How To Farm Legendary and Set Items Guide

You can increase your chances at obtaining legendaries and set items by doing the following.

• Set Items only — Check if your desired set is the current Haedrig's Gift — your easiest source of a set can be simply participating in a Season. Completion of chapters II, III and IV of the Seasonal Journey (a list of tasks accessible from the main menu or upper right corner in-game) yields Haedrig's Gifts, a cache-like reward that drops two pieces of a predetermined class-specific set. Haedrig's Gift guarantees you a complete set, but not necessarily a well-rolled one. This is a once-per-Season reward, and the gifted set rotates from Season to Season.
• Spend Blood Shards at Kadala — killing Rift Guardians (in both Normal and Greater Rifts) yields the Blood Shard gambling currency, which can be spent at the vendor Kadala in any town. Gambling allows you to target a specific slot, cutting out some of the randomness of farming.
• Upgrade rares via the Hope of Cain recipe in Kanai's Cube — Upgrading Rares is a very potent recipe, especially in early Seasonal play. At the cost of 25 Death's Breaths and 50 of each of the generic materials (Reusable Parts, Arcane Dust and Veiled Crystals), you can turn a Rare (yellow) item into a random Legendary item of the same item type (i.e. a rare Mighty Belt will only turn into a legendary Mighty Belt). The upgraded item will get completely brand new stats, including the potential for it to roll with Ancient or Primal quality. This recipe can produce both legendary and set items. In order to use this recipe properly, make sure that you are upgrading rare items of the item type of the legendary you require; while the recipe is vastly more efficient with smaller, class-specific pools of legendaries (i.e. Barbarian Mighty Weapons), it can also be used for more generic slots with reasonable efficiency due to its cheap price.
• Set Items only — Convert duplicate or redundant set pieces via the Skill of Nilfur recipe in Kanai's Cube — it is common in early character progression that you stumble upon two same legendaries or two pieces of the same slot of a desired set, i.e. two set pants. Using this recipe, you can use your worse rolled duplicate and transform it into another piece of the set, either to complete or improve your set of choice. Note that this recipe cannot produce Ancient or Primal rolls.

Note that you can use D3 Planner to check for your chances of getting the item you want through Gambling at Kadala or upgrading rares in the Kanai's Cube.

Ancient and Primal tier items are stronger versions of the base legendary and set items, dropping at a lower rate (10% and 0.2%, respectively). Ancient items are roughly 30% stronger than base legendary and set items, and only drop to level 70 characters in Torment difficulties or GRs; they are recognizable by their golden border once identified. Primal items are essentially the same as Ancients, but with maximized stats, and are recognizable by their red drop beam and item border. Primals can come from any farming activity in the game, but only after having successfully completed at least a level 70 Greater Rift solo. Besides efficient farming of standard and Greater Rifts (sub-5 minute runs), you can maximize your chances at obtaining Ancient and Primal gear by doing the following.

• Reforge with the Law of Kulle recipe in Kanai's Cube: this costly recipe (5 of each act-specific materials and 50 Forgotten Souls) is your only source of targeted farming in the game. It grants you a complete reroll of a legendary or set item; the reforged item will get completely brand new stats, including the potential for it to roll with Ancient or Primal quality. By allowing you to reroll a specific item over and over, cutting out every other alternative from the drop pool, this is by far the best source of a well-rolled Ancient, or even Primal, item that you desire. You should note that the reroll will not retain the ancient or primal property of the original item, and all of your (potentially desirable) rolls from the original items will be gone as well. Be prepared for the whims of RNG by rerolling a spare item, rather than one that you are actively wearing.
• Upgrade rares with the Hope of Cain recipe in Kanai's Cube: a second — less efficient, but far cheaper — alternative to obtain Ancients and Primals is upgrading rares. This recipe will cost you 25 Death's Breaths and 50 of each of the generic materials (Reusable Parts, Arcane Dust and Veiled Crystals), and is a reliable source of early Season Ancients, particularly weapons. It works best with class-specific items.