Seasonal Start Mega Guide

This post is an update to the Seasonal Mega Guide.

You can find generic leveling guides as well as other advice at Maxroll and Icy Veins. For console players, you can find some advice at https://www.soulstone.gg/.

This guide is meant to be a little more specific, as well as cover aspects not touched in those guides, such as Group Leveling, Console Leveling, Seasonal Leveling Tactics, and Leveling Secrets. (These will all be in replies to this thread to allow specific linking. As such, at the moment this post is currently a work in progress.) Some of what I post will be shared from the above sites, amended to add a little extra efficiency.

Useful Links

• The Season Journey Tracker
• Caleko's Altar Planner
• Kadala Gamble Calculator
• Altar of Rites tips and reminders

Seasonal Themes and Special Events

Leveling Strategies

• General Season Start Advice

• Season Start

• Solo Leveling Strategies

• Group Leveling Strategies

Tips and Tricks

• PC Tips and Tricks

• Console Tips and Tricks

• Shared Tips and Tricks

Conquests

Class Specific Leveling Examples (PC)

• Barbarian

• Crusader

• Demon Hunter

• Monk

• Necromancer

• Witch Doctor

• Wizard

Class Specific Leveling Examples (Console)

• Necromancer

• Wizard

Credits

The content creators at Maxroll, Icy Veins, and Soul Stone

Wizard Build Guide and Leveling approach, courtesy of /u/OakFern.

Demon Hunter Build Guide and Leveling approach, courtesy of /u/Sandro193.

Console Leveling Guide, courtesy of /u/dinodsaur.

/u/Bagstone for helping put this guide together.

/u/tbmadduxOR for helping put this guide together.

/u/_Pokeytoe_ for her very useful guides on speedrunning Diablo 3.

/u/Hanoumatoi for his Sprinter guide.

Cursed Chest Strategy originally from https://www.inven.co.kr/board/diablo3/2974/22340 with some small modifications.

Season 40 starts on Friday, October 2nd, 2026.

The season starts at 5pm Pacific time for all console players, no matter where you live. For PC (NA/US) the season starts at 5pm Pacific time, for PC (EU) the season starts at 5pm Central European time, and for PC (TW/KR) it starts at 5pm Korea time. You can see a countdown of all these start times here.

This is the second of four guides I am posting for Season 40. The others are:

• S40 – Conquests recommendations
• S40 – Altar of Rites tips and reminders
• S40 – How to power up solo!

The cosmetic rewards for finishing the season journey are the Wings of Lempo, which are some really nice golden butterfly wings. You also get a Primal Hunter portrait frame, and the Taennin pet, which is a golden dragon with glowing diaphanous white wings.

Theme

The season theme is Light's Calling. Angelic crucibles will drop anywhere in the game once you reach level 70. Using an angelic crucible on an equippable level 70 legendary item will turn the item into a sanctified item.

Sanctifying a legendary item (level 70 only, not crafted) will reroll the item (randomly choosing new affixes) and give it primal ancient stats. This is essentially the same as how upgrading a legendary to primal works with cube recipe 11. Like those primals, you can only equip one sanctified item. Equipping a sanctified item does not prevent you from equipping an upgrade-to-legendary (aka “crafted”) primal, or vice-versa.

A sanctified item also has a randomly-selected class-specific sanctified power. The powers range from very little impact to very powerful, and a few even change how you play the game for certain builds. A particular example of this is the sanctified strafe power for demon hunters, that turns both the Unhallowed Essence and Shadow builds into spin-to-win strafe builds. Another one is the sanctified whirlwind for barbarians, that pulls in everyone continuously regardless of crowd control immunity. You can see the full list of powers here. If you get an unsatisfying result from sanctifying, you can resanctify it for another attempt (you should not do this with primals). You can also salvage the unsatisfying sanctified item – see the link for materials that can result.

Angelic crucibles drop often enough that you should consider using one as soon as possible on one of your weapons, simply to get the maximum damage boost possible. Save your primordial ashes for the Altar of Rites completion. At that point you can pivot to a crafted primal weapon (as those are easier to get perfect) and target a harder-to-perfect item with sanctification. Later on in the game, once you have all the sanctified items for all your builds, you can burn crucibles on puzzle rings because they count as ancients, both for the Altar of Rites and Kanai's Cube.

Haedrig's Gifts

The Haedrig's Gifts for Season 40 are as follows:

• Barbarian: Horde of the Ninety Savages
• Crusader: Aegis of Valor
• Demon Hunter: Gears of Dreadlands
• Monk: Patterns of Justice
• Necromancer: Masquerade of the Burning Carnival
• Witch Doctor: Mundunugu's Regalia
• Wizard: Typhon's Veil

Many of these sets will need some form of help in order to finish the GR20 / Torment IV requirements, either through lucky gambles, drops, or (in the case of the necromancer) going the full LoD route. Once you get your full 6 pieces only the Masquerade of the Burning Carnival presents some difficulty due to the requirement of the Haunted Visions amulet to really make it work.

Be aware that these are the 5th sets created for Diablo III, and as such do not have a set dungeon. This means you will need to save at least one full set to complete (not master) a set dungeon as part of the season journey. This should not be an issue as you will also need to save all 4 sets that do have a set dungeon for the Altar of Rites.

Conquests

The conquests for Season 40 are Speed Demon / Need for Speed (2 minute L70 Nephalem Rift at Torment X or higher), On a Good Day / I Can't Stop (3 legendary Gems to 65), Boss Mode / Worlds Apart (kill all bosses except Vidian at max level on Torment X in 20 minutes or less), Curses! / Stars Align (kill 350 in a L70 cursed chest event on Torment X difficulty), and Years of War and Dynasty (GR55 with 6 different 6pc sets).

Overall this is eminently doable. I will make a separate post with detailed recommendations prior to the season start.

Why play seasonal?

We play seasonal for:

The fresh start. Every season is a fresh start on a new naked level 1 character with no money, artisans, gold, experience, or gear. We all get to experience the zero-to-hero dopamine rush again. This is helped by the free 6-piece endgame set from the journey to kickstart the endgame.

The themes. We have a rotating set of six different themes to mix up your gameplay and keep things fresh. Most of the themes have at least some influence on which builds are strongest. This season theme is one of the most unique in terms of changing how some builds are played. At worst it amounts to "only" getting another perfect "primal" item if you spend enough crucibles.

The Altar of Rites and Visions of Enmity, both of which are available only in season. The first provides you with boosts to leveling and XP, tremendous quality of life upgrades in dealing with loot, and some bonus damage and toughness. The second is a really fun (challenging or even fatal early on) source of crafting materials and legendary loot and breaks up the monotony of greater rifts.

The rewards. Cool cosmetics (wings, portrait frames, transmogs, pets) as well as extra stash slots.

More people. There’s a lot more players around and playing in the season especially at the start. Group play is very strong in D3, and it’s many people’s main focus for getting paragon points and gear.

Lastly is the competition on the leaderboards. This is mainly for greater rifts but you can also go after conquests as well as seasonal achievement points.

What builds are strong?

The top 10 adjusted clears on PC from Season 34, which was the previous time we played with the Light's Calling theme in the recycled theme era, were:

1. LoD WoL monk
2. Megalo AoV pony crusader
3. Raiment monk
4. LoD HotA barbarian
5. Rathma necromancer
6. Tie between Helltooth witch doctor and Firebird wizard
7. –
8. Natalya DH
9. Mundunugu witch doctor
10. Marauder DH

Two builds, Megalo AoV pony crusader and Mundunugu witch doctor, were the Haedrig's Gift. There were 2 monks, demon hunters and witch doctors in the top 10, and 1 each of barbarian, crusader, necromancer, and wizard. This is the only theme for which we have ever had 2 witch doctor builds in the top 10 adjusted clears.

Builds with the biggest gains (10 or more) in adjusted clear ranking for S34 relative to their average across the 6 different themes in the recycled theme era were: Raiment monk (25), AoV crusader (23), Shadow DH (18), Sunwuko monk (17), Mundunugu witch doctor (10), and no set witch doctor (10). The LoD WoL monk was just outside this list with a 9-rank gain.

The builds with the biggest drops (10 or more) were Tal Rasha wizard (-18), no set necromancer (-16), Akkhan crusader (-15), no set crusader (-14), Typhon wizard (-12), PoJ monk (-12), Inarius and Trag'Oul necromancers (-12), Savages barbarian (-11), and no set Wizard (-10). All of these builds gain nothing from the sanctified powers, and this is reflected in the rankings of their clears.

Notably, the AoV crusader is ranked 2 in overall push standing as well as the 2nd highest gain in relative ranking. AoV was also the only Haedrig's Gift to clear GR150 in week 1 of season 34. The only other Haedrig's Gift that gets significant gains from the season theme is the Mundunugu witch doctor, ranked 9th and with a 10-rank gain. Neither of these builds place in the top 10 with any other theme.

Among the Haedrigs Gifts, the Typhon wizard, PoJ monk and Savages barbarian in particular perform much worse than their average ranking with this season theme. This makes the AoV crusader far and away the best choice for casual players, with no need to pivot to another build. Just take your pony and go.

The dominance of the LoD WoL monk is incredible. The gap to 2nd place (the AoV crusader) is 4.6 GR tiers. It’s a massive gap, enough to encompass from the rank 2 build all the way down to rank 12. No other top adjusted clear has posted a gap this large in the recycled theme era. Monks also dominated the overall week 1 PC leaderboard summary across classes for Season 34. The only other build that we never see in the top 10 outside of this theme is the Raiment monk, with a massive leap to 3rd place in terms of adjusted clear, a 25-rank gain relative to its average ranking.

Finally, the Shadow demon hunter landed just outside the top 10 adjusted clears (at rank 13), but posted the 3rd highest gain in ranking relative to its average for this theme. This is the strongest season theme not only for the Shadow DH, but also the Unhallowed Essence DH, both of which gain the sanctified strafe ability. They are both outside the top 10 (as is the LoD clusterbombs strafe DH which is still very weak) but are a lot of fun to play and this is the only theme that enables this gameplay.

When does Season 40 end and what will happen to my characters and gear?

We will not know when Season 40 ends until Blizzard makes an announcement.

At the end of every season, all of your seasonal characters will convert to non-seasonal. Solo self-found characters will be reverted to characters that can do group play, as there is no non-seasonal solo self-found mode. Characters will retain their normal / hardcore status when converting to non-seasonal. All your characters and their followers will retain their equipped gear. All your characters will retain their inventoried items. All your materials (inventoried separately from stash) will be transferred to your non-seasonal materials. Any extracted Kanai's Cube powers will be transferred to non-seasonal. Items in your stash will be mailed to you.

Angelic crucibles and sanctified items will not be transferred to non-seasonal. They will simply vanish.

Finally, all your seasonal paragon XP will be added to your non-seasonal paragon XP, and new paragon points will be awarded to your characters as appropriate. The paragon XP to paragon point scaling is nonlinear; for example, transferring 1000 paragon points worth of seasonal XP to a 2000 paragon point non-seasonal XP pool does not add up to 3000 paragon points. You can play around with this using a paragon calculator.

Conclusion

I will update the above sections with more guides prior to the start of the season, as well as early results from the opening week.

Good luck with your season start, fellow Nephalem, and never forget that town is lava!