Because there is a character wipe with the new season, if I’m close to finishing the campaign, should I just focus on that and get all the altars, and avoid everything else? I don’t see much point leveling up and planning out my character build and obsessing over equipment if it’s all going away in a week.
Short answer: your character wont be wiped and you can continue to play with them. Focus on finishing campaign, map explored 100%, and all altars visited before participating in Season 1.
Long answer: to participate in seasonal content, you will need to create a new character. Assuming you have already completed the campaign once before, that new character has the option to skip the campaign and get right into the seasonal content. Additionally, progress you’ve made towards specifically the altars of Lilith and the map fog of war will carry over. Nothing else will, including additional renown.
Your main character will be forever playable in the “Eternal” realm, which is to say everything the game has right now. But generally people enjoy starting over every season and checking out new and fun experiences.
Renown does carry over I thought. They said if you found everything before the season started, you would have a lvl 1 character with 9 potions and 10 skill points to spend so you could start smashing the lvling really quickly. You don’t get that without renown to at least lvl three carrying over. I doubt you will get to spend paragon points in immediately though.