Diablo 4 has been playable for a month now. MyMMO editor Benedict Grothaus has been playing diligently like hundreds of thousands of other players until a “wall” eventually came. His decision: a new character is needed, and that changed everything.
I had a lot of fun with my first character. With my sorceress, I experienced Diablo 4 anew, checked out all the endgame content, and spent hours tweaking builds until I was finally satisfied with my strong Blizzard build.
However, it got quite tedious after level 70. By the way, many people feel the same way, because at this level there is a thick “loot wall” that significantly slows down improvements. But here, only the hardcore grind matters.
Even so, I actually enjoyed that, but there was one big problem: The nightmare dungeons, where most of the endgame grind is supposed to occur, just weren’t really worth it. I had a lot of fun, but they were too hard for what they provided. Or rather, what they didn’t provide.
With the first major patch, nightmare dungeons became more rewarding, granting more XP and hosting more enemies. So, I told myself until then: before I burnout and grind myself into the ground, I’ll wait for the patch and check out a new class.
Best decision.
I was very satisfied with my sorceress, but my new barbarian is just as much fun. Here’s my Blizzard build from the main:
Explore the whole world without “obligations”
After completing the campaign, any character can skip it and start in “Adventure” mode. Here, all capitals are unlocked, and you can complete the “Bounties” from the whispering tree, grind dungeons, search for world bosses, and more.
Unlike the first playthrough, there are hardly any limits. Aside from the fact that enemies in certain areas have a higher “minimum level,” the whole world is open. This means for me, I don’t have to follow the story, I can do what I want.
I started a barbarian as a second character. It is considered quite bad at the beginning. For me, that wasn’t the case, because through my main, I had already gained significant stat boosts and skill points through realm progression. The start is much easier.
My focus was much more on gameplay during the second playthrough. I paid more attention to how I perceive the world, what I actually want to do when there is no story.
This is how I discovered Diablo 4 anew. Instead of following the slow Lorath or breaking Elias’ nose for the 12th time, or falling in love with Lilith again and then having to betray her, I simply go beat up demons. That’s what you ultimately play Diablo for.
And that’s not even the biggest advantage.
When leveling again, I was also able to put our own tips to the test and am extremely satisfied:
Everything I get helps my main
Since I have already completed everything that one “must” do with my sorceress, I was able to focus on the essentials with the barbarian, which is: looting and leveling. And here comes the system of shared loot for all characters into play:
- I collect tons of obols from events with the new character gathering
- almost all found gear goes to the blacksmith for massive crafting resources
- other, rare materials like ground beast bones are farmed incidentally by the second character in dungeons
As a nice extra, there are also a few new titles. I actually thought this feature was pretty dumb, but since my sorceress can be a deadly spider
, I’m always looking for new, cool combinations. That’s why I play my barbarian Brigitte, the brutal brutalist… even if it’s rather because a colleague really likes alliteration and I wanted to make him smile.
I’ve almost completely filled the Codex of power now, mostly by just leveling. For new bounties from the whispering tree, I always selected the dungeons whose aspect I have not yet received. This makes it much easier to build for all classes later if I want to play more.
You can find the best builds in the tier list for Diablo 4.
The only disadvantage I have discovered so far is gems. I no longer collect them out of principle, but the ones my sorceress has left, I cannot equip due to being at too low a level. And gold unfortunately remains very scarce. That’s quite annoying especially at level 50 with the new character.
But just diving back into new class mechanics was a lot of fun for me, and I look forward to being able to do that again in Season 1. But right now, I don’t want to, so I can leave some new things for what’s to come.
And I still need to leave some expertise for the others in the team here, in case I don’t end up playing Diablo 4 like an MMO and stick with one hero:
Blizzard clarifies: You don’t need a new character every 3 months in Diablo 4, but…
