Pace yourselves because it will take over 150 hours to hit max level in Diablo 4

Diablo fans, you may be wondering how long it will take you to get to max level in Diablo 4. Maybe you’ve been waiting patiently, or impatiently, or perhaps you’re wailing out “why isn’t Diablo 4 here yet, I need it, I need it,” like my neighbors accuse me of doing. Well, Associate Producer Joseph Piepiora has that information for us, and it turns out it’ll take 150 hours or more to hit max level in Diablo 4.

The game comes out on a Tuesday, so if you were planning to take the weekend off to get to max level, take the whole week. But also, you may realistically need to take a week off, because 150 hours is just shy of the 168 hours in a standard seven-day week. You’d have to manage to pack all of your eating, sleeping, and bathroom breaks into eighteen hours over the course of that week if you wanted to hit max level in Diablo 4 within that time frame.

I know there are already players out there planning to not only do this, but to do this in less time than Joseph’s provided. And I know some of those players will succeed, likely due to doing away with those pesky and distracting necessities of human life, or minimizing them as much as is possible. And I am not your mother — at least I don’t think I am, I can’t account for everything I’ve ever done but I think I’d notice — but I do think it’s worthwhile to consider not trying to blaze your way to max level.

Seriously, it’s a week — stay hydrated and talk to real people occasionally

The main campaign is, according to a group interview Blizzard did on Diablo 4, somewhere between 35 and 45 hours. So basically, Blizzard is straight up telling you that to hit level 100, you will need to play this game for over 100 hours after you complete that. Imagine that this is that scene in The Simpsons where the FBI agent is stepping on Homer’s foot while calling him Mr. Thompson. Instead, it’s Blizzard stepping on all of our feet, sending the message that this is not a sprint; it’s a marathon, and we should pace ourselves.

There is a lot of endgame in Diablo 4. You start engaging with the endgame systems at level 50, which should be about the time you finish the main story campaign the first time. You can then do a variety of things — you can start an alt and skip the campaign and go straight to simply leveling in the open world, ride around and explore Sanctuary on your pony, try and kill a world boss, do some PVP, run dungeons — I haven’t even mentioned Strongholds yet, and there’s a lot more past that.

It’s absolutely fine if you’re the type who loves to power-level your character and finding the fastest way to max level. Just keep in mind that “150 or more hours” is literally around a week straight. Don’t spend so much time in Sanctuary that your objectively real life suffers, please. I love Diablo too, but if we all go insane or make ourselves sick, there won’t be anyone left to stop the demons.