“Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t do it.” That’s what I imagine Quin69 was telling himself just before he booted up Diablo 4 and headed into the game’s hardcore mode with his level 91 druid. The popular streamer had worked hard and come close to his goal – literally ninety-one levels – when a devastating server bug wiped his character clean, leaving Quin69 in the most painful state possible: shook.
Quin69 has dedicated 173 hours to his druid, meaning that he was very, very close to Diablo 4’s highest level cap in the action-RPG game. After spending hours brutally dispatching foes, Quin69 was finally on the brink of success. His hours of effort were about to pay off, and the Twitch streamer was one level away from the game’s level 100 cap.
But then, disaster. His druid died to “a failure to connect to the server.” The Diablo 4 message essentially says that your character has simply died, however, it doesn’t tell why. In Quin69’s case, he was exploring a dungeon in hardcore mode and died from a bug or unexpected technical error that caused a disconnection. Upon attempting to reconnect and pick up where he left off, Quin69 was met with a notice that his “fallen character had gone to the Hall of Fallen Heroes.”
With his eyes bugging out and his moustache wildly twitching, Quin69 begins to curse and shout at his monitor. On the run-up to level 100, a Diablo 4 character can only achieve a certain number of experience points per in-game day, leaving players unsure as to how close they are to being awarded the level-up screen. The streamer is dismayed to see that he had accrued enough experience to level up, only to have his character wiped out.
Finding light in the darkness, Quin69 finds comical relief by taking it out on a plastic mannequin and microwave in his home, smashing them with a skill and vehemence worthy of a Diablo 4 multiclass. There is nothing that can be done about lost characters in Diablo 4’s hardcore mode, making Quin69’s death the ultimate heartbreak for seasoned players keen to make the riskiest playthrough of the action-RPG game worthwhile.
If you’re looking for a less risky way to play Diablo 4, you might enjoy our breakdown of all the changes in Diablo 4’s Eternal Night dungeon-crawling event. If you’re looking to port your Diablo 4 Diabolic Imp companion outside of seasonal events, we’ve got all the answers to your questions right here.