As Diablo 4 Season 4 has arrived for about a week, people have experienced most of what's going on. One new endgame mechanic that was added in this new season is the Pit of Artificers. It starts from Level 100 enemies, and this scales up to being harder than anything else in the game currently.

My opinion is that the Pit is a good addition to Season 4, but there are also some issues. If these problems can be solved, this endgame activity will become more interesting.

The main negative things that I have for the Pit of Artificers are:

Defensive Stats

If we build up a million defensive stats, which is basically what you have to do to handle this type of activity. As you slowly exhaust all your resources and consume all your potions one by one, because you know that whatever you do is only a matter of time.

This has sort of always been the issue with any overly difficult, challenging endgame mechanic they've put in Diablo 4. With the defensive stats now being much more predictable for the developers because of the recent item changes, I can only hope that they will get this worked out sooner rather than later.

Boss Scaling

The second major negative I have is the imbalance of the scaling as far as where the difficulty lies. The bosses heavily out scale the challenge of the full progress bar worth of monsters that you have to beat to get to the bosses.

This makes the first portion of the Pit activity feel somewhat pointless in comparison, especially in the highest tiers. If the boss has all the challenges of the activity, then the only part that you even have to think about is the boss. It just invalidates half of the activity entirely.

Hopefully, with time and patches, they will be able to shift this a bit so that the difficulty is more evenly distributed between both sections and they both matter at least a bit more equally. Of course, these are things that can be changed with player feedback.

After all, the best parts of it shine through regardless: the endless monster density, never stopping from one fight to the next, varied enemy types, locations, bosses, and just the snappiness of it when you are farming more comfortable tiers. Each run takes about 2 minutes to get in and out of, or even less if you're moving fast enough, which feels more satisfying now in the lower level.

Masterworking Reset

As for the Masterworking resets, the gold investment is extremely expensive, and Masterworking gets super expensive in further ranks as well. My thoughts on how to fix this are somewhat twofold: Have the Masterworking reset cost scale with how many upgrades have been done to the item, and more importantly to the health of the game as a whole, just have the Pit reward at the end.

Stopping Pit runs on repeat to farm activities you're overpowered in just for gold is not fun. Just make the Pit reward a proper amount of Diablo 4 Gold and have it scale so higher tiers are the best source of gold per time in the game, matching the scaling cost of Masterworking as the most expensive gold drain in the Diablo 4 Season 4.

Pit Rewards

Which brings us to another point of contention: there aren't any meaningful rewards for raising your Pit level to around 80 in the vast majority of builds or classes, other than bragging rights or the achievement of completing Level 100.

You can get more of the Masterworking materials for doing higher tiers, but you quickly hit a point in any build where the time it takes to complete the next tier up is no longer worth the extra materials you gain from doing so. If you're looking for a reward, it's not worth it anymore.

To fix this and actually incentivize pushing, the main ideas I have are:

Increase the scaling on the amount of Pit materials you gain per tier push past around 90. Make it worth it for the gear that drops too. We do get a handful of items at the end of each Pit run, but they're pretty average at best. It would be nice if the rewards also increased with the level of the Pit.

For the ultimate endgame mechanic, give more chances for higher-tier affixes on the gear that drops. They can decide the exact numbers needed for that system, but this is probably a perfect reward for pushing. It can motivate more Masterworking because if you get a good drop you have to reset an item and push it further, making yourself stronger. This makes it a proper cycle.

There are the things that just aren't dropping at the proper rates this season. The first being the Stygian Stones, a material needed to summon the Torment version of bosses. These have an abysmally low drop rate now. They're supposed to drop from the Pit and rarely do, so just bump it up.

Final Thought

I've found that most players enjoy playing the Pit of Artificers in Diablo 4 Season 4. The foundation it builds on is very strong, and I think if they fix it, it will be the basis for an extremely enjoyable endgame activity for months and years to come.

To achieve this, some important changes are needed. Hopefully, these will be upgraded and improve your gaming experience!