Hard Core Tips

[CaptainSpacePony]

Hard Core (HC) season is here again! This one is only 2 months, and favor reward thresholds have been reduced and reaper XP increased.

What follows is a long list of tips directly applicable to HC.

GENERAL/FAVOR
-There are 5 HC awards available. Decide which you want to go for and make a plan. Most people will pursue favor rewards.
-LOTS of people ask how many quests they can skip while going for 5k favor. This season it's only 3k for the mount, so as long as you're paying attention, I assume you should be able to skip most that are scary too unfun. Normally the answer is, "A lot, but not as many as you'd like." Plan in advance which you're going to skip so you don't come up short.
-Those that can't open elite (me) will be at the mercy of the LFM panel. If there's nothing available, run to Wyndwood hall or waypoints, or knock out some flagging on normal or casual so that you can join that Into the Deep, I Dream of Jeets, or House of Pain LFM when it's up. I don't hesitate to repeat quests if it means I get to stay with a good party that has an opener.
-If going for favor, and you have all content access and skip little to nothing, XP quickly becomes irrelevant. Expect to be XP capped from about level 4 or 5.
-Don't expect to get much favor at epic levels. There are not a lot of quests that are epic only (aside from legendary raids and the original Eveningstar chains). Those that have heroic and epic versions are almost ALWAYS easier on heroic elite than epic elite. Ergo, don't take 20 too soon.
-Tangleroot's 1st quest is lvl 3, so you cannot start it above lvl 7. This is important in case you may want to farm it for the DW clicky
-Devil Assault is lvl 6. Few run it on elite but it's not bad on hard. This is also an old quest that has really harsh scaling on elite. So it can be a lot easier to solo on elite than to group. -EDIT- This keeps coming up in game. So let me put it this way: DA on hard is pretty easy. DA on Elite is really hard. DA on any difficulty is really boring.
-After 75 House favor, Phiarlan offers great buffs (most importantly energy resists). A full Tangleroot run (and Info is Key) will unlock that.
-Instead of skipping a quest you find difficult, consider completing on a lower difficulty. Some favor > 0 favor.

CHARACTER CREATION
-Hit Points are important. Most deaths occur when someone runs out of them. Build and gear accordingly (constitution helps).
-Robots tend to have poor AC but the immunities are great!
-Assiamar are great, because who doesn't appreciate a "Holy Snitch!" fast heal.
-I don't like dwarves (racist?) but they are tough.
-Int build? Take insightful reflexes early.

NOTEWORTHY THREATS
-Traps are the biggest killer. Kobold Shamen are lethal. Ancient Magma Brute (Heart of the Problem) hits like a truck. Flesh Renders and the like have vorpal attacks (death block prevents). Black Roomba Balls can cast slay living (death block). You have been warned.
-Have DDoor for ToEE water temple. Mikayl the Pious lvl 11 fighter hireling has DDoor. His are extra special: they never expire.
-Driving intoxicated or sleep deprived can take you to the land of lost souls.
-Buy some potions. Platinum is cheap.
-The bridge in the Sorrow Dusk troll cave quests is not to be underestimated. Climb up the ladder on the right side and jump across the chasm to the far side (not the bridge). Even if you fall short, there is a ledge to fall to below.
-Hera is the Queen (Total Chaos). Leave her alone. (See previous regarding optionals.)

GEAR
-Consider running sacrifices in Korthos a few times for multiple Anger's Step, and Necro's Doom for Gloves of protection (need to open a lock though) or if you have the umd, get scrolls*. (Don't need much since they are lvl 1 and are cheap so you don't need 100% success rate.) Magic Missiles can be lethal, especially when coming from Famine Reapers.
-As soon as you earn a HC reward, talk to the HC vendor to unlock it. Really stinks to die w/o it unlocked and you have to start all over.
-You will probably earn a lot of DDO pts from all the favor you're farming. Don't be afraid to spend it if you need to. (I've bought various pots, bells, augments. hirelings, and...)
-Anti-beholder crystal from the DDO store is a wise purchase, especially for meat-bags.
-Death ward clickies are available as Tangleroot end reward (ML 5), Salt Marsh's the Final Enemy (ML3) and Bluto (behind secret doors) optional chest in White Plume Mtn (ML 9).
-Level 6 quests in the 12 have good loot but are more dangerous than most other lvl 6 quests.
-The good ML 7 Red Fens named loot are end rewards so can be farmed on casual.
-Relic of a Sovereign Past is pretty easy to do on casual at level 8. You can get the ore and make (in quest) 100% fort necklace, the best heroic longsword, and... other stuff I've never bothered with.
-As soon as you take lvl 10, run into the mists on casual to get your Barovian weapon. There's a good chance it will be BIS until epic levels.
-As soon as you take lvl 20 (go unlock your reward) go to the Keep on the borderlands and farm some epic ingots to get your borderlands epic wpn. Then, go to epic Barovia to grab a legendary Barovian wpn (bank it) and sentient gem (slot it--probably in your borderlands weapon).
-Wilderness areas are not level restricted. So those that drop named loot can be farmed over level (looking at you, Sands). This is probably most useful if you're running multiple characters or TRing.
-Dreaming Dark and Tower of Despair are the only quests that can be run both above and below lvl 20. Flag by 19, run by 24. (Very useful if you want ioun stones).

PLAY TIPS
-Don't know a quest well and want a refresher? Scout it on a lower difficulty or other server.
-Avoid Optionals that don't yield something worthwhile beyond XP. They don't give more favor or Reaper XP. They are just more opportunities to die.
-If you're not running reaper, you can recall, top off, and reenter as long as the instance doesn't time out. In season 6, reaper could be reentered too. I will update this once I know the status.
-The level 6 quest in the Delara's chain where you just walk in and talk to her is not level restricted so you can run the rest of the chain at the level you planned.
-There are usually a couple of high population guilds that level very quickly and have the best buffs. If you aren't in one (they fill fast) post an LFM asking for ship buffs.
-Hotkey teleport or word of recall if you have them or the scroll.

DEATH AND TRANSFERS
-When you die, you are immediately teleported to the Land of Lost Souls (LoLS). This teleport never seems to go pear-shaped. You are not "dead", but you are stranded in a place with a whole lot of nothing, including mailboxes or bank tellers.
-While in the LoLS, you can still group with other characters, share quests (Restless Isles).
-You may want to leave your guild. HC tends to have REALLY large guilds that fill quickly to facilitate meaningful buffs in a short amount of time. Guilds have a limit of 1000 toons. If yours is hanging out in the LoLS, it's not earning favor and is taking up a spot. You can quit the guild on good terms (10% renown loss), bad terms (25% and it's the default amount), get kicked (bad terms), delete the character (no renown loss), or if transfers are available, transfer to another server (no renown loss).
-Inventory, character bank, and plat-type currency are all that move with a character. Shared bank, TR cache, stables, pets, monster manuals, and astral shards do NOT transfer.
-As noted, stables are tied to the server. If you get a mount from a daily roll or chest and use it, it will NOT be available on your home server when transfer your character out. This is not an issue with the HC favor unlocked mounts because you can claim them on any server from the HC vendor in the Hall of Heroes.

PERSONAL OPINION
-Some people like to rush to 20 and TR. While fun to show off your TRed name, 1 or 2 past lives do not give a big power boost but running all those quests does give you more death opportunities.
-Some people run separate toons for favor and RXP. I find that to be painfully time consuming. By around level 10 or so (certainly 12), I don't find R1 much harder than Elite. I typically have 7-10 reaper points by the time I reach 5K favor. I believe most people are far more scared of Reaper difficulty than they should be.
-RXP can come fast at legendary levels. Legendary groups can be scarce. (Another reason I like to earn RXP alongside favor.)
--(More on this) Some think it's high risk/low reward to run reaper before cap. I generally disagree. Anytime my party is blowing through everything on elite, I can't help but wonder why I'm not earning RXP?
-I'm a long-time premium player. VIP does not seem like the best value for me. However, I have upgraded to VIP for a few HC seasons. The inability to open elite or reaper can feel very frustrating if you're always LFM hunting. If you ever consider VIP, HC is a great time to be one. The seasons I haven't been VIP, I always find myself wishing I was.
-It's a game.
-It's fun.

Last bit may not be relevant anymore, but was key in previous seasons:
-If you disconnect and think there is ANY chance your toon was in possible danger, do NOT simply log the same toon back into the same place. Log another toon in 1st, or if you can, log in the hall of heroes to GET OUT of the trouble spot. Even on reaper, you can reenter the quest since you didn't "exit". Many a player not doing this (me) has logged out only to log back in and find themselves DEAD.

* I hear most people talk about shield scrolls. However, they are subject to arcane spell failure while nightshield scrolls are not. They are both level 1, so have same umd requirements, same plat cost, and are even sold by the same vendor.

(Most of this could be found in a similar thread for season 3. https://forums.ddo.com/forums/showth...-in-HCL3/page3)

[TedSandyman]

Seems like if I actually paid money for a quest, I should get the option to open it on elite too.

[Eantarus]

Best hardcore tip - sign on to one of the following servers: Argonnessen, Cannith, Ghallanda, Khyber, Orien, Sarlona, Thelanis, or Wayfinder. These servers do not have the permadeath or "hardcore" mechanic active, and will thus allow you to avoid this stupid gameplay style.

[Halciet]

Best hardcore tip - sign on to one of the following servers: Argonnessen, Cannith, Ghallanda, Khyber, Orien, Sarlona, Thelanis, or Wayfinder. These servers do not have the permadeath or "hardcore" mechanic active, and will thus allow you to avoid this stupid gameplay style.

"Kobold better run, but, but Shinies."

While I can understand that some people like it for me the risk is not worth the reward and I can play a brand new character on live all I want anyway.

[CaptainSpacePony]

"Kobold better run, but, but Shinies."

While I can understand that some people like it for me the risk is not worth the reward and I can play a brand new character on live all I want anyway.

Fair enough. HC isn't for everyone.

Counter point. There is no risk. A character that dies merely is stuck in the land of lost souls until transferred (for free) to another server.

Other selling points:

-The dynamic changes a lot. It can be REALLY exciting to be incapacitated hoping for a heal or even just to stabilize. I don't give it much thought at all on live. I find that fresh and fun. I understand not everyone does.
-Huge server population! (Yes please to server merges)
--Server cross pollination. I like that too.

[CaptainSpacePony]

The OP has been reorganized to (hopefully) not be such a daunting wall of text and be a little easier on the eyes.

[minorpenthes]

Fair enough. HC isn't for everyone.

Counter point. There is no risk. A character that dies merely is stuck in the land of lost souls until transferred (for free) to another server.

Other selling points:

-The dynamic changes a lot. It can be REALLY exciting to be incapacitated hoping for a heal or even just to stabilize. I don't give it much thought at all on live. I find that fresh and fun. I understand not everyone does.
-Huge server population! (Yes please to server merges)
--Server cross pollination. I like that too.

The server population is what I really enjoy about it. Especially the chance to meet people from other servers.


And also, honestly, a little bit of Schadenfreude about seeing some of the people from my own server who are used to being la creme de la creme because of years of farmed gear, tomes, etc., and who suddenly find that without those things, they are not quite the elite players they imagined themselves to be.

You really see if people can play. Sure, you can still have a "pay to win" situation, but to a much smaller extent. It's much more of a level playing field.

[Halciet]

Fair enough. HC isn't for everyone.

Counter point. There is no risk. A character that dies merely is stuck in the land of lost souls until transferred (for free) to another server.

If your goal is the rewards, then a dead character means (at the very least) a loss of time. Risking your time for the rewards. If playing with a static group then a single death means a loss of everyone's time.

I (personally) already have too many alts that seem to need remaking every other update. Every toon I run through HCL gets deleted after transferring items, as quite simply, I do not need another alt.

Other selling points:

-The dynamic changes a lot. It can be REALLY exciting to be incapacitated hoping for a heal or even just to stabilize. I don't give it much thought at all on live. I find that fresh and fun. I understand not everyone does.
-Huge server population! (Yes please to server merges)
--Server cross pollination. I like that too.

Personally think those things would be great, were it not permadeath.
Permadeath turns it into a game of risk mitigation, or just not caring if you have to start over.
Running with a bunch of people you do not know is directly contrary to risk mitigation, which is unfortunate.

I do like the extra challenges they put in place, they are fun and interesting to sort out, but even with the +2 level lockout it feels exactly like what I would be doing on live, but slower.
If HCL6 hounds were not buggy and massively random in difficulty coupled with permadeath I would have found them fun. Level 2 quests: Had 1 hound I was able to stand toe to toe with for a good 8 seconds and never felt in danger but then had a hound which teleported to me and did 200 damage within half a second. That type of thing would be more fun to me if I did not have to start all over. Worse still my friends have to wait on me, move on without me, or remake.
Personally I would love to see either a no permadeath or reduced permadeath (Quest fails when someone dies) with Level +0 lockout. It would be much more challenging yet with punishment and ramifications of that punishment less severe, and with risk mitigation being less absolute, but to each their own.
As for now I will just solo (because all of my friends hate permadeath at this point) to the reward if I find it interesting or just play live as there is always too much to do there. (or wait on the servers being down because they broke the game again)

As you stated HCL isn't for everyone, and that is fine.

Edit: apart from all that, thank you for your guide, some people will likely find it useful.
My recommendation for the "goto 20 -> TR" approach is to grab and upgrade a Pale Lavender Ioun Stone before tackling your 5k+, though I have personally never bothered to do it that way.

[Antheal]

-Huge server population! (Yes please to server merges)

The really amateur way names were implemented in this game kinda shoots themselves in the foot with merging servers.

Names aren't account based, they're first-come-first-served.

AND your character's surname is ignored so you can't have two people with the same first name even if they have different surnames.

If they merge the servers, be prepared to have a whole load of [name]-1's, -2's, etc. for the really popular character names. And who gets to decide what number you get stuck with at the end of your name?

Oh, I hear you say, "What about a free rename token instead?" That's be fine if it wasn't for the fact that every name is already taken to begin with which is the whole point.

[Eantarus]

"Kobold better run, but, but Shinies."

While I can understand that some people like it for me the risk is not worth the reward and I can play a brand new character on live all I want anyway.

My main gripe is permadeath is a dumb mechanic. My second gripe, though, is that nothing I do on HC benefits my main. So what's the point?

[jskinner937]

My main gripe is permadeath is a dumb mechanic. My second gripe, though, is that nothing I do on HC benefits my main. So what's the point?

But you do have unique cosmetics that are account wide access across all servers. Cosmetics for some are benefits and also for some a fast mount is beneficial.

[Nebless]

My second gripe, though, is that nothing I do on HC benefits my main. So what's the point?

- Save all those HC daily dice XP tokens give them to your main when you finish HC and transfer off the server, the same with all the coin you collect.
- HC is a fresh start server each and every time so go free store point farming on it.

Personally I know I'll never make the leaderboards and probably not any of the cosmetics, but the above is why I play on each one.

[CaptainSpacePony]

Seems like if I actually paid money for a quest, I should get the option to open it on elite too.

That's not really a HC specific issue, although, many non VIPs play multiple TRed toons exclusively so they never run into on live.

I have ever given any thought to the issue, but "VIPs can open any difficulty" and "Each TR allows a higher difficulty to be opened" (1 TR enables hard, 2+ elite) has been the way of the world for sometime.

[Uska]

Seems like if I actually paid money for a quest, I should get the option to open it on elite too.

No because everyone paid one way or another for a quest it’s still not VIP

[CaptainSpacePony]

OP updated to elaborate on Devil Assault Dungeon.

[misterski]

-Level 6 quests in the 12 have good loot but are more dangerous than most other lvl 6 quests.
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Learned this the hard way

[jskinner937]

I think you missed a big tip....Blood Tribute, Run Speed and Sprint Boost with 9-11AP and 2 levels of Barb is a great addition to most builds without alignement restrictions for HC.

Also do not dismiss Tabaxi tree. Evasion, Feline Agility (upgraded), Defelct Arrows and Defensive Roll are all fantastic feats you can get with 18AP in the racial tree, but you need decent reflexes. I love tabaxi on builds like pure wizard or alchy with insightful reflexes. Yes I said alchy because you can get evasion much earlier and take something like int to fort saves for your class granted feat, which is also really important on HC.

[yfernbottom]

I think you missed a big tip....Blood Tribute, Run Speed and Sprint Boost with 9-11AP and 2 levels of Barb is a great addition to most builds without alignement restrictions for HC.

Also do not dismiss Tabaxi tree. Evasion, Feline Agility (upgraded), Defelct Arrows and Defensive Roll are all fantastic feats you can get with 18AP in the racial tree, but you need decent reflexes. I love tabaxi on builds like pure wizard or alchy with insightful reflexes. Yes I said alchy because you can get evasion much earlier and take something like int to fort saves for your class granted feat, which is also really important on HC.

If we are talking racial trees, on top of getting some nice resistances and a much wider array of easy self healing options than most races, the warforged tree is really solid. Higher in the tree you have things like PRR, +3 to all saves and +15 to both attack powers. But even low in the tree you get save boosts, hitpoints, fortification and con.

[jskinner937]

If we are talking racial trees, on top of getting some nice resistances and a much wider array of easy self healing options than most races, the warforged tree is really solid. Higher in the tree you have things like PRR, +3 to all saves and +15 to both attack powers. But even low in the tree you get save boosts, hitpoints, fortification and con.

Yes, I agree WF is good tree for HC. But fortification is not one I have ever invested in. Sapphires of fortification stack with % fort on items but not with WF core and inherent fort. So that actually puts it at a disadvantage. But other tree stuff and immunities are really nice for HC.

[CaptainSpacePony]

... Sapphires of fortification stack with % fort on items but not with WF core and inherent fort...

Are you sure about that? My 1st reaction was, "Wrong!" but I know better than to think I know it all.