Hardcore Tips and Guides

A small general tips to do Hardcore.

The reason why I said "tips" is because I dont want to force a route as there are many ways to play it.

Also because levelling will depends on your weapon prowess and HP so forcing one way is not that advisable.

Before starting the game

I'm assuming you have a general knowledge and at least done 1 play through of the game.

If no, there are 2 guides thats should give you a rough knowledge of the stuffs like Learning Points and shrines and etc

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3352373764

This guide ^ has most of the important items with 3 exception, i.e the brainfood ( void plants ) , shrines location & quests.

https://www.neoseeker.com/drova-forsaken-kin/walkthrough

While ^ has the vice versa of the first guide, i.e does not have brainfood, Luminous bass etc.

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Things to note too:

1) As much as you want to finish the game ASAP because of how risky dying once is, you "cant" really push the game because levelling = prowess & higher HP.

That said, if you want to, the fastest way to go to chapter 2 is to join Nementon. You could follow Asmus from the beginning all the way to Nementon, go north slowly and then pick up the lost bag in the moor for the travelling merchant quest. This will give you super early access to Nementon and from there, just do the "Vanishing Weapon" quest and you are in, with Chapter 2 armour.

2) Giving Gawan money is a huge investment that helps a lot in the later game. 3000 gold is a huge amount to get some late game permanent potions.

3) It's up to you how you want to use your Mandragora but in my case, I went 4 base focus ( i.e Luminious Bass ) + 4 HP ( Hawthrone ). That way I have enough HP to soak damage during chapter 1-3 and enough focus to use Misty Spell twice ( 3 eventually once you just use the last remaining points on focus )

4) Lockpicking is highly advisable but just be very careful about it. The reason why I emphasise careful is because lockpicking requires you to move A & D and because of this, once you finish lockpicking, there is a chance you might "MOVE" left or right and this will cause the NPC to wake up.

How you want to avoid it is either

• You A&D and once it finish lockpicking, take your hands off the keyboard.
  
• You A&D and move a bit and just let it automatically fill it up ( means chance of -1 lockpick )
  
• IF you did wake them up, just run out. Dont touch the chest or anything. Just run

5) If you want, you can either screenshot puzzles to avoid wasting time.

6) Putting items into the shrines will give you +1 mind. You dont need to do the true ending, just giving you +1 mind is pretty good

7) Dont fight NPC or bears or anything early on. Get armor and level first. Once you feel comfortable, then start doing quest to get more lvl and money

8) Lastly, if you dont plan to join Nementon, before joining Remnant, do that quest with the Mandragora with the guy and once he clears the way, steal the Mandragora by just running away and just join Remnant. Dont care about the NPC because you arent joining Nementon and you want to highest amount of Mandragora so you can get more HP boost

Edit: Small thing because you might or might not know about this


Those are the location of Prowess & Learning Points. Learning points can be a lot more from the Learning Shrines. Prowess can be higher from talisman and such

Your Prowess is determine by the amount of strength, dex, mind that you allocated from your teachers OR talisman. This means leveling up gives you 3&4 Learning Points but DOES NOT increase Prowess UNLESS you allocate them. This means that you can either choose to allocate those learning points to skills or put them into stats.

That said, once you reach a decent amount of levels, its a good idea to use the "Potion of Forgetfulness" once so that you can recheck your skills and prowess to see if you have unnecessary allocated LP to other areas.

Safest first 10 minutes of the game

Everything and anything can kill you when you start the game so a good early armour will mitigate that. What you want to do is to get early leather armour.

When you start out, its up to you if you want to get the brainfood / void plant on the western side. If not, get the shield and club and continue onwards and meet up with Asmus.

Asmus will draw you a rough a** map but its fine. If you have played the game enough, you should know the entire route by memory. In any case, accept his drawing and stalk him. Why you want to stalk him is because he will provide safe passage till the tavern area and once you are there, you should be relatively safe.

Once you are at the tavern, just do this below:

Special thanks to FreiherrVomStein.


In any case once you have this leather armour, you should be 80% safe from dying in Chapter 1 ( unless you dont have any heals or fight some bandits or got gank by frogs + bloodflies or get gank by forest pigs ). If you stick to the main road and dont do anything risky, you should be relatively safe.

What you should do now?

You got 2 choices, either do some simple quest to level up or straight away go into Nementon and start Chapter 2.

Personally I would level up first.

If you are like me and prefer to level up first, you can do basically any quest with a small exception ( because of the dangers of it ).

• Broken Trust ( which ties to Taron's Last Piglet ) Chapter 4
  
• Lucrative Business ( there are two ways to go about it ) Chapter 1
  
• The Bridge, again Chapter 4
  
• IF you want to do the Secret of the Ruin Raiders Chapter 4
  
• IF you want to do Missing Chapter 1-4 ( just do this at chapter 4 )

For Lucrative Business, what you can do is either kite the ambush towards Remnants ( the guards wont do anything ) and once they de-aggro, run pass them OR go through the cave system.

Also make sure you have at least 10 ailment healing potion at all times because 2-3 of them are required for a quest / stats.

If you want to get +4 prospect in mining, make sure you help Mottek in the 50 gold and once you arrive at the Pit, talk with him to get Prospect 1. Then 3 prospect can be obtain in the pit ( helping Agnessa, listening to Trusty entirely and talking with Finlay ). The last Prospect can be obtain from the quest " Wood Protects from Snaptors".

You could also get a Norn ring and combine 3 of them into 1 to get a +20HP boost.

If possible, craft that potion that gives movement speed, i.e Potion of the Wandering Feather. It gives 30% movement speed for 50 secs. It requires Harpy Feather + Moorwheat. It is pretty good

My Very Own Talisman

This is one of those talisman that is SUPPPPPPPPPPERRRRRR important. You need to do this before doing Chapter 2 as it locks you out from the Nementon camp which is required to obtain it. Below is a guide to do it

https://www.neoseeker.com/drova-forsaken-kin/My_Very_Own_Talisman

The reason why this is important is because it gives you +5 STR, DEX, MIND. It basically boost your prowess to an additional +15.

In case you dont really understand, assuming that you dont level any learning points except just into sword learning, by level 15-17, you can already have prowess 85 with the +15 from the talisman. Meaning to say, when you hit early Chapter 4, once you get your runestone, you can technically get the strongest sword ( Rune Blade Prowess 85 ).

Here is lvl 18 with 17 LP spare ( either from leveling or learning shrines ). Just emphasising that you can use the sword earlier

Lockpicking

Why this is important is because it allows you to get complex lockpicking to unlock chest to obtain free gold and items.

There are 4 people to get complex lockpicking. They are Bardok, Chunnaic, Locke and Frithjof.


Bardok is in the upper chambers of Remnant

Chunnaic, I believe requires a Bear's Claw for you to learn her craft....

Locke is this guy in Nementon. His requirement is the least, i.e just sleep at their home and it allows you to unlock lockpicking

Frithjof which requires the cave system knowledge + 50-200 gold depending on the difficulty

Places of Interest for Swords.

A) Leather Armor. Best early game armour before Chapter 2
B) Check wall, iirc it gives a Slingshot. You can get a free Slingshot at GeorgeFarm.
C) Best Chapter 1 & 2 sword in the game. In the den of the wolves but requires a decent amount of level for prowess
D) Nothing. Accidentally put it there in Paint
E) There are 5-6 Harpies that guards a purple axe. It's pretty good but I believe you can get a decent purple axe in the forest in Chapter 2
F) "Strongest" Chapter 4 sword ( Unless you want to pay 5k for another one). Need Misty spell to teleport a short distance. Misty spell is located near a corpse
G) Strongest anti magic ring ( +12 magic resistance. Good for Golem ).
H) Has 5 Harpies. If you look into the wall and find 4 switches, you can open the floor and get a "Berserker Blade" but imo, kinda pointless because you can get a purple sword in the forest and the next best weapon would be the F sword
I ) Look into the chair. Gives a broadsword that requires 65 prowess with 38 damage. Kinda useless but yea.

Z1 & Z2) Location for Thunderspell.

Chapter 4 onwards

Once you reach chapter 4, you should prioritise doing these 3 things.

1) Once you get Misty spell, start doing the "Bloodborne" quest. To start this, head south of the tavern and find the crazy woman talking with the frogs ( A) . By chapter 4, she should be dead and has a fossil on her. Bring that fossil back and talk to Lorthiz. He will then ask you to find 2 more fossils. One of them is in the cave system, the 3rd one is the first place where you started (B) . He will then tell you to get a ring. The ring is located btm right, near Nementon. (C)


Once you have the ring, you can start lifesteal for health every hit.

2) You should get the strongest armour in the game, i.e the Bygones Armour. The safest way to obtain 3 pieces is doing the Library quest ( its main quest ). That will give you 2 of the 3 armour. The last armour could be obtain if you go to D in the map above ^.

Once you lockpick the basement, it is guarded by 4 guards on Classic difficulty. The best way to kill them off is to kite the melee enemy into 9-10 cluster trap (make sure you are not near your trap to set it off, killing you). That will eliminate 1 of the enemy so you only have to deal with the magician (becareful of the fire AoE). If the magician uses root, use Misty spell to move away.

Once that is done, unlock the door by lockpicking and set another 10 cluster trap. There will be 2 more enemies here. Draw aggro on the melee one and rinse and repeat. That should be enough to kill them.

Congratz. You now have 3 pieces of the strongest armor. With the heaviest protection, the lifesteal ring and Misty spell, you shouldnt be able to get 1 shot.

3) Lastly, you should try to get all the relics for the Primordial forest area to just bypass fighting all the enemies in that area.

Jesko sells Ram & Mirror

Merchant from each side sells Lyra, Horn ( meaning you can get 2 sets of lyra and 2 sets of horn )

A Ceremonial sword can be obtain near Remnant ruin, east of the base, with 4 Harpies around.

A clam can be obtain near where the Rootmoss Shrine south of the map ( Needs Misty Spell ).

There is ONE Incense Burner in the Remnant camp. It is where Gra hangs around near the statue ( east of the market ), just south of it, there is a basement. Special thanks to u/GameImpact on Reddit for informing me where it is


With these, you can just bypass the entire fight and straight away obtain the last crystal. Becareful of the shadow monster btw.

That's pretty much it

That is more or less the tips I can give.

At classic mode, I nearly gameover twice (i.e 20% HP life remaining), once where I tried to get the Bygone armour fighting the 4 mobsters because I didnt 1 shot the melee aggro so I got rooted and nearly gameover and the other is from those bandits between tavern & Nementon ( after doing the travelling merchant quest ). One of the bandit, for whatever reason, holds a Makeshift bow that does 58 damage.

That doesnt sound a lot but for Chapter 1 / 2 with bad armour and low HP pool, that can technically one shot you.

Anyway, I have put in 113 hrs, struggle really hard in Insane difficulty in the last area and spend 13 hrs in Hardcore mode, to not gameover once.

In any case, I wish you the best in Hardcore mode~!!!

Good luck and happy surviving!