Learning how to use Aspects in Diablo 4 is a great way to essentially create your own legendary items. This helps with making your own build so you don’t have to rely on random item drops. Otherwise, you’re stuck grinding a dungeon or an area in the hope of it dropping.
By speaking with an Occultist in Kyovashad or any other potential town, you can take full advantage of legendaries. Their services include imprinting and extracting Aspects alongside other useful features too. However, for the purpose of this guide, we’ll be focusing on those two services for now.
How to Use Aspects in Diablo 4
Reach Level 25 to Unlock the Occultist
While playing the beta players only had access to the one Occultist in Kyovashad.
Before you can start messing with aspects you’ll need to either reach level 25 or acquire a Codex of Power for the Occultist to become available. This is the main NPC you’ll be interacting with if you want to create your own legendary weapons.
Regardless, you’ll need to unlock the Occultist, Demyan, in Kyovashad before you can do anything with Aspects. You can find them on the left side of town represented by three connected circles on the map. Once you have them available, check the next two sections for more info.
How to Get Aspects
Extracting legendaries is one method even though it costs gold and is only for one use. Unless you extract it again.
For those that don’t know what Aspects are, they’re essentially legendary traits. You can get them by extracting legendary items, completing dungeons, and even making progress in the campaign. Fortunately, you can hover over a dungeon on the main map to see what Aspect is there.
This is useful to know so you don’t waste your time completing a dungeon for an Aspect you don’t want. Especially since certain ones are specific to a class and can’t be used on other ones. However, the good thing to know is that Aspects are character wide. So once you unlock it on one character, another one will have it available as well. Assuming you’re not on hardcore.
Grinding dungeons for experience and gear isn’t the only reward you can get.
The process of extracting legendary items is different from salvaging, so be careful to not make that mistake. Unlike salvaging items for materials at the Blacksmith, you’ll need to use the second tab at the Occultist. This page says “Extract Aspect” where you’ll destroy the legendary item to extract the legendary trait.
The idea here is that you’ll get a one-time use Aspect that you can put on another item now. This works well when you have an under-leveled legendary that you want to keep. Since you can extract it and put it onto a stronger item instead. However, it is important to mention this costs gold to do.
How to Imprint an Aspect Onto an Item
Did you know you can change the Aspect on a legendary?
Once you’re ready to create a legendary item, you’ll need to learn how to imprint Aspects in Diablo 4. This is the first tab at the Occultist where you’ll need a rare yellow item or legendary and an Aspect. Also, you’ll likely need some materials for this process such as Veiled Crystals. You can get Veiled Crystals by salvaging rare items at the Blacksmith.
Regardless, once you have a rare item you want to imprint onto, drag it from your inventory to the item slot at the Occultist. Then, you’ll need to decide the Aspect you want to imprint and how you’re doing it. This leads to the Codex of Power or the Aspect From Inventory slot.
Certain ones can be used by any class such as the Aspect of the Protector.
If you’re using the Codex of Power, you can click the red square button to see available Aspects. This will only show the ones you’ve unlocked from content like dungeons and campaign progress. But, you won’t lose these ones when you imprint them onto an item.
Or if you prefer to imprint an Aspect from your inventory, you’ll need to check the Aspects tab in your inventory. Then, drag it over to the “Aspect From Inventory” slot at the Occultist. Finally, when the rare item and Aspect are selected, you can preview the new legendary item at the bottom.
Preview your new legendary item before you craft it to make sure it’s what you want.
You’ll also see the total material cost for creating your new legendary item in Diablo 4. One quick example for imprinting a rare helmet costs 6 Veiled Crystals and 4,495 gold. However, imprinting an item like a weapon can be much more expensive. In my case, my rare staff requires 12 Veiled Crystals and 11,238 gold.
Aside from all that, it’s important to note that you can only imprint certain Aspects on certain gear. You can sort the Codex of Power by certain filters to see what Aspects are compatible. For example, certain ones like the Energizing Aspect for the Rogue only work on rings. Fortunately, you can use the Codex of Power and hover over Aspects to see how to get them.
You can check the Codex of Power at any time by visiting the Collections page on “Y” by default for PC players.
This is useful if you’re looking for a certain legendary trait and haven’t been able to find where to get it. Especially if you don’t want to hover over every single dungeon in Diablo 4. But, if you’re not sure what you want, you can also use those filters we mentioned for an idea. The filters are Defensive, Offensive, Resource, Utility, and Mobility.
That’s all there is to this in-depth guide on how to use Aspects in Diablo 4. It can be a lot to understand at first but it’s a powerful mechanic to use. When you get a chance, be sure to check out how the other Occultist services work too. Like enchanting your gear to change certain traits/affixes.
Jeff is a journalist with over 10 years of experience writing, streaming, and making content about video games. With an associate degree in journalism, he’s a sucker for RPGs, survival games, roguelikes, and more.