The current tooltip says the completed set lets the Druid gain an additional Bear and all other Companions of each type while also granting “all Companion Upgrades for free.” According to a report posted on August 30, however, the final upgrades at the end of the Companion skill branches are not being granted automatically. That leaves two possibilities: Nafain's Bestiary is not functioning as described, or the wording is broader than Blizzard actually intends.
There is an important wrinkle. This is not the first time players have investigated the set. A separate discussion from May suggests the intermediate Companion upgrades do work even though the skill tree does not visually show them as allocated. The final modifying upgrades, however, still require the player to spend skill points. So Nafain's Bestiary may not be completely broken. The real problem may be that “all Companion Upgrades” does not mean what most players would reasonably expect it to mean.
Nafain’s Bestiary Says You Get All Companion Upgrades for Free
The current five-Charm description is difficult to read any other way. Complete Nafain's Bestiary and the set grants additional Companions while telling the player that all Companion Upgrades are free. For a Druid building around Wolves, Ravens, Poison Creeper and the wider Companion package, that sounds enormously valuable because skill points normally spent completing those branches could theoretically be redirected elsewhere.
The new bug report specifically calls out the fact that the final upgrades are not provided. The player therefore asks whether the set is broken or simply phrased incorrectly, which is probably the most useful way to frame the issue until Blizzard clarifies the design.
If Blizzard intended every upgrade node attached to a Companion skill to become active, then part of the five-Charm bonus is missing. If Blizzard only intended the secondary or “side” upgrades to be granted, the current tooltip needs to say exactly that.
Those are very different bugs, but they create the same problem for somebody trying to build around the set: the item tells you one thing while the skill tree behaves as though the promise came with invisible fine print.
Players Already Tested This Earlier in the Year
A May discussion provides useful context because several Druid players initially believed the entire upgrade portion of Nafain's Bestiary was failing. They equipped the completed set, opened the skill tree and saw no indication that the Companion upgrade nodes had been activated. The nodes still appeared to cost skill points.
One player eventually tested the actual effects rather than relying on the interface. Their conclusion was more complicated: the side upgrades appeared to function despite not being visibly highlighted in the skill tree. They tested Poison Creeper and Ravens and found effects consistent with those secondary upgrades remaining active.
The final upgrade nodes were different.
Those apparently remained unavailable unless the player manually invested the required skill point. Another participant reached the same conclusion, explaining that Nafain's Bestiary provides the side upgrades but not the major final modifier at the end of each Companion branch.
That makes the August report particularly interesting. We are not looking at one player suddenly discovering that nothing works. Players have apparently understood for months that part of the set works invisibly while another part that appears covered by the wording does not activate at all.
The Tooltip Is the Real Problem Even If the Set Is Working as Intended
Diablo IV has a vocabulary problem here. If a tooltip says “all Companion Upgrades,” most players are going to interpret “all” as a fairly ambitious quantity.
Usually somewhere around all of them.
Blizzard may internally distinguish between normal Companion upgrades and the final skill variants, but that distinction is not obvious from the set description itself. A player should not need to visit a forum, read a three-month-old testing thread and manually verify Raven behaviour before understanding which part of their five-piece set bonus exists.
A clearer version could say something like “gain all secondary Companion upgrades for free” or explicitly state that final Companion variants are excluded. That would immediately tell players how many skill points Nafain's Bestiary actually saves and prevent them from planning a build around bonuses they were never supposed to receive.
If the final nodes are supposed to be included, of course, then the wording is fine and the implementation needs fixing.
The Skill Tree Not Showing the Free Upgrades Makes Everything Worse
The confusing tooltip would be easier to live with if Diablo IV clearly displayed which free upgrades were active. According to the earlier player testing, it does not. The side upgrades can function without being visibly allocated in the skill tree, leaving the player to determine their status through gameplay testing.
That is particularly awkward for a build-defining Talisman set. The entire point of these sets is to change how characters are assembled. If the set grants several skill effects without spending points, those effects should ideally be reflected somewhere in the interface so the player can see exactly what has changed.
Otherwise, every questionable interaction becomes a miniature laboratory experiment.
Does the upgrade work?
Equip the set. Find the correct enemy. Trigger the Companion. Watch the buff bar. Count the effect. Remove the set. Repeat.
That is useful work for theorycrafters. It probably should not be the normal onboarding process for an item tooltip.
Season 15 Is About to Make Nafain’s Bestiary Much Stronger
The timing matters because Blizzard is already buffing Nafain's Bestiary for Season 15. The official 3.2.0 PTR notes reduce the two-piece Battle Roar cooldown to five seconds, while the five-piece bonus is being expanded to provide an additional 250% multiplicative Companion damage. Blizzard is even making the Companions grow slightly in size.
In other words, this is not some forgotten leveling set Blizzard is preparing to abandon. Nafain's Bestiary is receiving direct attention in the next major balance pass.
That makes the upgrade wording worth fixing before the stronger version reaches live servers. If Season 15 pushes more Druids toward a Companion setup, substantially more players are going to complete the set and discover that “all Companion Upgrades” apparently excludes part of the Companion upgrade tree.
Blizzard is increasing the damage.
It would be a convenient time to increase the clarity as well.
This Is Another Talisman Problem Where the UI Cannot Quite Be Trusted
Nafain's Bestiary is unfortunately arriving in a system that has already given players several reasons to double-check what the interface tells them. We recently covered reports of Talisman set bonuses stopping during combat, while other players have encountered Seals that refuse to accept Charms or leave completed set bonuses greyed out.
A separate live bug thread has players reporting that some higher-quality Seals simply refuse to accept particular Set Charms at all. Others describe moving a completed five-Charm setup onto another Seal only to have its two-, three- and five-piece bonuses become inactive despite the Charms still visibly occupying the slots.
That issue is technically separate from Nafain's Bestiary, but the player experience is similar. The Talisman interface can show one configuration while the underlying bonus behaves differently.
We also recently looked at how generic Set Charms may effectively disappear from the expected loot pool once players move into Torment. Talisman power itself is interesting; understanding exactly what the system is doing has been the harder part.
The Druid Does Not Need More Invisible Build Math
Companion Druid is already full of interactions involving active and passive Companion effects, skill ranks, individual upgrade branches, multiplicative bonuses and equipment that changes how those Companions behave. Nafain's Bestiary is meant to consolidate some of that complexity by saying, in effect: complete the set and we will give you the Companion package.
Instead, players need to know that there may be three different categories hiding behind one sentence:
- Additional Companions, which appear to work.
- Intermediate Companion upgrades, which reportedly work but are not visually marked in the skill tree.
- Final Companion upgrades, which reportedly are not granted and still require skill points.
That is a lot of interpretation for six words.
It becomes more important when players are optimizing skill points. If a Druid believes Nafain's Bestiary covers an entire Companion branch, they may spend those points elsewhere and unknowingly miss a final modifier that their build guide assumes is active. Conversely, somebody who does not realize the side upgrades are being granted invisibly may waste points buying effects the set already provides.
Neither outcome is particularly satisfying.
This May Be a Wording Bug Rather Than a Mechanical Bug
The current evidence actually makes the conservative explanation quite plausible. Because the earlier testing suggests Nafain's Bestiary has behaved this way for months, Blizzard may have intentionally designed the set to grant only the side upgrades while leaving the final mutually exclusive modifiers under the player's control.
There is a reasonable gameplay argument for that approach. Final skill variants often represent meaningful build choices rather than simple passive improvements. Automatically activating every final Companion variant could create conflicting behaviour or remove choices Blizzard wants the player to make manually.
If that is the design, leaving those nodes out makes sense.
Calling the remaining benefits “all Companion Upgrades” does not.
That would turn this from a balance or functionality bug into something much easier to repair: rewrite the tooltip so it describes the mechanic that already exists.
But until Blizzard confirms that interpretation, we cannot rule out the other possibility — that the final upgrades genuinely should be granted and have simply never been applied correctly.
Blizzard Has Not Clarified the Set Yet
As of September 1, the August 30 bug report has not received an official Blizzard response. The thread is also extremely small, so this is not currently evidence of some widespread Druid failure affecting thousands of characters.
What makes it worth covering is not volume. It is reproducibility.
The set description is visible.
The final Companion upgrade nodes are visible.
Players can complete the five-Charm bonus and immediately compare what the tooltip promises with what the skill tree and abilities actually provide.
And, importantly, players were already doing exactly that in May.
This is therefore much easier to investigate than a random report that a build “feels 20% weaker.” Blizzard only needs to answer one question:
Does “all Companion Upgrades” include the final upgrades?
If yes, fix the set.
If no, fix the sentence.
Season 15 Is the Perfect Time to Clean This Up
Nafain's Bestiary could become much more attractive next season. A five-piece set that brings additional Companions, saves skill points and adds 250% multiplicative Companion damage has obvious potential for players who want the Druid fantasy to involve an entire wildlife documentary following them through Sanctuary.
That is exactly why Blizzard should clarify the current behaviour now.
Players can tolerate a complex build.
They can tolerate mutually exclusive skill choices.
They can even tolerate Wolves occasionally deciding that the safest route to an enemy involves three chairs and a staircase.
What they should not need to tolerate is the word “all” becoming a theorycrafting puzzle.
Sources
Diablo IV Forums: Nafain's Bestiary 5-Charm Bonus Either Broken or Phrased Incorrectly
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