The Pit of Artificers Guide: Glyphs, XP & Greater Affix Farming

Here's how I currently rank each Pit activity based on its value, if you are a curious player, a deeper dive can be found at the bottom of the article.

S Tier - Leveling Glyphs

The Pit is the only way to level Glyphs, making this its most valuable purpose.

Recommended setup:

• Choron's Blessing
• Choron's Haste
• Heart of Stone

These three upgrades provide everything you need for efficient Glyph leveling. The remaining Glyph-related nodes can generally be skipped.

B Tier - Experience Farming (Choron's Souls)

While not the best experience farm currently, it's worth keeping an eye on.

• Progress Orbs into experience orbs grant roughly 500 million experience per hour.
• Experience does not scale with Pit Tier.
• Pit Tier 1 provides the same experience as Pit Tier 150, making low-tier speed farming surprisingly efficient.

If stronger experience farms are nerfed in a future season, this could become a competitive leveling strategy.

A Tier - Greater Affix Farming (Choron's Flesh)

An underrated option if you no longer need Glyph upgrades.

• Converts Glyph upgrade attempts into loot.
• Averaged about 2.5 Greater Affix items per run in my testing.
• Since rewards don't appear to scale with Pit Tier, fast Tier 1 farming is currently the most efficient approach.

Z Tier - Red Path (right side of the tree)

At the moment, the entire red side of the War Plan tree is difficult to recommend.

• Cursed Merchant is overpriced.
• Cursed Offerings provide poor rewards.
• Cursed Rituals don't offer enough value for their cost.

In their current state, these upgrades are generally not worth investing in.

Accessing the Pit

Seasonal Realm

• Complete the Hellish Descent Capstone Dungeon from Season Rank II.

Eternal Realm

• Unlocks at Level 70.

Once unlocked, interact with the Pit Obelisk in Cerrigar or Túr Dúlra (Temis, if applicable in your version) to enter.

How It Works

• Defeat enemies before the 15-minute timer expires.
• Fill the progress bar to summon the boss.
• Kill the boss before time runs out to complete the run.
• Completing a tier upgrades your Glyphs and unlocks higher Pit tiers.
• Finishing with more time remaining unlocks multiple tiers at once.
• The Pit has 150 difficulty tiers.

Rewards:

• Basic Items, notably a good source of early Talismans
• 4 Glyph upgrade attempts.
• +1 attempt if you don't die.
• Up to +4 attempts from the Pit Skill Tree (War Plans).

Glyph Upgrades

• Glyphs can reach Level 150.
• Radius increases at Levels 25 and 50.
• Upgrade chance depends on the difference between the Pit Tier and your Glyph level.
• If the Pit Tier is 20+ levels higher, the Glyph gains an extra guaranteed level.
• Level 51 upgrades the Glyph to Legendary, unlocking an additional affix.
• Missing Glyphs can also drop at the end of a successful run.

Difficulty Scaling

• Monster level scales with the selected Pit Tier.
• Higher tiers increase monster Health and damage; these numbers keep changing, and they are difficult to test. Some say it's as high as 15/30%.

Layout

• Each run contains 5 randomized floors connected by portals.
• Maps and monster types are random.

Progress

• Elite monsters provide the most progress.
• Monsters can drop Exp Orb with certain Warplan Points.
• With certain Warplan points, a Butcher can spawn, and killing him can complete the run.

Leveling Glyphs

If your only goal is to level Glyphs, there are just three upgrades worth prioritizing, one yellow, two blue. Investing further into the Pit Skill Tree usually isn't necessary unless the current season also makes the Pit a good farming activity.

1. Choron's Blessing

• Grants +1 Glyph upgrade attempt for completing the Pit.

2. Choron's Haste

• Grants +1 Glyph upgrade attempt for every 5 minutes remaining after defeating the Pit Guardian.
• Most builds can comfortably finish with 10+ minutes remaining, giving +2 upgrade attempts.

3. Heart of Stone

• Pick it up at the start of the run.
• Enemies drop Progress Orbs, allowing you to summon the boss much faster.
• After defeating the boss, donate the Heart of Stone at the altar for +1 Glyph upgrade attempt.

Optional for Glyphs Upgrades

The last two upgrades on the blue path aren't a priority for Glyph leveling. Same for the rest of the Yellow Upgrade, even tho some are decent. Meanwhile the Red Upgrades are for loot and having nothing to do with Glyphs.

Choron's Shortcut

• Randomly triggers one of three effects:
• • Teleports you to the next floor.
  • Spawns an Elite.
  • Spawns a Shrine.
• This can actually slow your run down, as the teleport isn't always helpful and may skip areas you wanted to clear.

Damned Thieves

• Spawns Orb Thieves that drop Progress Orbs when defeated.
• There's no real downside to taking it; it helps, but not in a major way.

Pit Butcher

• Spawns the Butcher during a Pit run.
• The Butcher counts as the Pit Guardian, so killing him immediately completes the run.
• If the Butcher kills you, the run immediately fails.

Farming Experience & Loot

The Pit isn't just for leveling Glyphs. You can also use it to farm experience or Greater Affix (GA) items.

Choron's Favor: 3rd Upgrade in the central line.

• Increases the chance of special events and encounters in higher Pit tiers.
• Only useful when paired with the red side of the Pit Skill Tree.

Choron's Souls: 4th upgrade in the central line, one of the two choices.

• Converts your Glyph upgrade attempts into Experience Orbs.
• Progress Orbs no longer fill the Pit progress bar and instead grant experience.
• This affects all Progress Orb sources, including:
• • Heart of Stone.
  • Damned Thieves.
  • Goblins and other special encounters.

Experience Testing

• Experience Orbs grant the same amount of experience regardless of Pit Tier.
• Each orb currently awards roughly 350k experience from monsters and 1.1M experience by spending Glyph Upgrades
• Since rewards don't scale with difficulty, low tiers can be completed much faster, making them surprisingly competitive for experience farming.

If future seasons reduce the effectiveness of other leveling methods, such as Helltide Maggots, this could become a strong alternative, especially for lower-level characters that can't efficiently farm higher difficulties.

Choron's Flesh: 4th upgrade in the central line, one of the two choices.

• Converts your Glyph upgrade attempts into loot instead of Glyph upgrades.
• Based on my testing, rewards do not appear to scale with Pit Tier.
• I received about 2 Greater Affix items for every 7 Glyph upgrade attempts; I think it might be 1 GA per 3 Glyph upgrades. They can be Uniques.
• Insane GA per hour if you farm Pit Tier 1

Red Path

The red path focuses on special events and is most effective when paired with Choron's Favor, which increases how often those events appear. Almost everything in the Red Path requires spending Artificer's Stones.

Artificer's Stones are used to open the Pit and are primarily obtained from Nightmare Dungeons.

Choron's Wager

• Adds an altar that can be activated using Artificer's Stones.
• Completing the challenge rewards 30 Artificer's Stones, while activation costs 15, resulting in a net gain of 15 Stones.
• The challenge is simple:
• • Kill 100 enemies without evading.

After unlocking Choron's Wager, you can choose two of the following three upgrades.

Cursed Merchant

• Has a chance to appear after completing a Pit run.
• Sells equipment in exchange for Artificer's Stones.

In its current state, this upgrade isn't worth taking.

• Items cost hundreds of Artificer's Stones.
• Each successful Choron's Wager only provides a net gain of 15 Stones.
• The items sold are typically just standard merchant gear, including basic Ancestral or even non-Ancestral items, with no guaranteed Greater Affixes.

Cursed Offerings

Don't confuse this upgrade with Choron's Wager. While both add altars to the Pit, they serve different purposes.

Cursed Machines

• Have a chance to appear during a Pit run.
• Consume Artificer's Stones when activated.
• The more Cursed Machines you activate in a run, the better the rewards are supposed to become.

From my testing, this upgrade isn't worth taking.

• The most valuable rewards I've received were Horadric Cube crafting materials.
• Even after spending a large number of Artificer's Stones, the rewards remained underwhelming.

Cursed Rituals

Unlike the other red path upgrades, Cursed Rituals do not consume Artificer's Stones.

Instead, you'll find Choron's Blood, Choron's Sweat, and Choron's Tears throughout the Pit. These materials are gathered like herbs or ore in the open world and can be spent at Ritual Sites.

Gold Ritual

• Costs 5 of each material.
• Rewards 5 million Gold.

Boss Ritual

• Costs 20 of each material.
• Summons a boss with standard boss loot.
• In my testing, the best reward was Enhanced Primordial Dust.

Ancestral Ritual

• Costs 50 of each material.
• Drops a handful of gear, including both Ancestral and non-Ancestral items.
• In my testing, I received roughly 2 Ancestral items with no Greater Affixes, plus several normal items.

Overall, gathering the materials takes a lot of time for too few materials and the rewards are virtually 0.

Final Thoughts

The Pit has become much more than just the place to level Glyphs. Depending on how you build your War Plans tree, it can also be one of the better ways to farm experience and Greater Affix gear. Spending a few minutes planning your path will save you a lot of time over the course of a season.

Blizzard will almost certainly tweak War Plans and rewards in future updates, so some of these recommendations may change. We'll keep this guide updated whenever that happens.

Now that you know how the Pit of Artificers War Plans work, it's time to jump in. If you're looking to clear higher tiers faster or farm more efficiently, check out our Diablo 4 Tier List to find the best builds for the job. Good luck, and hopefully your next run ends with the drop you've been chasing.