# I never thought I would like Hardcore **URL:** \ **Category:** Wicked Feedback\ **Tags:** hardcore\ **Created:** [June 5, 2026, 1:13am UTC](https://forum.norestforthewicked.com/t/i-never-thought-i-would-like-hardcore/26530 "2026-06-05T01:13:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![z4a](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/41988e/32.png) [@z4a](https://forum.norestforthewicked.com/u/z4a)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2026, 1:13am UTC](https://forum.norestforthewicked.com/t/i-never-thought-i-would-like-hardcore/26530/1 "2026-06-05T01:13:39Z")
Some thoughts from a player who never expected to enjoy HC. These are based on Unspoken difficulty, though I think the conclusions apply broadly. 1. **HC is a missed sell.** I spent hundreds of hours in Wicked without touching HC, and that’s a shame. It massively changed the game for me, for the better (… the rest of my thoughts below). 2. **HC is a Roguelite, not a Difficulty Mode.** I didn’t understand this until I first reached Sacrament and realized I could build up the city, buy a house, and keep that progression across deaths. HC isn’t a no-death run — it’s a game where each character dies and resets, but your Realm … endures : ) And Realm strength really matters in HC: comfort buffs that are nice-to-have in normal mode become critical for every new level-1 character - Opulent buffs, for example, make it so that every run you’re actually really starting at like lvl 4-5, instead of lvl1. The balance shifts from character/build strength to Realm strength. Characters die; the Realm lives on. Over time, each new run starts with a warchest of gear, resources, and buffs left behind by predecessors — and you start making interesting decisions, like whether to risk your absolute best weapon on a run you’re not sure will last. 3. **HC exposes how shallow death is in normal Wicked.** The only penalty in normal mode is durability loss and time. It feels like the outcome of an early design debate where character progression won out over realm progression — and the result is that death has almost no weight. 4. **In HC, the map is the star.** Fall damage is a long-running joke for Wicked players, but HC forces you to take it seriously as strategy. Which approach do you take into an encounter? Can you clear the safe zones in a Crucible chamber before dealing with the ledge sections? HC puts the whole level design into sharper focus — the traps in corners, getting stuck between a chest and a mob. You remember those deaths. You obsess about making sure they don’t happen again. 5. **Realm milestones hit different.** Playing HC coop, one of our biggest early-game accomplishments was when my partner’s character made it to the Crucible shop wealthy enough to buy the Whisper Stone for our house. That toon died shortly after — but they were the GOAT. The Whisper Stone changed everything: suddenly we had a real Roguelite base to invest in, and every future run had actual momentum behind it. ### Concrete Actionable Feedback 1. **[Fix HC Coop Bug](https://forum.norestforthewicked.com/t/hardcore-character-still-allowed-in-hc-realm-after-death/23340).** This one just really sucks; the way I played HC Coop with another player after we discovered this bug was to actually just both agree to only use a character once until its death. Afterward, the character, the gear, etc. was lost and we would start over. This led to some pretty funny naming conventions for our toons `YOLO.Zelda.Life13` (`YOLO` was our term for ‘unofficial coop hardcore’). In HC coop mode, I would personally prefer it to be as stringent as possible, even if that means there are some “unfair” deaths. The HC status having integrity is more important - it’s what makes Runs real. You would never want to find out that you or someone else’s run wasn’t really “legit” … because the game saved a char from death when it shouldn’t have. 1. **“added by {CHARACTER}” display in menu for all housing items, maybe with a little memorial plaque in the chest/refinery/etc. menu for the fancy ones.** I really want to remember `HERO.NoFallDeaths8` for the epic crucible run that got us our Whisper Stone. He was a hero. Let’s remember the heroes that build our Realms. 2. **Re-evaluate the featherweight penalty for death in normal.** I don’t know if it makes sense to change Wicked normal, but after playing HC I’d want to make sure there was a really healthy, intentional decision to make the penalty for death so light in Wicked and that some of the ways death could be made weightier were considered somewhat… - What if you lost all inventory on death, but could buy it back at the graveyard? - What if ichor upgrades could let you retain one of your item categories, so you can retain more @ death over time? - What if there was a ring that let you keep everything @ death? ---
**Author:** ![Silas-Inservio-Pax](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex003/user_avatar/forum.norestforthewicked.com/silas-inservio-pax/32/10458_2.png) [@Silas-Inservio-Pax](https://forum.norestforthewicked.com/u/Silas-Inservio-Pax)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2026, 3:32pm UTC](https://forum.norestforthewicked.com/t/i-never-thought-i-would-like-hardcore/26530/2 "2026-06-05T15:32:05Z")
I know a couple of guys in the discord who will love this post 🙌. Great write up Z4a! Silas