I have a lvl 100 character and I’ll be starting a new character for the expansion (no twink gear). With the addition of Difficulty Merits, I can now choose to start on:
a) Normal/Veteran b) Elite c) Ultimate
I don’t want the game to be ridiculously hard, but I also don’t really want to play through the game 2 times to unlock Ultimate for a third playthrough. Starting on Elite or Ultimate seems like a good shortcut but I’m not sure if it will be fun or just a different kind of tedious. Any suggestions?
I went straight into ultimate when I got the expansion and it’s actually quite hard and bosses take a long time to kill. But then I just consider that it’d take even longer if I have to kill bosses 2/3 times instead of 1 and it’s not that bad.
But definitely, if you don’t have gear at certain level points, you’ll have to do a lot of shopping, especially the first 40 levels because a single quest will give you multiple levels. Enemies scale, your gear doesn’t, so each quest you turn in actually ramps up the difficulty by a lot.
I recommend you skip anything that doesn’t have to die in terms of heroes, they’re really painful.
Speaking out of Ultimate experience with a level 1 character using only self-found gear (And bought stuff from currency gained by mains)
Don’t underestimate how much time you’ll save by having all of the rifts open in Normal and Elite. I went to Ultimate first, and shot up to level 30 something just by doing the first few quests, but it was too much of a grind.
You can fly through Normal and Elite wearing Lokarr’s with a Potion of Clarity and all of the rifts open.
I think if you have some materials to make the run though enjoyable, starting on Elite feels pretty good. After a run through, I would do a normal run through for some easy shrines as well.