Death Penalty Explained: What Happens If You Die?

Dying in Diablo 4 (D4) results in loss of item durability, and also forces you to restart from the last checkpoint. This guide will cover all penalties for death, including permanent death in Hardcore Mode!

Penalty For Dying

Item Durability Decreased

Sent Back to Last Checkpoint

Hardcore Mode Will End

Item Durability Decreased

The main penalty for dying in Diablo 4 is the fact that it will decrease the durability of all equipped items by 10. Once an item's durability drops to 0, it will break completely, removing its affixes rendering it completely useless. Note that unequipped items are unaffected.

Items Can Be Repaired at Blacksmith

Items all begin at durability 100, and drop by 10 with each death. However, visiting the Blacksmith will allow you to pay gold in exchange for repairing your items back to full durability!

All Blacksmith Features | How to Upgrade Equipment

Sent Back to Last Checkpoint

Dying will send you back to the last checkpoint you reached, which can be quite far back depending on how far you have progressed since then. Although you will keep all items in your inventory, it can be a rather big waste of time, especially if you spend significant time on a boss etc.

Hardcore Mode Will End

Hardcore Mode is a feature in Diablo 4 which is much more penalizing for death than Eternal (regular) Mode. How it affects your gameplay will depend on how far you have progressed via your current level.

Permadeath if Under Level 10

If you have not reached level 11, dying in Hardcore Mode results in Permanent Death, meaning that your character will be deleted, and you will need to start over from the very beginning. Thus, if you are interested giving Hardcore Mode a go, leveling up past Level 10 without taking too many risks is very important so as to avoid a complete restart!

Forced to Eternal Mode if Dying After Level 10

Though Permadeath still exists after Level 10 to an extent, the way it works is a bit different. Rather than your character being deleting, dying after leveling past Level 10 results in being kicked off of Hardcore Mode, thus forcing you to play Eternal Mode (Normal Mode).

Your Hardcore Mode history can still be checked via the Hall of Fallen Heroes tab found in Collections after your death, alongside stats such as total time played, campaign progress, and level reached.

What is Hardcore Mode?

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