Diablo 4 guide: Everything you need
Diablo 4 mount: Race across the map
Diablo 4 waypoints: How to fast travel
Diablo 4 level unlocks: New vendors
Diablo 4 World Tiers offer different levels of difficulty, with higher tiers rewarding you with more gold and increased item drop rates. In past Diablo games you could change the difficulty fairly easily, but in Diablo 4, there's a lot more to it.
Every Diablo 4 player will start with two World Tier options: World Tier 1 (Adventurer) and World Tier 2 (Veteran). The options for World Tier 3 (Nightmare) and World Tier 4 (Torment) aren't available until you've completed the campaign.
For your first playthrough of Diablo 4, I'd recommend bumping it up to World Tier 2. Compared to the lower World Tier, Veteran adds a satisfying amount of friction to your first 50 levels. Enemies will attack you a little more and boss attacks will threaten you enough that you can't stand in place the entire time. As long as you pay attention to your skills and practice evading attacks, World Tier 2 won't be significantly harder than World Tier 1 and will be a lot more engaging, too.
If you want to race to level 50 and start the endgame, choose World Tier 1 for the speed. You lose the small XP and gold bonus but easy monsters and bosses more than make up for it. It's simply the most efficient way to get through the campaign. But World Tier 1 is also a solid choice if you're completely new to action RPGs.
And remember: You can change your World Tier at any time on the character selection screen before you log in or at the statue of Inarius in Kyovashad.
Here's a breakdown of the exact differences between each of the World Tiers.
World Tier 1 (Adventurer) explained
World Tier 1 is the easiest difficulty option for Diablo 4.
Tier 1 is designed for people who want to cruise through the RPG. Enemies don't attack you all that much and the campaign bosses are much easier to kill, making the pain of playing a class without a lot of damage output or sustainability much more manageable.
World Tier 2 (Veteran) explained
World Tier 2 is basically "hard" difficulty for Diablo 4.
Enemies are a challenge, but they give you 20% increased XP and drop 15% more gold. The campaign bosses are much more difficult, too. World Tier 2 is largely a challenge because it's designed for level 1 through 50 when you don't yet have too many skills unlocked.
- 20% XP bonus
- 15% gold bonus from monsters
- Increased enemy difficulty
World Tier 3 (Nightmare) explained
World Tier 3 is designed for characters at levels 50 through 70 and is where Diablo 4's endgame properly begins.
To unlock World Tier 3, you need to have finished every act in the campaign and you need to complete the Cathedral of Light Capstone dungeon in Kyovashad.
In World Tier 3, Diablo 4's demons can now drop Sacred and Unique items, which are both more powerful than Legendary items. You also can find Nightmare Sigils to unlock Nightmare dungeons for powerful loot. Helltides start spawning around the world and feature high-level monsters to defeat for rare items. This is also where monsters start to gain resistances to certain elements, too.
- 100% XP bonus
- Non-physical resistances reduced by 20% for the player
- Increased enemy difficulty
- Champion monsters can spawn
- Sacred and Unique items can drop
- Nightmare Sigils can drop
World Tier 4 (Torment) explained
World Tier 4 is currently Diablo 4's hardest difficulty option.
To unlock Tier 4, you have to complete the Fallen Temple Capstone dungeon on World Tier 3, which means you can't skip straight to this tier.
This World Tier is designed for characters at level 70 or higher. Enemies carry forward all the previous changes and start to drop Ancestral items, as well as new Unique items.
- 200% XP bonus
- Non-physical resistances reduced by 40% for the player
- Increased enemy difficulty
- Ancestral items and new Unique items can drop
