How to get Sacred items in Diablo 4

Diablo 4 Sacred items - Lilith
(Image credit: Blizzard)

Diablo 4 Sacred items are special pieces of gear that are stronger than your usual normal, magic, rare, legendary, and even unique items. That's because Sacred is a term that can be attached to any of those item rarities, making them better than the regular old version you'd usually get as loot.

Speaking of powerful gear; crafting Legendary items is a great idea if you're struggling with the campaign, and upgrading your healing potion can help, too. Either way, here's how to get Sacred items in Diablo 4 and what exactly they are. 

How to get Sacred items 

You can tell Sacred items by their name and glowing icon (Image credit: Blizzard)

First thing's first: to get Sacred items you need to be on world tier three, i.e. Nightmare. This means you'll need to complete the campaign and finish the capstone dungeon in Kyovoshad's cathedral. After that's done, you can change your world tier at the statue in Kyovoshad's main square, which unlocks Sacred items as a potential drop.

While you can get Sacred items the same way as any other loot, the best method seems to be defeating elites in dungeons, as well as opening resplendent chests, and greater radiant chests. Since you can get Sacred items at every rarity level, some of the drops are definitely more useful than others. You'll know a Sacred item when it drops due to it saying Sacred in brackets alongside the regular name, plus the top of the item icon will glow in your inventory.

You can also purchase Sacred items from merchants and get them from Curiosity Vendors for Murmuring Obols—just look for which of the question mark icons has the Sacred glow to know which might get you one.

What are Sacred items? 

Sacred items seem to sell for more than the regular version (Image credit: Blizzard)

Sacred items are essentially better versions of the normal, magic, rare, and legendary gear that you got in the Veteran world level, but you can also get Sacred unique gear, since unique items also unlock as potential drops in the Nightmare world tier. The key difference is that Sacred items roll higher stats than their regular counterparts, so are essentially just better versions of those same items.

Generally, I'd suggest holding onto Sacred rare gear for potential building and upgrading into legendary, while you can sell Sacred normal and magic gear, which seems to be worth a bit more than its regular version would be. The best gear you can get is Sacred legendary and Sacred unique—besides the ancestral items that can drop at world tier four, these are the most powerful available. 

Diablo 4 guide:Diablo 4 mount: 
Diablo 4 level unlocks: Diablo 4 Altars of Lilith: Diablo 4 Murmuring Obols:

Diablo 4 guide: Everything you need
Diablo 4 mount: Race across the map
Diablo 4 level unlocks: New vendors
Diablo 4 Altars of Lilith: Stat boosts and XP
Diablo 4 Murmuring Obols: Get Legendary gear

Sean Martin
Senior Guides Writer

Sean's first PC games were Full Throttle and Total Annihilation and his taste has stayed much the same since. When not scouring games for secrets or bashing his head against puzzles, you'll find him revisiting old Total War campaigns, agonizing over his Destiny 2 fit, or still trying to finish the Horus Heresy. Sean has also written for EDGE, Eurogamer, PCGamesN, Wireframe, EGMNOW, and Inverse.