During the early access beta and beta for Diablo IV, there were two different kinds of events I ended up running into. In one type you could either solo or be joined by a couple of players. The other one was more of a world event that takes quite a few players being higher level to kill.

Normal Events

While running around you sometimes come across these giant red circles on the ground. They are events that can be started right away either solo or with others. I’ve found all of them can be done solo on each of the different classes during the early access beta.

Perhaps the funniest thing about these is you can encounter all different kinds. In some of them, you are defending an object(s) from getting destroyed. Others you have to kill so many waves. For one of them, you even needed to sit in ritual circles to fill up the blood meter.

During one of these events featured above I had to kill off the creatures that were channeling protection on the bigger creature. Once they were dead you then could attack the main creature for that event. That was perhaps one of the more basic ones.

In another, there is an ancient obelisk that needs to be filled with blood before the timer runs out. Once you start the event creatures also start to spawn.

You however don’t feed it the blood of creatures you kill. No that would be easy. It wants your blood. So you have to stand on the different little platforms long enough as the blood slowly streams into the pillar before moving on to the next one.

An event like this would be quite easy if you had four players. Then each person could just stand on their platform. Despite that I was still able to solo this it was, however, a bit harder when I was not on a ranged class to deal with longer-range creatures since leaving the platform meant time I was not putting blood into the obelisk.

There were also a few different ones that had you defend something like a craven. It was first started by killing off a bigger creature. These can be a bit tricky depending on how spread out the objects you need to protect are.

This is another one where having two or more people depending on how many things you have to stop from getting destroyed would just make life a bit easier.

I also found I was running into these quite often. For some reason I always found people looking to go around them if they were blocking the path forward. I guess people just were not into running these as often.

During one random event, I stumbled into. I noticed there was an insane amount of creatures up. Like enough to kill even me on my best character. There was also a player who seemed to be trying to kite the massive nest that turned into a death ball.

I have no idea if they just showed up or if they started it and then became overwhelmed. Perhaps he just decided to kite till the timer ran out. I ran into the event with 45 seconds or so left on the timer. I just start going crazy killing everything more so in an attempt to stay alive than in my desire to reach the max reward for the event.

Shortly after that another player also showed up and between the three of us, we almost hit max reward before it ended. If I had just shown up a bit sooner that would have been an easy win. I had no time to even think about getting a screenshot during that event.

I think this also highlights just the fun nature of these smaller events. You might start them off solo but soon find out everyone in that area came rushing over to join in on the fight.

Since loot drops separately for everyone it was no big deal how many people joined. You were getting the same rewards as far as I could tell if you solo these events or end up having a lot of random players join in on the fun.

Why These Smaller Events?

At least for the normal events besides getting a chest of loot depending on how you performed you also got Murmuring Obols . Those are a currency you get to spend to gamble at a shop for items.

This seems to be the primary way at least from what we got to test during the early access beta of getting Obols by running events. I did get some from doing certain quests. That was however quite a rare reward to get and not something like these events that you can grind.

World Event Ashava The Pestilent

On two different occasions during early access beta, I noticed when looking at the map that a countdown was happening for what looked to be world events. When I showed up a giant pool of liquid with some nasty-looking flesh was around it. There were also quite a few players waiting around for it to start.

Sadly both times I tried this the random people I joined with ended up failing to beat Ashava The Pestilent. I did at least learn a bit about the event and even changed up my tactics in how I want to run these in the future.

These events are marked as being level 25+. So my first time when I might have only been level 17 I was not shocked I not only got killed often. I like many others during that event was usually getting killed before we even got any damage in.

Thankfully there is a revival point not that far away. So you could just keep running back if no one revives you there. You however did take a 10% armor decay damage on each death so all my gear was broken by the end of the time we had to defeat it before it ran away.

I could also take the damage much better. If I had to I could burn some health potions if other defensive items or skills did not protect me enough. I also had my flame shield that I would pop any moment I felt I was in danger.

While trying to be careful to not get killed on a few occasions I got a bit closer to getting some other damage in. While I could put the hydras in for damage dealing. My other attacks were not long enough if I wanted to stay out of the range of Ashava The Pestilent’s damage.

Ashava The Pestilent also moves around quite a lot so you got to stay on top of things. It seemed like a few times it even was going after me. Thankfully I had the teleport spell and would use that to keep myself from getting killed when that happened.

I only ran these with my sorcerer and now that I have mine up to level 25 I could not wait to try this world event again. That is in fact what I ended up doing during beta that was the next week.

World Event Ashava The Pestilent The Takedown

I was determined during beta to get another shot at Ashava The Pestilent. Coming off those two fails sucked but I now had a lot better gear and some experience in combat with the boss. It turns out I overlooked another critical thing. Just getting to the event in the first place.

I took note of what times the world boss event was going to run during beta. My schedule allowed me to be there for at least two separate attempts. Anything beyond that would be a bit more challenging to make time for.

Not wanting to be stuck in a long line during beta I made sure I was on hours before the first world boss event even started. I had no idea how many would be trying to rush on perhaps an hour beforehand. I wanted to play it safe.

About half an hour before the event I get disconnected. I thought it was not going to be the worse ever since I landed back on the character select screen. I went to log back into that character and I got an error message.

I knew instantly as the message popped up that I needed to exit the game and reset. I task manager ended the game not wanting to draw out the process any longer than I needed to and quickly restarted.

With about 28 minutes to go, I was in a queue that was 20 minutes long. While I felt that was pushing my luck I could run over to the spot the boss spawns in time and at least show up there. Assuming the 20-minute timer was correct.

Everything was going great according to how long it should have taken. The queue ended up going super fast. It might have only been about 10-15 minutes before I even had a minute left in line. Then I got down to 1 minute and it sat there for a few minutes.

I then got the dreaded disconnect from the server again code message. I quickly task manager closed the game and got right back in. This time only an 8-minute or so queue time. I could still make it if everything worked out.

It did not. I got to character select and then got stuck in a long line to get in from there. I guess everyone must have been switching over from their alt characters to their main for the boss event.

So I went off to my alt for a while since I missed my first chance. Then about half an hour till the event. I decided it was time to switch back over to the main. In attempting to do so I got an error message yet again and had to close out the game and try again.

Everything was even looking great as nothing but level 25 characters kept rolling in. Till I noticed we were getting quite a few low levels as well. With this being a level 25+ event you can’t expect the boss to be kind to those lower levels.

I only know that to be so true when I tried during the early access beta. It seems however they might have made the event a bit easier as the rest of it went better than I expected.

Unlike last time when I was dropping my hydras and staying out of range otherwise. I decided this time to say closer to the boss and see how he could deal with the area damage and other things that happen. This also would let me do full damage beyond just what my hydras were doing.

I got to say with all the kinds of different protections my sorcerer as he held his own quite well. This random group of players where also just melting this boss. I had quite high hopes this was going to be the one I finally got the kill.

Right before we got it down far enough for another two healing potions was the first time I got killed during this attempt. While I would have liked a zero-death run. This is a world boss and I was shocked by how many people kept getting killed over and over again with this was my first. death

Thankfully the revival spot was not that far away. I was quickly back into battle with my two hydras placed and dealing all the extra damage I could.

I then mess messed up. I teleport into a poison cloud instead of just right next to it like I had planned. I popped my flame shield and moved out of it. Then the boss did his AoE right after my shield dropped and I had to burn a couple of health pots to live through that one

It was not long after that I got killed for the second and last time. After that, I did rather well and did my best to avoid taking unwanted damage when I could. While still being close enough to deal normal damage on top of my hydras.

You can see at this point we had so much time left on the clock. My heart was pumping seeing just how many players were getting slaughters the moment they got back into the fight. I felt at this point just me and a couple of other levels 25’s could finish this thing off with 5 minutes remaining.

We kill it and I got a world boss challenger achievement. It then rained legendary down on me. I ended up getting 2 pairs of pants, a helm, a ring, gloves, and a staff weapon. I also got Ashava's Spoils that contained another 3 legendarys in it.

This ended up being what I got. While not all of them have effects or even items I want (like that staff). Some of them also look to be nice upgrades. I can’t wait to mess around with rolling stats and see what other kinds of item modification I do to this stuff at different NPCS.

Final Thoughts

I found events to be a nice way to change things up a bit. My sorcerer has grown quite a lot in power since my last encounter getting a few legendary upgrades. Hopefully, I’ll have time late into the night to get in on one more boss event during this beta to test out my new setup.

Other Content

• Diablo IV Early Access Beta | What Rogue You Are Already Dead
• Diablo IV Early Access Beta | The Sorcerer Of Fiery Death
• Diablo IV Early Access Beta | Starting As A Barbarian

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Diablo IV. This was during the early access beta. Things are subject to change.