Diablo Immortal Popular Guides | |||
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One question tends to haunt players in RPGs: what next? What town should the hero visit? What sword should they wield? What elder dragon should they hunt and slay? Some challenges pose themselves to the player throughout the game, ensuring there's always something for the player to do next, while others await the player at the end, occupying them long after the story has ended and the villain has been defeated.
In Diablo Immortal, Challenge Rifts are one of the best answers to "What next?" These mini-dungeons offer the player a satisfying feedback loop to grind, killing mobs and bosses in the pursuit of better and better loot. There's more to Challenge Rifts than meets the eye, however. Here are some tips every player should know when descending into the deep.
Even the simplest action RPGs can be difficult, and Diablo Immortal is anything but simple. With every class, ability, and piece of equipment changing the player's capabilities, there are plenty of options when it comes to confronting the game's many mobs and bosses. After blasting through the game's main story, several important tests of the player's ability remain, including Challenge Rifts. These Rifts give players the opportunity to test themselves against a series of evolving challenges. They're simple enough for anyone to jump into and pick up the basics, but they're difficult enough to present an ongoing challenge to veterans of the game.
*Article updated 1/17/2023 to reflect appropriate related guides
11 Stay In The Fight
Every player needs to pull their weight in the Challenge Rift, especially when playing as part of a team. Even if one’s character doesn’t have amazing DPS and can’t take down enemies quickly the way that teammates can, that character can still be useful. Having different characters who can make unique contributions is a staple of great action RPGs.
A big part of completing Challenge Rifts is surviving them in the first place. This means that the player can be valuable to their team even if the main thing they’re doing is simply drawing aggro. Pulling the attention of the Rift’s enemies in order to let more damaging characters do their thing without fear of being cut down is important. If the player finds themselves unable to contribute to the team in other ways, pulling aggro can be a quick fix.
10 Bring Diverse Abilities
Part of what makes combat in Diablo Immortal fun is the diversity of moves. There’s a big difference between the abilities and playstyles of the different classes. Even within a given class, the player has a healthy selection of different abilities to choose from. Build variety makes this more fun, but it’s also important for beating Rifts.
Broadly speaking, damaging abilities come in two varieties: those that damage a single enemy and those that damage multiple enemies. AoE effects that let the player blast through large groups of mobs are important for clearing the way to the boss, but they don’t deal much damage once the player is in that final battle. Similarly, single-target attacks are great for the boss but make the journey there rougher. Find the right balance between abilities to clear Rifts faster and more easily.
9 Bait Elites
While most mobs chiefly serve to slow down the player and deter progress through the Rift, Elite mobs are much more important because of the amount they contribute to the player’s progress. Unfortunately, they can also be tough to take down, wasting the player’s time and making the Rift more difficult.
One tricky but effective strategy is to avoid killing the elites as the player encounters them. Instead, run past the Elites and bait them into following. Once the player has several Elites in tow, lead them to a Pylon. Clear out most of the lesser mobs in the area, then trigger the Pylon, so that the bulk of its magical benefits can be spent killing the Elites. Doing so will allow the player to deal with Elites much more efficiently.
8 Kill Chaos Herald Pyl First
There's not much stopping the player from plowing through level after level of Challenge Rifts as soon as possible, but there's good reason not to do so.The player should wait until they finish the quest to open the Helliquary before going too far, as it requires the player to enter their highest Challenge Rift and kill Chaos Herald Pyl.
Defeating the boss at higher Rift levels can swiftly become too difficult if the player isn't careful, especially because the game defaults to the highest Challenge Rift level among the party and gives Pyl a huge spike in HP. Kill Pyl first, then grind Rifts.
7 Play With A Group
Playing with a group makes a lot of things in Diablo Immortal easier, and Challenge Rifts are no exception. Having other players there to draw aggro from mobs and bosses is a big help in itself, and working with others allows the player to synergize builds and skills.
Groups can tackle Challenge Rifts up to the maximum level available to any party member, so there's nothing stopping the player from jumping to a much higher difficulty if one of their friends has already gotten that far. Be warned, however, as lower-level players may not be prepared for the threats they face.
6 Don't Worry About The Leaderboards
Challenge Rifts track the success of the heroes that attempt them. They compare one solo player to every other solo player, one four-person group to every other four-person group, and so on. For some players, the leaderboards are a huge draw, especially in the end-game where there isn't always much else to do outside of PvP and the never-ending quest for better Gems and equipment.
Trying to grind higher in the scoreboard is fine, but early on, when the player is still learning all the ropes of Challenge Rifts, the leaderboards are more of a distraction than anything else. Players shouldn't worry too much about how they stack up against others.
5 Mind The Monsters
As the level of the Challenge Rifts increases, so too does the Monster Combat Rating of the enemies found within. The higher the MCR, the more careful the player will have to be when fighting their way through the Challenge Rifts. This is especially true for players grinding through Challenge Rifts solo.
With a party, there's always the team to fall back on if the player is killed or the plan goes horribly wrong. Playing solo, there's only oneself and an army of ravenous monsters. There's no severe penalty for dying within a Challenge Rift, but it's a waste of time if nothing else. The more the player can do to keep themselves alive, the better.
4 Bonus Levels
Four Challenge Rift levels work as bonus levels, distinguished by a skull by the Difficulty Level: 11, 27, 42, and 58. Completing these bonus levels grants the player a better reward than usual, but only if the player completes them at a certain Paragon level.
The player must be Paragon 1 for Level 11, Paragon 30 for Level 27, Paragon 90 for Level 42, and Paragon 160 for Level 58. Given that the appeal of Challenge Rifts is the rewards they offer for their completion, it's nice to know the player is squeezing every bit of value they can out of the Challenges.
3 Prioritize Elites
To finish a Challenge Rift, the player must kill all the monsters within as quickly as possible. Killing Blue and Gold Elite monsters is the player's priority, since these monsters drop Progression Orbs when slain, rapidly filling up the Progress Bar.
Every kill contributes to the player's progress through the Rift, but the spike in progress granted by Progression Orbs means that Elite units are always worth taking the time to hunt down. Since Elites can be significantly more dangerous than regular mobs, it's important that the player not allow themselves to be baited into any dangerous situations and killed when facing these creatures.
2 Take Advantage Of Pylons
Reaching a specific progress point in a Challenge Rift causes a Pylon to spawn. Pylons can be one of five types — Alchemical, Conduit, Empowered, Fleeting, and Frenzied — each of which grants players a unique buff. These buffs range from increased movement speed or crit chances to the ability to shoot lighting from the character's body, damaging multiple monsters.
Because the player has only 10 minutes to slay the monsters, kill the Rift Guardian, and complete the Challenge Rift, anything that speeds up the hero's work is a huge asset. Good Rift runners know not to let a good Pylon go to waste.
1 Go Fishing
The higher the level of Challenge Rift that the player reaches, the more difficult completing Rifts becomes. When technique that the player can use to try to overcome to the grueling difficulty of high-level Rifts is known as fishing. Fishing is the act of entering and exiting a Challenge Rift repeatedly until the zone, Pylon, boss, and monsters are all as advantageous as possible.
The major downside of this trick is that it's tedious, since it relies exclusively on the game's RNG favoring the player. Though that fact makes it a waste of time at lower levels, fishing remains a useful technique for beating the most difficult levels that Challenge Rifts have to offer.
Diablo Immortal is available on mobile and PC.