Following on the ARPG itemization post, D4 has a ‘refined’ journey here after a few years of tweaking and 1 DLC in prod (another coming end of month). It would be fair to say that D4 has stumbled at multiple points as the seasonal changes are often significant tweaks to the model, rather than simply tweaks (as in D3). Most of this relates to how rewards are allocated for given activities, sometimes helltides are better, sometimes bosses, sometimes undercity runs. The community generally adapts quickly. This post therefore reflects Season 12. I’ll update this for later seasons.

Assuming you are a fresh level 60, there’s only one real measure of progress and that’s a sustainable clear rate in Torment 4 – the highest difficulty currently available. In order to reach this, you need better stats. To get better stats, you need to play the hamster wheel of content.

Paragon

These are meta levels that are shared on all characters in a realm, in a system that’s more akin to PoE in complexity. This means there are optimal builds, and you can reset it pretty easy. You’ll likely be 200 levels into this by T4 difficulty. Gaining levels is passive as you complete content. Meaning – don’t worry about it, worry about gear.

Equipment

There are 2 types of items to worry about – Legendary and Unique. Legendary items can roll a multitude of stats and can be significantly tweaked (more on that). Uniques have fixed stats and fixes bonuses that cannot be used on other equipment. About half of the gear for any given build will be uniques.

These items can also roll as Ancient (50 power stronger) and/or Bloodied (extra stat boosts if you kill many enemies in a sequences). T1 content generally requires a decent set of Legendary items. T2 the mix of Legendary and Unique. T3 needs more of it upgraded to Ancient versions. T4 has optimal stat rolls.

Item Tweaks

You can enchant an item to re-roll one stat to something you prefer, at increasing costs. You can imprint legendaries with different passives, yet another stat that gives flexibility. You can temper items to add a passive boost (like more fire damage). You can add sockets and gems for stat boosts, or with 2 sockets, add runewords for skills that activate in certain conditions. And you can masterwork gear, improving it’s level by 25.

As a melee user, you likely want pants with Strength, Armor, Hit Points, and Critical Strike chance. You likely want a boost to whirlwind too. And slot runewords. That’s a lot of rolls that need to go your way. In D4, you only need 3 of those 4 initial stat rolls and can modify the item for all the others, and for dirt cheap as well!

Across 10 or so items, this makes a huge difference.

Acquiring Gear

This is the core of the game, right? All these activities have a difficulty level that is similar, though Boss Lairs can be a notch higher.

• Dungeons: Don’t do them, plain and simple.
• Nightmare Dungeons: You’ll randomly get a key to ‘upgrade’ a dungeon to a harder version. In season 12, I’d suggest you don’t run these.
• Slaughterhouse: Random key drops where you play as the Butcher. This is ‘fun mode’ and provide no meaningful rewards outside of the season journey.
• Infernal Runs: Increasing waves of difficulty (4, 6, 8, or 10) that give crafting rewards while leveling, and have a couple chests at the end. Outside of the seasonal journey goals, I would avoid this.
• Helltides: An area of the map has super spawn modes that drop cinders allowing you to open chests for random rewards. Useful all the way until Torment 1.
• Legion Events: Every 30 minutes or so, a multi-stage event with decent enough drops for the time invested.
• World Boss: Much longer spawns, only do it once a week. Not really worth the effort.
• Boss Lairs: You can access this any time but to open the chest you need Lair components. Bosses have much higher odds of dropping specific uniques. Mythical uniques (super rare) come from uber versions, and in season 12, Duriel is miles away from any other option here to farm. Bosses are generally harder than dungeons.
• Whispers: Completing a set of random activities gives you points, which you can redeem for loot chests. Don’t focus on it, but consider it when faced with multiple content options.
• The Pit: These are essentially D3 greater rifts, meant solely to upgrade glyphs used in the Paragon system. Get your 5 main glyphs to level 15 quickly. Level 46 is needed to get to get past T3. I would not recommend pushing past 46 until you can comfortably do T4 content.
• Undercity: Similar to the Pit in structure, but you can target rewards with Tributes. Useful to get more runes, Obducite, or legendaries. Generally, this is the activity that gives the most rewards per minute of activity.

Bloodied Dungeons, Infernal Runs, and Boss Lairs add +15 difficulty to the content you are in, which is a bit more than a single Torment level of difficulty. This means, if you use a key at T2, the content will be a bit more difficult than T3. If you want to use these keys, I suggest you drop the difficulty level down by 1. Bloodied Boss Lairs are extremely rewarding.

Gambling (Safety Net)

By doing the various bits of activity, you’ll also be rewarded with other currency you can use to get more gear in town.

• Pale Marks. You get these from using mercenaries, can’t really find the benefit here.
• Obols. There’s a cap on how many you can carry and you get this through a ton of activities, though mostly on the main map. One of the best ways to get your initial level 60 gear.
• Fresh Meat. Very similar to Obols, allows you to get Bloodied gear. Slaughterhouses give a lot, and bloodied lair bosses give the most by far.
• Butcher boxes. By chaining together multiple kills, you get points, which give you item boxes that drop a ton of loot and keys. You likely won’t even notice it as you need to manually collect it from the seasonal board, which is unfortunate given the rewards they hand out.

Dark Citadel

Adding this sort of footnote regarding the only mandatory grouping content in the game. Rewards are the same as other content, and the amount you get is determined by clear speed, which will be slower than all other options. There are cosmetics here, but they haven’t changed since the feature was released. The group finder is rudimentary, so your mileage may vary. This isn’t ‘brrrr-mode’, there are actual combat mechanics that need to be performed to avoid a wipe, so mindless play doesn’t work.

Personally, I think MMO-mechanics in an ARPG are not a terribly good use of resources without some sort of meta-incentive. Guilds in D4 are currently just group chats, so maybe there’s something that could be done here instead. For now, I’d avoid the content.