No Diablo 4 player will have to endure the most grueling grind again thanks to a hidden benefit with the new free character boost

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I won’t lie, I’m a little bitter that anyone who plays Diablo 4 from now on won’t have to spend hours doing the most grueling grind. We used to have to open a guide and play Where’s Waldo before Diablo 4 actually started. Now Blizzard is seemingly recognizing how stupid it is to run around clicking statues for a small, but necessary advantage.

As of today, the hunt for Altars of Lilith is over. Anyone who owns Diablo 4 can boost one character to level 50 in the ‘Eternal Realm’, or in non-seasonal mode, and receive a full set of legendary items, a ton of gold, And the account-wide collection of statistics you get when you click on all 160 Altars of Lilith. And if you own the Vessel of Hatred expansion, you can also boost a second character.

While Eternal Realm isn’t the best mode to play Diablo 4, progress from the Altars of Lilith will immediately carry over to your seasonal figures. Anyone who has been putting it off or is new to the game doesn’t have to experience the pain the rest of us have endured. Granted, you won’t really notice the lack of the bonus stats until you reach max level, but they’re free now, so why not?

Diablo 4’s midseason patch went live today, bringing major improvements to every class except the spiritborn, who have comfortably dealt billions in damage since their debut. From now until December 2, you can play spiritborn up to level 25 without Vessel of Hatred on Battle.net (not Steam). That’s not enough levels to take the fun out of playing another class for yourself, but it’s close: you’ve been warned.

For the coming week, XP and gold gains have been increased, making it even faster to get from level 1 to 60 and climb through the new Torment difficulty levels. There is also a holiday event running until December 3 that has apparently broken Helltide events. Normally Helltide monsters drop a few anomalous Cinders that you can use to open treasure chests, but right now the ones that spawn during the Blood Maiden boss event are exploding into the thousands. I don’t know if it’s a bug or the most generous Helltide I’ve ever seen.

Might as well take advantage of it before it gets fixed, or at least while other players flock to it to see what it looks like when the ground is covered in items. When I did it, I had more embers than there were chests to open. Welcome to cinder season, I guess.