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The Diablo 4 Ashava boss is one of the game’s earliest major challenges. Diablo 4 has produced some incredible moments for new and returning players of the franchise, such as the jaw-dropping opening cinematic, your first dungeon, or seeing Diablo in an open-world style, but the real highlight for many in the early-game is the first world boss, Ashava the Pestilent.
Ashava gives players a chance to fight the biggest boss that they have seen so far. As predicted, Ashava is incredibly difficult to take down, especially if you’re going at it solo. In this guide, we’ll go over where you can find Ashava and provide some tips on how to beat the world boss.
Where to find Ashava
In order to challenge Ashava, you should strive to be around level 25. Ashava is level 25 and is located in a level 25 zone, so if you’re any level less, you’re putting yourself at an immediate disadvantage.
To find Ashava, you need to head to The Crucible, which is an area found directly east of Kyovashad. It’s the farthest eastern region you can visit in the opening area. To get there faster, you can use the Yelesna Waypoint, if you’ve discovered it. This waypoint is located southwest of The Crucible, as you can see in the map screenshot below.
If you’re challenging Ashava on a day that it spawns, then a quest marker will appear in this region 30 minutes prior to the world boss is set to arrive. The marker will show how much time you have to get to the location and all of the rewards that you can earn upon defeating Ashava.
Beating Ashava
Now, it’s time to finally take down Ashava the Pestilent and score all of the loot that comes with it. Unfortunately, players won’t be able to simply breeze their way through this fight. The first world boss in Diablo 4 is completely unforgiving and can one-shot kill certain builds if they’re not careful. If you want to avoid that and beat Ashava in a reasonable time, then you’re going to need some help.
For starters, Ashava is a massive boss that doesn’t have any set weak points, so you’re perfectly fine attacking it anywhere on its body. It also does not seem especially susceptible to any kind of attacks, so use whatever elemental attack or weapon that you feel the most comfortable with or will do the most damage for your build.
Your primary goal will not be to attack Ashava, though. In all likelihood, you will have several other players helping you beat Ashava, meaning that the boss will always be taking damage from someone. In order to stay alive, you first need to focus on dodging Ashava’s many powerful moves. The boss will usually start off with a headbutt attack or a wide-ranging slash attack that can one-shot kill you if your HP isn’t high enough. If you have a ranged build, then throw down some conjurations and work on learning the signs for when Ashava will perform each attack. You’ll want to stay far back to avoid the aforementioned slash attack as well as the several ground pound attacks that the boss will do.
At some point during the fight, Ashava will try to latch onto you and bring itself closer to your location. It’s important to try and stay behind Ashava at all times for this reason. You will also do a better job at avoiding the boss’ close-range attacks if you can manage to stay behind its hulking frame. However, while you’re maneuvering yourself around the boss, you also want to watch out for the many poison pools that Ashava leaves. If you step on these, you will be hit with consistent damage. It’s recommended to avoid them altogether or dodge through them to avoid taking damage.
During the time you’re not dodging or maneuvering Ashava’s attacks, you want to put in as much damage as possible. Don’t get too greedy and lose your position, though; only attack when you feel there is a gap in Ashava’s attacking or the boss is focused on other players. Conjurations, like the Hydra for Sorcerers, are terrific ways to deal passive damage to Ashava, allowing you to focus on other types of attacks and not take damage yourself.
Another aspect of the fight to keep an eye on is the timer. You will likely suffer more than a few deaths trying to learn Ashava’s attack pattern, but make sure that you’re not wasting time during the fight or on the way back to the battleground, as the timer can really creep up on you. Given that you will likely have an entourage of other players trying to accomplish the same goal, you won’t usually have to worry about the timer. However, be mindful that it’s there.
Lastly, we recommend that you try to switch up your skills if you find that you’re dying constantly. Perhaps equip some more defensive or passive skills instead of DPS-focused ones. This might make the fight last longer, but at least you won’t be burning through your health potion charges every other second.
In the end, every player will have a different build with various ways of taking down Ashava. Use what has worked for you up to this point in Diablo 4 (or switch to more defensive skills if the fight isn’t going well), learn Ashava’s attacks and patterns, and prioritize avoiding damage over trying to attack too much. If you follow those general principles, you should be able to kill Ashava the Pestilent.
