Diablo 4 – New Difficulty Options Explained For Season 6 And Vessel Of Hatred
Diablo 4 Season 6 has arrived alongside the first major expansion, Vessel of Hatred. This new season features a ton of changes and new content, some exclusive to the DLC and some not, with one of the major changes being to the difficulty system. The new system sees the return of the Torment tiers last seen in Diablo 3, with four Torment tiers in addition to four regular difficulties. Bumping on the difficulty will net you more gold and experience, but you will need to be well-prepared before tackling these new challenges.
The path to level 60
The new max level is 60, which you will have to reach before taking on any of the Torment tiers. Prior to that, you will be limited to four options: Normal, Hard, Expert, and Penitent. Normal offers the base level of XP and Gold, with the difficulties increasing the percentages by 75%, 125%, and 175%, respectively. These have vague recommendations based on the loot you have found, with Expert for players with some legendary items and Penitent for players with multiple tempered legendary items.
If you are just picking up Diablo 4 for the first time, you should start on Normal. This isn’t really based on your own skill, but instead because you will have far fewer abilities to start. When you roll a new character, Renown rewards carry over, so returning players start out with a dozen or so skill points, which allow them to have multiple abilities out the gate, making it much easier to play on Hard. While there isn’t a great way to determine if you are ready for the subsequent options, at roughly level 30, you can move to Expert and around level 45 you can move to Penitent. Again, this has more to do with the loot you’ve gotten, but you can change difficulties at certain towns whenever you want, so you can always try out a harder difficulty and switch back if necessary.