Diablo IV’s Hardcore mode is not for the faint of heart. Anything that kills your character will leave them permanently dead, no matter what level they were, how much time you invested, or what gear they had. So Twitch streamer Quin69 was understandably overwhelmed with confusion and rage when his level 91 Druid with 172 hours of grinding behind it suddenly and shockingly died during, of all things, a loading screen.
Quin69 was traveling back to town after finishing a keystone dungeon when his game appeared to freeze up (via PCGamesN). After being kicked back to the main menu and logging back in, he was immediately greeted by a message informing him his Druid had ascended to the Hall of Fallen Heroes, never to return.
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“This is dog shit, man,” he told his stream in disbelief. “I finished the fucking keystone, upgraded my glyph, portaled to town, now in the loading screen of me portaling to town my character has died.” He’d accumulated 71,087,522 gold across 172 hours and 50 minutes of playtime with the character when an apparent glitch killed him. “Fix your game,” he tweeted on June 14. A full reaction video was later shared on YouTube where Quin69 continued to rage for the cameras.
So what exactly happened? Players can only speculate, but the main theory is that Quin69 was killed by a lightning strike during a storm. Normally he would have been safe within the protective bubble that appears while teleporting, but it’s possible the bubble despawned when the loading screen arose, while the lightning did not, killing his Druid before the teleportation was complete. The game claims Quin69 was killed by the environment, seeming to affirm that interpretation of events.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a Hardcore mode player die in the worst way possible. Souaïb “cArn” Hanaf was Diablo IV’s first player to reach level 100 in the permadeath mode, only to see his Barbarian eventually wiped out by a rogue server disconnect. Fortunately for him at least, he managed to win Blizzard’s Hardcore mode race before getting merc’d by in-game hijinks. It’s not yet clear if Quin69 will begin his climb anew. Though if he does eventually get to level 100 with a new character the victory might be all the sweeter.