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

Key art for the Monk class's Invoker ascendancy in Path of Exile 2. — (Image credit: Grinding Gear Games)

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.

Elon just died at rank 7 from r/PathOfExile2

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 periods, and demonstrated a basic misunderstanding of PoE 2 itemization by calling his set of immaculate gear low level.

As an illustration of how cutthroat the competition is for top-tier placement on the hardcore ladder, in the three days since Percy_Verence's death, the character's experience tally has already fallen from Rank 7 to Rank 13 as other high-level PoE 2 players race to outlevel each other. For experienced PoE players, the gameplay Musk showed during his stream seemed insufficient by orders of magnitude for the execution demands of hardcore ladder placement, leading many convinced that Musk was taking credit for a character that someone else had leveled.

You could also be forgiven for thinking that the stash tab named "Elon's map" seemed like a red flag.

Unsurprisingly, the death of Percy_Verence was met with a chorus of jeers and widespread gravedancing. "Clearly it's his level 52 gloves that held him back," one redditor said, referencing Musk's assessment that his gear—including his unique, build-defining, best in slot gloves—"could be better."

"Probably got triggered by all the laughing and actually tried to play the character for 5 mins," said Tateybread, another reddit user. "F. He can just buy another one."

Lincoln has been writing about games for 12 years—unless you include the essays about procedural storytelling in Dwarf Fortress he convinced his college professors to accept. Leveraging the brainworms from a youth spent in World of Warcraft to write for sites like Waypoint, Polygon, and Fanbyte, Lincoln spent three years freelancing for PC Gamer before joining on as a full-time News Writer in 2024, bringing an expertise in Caves of Qud bird diplomacy, getting sons killed in Crusader Kings, and hitting dinosaurs with hammers in Monster Hunter.