Seasonal Leveling Guide

At the very start of the Season, your first job is, naturally, to create a new seasonal hero. While this first choice does not lock you down too terribly, note that the Seasonal Journey rewards you once per Season — only for the character that completes the chapters first. Bearing that in mind, pick your character and enter the game.

While in town, approach one of the followers that most closely matches your class (Templar for Barbarians, Monks and Crusaders, Scoundrel for Demon Hunters, and Enchantress for Witch Doctors, Necromancers and Wizards), select the "Inventory & Skills" option, take their weapon and equip it yourself — it is a significant upgrade over the base weapon that you start with.

Note that once you reach level 7, vendors in all towns — the ones with the nickname "the Fence" in their names — will start selling rings. Each of them has a chance to sell rings that increase your Average Damage (i.e. 2-4 Damage), which is a massive DPS boost early on.

After your character is created, head to the Game Settings menu, go into the Challenge Rifts and start the current weekly run. Note that you have to have completed at least one Greater Rift on your account (either in non-seasonal or previous seasons) to have Challenge Rifts unlocked. Challenge Rifts are a weekly challenge that provides a fixed character and a build (usually using quirky skills and/or heavily unoptimized stats and items), and challenges you to beat the Greater Rift completion time of its original owner.

The completion of the Challenge Rift is usually trivial and can be completed either solo or in a group, and will net you a Challenge Rift Reward cache. Open it up in-game with your brand new seasonal character and claim its contents: 35 Death's Breaths, a couple hundred of each of the base crafting materials (128 Veiled Crystals, 354 Arcane Dust, and 364 Reusable Parts), 475 Blood Shards, 5.1 million gold, and 15 each of the Act-specific bounty cache materials. With your newfound riches, upgrade both your Blacksmith and your Mystic craftsmen in town to their maximum rank.

Your next important step is to acquire Kanai's Cube. Kanai's Cube is found in The Ruins of Sescheron — the waypoint in the top right corner of the Act III map. From that waypoint, run left towards the city and make your way around the ruins; one of its far corners (typically upper right, lower right, or lower left) will have the entrance to the next zone, the Elder Sanctum. Once in the Elder Sanctum, make your way through the zone, practically to its other end. When you find the Cube and click it, it automatically transports itself back to town.

You can grab Kanai's Cube at any level; the choice is completely up to you and your group, depending on your strategy.

• If you want to immediately craft a legendary, you can do so by getting the cube at Level 1.
• If you want to wait to grab the cube as quickly as possible, you can do so by doing it once your class has its movement ability; one issue to note with this is that, as you gain levels, you may find mobs more difficult to deal with due to the lack of appropriate gear for that level when compared with doing it at Level 1 with bought items from vendors.
• If you are leveling in rifts, you can do it in parts while waiting for rifts to close. It is important that you do not overwrite your teleport spot from the Ruins, otherwise you will need to run through everything again.

While you are at it, make sure to consult our Kanai's Cube guide for additional details on its use — it is an incredibly important part of your character progression at any point of the game, so make sure to acquaint yourself thoroughly with its properties.

One of the strongest early game boosts that you can obtain while leveling is to craft a yellow (rare) level 70 item at the blacksmith, then try to upgrade it into a valuable legendary at Kanai's Cube, and finally extract its property for one of the Kanai's Cube legendary power slots. Note that this strategy is stronger for some classes over others, particularly favoring Demon Hunters, Necromancers, and somewhat Barbarians. The remaining classes can skip this step and directly go to gambling, sparing themselves some disappointment and saving some materials for level 70, since you can do this recipe exactly once at the Season's start (you only have so many Death's Breaths).

When choosing which rare item to craft, keep in mind that you are looking to upgrade them into a legendary that provides some form of skill damage multiplier that will skyrocket your leveling efficiency. Every class has a different set of valuable items to attempt for:

• Barbarian: Craft a rare level 70 Two-Handed Mighty Weapon, and use the Upgrade Rare recipe in the Cube to try to obtain either a Fury of the Vanished Peak or The Gavel of Judgment.
• Crusader: Craft a rare level 70 One-Handed Flail, and use the Upgrade Rare recipe in the Cube to try to obtain either a Darklight, Gyrfalcon's Foote or Johanna's Argument.
• Demon Hunter: Craft a rare level 70 Dagger, and use the Upgrade Rare recipe in the Cube to obtain either a Karlei's Point or a Lord Greenstone's Fan. Demon Hunters are excellent at this strategy since they only have 2 daggers, and they are both great for leveling.
• Monk: Craft a rare level 70 Daibo, and use the Upgrade Rare recipe in the Cube to try to obtain either an Incense Torch of the Grand Temple, Balance or The Flow of Eternity.
• Necromancer: Craft a rare level 70 Two-Handed Scythe, and use the Upgrade Rare recipe in the Cube to obtain either a Bloodtide Blade, Maltorius' Petrified Spike, Nayr's Black Death or Reilena's Shadowhook. Necromancers are excellent at this strategy since they only have 4 Two-Handed Scythes, and they are all great for leveling.
• Witch Doctor: Craft a rare level 70 Staff, and use the Upgrade Rare recipe in the Cube to try to obtain either a Staff of Chiroptera or Wormwood.
• Wizard: Craft a rare level 70 Wand, and use the Upgrade Rare recipe in the Cube to try to obtain either a Fragment of Destiny, Starfire, Unstable Scepter or Wand of Woh.

Note that this part of the leveling strategy requires some amount of luck for non-DH and non-Necromancer players. Leveling in a group minimizes the risk of RNG screwing everyone over, but sometimes you will be unlucky; this is nothing to be bothered by, as leveling in Diablo is still a fairly easy and straightforward process.

If you are lucky, however, and obtain one of the items outlined above, you will have just about enough Death's Breaths to use the Extract Legendary Power recipe in Kanai's Cube. Do that, and then slot the (now maximized) legendary power of the item in the Cube, netting yourself a considerable leveling bonus. Needless to say, adjust your build accordingly to the legendary power, i.e. if you get Guard of Johanna as a Crusader, make Blessed Hammer your main damage dealing skill throughout leveling.

Your next step is to try and gamble for valuable items from Kadala at level 1. Since not every legendary is available right from the start, the legendary item pools for some classes are restricted in a beneficial way to obtain another strong damage multiplier right from the start. If you do not consider the legendaries listed for your class particularly attractive, you can always gamble for Helms for a considerable chance at obtaining Leoric's Crown; extracting its power and socketing rubies in your helmets throughout leveling will net you a hefty amount of extra experience.

• Barbarian: Gamble for Bracers, trying to obtain either Bracers of Destruction or Bracers of the First Men. Spend any remaining Blood Shards on Boots for a chance at Lut Socks.
• Crusader: gamble for Bracers, trying to obtain Gabriel's Vambraces. If you are lucky to get them quick, you can also spend some (or all, if you are feeling lucky) on shields for Guard of Johanna or Denial. At level 31, if you have any Blood Shards saved over, or new ones you are willing to spend, you can try your luck at Pants for Hammer Jammers.
• Demon Hunter: Not many great options; you can gamble for Belts, trying to obtain the Hellcat Waistguard, although Grenade comes a little later in the leveling process. Otherwise, either go for Leoric's Crown or the damage proc of Pox Faulds. Another gambling strategy you can attempt is saving shards for level 30, when you can gamble on Quivers for a chance at Sin Seekers, or level 31 — for the additional chance at Holy Point Shot and Spines of Seething Hatred.
• Monk: gamble for either boots (hoping to obtain Rivera Dancers or The Crudest Boots) or bracers (hoping to obtain either Pinto's Pride, Cesar's Memento or Gungdo Gear). Adjust your gambling strategy for Monk depending on the item you obtained (if any) on the previous step, Upgrading a Rare Item (i.e. gambling for bracers if you got an Incense Torch of the Grand Temple, hoping to get Pinto's Pride).
• Necromancer: gamble for Gloves, trying to obtain Grasps of Essence.
• Witch Doctor: Not many great options; you can gamble for Mojos, trying to obtain a Gazing Demise, but its usefulness is rather limited in early character progression. Otherwise, either go for Leoric's Crown or the damage proc of Pox Faulds.
• Wizard: Not many great options; you can gamble for Bracers, trying to obtain Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer, but its defensive properties are not very useful early on. Otherwise, either go for Leoric's Crown or the damage proc of Pox Faulds. Another gambling strategy you can attempt is saving shards for level 31, when you can gamble on Rings for a chance at Manald Heal, or level 33 — for Source gambling for Etched Sigil.

Pick a two-handed weapon category of your choice (2h Axes, Maces, Swords...) and craft a level 70 weapon of the chosen type. You are looking for a roll with:

• At least a Crowd Control secondary stat — Chance to Stun, Slow, Fear,.. etc. On Hit;
• Ideally, also a Life per Hit primary stat;

If both these stats are present, you have eliminated a large part of the possible Secondary stats on the weapon. Thus, you can easily reroll the other Secondary stat (the one that is NOT the crowd control stat) into Reduced Level Requirement — making the item wearable up to 30 levels prior to level 70. This is a tremendous damage increase for a large chunk of your leveling process.

Of course, if you are very lucky, the Reduced Level Requirement can roll onto your crafted item outright.

An easy early boost to your character in Seasons is to check your bounties for any easily completed act boss killing bounties — the most famous examples being Zoltun Kulle (at the Archives of Zoltun Kulle waypoint) and Maghda (down from the Road to Alcarnus waypoint) in Act II.

The boss bounties reward you with a Diabolic Hoard chest that is guaranteed to drop you a couple of rare items; they will boost your overall character power nicely right at the beginning.

Turn the difficulty up to Torment VI and go to the Halls of Agony Level 1. Run and dodge past monsters that come in your way until you reach the falling blades traps; there, lure the monsters towards these traps and watch as they get slaughtered, netting you tremendous experience.

This method, while extremely efficient time-wise, is also (arguably) quite unfun and counter-intuitive, not to mention prone to mishaps. Needless to say, this strategy is not Hardcore-friendly and will result in the (frequent) death of your character.

You can also consider leveling via Massacre bonuses — a very potent strategy in solo play. The Massacre bonus XP system was revised in Patch 2.4.1 into a multiplicative experience bonus that rewards you for chaining kills of monsters. The caveat is this bonus only works in bounties — and not during Rifts.

To successfully pull of long chains of monster kills, pick highly populated zones — the Cathedral (Act I), Halls of Agony Level 3 (Act I), and, most notably, Fields of Misery (Act I). The tactic is to always be on the move, leading monsters into one another, abusing Cursed Chests for monster spawns, and generally using skills with DoTs or high AoE ( Rend for Barbarian, Blessed Hammer for Crusader, Multishot for Demon Hunter, Wave of Light for Monk, Locust Swarm for Witch Doctors, Blizzard for Wizards).

While Massacre leveling will require frequent restarts of the game (every 5-10 minutes), it will result in some of the fastest leveling in Diablo 3, clocking under the 2 hour mark when you get the hang of it. Due to its individual nature and the level of coordination required to pull it off in a multiplayer game, leveling by Massacre bonuses can only be recommended for 2+ players if they are experienced and have voice communication; this is predominantly a solo leveling technique. It also has the considerable downside of losing the increased legendary drop rate and blood shards of rifting.

For groups and players that do not stress losing an hour in the 1-70 race, the general recommendation is to stick to rifts for the 1-70 journey. Rifts grant you increased legendary drop rate, blood shards for gambling, and a hefty "hand-in" bonus at the end. While rifting has a higher degree of randomness than bounties (map layout, monster density and composition are all RNG), the removal of Rift Keystones as a requirement to open them allows you to simply remake if you get a bad (difficult or slow) rift.