How to get the Shard of Dawn Aspect – Diablo 4’s Midwinter Blight event

The Shard of Dawn Aspect is a brand new Legendary Power added in Diablo 4’s Midwinter Blight holiday event. It features a complex buff: Night’s Grasp.

This new power increases your movement speed and attack speed under certain conditions, but can be very difficult to understand when reading the tooltip. Thankfully, we’re here to help.

In this Diablo 4 guide, we’ll show you how to get the Shard of Dawn Aspect and explain how the Night’s Grasp buff works.

How to get the Shard of Dawn Aspect in Diablo 4

Image: Blizzard Entertainment

You can buy The Shard of Dawn Aspect from Gileon’s shop in Kyovashad in the Fractured Peaks for 10 Midwinter Proofs.

In order to get Midwinter Proofs, you’ll need to exchange one of three currencies at the Collection Table in town: Blighted Fragments, Lost Heirlooms, and Red-Cloaked Trophies.

You’ll find each of these currencies out in the world of the Fractured Peaks during the Midwinter Blight event. Hop onto your horse and ride around killing enemies (which typically drop Blighted Fragments) and destroying the Frigid Husk ice statues (which drop Lost Heirlooms).

The most efficient way to farm these items is in a new event called Blighted Revelry. As you ride around, look for an event where a bunch of little freaks are jumping around in a circle around a broken cart. Kill the little freaks and interact with the cart to start the event. Protect the cart until the fire gets large enough to unfreeze the Frigid Husks nearby. Use this method to destroy all five Frigid Husks to spawn the Red-Cloaked Horror. Defeat this big goat boss to finish the event, get some loot, and pick up the Red-Cloaked Trophy.

Back in town, you can convert 300 Blight Fragments, 30 Lost Heirlooms, or one Red-Cloaked Trophy into 1 Midwinter Proof. Once you have 10 Midwinter Proofs, you can buy the Shard of Dawn Aspect from Gileon.

If you need more Midwinter Proofs for cosmetics or if you don’t yet have enough for the Aspect, just head back out into the Fractured Peaks to explore (and maybe do the “Secret of the Spring” quest while you’re out there), kill monsters, and collect the currencies that you can exchange for more Proofs.

How Night’s Grasp works in Diablo 4

Image: Blizzard Entertainment

The Shard of Dawn Aspect reads like stereo instructions if you haven’t progressed far enough into the Midwinter Blight event. And even then, it’s hard to understand. Let’s break it down.

After 30 seconds of Night’s Grasp, gain Dawn’s Haste, increasing your Attack Speed by 25-35% and Movement Speed by 20% for 12 seconds. While empowered by the Midwinter Ward, killing an enemy reduces Night’s Grasp’s duration by 1 second.

There are three buffs mentioned in that description, but it only tells you what one of them does.

First, let’s talk about Night’s Grasp. This is a buff that appears on your character when you’re in combat and wielding the Shard of Dawn. However, it doesn’t do anything. All it’s there for is to denote that you don’t have the Dawn’s Haste buff currently active on you. But once you’ve had Night’s Grasp on you for 30 seconds, you’ll gain the benefits of Dawn’s Haste, which increases your attack speed and movement speed for 12 seconds. Once Dawn’s Haste ends, Night’s Grasp returns and the cycle starts over again.

Dawn’s Haste is a pretty slick buff, as attack speed is desirable for most generator/spender builds and movement speed is valuable for all builds. To wit, you want to lower that 30 second window if at all possible. That’s where the Midwinter’s Ward buff factors into the Shard of Dawn, as it reduces the 30-second cooldown between Night’s Grasp and Dawn’s Haste by 1 second each time you kill an enemy.

Midwinter’s Ward is a buff that you can acquire from a special totem inside Kyovashad, next to Gileon’s shop. However, you’ll need to upgrade your Midwinter Tribute level to Tier 3 before it even appears in town. To gain Tribute experience and level up, all you need to do is exchange the Midwinter Blight currencies for Midwinter Proofs at the Collection’s Table. Once you’ve leveled up all the way to Tier 3, you’ll be able to acquire the Midwinter Tribute buff, which lasts for about six minutes and also gives you some bonus damage against Blightfiends and the Red-Cloaked Horror.

Finally, it’s worth noting here that the Shard of Dawn Aspect does not appear in the Codex of Power. Instead, you’ll need to repurchase it for 10 Midwinter Proofs every time you want to apply it to a new piece of gear. So make sure you choose your gear piece carefully when applying the Aspect at the Occultist.