schillman.se Diablo IV

Obols and the Purveyor: gambling for Aspects properly

The Purveyor is a slot machine where you choose the slot but never the prize. That sounds like there is no strategy in it. There is exactly one, it is arithmetic rather than luck, and most players get it backwards by buying the expensive slots.

Last checked against current sources on 13 August 2026.

The prices

What every slot costs

You spend Murmuring Obols at the Purveyor of Curiosities on an equipment slot of your choosing. You pick the slot. The rarity is completely random, and can come out anywhere from Common up to Mythic Unique. Prices:

Purveyor costs in Murmuring Obols, cheapest first.
ItemCost
Whispering Keys10
Tunic, Boots, Pants25
Cap, Gloves, Shield50
One handed weapons50
Rings50
Two handed weapons100
Amulets100

The strategy

Buy the cheapest slot that can carry what you want

Here is the whole thing. Rarity is random and the odds do not improve with price, so a 100 obol amulet is not a better roll than a 25 obol tunic. It is the same roll for four times the money.

What price actually buys you is which Aspects are possible, because each Aspect only appears on certain item types. So the rule is: work out the cheapest item type that can carry the Aspect you are hunting, and buy only that. On the same budget, four tunic rolls beat one amulet roll, every time, unless the thing you want cannot appear on a tunic.

The corollary is that gambling for a specific item is a bad use of obols, while gambling for a specific Aspect is a good one. If you are chasing an Aspect for the codex, buy volume in the cheapest legal slot. If you want a good amulet, farm one, do not gamble for it.

The cap that quietly eats your income Obols cap at 25,000, and everything you pick up past that is simply lost. There is no overflow, no conversion and no warning worth noticing. At 25 obols a roll that ceiling is a thousand queued rolls, so if you are anywhere near it you are farming for nothing every time you complete an event. Spend down in deliberate sessions rather than trickling.

Income

Where Obols actually come from

Obols are an open world currency and they resist being farmed efficiently, which is why most people end up either capped or empty:

  • Local Events, completed with Mastery. This is the main line, and the one Maxroll names as the best method outright.
  • Cursed Object events inside dungeons.
  • Gathering Legions zone events.
  • Quest rewards and world Statues.

Grouping up speeds Local Events considerably, since completion is what pays rather than personal contribution. If you are farming obols deliberately rather than incidentally, that is the single biggest lever available.

In Season 14 there is a second, lazier source worth knowing: the Obol Reserve affix on Nightmare Dungeons pays obols in batches large enough to matter, which folds obol income into the Escalation runs you are doing anyway. That is usually a better use of an evening than driving around Sanctuary looking for events.

Practical order

If you only do one thing

Decide what Aspect you are hunting, find the cheapest slot that can roll it, and spend everything there in one sitting rather than a handful at a time. Buying one of each slot because you are bored is how a thousand obols disappears with nothing to show.

Then watch the ceiling. If you are near 25,000 you are actively wasting income, and the fix is to go and spend, not to keep farming. The Season 14 Farming Ledger keeps both of those as items precisely because they are the sort of thing that is obvious once and then forgotten for a month.