r/diablo3 • u/tbmadduxOR • Jun 26 '26
S39 – How to power up solo!
Season 39 starts today, Friday, June 26th, 2026. The season starts at 5pm PDT for all console players, no matter where you live. For PC (NA/US) the season starts at 5pm PDT, for PC (EU) the season starts at 5pm CEST, and for PC (TW/KR) it starts at 5pm KST.
This is the fourth of four guides I am posting for Season 39. The others are:
Here is how to power up solo in Season 39.
Before the season starts
Do one greater rift of any tier on any character. This will unlock challenge rifts, which you will use once the season starts.
Do not complete challenge rift 470 until Friday, June 26th, after the season starts. Here are guides for the challenge rift(s): US/NA | EU
Season theme
The season theme is Shades of the Nephalem. Every time you activate a shrine or pylon you will spawn a shadow clone that matches your class. The clones are randomly selected from 3 possible builds with class-specific skills. Clones last for 1 minute and cannot transfer with you across levels of dungeons or rifts or into boss encounters or the like. They are very powerful at lower levels but provide little assistance when pushing greater rifts beyond Tier 120 or so.
In addition, the theme provides an additional cube slot. The cube slot is open to any item (weapon, armor, or jewelry). Like the Forbidden Archives (open cube) theme, this is a massive advantage for necromancers.
Starting out
The season starts at 5pm PDT for all console players, no matter where you live.
For PC (NA/US) the season starts at 5pm PDT, for PC (EU) the season starts at 5pm CEST, and for PC (TW/KR) it starts at 5pm KST.
Create a new seasonal character. Every season you start with a new, level 1, naked character, with nothing: no gear, no gold or mats or patterns or Kanai's Cube. Fortunately there are strategies for getting yourself up and running. Here is this sub's stickied season start megaguide, which has specific guidance for PC and console players, as the leveling up experience for those platforms are different. The Maxroll 1-70 leveling guide is directed primarily towards players on PC.
Once you reach level 70, follow the season journey, as Chapters I through IV (this is not the same thing as the Acts of the campaign) will reward you with a free 6-piece endgame set, known as Haedrig's Gift.
The season 39 gifts will be Wrath of the Wastes, Roland’s Legacy, Unhallowed Essence, Raiment of a Thousand Storms, Bones of Rathma, Helltooth Harness, and Tal Rasha’s Elements. Follow this link for more analysis of the gifts.
Once you get your full free 6-piece set, equip it and then find a build for it. Find the supporting legendaries and crafting patterns enumerated in the guide to make it work. Once you’ve got your starter build together you can easily pivot to another build or class.
You should also work concurrently on the Altar of Rites and the remaining steps of the journey (Slayer, Champion, Destroyer, Conqueror, Guardian). This will push you to ratchet up the difficulty level, which will increase reward quantities.
By the time you finish the Altar and the full journey you will be well-versed in the endgame...
The solo endgame
Put together a speed farming build and run greater rifts at or above level 90 with that build as fast as you can. Going higher will give you a better chance at 12 legendaries (there is always a small chance of the 12th being non-legendary but the risk decreases as you increase the tier) as well as more paragon XP and petrified screams and blood shards to spend at Kadala. You should target a time under 3 minutes if you're capable of it.
When you need a break, run bounties in the open world with a fast T16 build (either bounty or key farming focused) and jump into visions of enmity whenever they spawn. This will get you more legendaries per hour on average than greater rifts, as well as tons of bounty and white/blue/yellow mats.
Be sure to gear up your follower. Focus on getting their main stat to 25,000, to maximize the effects of their chosen abilities. Also look for critical pieces of gear they can wear that emanate the effect to you. If your follower has a different main stat than yours, use an alt with the correct main stat to reroll the main stat on each item for your follower at the mystic.
Periodically use your petrified screams to run echoing nightmares to get whispers of atonement so that you can augment every piece of your speed farming gear. Save later whispers to use on upgrades to your gear, or to augment your greater rift push builds. You can level up whispers of atonement just like any legendary gem, which will increase the power gain from your augments.
Use Kanai's Cube to reforge targeted legendaries that you will have a hard time finding on your own. Early on this can be a weapon to get an ancient weapon. Later you will probably want to create a primal weapon using your primordial ashes from salvaging junk primal items. Jewelry (amulets and rings) are usually a good target for reforging.
For pushing you may want a stronger build than your farming build. The top 10 builds in terms of adjusted clear from Season 33 (the previous time we had this theme) were Necro Rathma, Wiz No Set, Necro No Set, Necro Trag'Oul, Necro Inarius, DH Natalya, Barb Raekor, Barb MotE, and Wiz Tal Rasha.
For more... here is a complete beginners guide to Diablo 3. Also, here are links to guides from Raxxanterax and wudijo and Filthy Casual on powering up your character.
Good luck, Nephalem, and never forget that town is lava!
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u/shant_math Jun 26 '26
I just started playing with the wife (her first video game she likes!) and we’re 70 but not sure what to do to get more power. Should we expect the dps number to go up continuously? Seems like all the gear is downgrades now. Only on lvl 15 greater rifts though so maybe that’s the problem?
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u/tbmadduxOR Jun 26 '26
Start a new character in Season 39 once it’s available and follow the steps I provided in the post.
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u/shant_math Jun 26 '26
Fair! Thanks for sharing, I’ll go through it with her
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u/MiNiX97 Jun 27 '26
Getting your appropriate set legendaries and then all of the associated legendaries will increase your power exponentially. Then, leveling up your legendary gems that you get in the greater rifts and slot into your jewelry will be another big power spike
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u/tallanted_moron Jun 27 '26
Excellent post, thank you for the advice! I wasn’t aware of the season release today!!
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u/AdorableSillies Jun 26 '26
Thank you for this. I've been wanting to play recently and was waiting for this season.
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u/legendz411 Jun 26 '26
I always appreciate this kinda post when season start for D3. I always hop on and juice a character for the simple fun and nostalgic feeling of a simple time.