If you want to level up quickly in Diablo 4, you'll want to use the first few hours in the game wisely. While it isn't as crunchy as previous Diablo games, there are several ways to grind your way through and earn a bunch of XP to level up faster. Spoiler alert: this means avoiding the majority of the main campaign for the first few hours.
If this is your first foray into Diablo 4 or you're a veteran of the series, be sure to check out PC Gamer's ultimate guide to Diablo 4 to find mounts, gems and more. Otherwise, here are the best ways to farm XP and gold starting out.
How to farm XP
There are a number of ways to get extra XP in Diablo 4, but here are the most important:
- Play on higher difficulties
- Team up with other players
- Complete dungeons, events, and sidequests
- Craft and use elixirs
- Earn Renown rewards
If you choose Veteran difficulty at the start of the game, you get a 20% XP boost from all sources, and honestly, it isn't all that much harder than Adventurer. After you finish the campaign and the Cathedral of Light Capstone Dungeon you can also change your world tier even higher to Nightmare and Torment difficulties, which give a massive XP bonus, though are significantly harder. You can do this at the World Tier Statue in Kyovoshad.
Another simple boost is to team up with other players, but that doesn't mean you necessarily have to be friends with them. If you find someone adventuring out in the world or solo, it's easy enough to go to the social section in the menu, cycle to "local" to find them, and see if they are already in a party or if you can invite them. This will give you a further 10% increase to help you level fast.
You can also use elixirs since while they grant specific bonuses to your resist types, they also give you a flat 5% XP increase boost at their basic level. The Elixir of Cold Resistance is very easy to craft, so you may as well just always have one running when you're doing dungeons and events. Weirdly enough, cycling between public events and dungeons seems like a far better method to level than completing the main quests, likely due to the larger number of enemies you face in the former options.
The Anica's Claim dungeon is very good to farm due to the fact it's a series of loops containing a large number of powerful Animus Carrier enemies and elites that give decent XP and drop lots of loot. Once the dungeon is done, the reset will only take a minute or so, but if you don't get to the final boss you can warp out, wait a little while, and then return to fight the enemies again. This is quite handy since you'll also accumulate a lot of gear to sell, stash, or salvage, and heading back to any city will let you do that. To unlock Anica's Claim you'll first have to complete the Malnok Stronghold east of Kyovoshad in the Fractured Peaks.
Remember that you can warp back to a town or city at any time by pressing T and returning through the same portal, though this disappears if you leave that settlement on foot or horseback.
How to farm gold
While you'll naturally accumulate a fortune of gold by killing enemies, there are a couple of ways you can fast track the amount you earn, namely: selling spare armour and weapons that you don't need to dismantle and by using Greed Shrines. Like other shrines, these are completely random and you might find them out in the world or in a dungeon, marked with a little pile of coins above the shrine pillar. These will give you massively increased gold drops for a limited time, so get busy killing stuff to earn big bucks.
There are also Treasure Goblins you can hunt down, but these tend to drop more gear than they do gold, plus as with the shrines, they seem to appear randomly. As a general rule, the more enemies you kill, the more gold you'll get, so good XP farming methods will get you lots of gold, too.
