The number of people that play HC is much lower than for SC. It offers a unique brand of challenge, and maybe reckless speedrunning has had a bit too much focus recently than is healthy. Personally, I never even considered it because I played all other ARPGs in SC, but I have decided to pick it up eventually, and it will be fun to start from scratch. And if you do it as well, stream it if you can!
This came to my attention today, when RektByProtoss (an exclusive HC streamer), at the end of his stream, wanted to raid (host) another player like him. Unfortunately, this is the only hardcore streamer that was on at that time:
I can understand why people avoid playing hardcore. This game has ALOT of instant deaths from various endgame contents. Unless you run a piece of rock retaliation build or pet builds (even then thats not garentee…) 99% of other builds are locked out of endgame content with best item farms, because you risk your character instantly vaporizing to a variety of crap. And thats a hundred hour down the drain…
I mean you can farm those skeleton key dungeons forever, but their reward is comparatively bad…
Yeah I had similar notions about it. But after watching people like RektByProtoss, PewSquare, nomanual, a different picture was being painted. They very often play “meme builds”, and yet they defeat challenges like main campaign, Lokarr, decent Crucible and SR levels. And dying is a very rare occurance for them. An important thing is that HC has a different set of rules that need to be followed to make builds playable in the mode.
You could play it perfectly until a charge of skill disruption + blankpoint null-bolts, trapped + nullbolts, teleported into nullbolts, which is just bullshit really. You are prob fine in main campaign but some combos in SR are cosmic horrors.
you can at least prepare for them, also that aether basilisk is cancer for melee chars with his fumble, also the small room in Feral Thicket with those skill disrupt crabs…
But yeah, Ancient Grove, Port Valbury, Lokarr and Mad Queen should be decent enough goals for me in HC, with some random nemesis here and there
Crucible is the pinnacle of consistency compared to SR, which imo is why crucible is actually boring. I like a little inconsistency to keep every run fresh and SR definitely is much more exciting for me cuz of that. Then again I don’t really care that much about min/maxing legendaries per minute and timers. It’s more about just being able to make it and survive.
Fought him multiple times in SR, just don’t get hit 4Head
Same thing applies here, just don’t get hit.
On a more serious note though, from my experience Grim Dawn has actually few things that can oneshot you unless you have either made a mistake 1) building your char or 2) piloting it. So ultimatly when you die it’s pretty much always your fault and you will learn to eliminate those errors.
anyone here ever tried a hardcore deathmatch tournament with a friend or friends? Everyone starts with a character at level 5 and you go round by round, each character does 1 v 1 once. the losers die and are dead. the winners progress. next rounds start at level 10. then 15. then 20, and so on. I have been trying to get a friend to do this with me just for kicks.
fights take place on a set battleground (map area, say, deadman’s gulch) and both players enter the map, then have a 30 second window to split up and run and hide. after that 30 second window ends players must hunt eachother and fight until one dies. This actually could be really fun and interesting considering the surprising number of structures that youre able to hide inside. Takes stealthy play to a whole new level. Taunt/terrify (battlefield manipulation effects) as well, not to mention factions… Imagine a kymon character vs a deaths vigil character on the battleground of fort ikon where those factions are locked in an all out war. a support character would really benefit in that match up.
Nah not really, i did play sometimes Hardcore-Characters on oler ARPG’s but overall it’s not my cup of tea… due for me it doesn’t feel more “Challenging” but rather more “Punishing”. The Fights itself aren’t easier because you play softcore, but if you failed you won’t be punished as much to re-do everything from the scratch, and for that i neither have patience nor time to waste, and i’d also appreciate / value the time and work which i spent into characters too much(i really would play HC only just4fun if i’m bored, which so far isn’t happened with GD for me). There are Permdeath Games which i enjoy, mostly roguelike / roguelite Games, but ARPG’s stands for me for it’s consistent experience to progress and build up your character. And i agree withRektbyProtoss, “inconsistency” is what SR make attractive for me as well, plus adds variety in terms of modes/gameplay because for such an consistence experience we have already crucible, that’s why i personally don’t understand why someone wish to reduce / remove RNG spawns for SR. Also i’ve to add - il ove the idea with the Roguelike Dungeons, because it’s mix the consistency of Softcore with an “similar” punish-system like Permdeath/hardcore, that you need to redo dungeon if you die.
Than again, with that being said, i still the appeal for certain people and wish them best luck and most fun out of hardcore… but i also see why softcore is more popular than hardcore.
