Two of Diablo IV’s most requested endgame tools — a configurable loot filter and a timed tier-crawl dungeon — exist alongside each other, and using them together is what turns a slow farm into an efficient one. This guide covers how to set up the loot filter that shipped with Lord of Hatred, and how to push the Pit of Artificers ladder with realistic progression targets and build checks per tier.

What the loot filter is and where to find it

The loot filter is a free, universal feature available to every Diablo IV player regardless of expansion ownership. It lets you highlight gear that matters and hide everything else, ending the screen-clutter problem that has followed the game since launch. Hidden items still drop and can be picked up; they simply are not shown on the ground or on the minimap.

To open it, go to the main menu, then Options → Gameplay, and scroll to the large red “Open Loot Filter” button. There is an optional checkbox to add a shortcut to the main menu for faster access. Once inside, you can create named filters and add rules.

A filter holds up to 25 rules, and each rule is built from conditions. The ten condition types are:

  • Item Power Range
  • Item Rarity Match
  • Item Properties
  • Codex Upgrade Check
  • Greater Affix Check
  • Item Type Match
  • Has Required Affixes
  • Has Optional Affixes
  • Is Specific Unique
  • Talisman Set Bonus

Rules evaluate top to bottom, with higher rules overriding lower ones. A rule can either highlight matching items (with a recolor or sound alert) or hide them. Filters can be exported and imported as shareable text strings.

Building a first filter

The safest approach is to start broad and tighten over time. A practical starter filter for early Torment has four rules in this order:

  1. Hide Common, Magic, and Rare items below a set item power threshold (around 800 to 850 depending on your stage).
  2. Show any Ancestral-quality item.
  3. Show any item that would upgrade your Codex of Power aspect roll.
  4. Show items with at least one Greater Affix, recolored so they pop on the ground.

Test a filter before relying on it in a farming run. Drop test items on the ground and toggle the filter a few times, because overlapping hide rules can swallow gear you actually wanted. The most common mistake is a broad hide at the bottom of the list catching a Seal or Charm that a higher rule should have surfaced.

As you stabilize in higher Torment, disable the broad Ancestral rule and tighten further. Add named-Unique rules high in the list with a bright recolor so build-defining items always appear, and add Talisman Set Bonus rules when you are farming specific charm sets — Charms drop alongside regular gear and are easy to lose in the noise without a dedicated rule.

What the Pit is and how it scales

The Pit of Artificers is the timed endgame dungeon that unlocks once you reach World Tier IV. After completing a priority quest to clear a Tier 46 Nightmare Dungeon, you start collecting Artificer’s Stones from Helltide chests, World Bosses, Legion Events, Nightmare Dungeons, and Whisper Bounties. Spend an Artificer’s Stone at the Obelisk in Cerrigar to descend into the Pit.

Your task is to slay enough monsters before a 10-minute timer runs out to summon a final boss. Deaths cost time: the first death removes 30 seconds, the second removes 60 seconds, and the third and every subsequent death remove 90 seconds. After enough monsters are slain, a portal opens to the boss arena. Kill the boss before the timer expires to earn Masterworking materials and to unlock the next brutal tier of the Pit.

The reward for efficiency is tier skips. Kill the boss with 4 to 6 minutes left on the clock and you skip a level and unlock an additional tier. Kill it with 6 or more minutes left and you unlock two additional tiers. The Pit has 200 total levels of difficulty. The player who spends the Artificer’s Stone to open the Pit earns the lion’s share of the materials, and only that player has a chance at Stygian Stones used to summon Tormented Echoes — the Level 200 variants of the game’s summonable bosses. Higher tiers make Stygian Stones appear more often.

Note that the Tower — the multi-stage leaderboard dungeon that graduated from beta alongside Leaderboards — is a distinct system from the Pit. The Pit is the timed 200-tier crawl unlocked in Cerrigar, while the Tower is the leaderboard activity. Confusing the two is a common mix-up worth catching early.

Progression targets per tier band

The Pit scales monster health and damage with each tier, so progression is less about raw grinding and more about build checks at each band.

Tiers 1–45 — entry and Artificer’s Stone farming. This is the warm-up. The goal is to clear comfortably and bank Artificer’s Stones and Masterworking materials. Any working build with capped resistances and a coherent damage skill clears here. Use this band to learn the boss patterns and to lock in your filter, because the loot volume ramps sharply once you stop dying.

Tiers 46–75 — the World Tier IV band. Enemies start to punish mistakes. The build check is survival: capped resistances, a real defensive layer (Fortify, Barrier, or high armor), and enough damage to kill the boss with two to three minutes of buffer. If you are dying more than once per run, you are below the check — fix defenses before pushing higher.

Tiers 76–110 — the efficiency band. This is where tier skips start to matter. Killing the boss with 4 to 6 minutes left skips a level; with 6 or more, you skip two. The build check here is clear speed, not just survival. A build that clears comfortably but slowly earns one tier per run; a build that clears fast skips ahead and accelerates the climb. Most players plateau somewhere in this band, and that is where targeted upgrades — a Codex aspect roll, a Greater Affix on a key slot, or a Masterworking Capstone — pay off most.

Tiers 111–150 — the push band. Monster health and damage scale hard, and the boss arena becomes a real mechanics check. The build check is layered: capped resistances, a strong defensive passive or item, and a damage profile that can burn the boss inside the timer without a third death. Stygian Stones appear more often here, so this is the band where Tormented Echo farming overlaps with Pit pushing.

Tiers 151–200 — the ceiling. The top of the ladder is for fully optimized builds. Every slot should be Masterworked, key Uniques should be in place, and your filter should be aggressive enough that you are not wasting attention on junk drops. Deaths are catastrophic at 90 seconds each, so a no-death run is the real goal.

Build checks to run before you push

Before climbing past your comfort band, run these checks:

  • Survival: Are resistances capped, and is there a defensive layer that survives a boss hit? If a single mistake kills you, you are below the check.
  • Damage: Can you kill the boss with at least two minutes of timer buffer? If runs are finishing with under a minute left, a tier skip is unlikely and the climb is slow.
  • Death economy: Are you dying more than once per run? At 30-60-90 seconds per death, two deaths erase any tier-skip buffer.
  • Loot filter: Is the filter hiding anything you would actually equip? A filter that hides upgrades costs you more time than the clutter it removes.

What it means for players

The loot filter and the Pit solve opposite ends of the same problem. The filter removes the noise so you can see what matters; the Pit gives you a measurable ladder to climb with the gear that survives the noise. Set up a conservative filter early, tighten it as you stabilize in higher Torment, and use the Pit’s tier-skip mechanic to spend your timer budget rather than your patience. The 200-tier ceiling rewards builds that can both clear fast and survive a mistake, and the filter is the tool that keeps your attention on the run instead of on the ground.