Diffusion treatments offer possibilities to enhance the performance and the service lifetime of hot forging tools. In combination with coating after nitriding, the surface layer hardness can be further increased. Within the scope of this study, a surface layer hardness above 2,000 HV0.005 was determined for borided or DLC (diamond-like carbon) coated surface layers. An increased surface layer hardness improves the abrasive wear resistance of forging dies. Furthermore, the plastic deformation of thermally softened forging die areas can be reduced. Beside these desirable effects, the ductility of diffusion treated or coated near surface layers is reduced and thermomechanical cracks are promoted. Therefore, additional approaches were developed to improve the thermomechanical crack behavior of forging dies. Patterned plasmanitriding by the use of coverages to prevent areas from nitrogen diffusion, new combination processes of plasmanitrocarburizing (PNC) followed by plasmanitriding (PN) and the innovative boriding were investigated on different abstraction levels. A system of several testing rigs was set up to enable the abstraction of the thermal shock conditions in different stages. The patterned nitriding, boriding and combination plasma process (PN + PNC) were evaluated in a series of industrial field tests to derive recommendations for suitable tool treatments.