One Diablo 4 player found out the hard way why The Butcher has a reputation as one of the game's most challenging bosses when their cheesy battle strategy ended in tragedy. Beyond appearing in Diablo 4, The Butcher made its first appearance in the original Diablo as the game's first boss and is described as a "bloated and grotesque" creature with a love for inflicting pain on its victims.
The Butcher has made a massive comeback in Diablo 4, albeit as a secret boss that appears randomly instead of being found in a fixed location. The random encounters often catch players unprepared to the point that The Butcher is responsible for nearly 2% of all Diablo 4 deaths in spite of the fact that the encounter is a rare one. Some players are even able to complete the main storyline without ever encountering this challenging boss.
A Reddit user going by the username 905530940 shared their ill-fated Diablo 4 encounter with The Butcher, where they attempted to "juke" the boss by running around a pillar to avoid its attacks. The player only manages to avoid The Butcher for a few seconds as the boss follows them around the pillar but then doubles back and executes a powerful charge attack that stops the player in their tracks. The Butcher wastes no time teleporting away moments after killing the unlucky player, presumably on the way to claim the life of another unlucky soul wandering around in a dungeon somewhere. Perhaps they will be better prepared to face this tough Diablo 4 opponent by arming themselves with some knowledge in the unfortunate event that they encounter it.
Unfortunately, players have no control over when they encounter The Butcher in Diablo 4, but one can rest easy in campaign-related dungeons and the overworld since The Butcher will never spawn in these locations. Also, The Butcher will never spawn more than once in the same dungeon. That said, at least one Diablo 4 player has found a reliable way to defeat this challenging boss, but the method relies on having an elevated platform and powerful ranged attacks, so it may not always work. On the other hand, it seems silly to build one's character entirely around a rare random encounter; doing so might hold the player back in other ways.
Another cheesy method to beat The Butcher was discovered by a Diablo 4 player by the name of VelvetThunderClap. The grotesque boss seems to have trouble with doorways, and this player managed to get The Butcher locked against a wall, at which point they could simply chip away at its health using an appropriately long weapon.
Diablo 4 is available now on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
