Diablo 4 War Plans Guide: Best Plans, Tactics and Rewards
War Plans are the endgame planner of Lord of Hatred. You pick a short chain of activities you'd play anyway, like Helltide, Nightmare Dungeons or The Pit, run them back to back and open the War Chest in Temis when the chain is done. Every activity you finish also levels its own tree, and those trees are where War Plans really pay off, because their nodes change how the activities themselves play and drop.
Quick version (Season 15, checked November 2)
- Unlock: finish the Lord of Hatred campaign, then use the Command Table in Temis. Alts can skip the campaign.
- A plan: a chain of up to five activities from six types, then the War Chest in Temis.
- Whispers don't take a slot. You do them alongside any activity in the chain.
- The real power is in the activity trees: points you earn by playing unlock nodes such as Hellmouth in Helltide or Jade Epiphany in the Undercity.
- Best plan depends on your goal: Helltide and Undercity for XP, The Pit for Glyphs, Lair Bosses for targeted Uniques.
- Season 16 adds Tactics, Marks of Wisdom and Tyrael's Boons. These are still test values.
Running War Plans mostly for XP? With Paragon Leveling your character reaches the Paragon level you choose while you play along in our booster's party. The rest of this guide is the route you can run on your own.
How to unlock War Plans
War Plans need the Lord of Hatred expansion. Reaching level 70 alone won't open them. Play through the Lord of Hatred campaign, then go to Temis in Skovos and use the Command Table to create your first plan.
Once one character has finished the campaign, you can skip it on your other characters from Character Select, so alts get to War Plans after a short intro. War Plans work on both the Seasonal and the Eternal realm. Season 15's Prime Evil Splinter bonuses only apply on Seasonal characters.
How a War Plan works
At the Command Table you pick a path through the branches of activities and rewards the game offers you. A plan holds up to five activities, and new characters start with fewer slots that open up as the Command Table levels. The six activity types are:
- Helltide
- Nightmare Dungeons
- The Pit
- Infernal Hordes
- Kurast Undercity
- Lair Bosses
Whispers are the seventh activity and get special treatment, because they never take a slot of their own. You can do Whispers on the side of any activity in the chain, and they still earn progress for their own tree. When you finish a step, you can teleport straight to the next one. If you don't have the Sigil that step needs, War Plans makes one for you.
When every activity is done, go back to Temis and open the War Chest. What's inside depends on the rewards on the path you picked: keys, salvage, Horadric Cube materials, gold, XP orbs, Obducite or gear. The Mythic tier on a reward is about its size and doesn't promise a Mythic Unique. The normal loot from each activity drops as usual on top of the chest.
Season 15 made the XP from War Plans a lot better. On Torment X and higher, every node you finish gives 4 XP orbs instead of 2, whatever its reward, and XP reward nodes give twice as many orbs as before. Whisper caches were buffed too, and the Gold Cache now pays about three times more, around 100 million gold on Torment XII.
Activity trees: the nodes worth taking
Each of the seven activities has its own tree. Playing that activity inside your plans earns Activity Points for its tree, and player databases list up to seven points per tree. Some nodes compete with each other, so you can't take both sides of a choice. These are the nodes player guides recommend most right now. The effects come from community databases for patch 3.2.3, not from Blizzard's notes:
| Node | What it does |
|---|---|
| Helltide | |
| Hellmouth | A Hellwyrm opens a Chaos Rift, releases Maggots full of XP orbs or Bloodseekers with a better chance at Ancestral items |
| Writhe and Rot | Locks Hellmouth to Maggots with +1 Monster Power; sometimes a Pang of Duriel shows up, and it often drops Lair Keys |
| Undying Embers | You keep your Aberrant Cinders when you die |
| Whispers | |
| Wisdom of Whispers | 50% more XP orbs from Whisper caches |
| Tree of Plenty | A fourth cache to choose from |
| Nightmare Dungeons | |
| Recurring Nightmare | Bosses get +1 Monster Power and can drop an Escalation Sigil (Torment only) |
| Undercity | |
| Jade Epiphany | XP orbs each time your Attunement goes up, with +1 Monster Power |
| Lair Bosses | |
| Duriel's Invasion | Duriel can show up in Helltide in place of the Blood Maiden, with a shot at his Uniques |
| Lair of Plenty | One more Hoard chest from every Lair Boss except Belial, with +1 Monster Power |
| Two by Two, Greater Nemesis | After a Hoard, a chance at a portal to a lair with two bosses, then one with two Greater bosses |
| Infernal Hordes | |
| Forged in Flame | Gem Fragments turn into Obducite; Flawless Find does the opposite, so take only one |
| The Pit | |
| Choron's Haste, Choron's Blessing | Extra Glyph upgrade chances, one for every five minutes left on the timer, plus one more |
| Choron's Soul | Progress Orbs give XP; Season 15 doubled that XP |
Careful with Pit Butcher if you play Hardcore. The Butcher can end a Pit run early when you kill him, but if he kills anyone in your party, the run fails.
Best War Plans for each goal
There's no single best plan, because the right chain depends on what your character needs this week. Player guides mostly agree on the picks below. Nobody has published fair per-hour numbers for Season 15, so take them as a starting point and adjust to your build and Torment level.
| Goal | Activities | Nodes and rewards |
|---|---|---|
| XP and Paragon | Helltide, Undercity, Whispers on the side | Hellmouth with Writhe and Rot, Jade Epiphany, Wisdom of Whispers, XP rewards |
| Glyph levels | The Pit | Choron's Haste and Choron's Blessing |
| Gold | Any chain with Whispers | Gold Cache; Golden Hoard on Lair Bosses once regular gear is useless to you |
| Obducite for Masterworking | Nightmare Dungeons, Infernal Hordes | Recurring Nightmare, Forged in Flame, Obducite rewards |
| Forgotten Souls and salvage | Helltide, Undercity, Whispers | Unfortunate Souls in the Undercity, Salvage Cache |
| Boss keys | Helltide, Whispers | Writhe and Rot, key rewards, Keys Cache |
| Uniques and Mythics | Lair Bosses, Undercity | Lair of Plenty, Two by Two, Greater Nemesis once your build is strong enough |
Your Season 15 Splinter matters too, since each Prime Evil power boosts two activities. Terror (Diablo) helps Helltide and Infernal Hordes, Destruction (Baal) helps the Undercity and Lair Bosses, and Hatred (Mephisto) helps The Pit and Nightmare Dungeons. All three also work on Whispers, so build your chain around the activities your Splinter boosts. Our Helltide reputation farm shows how to stack Whispers, rifts and ambushes in one Helltide run.
If you're filling a new tree, open Hellmouth and Writhe and Rot in Helltide first, Jade Epiphany in the Undercity and the Choron nodes in The Pit. On the Whispers tree, take XP or materials, whichever you're short on, and leave the Nemesis nodes on Lair Bosses until your build kills Greater bosses fast. For the activities themselves, see our guides to Helltide, the Kurast Undercity, Infernal Hordes and Lair Bosses.
Shared progress, Eternal and Hardcore
Since Season 15, your characters share War Plans reputation and progress, but only inside the same group. All three have to match: Seasonal or Eternal, Hardcore or not, and Solo Self-Found or normal. A Seasonal softcore character shares with your other Seasonal softcore characters, while a Seasonal SSF character keeps its own progress. Each character still has its own planner and puts its points where it wants, the same way shared Paragon points work.
When a season ends, your War Plans progress moves to the Eternal realm with your characters. Hardcore has one extra rule: if your Hardcore characters are dead at the season change, their progress only carries over when one living Hardcore character from the same group goes through the change. A level 1 alt you never play is enough, so make one before the season ends.
Season 16: Tactics, Marks of Wisdom and Tyrael's Boons
Test server values. Everything in this section comes from Blizzard's notes for patch 3.3.0, which is on the public test server until November 3. Numbers can still change. Blizzard hasn't announced a start date for Season 16; GameSpot reports December 1.
War Plans Tactics
Tactics is a new tree on top of the activity trees. You earn its points by finishing War Plans activities, then spend them on the activities and reward types you want to see more often. Up to three points per node raise the chance that an activity or reward type shows up in the plans you're offered. You can lean toward gear (weapons, armor or jewelry), toward crafting stuff like Obducite, gems, salvage and Cube materials, or toward gold, keys and Talisman items.
Put at least one point into Helltide or Nightmare Dungeons and you also get a choice that makes Greater Helltides or Escalation Dungeons turn up more often. Tactics shifts the odds without fixing your plan, so other activities still show up. It works on both the Seasonal and the Eternal realm.
Marks of Wisdom
Respeccing gets cheaper for players who switch goals often. You get Marks of Wisdom for turning in finished War Plans, and they replace gold when you move points in the Tactics tree and in the activity trees. On the test server you can hold at most 20 Marks. How many Marks a plan gives and how many a respec costs, Blizzard hasn't said.
Tyrael's Boons
Tyrael's Boons is a seasonal War Plans tree that every Seasonal player gets, with or without Lord of Hatred. It holds up to 132 points across four paths: better buys from the Purveyor of Curiosities, a Merchant of Mystery who sells caches for Forgotten Souls, more gold and materials, and cheaper crafting that ends with Greater Temper, a Cube recipe that turns a tempered affix into a Greater Affix. Removing a Boons point costs 5,000,000 gold, because Marks of Wisdom don't cover this tree. Our Season 16 overview has the rest of the new systems.
Blizzard also lists a few test server bugs that touch War Plans: an alt may not show shared points until you change zones, and the Lair of Runes node doesn't raise Rune drops yet. Blizzard plans to fix them before release.
In short: unlock the Command Table once, pick a chain of activities that matches your goal and your Splinter, do Whispers along the way and spend your Activity Points on the nodes above. If you're mainly after Paragon points and the grind takes too long, Paragon Leveling gets your character there in our booster's party.
More guides and all Diablo 4 boosts are on our Diablo 4 page.
FAQ
You need the Lord of Hatred expansion. Finish its campaign, then go to the Command Table in Temis. After one character has finished the campaign, your other characters can skip it from Character Select.
It depends on your goal. Players pick Helltide and the Undercity for XP and Paragon, The Pit for Glyph levels, Lair Bosses for targeted Uniques and Nightmare Dungeons or Infernal Hordes for Obducite. Do Whispers alongside any of them.
Whispers never take a slot in your plan. You do them on the side of any activity in the chain, and they still level the Whispers tree.
Yes, since Season 15, as long as the characters match on all three: Seasonal or Eternal, Hardcore or not, and Solo Self-Found or normal. Each character still has its own planner and spends its own points.
Pick the one that boosts the activities you play most. Terror helps Helltide and Infernal Hordes, Destruction helps the Undercity and Lair Bosses, and Hatred helps The Pit and Nightmare Dungeons. All three also work on Whispers.
It depends on the rewards on the path you chose: keys, salvage, Horadric Cube materials, gold, XP orbs, Obducite or gear. A Mythic reward tier makes the reward bigger but doesn't promise a Mythic Unique.
Yes. In Season 15 moving points costs gold. On the Season 16 test server, Marks of Wisdom from finished War Plans pay for respecs in Tactics and the activity trees, while Tyrael's Boons still costs 5,000,000 gold per point.
It moves to the Eternal realm with your characters. On Hardcore, dead characters only carry their progress over if one living Hardcore character from the same group goes through the season change. A level 1 alt is enough.
Blizzard hasn't announced a date yet. GameSpot reports December 1. Tactics, Marks of Wisdom and Tyrael's Boons are on the test server until November 3, and their numbers can still change.
Change Log
- 02.11.2026 - War Plans guide published with the Season 16 test server changes. Facts checked on November 2, 2026.