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The Season of the Malignant has begun in Diablo 4 and if you want to join in on the festivities, you’ll need to create a new character on the Seasonal Realm. After creating your character, you’ll be given a choice — if you’ve completed the campaign once before, you’ll be able to skip the campaign on the Seasonal Realm. No need to replay the misadventures of your bumbling group of retired wizards! It sounds like a great thing, but not everyone can decide. If you’re not sure what to do, here’s a full rundown on whether skipping the campaign is right for you. Personally, I’ll skip the campaign in a heartbeat. And we’ll explain why that’s a valid choice below.
More Diablo 4 guides:
All Guides & Walkthroughs | Class Overview | Necromancer Shadowblight Minions Build | Barbarian Unconstrained Berserk Build | Golem Summoning | Accessibility Options To Change First | Potion Upgrades & Increase Max Capacity | Unlocking Horses | Silent Chests & Whispering Keys | Secret of the Spring Quest Solution | Early Game Loot Farm
How To Skip The Campaign In Season 1
New characters on the Season 1 Server can automatically skip the campaign if you’ve beaten the campaign on the Eternal Realm. The Eternal Realm is the normal server — where all your characters exist outside the Seasonal Realm.
- Unlocking The Skip Campaign Feature: Complete the campaign with any character on the Eternal Realm. Your ‘progress’ will carry over and you’ll be given the option to skip the campaign entirely.
Skipping the campaign means you’ll be stuck in the open-world. The campaign guides you through the map and gives you tasks to complete — and gives you plenty of XP so by the end of the story you’ll be about Level 50. But, there’s a downside. The new seasonal content is only available after you complete the campaign on the Seasonal Realm.
So that begs the question — should you skip the campaign?
Should I Skip The Campaign?
Whether or not you skip the campaign is up to personal preference. To help you make an informed decision, here are the reasons why you might want to skip the campaign.
- Skipping the campaign gives you instant access to new Seasonal Content. Talk to Cormond in Kyovashad to begin his quests and learn how to extract Malignant Hearts.
- All other content can still be played if you skip the campaign. Campaign quests won’t appear, but side-quests, dungeons, cellars, world events and more are all available to heroes even on World Tier 1 or World Tier 2.
- Skipping the campaign speeds up the leveling process. Even if you skip every cutscene in the campaign, solo players can still level up by replaying dungeons. Over and over.
There are downsides to skipping the campaign, though.
- Skipping the campaign forces you to grind. The only way to quickly level up is to replay the same dungeons hundreds of times. You can still take it slow, playing through dungeons you haven’t finished or taking side-quests and Whisper quests. But the campaign is varied and seamlessly helps you level up.
- Unless you wait, other players won’t be able to grind you. The fastest way to level up new characters is to join a party with endgame players, unlock World Tier 3 / 4 immediately, then blaze through Nightmare Dungeons. Because everyone is new on the Seasonal Realm, you’ll have less access to high level players that can farm you up.
- Seriously, it is a lot of grinding. If you skip the campaign, it will take about 5~ hours of grinding dungeons to reach Level 50. Hopefully the new Seasonal Content can help alleviate the monotony.
Those are your options. Jump into Seasonal Content immediately or take it slow and avoid (slightly less) monotony as you replay the campaign. I recommend skipping the campaign and immediately hunting Malignant Hearts. You can even enter the new dungeons where Malignant enemies spawn more frequently. The big question is now, what’s the best way to level up to 50 in Season 1?
How To Level Up To 50 Efficiently | Season 1
If you skip the campaign, the most efficient way to level up is to grind dungeons on World Tier 1. You’ll want to level up by any means necessary, starting with early Fractured Peaks dungeons — and begin the Seasonal Quest so you can get the new buffs associated with Malignant Hearts.
- Start on World Tier 1 and grind dungeons.
- Play through the new Kyovashad priority quest to unlock seasonal content.
- After leveling up, grind the Blind Burrows dungeon or Champion’s Demise.
- Joining a team will help. If you’re solo, go up to World Tier 2 if you’re killing enemies in a single hit.
The point of this is to go fast — clearing enemies as fast as possible is what matters most. If you’re slowed down or even dying, drop the World Tier down to 1. Planning your build ahead of time will help — and don’t forget you can respect at any time, so giving yourself a pure PVE build specifically for leveling up is easy. Then you can swap your build out for something you prefer after reaching Level 50.
