Diablo 4 has its first level 100 player

The first known player to hit the Diablo 4 max level cap is here. Diablo 4 Twitch streamer and YouTuber Rob ‘Rob2628’ has reached level 100 in the Blizzard RPG game after close to three days of almost non-stop blasting. His success makes him the first person to reach the milestone and publicly announce it, although the method by which he got there shows just how strong playing in a group is in Diablo 4.

Rob, who has adopted what’s widely considered to be the best Barbarian build, primarily focused on shouts and the whirlwind skill, has been almost exclusively playing in a group for most of his time. He hit the max milestone about a full level ahead of the second-placed publicly listed player, and more than two levels ahead of the players in third and fourth.

That may not sound like a big gap, but the grind is real no matter which of the Diablo 4 classes you’re on. In total, Rob’s playtime to hit max level clocked in at around 54 hours since launch, and it’s estimated that the exponential climb in required XP makes the final ten levels almost as long to complete as the first 90 put together.

So what was the trick? That one’s actually been somewhat a point of controversy. By using a group-based exploit where the lead player leaves the party, you can quickly and easily reset the current instance of the dungeon you’re in. This allowed Rob’s team to farm the Champion’s Demise dungeon over and over, taking down huge numbers of elites in quick succession – helped by how strong Rob’s character was prior to the Barb nerfs in this morning’s Diablo 4 patch notes 1.0.2d.

Ultimately, it’s in the game, and while it does seem like it’s probably unintended Blizzard has yet to comment on whether they have a problem with players taking advantage of it.

As for the ‘hardcore’ side of things, where players must contend with the ever-looming threat of permadeath, Max ‘wudijo’ – who you might remember from his solo clears of Diablo 4 world boss Ashava during the game’s pre-launch server slam – is currently top of the rankings at level 85, which has been thrown around as the rough estimate for the halfway point time-wise to 100, after a similar amount of time playing as Rob.

It’s worth noting that wudijo has been playing his trap-based Rogue build entirely solo, however, and of course has to build with less damage output in mind in favor of enough survivability to keep him alive on the already-fragile Rogue. The hardcore race to 100 is still very much on, then.

If you’re waiting on the full Diablo 4 release date, make sure you meet up to the Diablo 4 system requirements for the best time possible at launch, and read up on how the Diablo 4 battle pass works and what rewards you can expect.