Diablo 3: Hardcore

I've been playing Hardcore for about a week now and it's definitely a different experience.

Knowing you only have one life makes you very cautious and paranoid. Every Elite pack has to be scoped out in advance and some of them (along with a couple of normal monsters) should be avoided. (I hate those maniac/lunatics that run at you and explode).

Mystra is my second HC character. My first was also a wizard that made it to level 14, but died a horrible death to the spiders in Act 1. He got swarmed by about 10 of the small spiders and they ate him alive.

From that I learned:
1. Even for a wizard, defense matters
2. When you die everything in the PC inventory is no longer accessible.
3. All gold and items in your chest can be used by another HC character.

After a bit of research I also found out that the level of items in the HC Action House are not as good as in the SC AH. Mostly because a lot of the really good items are on dead PCs that are removed from play.

It could be build dependent, but what has worked best for me is to have a Life Steal weapon. This allows me to constantly heal without relying on potions and they potion timer cool down.

I also check the Auction House before a major boss fight to see if I need to upgrade weapons or armor.


Current Wizard build:
The build I'm currently playing on my HC wizard isn't that different than my SC wizard. She hasn't unlocked some of the runes she needs but build is the same except Diamond Skin replaces Archon.

Being immune to damage for a short period has helped out a lot.

This character is mostly a meleer though Arcane Hydra helps with ranged targets as well as added DPS while in melee.

Well made it to level 44 and was just starting my way through Act 3 and got a server timeout.

When I was able to log back in Mystra was dead.

I can take dying to a monster, but to a server crash!

They really need to fix that.

Dwarmaj wrote:Well made it to level 44 and was just starting my way through Act 3 and got a server timeout.

When I was able to log back in Mystra was dead.

I can take dying to a monster, but to a server crash!

They really need to fix that.

That sucks!! You should try emailing them and demand they restore her (or at least give you a legendary item set...)

When I decided to give hardcore a try I didn't event think disconnects/lag would be a major issue.

Guess I was wrong.

Here's a thread with some issue others have ran into:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/8568990721

Made a new wizard, up to lvl 30 again...

Oh, when playing hardcore, it's very handy to have backup equipment stored either in your chest or saved off in the Auction House.

Sooner or later you will die and having readily available backup gear saves a lot of time.

First milestone met... Midnight made it to level 60.

Once you get past normal, things become much easier.

One thing that made levels 45-60 go quickly was buying a "reduced level" weapon. At level 44 I had a 120DPS weapon, at 45 I bought an 860DPS weapon. As long as you keep your armor on par with the monsters, they don't stand a chance with the increased DPS.

Midnight is just starting in Act 3 (Hell), but the rest of Hell should be a cake walk (barring disconnects...)

And another one bites the dust...

Guess I'll stick with SC, it was nice while it lasted.

Getting really good at leveling HC characters...

Last one died when I joined a public game. The guy aggravated a pack with frozen|moltant|fast|duplicate, then ran past me when he got into trouble.

Guess I won't be playing multi player in HC.

After about 6 hours played, my PC is up to level 33. I'm using hand me downs from my previous HC characters and playing on MP10 (except for boss battles where I drop down to MP0 to be safe). That really speeds up leveling.

You should try Neverwinter.