Diablo IV Players Are Getting Destroyed By 'Harmless' Treasure Goblins [Update]

Treasure goblins in Diablo IV aren’t particularly scary or dangerous. In fact, most players get excited when one of these little weirdos appears, because they can’t attack and drop good loot when killed. However, some high-level players are dying to treasure goblins due to what some players believe is a bug.

Diablo IV is the latest dungeon crawlin’ entry in Blizzard’s long-running demon-infested franchise. It’s a very good game that I’ve sunk many hours into already. Sure, I wish the gothic-horror-themed action-RPG had an extra skill slot, but regardless it’s still one of 2023’s best games. Like every other video game ever made, Diablo IV isn’t perfect. Case in point, it appears that a certain in-game mod is inadvertently turning harmless treasure goblins into nuclear weapons which can then one-hit kill even the toughest Diablo characters around.

As reported by IGN and Icy Veins, some Diablo IV players have been unexpectedly destroyed by randomly spawning treasure goblins. In one example, a high-level hardcore character in a nightmare dungeon was wasted just a second after killing one.

Oddly, the goblin didn’t attack, because they can’t, and there were no other enemies or traps in the room. So what happened?

Well, in Diablo IV there is an in-game modifier called Death Pulse which triggers a “deadly lighting pulse” shortly after killing a monster. And it seems players who are using this mod are being utterly annihilated by the lighting pulse that erupts from dead treasure goblins.

In a normal game, this is just a funny, temporary setback. But this is extremely frustrating for high-level hardcore players as once their character dies, that’s it. There’s no respawning. What an embarrassing and annoying way to bite it.

These odd Diablo treasure goblin kills might be a bug

Some players believe this isn’t intended and that this interaction between Death Pulse and the goblins is actually a deadly bug. Over on the official Diablo forums, a few other folks have shared stories of high-level hardcore characters dying to the Death Pulse + treasure goblin combo. To some players, this doesn’t make sense. They feel their characters were beefy enough to survive most attacks in the game. Getting one-hit like this feels broken.

This is further backed up by what shows up in the game’s “Hall of Fallen Heroes,” where all your dead hardcore characters are chronicled for posterity. In there, the cause of death when killed by a treasure goblin’s Death Pulse is listed as “Slain by unknown killer.” Hmmm.

Kotaku reached out to Blizzard for clarification.

While we wait to see if this is indeed an unintended bug, I’d suggest hardcore Diablo IV players using Death Pulse avoid treasure goblins for the time being. No loot is worth your life.

Update 06/30/2023 4:15 p.m. ET: Blizzard confirmed to Kotaku that this is caused by a bug: “This is a known issue that will be addressed in a future patch coming before the start of Season 1.”

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