Purpose of Nightmare Dungeons
The principal reason for running Nightmare Dungeons, as many of you know, is to obtain and level up Glyphs, which can then be inserted into your Paragon Boards to boost stats. This activity is essentially analogous to legendary gems in Diablo 3, where, after killing the Rift Guardian to obtain the gem, you then speak with Urshi to level it up. In fact, Blizzard recently announced an upcoming change to sigils, which will boost XP and also allow players to teleport to the dungeon entrance. This will obviously improve the efficiency of farming Nightmare Dungeons, resulting in even greater similarity to Greater Rifts in D3.
Difficulty
The difficulty levels for Nightmare Dungeons range from 1 to 100. The higher the difficulty, the more glyph upgrade points will be rewarded upon successful completion. So, what difficulty should you be running? There are a few factors to consider when answering this question.
The first is that the difficulty level of a Nightmare Dungeon is not necessarily consistent with your character level. For example, a level 80 character might be able to comfortably clear only a level 30 to 40 dungeon when running solo. At the same time, a group of level 70 characters might be able to do the same by working together to take down the tough elites.
The second consideration is the efficiency of leveling up your glyphs. It’s certainly worthwhile running enough dungeons in the early stages of your endgame to collect all the glyphs you need for your Paragon Boards. However, after that, it may be better to wait until you’ve leveled up your character some more so you can run higher level dungeons and get more glyph XP per run.
A final consideration is how much Sigil Powder you have. The higher the sigil level, the more resources will be required to craft it at the Occultist.
Quality
It is also true that not all Nightmare Dungeons are of equal quality, because they vary with regard to layout, affixes, and objectives. Consequently, some dungeons are more worthwhile than others. The list below is an example of what may be considered the S and A Tier dungeons sigils currently in the game for the purpose of leveling glyphs. These are the ones you want to be sure to save and eventually use. On the other hand, lower quality sigil drops can be salvaged for sigil powder to use to craft better quality ones.
S Tier Nightmare Sigils
• Aldurwood
• Maulwood
A Tier Nightmare Sigils
• Blind Burrows
• Lost Archives
• Cultist Refuge
• Prison of Caldeum
• Serpent’s Lair
The more the merrier
Although Nightmare Dungeons can be done solo, it is ideal to do them in a group, if possible. That’s because party members can split up and clear the dungeon more quickly. As mentioned before, running in a group may also allow players to complete dungeons at a higher difficulty level compared to what they could handle running solo.
It’s also possible to carry lower-level players in these dungeons as well. The recommended strategy is for the higher-level player(s) to clear about 90% of the dungeon first. Then the lower-level player(s) can teleport to their party members inside the dungeon so they can share in the glyph XP, etc.
Questions
I hope this info was helpful for at least some of you. If you have any questions or feedback, please leave your remarks in the comments section below.