Best Diablo 4 dungeons and strongholds to farm, according to someone who did the math

As we get closer and closer to the start of Diablo 4's first season, Season of the Malignant, the most hardcore players are seemingly channelling all of their expertise to produce guides on the best and most efficient ways to grind.

Seeing as everyone will need to create new characters to level up the Season 1 battle pass and experience seasonal content, there's somewhat of an unspoken race to see how efficiently one can grind through the early hours, and how quickly they can unlock battle pass tiers.

We recently covered this map of all sidequests that lead to dungeons, which in turn is a great source of Renown. Today, we have an even more impressive bounty of information, courtesy of content creator Drybear.

Drybear tested all 115 dungeons and 15 strongholds in Diablo 4 to determine the ones more suited to levelling up quickly (for both solo players and groups), as well as those that grant the largest amount of XP. There are several factors that determine the amount of XP a dungeon/stronghold offers, including mob and elite density, and how fast you can clear them.

The content creator worked out that the best way to gain XP/level up is to fight enemies three levels higher than you. In other words, the most efficient way to gain XP is to target dungeons and strongholds when you are three levels below their minimum (there's a master list with all relevant information, too).

This is also true for Nightmare Dungeons, though the calculation is slightly different. In that case, you want your character's level to be 51 points below the dungeon's, which is equivalent to three levels.

All that work brought us this detailed, but simple to read list. As you can see, there are dedicated sections not only for players levelling up, but also for future XP grind once the early levels are done. The list also recognises solo, as well as group levelling, which is great for solo players as a lot of XP guides tend to to assume you have at least one other player nearby.

When Season of the Malignant starts on July 20 (assuming you've already done everything on this list to prepare), you're going to need to follow the levelling sections of that list to get into the level 50+ zone as quickly as possible. From there, it's a matter of optimising your time vs XP gain when it comes to the dungeons and strongholds you decide to grind.

As for how Drybear arrived at these results, they tested with a level 100 character to avoid altering enemy level or character properties during testing. The results do not include shrines, events, Treasure Goblin or Butcher encounters. In other words, the numbers only take into account the main mobs in a given dungeon/stronghold.

As immensely helpful as this list is, we hope today's big Diablo 4 patch doesn't mess with enemy density in those dungeons and strongholds, or make any other changes to XP gain that could make it partly or entirely useless.