Hardcore iv advice

[GLITRKING]

I know it's a competition, so I'm not asking anyone to post their hardcore builds or what they have planned. As a new-ish player and just catching the tail end of last season, I was wanting to hear some basic advice from our Hardcore veteran players. What to build for? What not to build? Since it's a little more difficult to have a higher level toon farming for you, how do you go about optimizing gear? How to grab as much favor and RXP as possible with the least amount of risk?

[cru121]

Hardcore iv advice?

Don't die.

[janave]

HP, PRR, MRR*
Fortification 100+ as soon as you can
Saves and Immunities
Self healing / Temp hp
Speed is helpful
Non resource based DPS ( unless wanting to spend on spellpoints)
UMD (Heal Scroll, Restoration, Fireshield, Spell Resistance ...)

Kind of reduces the optimal solo builds, especially when you add in the reaper stuff:

Ghost touch for melee/ranged
Deathward/deathblock
Shield spell
Cold damage resist and absorption
Stacking miss chance
No-save or easy to reach CC ( for reapers )

Palemaster and Robots give a front loaded defense package, I imagine recently updated builds would do well too. Google search for "DDO Hardcore Builds".

[arminius]

If you are looking for survivability above all else, then bladeforged paladin is hard to beat, and hard to screw up building. It is as close to an easy button as hardcore gets.

Not build-related, but an important tip: keep depositing everything you don't need, including excess money, in the bank after virtually every quest. I saw a lot of people get burned by building up a great nest egg and then getting smote and suddenly not having even two coppers to rub together.

[fatherpirate]

If you want reaper awards, build for reaper
If you just want elite, build for that

[cru121]

Frankly, for a newer player, I would not focus on RXP as a goal for hardcore. Imho, 1750 favor and level 20 are great goals to shoot for. Unlike normal servers, hardcore offers many opportunities to group for elite difficulty. Enjoy that.

[SiliconScout]

If you want the reaper rewards expect to TR at least once, maybe twice. You can get there without it for sure but running a Heroic life or two can make that goal a lot easier to attain.

[GLITRKING]

Don't die.

Tru dat, especially this season where there will not be additional lives!

[GLITRKING]

HP, PRR, MRR*
Fortification 100+ as soon as you can
Saves and Immunities
Self healing / Temp hp
Speed is helpful
Non resource based DPS ( unless wanting to spend on spellpoints)
UMD (Heal Scroll, Restoration, Fireshield, Spell Resistance ...)

Kind of reduces the optimal solo builds, especially when you add in the reaper stuff:

Ghost touch for melee/ranged
Deathward/deathblock
Shield spell
Cold damage resist and absorption
Stacking miss chance
No-save or easy to reach CC ( for reapers )

Palemaster and Robots give a front loaded defense package, I imagine recently updated builds would do well too. Google search for "DDO Hardcore Builds".

Very nice, thank you!

[GLITRKING]

If you are looking for survivability above all else, then bladeforged paladin is hard to beat, and hard to screw up building. It is as close to an easy button as hardcore gets.

Not build-related, but an important tip: keep depositing everything you don't need, including excess money, in the bank after virtually every quest. I saw a lot of people get burned by building up a great nest egg and then getting smote and suddenly not having even two coppers to rub together.

Yep, got burned with the gear thing last season.

Not a huge fan of bots, but this may well be my first!

[GLITRKING]

Frankly, for a newer player, I would not focus on RXP as a goal for hardcore. Imho, 1750 favor and level 20 are great goals to shoot for. Unlike normal servers, hardcore offers many opportunities to group for elite difficulty. Enjoy that.

This was pretty much what I was thinking. I just want to do better than I did last season. Level 20 and 1750 favor would be awesome, than shoot for 5k favor. If I just completely stay away from reaper, my chances increase dramatically.

[slarden]

I know it's a competition

It's only a competition if you opt into that aspect of it which is a tiny #, otherwise it's PVE if you are just going for a specific reward. I would suspect there is less than 50 people interested in the leader board aspect of hardcore and most of the people on the leader board (including me) just wanted to get a specific tier reward and move on and only ended up on the leader board due to lack of interest in leaderboard position by the community in general. My experience is people are only protective and secretive of their build when there are aspects of it involving an exploit or favorable bug. I don't think most people are worried about sharing their hardcore builds.

I am going to be running a variant of this build:? 12 Artificer 6 Fighter 2 Monk Reaper Build (ddo.com) This isn't the right build to farm rxp at 30 if you are going for the leaderboards. If you just want to get 10 reaper points and move on - this build worked really well for me.

In past seasons I went 15 artificer 3 fighter 2 monk warforged. This season I am going bladeforged 15 artificer 3 paladin 2 monk due to the amped up enemy spell damage. Robot for the easier self-healing vs. scrolls. I use repeater because the dps is reasonable without a huge ap investment. If you go for ratcatcher you can go inquisitive at higher levels for better dps. In season 1 and 2 I was one of the first 10 to 10 reaper points with this build and ran solo both seasons for rxp.

Have a gear farmer that stays ahead of you farming fey, ravenloft and sharn for gear. This season I will zerg my farming character to 9 and then farm out blademark docent and fey gear for my rxp character. I like to get 4 shield clickies from korthos - the chest doesn't ransack. A few expeditious retreat clickies are nice also (Korthos guaranteed or keep as a drop). The rune arm from the fey wilderness gives ghostly, trap the soul and profane hp. I am definitely going for that over the 3bc rune arm this season even with the lower proc damage. Once you have your fey gear you are good to go for several levels.

Good luck and most importantly have fun!

[Vish]

its not a competition, so heres my advice

dont play hardcore

come join me on sarlona doing racials

i have 15 left
so 15 weeks?

by the time hardcore is over

thats where im putting my competition

[SpartanKiller13]

Inspect every FvS that joins your party; if they're a half-elf, drop immediately.

Social distance between yourself and Arcane casters (and Druids past level 5), at least until you get FoM running. Extra care needed in Tempest Spine.

Keep an eye peeled for Globe of Invulnerability; it'll disable your FoM & Deathward if you're inside it.

Don't run Heroic Shroud. Avoid any quest with player-set explosives (like Undermine or Blockade Busters).

[KoobTheProud]

Never lead the party.

Have heal kits available to get the people who lead the party up when they run into that trap they forgot about and if they got lucky and only got knocked out by it instead of dying (approx 1% chance in my experience.)

Find a way to get the diehard feat/ability and also extended Unconsciousness range. This probably means taking some Barb levels in your build.

But even if you do get diehard follow the first two rules above.

[JOTMON]

Its going to be laggy as F. Go slow. Try not to die.

[kanordog]

Yep, got burned with the gear thing last season.

Not a huge fan of bots, but this may well be my first!

You can't do 5K favor if you don't aim for it as you will outlevel quests. So try to do all quests as you go even if you will be capped and gain no xp.



Warforged are not robots.
https://eberron.fandom.com/wiki/Warforged

[yfernbottom]

I make sure I can cast resistance. I also make sure I have a way to deal with negative levels (being a robot is an easy way to do it). If you plan to solo, you also need to make sure you can handle traps.

An Inq. based robot artificer is incredibly easy to build*, and is **** near unkillable by level 10. Unless of course you fall into deep lava and have no way of getting out . . . [Yes, I did that once. Yes, I was ****ed at myself]

Another thing I like to do solo is summon a bunch of permanent hirelings. In some level ranges you can easily have two or three out all the time, depending on what versions of different expansions you bought. They do jack all damage, healing or anything else directly useful. However, they cut down on the damage you take by being a distraction. If you have backstab damage, they also help you get more BS hits in.

In general, it's easier to play a ranged character than a melee character in my experience. Never getting hit by anything is a good defense, and it's much harder to achieve that while that standing on the middle of a crowd of mobs.

One very specific thing is to make sure your strength is high enough that you won't become helpless from ray of enfeeblement in certain quests. That means that you should at least have one strength enhancement item available even if you don't care a bit about strength normally.

Apart from that, a lot of common sense stuff (don't use con as a dump stat, death block, fortification, work on your saves, grab a ghost touch weapon at Keep on the Borderlands, ect.)

*Standard ranged feat package, 41 points into Inq., look to your other trees for defensive enhancements. Between the racial tree and renegade mastermaker you can make your character extremely resilient. Battle engineer also stacks well with Inquisitive. You can build a tougher character, but this set up is nearly idiotproof (tested by an idiot). Great DPS for levelling, great defense, great at traps, doggo plus hirelings keeps the number of mobs focused on you down.

PS: yes I know warforged aren't robots. Just like my characters aren't cartoons. ROBOT! ROBOT! TOON! TOON!

[SiliconScout]

Another thing to remember is that your first toon on the server is going to get several tomes and the like you might have from expansions. In some cases they are unique to the first toon.

So with that in mind. Make your first toon one you want to run with get it into Korthos and then exit out. Make a second toon that is a dedicated banker toon. ALL actions are posted and maintained by this toon and it parks at a banker / Auction and never, ever, ever steps in a quest.

This way no matter what happens you can't lose your bank items or auctions. There is no bank or auction house in the land of the dead so if you had auctions posted or gear in the toons bank it's as good as gone.

[SiliconScout]

Also don't run shroud, the death there counts you won't complete the quest and you will lose your toon.

Also, also don't go into or anywhere near the danger room on the ship once it has one. It will kill you and that death counts.