Hilariously poor tuning for Hardcore mode.

[Viking Mana]

Hardcore mode for Super Motherload is remarkably bad. At several points you're condemned to jump into a pit, dig a couple of blocks once you land, and spend the remaining half a tank of fuel you have flying back up to the surface. It's tedious and absolutely kills any attempt at having any real fun with the game. The first couple of fuel tank upgrades do so laughably little that it frankly feels like you're just throwing your money way for arbitrary upgrades. The fuel gage itself is extremely unreliable, as you freguently explode what feels like several several seconds before you ought to. At the same time, Laika is really the only viable candidate if you want to beat the game on Hardcore, because of the simple fact that hull-damage is unpredictable. Sometimes you will just randomly suffer huge amounts of hull damage from a slow horizontal collision, which makes no sense.

Why the developer felt like tuning the game this way would in any way make for an engaging and fun experience is beyond me. The game has a ton of pontential, and I've been playing the original motherload longer than I can remember, but now that all I've got left is Super Motherload Hardcore, I'm starting to get really sick of wasting hours at a time carefully excavating down to the first underground station, only to arbitrarily blow up because of the ridiculous fuel tuning that doesn't allow you actually play the game in any meaningful way, as a single tank, even with the 37K upgrade, just isn't enough to make progress.

[Nantes]

What about those portable fuel tanks? Why not use those?

[Viking Mana]

Originally posted by Nantes:

What about those portable fuel tanks? Why not use those?

It's been quite a while now. I don't remember specific numbers, but that really only becomes an option in the late-game, and even then you're better off investing in teleportation. Some of the betters rigs don't get fuel tanks big enough for it to ever really be worth it, if I'm not mistaken. So you end up with pacing slowing to a crawl at several points throughout.

[omscott924]

There's a character called simulcrum that you unlock by allying with tiberius and then destroying Earth anyway. This character has infinite teleports. This character made hardcore a lot more doable for me (even more than Laika)

[Arriator]

So I know I'm two years late, but Hardcore Mode is really more of a love letter to the original Motherload than anything - running out of fuel kills you, dying forces you to "reload", and - my favorite little feature - trying to select a Deceased character on a file even plays the original game over sound. As for the actual gameplay, I'll admit that at some point I just hopped between worlds to make some cash for all those earlier upgrades and then cleared out those worlds to get the later ones...

[MarioTGreat]

Originally posted by Arriator:

So I know I'm two years late, but Hardcore Mode is really more of a love letter to the original Motherload than anything.

If this is a love letter to the original, I admit I like it. I found myself dying a lot and reaching a level where you can easily reach the bottom takes a lot of work, but it feels nicer when you've achieved those upgrades that lets you do so.

In fact, I'm playing Abaddon on Hardcore right now and he has nearly the same amount of upgrades as my Normal Abaddon. Meaning aside from going to 10,000+ depths, Hardcord has become a piece of cake.

The originally definitely wasn't that much of a grind, but, in all fairness to XGen, it is called 'Hardcore'.

[Deus_nsf]

I love hardcore mode, but the fuel limitation in early game is really bad yeah, you're spending the first 2 hours into fuel tank upgrades only because otherwise you just simply can't play the game. Motherload 1 did a better job at this.

[ICountFrom0]

Originally posted by Arriator:

So I know I'm two years late, but Hardcore Mode is really more of a love letter to the original Motherload than anything - running out of fuel kills you, dying forces you to "reload", and - my favorite little feature - trying to select a Deceased character on a file even plays the original game over sound. As for the actual gameplay, I'll admit that at some point I just hopped between worlds to make some cash for all those earlier upgrades and then cleared out those worlds to get the later ones...

wait, how?

I thought there was only one other world, mars, and well, I can't get deep enough to get there without dying.

[ICountFrom0]

... wow... I might be the only one posting here anymore, heh

I OWN this forum, mine, MINE, all MINE.

[Viking Mana]

Well, not anymore.

[The Fifth Horseman]

Originally posted by ICountFrom0:

wait, how?
I thought there was only one other world, mars, and well, I can't get deep enough to get there without dying.

Not planets, he's talking about loading previous maps from savegames. There's an option for that, your characters are saved separately.

[ICountFrom0]

So, in hardcore, if I prepare a world completely and properly with one character, save it, and then make 10 or 20 worlds in order to get enough gold to level up another, I can go back to the world I prepared with unlimited teleports?