Your personal notes and observations of HC season Eight

[PaleFox]

Mine so far are:
- I like the Scavenger hunt a lot.
- I'm avoiding portals, be it in a wilderness zone or in a quest.

- Druids are this seasons hotcake.
- There seem to be two kinds of players (builds?), those that can solo and carry a group. And those like me, who need to be carried. :(

 

[hanul]

Mine so far are:
- I like the Scavenger hunt a lot.
- I'm avoiding portals, be it in a wilderness zone or in a quest.

- Druids are this seasons hotcake.
- There seem to be two kinds of players (builds?), those that can solo and carry a group. And those like me, who need to be carried. :(

What portals are you referring to?

 

[PaleFox]

What portals are you referring to?

Those that spawn massive amounts of reavers, elementals or giants at once or just a nasty combination of heldhounds and beholders.
(My perspective of what "massive" means differs greatly on HC vs Normal servers.)
Esp those that keep "spawning" out mobs in multiple rounds, brrrr.

 

[Kemiroch]

My personal observations thus far:

It is so much less stressful not having a 5000 favor reward. I don't have to do every single quest in the game, and those I do I don't have to do on Elite. My first two characters probably would not have died if I realized this going in!

I also notice how much easier Normal is than I remember, and how much harder Hard is than I remember (my live group runs on R1 for levelling).

I am currently playing the Blightcaster Druid. I chose it somewhat in frustration after the deaths of my first two characters. At the time I didn't realize exactly how the season worked or I might have chosen differently. While the Blightcaster is stupidly powerful and breezes through most quests, it isn't terribly fun since enemies just melt to my spells and it isn't my usual playstyle from live.

 

[PaleFox]

My personal observations thus far:

It is so much less stressful not having a 5000 favor reward. I don't have to do every single quest in the game, and those I do I don't have to do on Elite. My first two characters probably would not have died if I realized this going in!

I also notice how much easier Normal is than I remember, and how much harder Hard is than I remember (my live group runs on R1 for levelling).

I am currently playing the Blightcaster Druid. I chose it somewhat in frustration after the deaths of my first two characters. At the time I didn't realize exactly how the season worked or I might have chosen differently. While the Blightcaster is stupidly powerful and breezes through most quests, it isn't terribly fun since enemies just melt to my spells and it isn't my usual playstyle from live.

Also a blight druid here, I choose acid as my main ingredient and notice that I get nothing but yellow numbers.
I probably will switch to the pierce side of the enhancements tree once I port this character to Orien.

Seeing (or reading up on) how others are perceiving these druids performance is so far out of line with how I experience it, I wonder if my character is broken in some way.

 

[NomadDog]

Here are my thoughts on hardcore so far this season:

1. The hunt for Dragon Horde fragments was exciting for a week or so, until they were all found. I was constantly tuning in to streams and chats to see what we've found and how much more we needed to find.

2. The lack of a high favor goal and the fact that the Dragon Horde fragments can be found on normal difficulty diminished the need to run quests on elite. This has resulted in hardcore not being as difficult this season and thus not holding my interest as much.

3. Blightcaster is ridiculously strong. I tried my usual warforged rogue/artificer to start the season and it got nuked early. Ultimately after 3 or so deaths, I just decided to run a Blightcaster and like others have described, it just absolutely melts everything.

4. The champions are not that scary this season. The hounds still hold the title for me of toughest gimmick for any hardcore season I've played.

 

[Sylvado]

I liked the scavenger hunt but only for a week, once they were all found there was no more reason to look for them. Haven't tried the blight caster but my Tempest DH is doing very well.

 

[Secondlife]

This is the first Hardcore season since I came back to the game. It was a ton of fun. Most I have had in DDO in a long time.

I did the Strim sacred fist...so so so bad haha. I mean I didnt die and got her to 13 before I re-rolled to be with a friend who died.

But i ran up a light cleric who melted through to lvl 13. I ran elite or reaper back up and it only took a few hours.

Never died but im leaving for vacation so I wont be back for any other achievements.

I really look forward to next season. I want to do a PM trapper just because not having a person for traps in my group made elite too dicey a lot of times.

 

[Aerendil]

First ever HC league for me. Got to 18, holding 19, and made a silly mistake and paid for it. Might give 20 a go on an easy build like BC or PM/EK, not sure. Got my footprints though, which was my main goal anyways. Cloak is just a nice extra bonus.

Had a lot of fun though! Played CHA Ranger-DH trapper and had no issues tackling stuff. GCS with the DH + DS sneak dice made killing stuff pretty easy. Fun times.

Noticed a massive drop off in player numbers after the first 2 weeks though, once everyone got their toys. Shame there's no long-term goals.

 

[ProllyDidItWrong]

First, I recreated my OP AA Ranger build that has ROTFL-stomped me through many past life's and has never failed me - she dead at level 12
Secondly, I recreated my good old trusty THF Paladin build that has pulled me through many of dark times and grim adventures... he dead at level 7
Then I broke out my Swashie Bard build that has danced, pranced and tranced across Ebberon and beyond with flair and style - they dead at level 5
And then I tried a build-a-bot warpriest on the fly... it never made it out of Korthos
Finally, in desperation I mashed the new shiny Paladin/Monk-Cat thing and took the default build path and flipped, kicked and sticked my way to level 20....

Either my builds suck, the current flavor build is OP or.... after dying 4 times I finally got the hang of HC.

PDIW

 

[Deathbringer]

It was fun, I got all rewards except the Reaper ones, it was fun playing in a full group in quests that in live I never do a LFM haha.
I died at lv 6 with a Warforged Arty, so I created a Human fighter with a bastard sword & tower shield and do well, get almost to lv 24 and there I let him after getting the 13th piece of the dragon´s hoard, was fun

I'm glad they didn't go for high favor rewards this time, cuz I want to play with my other toons in live server and not get stressed out in HC, but well, let see in the future how it will be

 

[saekee]

This was a community labor in finding the horde pieces and it is a salute to folks’ selflessness in finding and sharing them. I was enabled essentially to have the footprints and getting them on normal made this easy for folks.

yeah and them blightcasters…

 

[jotmon]

Lag... alt F4

 

[Mary]

I really am enjoying season 8 and the feedback I've heard is that it is very enjoyable and popular - players I know who usually skip hardcore because it is too much of a time intensiver grind are playing and have earned rewards - the golden feet, everyone loves and wants; and the homage to willy wonka is great, though I can't for the life of me understand what Tiamat had to do with that kobold or how a golden mimic is involved - if anyone knows the lore I'd love to hear it. But lore aside, the scavenger hunt as a thing to do is great, much fun, and very low stress

 

[PaleFox]

Low-stress... yes once done. But stepping into any Dungeon on normal to get those hoard pieces got my blood pumping.
But maybe that was because I did it with a severely under level character.

Got to 5000 favor at the end of level 17.

I now know that to get to 5000 favor I can safely skip some stuff for sure and perhaps run some challenges to get to 5000 slightly ahead.

 

[Ying]

The new archetypes were a welcomed change of pace. Blight Caster will be a hardcore staple for seasons to come. Dark Hunter is a great trapper option, though Artificer still outclasses it for utility. Acolyte of the Skin is forgettable.

 

[Phoenicis]

The scavenger hunt is a blast.

With no 5k goal you can get all the rewards at 21 almost never seeing a champion.

No reason to run elite/reaper unless going for the favor/reaper leaderboards.

I can only imagine that more optionals were done once the mechanic of where the hoard pieces was figured out than in all previous HC seasons combined.

There should, IN MY Opinion, be some randomness in the location of the hoard pieces. Not sure exactly how to manage that, which I'm sure is why they are static.

 

[Ying]

On a more personal note: I leveled a Dark Hunter to level 22 and died to Velah's breath in VON6. I haven't had my heart racing from VON6 excitement like that since 2010. Zero regrets and would do it again.

 

[The Narc]

Hardcore 8 has been the softest hardcore yet, but the great thing is playing only casual hours of it. Actually played on the non hardcore servers during hardcore for the first time during a hardcore. A nice relaxed pace change but definitely should not be the norm for all upcoming hardcores. I would like to see something like the hounds again to make it more arduous and painful for multiboxers and please get rid of the reentry into reaper quests.

 

[TeamScorpioRI]

I think this season was definitely needed. While challenges are always welcome, having a season that is a little more relaxed is also a good thing. Especially when the focus was around solving a puzzle and finding treasure in places where players normally don't go. I'd definitely love to see more seasons like this. Maybe alternate the types of seasons. One where its very challenging and takes all the skill a player can muster (hounds, champs, etc), and then the next one will be focused on puzzle solving and a bit more relaxed.

I think showing off the power of the blightcaster was a good move as well. Because of the resists, a class that was just "good" got to showcase just how good it could be. I think we will see more blights in the regular servers once this is over (I know the character I am currently leveling will be switching to that for racial lives). I think SSG should continue this trend. Implement some mechanic that showcases the power of a particular class.