Hardcore Mode Guide Supplement

This walkthrough is intended as a supplement to the Hard Core Mode Guide that dallasm15 created. This expands on some of the information needed to utilize their advice, as well as to provide other tactics and information to help you beat Hardcore Mode.

Introduction

This guide was initially created to be posted in the comments on dallasm15's Hard Core Mode Guide (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1177075703), but I realized that it would be unwieldy to post it all there. Since this is information that I think will help a great many people that are still struggling with the game, I decided to put it all up here. I won't be re-posting anything that they put in their guide, for fear of violating the rules, but I will be referencing it obliquely-- When I say "trust the guide", I mean theirs, not mine. I mean, I can vouch for mine, too, but I won't pretend to say that mine is the best or only way to win the game on Hardcore. Anyway, I know their guide is 3 years old, but hey, I've been struggling with getting the hardcore mode achievement, and that guide just helped me get it. So, for the rest of you struggling with it, this guide includes some additional advice (basically, all the stuff that happens between leveling up and getting the recommended weapons).

One day, I still want to put together a full guide with all the recipes, monster stats and damage, stats and damage boosts for the player, etc, but that will have to wait. For now, what I do have is essentially a Hardcore mode Walkthrough! Please excuse the rough layout, here; I was planning on posting this in a comments sections, remember. Good luck, and I hope the RNG rolls are on your side.

Weapon Info

• The Mop and the Hatchet can both be made with the first tier of workbench, requiring no upgrades.
  
  
• The Staff requires the tier 2 workbench, needing the first upgrade. Keep this in mind to have the supplies for when you reach the level to effectively equip one. Note: the Crowbar is comparable in stats to the Staff, and may drop for you in the mid-levels. The Staff also has a tendency to drop not infrequently around floors 30-50.
  
  
• The Glaive requires the tier 3 workbench, needing the second upgrade. The Glaive also requires both a Staff and a Hatchet to build. Note: Even at the -33% damage for not having the required stats, the weapon will do more damage than the Staff or Crowbar, so it might be in your best interest to craft it early if you can--PROVIDED THAT YOU HAVE A BACKUP WEAPON. It's gonna suck if your Hatchet was your backup for your Staff, and then you use both to craft the Glaive, and then lose the Glaive. Always have a backup weapon. ALWAYS.
  
  
• In a pinch, the Stick is not a terrible weapon. Before any leveling up, it will actually be better than the Stiletto (which will be at -33% damage). Ideally, though, you'll find a Knife to hold you over until you get a Mop.

Upgrades

• Obviously, you'll need to upgrade your Workbench twice (as mentioned in the Weapon Info section), but those upgrade can be spaced out as they are needed, and as materials are available.
  
  
• One of the first things you want to do (possibly even before crafting a Mop), is upgrade your Door once. This Door will make bad events less likely when you sleep, and will increase the chance of getting free XP from sleeping. The second upgrade is also something you really want, but it's not worth the 6 metal to do it from scratch early on, so only worry about it if you get a free Barbed Wire somewhere, or once you have a lot of resources (no later than floor 30, though).
  
  
• You want to upgrade to the tier 2 Kitchen, the first upgrade. Don't worry about upgrading past this, but you'll want to be able to cook up your Fish and Meat for the extra nutrition without using more of your items than necessary. Remember: the more items in your inventory, the less likely it is that you lose your weapon (or that really big health kit you found but don't need yet). You'll eventually be running low on food, so don't neglect this upgrade and assume you'll have plenty of food forever!
  
  
• Eventually, you want to upgrade your Bed all the way, but don't worry about it until you can afford to lose the items from your inventory. This isn't as important as the Door, the weapons (and the necessary Workbench), or the Kitchen. But, this will be very important by the late levels. Every playthrough I've ever done, Wood and Rags are always the things I'm running low on, so if your games are like mine, then really, don't fuss too much about these upgrades until the last 50 floors. They increase the efficiency of sleeping, which is great, but when you need the only Wood you have in order to build yourself a Staff... prioritize the weapon.

Combat

If you're anything like me, you typically like to pump Accuracy first, so that you can reliably HIT the dang monsters. Well, fight that urge. Yeah, follow the guide EXACTLY, and we're gonna be going for a lot of crap chances to hit on these monsters. Here are the tactics for each, with the understanding that if you have a weaker attack that will kill the monster that turn, then obviously use that one instead:

• Four-Legged Guys: Go for the head. I know, it's 50% to hit, and you'll miss a lot, but just stick with it. That's really all there is to it. On a bad run, this might mean you die by floor 85, but that's not a failing of the strategy, it's just the RNG gods being jerks.
  
  
• Human Dudes: Your choice. Typically, I would go for the arms (the mid-range damage) until I got to the point where I was working with 47% chance for the head, but by the time I was looking at killing them in 2 hits on the head (if I hit), I just started exclusively going for head shots, regardless of the percentage.
  
  
• Brutes: The ones that might have the little parasite pop out of their stomachs, I mean. Not the poison guys. Anyway, no excuses--just go for the head. I know it's 50%. I don't care. Just go for the head. Run away if necessary to heal, but these guys are pretty much always worth coming back to kill.
  
  
• Club-Arm Dudes: Just stick with targeting the club-arm (the weak point). Remember his club-arm attack hits way harder than his jab.
  
  
• Poison Dudes: These guys are a little weird. If the combat is optional, you might consider running away. Remember, these guys are guaranteed to spit their poison at you and end the combat (WITH NO XP GAINED) on their second attack. Weirdly, this is not true of the console version (I've seen them spit poison on their third, or sometimes even fourth attack on console). So, with 56 health and only two attacks (if it didn't get a preemptive attack on you), you're not likely going to be able to kill it, even with a Glaive. Only engage if you know you can heal yourself of poison. But it's generally better to skip this guys, since you only lose resources and health, and don't even gain XP for it.
  
  
• Ladies: Look, don't mess around with low odds on targeting anything other than the one that gives you the best chance at hitting her. Hopefully, you won't be fighting her that often, anyway, and when you do, even more hopefully, you'll have your Glaive, so you'll be looking at dealing about 30 damage to her with a 65+% chance (with the Glaive, she isn't too bad, actually). Remember, she sometimes has a double-attack where the second strike hits harder, so factor that in to how much health you should have when you run away.
  
  
• Tall Guys: Woof. I hope you don't have to fight more than one or two in your run. This will be rough, no matter when it happens, or what weapon you have. I went for the higher damage, lower percent chance (the arms) until he crouched down, and then switched to headshots. But each time I fought him, I needed to run away 2-3 times in the fight to recover health--those friggen kicks are vicious!

General Tactics

• First off: ALWAYS CARRY A BACK UP WEAPON. It doesn't have to be the same weapon (in fact, if your attention wanders and you're likely to miss the fact that you just lost your main weapon, having a separate weapon as your backup already equipped in your other hand might save you from getting into a fight without any weapon). If you have two Glaives and it equipped in your hand, if you lose one, you will be holding nothing (even though you still have a Glaive in your inventory). **If you are playing on a console, there is a very helpful bug: When you lose the weapon in your hand, the game removes the pictures from your hand, but you will still somehow be wielding it in combat with its normal damage. Equipping a new weapon in your hand will overwrite the ghost weapon.
  
  
• If you still aren't getting anything better than a Stick by floor 90, stick with the run, anyway. My winning run, I only had a single Stick to my name until floor 89.
  
  
• If your RNG is just crap and you're dying to the 4-Legged Dudes and not getting any weapon, DON'T DEVIATE FROM THE GUIDE. It might feel like you think you'd do better by pumping Accuracy or Str because you found a Pipe or something---don't fall for it. Stick with the guide. Yes, even when the 4-Legged Dudes are kicking your butt up and down the hall while you're trying to hit them with a Stick. Trust in the guide.
  
  
• I'm guessing you've played with Total Mess before, so you probably already know the tricks to keeping a full inventory, but I'll give an overview, anyway. Don't keep your hunger topped up; you can eat anywhere, and a lost piece of parsley is preferable to a lost weapon or a lost large medkit that you don't need yet. While carrying around Wire is helpful, don't convert any other materials into other things to carry around. Wire is okay, because it's a 1:1 conversion (1 metal=1 wire). Sometimes, you'll want to use your Medkits when they're sub-optimal, just to make sure that you get the majority of the benefit from them. Are you down 45 hp, but have a +50hp Medkit on hand? Honestly, it's better to use it now and not risk losing it before you take a few more points of damage. Alternatively, you can eat some spoiled food and see if you can knock down your hp a little, but that's a method I'd only recommend when your inventory is packed full of stuff to protect your main weapon.
  
  
• Memorize the floor number of a medical vending machine (preferably on a floor with an elevator). You should pop back up here whenever you have some coins. Only make the Medkits right when you need to use them.
  
  
• Always keep a few resources around to be able to make the Antidote (preferably, enough to make a couple). If you engage with a Poison Guy, you're GOING to get poisoned. Maybe you'll be incredibly lucky and the RNG gods will smile down on you and let you evade or both hit AND crit on your two attacks, but more often than not, you're just going to get poisoned. Be ready for it.
  
  
• When you take enough damage and don't have any healing items left, pop back up to the VIP room, stuff your face full of food, and sleep it off. You'll likely need to utilize this technique a few times early on, and probably not much during mid-game. By the lowest levels (like, sub-20), this will be CRUCIAL, and is why I recommend the Kitchen, Door, and Bed upgrades to be in place by the end of the mid-game. This is where you're going to start running low on food (especially if you have to fight more than a couple Tall Guys!), so be prepared for this. Side benefits of this tactic, as mentioned earlier, is that you can gain XP from sleeping! But without the Door upgrades, you can also lose a random item (like your weapon).
  
  
• By the time you're in the last 20 floors or so, skip floors and rooms! Honestly, they don't really matter anymore, and they're just going to put you more at risk of pre-emptive strikes (and a strike while you leave the room) while also wasting hunger. Just book it on through, and try to skip any Ladies and ESPECIALLY Tall Dudes in the halls. And in the rooms.
  
  
• If you lose your VIP Card, don't panic. You can still use the elevator to get to the floor closest to the suite and then walk up. Eventually, you'll find another VIP Card.
  
  
• If it's not a Poison Guy, Lady, or Tall Guy, then KILL IT. You might need to run away and come back when you have a better weapon, but those monsters are just pinatas full of XP waiting for you to beat it out of them.
  
  
• You get three uses out of your special one-shot kill. 1: the first monster you encounter. 2: a monster around floor 70 (probably a Lady). 3: (it'll be ready again by around floor 40, but don't use it!) the next time you meet a Tall Guy in a hall that you CANNOT skip past. Fight that urge to use the perk before that specific scenario for number 3! IT WILL BE YOUR DOOM OTHERWISE.

In Summary

Trust in the guide. I've attempted a LOT of runs with a modified version of this guide, because I wasn't willing to foresake Accuracy, or because I kept going for the higher chance hits, or because I didn't think it was worth upgrading my Workbench that second time, or for myriad other reasons. When I decided to actually follow it to the letter, I got the achievement by my third attempt. Sure, RNG gods were smiling on me that run, but I didn't even get anywhere NEAR close on any run until I followed dallasm15's advice in their guide. Actually, on my second run with that advice, I only failed because I stayed in a combat with an Club-Arm Guy a little longer than was wise, and he critted me as I left the room. The advice I've provided in this walkthrough otherwise is just what I did between the level ups and how I stayed alive long enough to make use of their guide's advice. My advice is probably not the best way to do things, but it did work for me, and when I left the hotel, I actually still had a crap ton of supplies and food (but not health kits anymore--rags remained in short supply my entire run, even after using a resource vending machine at one point).

Again, props and kudos go to dallasm15 for making the original guide I referenced and linked. I didn't watch the full playthrough they posted for their run to see if there were other tactics they used, but you can check it out and see what worked for them, as well.

Anyway, I hope all of this helps people out there get this achievement! It is possible, and it doesn't require hacks or cheats or exploits (I tried, the Extremism and New Life perk combo no longer works that way, anyway). It needs a little bit of luck (the more, the better), but not an unreasonable amount, really. You can do it!

[Volter Coleman]

Завдяки вам та dallasm15 зміг пройти з 3-го разу, дякую

[Iyiyt]

Yeah, it was being weird. Thanks though, I found the guide and finally managed to beat hardcore within a few tries!

[StealthBirdie]

@lyiyt Sorry about that! Not sure why Steam is flagging its own link as potentially malicious. But you can find the guide by just clicking on guides for Skyhill. It's on the first page, sixth down, titled "hard core mode guide" by dallasm15.

[Iyiyt]

Hey, sorry, it looks like the link to the original guide you posted no longer works, and I can't find it on the Steam Guides for this game. Is there any other way you can link to it?

[StealthBirdie]

Sorry, my edits got in the way, there. I meant to actually state that I didn't think it was really fair to compare the Staff to the CW Axe because they are two different tiers. You could, however, make an argument that the CW Axe used with a penalty still does 9.4-12.7 damage, which is only about 3 less than the Staff's damage, and could thus be a suitable replacement. But I also don't have the recipe for the CW Axe yet, so that might change the feasibility.

[StealthBirdie]

@lionheart Thanks! As I mentioned, this is meant to supplement dallasm15's guide, so I was mainly aiming to explain what was left out of theirs, such as strategy and specific requirements, so I didn't mention other weapons.

I've never used a Clockwork Axe, but that's because it is a 3-stat weapon--I tend to ignore Str or 3-stat weapons entirely. The CW Axe is the optimal base damage weapon at that workbench level, but it is what I consider to be a higher tier weapon, since it requires 11 skill points while the Staff only requires 5. Unfortunately, I don't have the stats for the Glaive to offer a comparison of damage output, and when I did the full math comparison of the Staff to the CW Axe, the comment got too long, so I'll summarize: the CW Axe is a great weapon, but keep in mind that 2-stat weapons' damage outputs scale better than 3-stat weapons', and weigh the costs and benefits appropriately.

[lionhart]

Nice guide. I have beaten the game several times and I came to all the same conclusions as you did, except for one thing: why no mention of the clockwork axe? The clockwork axe is a great weapon -- better than the staff IMO -- and it can be crafted with workbench level 2 and fairly common components that you will probably have collected by the time you reach level 4. The clockwork axe can easily get you all the way to level 7; from there, I agree that the glaive is the best end game weapon.