Diablo IV Beginner Guide: What to Do in Your First 10 Hours
Start a seasonal character, pick an easy class and treat the campaign as your only job. Here is the order to play in, plus three time-wasting mistakes.
Create a seasonal character. Not an Eternal one. Seasonal characters are the only ones that get the current season’s content and rewards, and season 15 started on 15 September 2026, so this is a good moment to begin.
Once the character exists, treat the campaign as the only thing you do for the first ten hours. Wear whatever gear drops. Spend skill points wherever you like. This is not the stage for reading affix guides.
Three settings worth understanding
| Setting | What it changes | What to pick first |
|---|---|---|
| Seasonal vs Eternal | Seasonal characters get the live season and move to Eternal when it ends | Seasonal |
| Difficulty | Enemy strength and loot, changeable at any time | Default while you level |
| Hardcore | Death is permanent | Not on your first run |
There is also Solo Self Found, which blocks trading and parties so you only use what you find. Turn it on when you want that constraint, not before.
All four come from Blizzard’s season documentation. When a season ends, your character moves to the Eternal realm, so nothing is lost.
Pick the simplest class first
The base game ships with five classes: Barbarian, Sorcerer, Druid, Rogue and Necromancer.
Spiritborn comes with Vessel of Hatred. Paladin and Warlock come with Lord of Hatred. Amazon arrives in 2027.
On a first run, favour Necromancer or Sorcerer. Minions absorb damage for the first, and the second kills from range. Neither asks much of your movement. Barbarian’s Fury loop is easy to read, but melee is less forgiving. For the full list, see which of the eight classes to pick.
Then stop second-guessing. Early on, the gap between classes is far smaller than the gap between finishing the campaign and not finishing it.
The order to do things in
- Follow the campaign. Skill trees, the mount, and the endgame entrances all unlock through it. Skipping it means coming back later.
- Click every waypoint. Exploration raises region renown, and renown rewards include skill points and stats. Those are permanent gains.
- On your first legendary, only check whether it boosts your main skill’s damage. Other affixes do not matter yet.
- Replace gear as you level. Early items go stale fast, so hoarding them is wasted time.
- Start the seasonal journey after the campaign. Soul Splinters, the Horadric Post and Rebirth all expect some levels and materials behind them.
The season 15 mechanics are covered on the season 15 page.
Three things that waste the most time
- Copying an endgame build on day one. Those builds assume gear and levels you do not have, so the skill points will not even connect.
- Farming dungeons too early. Before the campaign is done, dungeon loot lags behind your levelling speed.
- Chasing maximum damage on normal difficulty. Early deaths are usually about health and resistances, not damage.
When to start reading build guides
Any one of these is a good signal: you finished the campaign, you can farm endgame content reliably, or one boss is clearly blocking you. The build order is on how to put a build together.
One account-level detail is worth knowing. Since season 15, War Plans reputation is shared between characters on the same account and partition, and progress from season 14 characters carried over to Eternal at the season change. Levelling a second character does not mean redoing that.
Sources
Related pages
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