Hardcore Combat Only

The entire gameplay consists of fighting enemies in different areas, and trying to reach end-game bosses, without ever touching any of the non-combat skills, or ever dying.

There's also a Google Sheets with highscores and some number crunching made by the community of the various players who play this gamemode. Hit mazunki [they/them]#3247 up on Discord if you wanna join or view it. Similarly, 8992#7954 has made a GreasyFork script available at GreasyFork.

Differences

Since we're playing Hardcore, there are some important parts to keep in mind:

No natural HP regeneration/s.
We start with 12 bank slots, capped to 80 (+ slots gained from Bank Slot Tokens after hitting 80 cap)
Harder penalties for being on the weak corner of Combat Triangle.
Permanent death

To regain

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Hitpoints

, our choices are very limited:

Consuming food, gained from monster loot:
- Potatoes from Plant
- Salmon, Lobster, and Shark from Sweaty Monster, Wet Monster, and Moist Monster
- Trout from Raging Horned Elite
Ancient Sword with its 25% chance for Life Leech (25% healing from damage dealt)
Warlock Amulet with its 20% healing from damage done from spells.

Known alternatives

Some people play alternative versions of this gamemode.

One of these variants (called HCCO 12 Bank Slots or HCCO12B) includes limiting themselves to the starting 12 bank slots.

Another style (called Hardcore No Gathering, or HCNG), allows using some non-combat skills, but none of the gathering-skills. This means they can't use

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Woodcutting

,

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Fishing

,

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Mining

,

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Farming

, but they can use the resources they gain from killing enemies. As a note, they will not be able to level

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Firemaking

, as there is no way to obtain Normal Logs without

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Woodcutting

.

Starting out

Starting out, it's quite possible you will die many times. Either because of bad luck, or because you forgot to pay attention to the game. Before you do anything, get a stack of potatoes by punching plants.

For the first few levels, personally, I recommend using Block, to level up

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Defence

. Leveling defence up improves your natural evasion ratings, effectively reducing all enemies' hit chance. I don't enjoy spam-clicking potatoes 300 times a minute. After reaching defence level 15 or so, I will start leveling my

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Attack

stat, for a higher chance to hit enemies. Once I get all melee

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Combat

levels up to level 10, at least, I will try to get my first gear.

Gaining gear

Baby clothes

Bronze Battleaxe and Bronze Shield are both dropped from Golbin at Golbin Village. With these, I will go back to grind more potatoes, until I get bored, and believe I am strong enough to get myself some steel gear from the Steel Knight. A quick note: Any weapon is better than your fists, simply because of the 4s cooldown between attacks with your fists.

Alternatively, you might get a Bronze Dagger and potentially an Iron Dagger from the Goo Monster, if you're feeling brave.

You will be able to push yourself through the first three knights ( Steel Knight, Black Knight, Mithril Knight) quite decently, getting Boots, Platelegs, Platebodies, Helmets, Shields, Swords, and Scimitars. Furthermore, the Black Knight will drop you a Black Dagger, but you can ignore the black knight entirely.

If you're having a hard time getting the first shirt and leggings, you can take a pitstop by the Zombie Hand for the Iron Platelegs, and just go for the Zombie for Steel Platebody. It's much easier to get the shirt from the zombie than from the knight.

Some better gear

After getting a full set of Mithril Helmet, Mithril Platebody, Mithril Platelegs, Mithril Boots, and possibly a Mithril Sword or Mithril Scimitar... I will do what I call a Pro Gamer Move, and kill a few Purple Goo Monsters until they give me an Adamant Dagger. The benefit of wielding a dagger over a sword is that you will save yourself 0.2s between attacks, allowing you to hoard up even MORE POTATOES.

Also, after getting some Mithril gear, you should try killing an Ice Monster to get an Ice Sword, since the drop rate is really high, and it's pretty much on par with the Rune Sword.

At this point you should already have figured out you would benefit from the extra +7% Combat XP from the Gold Emerald Ring, and the Amulet of Strength dropped at Mummy. The Gold Topaz Ring is kinda meh, for now, since we won't have access to Aorpheat's Signet Ring anyway.

After having some decent clothes, a necklace, ring, and weapon... it's time for our next step.

Gaining gold

Okay, so you're sick of being a manual autoclicker, pressing Loot All, equipping potatoes, and munching potatoes for 1001 nights in a row. Okay, so power up an Arduino, connect a real life potato to fuel it with energy, and turn it into a potato powered autoclicker instead. Do this until you have enough potatoes to get a million gold, and can buy Auto Eat I for 1 000 000 Gold Coins.

Just kidding.

Kill Cows, loot Leather, and get free Bones for

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Prayer

, experience, and some pennies. Upgrading Leather to Green Dragonhide increases the profit for each one. Do this until you can afford auto-eat. In my experience, this is the most efficient way to get gold at this stage.

While the efficiency of Auto Eat I might not be the best, you will save yourself a lot manual labour, and can finally get yourself a shower, by consuming your hard-earned potatoes.

AE2 and AE3

While this can (and probably should) wait until later, it's nice to know that in order to farm for Auto Eat 2 and Auto Eat III, one should do so at Master Farmer, mainly by collecting Oak Tree Seeds. The exact order of priority is the following, which can vary on your bank capacity:

Oak Tree Seeds > Willow Tree Seeds > Maple Tree Seeds > Yew Tree Seeds > Magic Tree Seeds > Compost > Sweetcorn Seeds > Tomato Seeds > Strawberry Seeds.

This takes drop chance, rates, and price into account.

Post-AutoEat

Okay, so you've seen the doctor, and they cured your Arthritis, and you can finally return to play Melvor Idle (which wasn't idle until now).

Now, you should do some farming up to combat levels

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Combat

50, or so. At this point, you should consider getting the gear from the ( Adamant Knight, its gear with Silver Bar and Gold Bar "quite easily" farmed at Statue. The drop chance for gold is slightly higher at Purple Goo Monster. It's worth noting that it's possible to skip directly to Adamant gear without having a full Mithril set, but do this at your own risk. You should be ready now to get yourself an Amulet of Looting from the Spider Chest at

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Spider Forest

. While it can vary a bit on your gear, you should have over a grand of Taters in your stock, since it will cost you around 500 potatoes per dungeon run.

Note: Some people claim you can rush the Amulet of Looting before getting Auto Eat.

Post-Amulet of Looting

Okay, so you finally got yourself an Amulet of Looting, and now you can sleep comfortable having your own automated Taterfarm.

The next step is to collect the Rune Knight) armor (with its upgrades), and Dragon Scimitar from the Seething Horned Elite. This should probably last you until you get yourself an Ancient Sword and/or Sunset Rapier. They are both useful for different purposes.

End-game

TBD