Diablo 4's strongest builds won't be enough to prevail in its new 8-minute speedrun dungeon with leaderboards

Diablo 4 shop cosmetic skin — (Image credit: Blizzard)

Powerful gear won't be enough to climb the ranks in Diablo 4's upcoming speedrun dungeon, The Gauntlet.

Starting next week, The Gauntlet will offer a permanent challenge Diablo 4 hasn't had before: chasing a high score to climb the ranks in a leaderboard. Powerful gear will play a role, but it won't be enough to just blast through the dungeon once. You'll need to perfect an efficient route through it before the end of each week when everything resets.

Blizzard has smartly kept the barrier to entry low. Enemies in The Gauntlet are all level 124, which means most players should be able to dabble in it around level 80. Obviously, you'll want to be level 100 and wrapped in good gear to compete at the top of the leaderboards, but there will be easily attainable Legendary item cache rewards every week.

Here's what it'll look like:

Each week a new Gauntlet dungeon with fixed enemy placements and layout will go live
You'll have eight minutes to race through it and collect Proofs of Might from monsters to increase your score
Specific enemies drop keys to open chests with more Proofs of Might
Monsters won't drop loot, but bosses will leave behind shrines for powerful buffs
A new shrine will bring monsters back to life, including bosses, letting you repeat everything again until time runs out
Completing it will reward you with an item cache with an increased chance at dropping Uniques

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You can die in the Gauntlet, and it'll cost you a third of your score and the time it takes to run back and recover your Proofs of MIght.

Every week, Blizzard will set four increasingly harder scores to chase after that determine the rewards you'll get when the new Gauntlet drops. Each "Seal" you earn for beating those scores will grant you a cache of Legendary items. And you can repeat this with multiple classes or in a group for more caches each week.

The Leaderboards will be broken out by platform, class, group size, and whether you're playing on Hardcore mode or not. The barbarians' seemingly endless status as the kings of Diablo 4 won't have to ruin it for the rest of us. Players who break into the top 100 in any category will get a mount trophy, and anyone in the top 10 will permanently show up in a "Hall of the Ancients" leaderboard.

The Gauntlet is way more complex than I anticipated. It's not just a dungeon you need to do fast; it's a dungeon you'll need to study each week and potentially build your character around. Players have complained about Diablo 4's simplistic endgame since its launch and I think we finally have something that demands a radically different approach than simply stacking on more and more damage. Meta builds that one-shot bosses or speed through dungeons won't necessarily excel in The Gauntlet, which should add value to items that were otherwise ignored.

Diablo 4 needed a healthy alternative to the power chase and I think this is finally it.

The Gauntlet, along with a meaty mid-season patch, will go live next Tuesday.

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Tyler has covered videogames and PC hardware for 15 years. He regularly spends time playing and reporting on games like Diablo 4, Elden Ring, Overwatch 2, and Final Fantasy 14. While his specialty is in action RPGs and MMOs, he's driven to cover all sorts of games whether they're broken, beautiful, or bizarre.