Although you may be a casual Diablo 4 player who doesn’t necessarily have to complete all battles and objectives, but just wants to wander and explore freely on the world map, to be honest, even so, you must ensure that your character level is maintained at a strong enough level, otherwise you may be killed by random enemies while enjoying the scenery. And if you want to be a real warrior, you more should complete the upgrade work as soon as the new season starts!

As time goes by, you are getting closer and closer to Season 8. In order to ensure that you can start your upgrade work as soon as you enter the season, you need to sort out a Season 8 upgrade plan based on the 2.2.0 PTR and all relevant information. Fortunately, we will save you time and bring you such a guide directly!

Complete The Main Quest Of Season 8

In this season, the demon Belial, who occupies a place in the entire Diablo series story, will return to the game as the ultimate boss (he last appeared in Diablo 3). Therefore, although the PTR did not make any announcements about the new story, it is foreseeable that the new main storyline of the game will revolve around him after Season 8 is officially launched.

According to the practice of Diablo 4, when you advance the main storyline, you will also encounter some minor battles related to the storyline. They are usually not very difficult, but they will provide XP, Diablo 4 Gold and some primary items as rewards, which should not be missed.

Farming Dungeons

There are many types of dungeons in Diablo 4, but they can be divided into two categories: permanent and seasonal. Usually, the unlocking method and loot of seasonal dungeons are determined according to the content of the new season. For example, Rootholds dungeon in Season 7 will provide Sigils from Silent chests and Whispers caches as one reward.

According to the known information, Season 8 does not seem to add seasonal dungeons, but it is not ruled out that there may be new changes after the official launch. If the exclusive dungeon of Season 8 really appears at that time, or Rootholds dungeon continues in a new form, you can definitely gain a lot of XP by cultivating this part of the dungeon.

In addition, permanent dungeons include campaign dungeons, quest dungeons, nightmare dungeons, and The Pit Of Artificers, which has a lot of randomness in its built-in content. Their farming methods will not change much because of the change of seasons. You only need to follow previous experience or relevant guides to complete them.

It should be reminded that some dungeons can be farmed repeatedly by resetting. Although the process is definitely boring, it is definitely the easiest and most effective way to quickly accumulate XP and gold in the early stages of the game.

Adjust The Difficulty Level In Time

In Diablo 4, whether it is a boss battle or other tasks, there are different difficulty levels, such as Torment difficulty 1-4. The higher the difficulty, the more XP and other rewards you will get in the end. However, this approach must be based on the fact that your character is strong enough. If you blindly challenge high difficulty, first, it is likely to cause the death of the character, causing irreparable losses; second, you may win by luck, but it takes too much time. In the same length of time, you may even complete many simple battles to earn more XP. So you must ponder it.

Get Boss Powers

As the seasonal power of Season 8, the combat gain brought by boss power should provide a lot of help for your new season XP farming work. After obtaining a part of the boss power, you can choose the most suitable main power and 3 modifier powers to equip according to your class skills or build to improve your combat and XP acquisition efficiency. In fact, in the process of killing bosses to obtain boss power, this form of combat will also provide you with XP as one of the rewards, so it can be said to kill two birds with one stone.

Complete Apparition Incursions Event

This is a seasonal event in Season 8. The background story is that the ultimate boss Belial brought his minions into the game and started to do evil. What you have to do is to kill these 10 Apparition bosses and the last Belial’s lesser form.

Killing these bosses can not only get XP required for upgrading, but also the magic level boss power they carry, which will be useful for you to complete the next task. And the reward box obtained after killing Belial’s lesser form is expected to contain Obol, which can be used to upgrade equipment.

Make Full Use Of The Game’s Welfare Mechanisms

When each new season of Diablo 4 starts, the game will launch three exclusive reward systems namely battle pass, season journey, and season blessings. When you start playing Season 8, they will operate in different ways to ensure that you can get corresponding rewards for completing each part of the corresponding tasks, including XP.

Among them, the battle pass includes free, premium and accelerated. The specific rewards are different, but basically they are gradually unlocked as the game progresses; the season journey will set some corresponding tasks according to the main storyline of the current Season 8, which you can complete while using the first XP acquisition method we introduced; and season blessings is a binding gain exclusive to the characters in Diablo 4 seasonal realm, which will focus more on improving your quality of life, such as allowing you to get more XP by farming dungeons!

The above are some methods we brought to you this time to earn XP in Diablo 4 Season 8 to upgrade as soon as possible. I hope it can help you!

Usually, whether you judge by your own experience or read some Diablo 4 game guides in advance, you will know that it is better to complete some season-limited content first, because they are more fresh and may be more helpful for you to complete the season goals.

But it must be said that the fixed Diablo 4 mechanisms that have been retained since their appearance should not be ignored. Compared with seasonal content, both the challenge difficulty and the drop probability of the final Diablo 4 Gold reward will be more stable in the permanent mechanism, and your farming of different resources will be more guaranteed by them.

According to the content shown in the previous 2.2.0 PTR, it is expected that you will be able to earn gold or gear in Season 8 by equipping boss powers and exploring Apparition Incursions events, but at the same time, don’t forget to divide your energy to farm nightmare dungeons and The Pit of Artificers we are going to introduce to you this time.

What Is The Pit Of Artificers?

The Pit of Artificers, sometimes referred to as The Pit, debuted in Season 4 in April 2024 as an endgame dungeon. Unlike regular dungeons, The Pit has a lot of random changes inside it, resulting in different monsters and different dungeon layouts each time you run it.

The Pit has 150 unlockable levels, with higher levels offering more challenging and, of course, more rewarding levels. To complete a level, you must kill enough monsters and the level’s summoned boss before the 15-minute timer expires. If you’ve played Diablo 3 before, you will find The Pit works very similarly to Greater Rifts in Diablo 3.

After killing enough normal monsters to fill up the progress bar, a boss portal will spawn on you to summon the boss and start the final boss fight. It is worth noting that in addition to avoiding general attacks from bosses, you should also pay attention to attacks from minions that bosses may bring, as these attacks can sometimes be fatal.

How To Enter The Pit?

First of all, you can only unlock and enter The Pit by reaching level 60 as quickly as possible by earning enough XP in the early game. Once you meet this level requirement, go to Cerrigar in Scosglen and interact with the obelisk here, while consuming 3 Artificer’s Stones to start your first trip to The Pit - Artificer’s Stones are special items that can be obtained by completing any endgame event, such as Whispers, Helltide, or Nightmare dungeons.

It is worth noting that unlocked The Pit levels can even be shared between different characters as long as your Diablo 4 characters are in the same realm and game mode. As for how many levels you can unlock at one time, it depends on the remaining time at the end of the current level run:

• Completing the run with up to 4 minutes remaining time will unlock 1 level.
• Completing a run with 4-6 minutes remaining unlocks 2 levels.
• Completing a run with 6 minutes or more remaining unlocks 3 levels.

Possible Penalties And Rewards During The Pit Challenge

Sometimes you may be too confident in your character’s strength and challenge a level of The Pit that is beyond your ability, resulting in your character’s unfortunate death. If this really happens to you, the current timer will be increased by 30 seconds, and the second death will increase by 60 seconds. From the third time onwards, each death will increase by 90 seconds. If you enter The Pit as a group, this penalty will even affect the entire group, so please proceed with caution.

Of course, if you successfully complete the challenge, The Pit brings great rewards. In addition to the fixed gold, there may also be Legendaries, Uniques, Obols, and most importantly, Paragon glyphs. This item can be plugged into a special slot node on Paragon board to provide buffs to your Diablo 4 battles, and as long as you complete one tier of The Pit within the time limit, you will get 3 chances to upgrade Paragon glyph, and even a fourth upgrade opportunity if you can ensure that you can complete the run without dying.

The Pit In S8

Generally speaking, dungeons that are permanent in the game like The Pit will not receive any major changes due to the arrival of the new season, at least that’s what Season 8 looks like according to the PTR, so just grasp the information we provide for you to unlock and farm it smoothly. What really need to remind you is that the boss powers that will be available in Season 8 should be a great help in completing The Pit.

First, when you get the easier-to-obtain magic boss powers in the early stage, they should help you complete the low-level The Pit, and then when you get glyph upgrades through The Pit, you can further expand the role of the existing boss powers, to obtain rare or even legendary boss powers by defeating more difficult bosses!

In short, we provide you with this guide not only to help your D4S8 experience, but also to remind you not to just focus on playing seasonal content and ignore the permanent dungeons! Because old friends are always more trustworthy!

As early as the end of February this year, Diablo 4 began to reveal the news that Season 7 would be extended and Season 8 would be postponed. At that time, you might think that this was because Season 7 would bring more new events, or that Season 8 was particularly worth looking forward to, but when the time came to the beginning of April now, you will find that the reason seems to differ from what you think.

At present, it is basically certain that Season 8 will be launched on April 29, nearly half a month later than the original mid-April, and in the next less than a month, Season 7 should not release any new major events. Therefore, you will find that except for the previous March Of The Goblins, Season 7 does not provide any good gameplay outside of seasonal content.

Although according to the 2.2.0 PTR, the main seasonal mechanism of Season 8, Boss Power, performs well and is innovative in design, it does not seem so complicated that require more development time. And when you are waiting for Diablo 4 Season 8 to be released, you’ll find that some of Diablo 4’s competitors will be releasing various updates in the first half of April! Below, we will analyze the updates of these games and the performance of Diablo 4 Season 8 for you.

What Are The Highlights Of Diablo 4 Season 8?

When Season 7 was launched, the witchcraft power attracted a lot of attention - I have to say that although you may often complain about some problems of Diablo 4 with your friends, it always grabs your attention when a new season is released. Season 8 is no exception. The new boss power designed based on the villain is indeed very innovative and may even redefine the way you farm Diablo 4 Gold.

More importantly, Season 8 builds on the boss power and brings back Belial, who appeared in Diablo 3, as the ultimate boss of the season. It also adds seasonal events: Apparition Incursions and a new lair boss mechanism, as well as new unique items for different classes.

What Opponents Will Diablo 4 Face In April?

To be honest, there are only 12 months in a year, and most MMORPGs need to release several updates in these 12 months, so it is not surprising that they collide. The main opponents of Diablo 4 Season 8 are expected to be Path of Exile 2 and Last Epoch.

POE 2 Dawn Of The Hunt

Since its early access launch in December last year, the popularity of Path of Exile 2 has been rising, and the patch 0.2.0 Dawn of the Hunt, which will be launched on April 4, will bring many new content covering all aspects of the game, such as new classes, endgame content, and new items.

It can be predicted that if Dawn of the Hunt receives good feedback, Path of Exile 2 is likely to launch a formal version in a few months. As one of the old rivals of POE series, Diablo 4 is often compared with it, so it is normal to want to avoid its edge.

Last Epoch Season 2

Last Epoch is another popular MMORPG with a time travel theme and loot-based combat. Although it was only released last February and is not as mature as POE 2 or Diablo 4, it still has a unique charm and a group of loyal fans.

Last Epoch originally planned to release Season 2 on April 2, but in the end it also took into account the impact of POE 2 Dawn of the Hunt, so the release date was finally postponed to April 17. The season is called Tombs of the Erased and will not only introduce the new faction Woven and some new endgame content, but also a comprehensive overhaul of Sentinel class.

The “Crowded” April

Although it is common for updates from different games to “collide”, it is still surprising that three major ARPGs will release major updates within a few weeks. For you as a player, this is actually quite good, so your April will be full of freshness, with almost endless new content to play; but from the developer’s point of view, it is not necessarily a good thing, because this will undoubtedly divert the player’s group. After all, your energy is limited, and it is impossible to always play three ARPGs at the same time.

Faced with this situation, Diablo 4 Season 8 wants to stand out and avoid player loss as much as possible, and the pressure on it will be greater. At least according to various performances, the new content of POE 2 and Last Epoch is very attractive. If Diablo 4 Season 8 is launched as scheduled, this competition will become more intense because the time is further shortened.

Will This Competition Affect Diablo 4 Season 8?

It is definitely affected, but you must admit that Diablo 4 development team’s practice of delaying the launch of Season 8 can indeed minimize the negative effects caused by this influence. When Diablo 4 Season 8 is launched on April 29, the enthusiasm brought by both POE 2 Dawn of the Hunt and Last Epoch Season 2 should have subsided.

However, it must be said that the delay is just a delaying tactic. Diablo 4 can’t do this every time it encounters a similar situation, right? Therefore, seriously developing a new season and improving its own playability is the best solution to face this kind of competition.

Although Diablo 4 Season 8 has not been officially launched, you must be eagerly looking forward to its arrival through the 2.2.0 PTR and other related information! Fortunately, you are getting closer and closer to the release date of the season on April 29.

However, in order to gain an advantage in a short period quickly after the release of Season 8 and enable your new season character to obtain basic boss power as soon as possible, in addition to completing Season 7 battle pass or seasonal journey to obtain all Diablo 4 Gold or other rewards, you also need to understand some gameplay and strategies of Season 8 events in advance. Based on this, we will bring you an introduction to the core season event Apparition Incursions.

What Is Apparition Incursions Event?

Almost every Diablo 4 season has its own season theme, and in order to fully display this theme, sometimes related season powers and events are launched. For the eighth season, it is the boss power and Apparition Incursions event.

Among them, the boss power allows you to obtain their skills by killing 24 bosses of different levels and types provided by Season 8. Each boss can provide 1 main power and 1 modifier power, but you finally choose only one main power and three modifier powers to equip.

But it is worth noting that when you just enter a new season, your character will definitely not be strong enough to challenge those dangerous lair bosses directly. At this time, the 10 Apparition bosses from Apparition Incursions become your best choice to obtain the power of the first wave of bosses. They are:

• Allek’s Talons
• Beastmaster’s Training
• Blackmailer’s Sabotage
• Flesh Reaper’s Disruption
• Hatred’s Embrace’s Haste
• Kirma’s Sparks
• Outlaw Sharpshooter’s Eye
• Sinerat’s Flames
• Skerg’s Toxins
• Torusk’s Rage

These Apparition bosses are actually the minions of Belial, the ultimate boss of Season 8, who brought these dangerous followers into Sanctuary and started to create chaos. What you have to do is to drive them out and take away the power they provide.

How Does This Event Work?

Apparition Incursions will periodically spawn in the open world of Sanctuary. Once the event starts, large groups of enemies will appear around the area, and an event status bar with a timer will appear below the minimap. Killing these enemies will fill up the status bar, eventually prompting Apparition bosses to spawn at the designated Apparition Incursions icon location.

After you encounter the first Apparition boss and kill it, the event’s invasion icon will move to another location in the area, and a new timer status bar will appear - until you fill it up again by killing enough enemies, and the second Apparition boss will spawn. Killing the second Apparition boss will start a countdown until Belial’s secondary form is summoned. If you can kill Belial, the event will spawn a reward chest for you, which means you have completed an Apparition Incursion.

Best Battle Strategy

Since the timer is long enough and the difficulty of enemies other than the boss is low, you can easily fill up the status bar without a group, but just in case, you’ll want to equip some good Diablo 4 items before entering the event. You’ll also need to interact with Betraying Eye as part of the event, but they’re not hard to find.

The final boss of the event, Belial’s secondary form, is more difficult to defeat, but as long as you have good gear and pay attention to avoiding the obvious red void areas that appear on the ground, the V-shaped lines extending from Belial, and any poisonous ground effects during the battle, your chances of survival will be greatly improved.

Apparition Incursions Event Rewards

This should be the part you care about most! In addition to the various Apparition boss powers, you are expected to receive gold, and gear of varying rarities after completing the event. In addition, the reward chest obtained after killing Belial’s secondary form is expected to contain Obols that can be used to upgrade gear.

What Is Spectral Ash?

Obviously, one of the main purposes of participating in and completing Apparition Incursions event is to obtain the powers provided by the bosses in it, so how can you enhance them through upgrades after obtaining these powers? According to the content shown in the 2.2.0 PTR, you can upgrade the boss powers of your equipment with Spectral Ash, a special seasonal currency. And Spectral Ash can upgrade boss power from level 1 to level 20, but the amount consumed is also relatively large. For example, upgrading the power of an Apparition boss requires about 3225 Spectral Ash.

How To Get Spectral Ash?

It is expected that this special currency can only be obtained through Apparition Incursions event, and it may be concentrated through the final Belial battle. Although the first two Apparition bosses can provide boss powers for you, no matter what difficulty you kill them, Spectral Ash dropped is only a negligible 1-2.

Other ways to obtain Spectral Ash should also include killing wandering Apparitions (they appear as red skulls on the mini-map), as well as regular Diablo 4 welfare mechanisms, such as season blessings and seasonal journeys. Or completing seasonal quest lines may also reward you with some Spectral Ash. Although the PTR has not announced or explained this, it is indeed the case based on the performance of previous seasons.

The above is the information and help we can provide you with for playing Apparition Incursions event. I wish you outstanding performance in Diablo 4 Season 8!