Diablo 4 Leveling Guide: Level up FAST in Season 3

Leveling in Diablo 4 used to be a long and tedious process, but it recently got a lot better. With Season 2, Blizzard made leveling to level 100 40% faster than before. Luckily, Season 3 didn’t fundamentally change the leveling process, which means we can continue to breeze to level 100 as we did last season.

This guide will walk you through these changes and ensure you focus your time and energy on the right activities.

Updated as of Season of the Construct (S3). See Updates.

Diablo 4 Season 3 Leveling Guide

Creating a Character

If you truly want to optimize the leveling process, there are a few principles you should keep in mind when creating a new Character:

• The Class you choose is important as some are better at leveling than others (our Class Tier list covers this in detail)
• Sorcerers and Necromancers are both great at leveling
• World Tier 1 can be more efficient early on (having said that, World Tier 2 is more fun)

While these principles can make a difference, one rule supersedes them all: Choose the Class/World Tier that is most fun to YOU.

Season 3 Leveling Guide, Diablo 4

Leveling 101

• Upgrade your Health potions as soon as possible (at levels 10, 20, 30, 40, etc.)
• Find a good leveling guide for your chosen Class
• Have an Elixir active at all times for the +5% XP
• Playing as a group will net you more XP per hour (therefore, group up when possible)

⚠️ Keep in mind that your character’s Power progression is just as important as your Level progression. Your gear, skills, and Aspects matter more than you think. There are techniques that can reward slightly more XP for those who want to reach level 100 as soon as possible, but these will hold you back later on (and are way less fun). This guide aims to optimize both: XP and Power gains.

1. Early Game Leveling: Levels 1 to 15

Leveling is extremely fast at this stage, but this is what we recommend you do to level up as fast as possible:

1. Claim all Renown Rewards from all 5 Zones

This should literally be the first thing you do when entering Sanctuary for the first time with a new character. Since Season 2, all unlocked Renown rewards carry over from previous Characters.

If this is the first time you play Diablo 4, you’ll want to tackle the game’s Campaign first (which is terrific and shouldn’t be skipped) and work on increasing your Renown in parallel. Dungeons and Sidequests were both buffed to give much more Renown and you should absolutely aim for Tier 1 rewards for all regions ASAP. Tier 1 Renown will give you extra Skill points, which are particularly valuable during the Early game, and decent chunks of XP.

2. Complete the initial steps of the Seasonal Quest

As you create a new Character for Season 3, you’ll want to tackle the seasonal questline as soon as possible. These quests involve a few steps and can be completed within an hour. Getting this questline done is important as it will unlock all seasonal activities and gameplay systems. This way, you can start unlocking the seasonal Pets and powers as soon as possible.

3. Overworld Events and Whispers

Farming Strongholds used to be the fastest method to reach level 48. Luckily, that was completely changed with last season. Blizzard significantly buffed XP and rewards from both Overworld activities (such as Legion events and Helltides) and Whispers of the Dead (Diablo 4’s bounties). Until you reach level 48 and World Tier 3, the strategy to follow is clear:

1. Look for Dungeons with Whispers to get XP from the Dungeon, the Whispers, and Grim Favors. Also, clearing Dungeons will allow you to passively unlock the top-tier Legendary Aspects for your Class.
2.  Grab sidequests and tackle them whenever you happen to be close to one
3. If a Legion event is about to start, drop what you’re doing and tackle that.

Legion events are great farming spots, too, as they have lots of monsters and high enemy density, and you can easily team up with the people already there for an additional XP boost.

Due to the massive XP buffs to Whispers and Legion events, doing a combination of these will be the best use of your time. With Patch 1.2.0, rewards for turning in Grim Favors were increased between +11% and +200%, and individual Whisper Completion were increased between +100% and +150%.

Tree of Whispers, Diablo 4

3. Level 15: Complete your Class Specialization

Tackle your Class specialization quest as soon as possible. Class-specific quests become available at level 15 for all Classes except for Necromancers, for which their class specialization quest becomes available at level 25. Completing these will make you stronger and help farm everything faster.

4. Level 15 to 48: More Overworld

After unlocking your Class specialization, you can resume the same gameplay loop as before: Legion Events when they’re up > Dungeons with Whispers to spice things up.

Alternative leveling: Dungeons

One of the best XP farms in Diablo 4 is still Dungeons.

3. Level 48 to 70: Nightmare Dungeons

Once you’ve reached levels 48-50, you can tackle the Cathedral of Light Capstone dungeon in order to unlock World Tier 3 difficulty. There, you can focus on farming Nightmare dungeons, as these offer the best XP/hour in the entire game. We have a Tier list ranking all Nightmare Dungeons based on their XP rewards here.

You can farm Overworld events (Legion, Helltides, and World Bosses) whenever you need a break, as they can also reward significant XP.

Never miss a World Boss

While Nightmare Dungeons and Helltides will be the cornerstone of your leveling experience, you should always participate in other World events if they happen to occur nearby. This is particularly true for World Bosses.

World Bosses are generally destroyed in seconds, and the XP they reward is not something to write home about. However, they grant 5 Grim Favors, which is excellent; more importantly, they can reward extremely powerful level 920 items.

World Bosses, Diablo 4

Helltides are still important

Farming Nightmare Dungeons used to be the only viable strategy, but massive buffs to Helltides made them a viable alternative, too. Plus, with Patch 1.3.0, Helltides are always active, save for a 5-minute rest once per hour.

But most players do Helltides for one reason only: Gather resources. Indeed, Helltides are the only source of critically important endgame resources needed to reroll your gear.

Helltide rewards, Diablo 4

How to access Nightmare Dungeons

You’ll still want to spend most of your time farming Nightmare Dungeons to level up your Gliphs, though. To unlock Nightmare Dungeons, you must first:

• Complete the main campaign
• Clear the Cathedral of Light Capstone dungeon (set at level 50)
• Move to World Tier 3 (Nightmare) Difficulty
• Complete  and turn in Grim Favors to the Tree of Whispers

The Tree of Whisper will then reward you with a cache that will contain a Nightmare Sigil. At this stage, you can simply go to your inventory, open the “items” tab, and activate the sigil.

Completing Nightmare Dungeons will reward you with more Sigils. After a while, you can go to the Occulist and craft more Sigils (and salvage the ones you do not want to run). You’ll want to avoid the worst-rated Dungeons and focus on farming the better ones in terms of XP/hour gains.

Nightmare Dungeons, Diablo 4

How to farm a top-tier Nightmare Dungeon

This is how you can maximize the XP per hour out of the Flooded Depths (or any other top-tier Nightmare Dungeon):

1. Enter the dungeon
2. Clear most enemies, focusing on the more dense areas
3. Teleport out of the Dungeon
4. Salvage all unnecessary loot
5. Reset the Dungeon by clicking “J” then “Dungeon Reset”

4. Level 70 to 100: World Tier 4

At this stage, you might want to tackle the second Capstone Dungeon, Fallen Temple, to unlock the World Tier 4 (Torment) Difficulty.

Other than that, the same strategy applies here: Farm Nightmare Dungeons and sprinkle in some Helltides to keep things interesting. You can also engage with Legion events or even Blood Harvests if these happen to be rewarding enough.

Optimize your gear (AFTER level 50)

As a general rule of thumb, from levels 1 to 50, don’t spend too much time looking at your gear. You could spend more time optimizing your gear, but your time will be better spent farming the right activities.

You’ll upgrade equipment very often, therefore, don’t waste your time trying to optimize your gear at this stage. Before hitting level 50, these are some general rules we like to follow:

• Upgrade to whatever has the highest Item Power and move on (you’ll be upgrading it again soon anyway)
• Affixes and Stats won’t make a difference at this stage
• For Armor: Upgrade to whatever has the highest Item Power
• For Weapons: Upgrade to whatever has the highest Damage Per Second (that’s what counts for your abilities)
• Don’t enhance items as most items will be quickly replaced

Having said that, there is one exception: Imprint the best-in-class Aspect into your Amulet, as can hold on to an Amulet for much longer (and Amulets give 50% extra benefits). As a Rogue, that same rule applies to ranged weapons, as they don’t need to be upgraded as often as the rest of your equipment.

Manage your resources

Between levels 1 to 50, you’ll want to focus on saving resources, not spending them:

• Salvage everything for materials
  • Low-level Gear sells cheaply but gives the same amount of materials as high-level gear
  • High-level gear can be sold for much more gold if needed
• Don’t spend Gold unless it’s absolutely needed
• Sell Rares, Salvage legendaries

Before you go…

Hopefully, you now know everything there is to know about leveling on Season 1! Are you aware of a particularly good farming spot? Let us know in the comments below.