Masterworking Guide

Masterworking is an end-game system available at the Blacksmith that allows players to improve the quality of the affixes (including Tempering Affixes) on their equipment. By providing a Blacksmith with materials obtained from Nightmare Dungeons, players can significantly improve their Ancestral Legendary and Unique equipment.

Masterworking Materials

Masterworking requires materials that are typically available by completing Nightmare Dungeons and the Infernal Hordes. As of Season 6, this system was simplified and now only uses Obducite. This material can be found even from normal elite packs within Nightmare Dungeons instead of being explicitly awarded at the end of the run. The amount of Obducite you get scales based on the difficulty you are playing, making it incentivized to play as high difficulty as possible when farming Obducite.

Higher ranks have higher material costs. In addition to the material listed above, Masterworking requires other materials including Gold, Iron Chunk, Rawhide, Veiled Crystals, Abstruse Sigils, Baleful Fragments, Coiling Wards, Forgotten Souls.

Masterworking Bonuses

Legendary equipment can have 8 Masterworking ranks in total, while Ancestral Legendary can be masterworked all the way to rank 12. Normally upon increasing the Masterworking Rank of a piece of equipment, all of its affixes increase by 5%. However, at Masterworking Rank 4, Rank 8, and Rank 12, only one of the item’s affixes receives a bonus, but the bonus is 25% instead of 5%. This larger bonus is known as a Masterworking Crit or Masterworking Proc. All Masterworking bonuses are additive with each other and additive with the 50% bonus associated with Greater Affixes.

The 5% and 25% apply to the base value of the Affix, not the 50% bonus of the Greater Affix. For example, let's say there's an affix with a cap of 50%. A Greater Affix would be a 50% bonus of that Affix, and would be 75%. However, each 5% increase from Masterworking would be 5% of that 50% cap, not 5% of the 75%. Affixes that have whole-number values have their values rounded down after their bonuses are applied.

• Rank 1, 2, 3: +5% to all affixes
• Rank 4: +25% to one random affix
• Rank 5, 6, 7: +5% to all affixes
• Rank 8: +25% to one random affix
• Rank 9, 10, 11: +5% to all affixes
• Rank 12: +25% to one random affix

A single affix can receive the MW Crit bonus multiple times. Affixes that receive this bonus once are blue. Affixes that receive this bonus twice are yellow. Affixes that receive this bonus three times are orange. At Rank 12, an affix has the following total bonus, depending on how many times it received a MW Crit:

• 0 MW Crits: +45%
• 1 MW Crit: +70%
• 2 MW Crits: +95%
• 3 MW Crits: +120%

Resetting

An item’s Masterworking Ranks can be reset. Players may want to reset an item's Masterworking Rank if the MW Crit bonus received at rank 4, 8, or 12 was randomly applied to an affix that is less valuable. If it's very important to get a Masterworking Crit bonus on one particular affix, then a player may want to reset Masterwork Rank at Rank 4 if they didn't get the proc they wanted. Very dedicated players may also reset their ranks at Rank 8, but that could be extremely costly. Resetting at Rank 12 is not recommended.

Summary

• The Masterworking menu can be accessed by interacting with Blacksmiths.
• Masterworking can only be performed on Legendary equipment. Additionally, the item must be either Unique or fully-tempered Legendary equipment.
• The required materials are obtained by completing Nightmare Dungeons.
• The maximum Masterworking Rank is 8 for Legendary items and 12 for Ancestral Legendary items.
• Most Ranks give every affix a 5% bonus. Ranks 4, 8, and 12 instead give a 25% bonus to a single random affix.
• An item’s Masterworking ranks can be reset.

Credits

Written by Avarilyn