Diablo 4

Diablo 4 is a game you play more than once, by design. Its seasons expect a fresh character every few months, and its alt-sharing rules decide what that fresh character starts with. Altars of Lilith, Renown rewards, every Codex aspect, every currency and crafting material, mounts, transmogs and the stash all belong to the account. The campaign, the map, the strongholds and every Paragon point belong to one character and have to be earned again. That split is the most useful way to read our 588 Diablo 4 pages, so this hub follows it: first the work that pays forever, then the work that pays once, then the pages for when the game will not start at all.

The work that pays forever

Altars, waypoints and strongholds

The Altars of Lilith are the purest example: over a hundred statues, five kinds of permanent stat, found once per account. Our locations guide ranks the map's icons by exactly this test, what one of them pays, and puts the altar first for that reason, ahead of waypoints, which are worth Renown once but have to be rediscovered by every alt, and strongholds, whose level requirements and bosses it tables region by region. The strongholds reset per character, but the towns and dungeons they unlock stay in the world.

Renown and the regions that produce it

Renown is region-scoped and its rewards, extra skill points and potion charges, are claimed once for the account. The regions guide is organised around what each of the five zones has that no other does, so you can see where the Renown in a region actually comes from before you commit an evening to it. The quests guide handles the side content that feeds it from the other direction, sorting our quest walkthroughs by the thing you have to notice before the quest will even start, since a quest you never trigger pays no Renown at all.

The Codex, and what is worth clearing first

Every dungeon's first clear drops an aspect into the Codex of Power, and the Codex is account-wide. The dungeons guide sorts our 105 walkthroughs by what the door asks you to carry, since prisoners, Animus and statues decide how long a clear takes; our dungeon map is the master list of all 115 with the aspect each pays. The items guide then sorts everything you can own by what a second copy costs, which puts Codex aspects at the free end and uniques at the never end, with the materials worth hoarding and, for Season 1 characters, the Malignant Hearts to chase in between. If a legendary ever fell where you could not see it, the missed drops page explains how the stash catches it.

The work that pays once

Paragon, and the class it belongs to

Paragon points are the deliberate exception to sharing: the alt-sharing page says outright there would be no reason to grind alts each season if they carried over. They are also class-bound, so the classes guide is written around what each of the five classes owes before its endgame opens, the priority quest that unlocks its mechanic, and lists the leveling, Paragon and skill pages we have for each. The builds guide ranks our 40 builds by how much of them the Codex can hand you on day one, from the five that need no drop at all to the six that lean on four or more drop-only aspects and uniques. For a ranking by current strength rather than cost, the Season 1 tier list grades every class build from S to D, and the PvP tier list does the same for the Fields of Hatred.

Systems that unlock by level

Most of what a new character has to redo is gated by level, not by choice. The mechanics guide lays our 77 system pages along that ladder, from the mount quest and the Alchemist at level 10 through the Jeweler, Paragon at 50, the capstone that opens World Tier 3, and the second capstone at 70 for Tier 4. It is the page to read when a system appears and the game has not said why.

Bosses, by how often you get to fight them

Some bosses are on a timer, some are behind a dungeon door you can reopen, and some appear once in the campaign and never again on that character. The bosses guide sorts all 62 of our boss pages by that availability, which is the practical question for farming. The world bosses that sit at the top of it have a spawn timer of their own, and when it seems to have failed, the world boss not spawning page covers the region and clock settings that usually explain it. Once World Tier 3 is open, the Nightmare dungeon tier list is where the repeatable fights turn into XP and glyph levels.

The people behind the counters

Every upgrade, imprint, socket and elixir goes through a vendor, and the NPCs guide sorts those services by what each one destroys to do its job, from the Blacksmith's salvage to the Occultist's extraction. It is short, because the game has few named service NPCs, but it is the page that explains why a stash full of legendaries is really a stash full of Coiling Wards.

When the game will not let you in

Diablo 4 is online-only, so a share of our pages are about the launcher rather than Sanctuary. Most of the error codes we cover are server-side, and the page for each says which fixes are worth trying before you simply wait.

For the machine itself, the keybinds page lists the General, Gameplay, Mount, Chat and System controls and how to rebind them; the Steam Deck page goes through desktop mode, Lutris and the Battle.net client; and the Mac page is honest that there is no native version and weighs cloud streaming against Boot Camp. For the record of how the game was first described, our pre-announcement report from the leak era promised an open-world isometric game with PvP and a darker tone, most of which turned out to be true.

Where to start

If this is a first character, spend it on the shared column: altars and Renown from the locations and regions guides, and the all-class Codex aspects the items guide puts at the top of its tables. If this is an alt, skip the campaign, take the class's priority quest from the classes guide, and read the builds guide with the Codex you already own in mind. Either way the mechanics guide tells you what the next level unlocks, and the bosses guide tells you which fights will still be there tomorrow.