Diablo 4 Whispers of the Dead: Collect Grim Favors to earn rewards
These are a good source of XP for those last few levels.
The Diablo 4 Whispers of the Dead is an activity you'll unlock once you've finished the campaign, so it's not something you need to concern yourself with right away. Once you have unlocked it, you can start earning Grim Favors from completing certain objectives across the map, and after you've collected enough of these, you can turn them in to claim useful rewards.
While you may have played the open beta or the Diablo 4 server slam weekend, that only gave you a taste of the first 20 or so levels and maybe helped you decide which kind of leveling build you want to go with. While you don't need to reach the max level to access this activity, it's certainly helpful to get you over the finish line if you're still a few levels off. With that in mind, here's what you need to know about Diablo 4 Whispers of the Dead.
Diablo 4 Whispers of the Dead: How to unlock
Whispers of the Dead unlocks once you've completed the final act of the campaign, which, if you've ignored everything else, you should hit at around level 45. You'll automatically receive a priority quest that sends you to the Tree of Whispers, located in the northeast corner of Hawezar. Handily, an icon on your map shows you the exact location and there's a waypoint right next to it.
How to earn Grim Favors
Speak to the tree, and it will explain how Whispers of the Dead works. Essentially, you need to collect Grim Favors by completing activities or "whispers", as they're called in-game. These can be cellars, dungeons, or quest-like objectives and will show up on the map, along with a time limit. Once the time runs out, these objectives will move to a new location.
Each activity offers varying amounts of Grim Favors, depending on the complexity. Doing an entire dungeon, for example, will award five Grim Favors, while doing a simple kill quest might only reward one. Once you've filled the bar with ten Grim Favors, return to the Tree of Whispers to claim your rewards. You can do this as many times as you like.
Whispers of the Dead rewards
There are three reward caches to choose from, and the priority quest hand-in gave me a legendary option:
- Greater Collection of One-handed weapons: Legendary quality
- Collection of Amulets: Common quality
- Collection of Gauntlets: Common quality
Once you select your reward, you'll gain a huge chunk of XP and your chosen cache. Each cache contains lots of herbs, gold, gems and rare items, and in the case of that first legendary cache, one legendary off-hand. That said, it's also possible for legendary quality gear to drop from common quality caches.
It's unclear if this is a one-off reward or if you're offered a weekly legendary cache, as I've only gotten the legendary option with the quest hand-in. Subsequent hand-ins have only offered three regular, common quality caches. I've completed the Whispers of the Dead again on multiple days and was only offered common quality cache choices.