Check Out this Quick Guide for Increasing Your CR
Important: This quick guide has been written for those who already know the base mechanics of Diablo Immortal. If you are a brand new player, then there will be countless other guides which will include more basic information about how the game works. Published 29th July 2022.
In Diablo Immortal, a character’s ability to fight on any difficulty level is determined by their Combat Rating, or “CR” for short. This single statistic is formulated from things like:
- Equipped Gear & Upgrade Level;
- Socketed Normal and Legendary Gems;
- Your Helliquary Level;
- Upgrades to the Legacy of the Horadrim Vessels [Click to visit my guide on this]
- Other Things That Can Help You… (Listed at the bottom)
This short guide will give you some information about the kind of tasks/activities you can do to increase your CR at a good rate, but there may be more stuff you can do. I am not an expert, just a player. I’ve written this as a response to more than one person asking in our Discord how they can improve their CR.
Before I go on, there is one important point I have to make:
Be Patient – It is not always a quick process to upgrade gear/gems and you will often hit slumps where you may only make gains of just a few CR points a day, and other times where you could add several hundred. It is unpredictable (unless you’re a whale who buys legendary crests and farms rifts!)
Equipped Gear
The goal of any player wanting to increase their CR, as quickly as possible, is to pick up legendary items for all the equipment slots. The game is designed to allow for legendary gear to be dropped by almost all creatures, chests and mission/quest rewards, BUT you can improve your chances by doing the following activities:
Dungeons:
This is one of the best ways to collect legendary gear. It is very common for the end boss of a dungeon to drop legendary gear, including Set Pieces. With a good party, or high level chars running you through, you could easily farm some nice gear in a short amount of time.
Bestiary:
Killing any creature in the game can result in the drop of a “Monstrous Essence”. Collect 10 of these and you can go to the nearest Safe Zone and use the Bestiary altar to decipher pages. Although you can only decipher up to three pages a day, you can claim your rewards as many times as you collect 10 essences. I have found this to be a good source of legendaries.
Shadow Contracts:
Each day, Bartender Bailey, in the Wolf City Tavern in Westmarch, offers Shadow players 1 or more contracts to complete. Among the rewards for completing these contracts is often a legendary item.
The Rarities and Antiquities Merchant:
This fellow, Yakin, can be found in Westmarch, along the southeastern end of Rakkis Plaza. His services will become available as you advance the main questline. You can spend extra gold with this guy to randomly generate items, for money. I advise only doing this a maximum of 10 times per day, per item category, as his prices go up after this point and it is really uneconomical. I once found 3 legendaries in the first set of 10 items I bought, so it can happen!
World Events & Bosses:
Each area of the game has it’s own world event to complete (Purge the Corruption, Call of the Ancients, Tax Collector, to name a few), or maybe a world boss (Blood Rose, Lord Martanos, Ancient Nightmare, Sand Golem, Hydra etc.) to vanquish. These attract a high drop rate for legendaries too.
Mob Farming:
The drop rate for normal creatures is infinitesimally small. However, when you’re out killing and you see an Ancient Elite (orange/brown icon on map)… KILL IT. The drop rate for legendaries from these creatures is high.
Note: It is important to note that Charms will also provide a CR boost, especially if you level their abilities up to.
Upgrading Your Gear
Now you have legendary equipment, you need to make sure that you upgrade it as often as possible. To do this, you will need the services of any of the blacksmiths around Sanctuary. I am hoping that, as you’ve been playing, you’ve been picking up all the loot dropped by the mobs and using the blacksmith to salvage it into scraps, dust or even glowing shards (from unwanted legendaries). You will need every piece of salvage you can get your hands on so please don’t dismiss those white, common loot drops…. you will see over time that you will never get enough!
Upgrading legendary gear requires all of it, but Glowing Shards are the hardest to get. It is largely only obtainable by salvaging legendary gear that you’ve picked up but not needed as you already have it, or it is inferior. There is also a recurring quest in the Dark Wood to fight your own dark shadow which rewards a players with a glowing shard each time.
In Westmarch, there is a vendor by the blacksmith, Charsi, who can convert lesser materials into higher class materials. This is a good service, but be careful not to overspend on scraps into dust, as then you’ll have to go collecting so much more scrap to upgrade stuff – you’ll need a good quantity of both.
Also, secondary gear requires Enigmatic Crystals which are mainly sourced from completing Challenge Rifts, but can also be a gift on the Battle Pass. Do not forget to upgrade secondary gear alongside primary!
Gems, Gems and Even Better Gems
Your CR will improve dramatically if you improve your gems, especially the legendaries.
Normal Gems
These gems are dropped by most of the creatures in the game but they are fairly rare to get. There are a couple of things you can do to improve your discovery of these little beauties:
Hilts Vendor:
The Hilts vendor in Westmarch allows 10 normal gems to be bought from him each week. Watch out for his special offers page as there is the option to buy 1 or 2 extra now and again.
Party of Four:
Just being in a party of four, with three other people, will give an automatic buff the the percentage chance of normal gems being dropped. Unlike other versions of Diablo, however, you will only ever see rank 1 normal gems drop.
Hidden Lairs:
These mini-dungeons, that randomly spawn in all areas of the game, are a fantastic way to boost your gem collection. For the first run through in a day, you can make around 6 normal gems just by doing the side quests that pop up as you go through, and by killing the boss at the end.
Legendary Gems
This is a little more complicated and I won’t go into the higher levels of these gems. By the time anyone gets there, they’ll probably know this game better than the developers or have moved on to Diablo 4 (out next year!). Legendary gems are predominantly sourced from Elder Rifts and/or can be Crafted by an Apprentice Jeweler. Levelling a legendary gem requires other legendary gems and this process gives a very healthy boost to CR. The problem is that it is not as easy to get them. The Battle Pass also gives some legendary gems out as rewards, more so if it is the Empowered Battle Pass.
Elder Rifts
There is a possibility for a legendary gem to drop from the end chest of an Elder Rift with no input, but I’ve only seen this a couple of times and not enough to actually upgrade another gem at this rate. What is needed are Eternal Legendary Crests to augment the rift. Each eternal crest will output a random legendary gem at the end of a rift, and up to 10 of these purple crests can be added to the rift before it begins. These can be obtained:
Buying Them from the In-game Store:
I wouldn’t spend money on them but many do.
Hilts Vendor:
This guy sells these for hilts at a rate of 1 per month (such a joke)!
Crest Merchant:
By the Elder and Challenge Rift entrances, is a merchant called Jondo Mauren. You can exchange Eternal Orbs (purchased only through microtransactions) for Eternal Legendary Crests.
Warband Voucher: (needs confirming)
I haven’t looked into this but there is a new mechanic whereby some warband raid awards a voucher that can be used to allow a player to buy an Eternal Legendary Crest from the Crest Merchant for platinum, rather than Eternal Orbs.
Crafting Legendary Gems
Alongside the miniscule chance that a legendary gem will naturally drop in an Elder Rifts, players can earn “Runes” and “Fading Embers” more easily. Beside the Elder Rift entrance is a Fading Ember Merchant, where a player can convert his embers into runes (for a price) and then these runes can be used by an Apprentice Jeweler to craft either specific 1-star legendary gems, or traded for random 1 or 2 star tradable gems. We don’t need to worry about the trading aspect here.
The player can choose which legendary gems he thinks will compliment his character and its build. The rest of the legendaries collected can be broken down, again by the jeweller, and used as materials to upgrade those socketed gems. Each time a legendary gem is upgraded, it will say how much of an increase to CR it will give. The higher the upgrade, the higher the CR boost.
The Helliquary
Each time your Helliquary is upgraded with Refined Scoria, This item gives an ever-increasing amount of CR, clearly visible on the item description.
Scoria is obtained by either killing the Helliquary bosses, or as gifts from the battlepass. This has to refined, using the services of a blacksmith.
Collecting and Upgrading the Legacy of the Horadrim Vessels
I have already covered most of the information regarding the LotH vessels in another guide found here.
For the purposes of this guide, the more you use the Culling Stones to upgrade the vessels, the higher the bonuses received and CR gained. I do not know how much CR is gained from boosting these types of stats and I apologise for not being more knowledgeable. What I will say though is that any stat boost will help you to kill stuff faster and earn more loot/cash for upgraded gear/gems.
Other Things That Can Help You…
Advancing Up Through the Paragon Levels
No matter what you CR is, you will still be able to fight at some level of the game and level up your character.
Once you have surpassed level 60, you will start to level into Paragons. Each time you gain a new paragon level, you will be awarded 1 paragon point to put into any of the paragon trees. Doing this will give you small, but cumulative bonuses to your characters statistics, including CR. This may be inaccurate, will investigate further.
Increasing You Shadow Rank
After being inducted into the Shadows, whether you decide to be in a Dark Clan or not, you are able to perform daily tasks, advance through the Path of Blood, raid the immortal vault, take on Shadow Contracts and/or attend the daily Assembly – to give and receive Blessings.
Doing these daily tasks can award you “Shadow Marks”, which are basically points which build up and allow you to continually increase your Shadow Rank. Each time you gain a rank, you will given a base bonus of 1% to attack and defence. So, if you reach rank 10, which in game terms is “Watcher III”, you will receive a 10% attack and 10% defence bonus to your character.
Note: If you are a member of a Dark Clan, doing all the above Shadow tasks also adds points to the Clan, which is really important for the clan leader boards and positionings for Shadow Wars. This is a different topic and one I won’t be covering here.
As I said at the start, I am not an expert and apologise if I have either missed out information or got it slightly wrong. Please feel free to let me know either via the Contact form, or Discord, if important changes need to be made.