How to Level
Leveling in Diablo 4 is usually best done in areas with high monster and elite density, on the highest difficulty you can still mostly one-hit kill monsters. To level efficiently, you want to follow these steps:
- Begin on Expert difficulty (or on Hard if Expert proves too challenging).
- With
Dance of Knives being so powerful early on you can reliably speed through everything. - Should you drop
Aspect of Star Shards immediately move to Penitent Difficulty.
- Start the Seasonal Questline to unlock the Seasonal Reputation Track.
- Complete a Dungeon with a Whisper Bounty for 5 points.
- Farm Helltide up to level 15, earning an additional 5 points toward a Whisper Bounty so you’re ready to cash it in.
- Open Helltide chests only after reaching level 15; opening them earlier won’t grant you Sigil Powder.
- Switch to Penitent difficulty and turn in your Whisper Bounty at the Tree of Whispers.
At this stage, you should have 60 Sigil Powder so you can craft a Nightmare Dungeon (NMD) Sigil at the Occultist. The Whisper Bounty provides 30, and opening Helltide Chests should yield the remaining 30. If you’re short on Sigil Powder from the Helltide Chests, you can complete an open-world Local Event to make up the difference.
- Craft your Nightmare Dungeon Sigil and complete the NMD, receiving another Sigil upon finishing it. Sigils with the Forgotten Wisdom affix are your top priority, though it’s still worthwhile to run NMDs without this affix to keep your character progressing.
- It’s important to note that the Forgotten Wisdom affix causes enemies to drop experience orbs. Because these exp orbs grant significant amounts, it’s usually better to complete Forgotten Wisdom Sigils on lower rather than higher difficulties so you can defeat enemies faster, despite the lower base experience. Therefore, only run these on higher difficulty if it does not take you much longer to clear.
- Continue farming NMDs until approximately level 55. At that point, you can wrap up your leveling by either clearing a few Strongholds outside of the Nahantu region or, if you have plenty of Forgotten Wisdom Sigils, continuing to run those.
- Consider lowering the difficulty if needed to complete Strongholds more efficiently. Most of the experience comes from Stronghold completion itself, which is unaffected by experience boosts.
- Don’t forget to start repeatedly crafting Elixirs at level 10 and Incenses at level 45 and beyond to help speed up your leveling.
How to get enough Movement Speed to not run out of Charges
Your Skill Tree provides you with enough Movement through various passives and bonuses.
- Dance of Knives itself provides you with +20% while spinning
Stutter Step is another +15% after scoring a Critical Hit
Dark Shroud gives you +5% per shroud, so +25% total
Haste grants you another +15%
Momentum grants you +30% at maximum stacks
Concealment gives you a +30% movement speed boost when you cast it.- As you can see, even without Concealment and no Movement Speed on boots, you are already at 205% Movement Speed, which is even 5% more than the cap of 200% would allow. Additional sources of Movement Speed in the guide are simply there to make up the lack of them during earlier stages of the leveling process.
FAQ
Which Elixirs and Incense should I use?
- For Elixirs you want to use Elixir of Advantage and later Elixir of Advantage II for Lucky Hit Chance and Attack Speed.
- For Incenses we use Spiral Morning for Dexterity, Song of the Mountain for Armor and Soothing Spices for All Resistances and more Armor.
- Remember that you can craft Elixirs starting from Level 10 and Incenses from Level 45.
Why are we playing Inner Sight?
Inner Sight allows you to have more Critical Strike Chance and is generally quite useful to refresh your Dance of Knives Charges if you happen to have to re-cast it often. 
Preparation is a solid choice as well. However, during leveling, the Cooldown of 
Shadow Clone is very long and we have no reliable way of spending Energy, unless we get lucky and drop a 
Qax Rune.
How far is 34 Meters to regain Dance of Knives Charges?
34 Meters is approximately one and a half screen worth of distance.
I'm level 60! Now what?
Once you reach Level 60 make sure to check out our Dance of Knives Endgame Build Guide.
Dance of Knives Attack Speed Scaling
- Attack Speed does not increase the rate at which Knives are thrown.
- Instead, Attack Speed scales the Base Damage of Dance of Knives linearly.
- If Dance of Knives Base Damage is 100% Weapon Damage, adding 50% Attack Speed increases it to 150%. This results in a relative increase of 50%.
- If Dance of Knives Base Damage is 200% Weapon Damage, adding 50% Attack Speed increases it to 300%. So, a relative increase of 50% again.
- To conclude, Attack Speed is its own separate multiplier for Dance of Knives.
Dark Shroud Damage Reduction Scaling
Dark Shroud
Dark Shroud is an insanely powerful defensive skill because of its parabolic scaling. This means that it gets stronger the more we invest in it.
- Level 1 Dark Shroud provides 40% DR at 5 stacks.
- Level 5 Dark Shroud provides 48% DR at 5 stacks. 1 - (1-48%)/(1-40%) = 13.33% effective DR increase.
- Level 15 Dark Shroud provides 68% DR at 5 stacks. 1 - (1-68%)/(1-48%) = 39.5% effective DR increase.
- Level 19 Dark Shroud provides 76% DR at 5 stacks. 1 - (1-76%)/(1-68%) = 25% effective DR increase.
Rogue
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