Everyone knows the Butcher from the Diablo series and the terrifying boss is also back in Diablo 4. We explain where and when he spawns and what you can do to defeat him.
Diablo 4 is stupid fun and players all around the globe are having the best time grinding to level 100 and perfecting their builds. One of the highlights of Diablo 4 is of course the many different bosses, especially the new world bosses. However, one particular enemy is killing more players than any other boss in the game: The Butcher.
In previous installments of Diablo, the Butcher was a regular boss with his own dungeon and boss arena. That has changed in Diablo 4. Now, the Butcher is a random encounter – a ridiculously hard one, though.
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Where & When The Butcher Spawns
In Diablo 4 the Butcher is a random encounter in dungeons. Sadly, there is no exact place or time, he will just randomly appear in a dungeon and start to hunt down the player. It doesn't matter if it is a normal dungeon, a whisper dungeon that grants grim favors, or a nightmare dungeon.
Every time you do a dungeon, there is a slim chance of the Butcher appearing out of nowhere. Sometimes you won't see him for days and sometimes he will destroy you for several dungeons in a row. So encountering the Butcher is purely based on good luck... or bad luck. After all, the Butcher killed almost 6 million players in only the first week after Diablo 4's launch:
With over 276 million hours spent in #DiabloIV already, it's been one Hell of a launch.
— Diablo (@Diablo) June 12, 2023
This is only the beginning pic.twitter.com/D1OCWZ8BrZ
How To Defeat The Butcher
Well, I am sorry, but there is no easy answer to that. The Butcher is very fast and has a huge health pool. And by fast I mean faaaaaaaast – you can't outrun him and even with mobility skills you will most likely only be able to escape, if you make it up a cliff or a ladder or can manage to leave the dungeon.
Fighting him on the other hand also isn't easy. The Butcher has very fast attacks and can stun you, and even if you manage to get some distance from him, he can still use his hook. And, as with every boss, the Butcher's health bar has two breaking points at which he will drop health potions, but also get stronger. Additionally, he can also not be frozen or slowed and is basically immune to status effects until you fill the meter below his health bar, which will stun him for a couple of seconds.
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If you want to defeat the Butcher, you need very high single target damage and good defense. Your build should be very strong already, so we wouldn't recommend fighting him until you reached endgame and have a decent build with good aspects and uniques supporting your main damage-dealing abilities and providing good defense and healing.
Since the Butcher is purely focused on melee combat and superfast, it is particularly hard to kite him as a ranged character. In our experience, tanky melee builds are best to defeat him. So Barbarians and Druids with endgame builds should be fine, as well as twisting blade melee Rogues. If you are focused on ranged attacks, make sure to have a good amount of healing and mobility and try to make use of every opening when the Butcher gets stunned or is stuck in other enemies or geometry (though you have to be very lucky for that).
What Do You Get For Defeating The Butcher?
Is it even worth defeating the Butcher in Diablo 4? Well, not really... Sure, it does give us a certain feeling of satisfaction if we manage to kill him, but the loot he drops is pretty meh. If you are lucky, you will get one legendary drop and a few yellows, but that's it.
However, there is a chance that he drops his cleaver as a mount trophy (for me, it dropped on the third kill). But even though it is pretty awesome to get a trophy for killing the Butcher that you can put on display on your mount, in our opinion it just isn't worth the trouble. Just take a look at the trophy yourself:
Butcher's Cleaver Trophy. Seems a bit too tiny... doesn't it?
by u/Traditional-Visit746 in diablo4
And that's everything there is to know about the Butcher in Diablo 4. How many times did he slaughter you, and have you managed to get a kill yourself already?
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