Bounties & Horadric Caches — Guide

Bounties are short, clearly defined objectives in Adventure Mode — and one of the most important farming activities in the entire endgame. They are the only reliable source of the act materials that power Kanai's Cube recipes, plus a handful of cache-only legendaries you cannot obtain any other way. If you want to optimize a build, fill the Cube, or land the Ring of Royal Grandeur, you simply cannot skip bounties.

This guide explains from the ground up how bounties work, how to unlock them, what's inside the caches, which items drop where, and how pros clear all 25 bounties in just a few minutes.

What Are Bounties?

A bounty is a contained task within an act that the game picks at random. When you start an Adventure Mode game, each of the five acts generates 5 random bounties — for 25 bounties total. Common bounty types include:

• Kill a boss or unique enemy (e.g. Queen Araneae the Spider Queen)
• Defeat a named elite pack in a specific area
• Clear a dungeon completely (kill every monster in a given dungeon)
• Complete an event (e.g. a cursed-event chain)
• Kill a set number of monsters in a zone

You can see an act's active bounties at any time via the bounty tracker in the bottom-right of the map. Each individual completed bounty instantly grants gold, experience and Blood Shards. The real incentive, though, is the cache you receive once all 5 bounties in an act are done.

[info] Difficulty scales everything: higher Torment tiers significantly increase gold, XP, the number of Blood Shards, and the quantity and quality of drops from the cache.

Unlocking Adventure Mode

Bounties exist only in Adventure Mode, which is not available from the start:

• Complete the Campaign through Act V with at least one hero on your account.
• Adventure Mode then unlocks account-wide for all heroes — you never have to earn it again.
• When creating a new game, choose "Adventure" at the top instead of "Campaign".
• In Adventure Mode, every waypoint across all five acts is unlocked immediately — you teleport freely around the world.

[tip] If you're running a Season Journey, it will prompt you to complete bounties early on anyway — a perfect excuse to learn the loop right away.

The Horadric Cache

Complete all 5 bounties in an act and that act's Horadric Cache appears at an NPC in your hub — at Tyrael (or the relevant act quartermaster). Click the cache to open it. Contents:

• A large chunk of gold and experience
• Blood Shards (currency for Kadala's gambling)
• General crafting materials (Reusable Parts, Arcane Dust/fragments, Death's Breath, Forgotten Souls)
• The act-specific crafting material (see below)
• A chance at cache-only legendaries that drop almost exclusively here

[tip] Open every cache at the highest difficulty you can clear safely and quickly. Drop quantities and legendary chances rise noticeably with Torment level — a cache opened on Torment XVI is worth far more than one on Torment VI.

Act-Specific Crafting Materials for Cubing

Each act yields its own material in its cache. These mats are the core of many Kanai's Cube recipes and are also needed for legendary crafting recipes:

• Act I — Khanduran Rune
• Act II — Caldeum Nightshade
• Act III — Arreat War Tapestry
• Act IV — Corrupted Angel Flesh
• Act V — Westmarch Holy Water

Many Cube recipes require one of all five mats at once, plus additional materials like Death's Breath and Forgotten Souls. Examples:

• "Archive of Tal Rasha" / Hope of Cain — converts a rare (yellow) item into a random legendary of the same slot category: requires e.g. 25 × Death's Breath and 50 × Arcane fragments.
• Reforge Legendary — rerolls a legendary with fresh stats hoping for perfect rolls: consumes 5 × each act mat plus 50 × Death's Breath and Forgotten Souls per attempt — extremely mat-intensive.
• Convert Set Item (turn one set piece into another from the same set): also act mats + Forgotten Souls.

[warning] Because many recipes demand all five mats, you need caches from multiple acts — never just one. Dedicated mat farmers therefore consistently run all 5 acts every round.

Cache-Only Legendaries

These items are found almost exclusively in the Horadric Cache of their act (or cubed via Hope of Cain with the matching mat) — normal monster farming essentially never drops them:

• Act I — Ring of Royal Grandeur: Reduces the number of items required for each set bonus by 1. One of the most powerful items in the game because it effectively frees up a gear slot. Also here: the Avarice Band.
• Act II — Pride's Fall: A helm that sharply lowers resource costs as long as you take no damage.
• Act III — Illusory Boots: Let you walk through monsters — ideal for kiting and smooth navigation.
• Act IV — Nemesis Bracers: Clicking a shrine additionally spawns an elite champion — pure density and drop bonus. Also here: the full Sage's Journey set (3 pieces) for doubled Death's Breath drops.
• Act V — assorted: further ring-specific and rare drops depending on the act's item pool.

[warning] The Ring of Royal Grandeur comes from Act I caches, the Sage's set from Act IV caches. If you need one specifically, farm that exact act — or cube it via Hope of Cain with the matching mat.

Efficient Bounty Farming

Clicking through bounties solo is doable but slow. Pros maximize throughput like this:

• Split bounties in a 4-player group: Each player takes a different act simultaneously. All 25 bounties are often done in 3–6 minutes — by far the fastest mode.
• Prioritize cursed/event bounties: Bounties of the "Kill X monsters in Y seconds" type (cursed chests/shrines) deliver huge XP and drops — grab them first if XP is your goal.
• Tyrael tour: As soon as an act is finished, immediately teleport to the cache, loot it — and only then start the next act reset.
• Fast over slow bounties: Boss bounties with long run-ups, or escort/event chains, eat time; in a group you deliberately spread the slow ones across players.
• Highest viable Torment tier: Play as high as bounties still fall quickly — every tier boosts cache output.

[tip] For pure mat farming it pays to start a fresh game once all five caches are opened: bounties re-randomize and the next round begins instantly.

Common Mistakes

• Opening caches at too low a difficulty: You waste the activity's main benefit. Better to play one tier lower but open all the caches and loot them at high Torment where possible.
• Farming only one act: You then collect just one mat and can never run the mat-hungry Cube recipes.
• Leaving before the final click: If you leave the game before the fifth bounty of an act is complete, you get no cache — an unfinished act's progress is lost.
• Solo instead of split: Anyone seriously farming mats wastes enormous time going alone versus a split group.

Why Bounties Matter

No bounties, no full Kanai's Cube — and no Cube means no optimized builds.

Bounties are the foundation of endgame crafting. The five act mats unlock the Cube recipes you use to craft, convert and reforge legendaries. On top of that, caches deliver the Ring of Royal Grandeur (saves a set piece = a free slot for more power), the Sage's set (more Death's Breath = faster crafting), and a steady stream of Forgotten Souls and Death's Breath. For anyone moving beyond the early endgame, regular bounty runs are mandatory — ideally in a split group, at the highest tier that still runs smoothly.