Once you’ve played through the main story in Diablo 4 and hit level 50, you’ll be able to take on the Capstone Dungeon and unlock a whole new host of endgame content to get yourself wrapped up in. One of the key endgame activities is that you will gain access to Nightmare Dungeons, which are much like Normal Dungeons but on steroids and with much, much better loot — so here we will explain Nightmare Sigils and Dungeons in Diablo 4.
Where to Find Nightmare Sigils and Start Nightmare Dungeons in Diablo 4
Once you’ve reached level 50 and completed the Capstone challenge dungeon to unlock World Tier 3 in Diablo 4, you’ll have access to all the new content but won’t be able to do some of it right away; you’ll have to build up to it. Nightmare Dungeons are one of the best endgame activities to do. They provide a challenging and monster-dense version of a Dungeon to battle your way through, and at the end of the Dungeon, you’ll receive a guaranteed Legendary that can even sometimes be a Unique Legendary. In addition, you’ll be able to apply experience gained from completing the Dungeon to level up your Glyphs, which we have another guide to explain.
To actually get started with Nightmare Dungeons in Diablo 4 though, you’ll need to start off with some of the other endgame activities to earn yourself some Nightmare Sigils first. Nightmare Sigils are drops that you can find from Caches when obtaining rewards from the Tree of Whispers. For more detail on that, check out our breakdown on the Tree of Whispers. If you’re familiar with Path of Exile, you’ll realize that the Sigils are very similar to Maps in that they are items that you can activate to enable you to play through a higher level of Dungeon-style content for better rewards.
Nightmare Sigils have different levels that will be indicated on each individual Sigil. These levels correspond to character level and scale up as such with more experience, difficulty, and rewards. A level 1 Sigil corresponds to a character level of around 50, and this trend carries on all the way up to character level 100. You’ll never find yourself with a lack of challenge this way with Nightmare Dungeons as while completing them, you generally find a Nightmare Sigil or two, and they’re usually around the same level or slightly higher so that you can steadily increase the level of Nightmare Sigils that you’re running.
To actually use a Nightmare Sigil and get the content started in Diablo 4, you need to open up your inventory and navigate over to the Consumables section. It’s honestly a bit of a pain this is where they are stored because it conflicts with your storage for Elixirs as well. All you need to do is click the Nightmare Sigil to consume it, and then it will activate a Nightmare Dungeon. Open up your map, and you’ll find it marked there for you to head over to and enter.
These won’t stay activated forever. In fact, closing the game and loading right back in would cause you to lose your active Nightmare Sigil, so just be aware of that as well and make sure you have long enough to complete the Dungeon before you use the Sigil.
That’s all there is to using Nightmare Sigils and starting out with Nightmare Dungeons in Diablo 4 — now you can really start to farm up some good gear and get a powerful endgame build going!