Diablo 4 players reaching endgame have likely noticed how slow it can be leveling your character. Especially if you’re not someone who loves to grind endlessly. In spite of the hardcore race to level 100, plenty of softcore players are trying to game the system for quicker leveling. This was the main reason players flocked to the Ruins of Eridu dungeon.
People realized you could grind the enemies in this Hawezar dungeon to reliably trigger elite spawns. And for those of you that don’t know, elites give more experience than normal mobs. So it benefits you to farm as many of them as you can for experience. However, the developers at Blizzard quickly caught wind of players grinding it.
Blizzard Nerfed Ruins of Eridu via Elite Monster Tweaking
You’re welcome to still track down the Ruins of Eridu location as shown on the map. Especially if you’re hunting down the Sacrificial Aspect for the Necromancer.
Between Hotfix 8 and Hotfix 9, Blizzard has continued to change how elite monsters spawn in dungeons. This isn’t just the case for the Ruins of Eridu, but rather all dungeons. So there’s a decent chance they nerfed all dungeons even if you were busy grinding a different one instead.
Hotfix 8 specifically made, “Further adjustments to Elite monster rates in dungeons.” While Hotfix 9 hit the following day with a similar message in their patch notes, “Further adjustments to elite monster density in dungeons.” However, we got a tiny bit of extra info in Hotfix 9 via the below note.
“Developer Note: We are standardizing the density of elite monsters that spawn in dungeons to ensure that no particular dungeon is clearly more efficient to run through than others.”
While Diablo 4 was only released a little over a week ago to everyone, we’ll definitely see more changes. It’s entirely possible they’ll later increase mob density or perhaps nerf other dungeons further. But, we can only speculate since it’s still early in the release of a live-service game that will be around for a long time.
With that said, we’ve seen a variety of responses to Hotfix 9 as can be expected. For example, one forum post discusses disappointment at Blizzard nerfing “fun experience farms”. Specifically noting how the Ruins of Eridu was fun, had high mob density, and decent experience per hour.
Gathering up swarms of enemies can make for some quick experience if you have AoE skills.
Even though others elsewhere on the Diablo 4 subreddit are looking at it from a different perspective. Redditor, kestononline, encourages playing the game without a sole focus on reaching the max level. At the end of the day, every player has a different goal in mind. When I used to stream Diablo 3 regularly, I was always trying to reach a higher Greater Rift level.
It’s only a matter of time until the community figures out another trick for grinding levels. Hopefully Blizzard can find a good middle ground for balancing leveling without nerfing every opportunity. For those of you unfamiliar with some of the tricks to gaining experience boosts, we’ve listed several below:
- Using Elixirs for a 5% boost in experience.
- Playing with other players in your party for a 10% boost.
- Using campfires for up to a 15% boost.
- Increasing the World Tier (assuming the enemies don’t slow you down too much)
- Fighting enemies at a higher level than you.
What do you think of Diablo 4 balance changes like these? I can understand Blizzard preventing players from speeding through the game too quickly. But, reducing mob density is disappointing since it’s fun to slay hordes of enemies. Fortunately, this is only for elites, but I wonder if they’d be better off lowering the experience gain directly instead.
Jeff is a journalist with over 10 years of experience writing, streaming, and making content about video games. With an associate degree in journalism, he’s a sucker for RPGs, survival games, roguelikes, and more.