played Diablo 2 for a very long time and just downloaded diablo 4. have gotten to level 36 paladin seasonal so far just doing quests and working my way through the story.

my question are:
what's the best method for quickly leveling a new character (incase I create another character or two after this first one, I wont necessarily want to do the full story again)?
What is the best method for getting items? I see a bunch of posts about mythic prankster, but can you immediately do them or do you need to have some pre-requisites completed before I could pay fg for a slot?

This post was edited by JonBully on Jan 14 2026 06:37am

Once you beat the campaign.. your next characters have a toggle box you can select to skip it. I think by default it’ll be “skipped” going forward.

If you’re looking for a rush on your next character.. you just need the pit 55 done for you (unlocks Torment 4) and then spend 10min or so getting bosses killed for you (the best xp this season). Very fast process

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Depends on what items you’re hunting for.. this season there is a great rotation of using your boss mats, summoning Azmodan, Legion events, World bosses, and checking your NMD (nightmare dungeon) keys for Prankster and Treasure Breeches

With the prankster.. they are generally done in T4. So have that unlocked. If you’re a bit weaker, stay behind them and let them kill. You don’t need to be super close for the kill

You’re still pretty new. Enjoy the journey, learn the game.. and you’ll be ready for the expansion dropping April 28th

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Lmk if you have any questions! I’ll try my best to answer

This post was edited by Gemfire1987 on Jan 14 2026 07:37am

Thank you. This was very helpful.

For a second character save whisper caches from first toon that give xp when opened . They also give gear, glyphs, temper recipes, for new character. I used this to get to 60 on my alt quick and got head start on glyphs, tempers, gear and aspects.

As for the items, you just gatta' farm em' like D2R. But, like D2R, there are specific lair bosses that drop specific class uniques to make your build online.

So, for example, if you are going the hammerdin route, you need the herald's morningstar, which is dropped by the lair boss Duriel.

To farm the regular non-unique GA items, the tributes of radiance can drop a good amount, hidden armory affix from nmd, and others can drop them.

Since you just got started, I would just not relegate myself to a certain build yet. Just experiment and have fun for now.

This is the answer.
Now considering you just started out, I’d suggest opening “gold” ones when you get them, and use the “white” ones for saving.
This method also generally gives you a lot, if not all of the class glyphs, tempers etc

LOL, what a sad day in your life.

This season has actually been a lot of fun.. I’m hopefully for the expansion

Well, you mean sanctification - which itself is positive thing, even though it is borrowed from other game. Still they can't keep it in the game, lol.

And what I saw - blizz capitalize on FOMO so hard, paladins just one shot everything.

Just think about it - it is no problem for them to bring in new class, which deals orders of magnitude more damage. And they do this on purpose, with every expansion.

Anyway, I think d4 is unfixable in it's current state.

well u need t4 unlocked