If you’ve been away from Diablo IV for a while, or you’re jumping in fresh with the Lord of Hatred expansion, things might feel a little different from what you remember. New systems, a new hub, new ways to farm and progress. It can be a lot to take in at once. This guide breaks everything down into digestible pieces so you can hit the ground running and spend less time figuring things out and more time actually playing.

Starting Out: Campaign and Difficulty

When creating a character, players who own the Lord of Hatred DLC will need to select the Lord of Hatred Campaign at character creation. For difficulty, Normal or Hard are both solid choices for the leveling phase, but Hard is the stronger pick. It keeps your killing speed high and gets you comfortably to levels 40 to 50 by the time you finish the story. Torment Difficulty now scales all the way up to T12, so there’s no pressure to jump into harder content too early. Ease into it as your character grows stronger.

Your main hub for operations is a place called Temis. This is where you’ll find Mercenary Bartering, Undercity portals, and the War Plan table, all in one spot. To make life easier, right-click the Temis waypoint on your map and mark it as a favourite. That way, whenever you return to town, you’ll always land here.

For fast leveling, run a loop between Helltide and Whispers in between your campaign missions. Within Helltide, head specifically for Accursed Rituals, as it’s the densest source of XP available for lower-level characters.

The Mercenary System

As you level up your Mercenaries, you’ll earn a currency called Pale Marks. Spend these at a location called The Den with a vendor named Fayira to purchase Lair Keys. There’s one free restock of these keys per day, so checking in regularly is worth the habit.

Two mercenaries stand out early on:

• Subo (The Tracker) should be recruited as soon as possible. His Sense ability highlights both resources and enemies on your mini-map, saving a lot of time during exploration.
• Rahier (The Shield Bearer) provides strong damage reduction and shields. If you’re running a glass-cannon build or finding that you’re dying often, Rahier is highly recommended.

War Plan: The Heart of End Game

War Plan is the main end-game progression system and where most of your time will eventually go. Playing in a co-op party is strongly encouraged since all members present when a node is completed will receive rewards together.

In terms of what to prioritize, here’s the order to follow:

• Lair Bosses first. They’re the best source for Unique items and provide loot multipliers through Nemesis Lair and Lair of Plenty.
• Pits next, which are critical for leveling up Glyphs through Choron’s Haste, Heart of the Stone, and Damned Thieves.
• Undercity for target farming specific items. Unlock Gutter Filth and Initiative here.
• Helltides for earning XP, especially through Meat Brothers encounters.
• Nightmare Dungeons at the bottom, mainly used to farm Primordial Dust.

Put Experience Gains on your War Plan tree first and get into the system early. Nodes require earned points to unlock, so delaying costs you efficiency. Once you’ve gathered enough resources from certain nodes, don’t feel forced to complete every single one. You can reroll your War Plan to skip nodes that no longer offer value.

One thing many players miss is the Season Rewards. Complete your Season Award milestones early because the Season track gives you 5 bonus Skill Points and 20 bonus Paragon Points, both of which are significant. When upgrading Season Blessings, also called Urns, follow this priority order:

• Urn of Ancestral Whispers
• Urn of Reclamation
• Urn of Curiosities
• Urn of Glyphs
• Urn of Masterworking

The Horadric Cube

The Horadric Cube is one of the most important systems in Lord of Hatred. It handles crafting, upgrading, and modifying your gear’s affixes all in one place. Hold onto Ancestral Magic and Ancestral Rare items since they’re valuable crafting materials.

Through the Cube, you can remove and add affixes to items. When adding affixes, you get to choose up to 4 target affixes by spending consumables. Once your affixes are set, upgrade the item to Legendary. You can also take any Common item and upgrade it straight to a Unique. If that Common item was Ancestral, the resulting Unique will also be Ancestral.

For enchanting, head to the Occultist and use the Enchant function to reroll a specific affix slot by spending materials and Gold. Crafting materials for the Cube come from:

• Completing War Plans
• Tree of Whispers rewards
• Killing Elite monsters

Something that works differently now compared to before: dungeons no longer unlock Codex of Power entries. Instead, if you have a surplus of materials, use random Rare items to gamble for the specific Codex of Power entry you’re looking for.

The Charm System

Charms are a significant part of your power progression and worth investing time into. Gambling Charms gives you a chance to roll a bonus of plus 2 or plus 3 to a specific skill level, which is a major power gain for any build. If you missed a Set Charm or aren’t happy with its stats, you can reroll it through the Horadric Cube.

You can also transmute 3 extra Charms into 1 new Charm using the Cube, but only do this with Set or Unique Charms. Transmuting 3 Rare Charms will just produce another Rare Charm, making it not worth the effort. If you end up with more Legendary Horadric Seals than you need, consider selling them for Gold since each one sells for roughly 13 million Gold.

Undercity

The Undercity is your go-to spot for target farming specific items. Before starting any run, always enable Tribute. At the Bargain screen, select whichever materials you need most to speed up crafting. Prioritize unlocking Gutter Filth and Initiative as they improve both drop quality and overall run efficiency.

Treasure Breach Farming in Nightmare Dungeons

This method is worth knowing about, though it may be adjusted or removed in a future patch, so don’t build your entire farming routine around it. If you come across a Treasure Breach during a Nightmare Dungeon on a War Plan, you can farm it repeatedly without clearing the full stage.

Here’s how it works:

• Do not clear the dungeon stage if the Dungeon Affix is Treasure Breach.
• Invite a friend who is on a different World Tier, between Tier X and XII, and a different tier than the party leader.
• Join the party, complete the Treasure Breach, and once done the invited player leaves and gets returned to the start of the Path of Coin.
• Re-invite and repeat.

That covers the core of what you need to know heading into Lord of Hatred. The systems may seem like a lot at first, but once you get a feel for the War Plan loop and what to prioritize at each stage, the rest starts to fall into place naturally.