Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred – The Festering Dark Guide

With the recent release of Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred comes a whole bunch of new content for owners of this highly-anticipated expansion pack. Included in it is an entirely new region, which also means a bunch of strongholds that you will need to clear. In this guide, we will be covering The Festering Dark, which can be found in the eastern corner of Nahantu.

The Festering Dark Guide

Strongholds in Diablo 4 are fairly straightforward, since you just need to follow the objective on your map and kill enemies along the way before lighting a Wanderer’s Shrine at the end. For The Festering Dark, however, there is a new twist introduced to this feature.

First, upon entering the stronghold, you will need to pick up the glowing reliquary lantern on the ground, just beside the entrance to the cave. Once you grab it, you will be tasked with activating a warding brazier up ahead.

With the lantern on hand, you will be able to pass through the barrier blocking the way to your northwest. With that out of the way, climb up the ledge and then activate the warding brazier just a few steps ahead of you.

Upon activating the warding brazier, the lantern will start floating and eventually move forward. Take note that this thing tends to stop if you are not within range, so stay in the circle to get things done immediately!

Follow it and kill any enemies along the way. Eventually, it will hit another barrier, which will collapse and cause the lantern to drop on the ground.

Pick the lantern back up and proceed through the corridor until you reach the entrance to the Skittering Darkness. Upon entering the cave, make your way to the other side and exit into the Forgotten Depths.

Be careful, as your character cannot fight while holding the lantern. If you need to break through some mobs along the way, do not forget to grab the lantern again after every fight. You will need to backtrack later if you somehow left it behind!

In the Forgotten Depths, you will find even more enemies blocking your path. Again, fight your way through and remember not to leave the lantern behind. Make your way to the southeast corner of this zone to find the entrance to the Vile Darkness.

In the Vile Darkness, the path may not seem very linear, but there is only one way through. Keep following the path southeast once you reach a wide area with many other openings. You will eventually make it to a singular path leading back up to a different part of the Forgotten Depths.

Upon exiting into the Forgotten Depths, head straight south with the lantern in tow. There, you will find a rope that you can traverse. Cross the rope and then activate the warding brazier to your right.

Same as early, follow the lantern and kill any enemies that are in your way (there will be a lot of them here). You will eventually break through a barrier, where the next path you need to take will be.

Once you break through, pick up the lantern and then activate the one to your right. This will help you break through the barrier blocking your way up north.

From here, all you need to do is follow the path leading to the west. Basically, you want to make your way over to the yellow circle in your minimap. The pathing for this can be seen in the image below, particularly in the minimap part.

Maleficium Boss Fight

Once you make it to the marked location of your map, you will find one last warding brazier that you need to activate. Upon activating this, you will start a boss fight.

The whole gimmick of the fight with Maleficium is that you can only deal damage to it while it is standing within the range of a lit warding brazier. There will be five braziers total in the arena, and they are all initially lit up.

As the fight progresses, he will snuff out some or all of the braziers, and these will also add to his pressure as these braziers can throw out various attacks at you that are heavily telegraphed.

The only real tip here is to remember what you have been doing throughout the stronghold. Pick up the lantern and then run over to the corrupted braziers to reactivate them. This not only stops their constant onslaught of attacks, but it also gives you a space to fight Maleficium in.

Take note that this boss can shut off all braziers, so you can’t just cheese it by staying under one bubble at all times. At least, assuming you don’t have an optimal build.

If you are playing on an easier difficulty, you will probably destroy it before any of the mechanics come into play. If not, be ready to run around a lot and avoid a nonstop barrage of red telegraphs.

Once you have defeated the boss, all that is left to do is climb up the ledge directly to the north of the arena. This will take you straight to the Wanderer’s Shrine above, which you probably already noticed earlier as you entered this zone.

As with any other stronghold in the game, rekindle the Wanderer’s Shrine to wrap things up. As you would expect, this will unlock a new waypoint (Gates of the Necropolis) for you to use, as well as the Betrayed Tomb dungeon, which is where you can get the Insatiable Aspect for the Spiritborn.

On that note, you might want to check out our guide on how to unlock the Rebounding Aspect as well. That one just requires you to clear a dungeon without any other time-consuming prerequisites, such as clearing a stronghold like you just did here.