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Landslide Druid Leveling Guide

Season 6 - Season of HatredLeveling

Last Updated:October 6, 2024|Change Log

Welcome to the Landslide Druid Leveling Guide! This build wields the might of the earth to smash your enemies to dust!

Landslide is a ranged skill that calls up pillars of earth in a circle at your target to crush the enemies inside. This build has solid single target, but lacks in AoE until you have access to Poison Creeper and certain drop-only Aspects. Keep an eye out for Subterranean, Aftershock and Trampled Earth in particular, as any one of these drop-only Aspects greatly enhances the leveling experience.

Landslide is quite Spirit intensive, so we utilize a number of Skills and a combination of Codex-only Aspects to relieve the pressure. Though Landslide has some inherent Crowd Control with its Immobilize, the combination of Quicksand and Umbral goes a long way to keeping your Spirit topped off. Wind Shear generates Spirit, deals respectable single target damage by inflicting Poison with Calm Breeze, and has a chance to make enemies Vulnerable. Blood Howl provides a modest Heal and another bump of Spirit, and its cooldown can be recovered quickly by slaying enemies. Use Trample for mobility, another burst of Spirit, and to break free of Crowd Controls. We take Cataclysm to inflict Vulnerable easily on targets for a long duration and because it's one of the strongest Druid abilities in the early game.

Between the intensive Spirit management and low AoE coverage early, the Landslide Druid has a bit of a slow start. But with solid Fortify generation, multiple Crowd Controls, and fantastic progression through Paragon and drop-only item acquisition, there's a lot to like, too. This guide teaches you all about how to reach the endgame in Diablo 4 with the Landslide Druid. Let's get started!

Landslide Druid Leveling Setup
Note

This build guide takes you up to level 60 and gets you started for the early Endgame on Torment 1 difficulty. If you're looking for Endgame guides, check out our Druid Guides section!

Pros
  • Solid Single Target
  • Tanky and Unstoppable
  • Straightforward Gameplay
Cons
  • Low Mobility
  • Small Area of Effect
  • Intensive Spirit Management

Check out our Leveling Builds Tier List to see how this build compares to others.

Season Theme

Season 6 - Season of Hatred
Landslide Druid

Season 6 is the Season of Hatred Rising. It features the Zakarum Remnants faction which hunts Realmwalkers, massive behemoths that roam outdoor zones and beckon Mephisto's hellspawn. Participate in these zone events and take down the Realmwalkers to spawn a portal to a Seething Realm. There you can acquire Seething Opals, new consumables that stack with Elixirs for a XP buff and the chance to gather extra rewards when defeating enemies. The types of Opals are:

  • Seething Opal of Equipment
  • Seething Opal of Gold
  • Seething Opal of Materials
  • Seething Opal of Torment
  • Seething Opal of Socketables

Use these Opals at all times to earn reputation with the Zakarum Remnants faction and unlock further rewards.

Learn more details about the season theme in our full Season Guide.

Skills & Gameplay

Season 6 - Season of Hatred
Landslide Druid

Getting Started

To start off, put 2 points into Basic Skills to unlock the Core Skill section. Wind Shear is our choice for the early game. It deals decent single target damage with Poison thanks to Calm Breeze. Next, take Landslide, the centerpiece of this build. The range is solid on this ability, but it deals damage on a slight delay, so you may need to lead your target. The Spirit costs are pretty high, too, so make sure that you hit as many targets with it as possible. Obtaining the combination of Quicksand and Umbral allows Landslide to restore Spirit with each enemy hit, sometimes twice between its inherent Immobilize and the granted Slow effect. Take Fierce Wind Shear to increase your Movement speed.

Howl, Trample, & Poison Creeper

Next, go for Blood Howl, which provides a burst of Healing and Spirit and can be recovered quickly by kills. Increase your damage by maxing out Landslide, stopping to pick up Poison Creeper, a very high damage ability in the early game, when available. Choose Ferocious Poison Creeper to extend its effects and increase its damage. Trample is our main mobility skill, but it has two other important uses. Utilize its innate Unstoppable effect to break free from Crowd Controls or leverage Savage Trample for a massive burst of Spirit in a pinch.

Landslide Druid Skills

Spirit Boons

At this stage, you gain access to Spirit Boons - the Druid's unique class mechanic. Check out the Spirit Boon Progression below!

Ultimate & Key Passive

To unlock the Ultimate skill wheel, focus on getting some high-priority damage passives in Feral Aptitude and Nature's Reach. From here, grab Cataclysm. This Ultimate deals very high damage in the early game and inflicts Vulnerable to any nearby monsters for its duration. Start in on the Earth Passive cluster, taking a single point in Safeguard and maxing out Stone Guard. Next up is your Key Passive, Earthen Might. This Key Passive should help further alleviate Spirit concerns and grant you big damage windows with completely guaranteed Critical Strikes.

Envenom & Other Damage Passives

After acquiring your Key Passive, max out Envenom through Neurotoxin. Now that we have a ton of guaranteed Critical Strikes between Landslide itself and Earthen Might, we should get a lot of value out of this numerically high Passive. Finish skilling Crushing Earth, then take full points in Humanity and Backlash.

Tanking Up

This leg focuses on making the Landslide Druid incredibly sturdy. First, max out both Ancestral Fortitude and Vigilance for a healthy amount of Resistances and Damage Reduction. Grab full points in Defensive Posture for some extra Fortify generation and even more Damage Reduction. Finally, grab Circle of Life for recovery with each cast of Landslide.

Final Journey to Level 60

At this point, most of the key synergies are unlocked and the gameplay loop is almost complete. As you level up, you unlock a lot of extra points that go into various offensive and defensive passives or max out certain skills. Check out the skills progression above to see where to put your points as you go, but feel free to deviate from the order displayed as necessary.

Check out our Renown Guide to unlock all your additional Skill Points efficiently. 

Druid Spirit Boons

  • Using your first 25 Offerings, unlock Packleader (Wolf Spirit) to massively improve your Poison uptime and damage with Poison Creeper.
  • Collect another 25 Offerings to unlock Scythe Talons at the Eagle Spirit to enhance your Critical Strikes.
  • Next, save 100 Offerings to completely unlock the Snake Spirit. There are two viable options here: Obsidian Slam for an occasional Overpower source, or Calm Before the Storm to recover the Cooldown of Cataclysm.
  • The remaining boons (Advantageous Beast and Avian Wrath) are more "nice to have," so you can save up another 250 Offerings to finish unlocking all Spirits and bond with the Eagle Spirit.
Landslide Druid Spirit Boons

Unlocking Specializations

Once you reach level 15, you have to complete a short questline starting in Túr Dúlra, Scosglen. To gain access to the Priority Quest, you first have to defeat the Stronghold of evil forces that has overrun Túr Dúlra. You receive 25 Druidic Spirit Offerings to unlock your first Boon when you complete the questline.

Each Spirit has 4 Boons that are unlocked with 25 Druidic Spirit Offerings each. On 3 of the Spirits, they unlock in a specific order (from left to right as displayed above). The outlier is the Snake Spirit - You have to unlock all his Boons simultaneously, meaning you need to collect 100 Druidic Spirit Offerings to gain access to its Boons. Once all Spirits have been completely unlocked, you can choose one to Bond with and select an additional Boon from that Spirit.

Learn more details in our full Druid Specialization Guide.

Gear & Stat Priorities

Season 6 - Season of Hatred
Landslide Druid

To get started as a Landslide Druid, always use your highest DPS weapon available for more damage, preferring Polearms when possible. Otherwise, follow the priority list below. While you don't have all of the desired temper manuals available, simply try to get anything useful on your gear until you get the right ones. For example, % Damage, Damage to Close, Vulnerable Damage, etc. all work as long as you activate their conditions. Likewise, you can temper multiple defensive options such as Resistances, Life, Armor to fill gaps in your survivability. Tempering low level gear is relatively cheap and the results can be very impactful.

Tip: For the early game, Elemental Surge Weapon Tempers are very powerful due to their high base damage, especially if you are twinking. If you find these, you may want to keep imprinting them on your weapons for an easy time.

1-60 Leveling
T1 Starter
Landslide Druid Leveling Stat Priorities
Landslide Druid T1 Starter Stat Priorities

Read more about itemization in our Beginner Articles about Damage, Defense and Stats.

Legendaries & Uniques

Season 6 - Season of Hatred
Landslide Druid

The Codex of Power is a collection of Legendary Aspects you can imprint onto Rare or Legendary items at the Occultist. They unlock after completing specific Dungeons located around Sanctuary or salvaging items with these powers. Check out our Map Tool to locate these Dungeons.

For leveling, there are a few powers that can significantly help us if we have the funds to imprint them. In addition, keep an eye out for powerful Unique items you may find for this or other builds.

Must-have Dungeon unlocks

  1. Calm Breeze (Grinning Labyrinth - Dry Steppes)
  2. Retaliation (Seaside Descent - Dry Steppes)
  3. Crashstone (Stockades - Scosglen)

Nice-to-have Dungeon unlocks

  1. Quicksand (Ferals' Den - Scosglen)
  2. Umbral (Champion's Demise - Dry Steppes)
  3. Disobedience (Halls of the Damned - Kehjistan)

Other useful Aspects (drop/gamble)

  1. Subterranean
  2. Aftershock
  3. Trampled Earth
  4. Symbiotic
  5. Juggernaut's
  6. Natural Balance
  7. Mending Stone
  8. Ghostwalker

What to Gamble

Offensive1h Weapon, Offhand
DefensiveHelm, Chest, Pants
Utility, MobilityBoots
ResourceRings

Great Uniques for this build

  1. Earthbreaker
  2. Vasily's Prayer
  3. Wildheart Hunger (needs Vasily's to function)

Jackpot Drops

As you level up, you may get lucky and find some great random drops. Some of these can massively amplify your power and speed up the leveling by switching to another build. Keep in mind that there are many more Aspects and Uniques that can be useful to multiple builds; this just lists some of the most impactful ones. While we usually recommend starting with Endgame Builds at level 60, you often can make them work earlier with these drops:

Build-defining Aspects

  1. Shockwave (enables the Pulverize Druid)
  2. Stampede (enables the Companion Druid)
  3. Moonrise / Adaptability (enables the Wind Shear Druid)
  4. Anticline Burst (enhances the Stone Burst Druid)

Build-defining Uniques

  1. Dolmen Stone (enables the Boulder Druid)
  2. Tempest Roar (enables the Tornado, Hurricane, and Lighting Storm Druids)
  3. Unsung Ascetic's Wraps (enables the Lightning Storm Druid)
  4. Storm's Companion (enables the Companion Druid)
  5. Stone of Vehemen (enhances the Stone Burst Druid)

Learn more details in our articles covering the Codex of Power and Unique Items.

Runes

Season 6 - Season of Hatred
Landslide Druid

You can have up to two Runewords in your setup, each consisting of one Ritual and one Invocation Rune. Socket them in Two-Handed Weapons if your build calls for them, otherwise place them into your Armor pieces to replace normal gems. The Landslide Druid focuses on the following combos:

Best in Slot

  • Yul + Wat - Decrepify helps with stagger, defense and allows execute at 10% HP. When combined with Xol in your other Runeword, it also generates large amounts of offering. Yul ramps up significantly in the mid and late game.
  • Xol + Lac - Challenging Shout is amazing for survivability, but the Taunt also allows you to group mobs and draw them in range of Poison Creeper.

Alternative choices

As long as you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top Runes, you can also benefit from these options:

  • Gar - The Crit Chance bonus is great, especially early on.
  • Mot - Dark Shroud is a strong and affordable defensive option.
  • Ohm - Though nerfed considerably from the PTR, this multiplier's still useful.
  • Tam - A reliable Offering generator for Core skill builds.
  • Lith - A surprisingly strong Invocation, provided you can afford to stand still.
  • Cem - As a Magic Rune, it's a reasonable choice that you're more likely to find.

Learn more about Runes and how they work in our dedicated Runewords Overview and Runewords Tier List.

Mercenaries

Season 6 - Season of Hatred
Landslide Druid

Mercenaries are unlocked during the Vessel of Hatred campaign and assist you in battle. There are 4 separate Mercenaries to choose from, each with their own skill trees and abilities. You can have one hired (permanent) mercenary during solo play and a reinforcement who assists you from time to time in certain situations.

  • Hired: Raheir

Raheir provides us with passive All Resistance, an area of effect Slow which increases our damage, a 90% damage reduction bubble that also increases damage, and prevents us from getting one shot every 30 seconds thanks to Valiance. Beware that he's not present when playing in groups and make sure you remain resistance capped without him.

  • Reinforcement: Varyana

We choose Bloodthirst for a periodic Attack Speed bonus.

Landslide Druid Mercenaries

Learn more about Mercenaries and how they work in our dedicated Mercenaries Overview.

How To Level

Season 6 - Season of Hatred
Landslide Druid

In Diablo 4, you can level by completing the Campaign, collecting Grim Favors for the Tree of Whispers, completing Helltide activities, grinding Dungeons, clearing Strongholds, fighting in the Undercity of Kurast or interacting with the Seasonal Mechanics. While there are many ways to level up in Diablo 4, not all of them are equal.

Campaign Leveling
Seasonal / Alt Leveling
Tips & Tricks
Speedrun Route

Campaign Leveling

  • For your first character in Diablo 4, completing the Campaign provides all the background lore information but is not necessary.
    • The Campaign is the slowest way to level, but it's worth experiencing the Campaign and Diablo 4's storyline at least once.
    • To play Seasonal Content you need to have completed or skipped the Campaign.
    • If your account is below Rank 4 Renown in each zone, focus on completing your Renown.
      • This only needs to be done once per realm (Softcore / Hardcore).
    • After finishing the campaign, you should focus on earning experience in Helltides by combining Helltide activities with Grim Favors for the Tree of Whispers or completing Gathering Legion Events.
    • Strongholds provide a big boost of experience for little time investment. Make sure to clear all of them after around level 40.

Seasonal / Alt Leveling

  • Complete the Seasonal Questline in order to progress your Seasonal Journey to unlock additional Legendary Aspects and work on your Seasonal Powers.
  • If your account is below Rank 4 Renown in each zone, focus on completing your Renown.
    • This only needs to be done once per realm (Softcore / Hardcore).
  • Complete the Dungeons needed for any Legendary Aspects from your Codex of Power.
  • From level 1-60 you should focus on earning experience in Helltides by combining Helltide activities with Grim Favors for the Tree of Whispers or completing Gathering Legion Events.
  • Strongholds provide a big boost of experience for little time investment. Make sure to clear all of them after around level 40.
  • If you're playing an Alt, make sure to use Tempers and Leveling Caches crafted from the Alchemist to speed up your progression.
  • Find the most efficient way of leveling your character in detail with our Speed Leveling Guide.

Tips and Tricks

  • Don't Imprint Your Weapon
    • It is a better idea to put your best Offensive Aspect on your Amulet, which will usually not be replaced as often as your Weapon.
  • Compare Your Items
    • Press Shift to activate item comparison. Use this build guide's Stat Priorities section to identify potential upgrades.
  • Choose an Easy Difficulty
    • Ideally, start on Hard difficulty for the extra XP modifier, then try to go higher when it's way too easy. If that slows you down noticeably, it's better to stay on a lower difficulty.
  • Use Your Materials
    • There's no point in holding on to your gold or materials for later. Use everything to speed up your journey to 60. If you're twinking, make sure to craft the Allowance Caches from the Alchemist at level 20 and if available, equip your Mythic Uniques at level 35 to make the leveling a breeze.

Speedrun Route

  • If you're looking to min/max your time spent on the way to 60 instead of following a generic guideline, you need to use a specific strategy.
  • This usually includes farming certain activities up to a specified level and then switching to other tasks while gathering XP in high density areas and pushing the difficulty as high as you can.
  • We update this strategy seasonally in our Speed Leveling Guide.

Endgame Transition

Season 6 - Season of Hatred
Landslide Druid

As you approach level 60 with the Landslide Druid, you unlock higher item power gear that represents a massive jump in character power. This is a good time to refresh your setup with new tempers and imprints.

At level 60, Paragon Levels and The Pit unlock. Work towards Tier 20 to enter Torment 1, where the Endgame begins. Focus on overcapping your Armor (1000+) and Resistances (70%+) as you receive some penalties to your character's stats:

  • -250 Armor per Torment difficulty
  • -25% All Resistances per Torment difficulty

At this point, your setup should look roughly like this before you dive into min/maxing with Uniques, Mythics & Masterworking. With better gear, more levels and Glyphs, you can push further and eventually unlock higher difficulties for increased rewards.

This step marks the end of the leveling guide. Below is the Paragon setup to get you started in Torment difficulty, but ideally, you should now transition towards the endgame version of this build or choose another of your liking.

Landslide Druid Starter Setup

Paragon & Glyphs

!
Important

Carefully check your Paragon Boards to ensure correct board rotation. Glyphs go from a radius of 3 to 4 at level 15 and from 4 to 5 at level 46. Some of them cannot be activated before reaching these thresholds! Progress through The Pit to rank up your Glyphs.

Use the slider to see progression steps. At around Paragon 200, leveling slows down significantly and all important Rare clusters, Legendary nodes and Glyph sockets should be unlocked. Afterwards, you can min/max your build with minor tweaks and by picking up additional smaller nodes.

Landslide Druid Paragon
Tip

Some Glyph position swaps, board changes and other pathing adjustments may occur as you unlock your full potential. The setup displayed by default is the final version of the build before spending additional points that do not significantly impact your character's power.

Glyph Leveling Priorities

To Level 15

  1. Headhunter
  2. Spirit
  3. Earth and Sky
  4. Outmatch
  5. Fang and Claw

To Level 46

  1. Earth and Sky
  2. Spirit
  3. Outmatch
  4. Fang and Claw
  5. Headhunter

There are a total of 328 Paragon Points. After reaching level 60, you gain up to 300 Paragon Levels, 24 from Renown and 4 from Altars of Lilith. Check out our dedicated in-depth guides to learn more about Paragon Boards and Glyphs.

Video Guide

Season 6 - Season of Hatred
Landslide Druid

Coming soon.

Summary

Season 6 - Season of Hatred
Landslide Druid
  • The Landslide Druid is a fun build, combining decent single target damage with incredible crowd control. Area of Effect is not its strong suit until after finding a few key aspects.
  • Use your skills to balance your Life, Spirit, and cooldowns.
  • Focus on improving your 2-Handed Weapon more than any other item.
  • Look out for helpful Legendary Aspects in the Codex of Power, especially those that generate Spirit and buff your damage/damage reduction.

Credits

Season 6 - Season of Hatred
Landslide Druid

Written by IBoilerUp

Reviewed by Danger

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