I was in NA server just now in a private game with password that I created 10mn before he walked. I swapped characters and rejoined the same game, and he walked in that 15s window while the game was empty. I know for a fact no one else joined that game and could have killed DC within those 15s.
When I rejoined the same game, he had just walked but I didn't get the message that he walked and he wasn't at the first unique boss.

TLDR - if a game is active but empty and DClone walks and you joined 5s after, he just doesn't spawn in that game? Sounds very strange to me, seemed to remember before D2R that wasn't the case?

Ty for free anni. "1" is not a safe password.

joke's on you, pw was "2"

Seriously though, is the trigger mechanism the fact that at least a player is present in the game? I would have thought the way it's coded was "any active game on that realm in hell when last soj is sold = walk", but doesn't seem to be the case.

Maybe, imagine if u can do that. U can spawn 3 or more declones with a single account. Kinda op

I agree, although empty games disappear faster than I thought. In my testing most games disappear in less than a minute if empty, even if they've been open for 30mn+. So would be hard to jump around between different games.

Yeah pretty sure he disappears if you leave the game after the spawn message with nobody in it and rejoin

Oh wow that's super interesting - so even after the spawn message (which I didn't have yesterday, he spawned while the game was empty), if you quit and rejoin and the game is empty for 5s then he won't appear? I wonder what the logic behind this is

The logic is quite clear: To prevent abuse of persistent games. Just stay in you game, and you get your anni. If you try to abuse it, you get nothing. Seems perfectly clear, logical and fair to me.

Go to frigid highlands, spawn Dclone, change character by rejoining => profit.

No thats wrong
I've already quit and come back in the game cause dclone surprised my lvl 60 char that i was leveling lol
I could bring my mosaic and clear it no problem