These are not my ideas, and I’m posting them here for easy referencing
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Playing a hardcore Guild Wars 2 character means imposing a set of restrictions on yourself that make the game more engaging in a vareity
of ways. They are just honor rules, it is easy to cheat and there are no real rewards beyond your own personal satisfaction.
Have you ever wished that leveling and the playing personal story was more engaging? Ever thought it would be cool if there
was a chance to fail so you had to actually focus and would appreciate any gear you had? Are you sick of exploring the world by following
a checklist and zig-zagging from waypoint to waypoint? What about creating a unique character while making meaningful decisions at story junctures?
If you answered yes to any of those questions, read on! The vanilla game, especially since feature pack 2, simply can’t offer this experience. That’s where hardcore mode comes in.
Hardcore mode borrows ideas from rogue-lite games, introducing tension, a high chance of failure, and fun in making multiple characters who each explore Tyria in their own unique way.
The idea is to make the game more immersive, scary, engaging and – most importantly – a challenge. It is not for the feint of heart and few will complete it on their first, second, or even
tenth attempt.
OBJECTIVE:
Defeat Zhaitan.
RULES:
1. If you die, your character is deleted.
2. You cannot withdraw from the bank, and start with no gold.
3. You cannot waypoint.
5. You can only make hero point purchases after completing a hero challenges. One at a time.
6. You have no minimap or content guide. You can only view your world map when in a city.
7. You cannot explore maps until the personal story has directed you to them.
4. You cannot change your build during personal story steps.
8. Certain core capabilities, such as dodge rolling and using your heal skill, are locked until purchased from the shop. (Shown below)
9. Personal story steps must be completed: Solo, consecutively, and as soon as they are available.
Cities are qualified as:
– Rata Sum, The Grove, Lion’s Arch, Divinities Reach, Hoelbrak, The Black Citadel, Ebonhawke and Fort Trinity
Your build is qualified as:
– All items you have equipped & their upgrade components, chosen utility skills and your specialization choices
THE SHOP:
Players are unable to perform certain actions until they are bought from the shop with gold.
– The shops inventory expands over time.
At first the shop will only carry:
– A booster token, sold for 50s.
– Holding this token allows the player to access black lion armourer vendors and claim a booster of their choice
– With this token in hand, an additional booster may be acquired after each personal story chapter is finished.
– An 18 slot invisible bag, sold for 50s.
– This bag is a cheap way of expanding the inventory and holds exactly enough space for all tokens gathered on an adventure.
After the level 10 personal story steps are complete the shop is expanded:
– Trinket slots are now sold for 5g
– When starting, characters cannot equip trinkets. The shop sells tokens which, when held in the inventory, allow the player to equip them into the corresponding slot.
– Armour slots are sold for 10g
– When starting, characters can neither equip armour into empty slots nor upgrade the armour they started with. These tokens allow you to freely equip any gear to the corresponding slot.
After the level 40 personal story steps:
– Dodgeroll is sold for 25g
– Healing is sold for 25g
– Without these tokens you cannot dodge roll, use or assign a new heal skill.
After the level 60 personal story steps:
– Trinket and gemstone trading post access is sold for 15g
– Armour and rune trading post access is sold for 15g
– Weapon and sigil trading post access is sold for 15g
Clarifications about cheating:
The only wallet currencies you may spend are: Gold, Karma and Transmutation charges
You forfeit the challenge if your level is three higher than the personal story recommends
You must start with an empty trading post
You may not visit World Versus World, Heart, or Edge of the Mists as the personal story does not direct you to them
You may not use the home instance portal stone
You may not accept items from other players
You may not ‘teleport to a friend’
You may not purchase exotic equipment from the Karma vendors in Orr
You may not visit your guild hall
You may not use the currencies or mails UI to see the map while not in a city
You may not use home instance nodes and other related upgrades
In the rare circumstance you are forced to travel through a map with no personal story, you must take the most direct route you can. Use no vendors, open no chests, nor claim any hero points there.
If choosing to craft, you must empty your materials storage of all items gathered by other characters.
To clarify things you CAN do:
Boosters are allowed, but you cannot spend gems to acquire them
You can deposit items (e.g black lion ticket scraps) to the bank if you really need to, but can never withdraw
You can craft with the materials deposited to your bank, but not manually withdraw them
You can visit the Hall of Monuments, but only while in Lion’s Arch
You can accept and use any login or achievement rewards
You can complete dailies and use their rewards
You can use bonfires, guild banners and guild buffs
Allies in the open world are welcome to support you or revive you when downed
THE SETUP
Now that you know what the rules are, you’ll see that you need to do a couple of things before playing. It doesn’t take long.
Your account:
First, you need to get rid of your gold so that your new character starts with 0. This is best done by depositing to a personal guild bank. You may already
have one for storage purposes, but if not you can quickly create one and buy a little influence for the guild storage upgrades.
– If you have no guild bank OR available slots to create one, find another way to get rid of your gold. Spend it. Invest it. Mail it to an alt account, trust a friend. Whatever.
Second, hardcore characters cannot dodge roll or use their heal skills until halfway through the adventure when they have the option of buying them. You can trust yourself
to never press these keys, but much better to unbind them in your options! No accidents.
Third, boosters. As you continue your adventure, you’ll be able to purchase enchanted boosters from black lion armourer vendors to speed up leveling or help you in combat – your choice.
The catch is – these vendors use the existing boosters they find sitting around in your bank as a currency. Make sure, then, that you have all those spare gathering, karma, XP (and so on)
boosters visible in your bank for the vendor to see before you start.
– If you’re out of boosters, you still get a lot from black lion chests and raising other characters to level 80. You can always choose not to use them, too.
Lastly, the content guide needs to be disabled. You’ll find the ability to do that in general options.
You’re done! It’s that easy.
A note on crafting. Crafting doesn’t really add much to the challenge, except as a means of a little bonus experience from refining. I would encourage you to ignore it, however,
if you want to try crafting on your hardcore character there is an extra step – make sure your bank is empty of all crafting materials gathered by other characters before you begin! You can
either sell it all or pull it onto alts. This process can be a pain to maintain if you’re planning on playing a little of the normal game AND a hardcore character at the same time, though,
and considering how little value crafting has, I would consider not bothering unless you sincerely want the option to craft.
Disabling the minimap:
Playing a hardcore character means you get no minimap. This encourages you to use scouts and study the physical environment to figure out where to go and what to do.
It’s a highly immersive and challenging element of the experience, but the game doesn’t offer an actual setting to disable the minimap! Not to worry, it’s easily accomplished with ICM:
http://wesslen.org/ICM/ .
Extract the archive to your guild wars 2 directory and in the configuration settings make sure to ‘hide minimap always’. You probably also want to turn off ‘combatmode’ so that the only thing to
change is the UI, but that’s up to you. If you’re unsure what to do I’ll include my settings for you to copy and paste into the config file:
http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=P2eaV1jh
You’re done again!
The shop:
The last big element of the challenge is the shop. The shop holds tokens you buy as you earn money in order to equip new gear, access areas of the trading post and complete certain actions in combat.
When a purchase is made the player simply deposits that amount of gold into the shop – unable to reclaim it until the challenge is over. (Either by yours – or Zhaitans – death.)
Once again you’ll find it best to use a guild bank for this. You can have any setup you like, and actually be rather creative in the items and ordering too! Here is my shop layout but it could be as messy
or fancy as you wish.
http://i.imgur.com/Lpk6Jht.jpg
With the last step complete, everything is ready! Feel free to make a new character of any race, profession and backstory you like. Follow the rules and see if you can make it to defeating zhaitan.
ADVENTURERS HANDBOOK (Everything written below this is WIP)
Here you will find an in-depth look at each of the 10 rules and how they affect gameplay – what’s fun about them and what to look out for!
Rule one:
If you die, your character is deleted.
The most important rule of the challenge. Playing a hardcore character means if you die, it’s game over. While this adds a great deal of tension
to playing, there are also more relaxed times to be had such as while leveling or exploring. Most of Tyria really isn’t that dangerous,
and it would be hard to stop random people from resurrecting you or helping out by accident – so it’s all allowed!
That said, sooner or later, you’re probably going to die. Wandering into dangerous territory at a low level, falling a great height or more
likely during your personal story things can get very scary. Even at very low levels be warned that you have no downed state at all!
The spirit of the game is to make lots of new characters and to try new things each time. Choosing your race, class, discipline and hero
point spending will all dramatically affect how each attempt plays, so try to learn from your successes and failures each time to rise to the top.
Death isn’t the end.
Rule two:
You cannot dodge-roll
At first not being able to dodge roll will sound very punishing, after all it is a core mechanic of Guild Wars 2! And yet, though this may seem
to remove complexity, it actually puts far more emphasis on skillful elements of combat. Strafing, line of sighting, watching what you
agro and planning routes of escape all become powerful tools you’ll frequently employ to survive.
Notably, dodgeroll is not the only form of damage mitigation. Evades provided through weapon skills are still fair game, as are blocks, blinds
invulnerabilities, projectile reflection and deflection, stealths and all boons. As such, weapons and skills providing these effects are very
valuable and the decisions you make when creating a build or choosing a stat set is very important.
Dissallowing dodge-roll does reduce complexity in some areas. Vigor becomes almost useless, as are sigils of energy and various on dodge
traits. Acrobatics Thieves and Arcane elementalists are perhaps hit hardest by this change, but these were generally trivialising already easy
gameplay and there are always other, less visited options to try.
Rule three:
You start with no gold or crafting materials, and cannot use the bank.
It wouldn’t be much of a challenge if you could simply rely on all the money and wealth you’ve acquired through other characters on your account
now, would it?
Early Leveling:
Consumables such as candied apples should be bought from the TP to assist in leveling.
Early game content is not mechanically difficult – the challenge here is XP management.
Rule Seven:
You cannot explore maps unless the personal story has directed you to them.
Rule nine is one of the most important aspects of the challenge, for without it characters could explore all of Tyria at their lesiure, acquiring
every hero point possible, gaining access to all consumables and vendors and generally becoming overpowered. The spirit of this rule is to truly
make each attempt feel different: Playing a Charr character means seeing completely unique areas of the world, getting different numbers of
hero points to other races and at different speeds. The same is true for the Order you will later pick, the race you sympathise with,
and for many personal story decisions.
The result is that by the end of the game your character won’t have everything – they will have only what you chose to invest in and will be
shaped by their specific journey. It is exactly this reason that you might die when things get difficult, and exactly this reason you might
be excited to try again and see what you can do differently next time.
The wording of this rule is very specific. Players can only visit a map AFTER their personal story has already directed them to it – this stops
someone theoretically exploring the world early, maxing out multiple specialisations and unlocking lots of utility skills before easily
breezing through early personal story steps.
This does have a side effect, though: Players may complete, say, metrica province at level 17 but then be stuck unable to progress further to
brisban Wildlands because the story won’t direct them there till level 20! These times, though, are perfect opportunities to craft and the level
gap is quickly bridged.
Lastly, there may be very rare situations where a players personal story directs them to a map so far away they have never explored any maps
en route to it. It is ONLY in these situations that players may explore additional maps, and while in them they cannot visit vendors, collect
chest rewards or gain hero points.
If you wanted more hero points, access to fire ele powder or that specific world boss chest you’ll just have to choose differently next time!
TIPS
13g41s
Rule one:
If you die, your character is deleted.
You’ll find for the majority of open world gameplay that not dying is quite bearable – simply don’t wander too far out of your depth
into difficult areas and keep to small events, or appropriate renown hearts.
You can, ofcourse, play things risky. Trying large meta events with zergs of players can reward a lot of fast XP. Trying a world boss, even, is
likely to reward you with powerful loot – but enemies here will be scaled high, perhaps capable of killing you in a single strike, so be sure
to take care.
Later in the game, particularly around Orr, general exploration becomes more cumbersome. Traveling with a companion who can assist you will make
things much easier, so don’t be scared to stick with those you meet or ask for help!
During personal story, things are another matter. You will be alone, weak, have few options, and will need to be very careful of your position.
Generally the game becomes very easy with the use of AI companions and for this reason classes like the Ranger can do very well.
Your last great threat is fall damage! One slip and it can be game over. Be weary of jumping puzzles or hero points poistioned precariously
over cliffs. The shiverpeaks can be a particularly deadly reigon for this reason, so try to watch out when using weapons that move your
character!
Rule two:
You cannot dodge-roll
Not being able to dodge puts a lot more pressure on having the correct build! Don’t understimate the power of weapon skills that allow you to
evade, try to get used to how they work early as they will be your main means of survival when things get tough! Staying alive with no
safety-net to get you out of danger won’t be easy, always try to watch what you’re fighting and plan to escape accordingly.
In general, watch for blinds, deflections and evade skills!
Rule three:
]
Rule nine:
You cannot explore maps unless the personal story has directed you to them.
If you find yourself stuck with no new maps to explore, waiting for more personal story to unlock, be sure to do some crafting! You’ll find most
of the time this is exactly the boost you need to progress further1.
Class tips:
Warrior: With it’s heavy armour and innately large health pool, you will find shrugging off hard hits easier than most. That said, you’ll find
further damage mitigation from shields, greatswords and to a less extent swords and maces. Endure pain, defy pain and berserker stance will
all help to negate incoming damage, too!
Ranger: Your pet is great at drawing agro, and combined with your long range you may find this one of the easiest classes to play! Further evades
may be found on lightning reflexes or signet or stone!
Necromancer: You have fewer abilities that nullify damage than most, but minions can be a huge help. Necromancer is a pretty difficult class
- try your best to keep life force high and use CC’s to escape as best you can!
Elementalist: Elementalists have low vitality and low health, but some capacity to heal themselves through water attunement. Using a focus may
not be great for offense, but will provide cleanses, reflects, invulns and deflects. Using cantrips while water specialised can get you out
of a great many tricky situations.
Mesmer: The Mesmer suffers from having particularly low damage, trying to collect condition based gear may be your best bet. Use stealths
Thief: As a thief you will start with a signet heal, significantly lowering the pressure to purchase mystic essence until much later where withdraw or hide in shadows may be preferable.
You have ample access to dodges without a moa feather, too, as well as blinds and projectile deflection! Be warned however: Your ranged damage is lacking and you are particularly squishy,
two things that will cause significant struggle against the hordes of undead later.
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