Whether you're a seasoned veteran of the hack-and-slash genre or a newcomer stepping into the ominous world of Sanctuary for the first time, there's plenty to learn in Diablo 4. This latest installment in the beloved Blizzard franchise brings a whole new layer of complexity and depth to its gameplay. That's why we've compiled a comprehensive list of 15 essential tips to help you navigate the deadly dungeons and treacherous terrains.
So, before you dive headlong into the demon-infested sworld of Sanctuary, take a moment to read through these crucial tips - your survival may depend on it!
1: Play the Story to Get Your Horse
Sanctuary is quite a large world full of plenty of places to explore. While there are waypoints out there to make travel a little easier, getting to all the little nooks and crannies will take some doing, and the fastest way to pull this off is by mount.
Early on you’ll find a stable, but if you attempt to purchase a horse, you’ll notice that purchasing a horse is restricted until you complete Donans Favor. If you were wondering where to take on this quest, and thought that you should search the multitude of side quests to find it, you would certainly be out of luck. In actuality, you will obtain and complete this quest as part of the main storyline, and once you complete it, you can retrieve your horse, and even purchase yourself additional horses and some neato cosmetics as well.
2: Don’t Waste Gold on Gear in the Early Game
It feels like just a few short moments after entering Kyovashad that you’re introduced to new vendors and tradesmen that will help you purchase new gear, and help you strengthen it to be the strongest version it can be. The higher level you go, the more expensive these items get, and the more it will cost to upgrade them. Obtaining gold is as easy as selling unwanted gear, and gold seemingly drops everywhere, so you may be tempted to upgrade when you have the chance.
However, you’ll also notice that in the early game, you’re going to be leveling very quickly, and even though you may find some neat gear pieces that might enhance your armor or damage, it’s very likely that these new gear pieces are just steppingstones as you increase your level. While there may be some exceptions to this rule, like if you happen upon a particularly exciting legendary gear affix, you would actually be better off stowing the piece once you’ve significantly out leveled it, and then head to the Occultist and remove the Aspect and put it on a much stronger piece once you’re closer to the Capstone world tier 3 trial. You’ll be glad you didn’t waste the money once you get into the higher levels, where you can easily run through hundreds of thousands of pieces of gold in moments.
3: Find Altars of Lilith the Easy Way
Throughout your journey you’ll be introduced to Altars of Lilith, which are these neat little statues that increase some of your base stats. Not only will it increase the base stats of the character that you’re playing, but it will also increase the stats of all the characters you create, so finding all of them will be a massive boon to every character you make going forward.
That also means that you may find yourself really trying hard to find every single Altar of Lilith that exists. As they are often positioned somewhere off the beaten path, it might take you quite some time before you find them all. That’s where our friends at Diablofans come in. The interactive map at Diablofans.com will be instrumental in finding every single Altar of Lilith, which will help you drive back the forces of Hell in no time.
4: You Can Respec at Any Time
If you’re a fellow theorycrafter when it comes to Diablo builds, then you’re definitely going to have your hands full picking through all the different skill tree options to make the most powerful, efficient, or just plain weird builds that you can think of. The problem is, you may think you have that ace build all planned out, but Diablo has a way to throw a wrench into your best laid plans with so many interesting Aspects that drop on legendary gear.
Luckily, you can respec your character at any time to try out new builds. You can take back all of your points and completely reinvent your build from scratch, or you can simply take back a single point at a time, making minor changes until you have the exact build you want. Just make sure, when taking back a single point at a time, that you don’t attempt to remove a prerequisite for the rest of your build, or else it won’t allow you to retrieve the point until you’ve taken away the other prerequisite skill points.
5: Upgrade Your Potions Every 10 Levels
Potions are life. But in Sanctuary, life can be fleeting. When you start your journey you’ll be taught the ways of the potion, which means that eventually you’ll need to gather some materials to put together a more potent potion. However, the journey is very arduous and between battling demons and sifting through gear, it’s very easy to forget that you need to keep your potions current with your level to maximize their healing benefits.
Potions are upgraded at different level thresholds at the Alchemist, and they will all take a bunch of materials in order to craft the next tier. The early upgrade materials are all easy enough to find without much fuss by playing through the story while halfheartedly grabbing a few plants along the way. You’ll want to swing by the Alchemist every 10 levels to upgrade your potion, except the Alchemist will upgrade your potion at 45, which I assume is due to the difficulty of reaching the near-end-game content that aligns with the story and World Tier battles that usually take place between level 45 and 50.
6: Use Elixirs Now, Ask Me How
Battles in Diablo 4 can get pretty tough. You may even get to the point where you’re thinking that you’ll need to hoard some consumables in the event you are faced with a particularly tough boss. That would be where elixirs come in, but what you may not realize, is that elixirs are not just a sometimes treat, they are a consumable that you should definitely utilize as often as you can.
There are many different kinds of elixirs out there. They can increase your armor, you attack speed, your defense against particular damage types, and more. They also grant you a 5% experience boost. Each elixir lasts about 30 minutes. If you were to wait for elixirs to drop, you may be waiting quite a long time, as they seem to not drop as often as you may want. That’s why you should head over to the Alchemist – the NPC that helps you craft your health potion upgrades – and utilize some of those spare materials to craft the elixirs of your choice. That way you can have an extra 5% experience boost all the time, and increase some of the stats you care the most about. Bonus points if you decide to group up and craft some incense that will grant boosts to your teammates as well.
7: Use Map Completion to Make All Characters Stronger
If you love Diablo 4 you’ll probably want to complete everything in the game, hit those achievements on Steam, Xbox or PlayStation, and 100% the map when you can. What you might not realize is that completing the map has other major benefits, not just for the character you’re playing, but for all the characters you create.
The map is split in to regions and each region has their own benefits which include bonus XP and gold. On top of that you have account rewards, which will let you gain skill points, potion capacity, increase your maximum Obols (we get to that later), and they’ll even give you some Paragon Points, which is a separate class tree that you unlock after level 50. Each region will allow you to unlock more points, potions and Paragon Points, that will be shared with all of your characters. You don’t want to sleep on completing these. In order to unlock these region bonuses you simply need to complete dungeons, find waypoints, unlock Altars of Lilith, discover all of the areas, and – you get the gist. You can find out where you stand in the “region progress” tab of your map.
8: Salvage Gear for Materials and New Clothes
There will come a time when you’re going to want to prioritize finding the best gear, and meticulously rerolling stats, upgrading them, and changing or adding new Aspects to them. In order to do that, you’ll need to salvage some gear in order to have the right materials for the upgrades.
However, you should certainly target the gear that you decide to break down, and the gear you decide to sell (because you’ll certainly want to split up gear between things to sell and things to salvage). In Diablo 4 you’ll have the option to change what your character looks like at the wardrobe which is available in most cities that also feature an account-wide storage. Each gear piece has its own visual style, but you can add these styles to your wardrobe by heading to the blacksmith and salvaging an unknown style. This works for any weapons and armor you find that you have not yet salvaged for their style. It’s very simple to find which styles you have not yet unlocked when you’re salvaging at the blacksmith, with a little icon on each style you haven’t unlocked yet, and a notation at the bottom that states it will unlock a new look on salvage.
9: You Don’t Have to Rush to World Tier 3
If you’re a Diablo veteran, you might think that you’ve done it all, you’re a pro, and you’re ready for everything. If this is a sentiment you have, and you’re looking to boost the difficulty for the additional rewards and glory, you will have to partake in a journey before you’re able to take on the Cathedral of Light Capstone Dungeon to increase your World Tier level to 3 and unlock all the benefits and content of the next World Tier.
If you really are the powerhouse you think you are, and you happen to be able to challenge the Capstone Dungeon, and win, when you’re far below level 50, you may quickly find that your completion was premature. For example, I defeated the Capstone Dungeon at 45, and when I swapped to World Tier 3, I found that a lot of the gear drops were too high level for me to wear. The enemies for World Tier 3 start at around level 53, which means that everything starts with an extreme advantage against you. Rushing to World Tier 3 may not be the type of challenge that’s worth it, as it brings a lot of challenge with very limited rewards until you’re close enough to level 50 to make use of all of the new gear you’ll find. On the upside, the increase in experience for World Tier 3 will help you hit that level 50 mark much faster. Just remember, if you do go to World Tier 3 early, and can’t hack it, you can always drop back down to World Tier 2 until you’re ready.
10: Don’t Leave Home Without Whispering Keys
Throughout the world of Sanctuary you’re going to find plenty of puzzles, secrets, and loot. The last thing you want is to happen upon some potentially game-changing loot but be completely unprepared to retrieve it. This will unfortunately happen if you come across a Silent Chest without any Whispering Keys.
You’re in luck though, because Whispering Keys are actually quite easy to find, if you know where to get them. All you need are a few Obols, which drop from completing world events and Obol caches, and then you can head on over to the Purveyor of Curiosities and scroll to the bottom, where he sells Whispering Keys for 20 Obols a pop. You’ll want to stock up with several Whispering Keys before you head out into the world. Then, make sure you head back to the Purveyor, when your Obols get close to maxing out, buy more keys, or take a chance and roll for some new gear. (There’s actually a decent chance to find legendary weapons when gambling with the Purveyor, so go crazy if you find you’re maxing out on Obols a lot).
11: Get Your Waypoints for Fast Travel!
When you’re hyper focused on saving the world, it’s very easy to forget simple things like clearing your bag space, upgrading your potions and – yes, obtaining new waypoints. Some of the cities in Sanctuary are large, and when you enter a new one, you may forget to seek out the way point.
Let this be a reminder that grabbing new waypoints will not only help you speed around the world faster, but they are also necessary as part of map completion. The last thing you want to do is have to run back to a remote part of the map to grab a waypoint you forgot. Seek waypoints in every new location you visit! If you’re not sure if you’re missing any, utilize the interactive map at Diablofans to make sure you’ve grabbed them all.
12: Don’t Leave Any Gear Behind
After an arduous battle, where you finally come out victorious and the boss explodes in a rainbow of different rewards, the next question you may ask yourself is, “Do I have enough bag space to haul all of this back?” Chances are, if you’re in a dungeon, the answer is probably “No”.
So many times you may find yourself trying to decide whether you should forget white pieces of gear, or if blue gear pieces are even worth looking at anymore. You may even leave a ton of gear behind just because it’s not worth the hassle to find the bag space to carry it back and forth. In Diablo 4 though, you don’t have to decide if you should pick up everything, or leave some behind. At any time in a dungeon, or out in the world, you can open a portal to the town of your choice, and sell or salvage items, and then return exactly where you left off. Simply choose the location from your map, and once you’re done selling, return to the portal you created just above the waypoint. Voila! No more leaving your trash gear behind, turn that trash into gold!
13: Side Quests Will Always Be There
Let’s say that you really want to rush the story and get yourself a Horse. Now that you’ve hit Act 4, you think, “I really want to finish this story and see what happens, but I don’t want to miss out on any of these side quests”.
Fear not friends, the side quests will always be there once you’re done with the story. While some of the story elements might have minor differences, the vast majority of the quests won’t change at all, and nothing completely disappears. That means that you don’t have to worry about missing a few quests along your journey. Just come back to them when you want – and – even if you skip the story entirely on your next character after completing the story, all of the same missions will be there for you to play through again. Take the game at your own pace, without worrying about missing questing content, it will be there.
14: Make the Legendary Items You Want
Even when you opt to play on World Tier 2 when you first enter the game, Legendary items will be rare to come by. Even if you do happen to find a few, there really is no telling whether or not the Legendary item you find will be useful to you at all. This is actually where the Codex of Power, and dungeon hunting comes in. When you complete a dungeon for the first time, you will be rewarded with a new Aspect for your Codex of Power.
Some of these Aspects will drop on Legendary gear, and sometimes you’ll find new unique Legendary gear aspects that you won’t find in the Codex of Power. Either way, in the early game, if you really want to create a build with Legendary gear, but you’re finding it hard to get those drops, you can easily craft these items prior to level 30 at the Occultist. After level 30, you’ll need additional materials, such as Baleful Fragments and Coiling Wards to imprint Codex of Power Aspects onto your gear, but hopefully by then you’ll have far more options to choose from. To find the best Aspects in the Codex of Power, just open up the Codex of Power and sort by Aspects that are available for your class. Then use DiabloFans interactive map to find out which Dungeon houses that Aspect. Planning out which Aspects you want ahead of time will allow you to imprint the abilities you want early, and feel much more powerful, without waiting for those Legendaries to drop.
15: Get the Most Information for Your Gear
If you’re a min-max type of player, and you want to know whether or not the drops you’re getting are actually better or worse than what you’ve got, then you will need some advanced information. That’s where the Advanced Compare and Advanced Information options come in. Both of these options are available to all players from the Options Menu, Gamplay Tab.
The Advanced Information option is especially important, because it shows you not only how much each stat increases or decreases, but it also shows you the stat roll limits for your level of gear. For example, it will show you that, for your level, your vulnerable damage limits are between say 20 and 27 percent. That means if the gear you’re looking at is 21%, you know that you’re on the lower end of the roll pool. This will be especially helpful when trying to find that “god roll” loot with all top end stats.
