Diablo 4 Season 7 Leveling Guide

Jonas Author

Created - 31.01.2025 Updated - 03.02.2025

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Our Diablo 4 Season 7 leveling guide is sure to make your first few hours in the game worth it. We know how tiring it can be to grind from level 1 to the max level so we’re going to help you take the most efficient route possible. With our guide, you can max out in just a few hours.

Aside from leveling, make sure to come prepared with a ton of D4 gold because you’re going to need them to max out your build. If you don’t have the time to grind, make sure to drop by our D4 store and we’ll help you out.

Starting Diablo 4 Season 7

When you first start, you’ll want to skip the expansion campaign for a smoother and more efficient leveling process. We recommend starting on Normal difficulty at level 1, but if you feel like you're obliterating enemies immediately, you can bump it up to Hard or higher.

However, keep in mind that if enemies start taking more than a couple of seconds to kill, it’s usually a good idea to drop back down a difficulty tier. The increased difficulty might give better rewards, but if it slows down your ability to consistently kill enemies, you’ll lose efficiency, which isn’t worth it in the long run.

As soon as you spawn into the game, head to your character panel and equip a pet. This will allow you to automatically pick up currency drops on the ground, saving you time.

Next, go over and complete the "Raising Spirit" side quest. You can find this beside the World Tier-changing statue in Kovash-Shad. The quest is super simple—you just walk over and cheer for some guards. Your reward for this is a bundle of herbs, which will let you craft your first Elixir.

In general, you want to have an Elixir active at all times while leveling. It doesn’t really matter which one—basic Elixirs give you a 5% bonus experience gain, and advanced Elixirs, which become available at higher levels, increase this to 8% bonus experience gain while active.

These little buffs add up over time and will make a noticeable difference in how fast you progress.

Eventually, you’re going to want to start stocking up on D4 Legendary items too so that you have good gear once you reach the higher levels.

If mercenaries are already unlocked from skipping the campaign, you’ll want to get them sorted out as soon as possible. Subo is great early on because he helps you stockpile herbs for Elixirs, which keeps your XP bonus rolling.

However, once you’re set on herbs, Varana should be your main mercenary. Her Massacre bonus gives you extra movement speed, which is invaluable when leveling.

If you already unlocked them after finishing the expansion’s campaign, then you already have them at the start of season 7.

Level 1-15 Progression

Your next step is to start the Season Quest at the Tree of Whispers in Hozar. This quest will send you into the new regional subzone takeover event for the season, which is called Head Hunts.

Within these areas, you’ll encounter a new enemy type called the Head Rotten, along with various events scattered throughout the region. You’ll also find boosted Whispers of the Dead activities, which have been modified for the season.

As you kill enemies and complete objectives in Head Hunts, you’ll start spawning Roots in the open world. These can be interacted with to summon even more monsters, increasing the overall enemy density and making the grind even more efficient.

For all intents and purposes, this event is similar to Helltide, but with an even greater focus on Whispers of the Dead. The main rewards come from Whisper caches, which are going to be your primary source of progression for this leveling process.

For the majority of your leveling experience, Head Hunts are going to be your main focus. Here’s why:

• They are densely packed with monsters, making it one of the fastest ways to gain XP.
• The event is tied directly to the Season Journey and Season Questline, both of which are crucial for progression.
• Most importantly, these zones are shared with tons of other players by default.

Unlike dungeons and Pit runs, open-world activities like Head Hunts do not scale monster difficulty based on group size or the number of players in the area. This means it’s always more efficient to play alongside other players in these areas.

Even if you prefer playing solo, you’ll still passively benefit from other players participating in the same zone. However, if you really want to maximize efficiency, you can:

• Group up with friends and coordinate your clearing strategy.
• Use the Party Finder function in-game to look for a group of players focusing on Head Hunts.

Either way, you’ll be clearing faster and leveling quicker compared to tackling these areas completely alone.

As you go through the leveling process, you should constantly be working on increasing the Coven’s Favor reputation track. This will unlock resources needed to gain Witchcraft powers, which you’ll then weave into your build as you progress.

If you’ve prepared for Diablo 4 Season 7, you shouldn’t have any issues with grinding and choosing your class though.

Level 15-23 Progression

At level 15 and again at level 30, your class mechanics will unlock automatically as you level up. This means you no longer have to stop your efficient farming in Head Hunt just to unlock them—they will happen on their own as you reach the required level.

However, you must remember to actually set up and activate your class mechanic once it's available so you can fully benefit from it.

Here’s what unlocks automatically:

• Warrior: Expertise
• Rogue: Specialization
• Druid: Spirit Boons
• Sorcerer: Enchantment
• Spiritborn: Spirit Hall
• Necromancer: Golems

Once you've got these mechanics active, you should keep grinding Head Hunt as the primary activity for leveling, using breaks to manage your inventory, salvage gear, and optimize your setup.

Also, once you hit level 15, you’ll have some new priorities to focus on, which we’ll cover next. But before we forget, make sure that you’ve understood all of the class changes for this season too as it can impact your leveling.

Level 23-50 Progression

Unlocking Your Key Passive at Level 23

At level 23, you gain access to your Key Passive, which is an important power spike for every build in the game. However, this assumes that you have all your Renown skill points unlocked—if you don’t, you may not have enough points to take it right away.

This is a great time to start looking for Legendary Aspects to enhance your leveling build. You have two main ways to do this:

1. Guaranteed Dungeon Aspects – Some aspects are always found in specific dungeons, so if your build relies on one of these, you should go and collect them now.
2. Class-Specific Legendary Drops – If your desired legendary isn’t from a guaranteed dungeon, you’ll need to rely on RNG to find it.

Even though your class mechanic unlocks automatically, you can still manually complete the unlock quest. Doing this will reward you with a guaranteed archetype cache, which contains legendaries and tempering manuals related to your class's specializations.

For example:

• If you're a Sorcerer, completing the class mechanic quest manually might give you a Pyromancy Cache, which contains legendaries and manuals related to Pyromancy skills.

While these caches are not 100% guaranteed to have the specific aspect you need, they provide another way to farm power boosts if you're struggling to find what you need through normal drops.

Season 7’s Season Journey has been completely reworked to be easier to complete while doing efficient leveling activities. The early chapters now reward more relevant items, including more archetype caches like the ones mentioned above.

If you're looking for RNG-based legendary aspects, level 23 is a great time to start tackling the Season Journey because:

• It aligns with your power spike from unlocking your Key Passive.
• It gives you another way to hunt down aspects that you might be missing.
• It allows you to progress in Season 7’s system more actively than previous seasons.

From level 23 all the way up to level 50, Head Hunt remains the best leveling activity. It offers:

• Dense monster spawns
• Group play efficiency
• Seasonal progression rewards
• Consistent experience gain

As you accumulate more legendary aspects, you can start testing a higher difficulty tier. Around this time, you should consider moving up to Expert difficulty to see if the extra rewards are worth it.

To determine if it’s worth playing on Expert:

• Compare your clearing speed between Hard and Expert.
• If the increased difficulty slows you down too much, stick to Hard.
• If you’re clearing efficiently on Expert, the extra rewards and XP gain will speed up your leveling process.

With this strategy, you should reach Level 50 in just an hour or two (depending on your clearing speed and efficiency). From here, you’ll transition into the next phase of the season, where you start preparing for the endgame grind.

Level 50-60 Progression

At this point in your journey, level scaling from 50 to 60 becomes significantly steeper—both in terms of enemy difficulty and equipment upgrades. This stretch of leveling is crucial, and you have two primary routes to take depending on your priorities.

Option 1: Strongholds for the Fastest XP

If your only goal is to reach level 60 as quickly and easily as possible, without worrying too much about your gear progression, then your best bet is to farm Strongholds.

Why Strongholds?

• The XP reward at the end of each Stronghold is substantial.
• Stronghold XP does not scale with World Tier difficulty, meaning you can clear them on Normal tier without losing out on rewards.
• You can effectively run through them on easy mode, completing them much faster than higher-tier content.

How to Farm Strongholds Efficiently

• Set your difficulty to Normal and speedrun through multiple Strongholds.
• Focus on completing objectives quickly, rather than fully clearing out every enemy.
• Rotate through different Strongholds, as they offer some of the highest XP-per-minute gains during this level range.

While this method is the fastest for raw XP, it has one major drawback: Your gear will fall behind. Since Strongholds don't provide as many opportunities for farming high-level loot, you may find yourself undergeared by the time you reach level 60.

When you finally hit level 60, you’ll need to pause and catch up on gear, which can make the transition into endgame content (such as Nightmare Dungeons or higher-tier Headhunts) more difficult than it needs to be.

Option 2: Head Hunts for Balanced Progression

If you want to keep your gear progression in sync with your leveling, the better long-term approach is to continue farming Head Hunts from level 50 to 60.

Why Choose Head Hunts?

• While slightly slower than Strongholds in terms of XP gain, Head Hunts provide significantly better loot.
• You’ll continue farming legendary aspects, rare drops, and materials as you level.
• You’ll be better prepared for the level 60+ content since your gear will scale properly with you.

How to Optimize Head Hunt Grinding

• If you’ve gained enough legendary aspects and feel comfortable, increase the difficulty to Expert for better rewards.
• Focus on group play, as Head Hunts remain one of the best open-world activities for efficient experience gain.
• Keep an eye on Season Journey objectives—many of them will naturally progress as you farm Head Hunts.

The main trade-off with this method is that it’s slightly slower than Strongholds in pure XP efficiency. However, the difference isn’t massive, and the gear progression benefits far outweigh the small time cost.

If you just want to hit 60 as fast as possible, go with Strongholds on Normal difficulty and then gear up afterward.
If you want a smoother transition into the endgame, continue grinding Head Hunts, ensuring that your gear keeps up with enemy scaling.

Once you hit level 60, your next step is preparing for the real endgame grind, which we’ll cover in the next section. It’s here that you’ll start to see the build you want. There are a few good builds for each of the classes in the game too.

Preparation for Torment 1

By the time you reach level 60, you should absolutely be playing on Penitent difficulty if you haven’t already. This is crucial because it prepares you for the upcoming jump into Torment 1.

Before making the leap, take time to:

• Fix up your gear—ensure that everything you’re wearing is up to a decent item level.
• Run a few Nightmare Dungeons to:
  • Gain some Paragon Glyphs (which are key to boosting your Paragon board).
  • Get a slight boost in Paragon levels to make the transition smoother.

Once you’ve done this initial setup, your next goal is to start Pit Runs to quickly push up to Tier 20, which is the key threshold to unlock Torment 1. Once you reach this point, you’re officially stepping into the beginning of the proper endgame.

Torment 1-4 Progression

For those who may not have played in last season, it’s important to note that the difficulty gap between Torment tiers is much larger than what it used to be in previous expansions. Torment 1 is a massive step up, and it gets even steeper as you move toward Torment 4—which is the current highest difficulty tier.

Once you enter Torment 1, your primary goal should be to start securing any specific loot you need to make your build function optimally.

At this stage, you should:

• Target farm specific Uniques that are necessary for your build.
  • These often drop from ladder bosses, which you can farm for guaranteed loot.
• Use Murmuring Obals to focus on specific gear slots.
  • This is one of the most effective ways to fill in missing Legendary Aspects via gambling.
• Begin transitioning into your mid-game build.
  • You now have access to more resources and materials than you did while leveling, but not enough to hit your true endgame build yet.
  • Your build at this stage should be optimized for farming efficiently with minimal gear requirements.
  • Focus on speed farming rather than pushing raw damage output—you need efficiency over power at this point.

Infernal Hordes and Root Holds

As soon as you’re in Torment 1, you can start running Infernal Hordes as an endgame activity. These offer great XP, but they are gated by entry keys, so they won’t be a constant farming option.

Additionally, Root Holds should now be on your radar. These are the new mini-dungeons tied to the Head Hunt activity, and they are densely packed with monsters, making them an efficient time-to-reward ratio grind.

How to Unlock Root Holds

• The SEs (Seasonal Events) for Root Holds are obtained through Whispers of the Dead caches.
• Running Root Holds will reward you with fast and consistent XP, along with decent loot drops.

Maximizing Rewards from the Season Journey

Now is also the time to start working more heavily on the Season Journey.
This will help you:

• Farm more archetype caches for class-specific legendaries.
• Secure additional crafting and upgrade materials.
• Fill in missing gear slots with useful power boosts.

You can still farm for materials, but if you’re just aiming to get the lower-tier materials, you can just buy them instead. It’s much better to buy D4 currency for this so that you can save time.

Nightmare Dungeons and Helltide

• Nightmare Dungeons will now be one of the best sources for Paragon Glyph XP.
  • If you haven’t been farming these yet, start now.
  • The higher the tier, the more Glyph XP you gain.
• Helltide is a great way to target farm specific gear slots.
  • If you need a Unique in a particular slot, Helltide chests will help you farm more effectively.

Head Hunts: Still Valuable

Even though we’ve talked about Head Hunts a lot, they remain a key part of your farming strategy as you progress through Torment.

As you move into higher Torment difficulties, Head Hunts become even more rewarding because:

• Bosses begin to spawn, dropping materials needed for crafting Occult Gems (which are a crucial seasonal power-up).
• The main rewards scale per difficulty tier, just like Whispers of the Dead rewards do.
• Whispers become incredibly valuable in the higher Torment tiers, giving you even more incentive to run these activities.

Pushing Pit Runs to Unlock Higher Torment Tiers

At this point, Pits should become a major focus for your long-term grind.

• Pit runs will be your main source of Glyph XP.
• They are also the key to unlocking higher Torment difficulties.

Here’s the Pit Tier progression to unlock more Torment levels:

• Torment 2 unlocks at Pit Tier 35
• Torment 3 unlocks at Pit Tier 50
• Torment 4 unlocks at Pit Tier 65

If your goal is to reach Torment 4 efficiently, then focusing on climbing Pit tiers while continuing your other endgame activities will be your best strategy.

When is the Undercity Worth Farming?

The Karass Undercity is a new activity from the Vessel of Hatred expansion, and it has some moments of high value—but it depends entirely on the Tributes you find.

• If you find a Tribute that increases XP gain, it’s absolutely worth doing.
• Without an XP Tribute, it’s not generally worth farming during leveling.

In the endgame, the most valuable Tributes to run are:

• Masterworking materials Tribute – Helps in refining and upgrading your gear.
• Boss summoning materials Tribute – Helps in efficiently farming Ladder Bosses.
• If you’re feeling lucky, you can run other Tributes, but these two are the most efficient in terms of overall resource gains.

Efficient Ladder Boss Farming

Ladder Bosses play a key role in target farming Uniques and Mythic Uniques, but you need to be careful with how you spend your summoning materials.

• You want to do the bare minimum of ladder bosses to get the key Uniques needed for your build.
• You do NOT want to farm for Mythic Uniques too early.
• Higher-tier Ladder Bosses have a higher chance of dropping Mythic Uniques, but they cost the same amount of materials to summon as a Torment 1 boss.

Every boss material you use before Torment 4 is effectively reducing your chance of getting Mythic Uniques later on.

So, while you should farm for the base Uniques you need, you shouldn’t waste too many materials hunting for Mythics too early.

Grind Through Diablo 4 Season 7

The grind through level 60 is honestly just the beginning for your Diablo 4 Season 7 leveling journey. There’s still the paragon board, but that’s another guide for another time. The season is rich with new content and features. Getting to the max level is going to be helpful in exploring.