Diablo 4‘s Season 1 update hasn’t quite lived up to expectations. However, those that have chosen to lose themselves in the game’s first major seasonal update area quickly finding themselves asking the same seemingly simple question, “Where do I find Wrathful Hearts?”
That’s obviously the question that we’re here to answer today, but before we dive into how to find some of the rarest new items in the game, here’s a little more information about both Wrathful Hearts and Diablo 4‘s new Malignant Heart mechanics.
Diablo 4: What Are Malignant Hearts?
Malignant Hearts are one of the biggest new features in Diablo 4’s Season 1 update. In fact, they’re one of the only things in Diablo 4’s first season that are actually exciting existing players and encouraging them to pursue new builds and strategies.
You won’t be able to acquire Malignant Hearts unless you’re playing on one of Diablo 4‘s Seasonal Realms. Even then, you won’t start acquiring Malignant Hearts until you’ve completed (or skipped) the main Diablo 4 campaign on one of those realms.
Once unlocked, Malignant Hearts essentially replace the gems you previously socketed into your jewelry. Like those gems, Malignant Hearts correspond to certain colors (or types) of sockets that they’re compatible with. Unlike gems, Malignant Hearts can only be socketed into jewelry (Amulets and Rings).
You certainly won’t miss those gems once you unlock Malignant Hearts, though. Not only do Malignant Hearts provide valuable Armor bonuses, but they offer what the Diablo 4 team describes as often “broken” effects. While the exact nature of those effects tends to vary wildly (more on that in a bit), they are often individually as beneficial (or more beneficial) than many of the Legendary Aspects in the game. Given that you can equip up to three Malignant Hearts at any time, you can easily take advantage of the many powerful synergies they enable.
Like most of Diablo 4‘s Season 1 content, Malignant Hearts will likely only be available so long as Diablo 4‘s first season is active. While it remains to be seen how the Diablo 4 team will ultimately “sunset” Diablo 4‘s seasonal content, anyone who wants to find and utilize those Malignant Hearts should do so while the first season of content is still active.
Diablo 4: How Many Malignant Hearts Are In the Game?
There are 32 Malignant Hearts in Diablo 4’s Season 1 update. Each class has access to four unique Malignant Hearts, and the other 12 can be used by any class in the game.
Those 32 hearts can be broken down into four major categories:
Vicious Hearts – These hearts provide various offensive benefits and are easily identified by their orange/red color.
Brutal Hearts – These hearts provide various defensive benefits and are easily identified by their blue color.
Devious Hearts – These interesting hearts provide what the developers describe as “utility” abilities. Identified by their purple hues, these hearts often offer unique abilities that feature a wide range of potential benefits.
Wrathful Hearts – The rarest hearts in the game, Wrathful Hearts offer what could best be described as “superpowers.” The abilities these grey-tinted hearts provide vary wildly, but you’ll definitely want to run one of them in pretty much every build.
Please also note that some Malignant Hearts will not become available until you’ve reached higher World Tiers. There are eight Malignant Hearts that can’t be acquired until you reach World Tier 3, and another five Malignant Hearts (one for each class) that aren’t unlocked until you reach World Tier 4.
Diablo 4: How Do You Find Malignant Hearts?
There are two main ways to find Malignant Hearts in Diablo 4’s Season 1 update: drops and crafting.
You’ll probably find most of your Malignant Hearts through simple item drops. Once you’ve unlocked Malignant Hearts (and the rest of Diablo 4’s Season 1 content), you’ll occasionally encounter Malignant enemies that have been infected with a corruption that is spreading across the land. Defeat those enemies, and they’ll conjure a Malignant Heart.
However, you can’t directly pick that heart up and add it to your inventory quite yet. Instead, you’ll need to interact with it in order to summon a powerful Elite creature. Defeat that creature, and you’ll acquire a Malignant Heart that matches the color/type of the conjured heart you just interacted with.
You can rather easily find Malignant Hearts (and the enemies that drop them) in the six Malignant Tunnels found across Diablo 4‘s Seasonal Realm. These tunnels are basically special dungeons that are guaranteed to house both Malignant enemies and special Malignant Hearts found at the end of each tunnel.
However, please note that you can also find Malignant enemies and Malignant Hearts in the open world and in regular dungeons as well. Generally speaking, it’s almost always worth fighting those enemies and acquiring those hearts whenever you have the chance to do so (even if you don’t need any more hearts at the moment).
Why? Well, you can actually salvage and craft Malignant Hearts at special stations called Cormond’s Workbenches (which are found in every major town hub). Salvaging extra Malignant Hearts will reward you with a special resource called Malignant Ichor. That Malignant Ichor (and a little Gold) can be used to craft Vicious, Brutal, and Devious Hearts.
What about Wrathful Hearts? Well, you can’t directly craft Wrathful Hearts as you can the other hearts in the game. However, you can craft an “Uncertain Heart Cache,” which is basically a randomized collection of hearts that have a small chance of containing a Wrathful Heart. It’s not known what the “drop rate” of those hearts is within those caches, but it certainly seems to be pretty low.
Alternatively, you can craft what’s known as a Malignant Invoker. These Invokers are used to trigger special Malignant Hearts found at the end of Malignant Tunnels. So a Devious Invoker will let you activate a Devious Heart at the end of those tunnels, and so on and so forth.
Once again, though, it’s not possible to directly craft a Wrathful Invoker. Instead, you’ll have to craft an Uncertain Invoker Cache and hope that you get lucky enough to find one in there. Much like the hearts themselves, though, it’s actually possible to find Invokers of any type out in the world. The drop rate for those Invokers seems to be higher in Malignant Tunnels, though you can certainly acquire them in dungeons and out in the open world.
Diablo 4: Where to Farm Wrathful Hearts
Farming Malignant Hearts in Diablo 4 is actually incredibly easy. All you need to do is run through Malignant Tunnel dungeons and defeated the various Malignant enemies you find inside.
While there is no guarantee that you’ll receive a specific heart during those runs, you are guaranteed to receive several random Malignant Hearts simply by running and resetting these special dungeon areas. If you get the heart you’re looking for…great! If you don’t, you can always run the dungeons again or simply use the crafting materials you acquire along the way to try to find the heart you need via those methods.
While you can also acquire Malignant Hearts via running “normal” content, there really is no point in running anything but Malignant Tunnels if you’re farming hearts. The drop rate for those items is guaranteed in those areas, and you’ll quickly acquire more hearts than you know what to do with simply by running through them.
What you really need to know is how to farm Wrathful Hearts. After all, those are not only the rarest hearts in the game but they can’t directly be acquired via the crafting options that
At the moment, the best way to farm Wrathful Hearts is to reach the mission “The Cold Hard Truth” as part of Diablo 4 Season 1’s questline (it’s the final mission in that questline). The end of that mission sees you battle a new boss known as Varshan the Consumed. That boss will always drop a Wrathful Heart after he is defeated, which makes him the only guaranteed source for Wrathful Hearts in the game.
Whatever you do, though, do not turn that quest in after you have completed it. Instead, simply exit the dungeon and reset it via the “Reset Dungeons” button (or by exiting the game and logging back in). You’ll be able to run that same dungeon again and face Varshan the Consumed once more. Since Varshan drops a Wrathful Heart every time that you defeat him, you can infinitely farm him for as many Wrathful Hearts as you could ever want.
The bad news is that you can’t utilize this farming technique if you’ve already turned that quest in. The good news is that you can team up with someone who hasn’t turned the quest in yet and infinitely farm Varshan the Consumed so long as the other person is the party leader. Again, though, be sure that the other person doesn’t turn their quest in.
If this farming method feels like cheating…well, it probably is. There’s a very good chance that Blizzard didn’t intend for you to be able to reset the Varshan the Consumed boss battle so easily and farm Wrathful Hearts by farming the boss. As such, there’s a chance that this method will be patched out of the game.
If that happens…well, you’re kind of out of luck so far as Wrathful Heart farms go. Your only other viable option is to run Malignant Tunnels at the highest possible World Tier until you either acquire Wrathful Hearts or the materials needed to craft those caches mentioned above.
While the Wrathful Hearts drop rate certainly seems to get a little better once you reach World Tier 3 and 4 (possibly because those tiers offer additional hearts you can potentially acquire), it’s certainly not great. On average, I’ve found that I tend to acquire a Wrathful Heart once every 5-10 Malignant Tunnel runs. Even then, you’re probably looking for a specific Wrathful Heart and a “high roll” version of that heart. As such, you’re really going to have to live in those Malignant Tunnels until you get exactly what you’re looking for.
For what it’s worth, I would also suggest trying to craft Uncertain Invoker Caches over Uncertain Heart Caches if you’re trying to spend your extra resources. Why? Well, the drop rate for Wrathful Hearts in those Heart Cahces seems pathetically low at the moment. You’ll likely acquire more Wrathful Hearts through the typical Malignant Tunnel farming process than you will by crafting and opening such caches.
However, you’re always going to need a steady supply of Invokers for the ends of those tunnels, and you certainly don’t want to miss out on a guaranteed Wrathful Heart because you don’t have a Wrathful Invoker item in your inventory. Certain situations may make it more valuable to invest your crafting materials in other resources, though I generally find Invokers are your best bet once you no longer need a steady supply of lesser hearts.