You will spot the Aetheric Mass fast in Infernal Hordes. It is that red, fleshy lump bolted to the ground, soaking hits and spitting out nasty zones that make you shuffle around at the worst time. If you are tuning your build or hunting upgrades like Diablo 4 Items, these things can feel like pure annoyance because they do not chase you, yet they still control where you can stand and how clean your pulls stay.

What They Really Do in a Wave

The Mass is basically a stationary tax on your attention. It is not "hard" in the classic sense, but it eats damage while you are also trying to kite real threats. Leave one up and it keeps painting the floor. Leave three up and you start running out of safe angles, especially when the pack decides to body-block your exits. It is why your run can suddenly feel messy even when your gear is fine: the fight space shrinks, and your movement gets forced into bad patterns.

Stop Forcing the Season Objective

A lot of players see "Destroy 50 Aetheric Masses" and instantly start picking every boon that promises more of them. Do not. The mode already spawns these by default in wave after wave, so you are paying a real opportunity cost for something you would have gotten for free. Between waves you get three picks, and those slots are your economy. If one choice is "more Masses" and another is "more Hellborne" or "more Aether Fiends," the elite option wins almost every time because that is where the Burning Aether piles up. There are cute interactions, like a Spire going down and a Mass popping in for a quick delete, but that is a bonus, not a plan.

How to Clear Them Without Losing Tempo

Kill them when they show up, but do it on your terms. They do not dodge, so dump your best stand-and-deliver damage: big cooldowns, ground-targeted nukes, anything that rewards a target staying still. The trick is not tunneling so hard that the mobile mobs corner you while you are farming a sponge. Clear a Mass to keep the floor playable, scoop the Aether, then get back to the enemies that actually scale your rewards. If your screen is getting clogged, that is your cue to wipe the lumps first so their overlapping zones do not turn the arena into a no-stand puzzle.

Keeping Your Run Profitable

If you simply keep playing the mode, the 50-kill objective tends to finish itself, and you will barely notice it. Spend your choices on what makes the run richer and smoother, not on what is already guaranteed to appear. And if you are short on time and just want to streamline the grind, some players also use marketplaces like U4GM to pick up currency or items so their build comes online faster, letting them focus on elite spawns and clean clears instead of dragging through slow waves.