Blizzard has provided an in-depth look at the upcoming Gauntlet mode in Diablo 4, a leaderboard focused endgame event. The Gauntlet mode launches on March 5, with weekly resets once it's live.
Detailed in a blog post, the Gauntlet mode is a leaderboard-focused dungeon, where you compete to get high-scores on a weekly basis. The dungeon is set at Nightmare Dungeon level 70, giving you eight minutes to score as many points as possible by slaying monsters, elites, and bosses. While your gear and build is important to scoring high, this particular challenge requires much more strategy in how you tackle it.
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Each week there is a set Gauntlet dungeon, which has a static layout. On top of the static layout, every mob, boss, chest, and shrine location will be the exact same during the week. The reason why it's static is that tackling the dungeon in a certain order has an impact on how much score you can get. There are also two special shrines: one that respawns all defeated monsters and one that increases your score. You will want to learn the dungeon throughout a week, to maximize the score they can achieve.
As for rewards, there aren't loot drops in the Gauntlet itself, but there are caches to earn. Each time you can complete a run, you earn a cache that contains some loot. In addition to that, there are weekly caches that are earned based on which Seal you end up in on the leaderboard. Depending on your high score, you will be placed into one of four Seals, with the highest being Seal of the Worthy. The Seal of the Worthy cache contains max-power-level items and has an increased chance to drop uniques.
The leaderboards are split by class and party size. This means that your high score set as a Necromancer is only compared to other Necromancers and your party of four is only compared to other parties of four. You can earn Seals and rewards in multiple leaderboards each week if you have multiple characters or run the dungeon with various party sizes. Placing in the top 100 on any leaderboard will unlock a special mount cosmetic and placing in the top 10 will get your name and character immortalized in the Hall of the Ancients.
Gauntlets arrive on March 5, alongside the midseason update, bringing a ton of changes and buffs to Diablo 4. It was recently announced that Diablo 4 is coming to Xbox Game Pass on March 28.
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