There are certain moments of the campaign where I slow down to enjoy it. There are also other moments that I speed-rush it though as I'm no longer that interested in certain areas. Since I know I won’t be hitting level 50 once I finish with it early on, I'm stopping for every side quest and event I can find.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about how Diablo IV is choosing to do a season compared to other games that I ended up learning the hard way. You do not get to engage with the main new season content till after you have either finished the campaign or skipped it at the start.
I found this to be a bit disappointing as I was hoping to find out more about the Season of Malignant while I was leveling up. Instead, I'm going to have to wait a couple of days as I find time to play to level up and go to Hell to finish things off before I get to explore it.
At the moment I was quite a distance away from reaching the end as I had just started. I was not even thinking about the long trek through Hell I'd need to be doing. Instead, I was off working on some random side quests not even focusing on the campaign at the time.
One of the things I love about Diablo IV is the fact that even when you don’t have a quest selected it shows up on the side panel. It will still show it on the map and most importantly anything you need to kill will be a red dot. Any time I see a red dot on the screen I'd always stop to defeat it.
I must finish off as much as I can while on the way to campaigns as I still need all the renown for current and future region progress. While I have a decent head start from my main on the standard server that transferred over. I’d still need quite a few renown gained in each region to pick up another skill point that I could collect right away. Any further renown beyond that point, and I'd have to wait till I progressed further along in the game to enjoy any rewards that unlocked.
It’s quite understandable why many would skip over the campaign if given the chance. I more than likely for next season will be doing the same on my main character to see how that ends up going. There is just far too much running around and I've started to notice that dungeons in the main quest lack creature density. They also proved some of the harder bosses were defeated at the end of the dungeon than normal ones.
By the time I entered these mines where I would next be running into the effects of Lilith, I was kind of wishing I was spending my time unlocking some needed aspects by doing other dungeons that would speed up my leveling. I also needed those dungeons finished off anyway for renown.
In some cases when I did not have followers with me. I'd start to skip fully clearing any creature around me unless it was required. I wanted higher-density areas of creatures to make my time worthwhile and that was not happening for the most part. You, however, might realize I tend to have a lot of followers with me while running the campaign and I never noticed just how much they end up slowing you down.
It was not long before I got to the boss encounter in this dungeon, and I thankfully got to teleport back out engaging in far more productive activities. One thing I always make sure to do this early in a game is to collect any crafting ingredients that I can find.
I was after the 5% experience boot from consuming a short-term elixir. For a while, I only had enough ingredients to craft a couple at a time. I also would forget far more times than I'm willing to admit to just not having any.
I even find it a bit strange that my inventory was not filled with elixirs for the consumable tab. I could swear during the standard server before the season and even during beta testing I got an insane amount of them to the point I was chucking them onto the ground to make room for other consumables. I guess not this time around.
One thing I would quickly start to love about the rouge is just how many skills ended up contributing to you running faster. While the base skill itself Dark Shroud grants damage reduction per point spent. Just two levels later I'd be unlocking Subverting Dark Shroud for that skill which grants me a 4% increased speed per active shadow from the skill. That is quite the speed boost if I'm not getting hit.
That is not the only speed boost I'd be enjoying either. Later on, I'd unlock Shadow Step which is the main movement skill I’d be using. It teleports you right behind whatever you had targeted when you used the skill. It also gives you quite a short-term 50% speed movement boost as well.
Much later on I'd discover a passive called momentum. That when I hit an enemy from behind among other things that count, I'd be getting even more of a speed boost. Needless to say, that and many other skills suddenly made it so that skipping over packs of creatures to speed through things no longer made any sense. It was quicker to kill non-elite packs and then bolt forward like a speed demon to the next pack.
This ended up being quite a fun playstyle and one I was somewhat looking to have. I have still yet to perfect it, but I have to say I'm rather enjoying it. It’s a shame, however, that not everything gets to be nice and quick.
While the mini event like the Ancient Obelisk is not that great for grinding out kills and experience. I was looking to gain a nice little pile of Murmuring Obols while I could. At this point, I don’t have any plans to spend them unless I have a reason greater than needing the gear for doing so.
Gear itself at these lower levels is replaced at such a high rate there is no point in expending resources on it. I might go and take a new weapon to the blacksmith for a once-over upgrade for a little more damage. That is however as far as I'm going spending resources. No doubt a couple of levels later that weapon would end up getting replaced anyway.
Perhaps one of the bigger time wasters during the campaign early on is the part where you have to run off and bring idols from one alatae to another looking for some kind of redemption. It slows you down and you can’t ride a horse. At the very least, along the way, I found some herbs to collect. I however despise this entire part there is very little killing.
After far too much talking and not enough killing I was back down killing things in a dungeon. This time I headed back to Black Lake and was off on missing meeting Lilith yet again. This ends up being quite the recurring theme till the end of the campaign.
At least I got to enjoy a bit of a battle with Lilith’s Lament and looted my first legendary for the season. It was just a pair of gloves that did not have anything useful on them. I, however, welcomed the nice boost in armor it gave me at such a lower level. I’d end up holding onto them for a while simply due to that reason.
Final Thoughts
I ended up hanging around Fractured Peaks for a while working on some questing and running more mini-events of Obols. I was not in that much of a rush to head over to Scosglen just yet. I was also rather busy in real life and kept running into interruptions. Since this is an online game it’s not like I can exactly pause as needed and when I'd be away for too long, I'd get boosted to character select. So, running side quests was a great option for the time I had.
Other Content
Information
Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Diablo IV.
