Percy_Verence, Elon Musk's infamous Path of Exile 2 hardcore character, dead at level 97

pcgamer.com:

Late last week, we reported how Path of Exile 2 players were questioning Elon Musk's claims of having one of the highest-ranked hardcore PoE 2 characters on the planet, thanks to a livestream showcasing his seeming confusion over game mechanics that would be rudimentary to any high level player. It's with a heavy heart that I report that at roughly 8 am EST on Friday, January 10, 2025, that character—Percy_Verence—died at level 97.

In Path of Exile 2, hardcore characters only last until their first death, at which point they're booted into the pool of standard characters. If those characters are ranked highly enough on the global hardcore ladder, a leaderboard tracking the total experience earned by the top 1000 hardcore characters, their deaths are announced in-game to all players. Percy_Verence's moment of death was captured in a screenshot by redditor JRoyales. At time of death, the level 97 Invoker had been Rank 7 on the ladder.

As a fun coincidence, JRoyale also captured the automated, in-chat captions the game provides for character combat barks. In this case, in Percy_Verence's final moments, JRoyale's warrior happened to be yelling «Weakling!» and «Meet your maker!» Happy accidents.

Musk first revealed the existence of Percy_Verence on January 5 via his alternate X account, @cyb3rgam3r420, so named because the weed number is funny. At the time, the character was already level 87, which was enough to earn it a placement on the PoE 2 hardcore ladder. Considering the difficulty of getting a hardcore character unscathed to higher levels—that was quite the achievement.

After Musk livestreamed an hour and a half of gameplay with the character on January 7, however, PoE 2 players were convinced the achievement belonged to someone else. During the stream, Musk seemed unfamiliar with basic components of how the game works as he repeatedly tried to enter inaccessible map nodes, neglected to collect valuable items, failed to notice his empty mana gauge for prolonged