Diablo 4 Speed Leveling Guide

A new class or build has piqued your interest, and you wonder how to get to the endgame as fast as possible? This Speed Leveling Guide is here to get you zooming to level 60! Learn everything about how to reach the maximum level in the most efficient and fastest way imaginable. This guide is suitable for group and solo players and includes tips for both playstyles.

Based on the collective experience of our guide writers, this is a quick summary of the fastest way to reach level 60 as of Season 8.

• Start on Hard difficulty (Normal if it is too difficult).

• Start the Seasonal Questline to get access to Apparition Incursions (if we need to).

• Do 1-2 Apparition Incursions to get a Boss Power that helps your build.

• Do 1-2 dungeons required for the Codex, based on the Leveling Build Guide you follow.

• Farm Helltide until level 15.
  • If a specific Boss Power is important for your build, you can continue doing Apparition Incursions until level 15.

• Do the Undercity Quest Line for experience, gear, and your first three Tributes.

• Once you have full yellows, temper your items according to the Leveling Build Guide you follow.
  • Once fully tempered, try not to replace your armor apart from your weapon to reduce time in town.

• Level in Undercity, Whisper Bounty Dungeons, or Helltide until level 45.
  • Swap to Penitent Difficulty when you feel strong enough
  • Keep an eye out for World Bosses for new Boss Powers and Tributes.
  • The Undercity shines with Tribute of Growth. Without it, it is slightly slower than Helltide. This is also the best source of aspects while leveling.
  • Helltide gives a lot of experience when you have Whisper Bounty available. Without it, you can do the Undercity.
  • Dungeons with a Tree of Whispers Bounty reward much experience, but avoid long dungeons to remain efficient!

• At level 45, you want to complete all the Strongholds outside of the Nahantu region.
  • You may need to lower the difficulty to complete the Strongholds more efficiently. Most of the experience comes from Stronghold completion, which is unaffected by experience boosts.
  • Remember to start crafting Incenses at level 45 and onwards to level faster.
    • Although you gain less experience from Strongholds after level 45, doing it at this point gets you to level 60 the most efficiently.

To minimize the downtime during your leveling session, it is important to prepare a general outline for the new character you have created. The Preparation section is going to cover everything you can do to speed up your leveling process before even creating your character. If you want to level fast, always remember: "Town is lava."

Picking the correct leveling build

While you have very likely already chosen your desired Endgame build from our Endgame Builds Tier List, it is important to choose the correct leveling build to go with it. Picking the correct leveling build ensures a fast progression through the early levels, and can be done by checking out the Leveling Builds Tier List. These builds are generally your best bet at reaching your desired Endgame build the fastest, since they clear density extremely well and incorporate high movement speed with low cooldown movement abilities.

Understanding experience gain

As a baseline, experience earned from monster kills follows this set of rules:

• Monsters give a base experience value depending on their HP/size that linearly scales up.
• Elites always give a fixed amount of XP, regardless of monster type, and also linearly scale up.
• Minions (of Elites) and Champion monsters always give 60% of the experience of an Elite, making them valuable targets.

You can learn more about Experience in our dedicated guide.

Difficulty Tiers

The following difficulty tiers are available for levels 1 to 60:

• Normal
• Hard (75% more Experience and Gold)
• Expert (125% more Experience and Gold)
• Penitent (175% more Experience and Gold)

Codex of Power

Target Codex of Power Legendary Aspects that your build requires or benefits from, by completing the required Dungeons if your Main hasn't unlocked them yet. This is the most reliable way to power up your Alt's gear before even playing it. This is preferably done on your Main while completing Renown Objectives to speed up the process of leveling your Alt, but can also be accomplished as you level in Dungeons on your Alt by losing out on efficiency. Completing the required Dungeons on your Alt is not advisable if you want to speed level your Alt. These Legendary Aspects can be continually imprinted on new items as you progress your new character. You can also acquire the required Legendary Aspects by purchasing Legendaries from other players and salvaging them at The Blacksmith.

Stashing "Twink" Items

If you already know which other characters or builds you want to play after you are done on your Main, you can stash items for your planned Alt(s) along the way. Keep in mind that the level requirement of an item is based on the character level of the character who finds the item. This means that every 5-10 levels or so, you can stash a batch of gear you find on your Main, which has optimal stats for your planned Alt.

Furthermore, you can purchase build-enabling Uniques from other players to increase your new character's power tremendously and smoothen the leveling experience. If you are lucky enough to have acquired a Mythic Unique, you can skyrocket the power of your new characters by equipping them at Level 35.

Consumables

During your time leveling, it is important that you have at least a Level 1 Elixir up all of the time for a constant 5% experience boost. As soon as you have the materials required for Level 2 Elixirs, or are lucky enough to find them, you need to use those for a constant 8% experience boost. It does not matter which type of Elixir you are running, since they all provide a boost to experience (5% and 8%). The following Elixirs are cheap to craft and give most builds the biggest bang for their buck, so prioritize using these:

• Elixir of Advantage
• Elixir of Advantage II
• Elixir of Precision
• Elixir of Precision II

If you want to squeeze out every last bit of experience gain, you can also use Incenses during your time leveling for an additional 5% experience boost. Incenses are quite expensive, persist through death, but only last 20 minutes. Incenses apply a buff to all players within a decent-sized range around the user. You can only use one Incense of each type (Core Stat, Defensive, Resistance) at a time to stack their combat effect, while the experience bonuses of Incenses do not stack. The lowest level required to use Incenses is level 45 for Song of the Mountain.

Imprinting / Tempering Items during leveling

Legendary Aspects, Tempering as well as weapon(s) play a huge role in a character's power. Therefore, you always want to replace your current weapon with a higher DPS weapon every time you find an upgrade, while keeping all your important Legendary Aspects and Tempers. To save materials and prevent you from having to go to The Occultist and The Blacksmith to imprint and temper your new weapon(s) every 5 minutes you should imprint your strongest Legendary Aspect on your amulet and ring slots because these will be changed less often and the stat difference on these items when not changed regularly is less impactful. The cost of imprinting and tempering goes up with Item Power as the general value and impact of those increase as well. If it is your first character in a Season, you won't have the materials required to always re-imprint and re-temper all of your items all the time.

Generally speaking, you want to invest just as many materials as necessary to one-shot trash mobs so you don't run the risk of running out of crafting materials during your speed leveling journey. Make sure you save enough materials to power up your character when it is most needed before increasing the difficulty to the next Difficulty Tier.

Valuable Item Stats

Some stats are more or less valuable depending on your current level, as not all of them scale up equally or hit specific breakpoints early on.

• Additive damage rolls and tempers, such as % Damage, Close Damage, and Fire Damage are much stronger early on in your leveling journey until their value gets diluted as stats on your gear increase.
• Resource per Second comes in handy when you have not yet solved your Resource problem in the early levels.
• Movement Speed is an incredible efficiency multiplier during all forms of content.
• Armor and Elemental Resistances keep you healthy throughout all sorts of content, but trivialize early content if you cap them as soon as you can.

While the above Item Stats are incredibly helpful early on and some of them lose value over time, the following stats are the complete opposite due to increasing stat values as you climb in levels:

• Main Stat (Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Willpower)
• Resource Cost Reduction
• Cooldown Reduction

After the preparation is done, you can finally jump into the game and begin your lightning-fast leveling experience. For this, you create your seasonal character, skip the campaign, and select Normal difficulty.

Seasonal Mechanic

The most optimal way to start your leveling journey is to unlock the Seasonal Mechanic to progress and unlock its full potential while you speed level. You don't need to fully complete the Seasonal Questline when you are Speed Leveling, instead, you stop progressing the Seasonal Questline after you have unlocked the usage of the Seasonal Mechanic and return to complete it after your character hits Level 60.

Kurast Undercity

The Vessel of Hatred expansion introduced Kurast Undercity as an alternative leveling path. In this time-attack mode, you are racing against the timer for experience and loot. If your build is extremely mobile and does not need any setup to defeat Elites, this is an effective way for you to grind until max level! If you are leveling an alt or are fortunate enough to find it on your first playthrough on your main, use Tribute of Growth for additional experience gains by making your Kurast Undercity run a little bit more risky, but also rewarding.

Stronghold Leveling

Strongholds are a valuable pastime during your leveling journey. Killing the end boss of a Stronghold and ringing the bell grants huge amounts of experience. Although this experience falls off slightly after Level 45, you are advised to do Strongholds around level 45, as doing the efficient Strongholds brings you to level 60. This list is ordered in terms of clear speed, with top being the fastest and bottom being the slowest Stronghold.

Helltide Leveling

By scavenging the Helltide while opening Helltide chests, joining Helltide Events, completing Tree of Whisper Grim Favors, and Legion Events, you can level extremely fast to Level 60! If you decide to level in Helltides, follow these important guidelines:

• Fill up the Helltide Threat Meter as fast as possible for additional Monster spawns by killing everything in your path.
• Focus on completing Tree of Whisper Grim Favors and Legion Events while in the Helltide to skyrocket your leveling efficiency.
• Join and complete Events for additional Aberrant Cinders.
• Save up all Baneful Hearts for when you are Level 60 to farm items, as almost all Monsters spawned during the Blood Maiden Event do not grant experience.
• Collect cinders while saving them to open Helltide Chests at the end of the Helltide for maximum experience gain.

If you are leveling in a group, make sure you communicate whenever a Helltide Threat Meter is about to be filled so you can group up, because the additional Monsters help fill surrounding players' Helltide Threat Meters. This way, you can benefit from constant additional Monsters spawning while completing other Helltide objectives.

Nightmare Dungeons

Nightmare Dungeons not only provide Obducite, but also have a lot of density and events like the Cursed Chest or Cursed Shrines, which grant absurd amounts of Experience in a very short period of time. Dungeon Events are extremely valuable to complete and should always be prioritized while running Nightmare Dungeons.

It is not required to fully clear a Nightmare Dungeon, instead, it is more beneficial to speed run through it while killing roughly 80% of all Monsters in a Nightmare Dungeon. You have to judge for yourself if a Monster pack is worth the detour instead of bee-lining to the dungeon objectives or events.

Only pick up Rare and Legendary items to minimize having to salvage at the vendor. If your Salvage Materials are comfortably high from playing your Main character, then consider throwing away everything that is not an upgrade to save additional time from not having to visit any vendors.

Boosting

If you want to boost your character the current fastest way to do this is through The Pit. For this, you need assistance from another player. Create your new level 1 character and get invited by the other player on his main character. This other player now opens a Pit Tier 65-70 and clears it as fast as they can, while you wait at the start inside of The Pit and collect all the experience. Make sure to use all available experience boosters mentioned above!

Additional Group Play Info

Playing in a group is one of the best ways to level your Alt quickly. Accelerate your progression by taking advantage of the 5% experience nearby player bonus and an additional 5% bonus if you are partied with them. Leveling up in a party is especially beneficial in Helltides and Nightmare Dungeons because you profit from other players' Hell Tide Threat Meter filling up and can split up in Nightmare Dungeons to complete objectives quicker, while the experience is shared throughout the whole Nightmare Dungeon.

Summary

• "Town is lava."
• As you level up, re-imprint Legendary Aspects from the Codex of Power on everything but your weapon(s), preferably on your Jewelry.
• Take advantage of fast-leveling strategies involving Helltide, Strongholds, Whisper Bounties, and Nightmare Dungeons.
• Always keep an Elixir running, and start using Incense as soon as possible!

Credits

Maintained by Avarilyn

Written by Chronikz
Reviewed by wudijo