Having leveled numerous characters, I have developed a certain preference for taking new characters from 1-70 (now at least). There’s really two methods, depending on if the character is an alt or for a fresh season start. Campaign leveling is different just because you only need to do it once per expansion. But I want to explain the pattern I follow either for a fresh season or an alt. Part of this has changed over time mostly when certain season quest rewards can influence how alts are handled. But I think the main methodology remains pretty consistent.
First, let me state that I generally don’t like using the Whisper Cache method for boosting an alt. When I play an alt, I want to see the progression and the Whisper Cache method bypasses the actual play experience. The importance of hand leveling an alt is that it provides the opportunity to feel skills before the end game build comes together. Quite frankly, I think if they got rid of the rushed arcade style the game would behave a lot better overall. But that’s just my opinion here.
When it comes to a fresh season, I think leveling on normal difficulty is the way to go up until around levels 40-50. Anything beyond hard at the start of a fresh season can be rough because of how loot has frequently changed. And most people probably end up heading straight into the Helltide, which can be strong depending on your class. Without Runes, Aspects, progress with the Season Journey (especially the extra skill points), Helltides might seem more challenging at this stage. If I start a character later in a season, Helltides can get rough because there won’t be many players in the wild that can help you out. If no Helltides are up, I might try a different zone to avoid wasting time and get either gear or Whispers. Also, I won’t tackle the Blood Maiden in the Helltide by myself until I have some gear and help (well it would be pretty hard at level one just because not only will you probably not have enough damage but you won’t have the summoning mats)
Fortunately, with Helltides you end up, leveling quite quickly. I tend to stick to Helltides until roughly level 15 to get my first class specialty ability. For instance, Sorcerers being able to attach a Fireball to their spells tremendously helps clear speed. Also, this is when the game starts to pick up more speed. I usually start clearing Strongholds in the north eastern regions and those with portals. There’s a few where the portals make a huge difference in providing quick access to World Bosses, Helltides, etc. Also, clearing Strongholds opens up Dungeons, which have become quite important because of the new War Plans mechanic as well as Escalating Nightmare Dungeons (since they may kick you out; although that issue might’ve been fixed in a recent patch). Early on Strongholds provide a fairly easy way to get quick loot and a level or two. In the past, they would provide Tempering recipes so that was an added incentive for starting characters.
I try to do all of the older Strongholds and one of the Kurast region ones (the one without a portal). The other two in Kurast can be a hassle so I might avoid those especially the darkness one. But part of the problem in the past is that the heavily scripted Strongholds would bug out especially if you kill a boss or manage to avoid a trigger from the script. Then you would have to reset the instance and redo the Stronghold which feels like a waste of time. That’s why I do these at lower levels because there’s less of a chance of causing an issue compared to later on when you’re doing ridiculous damage. This technique might change in the future if they ever get around to updating these areas. In the past, some Legion events would be worth doing but lately that’s not the case since the content is outdated and not very rewarding beyond some early season achievement progress. Note: if there are Legion events tied to the season journey, you’re best off trying to accomplish these early on because no one is around to help most of the time later on. I might try doing 4-5 in a row to get things done and break up that activity by throwing in some Helltides or a Dungeon. With all the Strongholds available, I can get to roughly level 50 or so, depending on how much time I spend on alternate activities.
At level 30, the Mercenary vendor opens up and you can start buying items. For fresh seasonal characters, the Mercenary vendor won’t be very useful early on because you need to max out all your mercenaries to open up the vendor’s full potential. And I think it’s a bad idea to swap Mercenaries until they’re fully leveled. For alts, if you have enough of the currency, the Mercenary vendor becomes a great way to get some Aspects and gear while you’re leveling.
With the Horadric Cube available, another way to get Aspects, especially for fresh seasonal characters, is to use Pure Primordial Dust to upgrade a rare into a legendary. There’s other requirements but the Pure Primordial Dust is the main key. This becomes critical once rares start dropping and Aspects are harder to find early on. For alts, you can do something similar in cases where you have a difficult time finding a class specific Aspect (because usually by that point, you probably would have farmed up the ones you needed on other characters). You can combine this with buying rares at the vendors in town to slightly target farm a category of an Aspect.
Since they added War Plans, I think it’s important to get the activity tree leveling started. Early on, I believe only Helltides are available. Shortly thereafter, Nightmare Dungeons are added and later Undercity runs and the Pit. The Pit becomes viable a little later maybe in the 60s zone as a way to start get a few Glyphs leveled as well as unlocking Torment I. Undercity is okay if you use a fast build, otherwise it’s a slog. You can run them without the Tributes but I feel it’s a wasted activity. Doing Nightmare Dungeons through War Plans though is the way to go for a fresh seasonal character because you’ll probably have little to no sigil crafting materials and can get a free Nightmare Dungeon done in this manner. When Inferno Hordes open up, then War Plans also can be used if you don’t have a key. But don’t expect a lot of loot at this stage. Either way, the main goal here is to start gaining experience for your activities as some early nodes can be very rewarding. Probably, starting off with War Plans in future seasons will be the way to move forward as you can get some rewards just for opening chest in Helltides.
Now, from levels 50-70, you have a few options. With a fresh seasonal character, you pretty much need to grind your way to level 70. I think around level 40-50, if you want to challenge yourself, you can test increasing the difficulty especially if you continued to keep your gear upgraded. The most important in that situation is ensuring that your weapon gets upgraded periodically. I think every ten levels you should get new weapons since the DPS can fall off hard. Tempering can help but I would save my materials and gold for a season starter.
For alts, I think this is the point where you can decide if you’d prefer to finish the character using the Whisper cache mechanism or continuing to level. Lately, I’ve used the Whisper Cache just because the last parts end up being painful and the build pretty much is set by this stage. Also, having those Whisper Caches available means you will have some starting gear potentially at level 70. In that sense, you might want to try saving a few categories to give the alt a well rounded group of items to use and upgrade.
If there’s a seasonal quest, I will split my time doing portions of it. If there’s a boss involved (or bosses), I might try the quests on lower difficulties just because it’s less annoying. Also, in cases where there’s some sort of currency or power unlock, you want to get this portion done earlier. Until the next set of seasons are announced, I don’t know what those may look like so this part could be irrelevant.
Another key thing to note is keeping your set charms around. I believe these start dropping around level 40 or so. But they’re important not only to help boost your character early on but you can convert them with the 3:1 Horadric Cube recipe once you get into Torment difficulty. You do NOT want to convert any charms earlier though because they simply transform the charms into the lower powered set versions, not the class specific ones.
Along the way, you might want to consider which build you want for the end game. In the case of Season 13, the situation was special because everything changed, there was no patch notes and no PTR. So there were no build guides available, even leveling ones. Right now, because of the skill tree revamp, I think you don’t need to put as much emphasis on getting Aspects to synergize during the leveling phase. You can piecemeal a lot of items together. Only when you get to some of the earlier Torments will you want to start focusing on finding the rights pieces for a build. Since they did announce a PTR coming up (which is for the patch 3.1), I’m guessing that most builds will remain relevant unless they either alter the systems again (which I doubt) or add more items. I don’t see them adding more skills at this stage though. Either way, I think you can find an appropriate build guide moving forward to help continue getting you through the end game.
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