How to get started with Diablo 3 Season 13

Due to the nature of Diablo 3’s Seasons, we have talked about this before, but it’s still worth it to go over the basics for folks new to Season play. I’ve done a few Seasons now so I feel fairly comfortable talking about the basics of Season Play for folks new to it. It’s really not that hard or scary.

The nuts and bolts of Season Play

Season 13 begins Friday, February 23 at 5:00 p.m. PST in North America, 5:00 p.m. CET in Europe, and 5:00 p.m. KST in Asia. When it begins, you’ll be given the option to make a Seasonal Hero on the character creation pane of the game. That’s all you have to do to start a Seasonal Hero — click the box that says “Seasonal Hero” on that screen. You can play your Season either Hardcore — that means no deaths allowed, you die once and that character is gone — or normal, which is just like the regular Diablo 3 play experience.

Seasons differ in that once you start a Season character that character starts at level 1 with no Paragon levels, none of your purchased stash tabs and none of the gold and gear your non-Season characters have access to. It is as if you just bought and installed the game as far as those characters are concerned. You can’t send them any gear, gems, or even let them spend your main character’s gold to level their artisans. You have what you earn on that character, and that’s it.

But I want to take my main through the Season

If you’re feeling disappointed because this means that you won’t be able to play your main through the Season, and you don’t want to roll an alt of the same class — which is what I do every Season, but I’m a little odd and I have like six Barbarians now — you can, in fact, take your main through the Season, but it does mean that your main goes back to level 1.

The Rebirth system allows you to take an established character and essentially import them into the Season. They lose all Paragon levels, all gold, all gear in their stash just like any other Seasonal character, so I recommend starting another non-Season character first if you don’t have any alts to make sure all your stash and gold remains intact. I’d also recommend logging on the character you want to put through Rebirth and taking all of her or his gear off, placing it in the stash to make sure it’s not all lost.

What do I get for playing a Season Hero?

We covered this Season’s rewards in detail over on this post, but we’ll sum it up here as well.

• You earn cosmetic shoulder and helmet armor as part of the Conqueror’s set transmog rewards for fully completing all of the Season’s Conquests.
• You earn a portrait frame for your characters based on Imperius’ color scheme.
• You earn a murder bear pet. No, really. It’s named Blaine’s Bear and it is adoragoryable.
• If you haven’t already completed the Season challenges four times, you can earn one of up to four tabs for completing a series of achievements. Not easy achievements, mind you.
• You can gain a complete set of armor for the class of your choosing for finishing the Season chapters 2, 3, and 4 to receive Haedrig’s Gift. Each gift contains two pieces of a set.

Because that’s a big draw, we’ll reproduce all the Season 13 class armor sets here.

• Barbarian – Might of the Earth
• Crusader – Thorns of the Invoker
• Demon Hunter – The Shadow’s Mantle
• Monk – Monkey King’s Garb
• Necromancer – Grace of Inarius
• Witch Doctor – Raiment of the Jade Harvester
• Wizard – Firebird’s Finery

But what happens to all that Season goodness once the Season is over?

You get it all on your regular account.

Every drop of gold, every point of Paragon XP, all the loot and rewards. You get it all. Even the character you leveled as a Seasonal Hero converts to a regular non-Season character and all of their Paragon XP (not levels, because each Paragon level is worth more XP than the previous) is added to your Paragon total. I’ve actually done the last two Seasons on characters that I used the Rebirth system on and in each case they converted back with better gear and more gold and it was pretty sweet overall. I’m very much a fan of how it works.

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

This is a question I’ve answered before, and that advice all stands. The Diablo subreddit is usually worth looking at — Deadset posted a pretty complete Season 12 guide that will likely still apply to Season 13 there, for example.

Good general advice for starting on your Season is to level in a group if you possibly can to get your Massacre bonus up as high as possible — that can be a ton of XP, and it’s easier to pull off in a group. Set the game difficulty as high as you can comfortably manage, as there’s more experience, gold, and loot dropping the higher your difficulty is. Also — and this is important — make sure you gem and gear for experience if you’re trying to level as fast as you possibly can, especially if you’re lucky enough to get a helmet with a gem slot.

Okay, that’s enough out of me for a while, I think. Enjoy Season 13 and I hope you get your murder bear as soon as possible.