In this guide, we’ll be discussing how to reach the level cap as quickly as possible in Diablo 4 Season 4. We’ll be maximizing your gameplay experience by focusing on farming the right content, and comparing the differences in loot and XP you’ll get from running various activities. Without further ado, let’s get started!
Preparation
First, we need to create our Seasonal Character, making sure to skip the campaign, select Seasonal Realm, and that we first want to start with WT2 to get the new 50% XP bonus.
Before we dive in, I highly recommend researching leveling builds that fit your class and investing some gold. These builds are often powerful wave clears, even if not prepared for them.
We’ll be completing Seasonal Quest starting in Sanctuary. Complete this quest until you unlock the all-important Seasonal Vendor later on, who will provide you with vital Diablo 4 items.
Level 1-50
For levels 1-50, my top recommendation is to run the newly upgraded Helltide. After the update, Helltide from Season 4 is accessible in World Tier 1 and 2.
To find Helltide, look for the red area on the map. Helltide lasts for 55 minutes, then stops for 5 minutes before switching to a new area.
Defeating enemies in Helltide will drop Aberrant Cinders, which you need to collect to open special Helltide Mystery Chests. Defeating enemies and opening Helltide Chests increases your Threat meter, and the higher your Threat is, the more often you will be ambushed by enemies. When you max out your Threat meter, you will be constantly ambushed by enemies and will eventually encounter a final boss elite enemy called Hellborne.
Please don’t keep too many Aberrant Cinders, because dying in Helltide will reduce your Cinders by half and reset your Threat meter.
Defeating Hellborne and opening Helltide Chests have a chance to drop Baneful Hearts. You need Baneful Hearts to activate a new event called Accursed Ritual.
For those who have played Helltide before, Helltide rewards in World Tier 1 and 2 will be limited to Mystery Chests, and instead of costing 250 Aberrant Cinders to open, they cost 100.
Additionally, Helltide also has its own exclusive Whispers, so be sure not to ignore them when farming Helltide for XP.
Helltide Leveling
Helltide leveling strategy is to make sure you never skip groups of enemies. To maximize your XP per hour, you need to constantly move from one group of enemies to the next.
Also, note a secondary objective, if you are close to or have more than 100 Aberrant Cinders, mark a Mystery Chest on the map and keep jumping from group to group on your way there.
Additionally, keep an eye out for Whisper Objectives, such as destroying Helltide Structures or interacting with Doomsayers. The only time you’d want to stop doing this is if someone has activated an Accursed Ritual nearby. Depending on the strength of the players participating, this can be your best source of XP in the game.
The boss of Accursed Ritual, Blood Maiden, can be quite tough to deal with. At each mark on Blood Maiden health bar, she becomes untargetable and summons 4 Hellborn adds. Therefore, I highly recommend you can buy Diablo 4 gold to upgrade your gear.
When you see a circle below you, run around it and stay out of the path of your teammates. When Blood Maiden jumps and bounces off the ground, try to stay out of the area of effect of this move at all costs. It can cause extreme damage.
XP Comparison From Different Activities
Next, let’s compare XP gains of popular leveling activities.
Legion Events
Legion Events are multi-step events that occur every 35 minutes. Check the top left corner of the map to see if a Legion Event is about to happen. You’ll need to arrive early to get Campfire XP bonus. You can also invite anyone nearby to get another free bonus.
After completing Legion Events at level 39, I got 227,000 XP, about 1 level, in just over 6 minutes.
Domhainne Tunnels
Domhainne Tunnels reset is great for players who don’t mind grinding the same thing repeatedly. Domhainne Tunnels is a dungeon located west of Corbach Waypoint. The goal is to clear the first area of the dungeon as quickly as possible, click out of the dungeon, open the map and reset the dungeon, then repeat the process repeated.
At level 33, I ran Domhainne Tunnel in 1 minute and got 32,000 XP, about 1/4 of my level.
Helltide
At level 33, I ran Helltide for 3 minutes, killing groups of enemies and completing a Whisper, and I got 135,000 XP, just under level 1.
I also did an Accursed Ritual, which took about 2 minutes to complete and gave me 107,000 XP, which is about 75% of my level. Opening a Tortured Gift of Mysteries gave me 20,000 XP, which is about 10% of my level.
After completing Helltide Whisper, turning in my Grim Favors to Tree of Whispers gave me 50% of my level XP. Additionally, completing a full Threat bar gave me another 85,000 XP, which is about 50% of my level. Overall, in about 25 minutes of Helltide, I could level up 5 levels.
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Also Read: Follow These Tips For Efficient Item Farming In Diablo 4 Season 4 – Legendaries & Item Aspects
Leveling Tips
Here are some tips to speed up the leveling process. Don’t forget to complete priority quests for your class. These quests provide important buffs or utility that you don’t want to miss. Most classes can complete class quests at level 15, and Necromancer at level 25.
Try not to spend too much time in town, as you won’t be able to level up every time you return to town.
Pick up every piece of gear you find, and recycle all of it at Blacksmith for important crafting materials you’ll need later.
Upgrade your gear every 10 levels or so. The difference in gear levels won’t make a big difference early on. Just focus on keeping your weapons up to date.
Complete Cathedral Of Light Capstone Dungeon
When you get close to level 50, you’ll need to complete a Capstone Dungeon to advance to the next World Tier. Capstone is the benchmark tool for advancing to the next World Tier, and if you can’t complete it on your own, you probably won’t survive in that World Tier.
Cathedral of Light is a two-level dungeon, each with its own boss, but as long as you have a decent build and gear, there’s nothing to worry about.
How To Improve Survivability?
In World Tier 3, we have a few issues to address, and our survivability will be a major issue, and it’s hard to level up if you keep dying. The issues we face are Armor, Elemental Resistance, and Max Health.
The first step is to upgrade your gear to a full set of Sacred Equipment, the difference from base armor/weapon damage is huge.
To specifically farm certain Sacred Equipment, there are more types of chests in Helltide that drop specific gear slots. Turning in Grim Favors at Tree of Whispers is another good option for targeted gear farming. Also, stopping by Iron Wolves vendor will give you a Cache of Sacred Gear for free.
Upgrade your armor to protect yourself from physical damage by Tempering your Head, Body, and Legs with Worldly Endurance Manual at Blacksmith, aiming for Total Armor or Max Health.
Imprinting your armor with Juggernaut Aspect or Disobedience at Occultist will greatly improve your armor.
Elemental Resistance will prevent elite enemies from killing you with elemental damage in one hit. You can get Elemental Resistance by finding Elemental Resistance on your armor affixes, keeping your Jewelry updated, or adding Diamond Gems to your Jewelry sockets.
Keep in mind that you’ll need to do this again in World Tier 4 when you move to Ancestral gear, but this is a common practice for any survivability issues.
Level 50-70
For this stage of leveling, everything is still the same. You’ll need to combine Legion Events and Helltide to keep leveling efficient.
In Helltide in World Tier 3, you should start seeing Profane Mindcage drops when defeating Hellborne in Threat meter events. These consumables increase the level of Helltide enemies by 10 levels, while increasing the amount of Aberrant Cinders and Threat meter you gain.
This is an absolute must-have for leveling in Helltide from now on, as long as you have decent survivability. Don’t forget to take advantage of your Season Blessings. Spend your Smoldering Ashes on Urn of Aggression. You’ll eventually get a 20% passive XP bonus.
Finally, make sure to take a minute to defeat some World Bosses. World Bosses spawn every 3 hours and 30 minutes, and this is currently the major way to collect Scattered Prisms, and in the endgame you’ll need a lot of these for socketing jewelry for your gear.
Complete Fallen Temple Capstone Dungeon
At level 70, you’ll need to be ready to complete the next Capstone dungeon, Fallen Temple, in Dry Steppes.
Again, this is pretty easy, with a few easy-to-complete dungeon objectives, but beating Elias is a real pain in the ass in my past experience.
World Tier 4 gets a lot harder again. Over the course of levels 70 to 100, you’ll need to get your armor up to a cap of around 9,200, and you’ll also need 120% of each resistance type to hit the resistance cap. Once you’ve hit those caps, you can focus on stacking max health and damage reduction.
Level 70-100
Once you have full Ancestral gear, it’s time to focus on leveling again. Eventually, you have two choices: either do Helltide or switch to Nightmare Dungeons.
Personally, I focused on leveling from level 70 to 100 as long as Nightmare Dungeons and World Bosses appeared. Nightmare Dungeons are a sound choice in my opinion, because you need to do glyph upgrades to make your character more powerful. And since glyph XP is only obtained from Nightmare Dungeons, it’s unavoidable.
Completing two Nightmare Dungeons at level 73 gave me 11,600,000 XP in 10 minutes, and I did so with monsters that were 8 to 9 levels higher than me.
At level 74, I ran Helltide for 20 minutes and gained 14,400,000 XP, almost exactly 2 levels.
As you can see, XP gain from Nightmare Dungeons and Helltide is very similar, which is why I would choose Nightmare Dungeons over Helltide at levels 70 to 100.
If you are well geared enough, around level 80, I recommend running Nightmare Dungeons from level 41 onwards to get a guaranteed item power 925 legendary gear. This will hurt your XP gain, but you will start collecting endgame 925 gear in exchange for harder to get XP.
Running Nightmare Dungeons
To start your first Nightmare Dungeon, you will need to turn in Whisper first. Whisper is guaranteed to drop Nightmare Sigils required to complete your first Nightmare Dungeon.
As you start to accumulate Sigil Powder, you can craft Nightmare Sigils at Occultist for more options.
Nightmare Sigils modify dungeons with both positive and negative affixes. Please avoid the negative affixes “Drifting Shade” and “Stormbane’s Wrath”, these negative affixes are really annoying. You need to complete Nightmare Dungeons that are about 10 levels higher than you are to get the best XP.
On a note, make sure you don’t complete a Nightmare Dungeon that takes more than 5 minutes to get to the end. Because in this case, faster XP is better than harder XP.
Don’t forget to upgrade Seasonal Blessing Urn of Nightmares to increase XP of glyphs in Nightmare Dungeons. I was able to upgrade 3 glyphs to level 21 after leveling to 100 from Nightmare Dungeon.
Seasonal Elixirs
No matter how you choose to level up in World Tier 4, I highly recommend investing your Murmuring Obols into these 2 Seasonal Elixirs.
Elixir of Holy Bolt is great for when you need some extra wave clearing power. Use Elixir of Momentum once you are fully equipped and making your way through a group of monsters on your own. This adds a 45% stacking movement speed bonus for 5 seconds, perfect for getting you to the next group of enemies.
So there you have it, some tips and tricks for reaching level 100 quickly in Diablo 4 Season 4. Follow these strategies and you’ll be dominating Sanctuary at top speed!
