Diablo 4 Maligant Heart & Caged Heart Guide: How To Get, Craft, Use?

Diablo 4 Maligant Heart & Caged Heart Guide: How To Get, Craft, Use?

7/19/2023 6:10:52 PM

In Diablo IV Season 1, Malignant Hearts with specific Legendary-type power will surely make your build more powerful, so here let’s break down everything you should know about them!

What Are Malignant Hearts in Diablo 4?

Basically, Malignant Hearts are Stepping Stones to get a caged heart which functions sort of the same way as legendary aspects did pre-season one with the main difference being how we get them the power they provide, and where you can socket them.

Malignant Heart Powers

Now at the beginning of season one, there are 32 confirmed Malignant Powers and four different types which are:

Vicious (Orange, Offensive power)
Brutal (Blue, Defensive power)
Devious (Pink, Utility power)
Wrathful (Black, Super)

Some hearts are specifically useful for certain classes. The power of the discovered malicious hearts increases with the character's progress. The following values can be found on level 20 hearts. Some hearts are only dropped as loot at certain world levels.

How To Get Malignant Hearts in Diablo 4?

Here are two main ways to farm Malignant Hearts in Season 1:

At the start of season 1, when an elite enemy spawns there is a chance that it spawns as a malignant version instead, these Malignant Elites can be identified by a slight difference in appearance in a Globe. Killing these malignant versions of the monster drops a malignant heart. Throughout Sanctuary, there are six different Halls of Malice, which are new dungeons where more malicious monsters await us.
Players have access to methods to specifically target certain types of hearts and also repurpose old hearts to upgrade new ones. Malignant Tunnels serve as dedicated farming areas for these hearts, spawning color-coded Malignant Outgrowths that indicate the type of heart they will yield. In case players don't obtain the desired hearts, they can salvage them for Malignant Ichor, offering ample options to craft new hearts or enhance existing ones at Cormond's wagon.

How To Use Malignant Hearts in Diablo 4?

Here are the main ways you use the Malignant Hearts in Season 1:

Socket Into Your Items For Specific Effects - Malignant Hearts operate similarly to gems, but they have gained more favor among players compared to gems, which have been less popular and deemed less effective. In Season 1, items may contain Infested Sockets that can accommodate Malignant Hearts, akin to gems. However, Malignant Hearts are color-coded and limited to specific categories of hearts.
Use Malignant Hearts To Get Caged Heart - We can then use a Cage of Binding (an item acquired during the Season’s Questline) on these Malignant hearts for a stronger version of that malignant monster to spawn as part of a ritual. Now you're going to want to do this because when you defeat this stronger version of the monster, it will then drop a Caged Heart. And a Caged Heart is what you want since this is where we can socket for different types of effects. You can insert this special Caged Heart into Infested Sockets in your Jewelry (Rings, Amulet), replacing a Normal Gem.
Salvage Malignant Hearts To Get Ichor - We take unusable hearts to Cormond's Wagon, where we can recycle them into a corresponding-colored Ichor. These Ichors serve as a resource for crafting new hearts and upgrading our existing ones.

What are Caged Hearts in Diablo 4?

Caged Hearts are legendary aspects like items that can only be slotted exclusively to jewelry, but there's another layer to this slotting process - these Caged Hearts must match a malignant socket type for them to be slotted. For example, a ring must have an Empty Vicious Malignant Socket for us to be able to slot a vicious cage heart onto it. Now the fourth type of Caged Heart is said to be stronger than the first three and can be slotted in any type of malignant slot it no longer matters if the slot is vicious, brutal, or wrathful.

How To Use Caged Hearts in Diablo 4?

Here are the mains ways to use caged hearts in Season 1:

Socket It In Jewelry (Rings & Amulets)
Salvage It To Get Malignant Invokers

How To Get Caged Hearts in Diablo 4?

Here are the main methods to get caged hearts in Season 1:

Farm from Fully Corrupted Malignant monster - When you use the Cage of Binding to capture Malignant Heart, Fully Corrupted enemies will be spawned, by defending them, you will have a chance to get one Caged Heart as the drop.
Craft With Malignant Ichor - Caged Hearts can be crafted with Malignant Ichors which are obtained by salvaging Malignant Hearts

How To Craft Caged Hearts in Diablo 4?

Here are the recipes to craft caged hearts in Season 1:

Brutal Caged Heart (Crafts a Brutal heart at your character's level)
Recipe: 35 Vicious Malignant Ichor, 35 Devious Malignant Ichor
Vicious Caged Heart (Crafts a Vicious heart at your character's level)
Recipe: 35 Devious Malignant Ichor, 35 Brutal Malignant Ichor
Devious Caged Heart (Crafts a Devious heart at your character's level)
Recipe: 35 Brutal Malignant Ichor, 35 Vicious Malignant Ichor

Malignant Invokers & Malignant Tunnels (How To Get & Use)

There will be a crafting system wherein we can break down caged hearts that we do not need, these would give us access to specific types of Malignant Invokers.

These invokers can now be brought to Malignant Tunnels which are basically dungeons that have a higher rate of spawning malignant versions of Elites. What's interesting about these dungeons is at the end of it there's a malignant overgrowth, here you can use a specific type of invoker of your choosing to spawn a malignant monster of the matching type which then when defeated drops a caged heart of that type as well. This will be our way of farming specific types of caged hearts, for example, if you activate a vicious overgrowth then a vicious malignant monster will spawn, beating it would have a chance to drop a vicious caged heart

And that's everything you need to know about Diablo 4 Season 1 Malignant Hearts, Caged Heart, Malignant Tunnels, and Invokers!