skill Damage and Attack Speed, and also provide damage multipliers like Damage Over Time and Critical Strike Damage. Armor pieces provide defensive and utility stats, and jewelry offers damage, utility stats, and elemental resistances.
If you look under the Core Stats in your character screen, you can check where you are with Level, Strength, Intelligence, Willpower and Dexterity, as well as what you are gaining from items under Item Contribution, and what these stats do for your character. This is also where you can find all of your offense, defense, utility and PVP stats, to help gauge where you are strong and what you need to try to improve.
Your equipment’s Item Power is the stats that roll on gear. The power of your gear scales with your character level, and the range of affixes on your gear increase along with your Item Power. If you find a piece of gear that has the affixes you are looking for but they aren’t as high as you would like, you can always upgrade it at the Blacksmith for a +5 increase to Item Power with each upgrade. Rares can be upgraded three times for an additional 15 Item Power. Legendaries can be upgraded up to five times for 25 to Item Power.
Remember that Legendary Aspects don’t increase with upgrading. Make sure to always upgrade your weapon and have your Item Power be as high as possible, as that is at the core of how you do damage.
The Stash
If you’re an in-game hoarder, no judgement. Holding on to something just in case is something a lot of us tend to want to do.
However, when you start out in Diablo IV, your stash is pretty small. It comes with one chest with 50 slots. Buying another chest for more storage costs 100,000 D4 gold. So, how do you manage it?
You find a Legendary item with an Aspect you think you might want to use to try on a build at some point. Don’t throw it in your stash. Extract the power at the Occultist to use later. That’s one less item you need to hold on to.
And unless you are running a Hardcore character where you need backup gear, don’t stash a bunch of marginal or “almost as good as what I have” items just in case. As your character progresses, you’re going to find better loot. So what do you keep?
In early game, if you find items that are well-rolled and generic and can work for any class, throw those in your stash and they can help you to quickly power up an alt character. If you somehow manage to find a piece of loot that can’t be equipped until you gain a level or two, keep that in your stash. You also want to hold on to any well-rolled Rare items that you want to keep in order to imprint an Aspect you are still looking for.