For anyone who has decided not to participate or can’t for obvious reasons, but is curious about what changes were made in the PTR, I hope to shed a little light on the subject for you. The patch notes only go so far as to explain what’s been changed, and they don’t explain everything. This post is written under the assumption that you have at least read the patch notes, as I won’t be explaining everything, but will try to be thorough where I can.
Also note this is subject to change of course and may not be representative of the final patch.
TL;DR (yes, it’s up front this time)
NPCs Have Moved: Various NPCs for different services have been relocated closer together in towns. A Jeweler has been added to the Tree of Whispers.
Materials: Simplified into three categories. 13 items have been removed, with 3 new ones added for masterworking. Upon collecting materials, a new pop-up just above your Health Globe will display the item with a number next to it, to show at a glance how many you received, similar to when you collect gold.
Gems: Various changes to gems across the board, Resists have been buffed, some Armor Affixes have been changed into pure stats, Weapon Affixes have been simplified.
Salvage: 
The option to Salvage “All Items” will do just that. All items, including Normal, White, Rare, Legendary, Unique, and possibly Uber Unique will be destroyed by this button now. If your items are not marked as Favorite, they will be destroyed.
Affixes: Some have been removed, some come with restrictions on what can be found, some are now a part of Tempering. Please Note: +All Stat and the Damage Reduction Affixes have been removed from gear and do not appear in any Tempering Recipes.
Greater Affixes: If you choose to enchant/reroll a Greater Affix you will lose that Greater Affix bonus. Apparently even the act of enchanting and keeping the affix will also get rid of the Greater Affix as of writing this.
Tempering: Items are assigned 2 specific categories for tempering affixes. Amulets can select from 5 different categories. Once a category is chosen this can not be undone. Ancestral Items can have 2 Tempered Affixes, Normal and Sacred Items can only have 1 Tempered Affix. 5 Rerolls for Ancestral, 3 for Normal and Sacred.
Masterworking: Requires an Ancestral Item to be Fully Tempered with 2 affixes. New materials for masterworking (Obducite, Ingolith, Neathiron) can be found in Pits. Success chance decreases after the 4th upgrade attempt to 70% and continues to diminish the further you progress, but increases by 10% with each failed attempt.
Codex of Power: Features new search functions for easier navigation.
Helltides: Introduces Baneful Hearts, found from opening up Helltide chests, that are used to trigger a new event with hordes of demons and a boss at the end. Baneful Hearts as well as the new Helltide Meter Progress currently persist between Helltides. New Helltide specific Tree of Whisper Objectives can be found.
Pits: Found in Cerrigar near the Waypoint. Requires Runeshards to enter. Rewards are given at the end, no need to pick up orbs to help along the progress bar, just kill things and keep running. Drops materials needed for masterworking.
HardCore players be wary of Boss Echoes that accompany the Pit bosses, these can still kill you after the Pit boss is dead if the Echoes’ mechanic is going off at the time of death of the boss.
Item Drop Reduction: Hard to gauge just yet, Pits definitely don’t fill up your inventory, NMDs still can depending, and Helltides are just filled with loot. PTR has increased drops for legendaries for testing purposes, so don’t expect it to be the same come live.
Zoom: This new option is listed under Options > Graphics > View Distance. It will have a drop down menu for Standard and Far. Far is roughly identical to the zoom out you get when riding a horse. Currently does not work in towns, I hope this is fixed for live.
Nightmare Dungeon Sigils: Only 1 Positive and 1 Negative Affix will appear on NMD Sigils regardless of the Tier. The negative affixes that stayed are Volanic, Stormbane, Nightmare Portals, etc.
Goblin Packs: These have a chance to spawn randomly in NMDs, multiple goblins just sitting there waiting to be killed. Goblins also drop random Boss Summoning Materials for Varsh, Grig, Zir, and Ice-B.
Wardrobe: You can now alter your hairstyle and facial hair.
Longer Explanations Incoming!!
You have been warned.
NPCs Have Moved
One of the smaller changes is the fact the NPCs for all your needs, occultist, blacksmith, herbalist, etc. have moved closer together in every town. Check your map for their icons. They’ve also included a Jeweler at the tree of whispers, we’re only missing an Alchemist now. I hope these changes are permanent.
Materials
There are now only 3 categories for materials:
- Stock Goods
Unusual Materials
Gem Fragments.
Stock Goods contains the following: Bundled Herbs, Iron Chunk, Rawhide, Sigil Powder, Angelbreath, Abstruse Sigil, Baleful Fragment, Coiling Ward, Veiled Crystal, and Forgotten Soul.
Unusual Materials contains the following: Runeshard, Obducite, Ingolith, Neathiron, Scattered Prism (now a legendary crafting material instead of rare), and Resplendent Spark.
All of the herbs (except for Angelbreath), Silver Ore, Superior Leather, and all of the Monster Parts have been removed. In total 13 items were removed, and 3 new ones were introduced for Masterworking.
Upon collecting materials a new pop-up just above your Health Globe will display the item with a number next to it, to show at a glance how many you received, similar to when you collect gold.
Gems
Gems have changed across the board, some values have changed completely, others were buffed by a decent amount. The values being shown below are for Royal quality gems.
| Ruby | Current | PTR |
|---|---|---|
| Weapon: | +24.0% Overpower Damage | +54.0% Overpower Damage |
| Armor: | 4.0% Maximum Life | 9.0% Maximum Life |
| Jewelry: | +30.0% Fire Resistance | +45% Fire Resistance |
| Amethyst | Current | PTR |
|---|---|---|
| Weapon: | +8.0% Damage Over Time | +18.0% Damage Over Time |
| Armor: | 8.0% Damage Taken Over Time Reduction | +27 Strength |
| Jewelry: | +30.0% Shadow Resistance | +45% Shadow Resistance |
| Emerald | Current | PTR |
|---|---|---|
| Weapon: | +12.0% Critical Strike Damage to Vulnerable Enemies | +20.0% Vulnerable Damage |
| Armor: | +250 Thorns | +27 Dexterity |
| Jewelry: | +30.0% Poison Resistance | +45% Poison Resistance |
| Topaz | Current | PTR |
|---|---|---|
| Weapon: | +20.0% Basic Skill Damage | +45.0% Basic Skill Damage |
| Armor: | 10.0% Damage Reduction while Control Impaired | +27 Intelligence |
| Jewelry: | +30.0% Lightning Resistance | +45% Lightning Resistance |
| Sapphire | Current | PTR |
|---|---|---|
| Weapon: | +12.0% Critical Strike Damage to Crowd Controlled Enemies | +20.0% Critical Strike Damage |
| Armor: | 3.0% Damage Reduction while Fortified | +27 Willpower |
| Jewelry: | +30.0% Cold Resistance | +45% Cold Resistance |
| Diamond | Current | PTR |
|---|---|---|
| Weapon: | +15.0% Ultimate Skill Damage | +35.0% Ultimate Damage |
| Armor: | 5.0% Barrier Generation | +11.0% Barrier Generation |
| Jewelry: | +5.0% Resistance to All Elements | +6.0% Resistance to All Elements |
| Skull | Current | PTR |
|---|---|---|
| Weapon: | +24 Life on Kill | +48 Life on Kill |
| Armor: | +5.0% Healing Received | +15.0% Healing Received |
| Jewelry: | +250 Armor | +525 Armor |
Salvage: The option to Salvage “All Items” will do just that. All items, including Normal, White, Rare, Legendary, Unique, and possibly Uber Unique will be destroyed by this button now. If your items are not marked as Favorite, they will be destroyed. This has been tested at least up to Uniques.
A new warning will pop up upon selecting “All Items” and it states:
This action will irreversibly destroy all equipment in your inventory. Are you sure you want to do this?
Salvaging is also the new way to ‘extract’ aspects as noted in the patch notes. You will destroy the item and receive the aspect in your codex (or it will upgrade where possible) and receive the transmog for it as well (where applicable).
A new tooltip will appear at the bottom of a Legendary item if the Aspect will upgrade your codex. There will also be a new separate icon on the item icon itself, in the top left corner when you visit the Blacksmith.
Affixes
Affixes have definitely changed, some have been removed entirely, others have been transferred over to Tempering Manuals instead and some are shared between being able to roll on the item as well as through Tempering. Meaning you can have +% Damage on a dropped item, but also Temper it to have additional +% Damage.
Please Note: +All Stat and the Damage Reduction Affixes have been removed from gear and do not appear in any Tempering Recipes as of writing this.
Certain Affixes that appear on items now have their own buckets. Such as Crit Dmg, OP Dmg, Vuln Dmg and DoT Dmg are in their own affix bucket meaning no more than 1 of those affixes can appear on a dropped item.
Example #
: If you have an item with +Critical Damage on it, you will never be able to get OP Damage, Vuln Damage, or Damage Over Time on that same item. You can however get + % Damage and +% Critical Damage on the same item.
Example #
: No more then 1 resist can appear on a dropped item. If you find a Chest with +% Shadow Resist, it will not come with a 2nd resist, and you can not Enchant a second resist type on that item. You can add another resist type through Tempering though. However you will never find an item with more then 1 resist type, and you can only ever make an item with 2 resist types (one found on the item, one Tempered).
Please note that in order to Temper a Resist on an item it must have access to the ‘Defense Category’ which only includes Helms, Chests, Legs, Shields, and Amulets. So 5 total items can potentially have 2 resists. One Resist type through a normal affix found, or enchanted onto an item and one Resist type through Tempering.
Example #
: Any affix that adds + Class Skills/Passives CAN NOT have an additional affix of the same type on that item. If you have +2 to Basic Skills (yes this is a thing now), you can’t have +2 to Bone Splinters on that same item.
Amulets may be exempt to some of these rules, most notably having multiple passives when finding a dropped amulet.
All Armor and Amulets can roll with +Skills/Passives, Rings can not. Some +Skills/Passives are shared amongst these pieces, but for the most part each piece of armor is associated to a particular section of your Skill Tree. These can give you +All as well as Individual Skills, ex. +All Curse Skills, or just +Decrepify Skill / +All Core Skills, or +Bone Spear.
Necro Example:
Helms: Curse Skills
Chest: Macabre Skills 
Gloves: Core Skills
Legs: Basic Skills
Boots: Corpse Skills
Amulets: Passives Only, from all over the skill tree
Necro Only: All items mentioned also can come with +Golem / Skeletal Warrior / Skeletal Mage Mastery as well, meaning they cannot receive any of the other mentioned +Skills if those appear on the item. Other classes may have similar +Masteries that also appear on all items, I haven’t checked.
There’s currently a mix up with 2 of the skills listed under the Chest and Boots for Necros which can cause double dipping into Bone Spirit or Corpse Explosion due to this. May or may not be fixed later, just a heads up, haven’t checked other classes to confirm if they can double dip on their +skills.
Greater Affixes
Yes these are amazing and will max out a stat for you and give you a bonus. You can in fact get 3 affixes (possibly 4 with uniques) as Greater Affixes on one Ancestral item. Unfortunately if you Enchant a Greater Affix into a different affix you will lose this bonus. It does not work like Masterworking. You can receive Greater Affixed items from gambling Obols though.
If you attempt to change a Greater Affix through enchanting, then decide to keep the original Affix instead, you will lose the Greater Affix bonus. This may or may not be changed when the patch goes live. Just be absolutely certain you don’t care about the Greater Affix.
Tempering
Tempering Recipes come in 3 rarities, magical, rare, and legendary and are dropped randomly from literally anything, World Bosses, Helltides, Dungeons, Pits, etc. The rarity of the recipe dictates the affix range for the affixes found within the recipe. For example a Magical Tempered Recipe may add +2-5% Bone Damage, but the Legendary recipe may add 5-10% instead.
This does not affect the cost of tempering however, the cost is based solely on the rarity of the item you are tempering. Normal and Sacred items only require rawhide and veiled crystals, Ancestral items will require rawhide, veiled crystals and coiling wards or baleful fragments.
There are six categories for tempering: Weapon, Offense, Defense, Utility, Mobility, and Resource. Of these 6 only 2 are assigned to an item, the only exception to this rule is an amulet which can choose from 5 categories.
Helms: Defensive | Utility
Chest: Defensive | Utility
Gloves: Offensive | Utility
Legs: Defensive | Utility
Boots: Utility | Mobility
Amulets: Offensive | Defensive | Utility | Mobility | Resource
Rings: Offensive | Resource
Weapons: Weapons | Offensive
Offhand: Weapons | Offensive
Shield: Defensive | Utility
Amulets can only choose 2 categories and are locked into those 2 categories permanently. For example if you choose Defense and Offense categories for your amulet, you cannot change these to Resource, Mobility or Utility. You will need to find a new amulet.
Normal or Sacred Rares & Legendaries can only pick from 1 category, Ancestral Rares & Legendaries will allow you to pick 2 categories for 2 total tempered affixes.
After you have applied a Tempered Affix to an item you will have the option to reroll this affix using the tempered recipes within that same category. Normal and Sacred items allow 3 rerolls, Ancestral items allow 5. There is currently no way to keep a previous Affix, rerolling is permanent and it does state this in the tooltip: ‘Existing affix will be replaced.’ So be absolutely sure you want to reroll a Tempered Affix.
Masterworking
Masterworking requires the item to be Ancestral and Fully Tempered with 2 affixes before you can start the Masterworking process, unless it’s a unique of course. I was originally confused by this, and the wording for the tooltip isn’t completely accurate.
Masterworking requires 3 brand new items found in the new Pits, they are:
- Obducite - Magical - Used for upgrading an item from levels 1 to 4
- Ingolith - Rate - Used for upgrading items from levels 5 through 8
- Neathiron - Legendary - Used for upgrading items from levels 9 through 12
At the Alchemist you can break down 1 Neathiron into 5 Ingolith, or 1 Ingolith into 5 Obducite. Currently you cannot break down Neathiron directly into Obducite, and you can’t reverse the process either.
Once you have upgraded to level 4, your 5th attempt will have an 70% chance to succeed. As you continue to successfully upgrade your item, this base chance will get lower and lower with each new attempt, until it caps out at a 20% chance.
However every time you fail, 10% is added to the success rate. So if you fail with a 20% chance it will be a 30% chance the next time you make an attempt, and so on if you continue to fail.
Masterwork 25% Bonuses at 4, 8, and 12 are tied to the spot the affix is in. Meaning if you change an affix that has a masterwork buff through enchanting or rerolling of a tempered affix, that bonus will be applied to the new affix. As a reminder if you reroll a Greater Affix, even if it received the bonus from master working, you will still lose the Greater Affix bonus.
Masterworking DOES NOT increase Base Damage, Armor, or Resists from items, unlike the current system when you upgrade to 5/5. Masterworking ONLY APPLIES to Affixes as of writing this. (People are saying this may not true and the item doesn’t actually represent this but your stats possibly do)
Small side note once an affix is upgraded at the milestones, 4th, 8th, and 12th levels they will turn blue on the tooltip. If you manage to get the same affix upgraded twice it turns yellow. Finally it changes to orange if you manage to get all 3 bonuses toward the same affix.
Codex of Power
Not much to say here that isn’t in the patch notes already. There are two handy search features for this though.
One is a search function that lets you type in whatever you want. Ex. If you type in ‘Minion’ it will show you every aspect with the word Minion in it.
The second search feature is to search by keywords and it will have a drop down menu where you can choose one or multiple keywords to search by. Currently it’s not as accurate as the actual typed search, but I expect this will be fixed.
Collections Menu: Codex of Power
The Codex of Power under the Collections Menu now has a new tab for Tempering Recipes so you can see what each Tempering Manual does and just how many there are. There is currently no search feature for this menu.
Helltides
A new resource called: Baneful Heart now drops from Helltide Chests (not 100% drop rate). 3 Baneful Hearts are required for a new event you can find on the map with the symbol of a demons head with different sized horns (it’s easy to spot). You will notice a symbol on the ground along with 3 Accursed Altars (they look like rocks) to insert the 3 Baneful Hearts into. This resource is tracked with an icon next to your cinder shards.
Baneful Hearts currently persist between Helltides, along with your meter progression.
Upon activating this event, the Demon Head icon pulsates on the map letting people know it’s happening, and demons spawn constantly through its duration with a boss at the end.
There are also new specific Helltide Whisper objectives. Similar to mini-events you’ve done before from previous Seasons, such as clicking an altar and staying within the circle while it siphons blood from you, or dodging mechanics within the circle. Along with other various objectives such as killing a specific amount of enemies, or helping random NPCs.
Nydus worms periodically pop up and spew out demons for you to fight. If you are under one when it breaks through the ground you will be knocked off your horse. They are meant to be disruptive. It appears to be a random chance for them to spawn which may be in correlation to your meter, I’m not entirely sure. Regardless they are very cool looking.
Pits
Require 1 Runeshard to enter, regardless of what Tier of the Pit you are entering. You will probably have an abundance of these runeshards once you reach the level to attempt the Pits. Upon entering, the timer starts to tick down automatically, they are not like the Gauntlets. Enemies do not drop any loot so you can run through it as fast as you like without having to worry about picking up anything. There’s no orbs to worry about picking up to help fill the meter, just kill and run.
Once you have filled up the progress bar by killing enemies, all remaining enemies will immediately die and a red portal will appear. This portal will lead you to a separate area with a small corridor or hallway that leads to the boss. Depending on where you are when the progress bar fills this Portal can appear farther away from you, so keep an eye out. It does show up on the map though.
Upon defeating the boss you will be rewarded with items from the boss, a random chest with only Masterworking materials in it, and you will unlock the next tier or couple of tiers of the Pit depending on how fast you were.
The type of material that drops from the chest will depend on the Tier of the Pit.
- Obducite will appear in Tiers 1 through 19
- Ingolith will appear in Tiers 20 through 39
- Neathiron will appear in Tiers 40 onwards
You may receive smaller amounts of Obducite from the Tier 20 chest and small amounts of Ingolith from the Tier 40 chest but eventually you will stop seeing those the higher you go up. I would highly recommend completing the highest Tier you are comfortable and fast with as you will receive more materials from the chest the higher you go, and you can always convert them later.
Fun fact: an un-targetable echo of a random boss will appear during the boss fight and perform one attack in their arsenal. Even if the boss dies, this mechanic will still go off and can possibly kill you at the end. Hardcore people beware. Yes Lilith can in fact spawn as one of the echoes, and she has one-shot me a few times, both during the boss fight and after.
Item Drop Reduction
This is hard to gauge in the PTR at the moment as they have upped the drop rates of legendary items for testing purposes.
Pits are mostly for the Mastercrafting materials and drop small amounts of loot.
NMDs can still drop a decent amount, especially if you run into the new goblin packs.
Helltides will definitely fill up your bags.
for this one.