I had a couple of things I needed to attend to in Fractured Peaks in Diablo IV. Perhaps the most important of them all was unlocking world tier III. I also wanted to finish off the renown I needed to pick up for four paragons. My time spent here end up being a lot longer than I was expecting.
Cathedral Of Light Capstone Dungeon
Signs things were going to take longer than I was expecting them to take first started with the Capstone dungeon. I needed to run this so I could increase the world tier to III for better loot and experience in exchange for more challenging creatures to deal with. For this, I had to switch over to being in world tier II.
I’ve been avoiding it since overall it just did not seem worthwhile on my first character for the increased difficulty and such a small amount of experience increase. There was however no longer any putting it off. So I ran up to the statue and changed the world tier.
While inside I would be facing off against a bunch of knights and what felt like cathedral forces. This place was also quite interesting just to look around at as well.
I got to what I thought was the end of the dungeon. It felt a little too easy but who am I to complain about that? Turns out that was not the end. They had tricked me. Once I downed the final enemies in one area a teleport opened up to another. This place was just getting started with me.
After a fair bit more cleaning I took out a far more challenging foe. Thankfully no portals opened to another area I had finished the dungeon. I even got two legendary drops out of the process.
With that out of the way, I could increase the world tier to III. There were quite a few things I wanted access to from Nightmare to Helltides. All that would however have to wait for the most part. I had some unfished business to deal with first.
Grinding For Renown
While it was tempting to run off and do all kinds of things. I spent a little time thinking about what would be the best thing to get out of the way. I believe that was picking up the four 4 paragons for finishing off the last tier of each region's renown.
While I could have lowered the world tier and done this much quicker. I wanted to play around in world tier III: Hell. Just to get a feel for how hard it was.
As far as my logic for wanting to get this out of the way I had a few reasons. I knew it would be quite the grind. I also wanted the massive increase in power you get from having more paragons. I also wanted any extra goodies that you can only get from here or higher tiers.
Once you hit level 50 you get four paragons per level. However, when you level up everything is expected to get slightly harder from being at a higher level. There is a way however I worked out you could become more powerful for your level and that not requiring RNG luck of loot.
I had already picked up the four paragons you can get from finding the Altars of Lilith. What was left was a further 20 paragon points from finishing off all the regions for renown. That is more than enough to pick up some massive damage boosts and stats. All without making the game harder on yourself other than the natural experience and any levels gained while doing so. That last part was going to happen regardless.
This also would be great when I decided to take a break from my main and work on some alts. They would quickly become quite powerful for their level once they could access the pargon system. On top of that, I already had all the Alarts of Lilith done.
So it only makes sense to go out and run these all first. On top of that, I’m a strong believer in getting the most out of things. While I’m out exploring if there happens to be Whispers to get for the Tree and they don’t take long to get I might as well.
It however gets better than that. Many times while out clearing for a quest which I felt were the fastest renown gainers I had left to go after. I was sometimes in areas where the Helltide was taking or even Whispers so I was getting two things done at once and double stacking.
Just running quests all on their own however would not be enough to get the remaining 600 renown I needed. I’d have to do some dungeons as well. As it turns out some of them are in areas being affected by Tree Of Whispers so I could yet again double stack. I’d get the renown for a first-time completion and Grim Favors. That however did require the dungeon to offer Grim Favors in the first place.
As far as the quests go. While I was always hoping to find quick and easy ones that required little effort for 20 renown. Some of them were quite intriguing. I don’t feel Fractured Peaks had the best side quests compared to other regions. In those other regions, some of them sucked me in story-wise. While others I could not wait for the side quest to end to get what felt like not enough of a reward.
One of the nice things about running these quests and dungeons at world tier III instead of just trying to quickly get this done as fast as possible on tier I was getting sacred drops. The first couple I found were not that great compared to what I needed.
Most times however they were at least an upgrade. A lot of the gear I picked up while getting to level 50 was not that great in terms of stats. They were however improvements over what I had. It is also interesting to see just how much of an upgrade a sacred can be over a standard legendary.
Final Thoughts
While getting four extra paragons does not feel like a lot. I know these will add up over time. At the very lead, I did not need to run every single dungeon or find every single quest to get it. It seems I even had an undiscovered area somewhere that I spent far too long hunting around on the map not finding.
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Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Diablo IV.
Originally posted on Enjar Games. Hive blog powered by ENGRAVE.