Outward Definitive Edition | Raining Gold Bars
Diablo IV | The Tree Of Whispers System
I was hoping I was done ever having to see the Tree of Whispers again. It turns out that was incorrect as you get to play a bounty hunter of sorts and go collect on people who owe the tree debts. It’s kind of creepy knowing what happens.
After you hit level 50 you get a quest that sends you over to see The Tree Of Whispers in the Hawezar region. After a little bit of story, you are told some icons can be found on the map of debts to be collected. You have a limited amount of time to collect them.
Each debt you collect is worth one to five Grim Favors. Once you have collected ten Grim Favors you can return to The Tree of Whispers for a Grand Cache reward. You can see your total progress on the world map at the bottom.
It is important to note that if you decided to change your world tier setting you will lose all current Grim Favors. So keep that in mind if you are someone who ends up enjoying grinding these for the rewards.
Before you get free reign of the system itself you are sent out to Caldeum to collect on some debts and earn Grim Favors. The good news is once you are done with the questing you are not limited to Caldeum. You just have to keep an eye out for them on the world map.
The Different Kinds Of Activates
Depending on what you enjoy doing there are a couple different kinds of activities you can partake in. The most important part is double-checking beforehand that you have enough remaining time to complete the task at hand.
One of the higher Grim Favors rewards is clearing out a dungeon. You do need to complete the entire thing so keep that in mind if that is something your build is good at doing or if there are other things far more worth your time.
These kinds of tasks are easy to spot on the map. As they have a dark blood-red background and the symbol of a dungeon. Hovering over them reveals the Grim Favors reward and the time before it expires.
A couple of activities have a kill so X amount of creatures' first requirement. Usually in whatever region you are in there is a general kill 100 creatures and collect their souls called Harvest. You then turn in those souls and some elites spawn you need to kill for three Grim Favours. Usually, you are not fighting them alone as quite a few players will be around.
You also have lesser kill count sites to run and there are a couple of different ones. While I find running cellars faster you tend to only have a limited amount of those. For these smaller kill count once there tends to be more of them. Sometimes you luck out and an area you are clearing counts for multiple things.
One of my more favorite ones to run is cellars due to how quickly they tend to be. They have a light pink background to indicate they only reward 1 Grim Favor. You also get to go in and clear out the random cellars event which in itself could reward something nice or not.
Another type is running around invoking four ritual sights. If they are close together this can be a quick and easy 3 Grim Favors. This one has quite a strange icon.
Perhaps the most strange of them all is this kind. You first have to find a corpse then fight off some creatures and an elite. If you left-click on them it shows the highlighted area the corpse can be found within making it a lot easier to find.
Any events that spawn in a region that is being affected by this system can also grant one grim favor on top of their usual rewards. I often find a group of players focusing these down quickly trying to capitalize on both favor farming and other rewards.
Rewards
Once you collect all 10 Grim Favors you are locked out of running anymore. You have to go back to the Tree of Life and do a turn-in for your reward. From there you get a choice of three different Grand Cache collection rewards. Along with some experience.
As far as I can tell from running the same region more than once that had these bounties spawning in them. It seems to be random rewards you get to choose from. At least you get to choose from three rewards.
One thing I’ve noticed is you end up getting a high chance of a glyph. If I wanted to glyph farm till I got what I needed this is one such activity I might consider. As other activities in the game are a lot more random and this route seemed to be rather consistent with rewarding a glyph.
Perhaps the more disappointing thing so far however has been the actual loot. After doing a few of these I must be rather unluckily in the gear drops department. At least you also get some gems and crafting materials. Some of the crafting materials so far have been once I don’t notice that I get quite often.
Once on World Tier 3, I started to notice in the rewards Nightmare Sigils. Still, I’d get shafted on actual gear loot. That however kind of starts to make up for it. Along with things like Baleful Fragments.
Final Thoughts
Overall I have found other activities in Diablo IV to be far more rewarding and interesting when they are up if I’m looking just for armor upgrades. However, it is nice sometimes to switch things up. It was also rather nice I could run these to farm for glyphs till I got the ones I needed. There is also the fact you can get on world tier 3 Nightmare sigils which gives me reasons why I might end up farming these more than I would first consider.
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Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Diablo IV.
