Are you starting a new story in Diablo IV and you don’t know where to begin? This short guide will provide some answers to the most important questions for newcomers and explain some in-game mechanics to understand this game better.
What Class should I pick?
Here’s a simple answer to this question – Choose any class that you like the most in appearance and playstyle. No matter what class you pick, you will be able to fight enemies in close combat or in long-range combat. Even if you are a mighty Barbarian or Rogue, you can still deal ranged damage with your basic attacks and abilities.
There is no secret that fresh characters are underpowered and lack many powerful skills, but don’t worry – each class has plenty of different archetypes and in the late game, you’ll definitely manage to create your own favorite build to slay demons in style. At least, that’s how the game is intended by the developers – to be played on any class, and balanced enough.
Just keep in mind that most class abilities and legendary items may be reworked and tweaked for more balancing experience, so don’t rely on build guides early on. Just pick your desired class and start playing the game.
If you like fast-paced action – choose Barbarian or Rogue. If you like to cast spells and keep your distance instead, then choose Sorceress, Necromancer, or Druid. Once you find more Rare items, Legendaries, and unlock more abilities, you will surely unlock your class’ potential, and it will allow you to push forward – to the new challenging activities and difficulty levels.
Choosing Difficulty level
Once you have decided what class to pick, it’s time to choose the difficulty level – Adventurer (World Tier 1) or Veteran (World Tier 2). Both difficulty levels seem to be pretty straightforward – you can choose Veteran for extra gold and experience, or stay on Adventurer mode and simply enjoy the story.
Usually, veteran players prefer to pick the higher difficulty, in this case, Tier 2, but I still recommend everyone to start on World Tier 1 for several reasons. On this difficulty level, enemies, especially bosses will have significantly less HP, and you will get the same amount of loot as on Veteran. Of course, you will receive 20% more XP, 20% more gold and 15% magic find, but while you are leveling on World Tier 1, and learning your class, you will still be able to enjoy this game even on this “casual” difficulty, find decent loot, test your abilities, and participate in random events with quests.
If you plan to clear every single side quest, dungeons, and discover all locations, you will definitely hit the maximum level 50 even on World Tier 1 before the story is even finished. Once you complete the story and reach level 50, you will be able to proceed to the new Nightmare (World Tier 3) difficulty which will unlock new Sacred and Unique items, and nightmare dungeons.
What’s more important is that the game doesn’t force you to level up to continue the story as it was in Diablo Immortal, and every single enemy and event will adapt to your level anyway. So you’ll always face some enemies and elites that will test your limits. If you feel that your hero is too strong and you one-shot elites, you can always increase the World Tier in town and call your friends for an additional power boost and XP.
Leveling Up
Now it’s time to learn some basic rules about leveling in Diablo IV. There are plenty of ways to level up your character fast, but the simplest one is to follow the campaign. If you ignore most of the side activities and simply follow the story, you will understand this game better and the way your class works. Most story quests provide decent bonuses, like permanent skill points, crafting materials, access to mounts, and of course loot. Once you finish the story, it might still not be enough to reach level 50 to unlock the next difficulty level, so you will still have to play public events, clear several dungeons or finish side quests.
Finishing random events or dungeons (especially with your friends) will grant you precious XP and aspects, which can be later used to convert rare items into legendary. Additionally, if you join a group, you will gain an XP boost up to 15%. While these events and dungeons sound repetitive and time-consuming, you will easily find decent loot and aspects which can come in handy later.
When you are traveling across regions, don’t hesitate to scout the area for new dungeons, and public events – these are your easy targets for leveling and getting loot fast. If you plan to do this in a group, always play close to each other for XP, and share your findings with each other. However, playing for the story quests in a group can be a problem.
If you are playing in a group, your side quests are not sharable, and each player must pick them on his own. If you are going to play Diablo IV exclusively in a group, I recommend you to be always in sync with your party members, because if you ignore side quests or skip important story steps, you’ll have to finish them anyway in your personal world state. While you can certainly join any players and continue doing quests in their world state, it won’t progress your personal story.
If you are going to play this game solo, then honestly, I think it’s the best decision by far to learn more about the game, your class, and its story. Because if you play with friends, you will always feel a sense of rush and your chatter can distract you or your friend during cutscene, and you won’t understand a thing about the lore. But once you finish the whole campaign, and maybe all side quests, It’d be definitely a good idea to join your friends and start doing end-game activities without focusing on the dialogues.
Items & Crafting
During your walkthrough, you will surely find many items of different quality – common, magic and rare. Most of them are pretty much useless, unless you have nothing else to equip. You should always focus on rares and check what properties they offer.
Some of these rare (yellow) items may even grant you +1 to certain skills or archetypes, so don’t miss that chance to use these extra points and adapt your build if needed. If you find a really decent rare item, you can upgrade it on Blacksmith for resources, but do not get too carried away because you’ll definitely need gold and resources later. And you should also know, that weapons are your essential tools for the output damage. You need to change your weapons as often as possible, to maximize your damage while saving most of your resources for the end-game.
Aside from blacksmith, you can also upgrade your gear at the Occultist, who can reroll one property on your gear, extract legendary powers and convert Rares into Legendaries (with essences or dungeon’s aspect). Sounds cool, but again, it requires your gold and materials, so use it wisely.
You will barely have much chance to upgrade your gear early on to legendaries, but you can start farming local dungeons to stack your class aspects. Make sure to craft only the essential items with the right legendary bonuses, and don’t overdo it, because during leveling you will inevitably find better gear in new zones or from story quests. Even if your gear is pretty good, you have plenty of armor, extra skills, and different sockets, I recommend you to focus only on your weapon, because your base damage enhances your attacks and abilities. In case you find a legendary weapon, you may also consider two options – either equip it to boost your base damage, or dismantle it from Occultist to extract its aspect, which again, can be used to convert any rare item into another legendary.
There is also one more important tip regarding aspects and legendary items – if you extract power from a legendary item and then use it to convert Rare into a new Legendary, you will receive a weaker bonus from it. Meaning, Legendaries that drop from around the world (from chests, enemies, etc.) will always have a higher bonus % than your “Crafted versions”, keep that in mind.
So, long story short, keep looking for weapons, salvage or sell unnecessary items and save as many recourses as you can. And also, one more thing – don’t forget to visit the Alchemist in town to improve your potions. You’ll be able to upgrade your potions on certain levels. Level 20, 30, 45, and beyond. For this, you’ll need to gather plants from around the world which is not that difficult. Just remember to visit Alchemist and your life will become easier, especially on Hardcore.
Side Activities
Once you familiarize yourself with the environment, you can continue doing more side quests, random events or world bosses, and also finding statues of Lilith, unlocking new waypoints, clearing Strongholds with dungeons and discovering hidden areas. Whenever you finish these activities, you’ll gain reputation in one of the five available zones.
Always check your progress on the map and press W to see your possible rewards. Once you reach a certain number of points (Renown), grab your reward from the map and use it on any of your current and future characters, because these rewards are account-wide. Plus you don’t have to complete all of them to get the first three regional rewards. But keep in mind, that all these Renown activities (from the map), including Altars of Lilith are not account-wide and you will have to search for them again. Of course, finding all 160 statues of Lilith seems like a lot, you can use Diablo IV interactive Map and find all the missing collectibles there.
As for the random events, don’t hesitate to finish them, because they barely take more than two minutes. You will surely find them while traveling around Sanctuary. Even if you don’t master the objective, you will still gain plenty of XP and loot as a reward. As an extra bonus, these events drop Obols (special in-game currency) which can be used for gambling in town. So if one of your items is significantly behind in level, you can trade these shards for a certain piece slot.
Speaking of World bosses, don’t miss the opportunity to participate in these fights on World Tier 1 difficulty as they grant you plenty of XP, legendary items, and one bounty cache every week. Just beware, that you need to finish Campaign first, to encounter this activity!
Even if you are under-leveled for this activity, you can still kill these world bosses with a group of other players. If you want an extra challenge, you can of course tune the difficulty setting to World Tier 2 or higher, but trust me, these rewards are not worth your time and effort. Just kill the boss on Tier 1, get XP, and weekly cache, then move on to other activities.
Once you reach level 50 and finish the campaign, you will be able to unlock World Tier 3 – this is where you will have to farm Nightmare dungeons for new Sacred (500-700 item power) and Unique items. World Tier 4 will unlock Ancestral (700-925 item power) items that give the most power for your character.
Summary
That’s pretty much all you need to know to understand the in-game mechanics and your primary objectives. When you start a new game, always pick the class you like the most, it can be either their appearance or playstyle, it’s up to you. Keep in mind that all fresh characters are weak anyway, as they lack skills and legendaries to show their true power.
Just pick the class, and ignore most of the build guides early on, as you won’t get all the required legendaries fast anyway. Play on World Tier 1 with your friends or Solo and enjoy the story. If you find Legendaries or decent Rares, don’t rush to upgrade them. Save your gold and materials for later. Equip them when necessary or store them in your stash for later. You should prioritize your weapons, upgrade Healing Potions when it is available, and do side activities to maximize your damage and XP gain.
Don’t forget that you don’t have to finish all dungeons and side quests to get your regional (Renown) rewards, and I’m pretty sure you’ll still make it to level 50 even if you save half of the content for the next difficulty levels.
As long as you follow these steps, you’ll easily understand this game, and get used to the local activities. I hope you find this guide useful, if you still have some questions, make sure to watch the video guide below and leave your comments there. Thank you and happy farming!
Video Guide
FAQ
Are Altars of Lilith account-wide (unlocked on every character)?
- Sort of. While found statues are shown only on one character, they still grant you permanent stat bonuses for all other heroes on certain realms: Softcore, Hardcore, or Season.
I don’t see world bosses in my game. What should I do?
- You need to finish the campaign first, to unlock this activity.
What is Class Specialization?
- Each class has an exclusive “specialization” tab with skills that are unlocked after finishing your Specialization quest later on. Necromancers, for example, have this tab unlocked by default (with Skeletal Warriors), but they still need to finish a special quest to unlock Golem.
Why my legendary power bonus is lower than expected?
- Imprinted Legendaries (with aspects) have weaker bonuses, than regular Legendaries which can be found in the Sanctuary.
When will I be able to play PVP?
- You will encounter a new area called Fields Of Hatred in Act III. When you enter this zone, you can become hostile to other players.
When will I unlock my first mount? I’ve already completed two acts / I’m almost level 50…?
- You must progress your story and finish Donan’s Favor quest. It’s available at the end of Act III, and there is no way to unlock it earlier.
Does World Tier 2 (Veteran) difficulty provide an extra magic find bonus for Legendaries?
- No. The drop chance doesn’t change. You can safely play on T1 or T2. It only provides extra Gold% and XP%.
I joined my friend, and he has progressed much further in the story. Will it overwrite/sync my progression?
- No. You can continue playing with any friends you want, and your world state is tied to your character.
What will happen after I reach level 50?
- You will be able to gain paragon points and assign them in the paragon window for additional permanent bonuses like damage, armor, primary stat, etc.
- If you finish the campaign, you will also unlock a new World Tier 3 (Nightmare) difficulty, adding new Unique and Sacred items and Nightmare dungeons. For that, you will need to finish the Capstone dungeon in Kyovashad.
Can I unlock every single ability in a Skill tree?
- No. You have a limited amount of points to distribute.
What items can I lootshare with my group/friends?
- You can trade only Common, Magic, Rare items, Gold, Gems, and Elixirs. Unfortunately, even if you play in a group, you can’t share legendary items. Modified and crafted items also do not count.
How can I reduce enchanting costs for my gear?
- Before you imprint a legendary aspect, it’s recommended to roll yellow items first, as they require fewer crafting materials.
- If you are not satisfied with the suggested enchanting rolls, choose “No Change” to reduce Gold costs.