Owen Leach, Lead Encounter Designer and seasons lead for Season of Hell’s Legacy, walked through the Prime Evil waking nightmares at the Diablo IV: What’s Next panel at BlizzCon 2026. It is not time travel, he said: “we’re entering the nightmares of the dead who have come back to life.” Each waking nightmare recreates a key moment from an earlier Diablo game in Diablo IV’s art style.
Of the three kinds, the Prime Evil ones end in a Prime Evil fight and are played through the seasonal questline. The first is Act V of Diablo II: start at Ancients’ Way, fight up to Arreat Summit, take on the Ancients, descend Worldstone Keep, clear the wave event in front of Baal “that you know from your Baal runs,” then kill him through the portal.
The second is the end of Diablo II’s Act III. You start in Travincal, assemble Khalim’s Will from the heart, eye, brain, and flail, smash the Compelling Orb, go down into the Durance of Hate, and kill Mephisto. The third, which excites Leach most, recreates almost all of Diablo I, from Tristram Cathedral through the catacombs and caves into Hell to face Diablo.
All three also return as harder capstone dungeons. There is a new dungeon type as well, Pinnacle Capstones, which Leach called “the hardest, biggest dungeons we’ve ever made,” balanced toward Torment 13. How they unlock, what they reward, and whether they reuse these nightmares was not said. The other two kinds are covered separately.
