No Diablo 4 player will have to suffer its most grueling grind again thanks to a hidden perk with its new free character boost

A Diablo 4 spiritborn character reaching out in a battle pose with streaks of firey claw marks around her

(Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment)

I won't lie, I'm a little bitter that anyone who plays Diablo 4 from now on won't have to spend hours undertaking its most grueling grind. Back in my day, we had to open up a guide and play Where's Waldo before Diablo 4 really began. Now Blizzard is seemingly acknowledging how much it sucks to run around clicking statues for a minor, but necessary, benefit.

Starting today, the hunt for Altars of Lilith is over. Anyone who owns Diablo 4 can boost one character to level 50 on the 'eternal realm', or the non-seasonal mode, and receive a full set of legendary items, a bunch of gold, and the account-wide bucket of stats you get for clicking all 160 Altars of Lilith. And if you own the Vessel of Hatred expansion, you can boost a second character too.

Diablo 4's midseason patch went live today, bringing major buffs to every class except the spiritborn, who have been comfortably dealing billions of damage since their debut. From now until December 2 you can play a spiritborn up to level 25 without Vessel of Hatred on Battle.net (not Steam). That's not enough levels to suck the joy out of playing any other class for yourself, but it's close—you've been warned.

For the next week XP and gold gains have been cranked up, making it even faster to level from 1 to 60 and start to climb through the new Torment difficulty levels. There's also a holiday event running until December 3 that has seemingly broken Helltide events. Normally Helltide monsters drop a few Aberrant 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 thousands of them. I can't tell if it's a bug or the most generous Helltide I've ever seen.

You might as well take advantage of it before it gets fixed or at least while other players head there in droves to see what it looks like when the ground is coated in items. When I did it, I had more cinders than there were chests to open. Welcome to the season of cinders, I guess.

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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.