Diablo 4 mathematician proves high-tier Nightmare Dungeons just aren’t worth it

Diablo 4’s oft-maligned Nightmare Dungeons have been put through a rigorous testing process by one dedicated player. The results seem to prove that there’s a negligible difference between drop rates from tier 40 onwards.

Diablo 4 has been a rollercoaster of a release. Despite a massively successful launch that broke records for Blizzard, the aftermath has been tumultuous.

Poorly received patches, a lack of post-launch content, and a lonely multiplayer experience are just some of the things that have plagued Diablo 4. The game’s more recent negative reception has caused a massive drop in interest with Diablo 4’s Twitch viewership showing a 99% decrease since the launch of Season 1.

The end-game content of Diablo 4 has been a particularly sore point for players since its release. Now one masochistic Reddit user has taken it upon themselves to prove why Diablo 4’s Nightmare Dungeons feel so unengaging to players.

Exploration: item power distribution in NMD t21–100 [8000+ items]
byu/fpsthirty indiablo4

u/fpsthirty engaged in a painstaking experiment completing over 400 Nightmare Dungeons across 18 days of Diablo 4 play. They cataloged a total of 8,104 pieces of Ancestral gear in an effort to see how the tiers of Nightmare Dungeons impacted item drops.

Their study proves a shocking variance in the tiers at which you could collect powerful drops. The 3 most powerful items they looted came from tiers 21 to 100, which is a considerable range.

The player then broke the core findings down in a TL;DR. Their main takeaway was that between tiers 40-90, the loot on offer is essentially the same. The items they collected had a power differential of 3 points across 70% of the gear they collected.

While the drop rates differ across tiers, one user detailed that the speed at which you can clear a dungeon impacts the amount of Ancestral gear you can collect per hour. “Realistically you want max chances per hour and tier 100 dungeons slow most characters down a ton, so you’re going to have to figure out what tier makes the most sense for your character,” they explained.

While Tier-100 Nightmare Dungeons are considered a milestone achievement to aim for, u/fpsthirty’s data offers a different approach. There’s no sense in grinding a dungeon with a slower clear rate when you can speed farm an easier tier for items of identical power.

The most effective method to farm Ancestral gear appears to be finding the highest Nightmare Dungeon that doesn’t slow you down and farming that tier. Any higher tier actually reduces the speed at which you can collect powerful gear in Diablo 4.