For a lot of Diablo 4 players, the sight of a Treasure Goblin is a moment to celebrate, as pummelling them into smithereens is a sure fire way to grab yourself some pretty great gear. To make things even better, they're usually completely harmless, meaning you can pummell away without the fear of the poor goblin retaliating and killing your character. Note the word "usually" though, as a new bug introduced in the latest Diablo 4 patch has turned them into killing machines capable of one-shotting even the most powerful character.
First shared by IGN, a number of players have reported instances of their hardcore characters being completely obliterated by Treasure Goblins mere seconds after they're put down. One of the best examples of this comes from Twitch streamer Killthuzad, who's character met their fate at the hands of a Treasure Goblin while running a tier 37 Nightmare Dungeon. You can watch a clip of the death here.
Killthuzad isn't the only reported case of this happening either, as another Diablo 4 player called Faraddox took to the Blizzard forums to vent their frustration. Others then took the opportunity to pile in and vent their frustrations too, including MythiZena who says that they lost their level 97 Druid, and Uncle Mumble who lost their level 100 Rogue to the same glitch.
If you're wondering what this glitch is so you can avoid it for yourself, it seems to be connected to the Death Pulse affix, something that enables monsters to release a pulse of lightning whenever they're defeated. Usually, it doesn't do much damage to the player, but the glitch is making it so that the pulse emitted from Treasure Goblins is powerful enough to one shot almost, if not all, characters that are hit by it.
Thankfully, Blizzard has already responded to complaints and has explained that it's a known issue that is being looked into. While it didn't state when the bug will be fixed, Blizzard did promise that the problem will be addressed in a future patch that will release before Season 1, the start date for which will be revealed at some point next week.
If you thought that losing a character to a Treasure Goblin was bad though, try losing one to a disconnect. That's exactly what happened to streamer Souaïb "carn" Hanaf earlier this month. Shortly after becoming the first player to reach level 100 on Hardcore, Hanaf's character was struck down whilst the game was frozen, before being disconnected from the server, resulting in the loss of over 82 hours of of gameplay. Ouch.