Diablo 4 streamer tests out all 130 dungeons and strongholds to determine which are the best XP sources

Since Diablo 4 arrived early last month, those who approached it with the perfect build in mind and plenty of spare time have been making great progress towards their goal of reaching peak performance and burying Hell beneath a mountain of enemy corpses.

With the game’s first season fast approaching, some of these hardcore hellspawn have recently been busy creating their own party finding and enchanting outcome predicting apps.

Now, however, one streamer has put together a tool that’s arguably even more useful for progression-obsessed players, having analysed all of the game’s permanent dungeons and strongholds to determine which of them provide the best experience gains.

Are you struggling to earn enough XP from Diablo 4’s dungeons and strongholds to take your build to the next level?

The creator in question, Drybear, revealed in a post on the Diablo 4 subreddit that, over the course of the past week, they’ve: “hand-tested every single permanent dungeon and stronghold in the game and compared them (based on) clear speed, mob density, and how valuable your time (spent) is per second in that encounter.”

The streamer added that their aim in taking on this mammoth task was to create: “a robust resource that the Diablo IV community could use to determine the best source of experience at any given level.”

They’ve shared their findings, which cover all 130 of the permanent dungeons and strongholds the game currently has to offer, in several forms.

In addition to the list included in the Reddit post, there's a massive spreadsheet that'll allow you to comb through all of the info yourself, while the YouTube video below provides some extra guidance on how you can use the rankings to inform your choices and goes into detail regarding the methodology of Drybear’s testing.

Meanwhile, for those just want a bitesize snapshot of the results, there’s a summary image, which allows you to glean at a glance that Drybear found Sarat’s Lair to be the best dungeon for both solo players and groups in terms of overall XP yield for the time invested, while the Temple of Rot topped the stronghold rankings.

In the Reddit post, Drybear also shared some important findings regarding the enemies those looking to grind effectively should be seeking out, explaining: “optimal experience (gain) comes from fighting enemies (that are three) levels higher than you”.

This means you can potentially gain a lot by taking on a dungeon or stronghold while three levels below the minimum level for it that’s listed in the spreadsheet.

Regardless of whether you’re planning to use this tool to inform your grinding sessions in preparation for the arrival of the Season of the Malignant in Diablo 4, make sure to follow us for an array of guides to everything from realms to world bosses.