Diablo 3 Season 11: How to start and level your Seasonal Hero

Diablo 3 Season 11 starts in just a few hours, and it’ll be the first Season to feature the game’s newest class, the Necromancer. If you haven’t played Diablo 3 before or have never tried to level a Seasonal character, you may have many questions. Let’s try to answer some of them now and get you on your way to wreaking untold havoc on the demon-infested lands of Sanctuary.

What is a Season?

Season play in Diablo 3 is the game’s version of PVE competition. While Diablo 3 has PVP in the Brawling system, each Season has leaderboards based on player achievements. The leaderboards allow you to see how well you’re doing in comparison to players across your region, your clan, your friends list, of the same class, or even those in a party with you.

Seasons also have their own Conquests, which are special Seasonal Achievements considered to be much harder to achieve than standard Achievements. Completing Conquests will aid in raising your score on the leaderboards. However, Conquests are exclusive to the first 1,000 players in any given Season who achieve them, and those 1,000 players will earn their own special spot on their regional leaderboard.

If you want to rack up Conquests, you’ll need to start leveling as soon as Season 11 drops.

How do I create a Seasonal Hero?

It’s really basically the same as making a new character. You start a new character, and there are two boxes underneath the button to create your hero. The top one is Hardcore, which means that if you die that’s it, you can’t play that character at all anymore. Some players like that, some don’t, it’s up to you but I don’t suggest it for your very first character if you’re brand new to Diablo 3. The bottom box, when clicked (once the season starts) will allow you to create a new Seasonal Hero.

What does it mean to create a Seaonal Hero?

Seasonal Heroes start at level 1, and their shared stash is linked only to other Seasonal Heroes that you create. You cannot access the stash of any non-Seasonal characters you roll or use any loot that didn’t drop for a Seasonal Hero.

You are essentially starting over at the bottom — though, once the Season ends, everything earned during the Season will transfer over to your Non-Seasonal stash, and your hero will essentially function as any Non-Seasonal character would.

What if I want to play a character I already have?

You can, but you’ll have to use the Rebirth system to convert that character to a Seasonal Hero. Doing so will wipe all XP and reset your character at level 1, and all their equipment will be mailed to your non-Seasonal characters. In addition, you’ll have access only to the Seasonal stash, and otherwise, will be treated exactly like a Seasonal Hero.

Basically, the Rebirth system allows you to keep a particular character’s stats, as well as create a Seasonal character without taking up an additional character slot.

What are Season 11’s rewards?

We covered these before, but to sum it up: Season 11 brings with it new Conqueror gear pieces, a unique portrait, an Emerald Dragon pet, and the return of Haedrig’s Gift — which grants you one (and only one) set of Class-specific armor for your Seasonal Hero. These rewards are not dependent on your leaderboard placement, so if you want any of them, it’s not necessary to jump into Season 11 the moment it starts — just be sure to level through at some point before the Season ends.

As noted before, the armor sets (shown above) were last available during Season 7, almost a year ago. In other words, if you love the look of one of these sets in particular, make sure to grab it while it can be grabbed.

How do I level through Season Play as fast as I can?

Well, if that’s your goal, there are a lot of walkthroughs and guides. Some general advice for you:

• Gem and gear for bonus experience. Any gear that drops that has a bonus to experience gain? Use it. Rubies in your helm as soon as you can.
• Try for high massacre bonuses whenever possible. A chain of wanton slaughter will reward you with more XP, and that’ll help speed things up. Always. Be. Killing.
• Group up if you can. Groups can kill more and get that massacre bonus up — not to mention, it’s generally more fun!
• Check out this guide for new players — it’s very handy, especially once you hit level 70, as it sums up where you should be putting your efforts.

Also remember that you can do Adventure Mode immediately as long as you’ve completed Story Mode at least once. In other words, you can do Bounties as soon as you create your Seasonal character and enter Sanctuary.

So there you go. You can see that Season 11 isn’t scary or intimidating — it’s mostly just an excuse to play the game over again and get cool rewards and bragging rights while doing so. It’s as easy as starting a new character and, well, killing things! Good luck, nephalem!