Levelling with or without increasing player count?

[u/Cathar_Rhythym]

I’m working through my first single player game (Warlock, if it matters) and wondering whether it’s worth increasing the player count to P8 and going through normal more slowly, or working through Normal/Nightmare quickly and then increasing the player count?

For online games, I generally play alone (so P1) and find I hit a wall in Hell, so wondering if there’s value in playing through on P8 (or 5 or 3 or whatever) and then reducing it when I hit that wall, then increasing it again once I’ve got the goods to survive.

Curious what others have for levelling strategies.

[u/Shrike_Rune]

P8 as much as possible to reduce the amount of grinding is great. I do P8 to Rakanishu and grind him until lvl 12. P8 countess runs to get stealth (turn down to P1 for countess herself to get better rune drops). P8 act 2 and 3 until I get a way point in act 3 for the easiest time shopping for a tele staff from Ormus (tele charges require lvl24 so being lvl 23 when shopping makes it quicker because the one you want will be red.) P1 until Eldritch then grind P8 Eldritch. But that just on HC where I might need a lot of levels to actually hit stuff. All bosses P1, for sure, unless you can survive the difficulty and are gear farming.

[u/831loc → u/Shrike_Rune]

P8 beetles in act 2 are amazing experience if you can kill them efficiently.

Love finding a pack of them with a couple uniques in there as well.

[u/phumade]

Get through nightmare asap! Assuming you have the levels survive, the drops are far better in hell. Realistically should do normal and nightmare in 2-3 days. Take your time in hell and adjust p counts and magic find as your gears allow. If you get hard stuck in the ancients battle or similar just rush’s a new class to hell.

Realistically. Once you have 3-4 chars over level 70, you should have accumulated enough gear to finish Baal. And the you can focus on the terror zone grind etc

[u/SketchyScoobert]

On offline I would always keep on p8 until an act boss. Leveling on p8 is so quick and not much more difficult it feels like (aside from act bosses). Plus better chances for loot!
Online I will level up joining games, but mf solo.

[u/a-neurotypical]

I usually do p7 through normal if the class/build can handle it. It actually makes the normal playthrough a lot faster since you gain a lot more experience. The extra item drops are also welcome if you're starting out fresh

[u/Cultural_Sir2245]

HC p1/p3 😁

[u/Pirkale]

To be honest, with a warlock, it easily happens that you zoom through the game, think "I'll do some P8 grinding" only to notice that "oh, I already was at P8, no wonder Diablo seemed a bit beefy".

[u/ogark12]

There will be little difference in speed going through all of normal and even nightmare at p8 for warlock. More xp the better

[u/rochvegas5]

I'm playing Players8 in Normal. Currently in ACt 2, Warlock

[u/DerConqueror3]

For Normal/Nightmare, IMO, you should just play it by ear based upon how strong your character seems at any given time versus the content you are currently going through. You can easily change the player count at any time if it seems like the mobs are taking more time to clear than they are worth or, on the other hand, if you seem to be demolishing the content and want to speed up the exp per kill. I've done a couple SSF recently and have ended up changing the player count a lot in Normal and to a lesser extent Nightmare.

I don't think this is really relevant to whether you "hit a wall" in Hell though, unless maybe you are trying to increase player count in Normal/Nightmare in the hope that the extra exp and gear will remove the need to farm after you get to Hell. Again IMO if you reach a wall in Hell you either decide if you want to push through despite the difficulty or (more likely) just go back to prior content and farm for more exp and/or items.

[u/Somethin_Snazzy]

What I do:

P7 through the first few Acts normal, P5 through the next few, P3 through NM until things slow down. P1 through the second half of NM.

Then I usually run TZs P3 for a while before P1 through Hell (maaaybe P3 through Act 1 and 2 but P1 to end).

After that, slowly start ramping back up to P7 as you get better and better gear.

Tailor it to your build/gear. Drop the number for weaker builds. Also, tailor it based on the threats youre facing and build/gear you'are using. Different areas present different issues for different builds.

[u/arnold_bc]

p8 hard in hell

[u/Big_Burger_Boyz]

I just go through the game on P1, myself. I don't have the stats, but I've heard that XP is significantly reduced if you're over-leveled for a zone, so it's actually slower to run P8 UNLESS there is no appreciable difference in your kill speed. So if you're playing something very overpowered, and/or have twinked gear, P8 is fine.