Diablo 4 Vessel of Hatred drops player level cap to 60, with big changes to leveling and difficulty tiers

In addition to exploring Nehantu with the new Spiritborn class, Diablo 4:Vessel of Hatred has many changes coming for the player experience, including dropping the maximum level to 60 — that’s 50 levels for the base game, and 10 more levels in the expansion. Goodbye, slog to level 100! But this won’t equate to a drop in power, as the rest of the game’s systems have been rethought to fit around the new level cap.

Like Diablo 3, players will earn skill points until they hit the level 60 cap — which will result in 10 more skill points to earn in Vessel of Hatred. Once you’re level 60, you start leveling Paragon, earning more Paragon points as you progress. The Paragon cap is also increasing from 200 to 300 in VoH. (Note that this is specifically Paragon points earned from experience; your extra Renown Paragon points will remain as they are.) Paragon points unlock in your account based on the realm you’re playing in. For example, earning Paragon on an Eternal realm character unlocks it for all characters in that realm. Similarly, Seasonal characters will start will start with no points, but once unlocked by a character for the current season will be available to all your seasonal characters. It’s very similar to the Diablo 3 system.

When Diablo 4 launched, the leveling pace was relatively slow and deliberate: the developers intended it to take over 150 hours to reach max level on a fresh character. The team appears to have learned some hard lessons after the title’s first year, and with Vessel of Hatred pacing has been reimagined to offer more difficulty tiers. These experiences will be opt-in, based on your desired difficulty rather than being progression-locked like the original Diablo 4 World Tiers.

Starting with the expansion, the game will have will be two major difficulty sections:

• Standard, with Normal, Hard, Expert and Penitent difficulties. Normal will offer a slower leveling pace for new players who want to experience the story and learn the game, while Penitent is the equivalent of the current World Tier 2 plus a whopping 45 monster levels. Normal and Hard difficulties are available immediately, Expert will be unlocked by completing the game’s prologue, and Penitent will be unlocked at level 50.
• Torment  is where the big adventures will start, with a significant increase in difficulty (and rewards). You’ll be able to play in Torment tiers 1 through 4 starting at level 60, with the difficulty level based on on the level of Pit you’ve cleared. Torment 1 unlocks at Pit level 20, Torment 2 unlocks at Pit level 35, Torment 3 unlocks at Pit level 50, and Torment 4 unlocks at Pit level 65.

Rewards will scale with difficulty as well, with each level offering more gold, experience, and efficiency in your progression. Frankly, these improvements are fantastic because it means the D4 team learned some big lessons and has continued to listen to community feedback. Would it have been even better to have these features at launch? Probably, but let’s embrace “better late than never.” So be prepared to level characters to 60 in Vessel of Hatred, with additional difficulty tiers for more challenge in endgame content.

And even though these changes are coming to the expansion, they’ll be part of the base game for everyone to enjoy. For players on the Eternal realms who prefer long-term progression, power at level 50 will be adjusted to match the new system. If your character is currently level 100, it will be converted to level 50 with 200 Paragon points. If your character is level 50 (or below), nothing will change.

This is only one of many big game changes coming to the game with Vessel of Hatred: read the full patch notes  (all 17,000 words of them) if you want all the details.

All of this is available to test in the Diablo 4 patch 2.0 PTR, which runs from September 4 – 11 for PC Battle.net players. The PTR will focus on testing low-level progression with new characters on Wednesday through Friday. Around midday on Friday, late-game content and Runewords will be unlocked for testing. The PTR will also have a vendor who will allow you to beef up your character for end-game testing with leveling, upgrades, gear, legendary powers, and glyphs.

These are some great changes for the game, and it will be interesting to see how they play out on the live game, starting with the PTR next week.