TOPIC: Harder hardcore and outdated info in players guide

Arnold wrote:

John DiMartino wrote: So this year my group took the move from casual to hardcore level and while we did ok it was only because other members were way over geared. I guess hardcore got harder this year according to some volunteers but I can’t find any announcement about this. Also the players guide says that hardcore is recommended for anyone with more than 3 bags of tokens. Unless this means 3 250 orders of tokens this is very misleading and could create negative experiences for newer players. We almost had our rouge die first room first turn of combat with 2 hits of 14 damage and that really doesn’t feel good.

Overall we had a blast and will continue to play hardcore but we would have liked more accurate information on how hard hardcore is.

John- my two friends and I were on this run with you. Your group was a pleasure to run with.

I do remember Cait getting hit for 28 points right off the bat. It made me wonder if that particular monster in N1 was pre-programmed to target the Rogue.

I'm glad we were able to heal her back up to near-full. Although it did not help that our cleric opted to slide rather than heal her that combat.

I would agree with you that the run did not seem "3 bag" friendly.

Yeah if we hadn’t built a lot of hp onto her she would have died room one and I know that would have ruined there run for her and her husband that they spent 150 on. I understand you risk dying more on hardcore but room one is a bit much that was a lot of damage to target onto a rouge. We had a great time and want to run more. The main point to me posting is hopefully to get better and updated descriptions on what to expect on higher lvls of difficulty so a less experienced group doesn’t have a bad experience.

I was also on the run with WaterSomePlants, and the group had a lot of difficulty with Hardcore during N2 and N1.
We had seven players who had 4-5 years of experience, and three players with 14 years of experience.
All of the experienced players had a good number of purples (and a couple orange/green), and (during N2 and N1) all 10 party members were 5th level.

The fights were much more difficult this year, and one of our long term players was left frustrated enough to consider no longer playing TD in the future.

In N3, the group was more of a mix (several new players joined us), so we ran at the Normal level.
That was slightly better.

The only thing I can think of is that during N2, we had two empty slots (due to no-shows), but the rest of the eight characters were all 5th level to take care of missing players
The missing characters were both of the Wizards, and the Barbarian/Ranger/Rogue did tons of damage. I'm not certain why the monsters had so much HP.

The lack of players doesn't make sense, as the Hardcore N1 run we did had all 10 players, everyone was 5th level, some players were equipped for Nightmare, and there was still difficulty defeating monsters at Hardcore.

It also seemed like there were puzzle hints that were left out during Hardcore that were needed to solve some of the puzzles.

While I had a great time, I have a great deal of concern regarding the possible loss of our longterm party member due to the difficulty of (and disappointment in) the dungeon.

The consensus seems to be that some dungeons, particularly N2, were a little overtuned. Since the unintended difficulty may have been a one-time error, perhaps we leave the hardcore description as is for the time being. If the >3 packs generalization turns out to be inadequate, we can revise it.

Druegar wrote: The consensus seems to be that some dungeons, particularly N2, were a little overtuned. Since the unintended difficulty may have been a one-time error, perhaps we leave the hardcore description as is for the time being. If the >3 packs generalization turns out to be inadequate, we can revise it.

I've always thought that description was misleading for most groups on Hardcore, and that it was much more difficult than a few 10 packs of tokens. I do agree that it was more difficult this year, but I'm OK with that. If it's designed to only require a few 10 packs to run, I think the difficulty level is too close to Normal.

With mixed groups, the only guideline I've come up with so far is that everyone has to have 30+ HP for hardcore to be a reasonable option. Considering that one of our players played in a group on nightmare where someone ran with 27hp, obviously just a guideline.

Then, while not having some sort of offensive stat guideline seems to work fine for full parties, have had less than full parties struggle much more with hardcore due to a combination of inability to kill monsters along with how the more players you have the less fighting you do so the fewer attacks monsters get! (It occurred to me after one run we would have been far better off just being incredibly slow at combat since there was no way we were going to kill the enemy.)

This was Guildy McGuildFace's first year in Hardcore. We had N1 at Origins and N2 and N3 at GenCon. I agree the combat at GenCon felt tighter. We had one tight room at Origins (DM didnt believe/remember we could ALL see invisible).

Our Wizard and Barbarian are damage machines. (FYI MEC + MoMM = lots of wizard damage; NM barbarian with 3+ deathcleaver and like 1 bad slide all day also does mucho damage)
Our Rogue is typically #3-5 in damage, but opened up a can of whoopin' this year and was especially devastating in round 1 all day. He is normally good for 60-75% of his slides, but he must have been 80% plus.

The rest of our damage team is Ranged Ranger with +12 to hit, Dwarf Fighter (AC 27, melee hit +13/+8 dmg), and Paladin (+10 hit/+12 dmg). Elf Wizard is our weakest geared character, but with medallion of mystic mouth she was probably #4 damage getting +10 free dps every round.

Bardsong +2 hit/+4 dmg all day, plus he has Shield of the Scholar and got to drop 28 points of damage round 1 (via Ocarina + charm of the sage + arcane scroll tube)

Cleric purely buffing and healing. As druid, I was the switch and bounced between polymorph, range dps and healing. I healed MUCH more in N2/N3 than I did at Origins, especially when the Cleric got himself cursed with spores and needed a round to quaff a potion to de-curse himself.

Our dwarf fighter taunted on the regular to avoid damage spikes to the wizard or bard, and paladin guarded for the same reason.

We needed a third round of combat in one room (twin giants), but Wizard AOE damage helped there a lot.

Overall, our melee was REMARKABLY more consistent than I thought they could be, and I am super proud of them all (not just my two daughters, aka THE TANKS).

TL;Dr: harder than GenCon, we got luck on slides, we beat every room, but some with no time left. We had zero deaths. As I said, I'm super proud of our team this year!

In the group that I mentioned previously having difficulty with Hardcore, everyone had 30+ hp--with Ranger and Barbarian in the 50+hp range (plus several players with regen).

We were down to eight players in N2 due to no-shows, so we didn't have either wizard class.
The Barbarian to-hit/damage is +12/+28, the ranger is +11/+17, and the rogue hit with first round sneak every time. The Cleric has goggles of divine sight, so healing was plentiful.

The group didn't have any issues with death or healing, but the monster HP was significantly higher than a group equipped like this could complete in the time given.

Between the five characters I can count, there were more than 50 purples (or higher).
The group was very experienced--I'd guess >100 dungeons of experience between seven of the players.

This doesn't sound like the kind of equipped group that should have problems with Hardcore if it is intended to be three bags per player (~30 bags). Even if the suggestion was 10 bags per player, this group easily exceeded that.
(I'd have a hard time guessing how many bags the group may be at, but I can say that I've been buying 250 bag sets for 10 years.)

If this was a one time thing, then I wouldn't be as concerned.
However, it happened in both N2 and N1 when run at Hardcore. (N3 was run at normal because half the group was new).
I'm seeing a possible trend.

I would also chalk it up to just a bad year--if this hadn't alienated veteran players (>10 years) into potentially quitting TD. This concerns me.

I always heard that if players were geared with mostly a red build that they could run hardcore.

It would be great if we could find a way to signup for levels or runs, but I know there is not a good way for this to ever happen unless GenCon does not manage ticket purchases and it was done fully through TD.

Mekra wrote: I always heard that if players were geared with mostly a red build that they could run hardcore.

It would be great if we could find a way to signup for levels or runs, but I know there is not a good way for this to ever happen unless GenCon does not manage ticket purchases and it was done fully through TD.

True Dungeon used to allocate certain runs as Nightmare only in the ticket system, but that didn't work very well because many of the tickets were still bought by people that wanted to run non-Nightmare, and in some cases the Nightmare runs didn't sell out as fast as the regular runs.

Couple notes on the "HardCore" distinction:

I agree that Hardcore was at a very nice point for the last couple/three years, and if it was cranked up this year it should be cranked back down.
My thought is that perhaps it was nudged upwards to keep it kind-of "between" Normal and Nightmare... but I'd rather it wasn't geared with that in mind. Nightmare - and now Epic - are the place to push groups into buying high-end gear to defeat the dungeon and get bragging rights. Hardcore fulfills a different niche, and I'm hoping it can stay there.

The other thing which tends to get glossed over when folks discuss HardCore - and I think it's an important note - is that it's NOT all about the tokens. Yes, having Rares in most slots is appropriate for HC, and Yes, it should be aimed at people who have played a few times before and have either spent a little on tokens (or have kept their treasure from all their previous runs.)

HardCore is also about TEAMWORK.
If you've got a good group together who has played before and knows their stuff, they will be:

* Quicker & more efficient on the combat table
* Making their Wizard/Cleric/Bardic challenges more often
* Aware of the difference which BardSong makes, and will have equipped their Bard with (at least) a Masterwork Instrument
* Using their healing spells efficiently (which includes having a system for players to let the Healers know when they're needed)
* Good at in-group communication - knowing to listen to each other for puzzle brainstorming, or knowing when everyone needs to listen to the One Guy who's trying to coordinate the group for a physical task.

In my mind, that's the difference between Normal and HC mode: The knowledge of how TD works, and the willingness to adopts strategies to maximize your time in the dungeon.

If you've got that, you should be able to do HardCore on a Sealed Deck run.
If you haven't got it...then you may need more than just 2-3 packs of tokens per player.

I’ve been following this and similar threads with renewed interest this year. And I’ll open a new thread to do some more relevant discussion- but here’s something to add to the mix. This year there were several challenges. Tuning in the difficulty was something that was acknowledged straight up as an area that didn’t get accomplished as smoothly as may have been liked. Many veterans- myself included- have not felt threatened in combat for a while. Some comments and feedback have addressed this reasonably well some from a one-sided perspective... bottom line - there’s some degree of disconnect... one thing that gets missed sometimes is the DM side of it... and it is far more involved than “the DM didn’t do a good job” - “the DM did a good job”... suffice it to say - the combat DM is critical to the success of the combat module, and it’s a bloody challenging task!

The feedback - even the negative - is helpful, and as long as we get good specifics of what did and didn’t work spelled out... it builds a better TD experience!

Final note: the Hardcore experience should serve as a gateway for people who feel that they are able to move past Normal. It should not require expansive tokens.... mostly red in the major slots... and generally I think I also agree with what Raven said in the previous comment.... especially about teamwork!

I think part of the problem is there is now such a huge gap between normal and nightmare that it is hard to balance hardcore for players. The last few years hardcore was good for a all rare build but probably to easy for a half UR build but nightmare is still to hard for that same build.

I do like the idea of two lvls of difficulty between normal as it gets to easy very fast (and cheap) and nightmare that you really need a very large investment to play. But that might be to many lvls of difficulty to balance.

Also raven I would agree with you in years past that hardcore could be run with a few packs but not this year. The damage even in room one of I think n1 was 28 to a single player in the first turn. Only the dwarf fighter and barb could tank that without multiple hp up items. Also one fight had in the range of 400 health. That’s not something doable without a lot of optimized gear I feel.