Gear is optional: Diablo 4 player strips their character naked and slides through its most brutal dungeon without a single death
Blizzard wasn't fast enough to stop them.
It took a few days for Blizzard to step in and fix the Diablo 4 bug that let sorcerer players stack enough damage bonuses to break the game. A day before the fun was over, streamer Mekuna decided to see if it was possible to clear the hardest dungeon in the game wearing no gear on their character at all.
After a few attempts, he pulled it off: A deathless and loot-less run through the highest and hardest tier of the Pit. Setting aside the infinite damage bug, a tier 150 Pit is mathematically impossible to finish for players who have the rarest gear in the game. Monsters have billions of health and can kill you with just a glance in your direction. The few players who compete on the community leaderboards cap out around tier 110 before it becomes impossible to finish the dungeon within the 15-minute time limit.
But nothing can stop you when you deal so much damage that the numbers don't even matter anymore though. Using a passive skill for sorcerers that substantially increases their elemental damage and a seasonal power that skyrockets it into infinity, Mekuna was able to enter the dungeon with the power to delete anything he touches. But without gear to bolster his health and defenses, he too was constantly one tap away from death.
Instead of breezing through the dungeon and teleporting past packs of enemies as they explode like he normally does, Mekuna had to tiptoe his way through it, avoiding every stray projectile or ground effect. Under these absurd circumstances, Diablo 4 became a horror game where every monster who entered his screen could tear him apart and end the run. The winning strategy involved summoning fire-breathing hydras every few steps to clear a path toward the final boss fight—which ended with a single click.
"We did it! 150!" Mekuna said, holding back laughter at the absurdity of his achievement. "Let's go through my gear." Like most Pit clear videos, he opened up his character screen and hovered his mouse over each empty slot for proof that he was wearing nothing but a poor-quality wand and focus to be able to cast skills.
The next day, Blizzard dropped a patch that killed the exploit and any hopes of Diablo 4's naked meta getting off the ground. Sorry folks, gear is mandatory again.
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Tyler has covered videogames and PC hardware for 15 years. He regularly spends time playing and reporting on games like Diablo 4, Elden Ring, Overwatch 2, and Final Fantasy 14. While his specialty is in action RPGs and MMOs, he's driven to cover all sorts of games whether they're broken, beautiful, or bizarre.
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