{"id":1810978,"date":"2026-03-06T12:55:55","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T09:55:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1810978"},"modified":"2026-03-06T12:55:55","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T09:55:55","slug":"blizzard-is-changing-the-pace-of-levelling-in-diablo-4-for-the-lord-of-hatred-expansion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1810978","title":{"rendered":"Blizzard is changing the pace of levelling in Diablo 4 for the Lord of Hatred expansion"},"content":{"rendered":"<article class=\"article \" data-ads=\"true\" data-article-type=\"news\" data-article-group=\"news\" data-paywalled=\"false\" data-premium=\"false\" data-sponsored=\"false\" data-type=\"article\">\n<header class=\"article_header\" data-component=\"article-header\">\n<div class=\"breadcrumbs\">\n<nav class=\"nav_breadcrumbs\" data-component=\"nav-breadcrumbs\" aria-label=\"Breadcrumb\">\n<ul class=\"nav-links\">\n<li>\n                <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/\" data-active=\"false\"><br \/>\n                      Home<br \/>\n                <\/a>\n            <\/li>\n<li>\n                <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/news\" data-active=\"false\"><br \/>\n                      News<br \/>\n                <\/a>\n            <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/nav><\/div>\n<div class=\"headline_details\" id=\"main-content\">\n<h1 class=\"title\">Blizzard is changing the pace of levelling in Diablo 4 for the Lord of Hatred expansion<\/h1>\n<p class=\"strapline\">Hell yes?<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"headline_asset\">\n<figure class=\"headline_image_wrapper\">\n<p>        <img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"headline_image\" src=\"https:\/\/assetsio.gnwcdn.com\/diablo-4-paladin.jpg?width=570&amp;quality=85&amp;format=jpg&amp;dpr=3&amp;auto=webp\" alt=\"A close-up of a paladin character. We see a hooded face covered entirely with a metal helmet holding a large glowing sword in front of them.\" loading=\"eager\" data-uri=\"diablo-4-paladin.jpg\" data-lightbox width=\"570\" height=\"321\"><figcaption>\n          <span class=\"attribution\">Image credit: <cite>Blizzard<\/cite><\/span><br \/>\n        <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"metadata\">\n<div class=\"avatar\">\n<p>    <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Robert Purchese avatar\" src=\"https:\/\/assetsio.gnwcdn.com\/user-9946-originalxoriginal-14-03-23.jpg?width=2048&amp;height=2048&amp;fit=bounds&amp;quality=85&amp;format=jpg&amp;auto=webp\" style=\"aspect-ratio: 1\" width=\"1024\" height=\"1017\"><\/p>\n<p>  <img alt=\"Robert Purchese avatar\" data-autosize=\"crop_lossy\" data-uri=\"user-9946-originalxoriginal-14-03-23.jpg\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"aspect-ratio: 1\" width=\"1024\" height=\"1017\">\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"text\">\n<div class=\"byline\">\n                  <span class=\"article_type\" data-slug=\"news\"><br \/>\n                    News<br \/>\n                  <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"by\">by<\/span> <span class=\"author\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/authors\/robert-purchese\">Robert Purchese<\/a><\/span>                    <span class=\"job_title\"><br \/>\n                      Associate Editor<br \/>\n                    <\/span>\n            <\/div>\n<div class=\"published_at\">\nPublished on <time datetime=\"2026-03-06T12:55:55+00:00\">March 6, 2026<\/time>              <\/div>\n<div class=\"comments\">\n      <a class=\"comments__link comments-bubble\" href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/blizzard-changing-pace-of-levelling-in-diablo-4-for-lord-of-hatred-expansion?view=comments\" rel=\"nofollow\"><br \/>\n          1 comment<br \/>\n      <\/a>\n    <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"mypop-header-wrapper\">\n<p><button class=\"mypop-button button wide\" data-state=\"follow\" data-type=\"tag\" data-uuid=\"1f7364a3-5278-45be-99d4-9b4d68aa321d\" data-name=\"Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred\" data-follow-text=\"Follow Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred\" data-unfollow-text=\"Following Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred\" data-aria-follow-text=\"Follow Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred\" data-aria-unfollow-text=\"Following Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred\" data-popup=\"true\" data-force-login=\"true\" aria-label=\"Follow Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred\" title=\"Follow Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred\"><br \/>\n  Follow Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred<br \/>\n<\/button>          <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"article_body\" data-component=\"article-content\">\n<div class=\"article_body_content article-styling\">\n<p>The pace of levelling in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/games\/diablo-iv\">Diablo 4<\/a> is going to change when Blizzard releases the Lord of Hatred expansion on 28th April.<\/p>\n<p>The intention is to make the earlier character levels last longer, so you won&#8217;t have an experience whereby levels whizz by at the beginning of the game and then slow down dramatically after. But that won&#8217;t mean a longer levelling experience overall.<\/p>\n<p>Game director Colin Finer explained it to a group of press I was in at Blizzard headquarters recently.<strong> &#8220;<\/strong>We&#8217;ve actually rebalanced it a little bit,&#8221; he said. &#8220;We&#8217;ve increased the level cap [from 60 to 70 in Lord of Hatred] but the time it takes to get max-level is the same.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What the curve is going to look like is today, you get through one to 20, one to 25, really quick. It&#8217;s almost over in a second. What we&#8217;re doing is front-loading a lot of the monster cleaning you do early, so it&#8217;s slower early, but then in the later levels, it&#8217;s much less. Imagine it takes 20 hours to get the max level: we&#8217;re essentially saying the first 20 levels are going to take a little bit longer but the back half is going to be much faster.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The thought is you&#8217;re going to have a lot more skills at your disposal, you&#8217;re going to be killing way more monsters, and we want that to be snappy and more evenly paced throughout.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>A positive knock-on effect is that by having more time between levels early on, players will learn their characters and their powers more gradually. The drip-feed of new ideas and systems is deliberate, and if you level so fast as to have many ideas rush at you at once, it can be overwhelming.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"injection_placeholder\" data-position=\"1\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>I felt this for myself recently when reinstalling Diablo 4 to try the paladin class. I levelled from one to 30 in about half an hour, courtesy of a shared-world quest boss that kept respawning. It was such a blur of advancement that I was none the wiser, after experiencing it, about how the class actually worked.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/unpacking-the-diablo-4-warlock-and-skill-tree-changes\">The Lord of Hatred expansion brings a lot of new things to Diablo 4<\/a>, not least two new classes &#8211; a warlock and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/transform-into-the-butcher-in-diablo-4\">a paladin (that you can try for free next week)<\/a> &#8211; a new area, a new storyline, new systems, quests, and more. But perhaps a more exciting change comes in an overhauled and expanded skill tree alongside the expansion, and Blizzard hopes this will bring much-needed build variety to the game. It&#8217;s also a declaration, alongside loot overhauls and other reworks that have been done to the game, that Blizzard isn&#8217;t afraid to tackle core areas of the game should they need it. It means that three years in, Diablo 4 is in better shape than ever.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"poll_wrapper\" data-fixed=\"true\" data-hashid data-init=\"false\" data-poll-position=\"1\"><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"preferred-source\" data-component=\"preferred-source\">\nLove Eurogamer.net? Make us a <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/preferences\/source?q=https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\">Preferred Source on Google<\/a> and catch more of our coverage in your feeds.  <\/div>\n<\/article>\n<div class=\"article_body\" data-component=\"article-content\">\n<div class=\"article_body_content article-styling\">\n<p>The pace of levelling in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/games\/diablo-iv\">Diablo 4<\/a> is going to change when Blizzard releases the Lord of Hatred expansion on 28th April.<\/p>\n<p>The intention is to make the earlier character levels last longer, so you won&#8217;t have an experience whereby levels whizz by at the beginning of the game and then slow down dramatically after. But that won&#8217;t mean a longer levelling experience overall.<\/p>\n<p>Game director Colin Finer explained it to a group of press I was in at Blizzard headquarters recently.<strong> &#8220;<\/strong>We&#8217;ve actually rebalanced it a little bit,&#8221; he said. &#8220;We&#8217;ve increased the level cap [from 60 to 70 in Lord of Hatred] but the time it takes to get max-level is the same.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What the curve is going to look like is today, you get through one to 20, one to 25, really quick. It&#8217;s almost over in a second. What we&#8217;re doing is front-loading a lot of the monster cleaning you do early, so it&#8217;s slower early, but then in the later levels, it&#8217;s much less. Imagine it takes 20 hours to get the max level: we&#8217;re essentially saying the first 20 levels are going to take a little bit longer but the back half is going to be much faster.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The thought is you&#8217;re going to have a lot more skills at your disposal, you&#8217;re going to be killing way more monsters, and we want that to be snappy and more evenly paced throughout.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>A positive knock-on effect is that by having more time between levels early on, players will learn their characters and their powers more gradually. The drip-feed of new ideas and systems is deliberate, and if you level so fast as to have many ideas rush at you at once, it can be overwhelming.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"injection_placeholder\" data-position=\"1\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>I felt this for myself recently when reinstalling Diablo 4 to try the paladin class. I levelled from one to 30 in about half an hour, courtesy of a shared-world quest boss that kept respawning. It was such a blur of advancement that I was none the wiser, after experiencing it, about how the class actually worked.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/unpacking-the-diablo-4-warlock-and-skill-tree-changes\">The Lord of Hatred expansion brings a lot of new things to Diablo 4<\/a>, not least two new classes &#8211; a warlock and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/transform-into-the-butcher-in-diablo-4\">a paladin (that you can try for free next week)<\/a> &#8211; a new area, a new storyline, new systems, quests, and more. But perhaps a more exciting change comes in an overhauled and expanded skill tree alongside the expansion, and Blizzard hopes this will bring much-needed build variety to the game. It&#8217;s also a declaration, alongside loot overhauls and other reworks that have been done to the game, that Blizzard isn&#8217;t afraid to tackle core areas of the game should they need it. It means that three years in, Diablo 4 is in better shape than ever.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"poll_wrapper\" data-fixed=\"true\" data-hashid data-init=\"false\" data-poll-position=\"1\"><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Home News Blizzard is changing the pace of levelling in Diablo 4 for the Lord of Hatred expansion Hell yes? Image credit: Blizzard News by Robert Purchese Associate Editor Published on March 6, 2026 1 comment Follow Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred The pace of levelling in Diablo 4 is going to change when Blizzard [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,253],"class_list":["post-1810978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-eurogamer-net"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1810978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1810978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1810978\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1810978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1810978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1810978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}