Diablo Immortal Ancient Nightmare zone event explained

Diablo immortal classes — (Image credit: Activision)

The Diablo Immortal Ancient Nightmare zone event is a random raid boss fight against the titular Ancient Nightmare, a giant monster who uses a shield that needs to be destroyed before you can win. To do that you'll need to kill another boss, Lord Martanos, and use the rewards earned from him to trigger the special Shield Altars around the arena. This'll shear away the Ancient Nightmare's shield and make the fight a lot easier, though it's still going to require skill and patience. For those who think they're ready, here's more detail on how to beat the Ancient Nightmare zone event in Diablo Immortal.

How to find and beat the Ancient Nightmare in Diablo Immortal

Diablo Immortal ancient nightmare lord martanos shield shield altars zone event

The Ancient Nightmare in Diablo Immortal can be found and killed by doing the following:

1. Beat the story campaign, reach level 60, and unlock the new difficulty tiers.

2. Make sure you're at a difficulty of at least Hell 1.

3. Travel to Mount Zavain and head to Lord Martanos' location in the North.

4. You can trigger the boss fight with Martanos every 30 minutes.

5. Kill Martanos a few times and pick up the Zakarum Sigils he drops.

6. Head to the Misty Valley in central Mount Zavain when the Zone Event is scheduled.

7. Working with other players, find the wandering Ancient Nightmare in that area.

8. Attacking the Nightmare will do small damage to its shield.

9. When it's close to an Altar, interact with the Altar to do major shield damage.

10. Altars are on a timer, but can be reset and empowered by using Zakarum Sigils.

11. When the Nightmare's shield is broken, everybody should collectively attack it.

12. Stay at range and mobile to eventually beat this powerful boss.

Clearly this is a complex encounter, though arguably all the complexity comes in finding new advantages over standard combat. It's technically possible to beat the Nightmare without using the Sigils or Altars, but we wouldn't recommend it unless there's hundreds of players at work helping out. Farming the Sigils might be repetitive, but it gives you a fighting chance.

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As you can see on the edited map above (with thanks to BlizzPlanet for supplying the base maps themselves), we've marked Martanos' and the Nightmare's respective locations. Martanos is always in the same spot, but the Nightmare wanders around in the circle marked, so while it's incredibly visually obvious - thirty feet of shadowy bipedal horror - you might need to search around before you see it.

The amount of Sigils you need to take off Martanos is to taste, and depends on how many players end up showing up to battle the Nightmare (the more, the better). We recommend getting at least three of them just to be certain, and not actually using them until you're sure there's a sufficiently large crowd with which to take on the Nightmare properly. It's also a time where certain Diablo Immortal classes shine over others; as ranged fighters will have it easier over those the close-quarters warriors who the Nightmare can more effectively step on.

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Ancient Nightmare event schedule and spawn time

Diablo Immortal hidden lairs location — (Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment)

The Ancient Nightmare zone event, at time of writing, has a schedule that triggers on Wednesdays and Fridays at 12:00 PM, 8:30 PM, and 10:00 PM (based on server time, not your own). That being said, we have seen some people claiming that for them the event triggers every day, every two hours between 8:00 AM and 12:00 AM.

It's actually fairly easy to sort out for yourself - head to Mount Zavain, and if the Nightmare is going to appear any time that day, a countdown timer will automatically be present in the top-left hand corner of the screen. If it's not there, there either won't be Nightmare in your server that day, or you haven't fulfilled the conditions for spawning it mentioned at the top of the article.

Ancient Nightmare Rewards

Like all major bosses, the Ancient Nightmare drops an assortment of random loot, but can be relied upon to drop Enchanted Dust, as well as Nilfur's Precision, a special Vessel for the Legacy of the Horadrim shrine that provides the player with a bonus to armor protection.

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Joel Franey is a writer, journalist, podcaster and Very Tired Man with a BA from Brunel University, a Masters from Sussex University and a decade working in games journalism, often focused on guides coverage but also in reviews, features and news. His love of games is strongest when it comes to groundbreaking narratives like Disco Elysium, UnderTale and Baldur's Gate 3, as well as innovative or refined gameplay experiences like XCOM, Sifu, Arkham Asylum or Slay the Spire. He is a firm believer that the vast majority of games would be improved by adding a grappling hook, and if they already have one, they should probably add another just to be safe. You can find old work of his at Eurogamer, Gfinity, USgamer, SFX Magazine, RPS, Dicebreaker, VG247, and more.