Diablo 4 Season 8 will be officially released on April 29. The theme of Season 8 is Boss Powers, so we have to deal with all the bosses. Farming Bosses will become the main activity for players in the next season.
The boss system will usher in changes in Season 8. The boss system has been restructured. The endgame boss and ladder boss are grouped into a new structure called Lair Boss and divided into three difficulty levels.
Lair Boss Ladder

To challenge Lair Boss, players need to be at least in Torment I difficulty. Lair Boss Ladder is divided into three levels: Initiate, Greater, and Exalted. The higher the level, the better the loot you get after defeating the boss.
Initiate Lair Bosses
- Grigoire
- Beast in The Ice
- Varshan
- Lord Zir
- Urivar (Vessel of Hatred)
Greater Lair Bosses
- Duriel
- Andariel
- Harbinger of Hatred (Vessel of Hatred)
Exalted Lair Bosses
- Belial
How Do Lair Boss Keys Work?
In Season 8, you no longer need to collect various boss materials to challenge bosses. You can challenge them at any time. However, after you defeat them, you will find that the rewards they dropped are very scarce. That’s because you need to use keys to open specific treasure chests to get the real rewards.
The keys you need are the summons needed to summon bosses in previous seasons. If a team defeats the boss, each member needs a key to claim the reward.
If you die in the process of challenging the boss, you will not lose any materials. These materials will only be consumed after you open the box.
In the treasure chest, besides the usual unique items, gold and materials, the Initiate Boss will also drop materials needed for Greater Boss, as well as Shard of Agony or Stygian Stone.
Here are the keys needed to unlock Lair Boss chests, as well as some of the items dropped in the chest:
- Varshan: 12x Malignant Heart (Required Key), Shard of Agony or Stygian Stone (Drop)
- Grigoire: 12x Living Steel (Required Key), Shard of Agony or Stygian Stone (Drop)
- Beast in the Ice: 12x Distilled Fear (Required Key), Stygian Stone or Pincushioned Doll (Drop)
- Lord Zir: 12x Exquisite Blood (Required Key), Pincushioned Doll or Stygian Stone (Drop)
- Urivar: 12x Judicator’s Mask (Required Key), Abhorrent Heart or Stygian Stone (Drop)
- Duriel: 4x Shard of Agony (Required Key)
- Andariel: 4x Pinchioned Doll (Required Key)
- Harbinger of Hatred: 4x Abhorrent Heart (Required Key)
- Belial: 4x Betrayer’s Husk (Required Key)
Each Stygian Stone can be transformed into a Greater key, which is very useful, and each Stygian Stone is worth 150,000 Diablo 4 Gold. It is almost impossible to get Stygian Stone from other places except this way, so don’t waste it.
Materials Drop
- Malignant Heart: Dropped from Whispers Events or various Helltides Events on the map
- Living Steel: Helltides Chests
- Distilled Fear: Nightmare Dungeons
- Exquisite Blood: Dropped from Elites in Legion Events, Helltides and World Bosses
- Judicator’s Mask: Rewarded from Helltides Events, Whispers Tree and World Bosses
- Shard of Agony: Varshan or Grigoire
- Pincushioned Doll: Lord Zir or Beast in the Ice
- Abhorrent Heart: Urivar
- Betrayer’s Husk: Belial’s Ambush
Different materials will drop from different bosses. Besides farming bosses to obtain materials, you can also choose to trade with other players, or use Stygian Stone to convert them into the materials you need.
Lair Boss Loot System
Lair Boss Loot System has not changed much compared to Season 7. Boss loot pools work as follows:
- Each Lair Boss has its own loot pool, which contains both unique and mythic unique items.
- The first unique item dropped from a Lair Boss comes from that boss’s specific loot pool, and additional unique items have a 50% chance of coming from a specific loot pool or a universal unique item pool.
- When playing in a group, a boss has a 1/3 chance of dropping an additional unique item from its specific pool for each additional party member.
- Under Torment 4 World Difficulty, boss chests usually contain 5 unique items.
Belial’s Ambush

After killing a Lair Boss, there is a small chance that Belial’s Ambush will appear. The loot for defeating Belial’s Ambush is:
- Second round of loot from Lair Boss you just killed
- Betrayer’s Husk, used to summon Belial in Exalted difficulty
Killing Belial’s Ambush that comes up suddenly does not require any summoning materials to get rewards, and if you are killed by Belial’s Ambush, you will not lose anything.
Belial’s Ambush is a smaller version of Belial. Like Belial, he can also use Blood and Poison attacks, and his damage is also high. During the battle with him, use your movement speed to avoid his large-scale attacks, and use elixirs when necessary to enhance your survivability.
In Diablo Season 8, killing these Lair Bosses will not only get gold, unique items, and other rewards, but you will also unlock Boss Powers when you first kill them. After unlocking Boss Powers, you need to collect materials through Apparition Incursions to level up Boss Powers.
Please note that the drops from Belial you kill in Apparition Incursions activity differ from the drops from Belial in Lair Boss.














