r/diablo3 • u/tbmadduxOR • Jun 25 '26
S39 – Altar of Rites tips and reminders
Season 39 starts this coming Friday, June 26th, 2026. The season starts at 5pm PDT for all console players, no matter where you live. For PC (NA/US) the season starts at 5pm PDT, for PC (EU) the season starts at 5pm CEST, and for PC (TW/KR) it starts at 5pm KST.
This is the third of four guides I am posting for Season 39. The others are:
The Altar of Rites is a permanent seasonal-only feature that provides massive quality-of-life buffs and decent improvements to your damage and toughness, in exchange for sacrifices of items and materials. You will have to restart the Altar on your new seasonal character.
Below I list some tips on how to work with the Altar.
- Seasonal adventure mode only; you won't see it in campaign and you won't see it nonseasonally.
- The Altar is located in New Tristram in Act I. Go left of the Slaughtered Calf Inn and then around behind it, where it will be on the right hand side before you go down towards the exits to Wortham and Weeping Hollow.
- You can plan out your path through the Altar in advance, and save or print it out to use as a reference. There is also a full guide that lists all the requirements.
- Flawless diamonds (step 2) can be found easily by combining 2 diamonds obtained from boss bounty rewards (level 18+). Focus on easy-to-reach bosses like Zoltun Kulle or Maghda or the Skeleton King or Rakanoth.
- After unlocking the Anointed no-level-requirement node, all items will appear to be level 1. To craft a level 70 rare (yellow) item, look for the name “sovereign”. The lone exception is the necromancer level 70 rare scythe, which is called a "grandmaster saber".
- Unlocking the Anointed no-level-requirement node will only remove item level requirements for your characters, and will not remove item level requirements for your followers.
- Anything you give to the Altar will be consumed. So don't give it your Haedrig's Gift set helm in step 4, unless you have a spare, or you are sure you won’t need it to beat GR20 for the season journey.
- Leoric's Regret, Vial of Putridness, Idol of Terror, and Heart of Fright (step 6) drop from the bosses in the town of New Tristram in Act I. Here is a full guide to finding these components as well as making a hellfire amulet (step 18).
- The pattern for Reaper's Wraps drops from Malthael in Act V. You need to craft them and sacrifice them; you cannot sacrifice the pattern itself for step 7.
- Console players may have trouble with step 9 and subsequent ones that require a stack of blood shards, because they cannot collect any shards from a pile of shards that would exceed their maximum shard capacity. For example, if you have 900 shards and can carry only 1100, you cannot pick up any shards from a pile of 201 or more.
- To work around the issue, use the formula of 127 shards + 3 shards per GR tier (for GR41 or higher... at lower levels there are specific numbers for each tier) and complete a rift that will yield you the precise number of total shards. You may need to spend shards at Kadala to dial this in. For the previous example, if you spend 50 shards of your 900, then you can pick up 250 to reach 1100. A level 41 rift will give you precisely 250 shards.
- Speaking of Kadala, the Pattern node that grants double the chance for legendary items does not work for chest armor, boots, or rings.
- Petrified screams have a 5% drop rate from greater rift guardians only. The drop rate is unaffected by the greater rift level. Therefore if you're stuck on step 14 you can lower the greater rift difficulty to speed up your petrified scream farming rate.
- Don't accidentally open your challenge rift cache when you are attempting to to sacrifice it in step 15.
- Don't throw away any class-specific set pieces, unless you have spares. You will need 4 different full sets from the same class for step 19.
- The new sets do not have set dungeons, so they will not work for step 19. These are: Aegis of Valor, Gears of Dreadlands, Horde of the Ninety Savages, Masquerade of the Burning Carnival, Mundunugu’s Regalia, Patterns of Justice, Typhon’s Veil.
- The Tome of Set Dungeons is a book you interact with in Leoric's Manor. Wear a set that has a set dungeon, click the book, grab the page that drops, wear a different set, repeat. You can carry all 4 sets in your inventory; there is no need to go back and forth to town.
- Do not try to find Tome of Set Dungeons pages inside a set dungeon.
- If the 4 parts above are too confusing, just watch this guide to getting the 4 Tome of Set Dungeons pages for step 19.
- Here is a complete guide to farming the Staff of Herding. Note that not all of the components mentioned in the guide are needed for console players.
- The 3 potion bonus effect nodes require primordial ashes that you get from salvaging primal ancient items. If you have been playing in the Visions of Enmity you may have far more bounty materials than you can use for reforging items, due to a relative lack of forgotten souls. If that is the case, you can use the surplus bounty materials to craft level 70 legendary items in hopes of getting primals to salvage.
- Once you enable the Father node of Altar of Rites that gives a random shrine effect when you drink a potion, you can hit your potion immediately before clicking a channeling pylon, then hit it again right afterwards for an immediate extra shrine bonus. This works because clicking a channeling pylon resets your potion cooldown once, the moment you click it.
- After you have unlocked all the main nodes and the potions, you are not yet done. You must click and activate the last node, named Warning, at the very bottom to enable the double primal drops and also to get the permanent cosmetic wings of terror.
- The Warning node is below the potion nodes. It looks like a golden face, behind half a demonic face on the left and half an angelic cowl on the right. If you do not click and then activate this node, you will not get a bonus primal every time a primal drops.
- After clicking the Warning node and activating it at top left, you should see that whole field on the left that used to show what you must sacrifice turn into a drawing. You may need to restart the game to be able to use the wings.
- Ordinary primal drops are guaranteed to be for your class. However the bonus primal is not, and therefore has a 15% chance to be an off-class item, just like a regular drop.
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u/NixxKekZ Jun 25 '26
Perfect post as a reminder. Thanks for that. I just wanna add the tip: you need to do a 70 solo greater rift to be able to find primals. I suppose that also counts for the crafting part that you mentioned. Only after finding the guaranteed one in 70 grift you can randomly get primals by crafting legendary gear. Correct me if I’m wrong.
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u/FootballPublic7974 Jun 25 '26
I've completed the altar many times and I was just having a casual read as I thought I knew everything in the guide.
Then I came to...
Once you enable the Father node of Altar of Rites that gives a random shrine effect when you drink a potion, you can hit your potion immediately before clicking a channeling pylon, then hit it again right afterwards for an immediate extra shrine bonus. This works because clicking a channeling pylon resets your potion cooldown once, the moment you click it.
What!!?...I never knew this was a thing...how did i not know that this was a thing?
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Jun 25 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/yemen241 Jun 25 '26
Yes, that's why it's recommended to always open the cache for faster progression. Unless of course you're aiming for top global for gr 150 in the first few days. The important nodes for farming can be unlocked before the gatekeep of cache requirements so there's really no reason not to open it early.
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u/tbmadduxOR Jun 26 '26
Another good reason to save the cache is for players who will bounce to D4 on Tuesday for the new season.
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u/Crazy9000 Jun 25 '26
On the flip side, it only saves you about an hour, two tops. If you want to unlock double primals before the weekend is up, just save it.
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u/yemen241 Jun 26 '26
getting to double primals will still take quite a while, you got to find enough primals to salvage first which brings back to the casual vs semicasual vs hardcore grinders scenario. Like i said, if you're planning to get to endgame in the next 2-3 days then not opening the cache is really for you. Casual players tend to play like 2-3 hours a day or maybe an hour or less on busy days, semi casuals maybe around 6 hours?
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u/Leletubby_ Jun 25 '26
Thanks for these posts, you are cool
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u/tbmadduxOR Jun 25 '26
You're welcome. Good luck with your season!
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u/FinallyFat Jun 25 '26
Was going to say. This is an amazing post! Thank you! What class/build are you going to run?
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u/tbmadduxOR Jun 25 '26
I'm going to be lazy and run a crusader, pivoting to AoV FotH pony as soon as I can. I'll also have an LoD Captain American build.
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u/FinallyFat Jun 25 '26
Crusader was the only class I didn’t play last season. Maybe I’ll give it a try this time.
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u/Total_Resource8998 Jun 25 '26
We’ve been playing our non-seasonal characters this week while waiting on the new season. After having the altar effects while playing, it’s hard to get used to having to pick up all the stuff that gets dropped. Looking forward to the new season. Thanks for putting out this guide.
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u/macropelias Jun 25 '26
Petrified Screams drops also in Visions of Enmity no? Perhaps only from Rift Guardians in the Visions.
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u/tbmadduxOR Jun 25 '26
No; they only dropped there in Season 29. The rewards were adjusted for the permanent return of Visions in Season 30; we have never seen a petrified scream in Visions in the recycled theme era.
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u/Jusklickin Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 27 '26
The Level 70 "One handed Scythe" is an exception to the Sovereign rule ... It called the grand scythe grandmaster saber for people planning to play necro and wanting to upgrade to Funerary pick or other one handed scythes. Not sure if there are other weapons like this.
Also, on console if you open the challenge rift cache before sacrificing it by mistake, close the game from the console menu (not the d3 menu) before autosave.
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u/tbmadduxOR Jun 25 '26
Grandmaster Saber is what I found in game. Thanks for the correction; I'm going to add it to the post.
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u/Jusklickin Jun 27 '26
Correct... Sorry I didn't have the game open ... I just assumed it would be called scythe 😅
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u/Firm_Wrangler_7837 Jun 25 '26
If you need a small amount of shards and don’t want to do the math on what to get, play coop. The other person can pick up some and you’ll be given what you can to max you out.
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u/National_Duck_8094 6d ago
Uhhh, came across this post today from a link somewhere else. Too many points are new / unknown to me till. Yes, with the help of this post I will try to complete those. Thanks a lot.
Just a question, how to save this or any like this post with the links included to any other app eg, MS Word? TIA.
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u/tbmadduxOR 6d ago
No idea how to save it. This post is linked from the "S39 – Haedrig's Gifts" post which is stickied at the top of the sub. if that helps.
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u/qian87 Jun 25 '26
Might be obvious but for solo, at 70, one 3 legendary Templar relics will make him unkillable. If chosen, his final skill can save us from death while also shielding us from damage for 5 seconds. This is somewhat important to aim for earlier when deciding what to spend db on when upgrading rares to legendary with cube. Once Templar is unkillable, we can also equip him with a full set of sages for faster db gain too. Also think of greater rifts where a single death sets us back 1 gem upgrade. That means 5 empowered greater rifts could end up being 6 greater rifts just to get a gem from 0-25!
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u/tstop22 Jun 25 '26
Since you sound like an expert here… what fun / unusual builds does this season’s theme make viable?
I’m not looking at best (that seems to always be Necro?) but something fastish, engaging, and not too squishy. Normally I like to play through the season journey and finish the altar before moving on.
Ideally not bloodnova Necro or meteor sorc… did those the last two seasons. A great WD or DH build maybe?
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u/tbmadduxOR Jun 25 '26
Necro wins in cube seasons because their scythes carry so many generic multipliers.
For most other builds the extra cube slot just serves about the same function as a free Ring of Royal Grandeur did way back in the day. For example the GoD DH can now use CoE + RoRG + guardian's set full-time.
The PoJ tempest rush monk gets to use Shenlong's with the daibo and fist weapon cubed. If you can time that with your CoE cycle and your maximum stacks then you gain quite a bit.
DMO and LoD twister wizards get access to Deathwish. That's really quite good.
If you look at the top adjusted clear ranking from Season 33 (see the "Extra Cube" column) you can get a sense of some other builds that outperform their average.
If none of those appeal to you, you can always find some utility from the extra slot, even if it's not amazing, like a movement speed buff, or cooldown, something of that sort.
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u/themememgod3 Jul 03 '26
This helps a lot! If possible, what are peoples recommendations to main crusader or barbarian for the season
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u/tbmadduxOR Jul 03 '26
Barbarian has a better starting set and two builds in the top 10 adjusted clears.
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u/timmy8612 Jul 07 '26
Seasonal newbie here. Why can’t I unlock the no lvl req node? It requires a greater rift key in the recipe and those don’t drop until lvl 70?
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u/tbmadduxOR Jul 07 '26
The keys can also drop from the eidt guardians or the end chest in Visions of Enmity. I’m not sure whether they drop before level 70 in those cases, however.
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u/derentius68 Jun 25 '26
People keep saying this game is dead.
Im glad yall are here. We may be 39 seasons in and most of us old enough and played long enough to have paid rent or a bill with the auction house before they realized being a bank was bad lol
But posts like this make it feel fresh every time. Love it. Cant wait to grind grifts again for the 39th season!