Highlights

  • Diablo 4 Season 3 introduces Gauntlet and Leaderboards for players to compete, but cheaters are ruining the experience with exploits.
  • Despite a strong initial release, Diablo 4's subsequent seasons struggle to maintain player interest, leading to the Gauntlet's disappointing debut.
  • Exploits like bringing buffs from overworld Shrines and bypassing the Gauntlet timer are inflating scores and frustrating players.

Although it arrived a bit later than expected, Diablo 4 Season 3 has finally introduced the Gauntlet along with a leaderboard system for players to compete against one another for the top spot. In a rough blow for the game when Diablo 4 really needed a win, the Gauntlet's launch has been fraught with controversy as cheaters have found ways to break the system and earn impossible scores, making claiming the top spot on the leaderboard nearly impossible for the average player. What was supposed to be the big draw of Season 3 might end up as another reason Diablo 4 players decide to sit this season out.

Despite having a strong initial release, Diablo 4 has had a difficult time keeping up that same momentum with each subsequent season. The reaction from Diablo 4's player base after a string of underwhelming seasons has been tempered by the announcement that the game's first major expansion Vessel of Hatred is set for release later this year, but the game has struggled to hold players' attention in the meantime. The Gauntlet was meant to be a breath of fresh air for the game, giving players a new endgame challenge, but being plagued by cheaters and exploits has hurt the Gauntlet's debut.

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Diablo 4's Gauntlet and Leaderboards Are Off to a Rocky Start

The Gauntlet is a new, Seasonal Realm-only endgame challenge that pits players against a fixed layout, non-linear dungeon and challenges them to earn the highest score possible within the 8-minute time limit across different categories divided by class, difficulty, and party size. Killing demons and earning Proofs of Might contributes to players' scores, so there is a heavy emphasis on killing as many enemies as possible within the Gauntlet's time limit. Each week, the Gauntlet changes to a new layout, and players' scores are reset, encouraging them to tackle a different challenge on a weekly basis.

While this new mode sounds like a great endgame activity for skilled players to enjoy in theory, the implementation of the Gauntlet in practice has not gone as planned. Instead of players competing to create the best Diablo 4 build possible each week and finding the perfect route for maximizing demon-killing efficiency within the Gauntlet's time limit, the top Gauntlet runners are using exploits that break the original intention of the Gauntlet. As such, players who want to run the Gauntlet the intended way are essentially forced into their own unofficial "exploit-less" category.

Cheaters Are Using Exploits to Break Diablo 4's Gauntlet and Leaderboards

A major part of earning the highest score possible within the Gauntlet is making good use of the Pillars and Shrines found within to increase Proofs of Might earned and enemies spawned, respectively. However, players have found a bug that allows them to activate regular Shrines in Diablo 4's overworld and bring their buffs with them into the Gauntlet. Doing so allows players to use powerful Shrine buffs like Artillery to slaughter enemies much more efficiently than what would normally be allowed in the Gauntlet, astronomically inflating their scores to heights normally not possible.

Another bug has also been found that allows players to enter the Gauntlet dungeon without actually starting the timer, allowing them to do things like kill the key-bearers, pull all the enemies towards them, and activate the dungeon's shrines without ever starting an official run. This removes the difficulty of navigating the dungeon while on a time limit and gives players the ability to prematurely rack up their Gauntlet score. Despite player calls to fix these bugs and restore the Gauntlet to its intended form, the latest Diablo 4 patch still seems to be neglecting these issues, leaving many players frustrated with the overall Gauntlet experience.