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Escalations and the Horadric Reserve affixes

Most farming advice tells you to run Nightmare Dungeons. The useful version tells you which affix to look for, because the Reserve affixes turn a dungeon into a vending machine for one specific material. This is the full list and what each one actually pays out.

Last checked against current sources on 10 August 2026.

The format

What an Escalation is

An Escalation is a chain, not a dungeon. You need an Escalation Sigil to start one, and those drop from Horadric Strongrooms as early as Torment 1. Using a Sigil starts the first of three consecutive Nightmare Dungeons, and clearing all three puts you in front of an Astaroth fight.

The escalation in the name is the affixes. You start the first dungeon with 1 positive and 1 negative affix. Clear it, and another set of both is added. By the third dungeon you are carrying 3 positive and 3 negative affixes at once, on monsters that have also gained life and damage at each step.

That structure is why Escalations are the best targeted farm in the game and also the reason people bounce off them. The positives compound in your favour, so a chain that starts with the Reserve affix you wanted keeps it for all three dungeons. The negatives compound too, so a chain that rolls badly against your build gets genuinely dangerous by the third floor rather than just slower.

Judge the loop on the third dungeon, not the first A first dungeon with one positive affix looks unremarkable and pays like a normal Nightmare Dungeon. The reason to run Escalations is entirely in the back half of the chain, so a single early clear is not enough information to decide the format is not worth your time.

Reference

The Horadric Reserve affixes

Every Reserve affix does the same structural thing: it spawns 8 Horadric Chests through the dungeon. What changes is what is in them. This is the part worth bookmarking, because matching the Reserve to your actual bottleneck is the difference between farming and hoping.

Each Reserve affix spawns 8 Horadric Chests throughout the dungeon. Only the contents differ.
AffixWhat the chests contain
Horadric Gem Reserve Gem Fragment chests, across gem types.
Horadric Gold Reserve Gold chests.
Horadric Obols Reserve Obols chests.
Horadric Materials Reserve Gold, basic and legendary crafting materials, Bundled Herbs, Angelbreath, Veiled Crystals and Forgotten Souls.
Horadric Amethyst Reserve Amethyst fragment chests specifically.
Horadric Diamond Reserve Diamond fragment chests specifically.
Horadric Emerald Reserve Emerald fragment chests specifically.
Horadric Ruby Reserve Ruby fragment chests specifically.
Horadric Sapphire Reserve Sapphire fragment chests specifically.
Horadric Skull Reserve Skull fragment chests specifically.
Horadric Topaz Reserve Topaz fragment chests specifically.

The split between the generic Gem Reserve and the seven single colour Reserves is the most useful thing on this page. If you are working toward one specific gem, a single colour Reserve is worth several times a generic one, because none of the 8 chests are wasted on colours you already have stacked. If you are gemming a fresh character from nothing, the generic one is better.

What I could not confirm Tuning Prisms and the Primordial Dust tiers are commonly farmed through Escalations, and the Ledger points at Materials Reserve runs for them. The source I checked lists Materials Reserve contents exactly as above, without naming Prisms or Dust. They may sit under "basic and legendary crafting materials", or they may come from the chain's Astaroth fight rather than the chests. Treat the specific attribution as unverified.

Making it repeatable

Choosing your affix instead of taking one

The obvious problem with all of the above is that a Reserve affix you want is a roll. The fix is in the Nightmare Dungeons War Plan tree: Branching Pathways, on the middle path, gives you more consistent options over which resources you take out of an Escalation. That is the node that converts this table from something you read after the fact into something you can plan a session around.

The other affix worth knowing is Rupture. A Nightmare Dungeon rolled with it opens a Deathtoll Chamber once you have closed enough Tears inside, which is the second route to Superior Lair Keys and the reason Escalations and the season mechanic are not competing uses of your time.