Diablo 4 Season 9 Farming Guide: Forgotten Souls, Opticide, and Strong Room Tricks

If you've started dabbling in masterworking your gear in Diablo 4 Season 9, you already know how resource-hungry this system is. Between forgotten souls, opticide, and veiled crystals, upgrading gear-especially aiming for triple masterworks on skills-can quickly drain your reserves. Fortunately, there are efficient ways to farm these materials thanks to recent drop rate buffs and a few clever farming routes that top players are using.

In this guide, we'll break down the best strategies for farming forgotten souls, stockpiling opticide, and even leveraging a boss lair strong room bug to maximize your haul. Whether you're an endgame grinder or a casual player trying to keep your upgrades rolling, these methods will save you time and frustration.

Why Forgotten Souls and Opticide Are Essential

Masterworking your gear requires more than just rare drops. Forgotten souls are a critical bottleneck-especially when attempting high-level masterworks. Similarly, opticide (a resource primarily tied to high-end crafting and material upgrades) has skyrocketed in demand since the Season 9 crafting changes. Without a healthy stock of both, you'll find yourself unable to keep up with gear optimization.

Farming Forgotten Souls: Legion Events Are King

The single best source of forgotten souls right now is Legion Events. These world events spawn every 25 minutes across Sanctuary, and they're fast, lucrative, and incredibly efficient for farming.

How Legion Events Work

 Each event can be completed in 3-5 minutes with a competent build.

 On Torment 4 difficulty, you can earn 200-250 forgotten souls per event-plus veiled crystals, ancestral loot, and boss materials.

 If you chain two events within an hour, you're looking at 500+ forgotten souls/hour with minimal downtime.

The Legion Event timer will show up on the left side of your screen 10 minutes before an event begins. But if you want a reliable tracker, use helltides.com, which shows upcoming Legion Events and ensures you never miss a spawn.

Pro Tip

Plan your farming route around these events. Run other content (like dungeons or whispers) during the downtime between events.

Alternative Forgotten Soul Farming: Nightmare Dungeons

While Nightmare Dungeons can also drop forgotten souls, they're far less efficient than Legion Events. The primary method here is farming Baradri Chests, which have a chance to yield 15 forgotten souls per chest. However, chest spawns are random, and you might spend more time searching than collecting.

A quick dungeon might net you 30-60 forgotten souls, but it pales compared to the 250 souls in 3 minutes from a Legion Event. Unless you're farming Nightmare Sigils for other purposes, this isn't the best route.

Opticide Farming: Best Methods in Season 9

Forgotten souls are only half of the masterworking equation. Opticide-used heavily in high-end crafting-is just as important and slightly trickier to farm. Here's what's working best right now:

1. Tribute of Refinement (Undercity Farming)

 This activity lets you gather 2,000 opticide in just 2-3 minutes if you have a fast-moving build.

 The catch? You need Tribute of Refinement keys, which are limited.

 These keys are shared among your party, so grouping with friends or using party finder tools can help you chain runs.

2. Infernal Compass Hordes

 Running a 10-wave Infernal Horde will yield 3,500-4,000 opticide, but it takes 13 minutes.

 An 8-wave horde is often more efficient, clocking in at 10 minutes for slightly less opticide.

 While this method isn't as explosive as others, it's a reliable baseline farm with extra rewards like ether and high-tier loot.

3. Strong Room Farming

This is where things get interesting-and potentially broken.

Strong rooms are found in Nightmare Dungeons, and they're currently one of the best ways to farm opticide. A single strong room can drop 2,500+ opticide, and they can be cleared in 2-5 minutes if you know where to look.

The issue is that strong rooms spawn randomly within dungeons. But there's a boss lair teleport trick (borderline exploit) that lets you find them much faster.

The Boss Lair Strong Room Bug

Here's how it works:

1.Open a Nightmare Dungeon (like the Aldur's Cave) that contains a strong room.

2.Instead of running the dungeon, teleport between boss lairs (e.g., Gregoire the Faminebearer, Oravar, Hangman's Hall, etc.).

3.Check for purple flames indicating a strong room spawn.

4.If none appear, jump to the next lair.

5.Once you find one, clear it in seconds for opticide and rewards.

6.Repeat the loop, cycling through boss lairs.

The beauty of this method is that strong rooms reset automatically-no need to reset dungeons manually. This loop can generate massive opticide gains, especially if you chain multiple rooms within 10-15 minutes.

When to Use Strong Rooms Over Other Methods

Strong room farming is particularly worth it when:

 You have Horadric Strong Room Affixes, which guarantee opticide escalation rewards.

 You've unlocked Opticide Mines, where monsters drop 45-60 opticide per kill instead of the normal 15-30.

 You're chasing nightmare dungeon escalation keys, which drop from completed strong rooms.

For pure opticide efficiency, boss lair teleporting + strong rooms currently beats most other content.

Optimizing Your Farming Loop

The most effective approach combines multiple strategies to avoid resource bottlenecks:

1.Run Legion Events every 25 minutes for forgotten souls.

2.In between events, farm opticide using strong rooms or Infernal Hordes.

3.Use helltides.com to track Legion Event spawns and plan downtime farming accordingly.

4.Always bring a fast-clearing build (Sorcerer, Druid Pulverize, or Twisting Blades Rogue) to maximize efficiency.

Final Thoughts: Is This the Best Farm in Season 9?

Right now, Legion Events + Strong Room teleport farming is the gold standard for material gathering. Legion Events provide a steady stream of forgotten souls, while strong rooms (especially with the bugged teleport trick) supply absurd amounts of opticide in record time. Seize the opportunity to quickly accumulate a large number of Diablo 4 Items and D4 Gold to gain more wealth.

The key to success is balancing your resources. Forgotten souls are useless without opticide, and vice versa. By weaving both farms together, you'll stay fully stocked for all your triple masterworking needs-whether that's lowering evade cooldowns on Sorcerer boots or stacking Pulverize enhancements on your Druid.

MMOexp Diablo 4 Team