Greater Rifts had a major place in the endgame of Diablo III, and Diablo IV has its own version; The Pit Of The Artificer. While The Pit has been around previously, the unlocks and rewards have changed in the last couple of months. If you are getting into the endgame, here is how you can unlock these short, difficult, timed, run-based dungeons.
Click next to delve into the Pit.
The Pit Of The Artificer is a repeatable dungeon located in Cerrigar, Scosglen. Just northwest of the Cerrigar Waypoint you’ll find the Artificer’s Obelisk (Portal Activator). This is where you’ll gain access to the dungeon, so remember it well.
As for the dungeons themselves, they are timed but they don’t merely have a numerical timer like The Kurast Undercity does. Instead, a gauge will appear on the right side of the screen, with an hourglass marker slowly progressing from left to right.
A separate, white triangle marker on the gauge represents your progress. For each enemy you kill, the gauge will fill slightly, moving the white triangle closer to the end.
You’ll need to defeat a large number of enemies to fill the gauge completely, which causes the portal to the final boss to appear. You’ll need to completely fill the gauge and kill the boss before the hourglass reaches the end to win, and the faster you do it, the better your rewards will be.
Each time you complete a run with time to spare, you’ll unlock higher difficulties of The Pit Of The Artificer, which represent difficulties up to (and surpassing) Torment 1 to 4.
If you die in The Pit Of The Artificer, you’ll incur a time penalty, which starts as a slap on the wrist, but the time penalty will increase the more you die. Ideally, you’ll want to run difficulties where you can get through quickly, without dying.
To unlock the ability to use The Pit Of The Artificer, you’ll only need to meet the following requirement:
However, even once you’ve unlocked it, you’ll need the following consumables to create a portal to the dungeon every time you’d like to do a run:
So let’s talk about where you can get Artificer’s Stones.
The Artificer’s Stones have a chance to drop—but are unfortunately not guaranteed—when completing the following activities:
Running around the open world, completing these sorts of activities, then returning to Cerrigar and running The Pit a bunch of times, is a satisfying rhythm, and a fantastic way to gain Paragon Levels and get new Legendary items, all of which boost your power.
While you’ll still get the great Legendary items you will find anywhere else in the game, finishing runs of The Pit Of The Artificer is primarily done to power up the Glyphs you use on your Paragon Boards.
You’ll get five Glyph levels when you complete a run, and when you access the pedestal after defeating the Pit boss, you’ll be able to put each of those levels into any Glyph you have unlocked. Put them into ones you’ve already socketed on your Paragon Board to maximize your benefits.
While you can see how many Artificer’s Stones you have by accessing the Artificer’s Obelisk in Cerrigar, you don’t want to have to travel there to see if you can start up your next run.
If you are out and about and want to check how many Artificer’s Stones you have, open your Character sheet, then click into Stats & Materials (found under your character’s name, Wardrobe and Profile). By default, this will take you to the Active Effects / Currency tab, so click over to the ‘bag’ Stocked Goods and Unusual Materials tab.
Scroll down to Unusual Materials, where you’ll see how many Artificer’s Stones you have. You’ll need three to run The Pit, so don’t head to Cerrigar if you don’t have that many yet.
With all that information, you are ready to run The Pit Of The Artificer, so get to it and rank up your Glyphs. Grow strong, friends! Once you are strong enough, you can also unlock Torment difficulties through this activity, so check out our guide on that, too. Good luck!
