Hi, I've recently been trying out this mod and wanted to provide some constructive feedback. The character I've mostly been using is Dream/Defense focusing on melee and retaliation. Currently I'm about halfway through Act 1 on Epic.

My biggest issue with the mod thus far is not the difficulty of it, but rather that the mod is not very rewarding for overcoming the challenge. The very low drop rates combined with low exp gain makes the mod feel like a real slog to get through. In other words, most of the challenge of the mod thus far is due to being under-geared and the inability to acquire any.

For example, currently my toon in Act1 Epic is level 42. Enemies are typically 10+ levels above mine, yet yield hardly any experience. I can clear whole maps out, which is a very slow process, and my exp bar has barely moved. I've killed Nessus more times than I can count at this point, and his chest typically yields nothing but yellow junk. This was also the general experience most of the way through Normal... there is very little point in farming bosses because mystical chests and orbs all have simply terrible drop rates. I would say that about 80% or more of the gear I've gotten to this point is from farming vendor shops or from regular trash mobs. Similarly, any souls that I get at this point are well out of level range. I still can't even equip souls from Act 4 Normal because their requirements are too high.

Anyways, I'm going to take a different build through Normal and see if it fares any better. My goal with the current character was melee & retaliation, but I discovered too late that the Icescale gear has all been heavily nerfed, so I don't think there's much point in continuing on with this toon right now.

I don't want this to sound completely negative. I think there was obviously a lot of work put into this mod and the potential for interesting builds is there. I like that the souls provide new skills and trade-offs that you could potentially build around. I like the challenge of fighting heroes and champs. The mod actually gives you a reason to visit caves and side areas which were always completely pointless before. So I'll keep chipping away at it for now but I wanted to provide feedback on the experience so far. Thanks.

Well, my first couple attempts at this were already horrible failures. I started two Wanderers (nature) and intended to level as that until I figured out what I wanted my 2nd mastery to be. First toon died almost immediately from me just being dumb. Whatever, no big loss. Second toon made it to the Gorgon sisters as a plague caster, but I didn’t take into account that there would be 3x Euryales, so they just constantly heal and I couldn’t do any damage to them. Ran out of potions, tried to portal out but died.

Oh well lesson learned. Now I decided to roll as a Skinchanger but I started as Rune instead of Nature. Much better results. The plan is to stick to a throw & shield elemental build. Might add pets later, not sure yet. I’ll report back when I’ve made some significant progress. For the leaderboard entry:

CaptainBourbon
Skinchanger (twinked)

Hi, a couple questions before trying this.

1) This would be my first time attempting a hardcore toon. Is gear that I already have saved in TQVault ok to use or are you requiring a fresh start? (I can always use a separate clean vault tab if that's the case)

2) Which version of xmax is considered acceptable for this challenge? I noticed that the Steam workshop has a mod that merges LootPlus along with Xmax, for example.

Thanks.

Hello all,

Old salty player returning to the game. I'm using the GOG version. I've been playing loot grinders forever it seems, all the way back to when the first Diablo came out. I imagine most folks here have the same story.

Currently I have a ranged Bone Charmer in legendary (been playing again for a bit before deciding to finally join forums).

Anyways, looking forward to chatting with everyone. The xmax hardcore challenge caught my eye. Might decide to pull the trigger on it!