After 7 seasons of leader board crawling in d3 I decided it was time to try something new.
I really like this game but to me the levelling feels way to slow, I finished vet mode (at lvl 39) so I could unlock elite and finish my leveling faster but now im getting through elite and still only level 50ish.
I saw elsewhere that it usually takes finishing vet, elite and ultimate to get the85 (in other discussions of it being to slow) but I don’t see the point in doing ultimate if you don’t have access to all the gear (farming is fine) and skills you want to try, vet and most of elite maybe but not the final difficulty.
I intend to play crucible a lot but the exp from it is so low and I cant push what I want because im to low level and don’t have the build I want yet.
I would be interested to see out of the steam user base how many people have actually got a lvl 85 or left before making it.
Also I wanted to try 3 builds that I have made but not sure if I will even finish levelling my first at this stage.
Any tips or help with levelling would be awesome.
otherwise this game is really well put together and i look forward to coming back when new content is made
Quick edit note: I also saw a lot of replies on this in other discussion saying levelling too fast would kill end game as you don’t have anything to work towards and some people like that more which is fair enough. But I would ague making it take longer to get to 85 (endgame) doesn’t actually add content or make the game playable for longer how ever I would say still having a difficulty level to do once you hit 85 is actually adding end game if anything and then we can get into crucible faster if we want. I totally understand what people are saying there but for me I think its N/A
Ultimate is the most fun and the most challenging, that’s the point Gear sure as hell makes it easier and imo more fun as well. Don’t need gear to have fun though
Stick to the main quest and don’t fart around doing w/e. Just blast through the main quest at light speed only killing what monsters you need to while doing bounties that you can do w/o having to go out of your way. Depending on build and how (not) focused I am I level to max in like 20-25 hours. I personally would enjoy it being a bit faster as well, but it’s not too bad. Until you start playing a lot of builds and you want to kill yourself after playing through veteran for the 15th time :furious:
I thought the leveling was a little slow at first too, but as I learned the game it got much easier and faster. Now that I’ve beaten the game a few times I can generally get to ultimate in ~15-18 hours and finish the game in under 24. It’s not the best time but I think it’s pretty good. Once you learn where the devotion shrines are and what areas you can avoid it isn’t too bad. It also really helps to have already taken a character through ultimate. By that time you should have a nice stash of components and items. Having factions at max rep is great for mandates. Here are a few tips for leveling through the game that I find helpful.
-Play normal, not veteran. You can make up all lost exp at the end of the difficulty in an hour or two.
-No melee in normal. Ranged is much easier at lower levels. The one exception might be blade arc.
-Farm BoC a few times at the end of normal and elite. You can gain multiple levels per run that only take ~20 minutes each. If you don’t have the keys the first floor is fine.
-Know which skills and components are good for leveling. Some skills that are great at higher levels are terrible at lower levels.
-Defensive gear is better than offensive gear. Gaining resists/hp and losing a little bit of damage is almost always worth it. Use offensive devotions if you need more damage.
-No matter what build you have, faction gear is great. It has hp, resists, and OA. It also has the incredibly rare physical resistance. Use it.
-Skip mobs, kill heroes.
-Quests give an incredibly large chunk of exp. Once you get the route down you can finish them extremely fast.
That’s all I have at the moment, hope it helps a little.
Given that most people reach the max level before completing Ultimate, leveling is definitely not too slow…
Your mistake is thinking you should enter Ultimate only once you are already maxed out and pretty much have all the gear. You wonder why you should do Ultimate before that and I wonder why you would still bother with it at that point
Your level at the end of Normal and Epic is relatively low though, did you skip a lot of content and quests? You definitely should not do the latter.
I hate D3s focus on ‘endgame’, to me that completely misses the point, but so does most of D3… I take GDs leveling over D3s any day.
Have to agree with Mamba, your levels for Normal and Elite were too low so you must have skipped some content. Most people finish Normal around the 50+ mark.
And if you think levelling in GD is slow, go back and give Titan Quest Immortal Throne another go. Way, way slower, but it is an older game of course.
I think it´s would be a good idea, if the game could have some movement skills. Like there was in Path of Exile, or Diablo 2. That´s would do the leveling experiencie in those large maps, in this extensive game, much more faster, and funny. I mean…, the idea is, do some skills, like brutal charge, that´s could be activate without click on a enemy. Only clicking on a place and instant moving to that place in a charge. Or some new skills on Archanist, like the teleport skill of the sorceress in d2. This would be pretty better to enjoy the leveling experience in this game, i think.
i agree with mamba, medea and CDQUINT, leveling is fast enough imo.
i would add that in Normal/Veteran, there’s a lot of areas where monsters have an higher level than yours, ensuring more XP. once you know where these areas are and when you can do them safely, you can level up really fast. last thing, if you don’t rush, you will unlock honored status with most of the factions, unlocking new quests and sometimes new areas to explore.
without any grind but doing quests and clearing most of the content, you can easily reach level 50+ at the end of Veteran, and you will probably have better gear to start Elite on top of that
I was playing Diablo 3 before this game as well, and what I found is that while in D3 the game only really starts at max level, this game is much more like a classic rpg where you are leveling all the time and only reach max level towards the end of the game. Characters are also perfectly playable at lower levels.
Just see it like that, don’t rush to max level and play through the game. I explored everything on normal on my first playthrough and finished at level 50.
The leveling speed is perfectly fine in this game. I always reach level 85 through the middle of Ultimate. Also, you can go through Ultimate with average gear, it’s not a complete gear check (you’ll still need decent gear to kill the hardest enemies). It will be challenging, but it will be fun.
I know it’s not the game we are talking about but Titan Quest leveling speed is horrendous. I’ve never reach max level with any character and i have completely the game fully with my Spellbreaker, she’s only 63 and the level cap is 75 and i did everything in the game (this includes multiple sessions of farming). Thank god this was changed in Grim Dawn.
The point of playing a game is to enjoy playing the game. If the only reason you’re playing the game is to get to the end, then you can just Alt-F4 and declare victory.
Yeah I agree that the leveling is perfectly fine as it is. Doing all the content available I usually get to 50-55 by the end of normal (veteran) and 75ish by the end of elite. Your levels at the end of both difficulties indicates you either skipped or missed a lot of content.
This game is more about leveling builds than farming end game. The end game is there, buy I do not believe it is meant to be the primary purpose of playing this game.
I think the leveling speed is good.
However, I wonder how an ironman character can survive without grinding a lot to raise his xp, there are some bosses that are impossible to pass without dying if we don’t grind much to have enough levels over them.
What bosses do you have trouble with? I strongly disagree with that statement. If you go pure speedmode trying to beat veteran in <1.5 hours or something that might be true I guess, but if you do ~all of the main quest stuff I don’t think you should have troubles
“Slow” and “fast” are abstract concepts. Different game concepts and designer visions feel differently. Different “meta”.
You said D3. It’s a game you rush through the story line in a couple of hours to hit max lvl and meet the meta to spend 95% of your play time there.
In GD the story line is all, meta included.
What’s better, what’s the best. Different strokes for different folks. Different games.
The flaw I can see is the leveling past 75 is too fast and doesn’t correspond to progression even you don’t stop to consistently farm and overlevel specific areas, but just follow the road.
For veteran players, who’ve leveled 5+ characters to 85, the game does really begin at 85, so yes they mostly rush past everything only doing main quests with rep scrolls and maximizing bounty opportunities to get exp and rep.
I’ve leveled around that many characters to level 85, but I still do every quest, explore every nook and cranny because I’m a completionist. Not everyone has to do that.
To the new player looking for a fast leveling experience, do crucible, mostly just level 1-10 crucible spam at the start, and then progress onwards until you get to a gear gap, and then spam the last crucible level you could to get the gear and then continue progressing onwards. If you want to do campaign i.e story mode, then yeah you have to grind through 3 difficulties, but you only have to do the main quests and you will be around level 77/78 by the time you kill Loghorrean on Ultimate, and Bastion of Chaos gives you insane exp.
I love the levelling speed . I’ve just started playing , my summoner reached log on Veteran at lvl 50 , I like to open all map area’s etc and did farm the hive at twin falls for a couple of levels in my 30’s just for some gear .
I am now in Elite at fort Ikon lvl 66 , so hopefully on track .
I have played the Diablo series from day 1 and just gave up on D3 a couple of weeks ago , people coming from D3 can get Power leveled in what ? around 5-10 minutes , no wonder levelling feels slow , it would feel slow in any game at that pace .
But , like I say I am enjoying the pace and the new areas/mobs/quests , it’s a breath of fresh air . Wished I had bought the game a long time ago .
I love the leveling speed. But honestly I just think the distribution is not too even. Currently from playing multiple characters normally (not speedrun or anything) I notice this is the most accurate (in my case at least) level distribution:
Level 1-50 : Normal / Veteran
Level 51-70 : Elite
Level 71-85 : Ultimate
I would actually love the exp steeps up after level 40, so it becomes like this:
Level 1-40 : Normal / Veteran
Level 41-65 : Elite
Level 66-80 : Ultimate
After beating the game at ultimate difficulty, players can now grind from 80 to 85 on their own. Now this will become a problem because the difficulty caused by player’s growth, so this is actually quite a tricky feature should this be implemented.
Gear sure as hell makes it easier and imo more fun as well. Don’t need gear to have fun though