Much like its predecessor, Blizzard‘s Diablo 4 has several difficulty tiers that scale the difficulty of the game, and the higher the difficulty level, the greater the rewards. It’s always a goal when playing Diablo to become strong enough on your characters to be able to take on the higher difficulty levels and start getting the extra experience and loot rewards that come along with it. In Diablo 4, it still works this way, although quite differently compared to in Diablo 3. Diablo 3 had tons of difficulty levels, and the game could be scaled right up from the start and then even higher again once certain level requirements were met. In comparison, Diablo 4 still abides by this system, although it has been considerably squished down, now only scaling across a total of four difficulties, also known as World Tiers — and here are the differences.
Differences Among World Tiers in Diablo 4
World Tier 1: Adventurer Difficulty
Adventurer difficulty is the default starting difficulty and the easiest in the game. The enemies have the least amount of HP, drop less loot, and don’t hit very hard. Overall, this is a pretty easy difficulty and most people will be able to breeze through content on this difficulty, which makes it very useful for level alternative characters or for playing through the main story quest line a bit quicker.
World Tier 2: Veteran Difficulty
Veteran difficulty is also a difficulty tier available right from the get-go in Diablo 4. It adds a lot more challenge to the game. All enemies become quite a lot tankier and deal more damage for a pretty minimal increase of 20% experience and 15% more gold. In terms of efficiency, the added time to kill for these benefits is really not worth it. You’re better off playing on World Tier 1 until you reach level 50.
World Tier 3: Nightmare Difficulty
Nightmare difficulty is where the endgame of Diablo 4 begins, and it’s where you can really start to build out your character properly. Enemies will become a heck of a lot tougher and much more deadly, but the rewards are completely worth it. You’ll want to unlock and enter this tier as soon as possible. You’ll not only get 100% more experience and 15% more gold, but you’ll now be able to get the good stuff — the coveted Unique items that can be completely build-defining and game-changing. You’ll also now have access to a larger pool of Legendaries to find and a higher tier of items in general called Sacred items. These have a massively higher power level and stat pool than regular items, and it’s what you’ll be after from this point on until you open up the next tier.
World Tier 4: Torment Difficulty
Torment difficulty is the current highest World Tier in Diablo 4, and here is where you’ll find the most difficult enemies in the game along with the best rewards in the game. Enemies will be tougher to take down than ever, and you’ll also have to start paying attention to your resistances as enemies will now overcome 40% of your resistances, which means you can die to elemental attacks much easier. In return you get 200% increased experience and 15% more gold.
The real best part of Torment is that this is where you unlock the rest of the Unique gear drop pool, so you’ll have more awesome Uniques to hunt for, as well as the highest tier of items in the game being able to drop now, called Ancestral items. Ancestral gear will be a whole other massive leap up in power level at level 70, much like Sacred gear was at level 50. On this tier you’ll be able to finally reach full build potential on your characters and really start to hit some crazy-big numbers.
That is everything you need to know about all of the current world tier differences in Diablo 4. There may be more added in the future, but for now we just have these four distinct tiers to be working our way through. Keep an eye out for the next major patch when seasonal content gets introduced though, as this is likely the point where we will see another difficulty tier and new gear get introduced to the game!
