While we’ve looked into the broad details, we’ve spared the specifics because—even writers—we’d really love to experience this all first-hand and as a surprise! That being said, there are some iconic and incredible bosses from the original Diablo that we’d love to see come back for us all to hack and slash our way through in the next few days. Here’s our list of five Diablo bosses that we’ve got our fingers crossed for.

The Butcher

“Ah… Fresh meat!” Let’s start off with the obvious choice. Although he appears in Diablo III, there’s nothing quite like your first encounter with the original boss.

This giant, cleaver-wielding menace has his own quest and resides in a room full of bloodied and mutilated corpses. Anyone out there who has attempted to take The Butcher on with a low-level character knows what a mistake that typically is.

The Butcher is incredibly fast and will chase players into confined spaces where it’s easy for him to hack them to death his cleaver. Only rogues are able to move faster than The Butcher, which lends to the superior strategy of taking this brute down being leading him to the third level of the Cathedral where you can trap him between the stairway and then shoot him with a bow.

To stand up to The Butcher in melee combat, you need a minimum of 55 Dexterity to land hits without taking so much damage that he straight-up kills you. Needless to say, we’re really eager to see what happens with Diablo’s first major boss in their anniversary remake.

The Skeleton King

The Skeleton King is another shoo-in. Skeletons and undead are extremely common in Diablo – and the other games of the series – but The Skeleton King is special. In single-player mode, The Skeleton King is accessed by pulling a lever in King Leoric’s Tomb. Upon entering the level, The Skeleton King wastes no time in coming directly at the player with his small army of skeletons. Killing the skeletons eventually becomes a useless strategy as The Skeleton King will just spawn more of them. 

What makes the fight against Leoric so frustrating is that he has 100 percent Life Steal, which means that every single point of damage he deals to you is restored to him. Luckily, he’s pretty weak and hammers do a lot of damage to him.

Once defeated, the Skeleton King drops The Undead Crown, a helmet that offers 0–12.5 percent Life Steal. This item is extremely unique as there’s only one other item in the game in this same slot that provides this statistic.

Zhar the Mad

Despite a significant appearance in Diablo II, a lot of people never knew that Zhar even existed in the original Diablo.

Why Zhar? We want his awesome dialogue recreated. Diablo doesn’t get enough credit for how it weaves in hilarious and strange dialogue like this into some of its fights. It’s almost Pulp Fiction-esque.

In the original Diablo, you find Zhar in the Catacombs of Level 8. Talking to him will get you a random spellbook, and he’ll warn you not to touch the bookcase. Doing so will start the boss fight.

For ranged classes, Zhar is a breeze. Kiting him out as a Rogue or Sorcerer shouldn’t give you many problems, but Warriors and other melee classes may find the fight to be relatively difficult. To succeed, players using a melee class must move around in an attempt to get Zhar to teleport himself into a corner and then, once he does this, you gotta’ bash his head in.

All in all, it would be a great sequence – and fight – to relive in Diablo III.

Archbishop Lazarus

Lazarus is inarguably one of the most memorable battles from the original game.

Deckard Cain initiates the quest involving Lazarus after you retrieve the Staff of Lazarus. After, a red town portal is opened and through it awaits one of the best cutscenes from the second half of the game.

Lazarus is accompanied in this fight by Red Vex and Blackjade, his two succubus bodyguards. Experienced players know to leave the area after the cutscene is over so that you can deal with them one by one before taking on Lazarus. Fighting all three at the same time is quite the task.

Lazarus is not only and interesting and engaging fight, but he is an important fight because defeating him grants you access to Level 16, which leads to…

Diablo

This should come as no surprise. We all want another go at the original Diablo boss fight. A lot of die-hard fans will tell you that this was the hardest Diablo fight in the entire series. Is it just nostalgia talking?

In the original Diablo, you start this fight by working your way through the entire level, killing monsters and flipping levers to progress through the rooms and eventually release Diablo from a sealed box guarded by Blood Knights and Advocates. However, everyone would just use Telekenesis over the walls… Oh, and you better have a lot of potions before you decide to do that.

Killing Diablo means the game is over. All of your drops are stuff that you’ve left in town mean nothing. You get that amazing cinematic and then a sinking feeling when you realize it’s done. I hope we get to experience that again. The Diablo fight is always special, but the first will always have a special place in our hearts.

So, what do you think? Is there a particular boss that you really miss and want to see come back? Many speculate that the 20th anniversary patch will hit Diablo III on the 6th of January, but Blizzard has been cagey on details. The official date of Diablo’s anniversary is actually the 31st, so perhaps the patch will drop then.

Be on the lookout for this exciting retro content and let me know what you’re most looking forward to in the comments below!