Instant death on Journey's End, END OF HC

I am playing hardcore since diablo2, it's the only way to have fun for me, I usually fall asleep if I play softcore. I like to play slow and thoughtful, I love to think in between decisions and enjoy all the process of grinding. At the Journey's End I cleared an area and was opening chests, looking to my inventory thinking which item should I remove to get a drop, so my screen was clogged with inventory and character UI, I looked away for a second which is something I do a lot after clearing an area, taking a moment before continuing. I am playing d2,poe, poe2 in total for more than 20 years. I've never encountered a death like this. Turned my eyes away from the screen for a second and I heard an explosion. BOOOOM YOU ARE DEAD. Yes how fun is that? I played this Druid for some long time for my own standarts and it's gone in an instant. To what I learned by reading the chat: ''You were caught in an explosion and died''

Thank you whoever thought of this. You made me stop playing the game altogether. Not sure if I can come back next season now I'll have paranoia. This no longer a slow and sure grind where I enjoy theorycrafting in every step, thinking every next decision. Now I can't be safe, I can't chill, any area might explode any time if I take my eyes of the screen every single second.

I mean who thought of this. I need to hear that anything close to that should never happen again. This is not an action/adventure, this is arpg and I should be able to enjoy taking pauses and think in between moves without pausing the game every single to or I shouldn't be feeling like i need to back to town to sort my inventory every 2 minutes...

Don't tell me to play softcore because I feel like you can just go all offensive on items and skill tree, then run until the game ends. I just go sleep if I do that. I love the slow and careful grind and I was enjoying this beautiful game a LOT, until this BS happened now I won't play, I don't play any other game this was my only joy and maybe it's a good that its finished so I can focus on my work even harder now. Thank you and FU to whoever designed this BS.

I can relate to your frustration. I don't play HC but I also got caught in that blast and felt a bit cheated.

There needs to be a verbal warning or something so that we can understand what is going on. I thought the timer just meant that I had to open all the chests and pick up my loot before it ended. I didn't even see the lit bombs until I moved my big bear butt and by then it was far too late.

Certainly for hardcore players an instant kill like this is even more absurd than those horrible bubbles-of-drowning.