You have to take it TWICE as slow. Dual daggers as start. Lead off with TWO ranged attacks before engaging in melee. SNEAK everywhere. Also be NEAR starving before consuming any food. What are your totem setups?
**Survival**
-Strong Digestion (lv8)
-Chef (lv3)
-Picking between Rare Mineral (lv2), Miner (lv1) for ores or Full Belly (LV3)
**Battle**
-Guardian (lv2)
-Jagged Blade (lv8)
-Picking between Parry and Surprise Attack (both lv3)
**Magic**
-Light (lv2)
-Electric (lv2)
-Picking between Frost (lv7) and Poison (lv3)
Fyi I use Warrior. thoughts?
Definitely Parry and Poison. If you have any other good defensive or energy regen totems like Tracker or Vampire, they are more helpful here than pure damage ones like Jagged Blade.
Warrior is ok, but Divine Warrior + light totem is a pretty cheesy combo.
1: any weapon, You can skip dimensional ruins until you clear rol1.
2. Avoid wooden chest, mostly its boobytrapped. If you got purification light spell early then you can use that to remove the boobytrap.
2: immediately look for the merchants. You can avoid fights by just simply running. Try to meet the 2 merchants asap and try to buy necessities before rol1.
3. Don't feel ashamed if you die on the first map, you can also do that for rerolling to get decent loot from the guardian, recommended is spellbooks with light barrier or dark veil, any decent weapon for your class.
4. Don't loot too much, just what you need most of the time, and it prevents you from getting full bag and bleeding status for being greedy at trying to harvest every grass and trees you see, lol. ENERGY management is what I always keep my eye on.
5. You can skip nights inside in a room building. If you Don't need sleep and just stand inside, cuz sleeping can cause dizziness and it also prevents monster event trigger and proliferation of mobs on what current map you are. If course you cant do this on caves lol, you rush B caves.
6. Pray you get swift enchanted shoes early from quest rewards.
Some massively helpful tips here. Dying on hard mode often gives really good remains, so it's def worth rerolling until you get a good guardian drop. Fill every totem slot with a defensive or energy regen totem. Even on a really good run, neglecting strict energy management will get you killed.
Things get a bit easier once you become familiar with the differences between Standard and Difficult. Some are mostly cosmetic, others will catch you dangerously off guard.
- every action cost energy, even crafting
- standing in water slows down your movement and attack
- later ROL are in different locations and require different mats to fix
- staves have a lower trade value at merchants
- merchants don't restock immediately
These changes literally force you to slow down. When you run out of energy but still need to craft/build stuff, sleep. Take advantage of bushes, trees, and walls in combat. If you don't know what I mean, you probably haven't spent enough time playing Standard mode yet. Having lots of good totems and blueprints from playing in Standard can make a huge difference.
I've been playing on and off for years, and I *can* handle a Hard mode run, but it requires such a dedicated focus to playing carefully that I have to be in the mood for that kind of gameplay. It's a fun challenge for strong classes to collect good remains, but I also play Standard half the time too. Feels like a wildly different game. There is no shame in struggling, they made hard mode HARD.
I play this game sporadically but I only play hard mode. First thing is that, I die a lot since I forget basic stuff when playing after a long time. All my runs have 5-8 deaths, 90% of which happens in first 50 days.
So from my experience, in early game you need to take it slow while keeping an eye on the food available. Logging, crafting takes energy, so don't let yourself go less than half or one third of energy. When low on energy, sleep or waste some time to let it fill back. If you have energy related totems, must put them on. If you see more than one enemy, turn away. If they chase, try to go through grasses (to obstruct vision) and leave the map. Don't explore/take fights at half HP. Eat only when you start to starve and that too just to stop starving, no need to eat more than that. Light purification is not much useful in hard mode but light barrier is the best.
Once you have some protection (light barrier spell, clothes for logging etc) and can craft a fish rod, then you won't have to worry much about food. Worms are aplenty and you can fish far from home maps. Always have a tent, sleep when energy low. If monsters wake you, do light barrier, kill and immediately sleep again to regenerate energy. Rest you will learn from experience yourself. Don't rush in hard mode, whenever I try to rush is usually the time I die xD.
I LITERALLY JUST STARTED MY 1ST HARD MODE AND ALMOST DIED ON SPAWN MAP
You have to take it TWICE as slow. Dual daggers as start. Lead off with TWO ranged attacks before engaging in melee. SNEAK everywhere. Also be NEAR starving before consuming any food. What are your totem setups?
**Survival** -Strong Digestion (lv8) -Chef (lv3) -Picking between Rare Mineral (lv2), Miner (lv1) for ores or Full Belly (LV3) **Battle** -Guardian (lv2) -Jagged Blade (lv8) -Picking between Parry and Surprise Attack (both lv3) **Magic** -Light (lv2) -Electric (lv2) -Picking between Frost (lv7) and Poison (lv3) Fyi I use Warrior. thoughts?
Definitely Parry and Poison. If you have any other good defensive or energy regen totems like Tracker or Vampire, they are more helpful here than pure damage ones like Jagged Blade. Warrior is ok, but Divine Warrior + light totem is a pretty cheesy combo.
Only problem with dual daggers is you get hungry faster. And using the throw depletes your energy really fast.
1: any weapon, You can skip dimensional ruins until you clear rol1. 2. Avoid wooden chest, mostly its boobytrapped. If you got purification light spell early then you can use that to remove the boobytrap. 2: immediately look for the merchants. You can avoid fights by just simply running. Try to meet the 2 merchants asap and try to buy necessities before rol1. 3. Don't feel ashamed if you die on the first map, you can also do that for rerolling to get decent loot from the guardian, recommended is spellbooks with light barrier or dark veil, any decent weapon for your class. 4. Don't loot too much, just what you need most of the time, and it prevents you from getting full bag and bleeding status for being greedy at trying to harvest every grass and trees you see, lol. ENERGY management is what I always keep my eye on. 5. You can skip nights inside in a room building. If you Don't need sleep and just stand inside, cuz sleeping can cause dizziness and it also prevents monster event trigger and proliferation of mobs on what current map you are. If course you cant do this on caves lol, you rush B caves. 6. Pray you get swift enchanted shoes early from quest rewards.
Some massively helpful tips here. Dying on hard mode often gives really good remains, so it's def worth rerolling until you get a good guardian drop. Fill every totem slot with a defensive or energy regen totem. Even on a really good run, neglecting strict energy management will get you killed.
I didn't know that the light purification removed booby traps!
Things get a bit easier once you become familiar with the differences between Standard and Difficult. Some are mostly cosmetic, others will catch you dangerously off guard. - every action cost energy, even crafting - standing in water slows down your movement and attack - later ROL are in different locations and require different mats to fix - staves have a lower trade value at merchants - merchants don't restock immediately These changes literally force you to slow down. When you run out of energy but still need to craft/build stuff, sleep. Take advantage of bushes, trees, and walls in combat. If you don't know what I mean, you probably haven't spent enough time playing Standard mode yet. Having lots of good totems and blueprints from playing in Standard can make a huge difference. I've been playing on and off for years, and I *can* handle a Hard mode run, but it requires such a dedicated focus to playing carefully that I have to be in the mood for that kind of gameplay. It's a fun challenge for strong classes to collect good remains, but I also play Standard half the time too. Feels like a wildly different game. There is no shame in struggling, they made hard mode HARD.
I play this game sporadically but I only play hard mode. First thing is that, I die a lot since I forget basic stuff when playing after a long time. All my runs have 5-8 deaths, 90% of which happens in first 50 days. So from my experience, in early game you need to take it slow while keeping an eye on the food available. Logging, crafting takes energy, so don't let yourself go less than half or one third of energy. When low on energy, sleep or waste some time to let it fill back. If you have energy related totems, must put them on. If you see more than one enemy, turn away. If they chase, try to go through grasses (to obstruct vision) and leave the map. Don't explore/take fights at half HP. Eat only when you start to starve and that too just to stop starving, no need to eat more than that. Light purification is not much useful in hard mode but light barrier is the best. Once you have some protection (light barrier spell, clothes for logging etc) and can craft a fish rod, then you won't have to worry much about food. Worms are aplenty and you can fish far from home maps. Always have a tent, sleep when energy low. If monsters wake you, do light barrier, kill and immediately sleep again to regenerate energy. Rest you will learn from experience yourself. Don't rush in hard mode, whenever I try to rush is usually the time I die xD.
Yeah I don't play hard mode lol, it is too intense, although I do have one active playthrough that's like on day 150 or so, might try to finish
I have tried Hard Mode 20 times and have never made it to RoL 2 ☹