The Diablo franchise has always put a lot of emphasis on leveling up, mostly as a means to discover better loot that can make your character even more powerful. The simple formula of killing a bunch of enemies over and over to find gear powerful enough to help you kill even stronger enemies has been integral to the action RPG’s longevity and success. But the latest iteration, Diablo Immortal, shakes up the usual routine and combines it with the proven recipe of a freemium mobile game. Since the PC/mobile hybrid title requires a bit more knowhow, here are our five best tips for leveling up in Diablo Immortal.
5. Grind that Battle Pass
Like most free-to-play games released in the past decade, Diablo Immortal comes with its own battle pass. You can access the track in the codex in the menu. There are 40 tiers to level up in total, and each grants a significant amount of experience and items per level. You can pay $4.99 to get an empowered battle pass that gives you extra rewards or $14.99 for cosmetic rewards and a rank boost to help the grind.
The cosmetics you can unlock and purchase with the Battle Pass
You’ll need to earn Battle Points to move up the ranks by completing different missions. Guide missions have you completing main quest objectives, hitting leveling milestones, or completing missions. Quests are larger objectives that refresh daily, like killing elite monsters or equipping legendary items that grant you a large number of Battle Points. You can earn an extra quest per day by empowering your Battle Pass.
Then there are the activities, which grant you Battle Points for completing daily objectives, Elder Rifts, raids, Bestiairy pages, and competing in PVP. There are also three tiers of daily activity rewards that grant you crests, gems, and other items. Doing these will grant you the bulk of your Battle Points. Bestiary pages give you the most points, either 40 or 80 if they are the featured quest of the day.
4. Bounties and Contracts
In order to fill a Bestiary page, you need to find 10 pieces of monster essence, which only drops from random mobs in the overworld. In order to be as productive as possible, it’s best to complete pages by working on Bounties. In Westmarch, you’ll find a Bounty board that has four quests on it, almost always located in the same zone. You’ll have to kill spiders, wolves, and a myriad of other creepy crawlers to complete the quest. Once you finish four Bounties, you can head back to the board and the quartermaster will give you some gold and items.
There are also Contracts, which unlock after you hit level 40 and join either the Shadow or Templar groups. They are like three-tier bounties, requiring you to finish three objectives before returning to base.
3. Non-stop Raids
Raids have always been in the DNA of Diablo, with up to four adventurers slaying hordes of demons to gain loot and experience. Diablo Immortal changes that formula quite a bit, by having zone-specific raids that don’t change maps, tiles, or monster locations. Every time you log into the Mad King’s Breach, you’ll fight the same mini-bosses and the Skeleton King at the end.
Fighting the Mad King over and over is a great way to grind early levels.
It’s best to farm these as a group to get more experience and harder mobs, though doing them alone isn’t the worst. If any of the raids are featured, they grant double Battle Points, so those can be prioritized.
2. Elder Rifts
Like raids, Elder Rifts are a new take on a classic Diablo staple.
You enter a nether portal in the middle of town and kill as many enemies as you can before the timer runs out. After defeating a Rift Guardian, you’ll be rewarded with gold and items. That amount of reward depends heavily on what crests you add, up to three. Rare crests add slightly more powerful items, while Legendary crests allow more Legendary items to drop, which helps you get stronger faster.
1. Pay up
Diablo Immortal has many opportunities for you to pay real money.
Getting to level 40 is fairly simple in Diablo Immortal, but once you hit level 50, it’s a real grind to level up. The game wants you to spend real-world money to earn better loot and experience, so it makes it a chore to earn that sweet progression. Spending real money on the battle pass, Boons of Plenty or Prodigy’s Path (which both become purchasable as you play) will allow you to earn better items to finish objectives faster and earn more experience.
Without that monetary crutch, you are going to be stuck doing more of the same rifts, raids, and Beastiary pages. Unfortunately, the best way to level up is to spend money in the game to earn an advantage. It’s not exactly pay-to-win, because you can level up without putting down real money. But you will be underpowered and burnt out without that extra cash boost.
