Season 2 — Season of Blood — launched October 17, 2023 and reshaped how Diablo 4 handled endgame boss content. Five named encounters anchored the new Path to the Endgame system, each gated by a different summoning material farmed from a feeder activity. This page is preserved as a historical reference for that lineup. The current expansion is Lord of Hatred (April 28, 2026), and the live season is Season 13: Season of Reckoning; for the current meta and live carry coverage, visit the live Diablo 4 hub.
The boss-by-boss walkthrough below recaps each Season 2 encounter's lair, summoning chain, and the mechanic that defined its fight.
Grigoire patrolled the Hall of the Penitent in Hawezar and demanded Living Steel for entry. Players farmed Living Steel from Tortured Offerings during Helltides, then turned the chamber into a damage check against rolling lightning waves. The boss was a steady source of Shards of Agony, the component every Duriel hunter needed before they could touch the King of Maggots.
Lightning resistance was the difference between a clean kill and a wipe. Builds that stacked Crackling Energy or relied on shock procs treated the chamber as a buffet; everyone else respected the dodges or died to the chained discharge.
Lord Zir lived in the Darkened Way under the Fractured Peaks. His summon was Exquisite Blood, dropped by World Bosses and Legion Events on the seasonal Realm — the open-world content the season was built around. Zir punished slow movement with a series of charge attacks and a blood-pool denial pattern that forced melee builds to learn his cycle rather than tank through it.
His loot table fed back into the Duriel chain through Mucus-Slick Egg components, making him a required stop in the path to King of Maggots farms.
Varshan was the returning seasonal antagonist from Season 1, resurrected and stationed in the Malignant Burrow near the Tree of Whispers. Summoning him meant collecting Malignant Body parts — Heart, Gut, Eye, and Tongue — from Grotesque Debtors that spawned during Whispers of the Dead grinds.
The fight was an adaptability check. Varshan summoned ethereal copies and rotated mechanics between phases, rewarding builds with cleave damage and punishing pure single-target loadouts. His drops fed Duriel through the Mucus-Slick Egg pipeline.
The Beast in the Ice waited inside the Glacial Fissure in the Fractured Peaks, behind a crafted Nightmare Sigil that required Distilled Fear and Sigil Powder. Distilled Fear came from Nightmare Dungeons at Tier 30 and above, which made the Beast the boss with the highest material floor in the lineup.
Cold resistance and movement uptime were the price of admission. The Beast's primary mechanic was a frozen-arena denial pattern that punished players who stood still on cooldowns.
Duriel returned from Diablo 2 as the season's prestige target. His lair was the Gaping Crevasse in Kehjistan, and the summoning cost was deliberately steep: two Mucus-Slick Eggs from Varshan and two Shards of Agony from Grigoire per attempt.
He earned the cost. Duriel was the only reliable Uber Unique source in Season 2, with The Grandfather, Doombringer, Andariel's Visage, Harlequin Crest, Melted Heart of Selig, Ahavarion Spear of Lycander, and Ring of Starless Skies all rolling out of his loot table. Build optimization centred on his burrow-and-spike pattern: kite the burrow telegraph, eat the spikes with mitigation up, and burn the window between phases.
The Season 2 lineup did not get retired. All five bosses still live in the active Lair Boss roster as of Season 13: Season of Reckoning. Patch 1.4's Loot Reborn rework (May 2024) consolidated summon costs into a flat material count per boss and removed the Beast's two-step Sigil-Powder crafting. Tormented Echo variants now sit on top of each fight — higher-tier re-skins that cost roughly three times the standard summon and guarantee a Mythic Unique floor.
The roster expanded. Echo of Andariel joined the rotation at Patch 1.4, Belial arrived with the Vessel of Hatred expansion in October 2024, and Lord of Hatred (April 2026) launched four more: Astaroth via the Recurring Nightmare War Plan, Bartuc inside the Horde mode, Urivar in the new Nahantu region, and the Bloodied Butcher in Gea Kul.
Returning players running the live ladder can browse our Diablo 4 boss carries for current Tormented kills, or stock up on boss summoning materials if the open-world feeder grind is the part of the loop you want to skip.
Yes. Grigoire, Lord Zir, Echo of Varshan, the Beast in the Ice, and Duriel remain in the active Lair Boss roster as of Season 13 (Season of Reckoning, April 28, 2026). Their summon materials and lair locations are unchanged; only the mat costs were consolidated at Patch 1.4.
Patch 1.4 (May 2024) rebranded Uber Uniques as Mythic Uniques. The drops are the same items — The Grandfather, Doombringer, Harlequin Crest, Melted Heart of Selig and the rest — but the loot category is now called Mythic. Tormented Echo variants of the Season 2 bosses guarantee at least one Mythic on kill.
The Gaping Crevasse in Kehjistan, south of the Ruins of Eridu waypoint. The lair entrance is a fixed waypoint on the seasonal realm and has not moved across patches. Summoning still requires Mucus-Slick Eggs and Shards of Agony, sourced from Varshan and Grigoire respectively.
The framing was retired. Season 13's equivalent is the Lair Boss / Tormented Boss ladder with the Boss Powers system (introduced Season 12) layered on top. The progression goal is the same — farm feeder activity, summon boss, chase Mythic Uniques — but the system has its own UI and progression hooks now.
Most players ranked the Beast in the Ice as the toughest gate because of the Tier 30+ Nightmare Dungeon requirement for Distilled Fear, not the fight itself. Mechanically, Duriel's burrow pattern was the most damage-checked: low-mitigation builds failed his second phase even when they cleared every other boss in the lineup.
For Mythic Unique drops, yes — Tormented variants of Duriel, Andariel, and the original Season 2 lineup are still the highest-density Mythic farms in the game. For class-specific Uniques, the newer Lord of Hatred bosses (Astaroth, Bartuc, Urivar, the Bloodied Butcher) carry more of the relevant loot tables for Paladin and Warlock builds.
