There’s a lot of discourse online about the high cost of maxing out a character in Blizzard and NetEase’s latest mobile action RPG, Diablo Immortal. However, if you’re willing to put the time in, you can build a strong character without paying a penny.
Levelling Up
One of your first priorities playing Diablo Immortal is to level up to the cap of 60. After the level cap, you will gain Paragon levels. Paragon levels are capped too, but the cap increases by two every day.
To level up quickly, you should play the main story. Every so often, you’ll need to hit a specific level before continuing. At that point, I’d recommend using Challenge or Elder Rifts to farm XP.
Enter the rifts without using any crests and then only kill the blue or gold enemies. These enemies drop bonus XP and rift progress orbs. They also have a higher chance of dropping high-quality items. Each rift completion is pretty quick and can be done endlessly.
Getting Good Loot
As a non-spender, you can still get higher-quality items pretty regularly. In fact, there’s a free version of the battle pass in Diablo Immortal that will dish out legendary items at levels 10 and 20 and rare items multiple times as you level.
In Westmarch, you’ll find the Rarities and Antiquities Trader, and you can spend gold with them to roll for random items which have a low chance of being legendary. This is a great way to spend gold at high levels, where you might amass a hoard without much to spend it on.
Another reward you’ll get from the Battle Pass is a currency called hilts, which you can turn in at the Hilt Trader in Westmarch. For 1,600 hilts, they will sell you a legendary item once per week, and if you’re part of the Immortal faction (you can join factions after completing the Bilefen part of the main story), then you can buy a second, also for 1,600 hilts. You can also join the Shadows faction and do Shadow Contracts for a chance to get high-quality items and also farm XP.
Entering a rift with crests will give you a chance to get legendary rewards for completing them, and each special enemy you defeat in the rift has a chance of dropping good loot.
Make sure to check your codex, it will tell you which dungeons are offering bonus item chances, and you can farm those over and over while they are offering the bonus.
Finally, turning in 10 monster essence to your Bestiary can reward you with good loot. Doing bounties will help you collect monster essence. You can do 8 bounties a day and accept 4 at a time.
Legendary Gems
Legendary gems are the most challenging type of item in the game to get without paying for them, but there are a few ways that you can get them. If you run a rift with a legendary crest, you are guaranteed a legendary gem will drop. You can buy one legendary crest per month from the Hilts Trader for 1,600 hilts.
You can also use rare crests. The more rare crests you add to the rift when you do it, the higher your chances will be, and if you don’t get a legendary gem to drop, you will get an item called Fading Embers. These can be traded in with the Fading Embers Trader in Westmarch for runes, and you can use these at the Jeweller to craft legendary gems.
The Jeweller offers various low star-rating gems, but they also offer a randomized gem for 22 of the FA-type runes. These gems can be 1 to 5 star rated, 5 being the best. In the short term, you probably should fill your sockets with whatever legendary gems you can get. But once you reach the level cap, you will want to use the random option for the slight chance of getting 5-star gems. Even if you get rubbish gems, you can sell them for platinum to other players or keep them to infuse into higher rank gems.
Keep On Grinding
With Diablo Immortal, you need to decide what you want to pay to progress, money or time. I find a lot of the fun in these games is pushing the limits of what I can get for free, but you might look at this list and log straight in to buy the battle pass. Whatever you decide to do, have fun and keep an eye on FTW for more Diablo Immortal content and guides!
Written by Sam Harrison on behalf of GLHF.