Diablo 3 comes equipped with several difficulty modes that provide a great challenge for experienced players. When you first make a character you’ll start off on Normal where enemies have unbuffed stats and mistakes are forgivable. However, once you beat the game for your first time you’ll be able to return from the beginning of the story but with increased difficulty. You’re able to do this a total of three times before you can play in the game’s most difficult setting which is appropriately titled: Inferno.
As you progress in difficulty not only will the monsters become significantly harder to defeat, but the loot earned from drops will improve as well. As such, if you’re looking to make your character as geared as possible you’ll need to advance through the difficulties to not only level your character but acquire high level items.
Below are the names of each difficulty mode in order of sequence as well as the estimated level range for each:
- Normal (level 1-30~)
- Nightmare (level 40-50~)
- Hell (level 50-60~)
- Inferno (level 60)
There is another mode in Diablo 3 simply called Hardcore which has been designed to test your survivability. When playing on Hardcore the difficulty is only set to Normal but you are given no respawns. If you happen to die your character will no longer be able to enter the game world and will only be viewable as a ghost on the character selection screen.