5 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started ‘Diablo 4: Lord Of Hatred’

InnovationGaming5 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started ‘Diablo 4: Lord Of Hatred’ByPaul Tassi,Senior Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. News and opinion about video games, television, movies and the internet.Follow AuthorApr 29, 2026, 09:45am EDTApr 29, 2026, 09:53am EDT--:-- / --:--This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.Diablo 4: Lord of HatredBlizzardDiablo 4’s Lord of Hatred expansion is here, and it’s being generally quite well received, from its excellent story to its new classes to its skill tree additions and endgame changes. Not perfect, but the game is certainly in a good state and worth revisiting.I had a lot of time to play it before release, and now, after playing the early stages yet again (since my characters were wiped), I have some advice for those just starting out. To be clear, this is early game advice, not much for post-launch and certainly not for deep endgame.Diablo 4: Lord of HatredBlizzard1) Don’t Stress About Campaign Difficulty Settings – This is advice I didn’t really follow myself, but I probably should have. Obviously, the base idea is that if you want more of a challenge, then up the difficulty, but there are some caveats. I did it on hard, but going to expert or penitent is going to be sort of a slog, not based on your skill, but based on gear, mostly. As I went, I did up the difficulty and was at penitent by the end, but there was no real reason to.I thought I would do this for better XP gains, but once you hit the endgame, that’s pretty pointless. It doesn’t matter if you finish the campaign at level 40 or level 65, because once you get there, if you start War Plans, you will soon find yourself buried in more XP than you can carry. You’ll gain levels that would have taken you five times as long to get if you just played the campaign on that higher difficulty. So it’s not really getting you a head start at all, if that’s yo...