loot boxes is not entirely necessary to reach Diablo Immortal's highest character status.
Wudijo, a Diablo server, and they did it without spending a single penny.
SImply accessing the immortal boss fight presents an enormous challenge in itself. First, your character has to reach level 43, and be invited to the elusive Shadow Clan. This means completing the Bilefen questline, then going to the Westmarch Tavern and speaking to the Mysterious Patron. You will be entered into a lottery, and if you win, you will enter a battle with the three Ancient Champions – defeat them, and you'll be accepted to the Shadow Clan.
Your clan then has to become one of the top ten on your server; grinding the events Akeba's challenge, Path of Blood, Raid the Vault, and Shadow War can help raise your clan's rank.
But even then, the work isn't over. Your clan has to fight ten battles in a PvP event called the Rite of Exile, and win at least six of those battles before you can challenge the immortal. The immortal can be either a player nominated from within the current, ruling immortal clan, or – if it's a fresher server without an elected immortal – a highly powered NPC, which you, your teammates, and of other clans who graduated from the Rite of Exile, have to work to take down. If the immortal is beaten, the surviving challengers then battle each other – the clan that wins becomes the immortals, and reigns at the top of the server until the process repeats.
It's long and arduous, and typically demands the kinds of upgrades and gear only accessible through in-game purchases. Wudijo, however, has managed to reach immortal status without buying anything.
But there is a significant caveat: although Wudijo as an individual player does not use in-game purchases, this is not true for the other players in his clan. Although it is possible to acquire the immortal status without microtransactions, it seemingly requires a lot of cooperation and from a clan of paying players.
"As I mentioned in the video, obviously not my entire clan is full F2P," says Wudijo in a comment on his YouTube channel. "For the concerns that this highlights F2P being viable in this game, that's obviously untrue. The game is designed to move the biggest spenders to the top of all leaderboards by default, and being competitive at all is almost impossible without that."
Despite the criticised the game for restricting mission and character progression through microtransactions.