Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred has launched not just with two new classes, Warlock and Paladin, but a revamped skill tree that affects all older classes, opening up a huge host of new builds to try, which can be fun or…exhausting.
There are now eight Diablo 4 classes: Barbarian, Rogue, Sorcerer, Necromancer, Spiritborn, Druid, Warlock and Paladin. During most seasons, players may pick a class or two, level it with whatever seasonal event is going on, then move on to others in future seasons.
Here? It’s easy to want to try all of these classes because of the new skill system (plus new gear and new additions like the Talisman and Horadric Cube), moving into powerful endgame builds. Now, Blizzard has made this easier and less annoying than ever.
While it’s been possible to skip the campaign for a long while now, and you can do so with Lord of Hatred’s as well after you beat it, there are new additions that allow you to speed level characters without doing something dull like farming one specific zone over and over or being carried by a friend in some piece of high-level content.
By the time we’ve arrived at Lord of Hatred, Diablo 4 is now positively dumping XP on you. Since you start at the endgame, you have unlocked “War Plans” instantly, the new endgame pathing system that has you choose a path through a number of consecutive endgame activities from Kurast to Nightmare Dungeons to The Pit to Lairs to even Helltide. But more importantly, you can herd yourself toward rewards.
One of those rewards? Big clusters of XP orbs, as you can take the paths to get you toward that focused reward. You will see some XP orbs drop on the map, whatever you do, and all maps also have frequent XP wells at this stage, which can level you quickly, given how long they stick around. Bosses will drop some, but by the time you finish the full War Plan, if you’ve gone through any number of XP-focused activities, you will drown in XP, rocketing up levels after not all that much time investment.
Past that, the new Talisman system often drops charms that allow you to get bonus XP up to level 70. I eventually made a set of charms that gave me 50% more XP up until level 70, which wildly accelerated the pace of leveling when I handed it over to my alternate character. And you can do that with all of them, once you have it.
During the review period, I beat the campaign with my Warlock, then pivoted to a “skip” Paladin. I had him maxed with a couple dozen Paragon points to boot in just a few hours, thanks to this new system, and it was easy to try out all his skill setups. Then, of course, you have to get to farming, as there’s no way to skip to the relevant gear for the build you’re trying to get, which is…the whole point of Diablo 4.
Again, I am sure there are speed-leveling tactics that are faster than this, but the changes and additions here allow you to actually play the endgame as intended when you skip, racking up points for activity bonuses and getting gear in the process. I highly recommend doing it this way, and you’ll see how you can test out really all the classes this season, given how easy it is to catch up now.
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