Diablo IV: How to Use War Plans – Routes, Trees and Rewards

Read this first if you came here for Chaos Perks: they are gone. Chaos Perks, Infernal Warp and the 666-Aether Bartuc summon were Season 10 (Season of Infernal Chaos) mechanics, and Blizzard retired them when that season ended in 2025. You cannot equip or upgrade a Chaos Perk in the live game. War Plans, on the other hand, survived and got promoted — they are now a permanent Lord of Hatred endgame system with their own skill trees, and they are one of the best power-per-hour levers in Diablo IV as of Season 14 (Season of Death Awakening, live to September 15, 2026). This guide covers how War Plans actually work now and how to route them.

What War Plans are in the current patch

War Plans are a permanent expansion feature, not a seasonal power. Requirements and access:

• You need the Lord of Hatred expansion (launched April 28, 2026).
• You unlock War Plans after completing the expansion campaign.
• You build plans at a command table in Tyrial, the expansion’s hub city.

A War Plan is a sequence of five endgame activities you commit to running in order. Instead of bouncing between systems at random, you pick a route, then follow it with a map marker that teleports you straight to each node. The activities that can appear are Nightmare Dungeons, Helltides, the Pit, Lair Bosses, Kurast Undercity, Infernal Hordes, and the Tree of Whispers. Echoing Hatred sits outside the system and never shows up as a node.

The short version

• Build your plan around the activity tree you want to level, not around the flashiest single reward.
• You get three free rerolls per plan. Use them — then commit, because once a plan starts it is locked.
• Each of the seven activity trees gains XP only when you run that activity inside a War Plan. Repeating the same node type is how you actually unlock the good upgrades.
• In a party, only the leader’s plan advances. Everyone still gets loot and some tree XP.
• Choose your reward type while planning — boss materials, Horadric Cube materials, gold, or XP — based on what your build is currently blocked on.

How to build a plan that is actually worth running

The single biggest mistake is treating the command table like a fast-travel menu. It is a routing system, and the route determines what you get out of the next 30 to 60 minutes.

Start from a question: what is your character short of right now? That answer decides the plan.

• Blocked on a specific Unique or Mythic? Weight your plan toward Lair Bosses and reroll for a layout that repeats boss nodes, then spend your tree points on boss-material yield.
• Blocked on Glyph levels? Nightmare Dungeon nodes. Take them at a tier you can finish cleanly rather than the highest you can technically survive.
• Blocked on crafting materials or gold? Helltides and Tree of Whispers do the heavy lifting, and the Horadric Cube material rewards route through these nodes.
• Blocked on raw item power? Pit and Infernal Hordes.
• Blocked on levels? Whichever activity you clear fastest. Speed beats reward tier while you are still climbing.

Then reroll. You have three free rerolls before you must commit to something, and it is almost always worth spending them to get two or three nodes of the same type into one plan — because that is how you funnel XP into one activity tree instead of spreading it thin across seven.

The seven activity trees, and why they matter more than the loot

On the right of the War Plans UI sit seven skill trees, one per activity type. Running Helltides inside a plan levels the Helltide tree; running the Pit levels the Pit tree. Those trees let you:

• Change what a completed node pays out — more boss materials versus more gold, for example.
• Add flat bonuses to the activity.
• Add optional extra challenges that raise the payout in exchange for harder modifiers.

This is the actual long-term value of the system. A single War Plan run is a decent hour. Twenty plans concentrated on two or three trees is a permanent multiplier on how much every future Helltide or Pit run is worth. Specialise early rather than dabbling.

Running plans in a group

Party behaviour catches people out. Each player carries their own War Plan progression, but when you complete a node, only the party leader’s plan advances. Everyone in the group still gets the activity’s loot and still earns some XP toward their own trees, and if a member happens to have the same activity queued as their next node, it counts for them too.

Practical consequence: if you are farming as a fixed group, rotate leadership between plans so everyone progresses, or agree that one player is being deliberately pushed this session. Silently running twenty nodes as a non-leader is how people end up feeling like the system did nothing for them.

Season 14 context: what your plan feeds into

Season of Death Awakening is live from June 30 to September 15, 2026, on the 3.1.x patch line — the most recent official note being server hotfix 3.1.1 on July 21, 2026. That hotfix is worth knowing about when you plan your routing, because it retuned Mythic Tribute drop rates: at Torment X the Mythic drop rate is greatly increased, and at Torment XII a Mythic drop is guaranteed. If you can hold Torment X or above, weighting plans toward Kurast Undercity nodes becomes a genuinely efficient Mythic route rather than a side activity.

Remember the ladder now runs to Torment XII since Lord of Hatred, so “T4” thinking from older guides badly undersells where the content actually stops.

What happened to Chaos Perks, Infernal Warp and Bartuc

This is the part of the original guide that is now history rather than instruction, so here it is honestly:

Season 10 system	Status now
Chaos Perks (three non-Unique plus one Unique)	Removed. Seasonal power system, retired with Season of Infernal Chaos. Cannot be equipped or upgraded.
Infernal Warp (perk upgrade currency)	Removed. No longer earned or spent.
Bartuc summon for 666 Aether	Removed. That specific purchase and its Unique Chaos Perk / Chaos Armor rewards are gone.
Chaos Offerings / Chaos Waves	Removed as a named system. Infernal Hordes still has harder variants and reward modifiers, but they now hang off War Plans trees instead.
Aether	Still exists as the ordinary in-run Infernal Hordes currency for choosing chests and rewards. It no longer buys Bartuc or feeds Chaos Perks.
War Plans	Alive and permanent. Now the core Lord of Hatred endgame routing layer.

Blizzard flagged this pattern during the season itself — Chaos-specific gear was explicitly stated to deprecate once the season ended. Any guide still telling you which Chaos Perks to slot is describing archived gameplay. If you are chasing that older Chaos gear on a legacy character, our Chaos Uniques farm guide covers what those runs looked like.

Common mistakes that make War Plans feel worse than they are

• Spreading tree XP across all seven activities. Two well-levelled trees beat seven shallow ones by a wide margin.
• Not using your rerolls. Three are free. A plan with three matching node types is worth far more than the first layout you were shown.
• Picking reward types on autopilot. Gold when you needed boss materials is a wasted hour.
• Choosing nodes above your comfortable clear tier. A plan you grind through slowly pays less per hour than one tier lower that you cut through.
• Running as a permanent non-leader. Your own plan is not advancing. Rotate the lead.
• Looking for Chaos Perks. They are not in the game. Spend the effort on the trees instead.

FAQ

Are War Plans seasonal?

No. They are a permanent Lord of Hatred expansion system and carry across seasons. Your activity trees are progression you keep working on.

Can I still get Chaos Perks?

No. They were a Season of Infernal Chaos (Season 10) mechanic and were retired when that season ended. There is no way to obtain or equip one in the live game.

Can I change a War Plan after starting it?

No. You get three free rerolls at the planning stage; once you commit and start, the plan is locked until you complete it.

Which activity tree should I level first?

Whichever activity you already run most. If you have no preference, Helltides and the Pit are the safest first picks because they feed the widest range of goals — materials, gear and XP — and both stay useful at every Torment.

Practical takeaway

War Plans reward specialisation. Pick the bottleneck, reroll until the layout repeats the node type that fixes it, run the plan at a tier you clear cleanly, then dump the tree XP into one or two activities instead of spreading it. Stop looking for Chaos Perks — that system is retired — and put the same energy into the activity trees, which are permanent. For the broader progression order, read how to get powerful fast in Diablo IV, and browse everything else on the Diablo IV hub.