Diablo 3: Beyond the Story – What to Do After Beating Malthael

So, you’ve vanquished Malthael, the Angel of Death, and watched the dramatic end-game cutscene unfold. Congratulations! You’ve completed the main storyline of Diablo 3, but that doesn’t mean your adventure is over; in fact, it’s just beginning. The game is designed to be highly replayable, with a wealth of endgame activities waiting to be explored. The primary focus shifts from a linear narrative to a dynamic, randomized experience centered around character progression and item hunting.

Adventure Mode: The Heart of the Diablo 3 Endgame

The most significant change after completing the story is unlocking Adventure Mode. This mode allows you to bypass the campaign entirely and freely roam across all five Acts. There are no story restrictions, enabling you to focus on specific tasks, earn valuable rewards, and build your character’s power.

Bounties: Structured Chaos

Adventure Mode features bounties, which are short, repeatable objectives within each Act. These can involve clearing a dungeon, killing a specific unique monster, participating in a timed event, or eliminating a boss. Completing all bounties within an Act rewards you with a Horadric Cache. These caches contain valuable loot, Blood Shards, and Rift Keystone Fragments – essential resources for progression.

Rifts and Greater Rifts: Randomized Dungeons

The real meat of the endgame lies in Nephalem Rifts and Greater Rifts. These are randomized dungeons filled with hordes of monsters, diverse environments, and unique boss encounters. Rifts offer significant experience gains, making them ideal for leveling up, and Greater Rifts are timed challenges designed to test your character’s limits, offering progressively better loot, and the opportunity to increase your Paragon level.

Paragon Levels: Eternal Progression

After reaching the level cap of 70, you’ll begin earning Paragon levels. These levels provide incremental increases to your character’s base stats, allowing for continued character advancement even after hitting the maximum level. These gains, along with item farming, will be crucial for tackling higher difficulty levels.

Gearing Up: The Loot Grind

The pursuit of better gear becomes the primary driving force post-story. You’ll be constantly seeking powerful legendary items and set pieces, as these can significantly enhance your character’s abilities. The higher the difficulty level you play on, the better the quality of loot drops will be, further encouraging you to continuously push your character’s limits.

Season Play: The Cyclical Challenge

Seasons are recurring limited-time events that provide fresh starts and challenges. When a new season begins, you create a new Seasonal Hero, starting at level 1. You’ll need to power up this character from scratch. You will be able to attempt the seasonal objectives while grinding for better gear. As you level up in a season, you will get better loot, allowing you to tackle higher difficulties. Once a season concludes, all progress, including your hero, items, and paragon levels, is transferred to your non-seasonal characters, providing additional content and goals to achieve.

Sanctified Items: The Ultimate Power Boost

Within Seasons, you might find Sanctified Items, which allow you to reforge an item to have perfect Ancient-level stats on all affixes while also preserving its legendary power. This allows a huge power boost and can completely change your character build.

Other Endgame Activities

Beyond the core modes, several other activities offer variety and additional rewards:

• Set Dungeons: These challenge you to master your class’s specific gear sets. While they don’t provide unique items, they offer cosmetic rewards like banner sigils, pennants, and wings.
• Torment Levels: Increasing the game’s difficulty through Torment levels is essential for accessing better loot and more challenging monsters.
• Solo Self Found Mode: This new mode lets you tackle the game alone in both campaign and adventure mode. It is a true single player mode.

The beauty of Diablo 3’s endgame is its ability to cater to both casual players and hardcore grinders. The game offers numerous avenues for character progression, item acquisition, and exciting, replayable gameplay, guaranteeing long-term engagement.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. What happens to my Seasonal Heroes after a season ends?

At the end of each Season, all Seasonal Heroes are moved to the existing non-Seasonal Hero pool. All items, currency, and materials obtained by your Seasonal Heroes become available to your regular Heroes. Items in your Seasonal stash are sent to you through the in-game mail system.

2. Is there an end game in Diablo 3?

Yes, absolutely! Diablo 3 is primarily focused on the endgame experience. Once you complete the main story and hit level 70, things truly “begin” with Adventure Mode, Rifts, Greater Rifts, and endless character customization.

3. What are Paragon Levels, and how do they work?

Paragon Levels are a progression system that begins after you reach level 70. You earn experience towards these levels, which grant small but permanent bonuses to your base stats, allowing for continued character growth.

4. How do I unlock Adventure Mode?

Adventure Mode is unlocked automatically after you have completed the main story campaign of Diablo 3.

5. What are the benefits of playing on higher difficulty levels?

Higher difficulty levels result in higher experience gain, better loot drop rates, and a more challenging and rewarding gameplay experience overall.

6. What are Rifts and Greater Rifts?

Rifts are randomized dungeons that offer a mixture of monsters, diverse environments, and a final boss fight. Greater Rifts are timed challenge versions of the Rifts. They are ranked in levels, with each level increasing the monster health and damage output but also the reward quality.

7. Can I play Diablo 3 alone?

Yes, the game is entirely playable solo and has even introduced a Solo Self Found mode for a more isolated experience.

8. What are Bounties, and why should I complete them?

Bounties are short, repeatable objectives within each Act. Completing them awards Horadric Caches, which contain valuable loot, Blood Shards, and Rift Keystone Fragments.

9. How do I get legendary items and set pieces?

Legendary items and set pieces drop from monsters, chests, and bosses in all game modes. The higher the difficulty, the better the quality of the loot drops. You can also use Kanai’s Cube to reforge items or extract legendary powers.

10. What are set dungeons?

Set Dungeons are special dungeons designed for specific class gear sets. While they don’t provide unique items they do reward cosmetic items.

11. Does Diablo 3 carry over to Diablo 4?

It is highly unlikely that any items or cosmetics you earned in Diablo 3 will transfer to Diablo 4. The games are separate entities.

12. What happens when you sanctify an item?

Sanctifying an item reforges it to have perfect Ancient-level stats on all affixes while also preserving the item’s Legendary Power. This is done using items found in seasonal play.

13. What happens to my Paragon experience after a season ends?

When a season ends, all your Paragon experience is transferred to your non-Seasonal profile. This is added to your already achieved paragon level on that profile.

14. Who is the final boss in Diablo 3?

Malthael, the Archangel of Death, is the final boss of the Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls expansion.

15. What should I focus on first after finishing the story?

Focus on unlocking Adventure Mode, completing bounties for Horadric Caches, and grinding through Nephalem Rifts to improve your gear and Paragon level. If a new season is underway, you should try to complete the seasonal objectives for extra rewards.