ok correction, my testing was a little faulty. this is how herald spawning works:
you have a 2% chance to gain a token, up to 5 tokens, every time you kill an elite monster (champion, unique, superunique, boss)
you have a 1% chance to convert the token, which turns any newly spawned elite into a herald, however, the 1% chance attempts for as many monsters are total in the monster pack. if the convert chance succeeds multiple times on the same pack, it will spawn another pack in the same spot as the same tier herald.
killing any herald increases the tier of the next herald spawn, so batch spawns can skip herald tiers if you kill all the heralds that spawned at the same tier.
the herald tier does not roll over normally (meaning go all the way up to terror and then roll back around to fright again), and terror heralds will continue to spawn indefinitely in the same game as long as you can keep converting.
since each champion kill can generate a token, champions are MUCH better for herald spawning, both gaining tokens and converting them. act 1 is probably the best act for herald farming, as it has so many tile spawns with large groups of monsters, and several tileset champion packs. if you were wanting high level heralds, i'd probably TZ the acts with fewer boss spawns (including tile packs) first, so act 4 first, act 2, 3, and 5 are probably fairly similar, and then act 1 a decent step above the rest, so doing it last has best chances of getting multiple herald spawns at higher tiers. the moment you spawn a t3 herald, i'd immediately head straight to act 1 if you aren't already there after killing the t3.
Thank you for your additional information. Any data proof on hand? Or is it based on your testing, which is also very valueable at this stage?
It seems hat the TZ affix (e.g. ligthning enchanted, cursed etc.) has also an influence on the spawn behaviour of the herald. In a complete terrorized act3 (which is quite big) no herald spawned. It was cursed. In the same game in act2, which was not cursed but with spectral hit, the first herald spawned immediately in one of the first tombs. This is a n=1 obersvation, but maybe someone from the d2jsp community can confirm this? Thank you
for all the testing.
This post was edited by namhan on Feb 17 2026 06:55am