Levelling up a completely new seasonal character in Diablo IV just got a lot faster after fans discovered what might be the best early XP dungeon grind in the game. Following Blizzard’s recent big buff to enemy density, the Domhainne Tunnels in Scosglen can take players all the way up to level 40 in just a couple hours.
Diablo IV is all about finding shortcuts, and YouTuber Raxxanterax just highlighted a big one, as recently spotted by PC Gamer. Blizzard’s recent 1.1.1 “make good” patch did a lot to try and win back support from the community, but one of the big things was increasing monster density in nightmare dungeons by 50 per cent. However, it also appears to have changed even some non-nightmare dungeons, increasing the number of monsters and how quickly you can level by killing them as a result. “Before the patch my record to level 40 was maybe like three and a half hours,” Raxxanterax said. “Now my record to 40 is two hours and seven minutes.”
The strategy is simple. You create a new character, choose World Tier 1, head over to the Domhainne Tunnels as quickly as possible, follow one of the many builds for quick levelling available online, and begin playing it over and over again. Instead of freeing the prisoners as the dungeon asks you to, you simply circle around the map killing everything and then leave the dungeon and reset it before plunging back into the XP grind death march. Bonus points if you have chain lightning or something else that quickly clears through enemy mobs. It may sound boring, but going from level one to 40 in just two hours is no joke. It’s for this reason that Raxxanterax jokingly refers to the dungeon as Dopamine Tunnels.
This is a great trick for players who have already cleared the campaign and are starting fresh seasonal characters or experimenting with alternate classes, but it doesn’t just work for the early part of the game. According to Raxxanterax’s testing, which is compiled in a comprehensive Excel spreadsheet guide, the Domhainne Tunnels are also the fastest way to get from level 40 all the way to up level 55, at which point it’s more efficient to switch back over to end game nightmare dungeons. “Level 40 in two hours is pretty fast, that’s blazing,” Raxxanterax said.
We’ll see how long it stays that way. The dungeon is so generous and so far outside the apparent incentive structure of the game that it seems likely Blizzard will patch it at some point. Diablo IV’s next update goes live on August 15, but so far the existing patch notes preview didn’t mention anything about dungeon enemy density in general or Domhainne Tunnels in particular. Plenty of time to get your newest Season of the Malignant character to World Tier 3 at record speed.
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