I played D4 from the day it released for about nine months. And then getting hit with a serious illness (thankfully now recovered), as well as a death in the family resulted in me having to walk away from the game, as well as many other things. As I am nearing having the opportunity to come back to the game, I’ve been reading about many improvements that have been made, but the changes seem almost overwhelming to try to completely understand. I could really use your help in identifying the key things that will be different to me. I recall, when I left, being very frustrated with nearly endless grinding and questing in search of any really good quality stuff, and virtually never coming across anything of note. Supposedly that has gotten better? I also recall moving to a higher level and finding that things suddenly got massively more difficult. Anything new there for the better?
It also seems that many of the improvements are specifically tied to seasons, and not the game in general? Is that correct? Any articles or guides for returning players that you can point me towards that will help me effectively restart is also greatly appreciated. I’m sure that everything my characters possess will be outdated and mostly worthless? That could make things very difficult.
Well let’s start with some questions, first and foremost are you a seasonal, eternal, or both type of player?
Right now the season is just about over and a new one starts at the end of January. So just keep that in mind if you decide to jump into the game now.
The game has also come out with an expansion, so the next question would be have you purchased this already? If you haven’t I would highly recommend waiting for another sale. Although it may still be on sale as of writing this, I’ haven’t checked.
Third question for you, were you around for the itemization overhaul that occurred during Season 4? Depending on your answer will dictate where we go from here.
While they have made a lot of changes since you’ve left, the grinding is still present. It is easier than ever to get to endgame content though, and the difficulty tiers only give you more exp, gold, and amount of loot (not better quality of loot) the higher the tiers you go.
You can potentially farm everything the game has to offer in a lower difficulty if you so please.
ITs going to be a whole new game for you. Sounds like you play eternal so that is even worse for you as all your items are legacy and bad. Jump into helltides when you come back to try and get base new gear then go into dungeons for materials, pits for glyph levels, hordes for materials faster, and citadel is for cosmetics.
Getting the expansion is mandatory if you want to use runes and you do because they are OP.
If you’re a returning eternal player, you might notice your character is now level 50, you can’t access paragon baords, and all of your gear is labeled legacy and is locked. Don’t worry.
The journey to level 60 and unlocking your paragon boards won’t take long. All the points are still there. Your gear will carry you through to the torment 1 difficulty where endgame unlocks.
You’ll also notice you will have more points to put in the skill tree when you hit level 60. Please also note that ultimates now have ranks, so you might use a few here.
Just start a new character and feel the game out, as if you haven’t played it before. Do the campaign or skip it. You get normal and hard difficulty. Expert unlocks when you finish the campaign prologue (sounds like you already did). Penitent unlocks when you complete the campaign (sounds like you already did).
Max character level is 60 and then you start paragon levels. There are 300 paragon levels, but 200+ is plenty to fill out your build.
You can unlock torment 1 by completing pit 20. The pit menu will show you when you unlock torment 2-4.
Standard item power goes up to 750. In torment, you can get ancestrals, which are item power 800 with at least one greater affix.
You can visit maxroll’s website if you want build guides. They also have a lot of informative resources.
Also, there’s a returning player boost in kyovashad. It’s a quest that doesn’t clearly communicate what is happening, until it’s too late. It’ll guide you to the fated reliquary. If you complete the quest, it’ll unlock all your lilith shrines, give you some gold, boost you to 50, and give you a choice of 3 starter builds.
This cannot be undone.
Just hop in and play mate it’s all pretty straightforward you’ll be fine
Wait til season 7 so you won’t be spoiled with how much fun spiritborn is. Best to wait until next season when it’s not fun.
At this point I’d wait until the next season to really get into it, as you only have less than 3 weeks of this season left, I think.
Obviously, that doesn’t matter if you’re more into non-seasonal playing. You will find your old characters still there, but I wouldn’t bother with them unless you’re really attached and want to rebuild them.
But, yeah…The whole game has changed, aside from the story/campaign…Although now there’s the VoH expansion too.
Check out build guides (there’s no shortage of them) if you want, but it’s pretty easy to dive back in if you’re familiar with top down ARPGs…But it’s probably best to forget everything you thought you knew about character building in D4.
Spiritborn will still be loads of fun next season.
Even this season, you can opt to not use Kepeleke and see how the class actually works.
Pick any Spiritborn ability. You can absolutely build around it and clear all content up to Pit 95 or higher. I personally use a “terrible” Poison build centered around Scourge/Menancing Aspect. I can clear 112 on farm.
All classes should work like this.
So, I’ve probably spent 10-12 hours online in D4 this week, playing eternal, as I always did before. . I’m essentially getting nowhere. There are virtually no other players to be found. Checking the social screen shows maybe one other player and I’m in the largest city. I was hoping for some higher levels or at least newer players with well developed characters making use of current equipment to tag along with on higher level content, as I often did before. With no way to do there is no way to get better gear, and all my year old gear is crap. I can’t really accomplish much at al. One player I spoke to said to run “purple” quests, but I have seen none of those. Its all extremely frustrating.
Don’t play eternal realm until they bring leaderboards. There is no purpose to eternal realm yet. D4 eternal will be way more popular then D3 eternal because we have a paragon cap in D4.
Play seasonal, get your aspects and that. It all gets transferred anyways.
The new skills of each class is great, the rest is a bit like before. Just now main events to do are the Pit, to improve paragon gems, and Infernal Hordes, to get material to upgrade the gears. So it gets a bit boring after a while, as usual.
The reason I only ever briefly played seasonal was that I really don’t enjoy starting new characters over from scratch again. I always found developing characters from level 50 and up more interesting. It appears thats basically pointless now.
I did research new builds for my rogue, and was going to reset all the points and use them for new skills and a new build. Not sure if that makes sense now, or not?
Just a big change from 1 year ago, is that the levelling process is quicker. Also you can get boosted in the Pits 1-60 really quickly, but for your first char of a class I still recommend levelling properly once.
I have done paragon 300 in both softcore and hardcore. Cleared tier 150 on both and still a week left before season 7, I promise you can pretty much get everything you want done and probably can take a month off in a season.
I was never a hardcore player before d4 but its a way better experience then softcore with D4 in its current state. Good community, people help each other and you get to form bond with players. Softcore you don’t need anyone as there is zero risk.
This is by far the most I have played in any season, usually I am done within a month. It’s only because I heard leaderboards are coming and wanted paragon 300 in eternal realm. Season 7 I will only play hardcore this time and might only be for a month, I don’t need to worry about capping paragon again this whole expansion.
rogue dancing knifes new skill is great, very powerful with some explosions on hits stuff (like shadow, frost or poison explosions). It’s as easy as a good whirlwind barb.
Also don’t forget the new free dog pet, that will collect resources, very useful.
I am still playing, mostly Eternal now and I am still finding people around. You can check the Party Finder. They are always parties listed for game activities. Did you enable cross play in the game option?
I am on EU server; not sure our play time overlaps but if so, we can do some stuff together.
I’ve been looking and finding zero parties available. I’m 90% certain that I have cross play enabled (and will double check that). Doing some stuff together would be great. I seem to be unable to even find better level quests at the moment. I’m most often on Saturday’s, 1-5pm EST, Monday’s 1-5pm EST, Tuesdays 1-5PM EST, Friday’s 2-5pm EST.