Diablo 4 player somehow loses 172-hour Hardcore character despite multiple invincibility protections

Diablo 4 Lilith — (Image credit: Blizzard)

I'm still reeling after seeing how this Diablo 4 fan lost a level 91 hardcore character they spent 172 hours on.

After wrapping up a nightmare dungeon, streamer Quin69 probably thought they were safe, sitting in an invulnerability sphere under the protection of an Elixir of Death Evasion while teleporting back to town. They were wrong, and now their character has joined the Hall of Fallen Heroes.

So what happened exactly? No one knows, as the reason given is simply "environment", though we're likely looking at the power of bullshit. Some fans believe that the lightning zap that appears due to hardcore mod didn't disappear while Quinn was on the loading screen, though the immunity bubble did, meaning that their health slowly whittled away without them being able to do much about it.

Essentially, then, Quinn lost his character to a bug. That’s not likely to make the content creator feel better, but it’s something. Looking at the Diablo subreddits and forums, there have been reports of players losing characters to funky glitches. Blizzard is likely already looking into the glitches, though Quin’s loss will likely bring the issue to more people’s attention.

Since the new Diablo game launched, Blizzard has cranked out several hotfixes already, with the latest fixing bugs with PvP and standout bosses. Not every death is done to misfortune, though – a recent set of stats revealed that the Butcher has claimed nearly 6 million players in one week, which means that 2% of all Diablo 4 player deaths are down to one Big Bad. If only some of them had been standing in an invulnerability sphere under the protection of an Elixir of Death Evasion.

Diablo 4 dataminer uncovers evidence of World Tier 5, pointing to a new difficulty level.

I joined GamesRadar+ in May 2022 following stints at PCGamesN and PocketGamer.Biz, with some freelance for Kotaku UK, RockPaperShotgun, and VG24/7 thrown in for good measure. When I'm not running the news team on the games side, you'll find me putting News Editor duties to one side to play the hottest JRPG of 20 years ago or pillaging the depths of Final Fantasy 14 for a swanky new cloak – the more colourful, the better.