Getting certain materials in Diablo 4 can be difficult if you’re not sure where to look. Regardless of whether you’re trying to get potion ingredients or materials to upgrade gear. You’ll eventually need to learn how to get Forgotten Souls. And if you’re not in the right area, you’ll never get any.
Before you can start farming Forgotten Souls, you’ll need to finish the Diablo 4 campaign. And then after that, you’ll have to unlock World Tier 3. Aside from making enemies tougher in Sanctuary, this World Tier also unlocks a bunch of new content.
How to Get Forgotten Souls in Diablo 4
Understanding How Helltides Work First
Helltides are for more than just filling your inventory with legendaries.
Once you begin playing on World Tier 3, you can start participating in Helltide events. This is where two adjacent regions become red on the map for an hour. During this period, the monsters are tougher and provide the Aberrant Cinder currency when slain. You can then spend those Cinders on Tortured Gift Chests spread throughout the area. Just make sure not to die and lose half your Cinders.
While wandering a Helltide, you’ll start to see these chests appear on your map. Then, you can hover over their symbol to see what type of chest they are. For example, the Tortured Gift of Protection will only give you armor items. While others can give you weapons or jewelry.
Opening Tortured Gift of Mysteries Chests
You can see how many Cinders you’ve gotten this Helltide by checking the top-right. Just don’t forget to spend them!
For the purpose of farming Forgotten Souls in Diablo 4, you’ll need to search for a more difficult-to-find chest. This is the Tortured Gift of Mysteries which usually provides the highest amount of Forgotten Souls. In my experience, I tend to get anywhere from two to six. However, they’re set in certain Helltide spots that can rotate every hour.
Despite Helltides running for an hour, they can pass the hour mark such as going from 4:30 to 5:30 and swap chest locations. Fortunately, players have realized that even though Mystery Chests can rotate, they still have static locations. So it’s just a matter of finding which one is active.
Don’t be surprised if a Mystery Chest isn’t visible on your map. Use your mount to find them quickly and get up close.
Depending on which regions the Helltides are taking place in, you can reliably find four Mystery Chests and sometimes as many as seven. With that said, these chests won’t appear on the map unless you’re really close to them. So it’s easy to miss them unless you’re following a guide. I tend to use Mapgenie and then only use the Mystery Chest marker under the Helltide section.
Alongside that struggle, Mystery Chests are also the most expensive to open up requiring 250 Aberrant Cinders (originally 175). This means you’ll need to grind Helltides effectively if you want to open up several of them. Which is part of why players rely on countdown timers for when Helltide events start. Such as the d4events.live site, the Diablo 4 Discord, or Mapgenie.
Here’s one example of the reward from opening a Mystery Chest on World Tier 3. Start converting those legendaries into aspects!
If you’re new to Helltides it’s also important to mention that Abberant Cinders are lost when the Helltide ends. Therefore, you can’t stack them up to use on Mystery Chests. Instead, you’ll have to grind them all during that one-hour window. Which isn’t as bad if you party up with other players. But, there are many other ways to get Forgotten Souls mentioned below.
Opening Cheaper Tortured Gift Chests
You can also open the cheaper chests if you’re looking to replace a certain legendary slot.
If you don’t have a lot of time to spend running a Helltide or perhaps caught it near the end, you can try the cheaper chests instead. The cheapest ones come in at 75 Abberant Cinders, then 125, 150, and finally Mystery Chests at 250. The main negative with going after cheaper chests is that they aren’t guaranteed to have Forgotten Souls.
Even though you’re really playing the odds of whether you get any or not, you’ll still likely get a legendary or two. And if that Helltide timer is running low, that’s better than nothing, to be honest. Especially since you can’t keep your Cinders anyway.
Breaking Screaming Hell Veins For Forgotten Souls
Screaming Hell Veins are another source of Forgotten Souls if you’re lucky enough to find them.
While exploring Helltides you’ll come across all sorts of new objects to interact with. Some of them may give you Aberrant Cinders, gold, or perhaps just a potion to help out. But, the one interactive you really want to find is a Screaming Hell Vein. Despite their creepy name, you can interact with these to get Forgotten Souls as well.
I can’t say whether they’re rare in certain regions or I just have really bad luck, but I can’t find many of them. And the few Screaming Hell Veins I have found have only given me one Forgotten Soul each. You can get an idea of what they look like in the screenshot above. So it’s important to know they’re not just normal Ore Veins.
Farming Helltide Enemies For Forgotten Soul Drops
You’ll likely get some Forgotten Souls by just naturally doing Helltides, but perhaps not a lot.
I’ve noticed while doing Helltides without even opening chests that I’ve gathered Forgotten Souls. This is because it’s easy to automatically pick up materials without realizing it. However, I have realized that elites sometimes drop them as well even though it’s rare.
While actively trying to catch when Forgotten Souls drop, I realized a Helltide Harbinger boss I took out dropped two. I can’t say for sure whether they have a higher loot drop chance or not. But, I wouldn’t be surprised if elites in general do. Even though the Helltide Harbingers are important enough to be marked on the minimap.
Slaying the Helltide Boss, Kixxarth, Helltide Assassin
I don’t currently have a Kixxarth screenshot, but I’ll try to get one!
When you’re new to Helltides fresh out of beating the campaign, you may accidentally run into Kixxarth, Helltide Assassin. This is a level 72 boss that can take a beating if you’re under-leveled. Right now a lot of players are questioning whether it’s worth killing Kixxarth since they don’t seem to drop anything major.
However, the main reason to kill them seems to be for Forgotten Souls if it’s not going to take you too long. While I haven’t personally beaten Kixxarth, I’ve seen they can drop around five to eight Forgotten Souls. With that said, I don’t recommend trying to kill them at a low level especially if you’re alone. Since your time could be better used gathering Aberrant Cinders for chests.
Ignore my baby character in the Diablo 4 beta fighting The Butcher.
Plus, similar to fighting The Butcher in Diablo 4, if you take too long, they can despawn. So if you’re like me and tried fighting Kixxarth at level 60 alone, it’s probably a bad idea. Even if you can survive those hits, you won’t necessarily have enough damage to back it up.
That’s pretty much all there is to this guide on how to get Forgotten Souls. If you want to completely upgrade your gear, you’ll need them for the fifth tier. So it’s worth grinding some of them out for when you want to start upgrading your gear to the max tier.
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.