You’re eager to get back into Diablo with the arrival of season 2, but you’re dreading the grind to level 70, then torment, then eventually torment VI. After doing some digging and experimentation, I’ve found an incredibly efficient model for starting anew as efficiently as possible.
How do I start?
If you’ve completed the whole campaign (Act V included) on your account then you should be able to jump into adventure mode right away. You’re going to want to stick to Act I bounties on hard difficulty for now because those provide the best experience/difficulty ratio (normal doesn’t give any bonus, and expert is only an additional 25% for a big difficulty spike). After you’re done with all 5 bounties, leave the game, start a new one, and do it again. Don’t worry too much about gear at this point, just get that damage up and maybe life on hit or something like that. After you hit level 70, you’ve completed the pre-early game stage of Diablo 3.
Boom, level 70
Now that the grind to level 70 is out of the way, you’re going to want to switch the difficulty down to normal and keep grinding out those Act I bounties. While you’re out there getting your rift keystones and blood shards you should be on the lookout for yellow pieces of gear with good stats. If you find a legendary then that’s cool, but generally stick to yellow gear with decent stats.
The stats you’re looking for are mainly crit chance, crit damage, resist all, sockets, main attribute, and attack speed. For instance, if you find a pair of bracers that has skill strength, resist all, and crit chance you’ve got a decent set of bracers. Eventually you want all your jewelry to have a socket and some crit stats.
When looking for crit stats, remember the golden rule of critical hits: 10% crit damage = 1% crit chance. So in an ideal crit build if you have 30% chance you’d want 300% damage. If you can bolster one of those two stats without harming the golden rule ratio then go for it, but generally you want to aim for a 10 to 1 ratio with crit.
I’ve been farming for yellows for about an hour now, what next?
You’ll want to try torment difficulty and see how that goes. If you can do bounties pretty easily on torment, then it’s time to spend those rift keys you’ve been getting from bounties. You’ll want to be doing a few hundred thousand sheet DPS before attempting torment I to make farming more efficient, but you can try it if you’re feeling cocky.
Your goal here is to get greater rift trial keys. When you clear a rift on torment you’re going to get a trial key nearly every time you do one so do as many as you want. I’d recommend getting two or three trial keys.
Ok, I have the trial keys, now what?
Time to game the system, boys and girls. This gets a little complicated, but once you get it down it couldn’t be easier. Trial keys are designed to test your abilities to see what greater rift would be appropriate for your character. What you want right now is the lowest possible level so you can get your gems more quickly. When the trial starts you’ll see a timer on the right side of your screen and mobs will spawn. Kite the mobs around until the timer is done and you’ll get a level one grift (great rift) key.
Grift is a silly word. What next?
Yes it is, but that’s ok because Diablo don’t give a shit. Now it’s time to farm for your legendary gems, and you’re going to be able to do it with minimal grift keys. Bear with me, the next few steps won’t make sense until you’re done reading. This next part is crucial to the success of your grift farm.
The crucial part
You’re going to need a timer for this next part. Set the timer for 11 minutes and start it as soon as you open your greater rift. Start running through the level for a while, completely ignoring any enemy mobs that are in your way. Once you’ve passed through a few mobs (I like to wait until I’m on the second floor of the grift) you want to kill mobs until the purple rift gauge is around 95% full (like in the image above). The timer bar should be around a third of the way through at that point. Once you get that, teleport to town and check your timer. You should have around 6-8 minutes to kill until your timer is done, so do some act I bounties to kill the time and maximize your efficiency.
Once that timer hits 0 immediately port back to town and go through the rift portal entrance, and you should see the meter looking like the one in the image above. Kill the mobs you originally left at the beginning and the rift guardian gauge should be filled. Kill the rift guardian and revel in the spoils of legendaries, gold, and gems. Talk to the NPC who appears and select the option to upgrade you grift key like in the image below and if you did everything correctly it should give you a level two key.
Why make it that complicated?
The reason you mess with the game like this is to guarantee that you’ll get your legendary gems as quickly as possible. If you go all-in during the trial or your level one grift you’ll end up with a level 10-14 key which makes it harder to get your gems quickly. In addition, you can’t get the same legendary gem twice on the same character so doing the runs this way ensures you’ll get the ones you need for your class as quickly as possible.
I got my gems, now what?
After you do your gems you pretty much just grind on torment until you get the gear you need to get to torment VI and level 30+ grifts. This guide isn’t meant to be the most fun way to play or even the absolute most efficient way but it is a very effective way to get the most out of your character as quickly as possible.
This guide was made using information from my own personal play experience, YouTuber/Stremaer Chainer’s guides and streams, and the /r/diablo community. If you have any questions about the guide you can leave a comment and I’ll answer to the best of my ability. I also recommend you check out Chainer’s twitch channel as he streams a lot of Diablo and gives solid advice. You can also add me on Battle.net @Skateboard#1845 if you want to run some T6 rifts with me. Happy loot grinding!
