Your hero fights automatically. You choose the skills, gear, pets, loadouts and runs. When a fight is too hard, farm gear, adjust the build and try again.

Desktop shortcuts pause while you are typing in a text box.

Death sends you back to the start of the current act. You never lose more than one act of campaign progress. Farm or change your build if the same fight keeps stopping you.

Sorceress: Elemental spells, status effects and crowd control.

Warrior: Builds Rage and spends it through Execute, Last Stand or Item Find.

Rogue: Chooses Assassin, Toxicologist or Mage Hunter in the Spec tab. Schemes add a separate utility bonus. The schemes are High Roller, Pilfer and Heist.

Ranger: Chooses Hunter, Arcane Archer or Trapper in the Discipline tab. Forestcraft passives are in the Passive tab. Rangers can Scout bounties and tame companions.

A campaign zone has 15 enemies in Normal, 20 in Nightmare and 25 in Hell, followed by its boss. There are five acts per difficulty. Clearing Act 5 opens the next difficulty. You can use Top Off during regular fights and boss fights.

Fire can burn, lightning can shock, cold can chill or freeze, and physical damage can bleed. Status Effect improves the chance and duration. Ailment Damage improves burn, bleed and poison damage.

You gain skill points from levels and some campaign milestones. Act 1 and Act 5 each award a point the first time you clear them on a difficulty. A new difficulty awards two more. Spend points in Skill Levels.

Gear and Skill Loadouts holds your Builds, Auto-switch rules and Loot Priorities. Auto-switch can choose a build for farming, bosses and special runs. A full respec is free before Desolation. Later respecs use free charges first, then cost more gold each time.

The rarity order is Normal, Magic, Rare, Unique, Set and Artifact. The game compares ordinary drops against your equipped gear and Vault using the active loadout's Loot Priorities. Lock a slot if you do not want it replaced. Uniques, sets and artifacts that need a decision go to Pending Rewards.

Set pieces can be moved into the Set Bank from the Vault, regular Bank or Pending Rewards. It holds 250 pieces and can filter complete sets, incomplete sets and duplicates. Sets grant bonuses at two and five equipped pieces. Withdraw an item when you want to equip or craft it.

Gloves focus on direct hits. Their affixes include recovery, ailments and on-hit effects. These effects trigger once per damaging attack, not again from echoes, splash, damage over time, companions or thorns. Gloves unlock in the Everdeep.

After a boss you can visit town to shop, gamble, check the Bounty Board, use blessings and manage other unlocked systems. The game pauses while the town screen is open.

Reforging costs 50 gold and works on Magic and Rare items. It keeps the number of affixes and rerolls them. Fortune favors Encounter Damage and Echo. Ruin favors Damage and Ailments. Tempest favors Speed and Recovery. Ember favors elemental damage. Bulwark favors defensive stats. Bramble and Warding join the pool in Desolation.

The first reforge has a 5% chance to destroy the item. That chance rises by 5 points each time the same item is reforged. Enchanting keeps one selected affix while the others reroll. Quality stats survive both.

Runs can target a boss, farm an act or start an unlocked activity. Farm Zone pack choices change the reward focus. Ghost packs favor jewelry and trinkets. Undead packs favor weapons and armor. Goblin packs favor gold and can also drop jewelry.

A bounty shows its target and reward before you accept it. Hunt searches for 10 seconds, then starts the fight. Win to collect the reward. Dying loses that contract. Rangers can Scout for a different bounty and can find tameable companions during searches.

Guided Hunt has no posted target. You follow three clues and use Mastery checks to shape the hunt and its possible rewards.

Ranger companions fight beside the Ranger and provide a passive bonus. The Wolf is available first. Other companions can be found during bounty hunts, including queued hunts, and must be tamed when found.

Menagerie pets are separate from Ranger companions and can be used by every class. Pet ownership, bond ranks, clues and names are account-wide within the same mode. The summoned pet is chosen per character. Time summoned raises bond, and duplicate pet finds also advance it.

Each loadout can favor up to five stats. These choices affect item score, auto-equip, Vault decisions and Bloodpit auto-resolve. Change them when a build values a stat that the basic score would miss.

Normal kills add one relic charge and a boss fills all charges. Use a relic manually or set it to trigger When Full, On Boss or On Expiry. Duplicate relics raise the rank. Stored charges stay with the relic when you swap it.

Click blood wisps during boss fights for healing. Break jars for gold and a chance at an item. Claim starfalls for their item before they disappear. Some shrines and temporary buffs also need to be clicked.

The full Delve and Bloodpit open with Desolation. Delve stores loot in a limited bag. Extract to keep selected items. Dying loses the bag. A guardian appears every 20 depths and defeating it creates a checkpoint.

Guided Descent gives you three persistent tunnels with branching maps, checkpoints and tunnel bonuses. Guided Descent waits when you leave it. Auto-Delve is the version used by the Idle Queue.

Bloodpit is a timed Rite that turns kills into a choice of boons. Longer Rites can offer more boons. Pending Bloodpit loot can hide junk, compare gear scores and auto-resolve using the active loadout's Loot Priorities. Auto-resolve always protects uniques, artifacts and set pieces.

The Idle Queue chains farms, bosses, acts and unlocked activities. It can switch loadouts and repeat. Offline combat is an approximation based on your saved gear, skills, mastery, supported effects and queue rules. If a target is too hard, it can step down to an area you can farm instead of making no progress.

Rewards that need a choice are stored as Pending Rewards. Offline effectiveness starts low, rises through active play and Mastery, then tapers during a long absence. Arcade applies an extra offline reduction. Epoch has a longer offline window. Supplies that were active when you closed the game count at half strength.

Clear Hell to open Desolation. Your character, gear, gold, skills and relics carry over into another Normal, Nightmare and Hell campaign with stronger enemies and gear. Boots and a second ring unlock immediately. New stats and the Bramble and Warding crafting shards enter the item pool. Gloves unlock later in the Everdeep.

Epoch is a separate character mode with real-time combat, no fast-forward, harder enemies, rarer loot, higher stat caps and a longer offline window. At level 50 you choose one of three class Ascendancies. Conquering Desolation opens a second relic slot. Epoch also has uncapped Delve depth and its own artifact chase. Epoch gear and banks do not mix with Arcade.

Event Mastery tracks the activities you complete. Skill Mastery grows as a skill deals damage online or offline. Each skill reaches mastery 100 and activates its capstone there. Augments unlock at their listed mastery levels. Augment slots open at mastery 5, 50 and 80, with up to three attached to a skill.

Mastery milestones add to your Mastery Pool and can award Mastery Seals. The Accessory Forge uses gold and seals to add or improve class accessory lines. The Journal records uniques, sets, artifacts, creatures and run records. Achievements award Astral points for the Constellation.

In the desktop app, Mini mode keeps the fight in a small always-on-top window. Use the restore button to return to the full game. Drag that button to move the window and use the corner grip to resize it. Press Ctrl+Shift+M if you need to restore the full window.