Earning experience and leveling up your character is at the heart of every RPG. If you want to efficiently reach level 100 on your Endgame Build in Diablo 4, understanding the game’s underlying experience mechanics is essential.
In this post, we explain how the different experience bonuses found throughout the game come together and how monster XP scaling works. Let's walk you through it!
Experience Basics
As a baseline, XP earned from monster kills follows the following set of rules:
- Monsters give a base experience value depending on their HP/size that linearly scales up with their level.
- Elites always give a fixed amount of XP, regardless of monster type, also linearly scaling up with their level.
- Minions (of Elites) and Champion monsters always give 60% of the XP of an Elite of the same level, making them extremely valuable targets.
- A bonus is applied for defeating monsters that are higher level than your character, while a penalty is applied for defeating lower level monsters. These adjustments depend on the level difference between your character and the monster..
The XP value of Elites is significant compared to regular monsters, given you can defeat them at a comparable pace. To give some examples: Compared to the biggest regular monsters in the game (e.g. Bear, Ice Clan Mauler), Elites give precisely double the XP. Compared against a regular small to medium-sized monster (Warg), roughly x7.7.
As you level up, zones and monsters level with you to keep fights challenging. Similar to a monster's base XP, other sources such as Side Quests and Events also scale up their rewards.
When fighting monsters outside of your own character's level range, the following multipliers apply:
- Monster is 1 level above character: +1.5%
- Monster is 2 levels above character: +3.0%
- Monster is 3 levels above character: +4.5%
- [...]
- Monster is 10 or more levels above character: +15.0%
- Monster is 1 level below character: -10%
- Monster is 2 levels below character: -20%
- Monster is 3 levels below character: -30%
- Monster is 4 levels below character: -40%
- Monster is 5 levels below character: -50%
- [...] approaching 0 XP
Additionally, when you are fighting monsters of higher level there's a limit to how high their base XP scales. This limit is called maximum level offset and it depends on the World Tier:
- World Tier 1 (Adventurer): Up to +0
- World Tier Tier 2 (Veteran): Up to +3
- World Tier Tier 3 (Nightmare): Up to +6
- World Tier Tier 4 (Torment): Up to +10
This means that if a level 1 character gets into World Tier 4 and kills a level 75 monster, that monster's XP will be threated as if it was level 11. After that, all experience bonuses apply normally, such as underleveled bonus and World Tier bonus.
Tip: Since a monster's base XP value scales up linearly according to their level, fighting higher level monsters (up to the maximum level offset) is much more valuable on low character levels compared to high character levels where the impact of each additional monster level is not as high compared to its total XP amount.
World Tiers & Experience Buffs
Outside of being underleveled relative to the monster you're fighting, there are several ways to improve XP gains. The most basic increasing the World Tier you're playing on:
- World Tier 1 (Adventurer): Base XP
- World Tier Tier 2 (Veteran): +20% XP bonus
- World Tier Tier 3 (Nightmare): +100% XP bonus
- World Tier Tier 4 (Torment): +200% XP bonus
Check out our Difficulty Overview to learn more about the different World Tiers.
Experience Buffs
In addition to raising the difficulty, you can also boost XP in the following ways:
- Consumable elixirs: These provide various combat buffs as well as 5% bonus XP for 30 minutes.
- Party bonuses: You gain 5% bonus XP if at least one other player is nearby, or 10% if they're also in your party.
- Campfires that add a stacking experience buff up to +15% when you stand near them.
- All XP bonuses stack additively but together multiply the bonus of the World Tier.
- Experience buffs only benefit XP gains from monster kills, not quest rewards.
Tip: Make sure to always have at least some elixir active, e.g. Weak Iron Barb Elixir, which you can craft starting from level 5 and is the cheapest elixir in the game if you don't have others available.
Campfires
The flame's warmth puts you at ease.
Campfires are a special source of experience bonuses found in the open world. They appear at zone event sites such as the Gathering Legions event when the event is loading up (marked on the map).
If you get there early and stand next to an active fire, you can stack up the campfire buff for a total of 15% bonus XP over the course of two minutes. However, each stack of the buff only lasts for a short time and vanishes when you leave the area, so it is just a very minor bonus.
Experience in Groups
Parties have significant advantages for leveling up quickly:
- Groups are generally more powerful due to stacking of buffs, debuffs and other synergies between party members.
- Base XP gained from monster kills is gained by every party member individually at full value, regardless of contribution.
- When you are close together (~3 screens radius) you get a Party Bonus buff, increasing XP gains by 10%.
- In the open world, XP is shared in the same radius, if you see the buff that means you are getting XP from your teammates' kills.
- In Dungeons this range limitation is gone and XP is shared between all the players inside the same dungeon, regardless of how far away they are from each other.
- You can boost low level party members into higher World Tiers by carrying them through Capstone Dungeons and profiting from the higher maximum level offset and World Tier multipliers there. This allows one high level player to power level others from 1-50 and beyond in no time.
Check out our Multiplayer Overview to learn more about general group play.
Summary
- Higher difficulties grant massively more XP.
- Elites, Champions and Minions are valuable targets if you can finish them quickly.
- Farming low level monsters gives much less XP than normal.
- The sweet spot in difficulty vs. reward ratio is fighting monsters that are exactly at the same level as your character. Fighting monsters higher than that is inefficient if it means you have to slow down in a noticeable way (up to +10 monster level).
- In parties, several mechanics provide massive benefits to leveling speed and allow you to boost low level players.
- XP gains can be boosted through party members, elixirs, campfires and seasonal blessings.
Credits
Written by wudijo
Reviewed by DarkHumility