The major part of this guide is written by @Username#7620, @mazunki [they/them]#3247, and @ERRORMONSTER#8764 on the Discord community. If you got any questions, or anything is wrong make sure to shout out to any one of us. Feel free to edit the guide, or add stuff to it too.

This page was last updated for (v0.19).

Thanks to everyone in #hardcore-mode-chat for making this possible. :)

Preface

Food is vital to a HCCO account and your first food source (and one that you will be relying on for quite a while) is plants. Starting out, you should fight plants for the potatoes they drop and to increase your combat levels.

Note about
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ATK
vs
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STR
vs
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DEF
: All three combat skills are very useful to level in their own ways. ATK increases your chance to hit and unlocks new weapons to use, STR increases your maximum hit, and DEF increases your chance to not get hit (which saves you food). In general, they should all be leveled equally.

DEF should be your first combat skill that you level, as it greatly reduces the amount of damage that you will take from plants (roughly by half). ATK should be second and STR should be last (since you have a low chance to hit, it’s more important to level ATK rather than STR). Weapons in this game have different attack speeds depending on their type. Daggers attack quickly, with an attack speed of 2.2 seconds, and Battleaxes attack slowly, with an attack speed of 3.1 seconds, for instance. Weapons that attack more slowly also deal more damage per hit and weapons that hit quickly usually do less damage per hit.

There are different styles in the game, depending on the weapon you’re wielding. Melee weapons, which will be our main focus for the first part, have Stab, Slash and Block. Each style gets a bonus to the accuracy rating depending on the specific weapon. Swords usually have a better stabbing accuracy, while scimitars are better at slashing, for instance. The style you choose will also give you experience towards the combat skill in question: Stabbing gives Attack experience, Slashing gives Strength experience, while Blocking is used to train Defence. During the beginning of HCCO, you’ll have to eat manually to ensure that you won’t die. Later on, you’ll be able to automatically eat food so eating will be less of a worry.

Chapter 0: Your first gear

   Start: Naked
   End: 4 steel pieces

You should get to about 10 in all melee combat skills (usually expressed as 10/10/10) by fighting plants and then it’s time to start getting your first gear.

Chapter 0—I: Starting naked

After you have a decent stack of food, it’s time to get your first pieces of gear from the   Golbin. You should have some levels in all skills (10/10/10 or so) and a couple hundred   potatoes or so. You’re looking for a   Bronze Battleaxe (1 in 27 chance) and a   Bronze Shield (1 in 27 chance). If you get unlucky, don’t worry. Just kill plants for food until you’re able to get both.   Plants have very low HP, so having a faster weapon allows you to kill them faster, as you don’t need more than 20 damage to kill a plant. So, your next goal after your   Bronze Battleaxe is an   Iron Dagger. You should have about 15/15/15 stats and a few hundred potatoes. The   Iron Dagger has a 1/33 drop rate from the   Goo Monster. Your next gear upgrades will come from Zombie Hand. You’re looking for the   Iron Platebody (1 in 4 chance) and   Iron Platelegs (1 in 4 chance). Some people might go for the   Steel Knight first, but since the   Zombie Hand has a better chance for gear, it’s recommended to do it first. You should have about 20/20/20 stats for this and, once again, a large stack of   taters. After you kill the   Zombie Hand, you should then move on to the regular   Zombie for the   Steel Platebody (1 in 5 chance). It also drops   Steel Boots (1 in 5 chance), but you shouldn’t grind for them since   Steel Knights are easier to get them from the   Steel Knight. (20/20/20 stats recommended)

You’ll end the first part of your HCCO journey with   Steel Knights. They drop the   Steel Helmet (15 in 67 chance),   Steel Shield (10 in 67 chance),   Steel Sword (10 in 67 chance), and   Steel Scimitar (4 in 67 chance). You should be using the   Steel Sword on ATK and DEF and the   Scimitar on STR when killing most monsters, but again, daggers should be used on plants due to the fast attack rate. The   Mirror Shield is a useful item to get around here, but if you decide not to get it, you can avoid ever getting tasks in the
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Strange Cave

Chapter II: Mithril armor

   Start: 5x Steel Armour, 10/10/10,  Steel Scimitar
   End: Amulet of Looting, AE1, 5x Mithril Armor, 40/40/40, Ice Sword, Adamant Dagger

The next Knight after   Steel is   Black, but should skip it, as the drop chances are very low, and the next tier is not much harder anyway.

But before you visit the   Mithril Knight you'll want to take a detour to fight the   Mummy for   Amulet of Strength and   Gold Emerald Ring to fill out your neck and ring slots. Your next step, therefore, is   Mithril Knights. Because they only drop gear a quarter of the time when killed (on average), it can take quite a while to get a full   mithril set. You will probably get   boots (25 in 268) and   helmets (15 in 268) quite often, and the eventual   platelegs (5 in 268). The   platebody has quite a low drop-chance (1 in 568). This is quite the trend on these knights. Before getting the   platebody you will probably get both a   scimitar (1 in 67) and a   shield (5/134), too, so equip these once dropped, for a decent upgrade. You may equip the   sword, too, but I’d stick with the   Scimitar for now, to efficiently level up your
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Strength
skill before practically perma-equipping the   Ice Sword for a long while. The last thing to consider before moving on to the   Ice Monster is to potentially getting an   Amulet of Calculated Promotion from   Leech while your name is set to "witwix", however this is only a 1% chance, so you might instead want to put it off until later. As mentioned, you will want to get the   Ice Sword after getting full   Mithril armor, or even before getting the   platebody, as it is a really good upgrade at this point. It is practically a cold   Rune Sword, in stats, except it is slightly better defensively than offensively. The drop rate is 10% at the   Ice Monster over at the
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Icy Hills
. Huge. Because of variance, you might get it on your first kill or your 20th, but don’t be discouraged. Also, the   Ice Sword is better at grinding
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Strength
than all weapons from a lower tier, meaning that the next best strength weapon after.

Now, before you go away from the computer, or to sleep, it’s time to upgrade your dagger. At the   Purple Goo Monster you can get a cheap   Adamant Dagger. Going from 429 to 444   Potatoes/hour? Good business.


Chapter II—A: Looting Amulet

The   Looting Amulet is a special amulet which automatically loots gear acquired from Combat Areas and Slayer Areas. You may get it from the   Spider Chest, with a 1/22 chance. Due to the nature of HCCO, you will spend a lot of potatoes in the early game (and beyond, too), so you might want to rush this item in order to ease the grind for food as soon as possible.

By using   Mithril Armor, and having around 40 melee stats, it will take you around 5000 healing from food per run of the
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Spider Forest
. Before you start running the dungeon, you should have a buffer of at least a thousand potatoes, just because RNG might be on your bad side.

It is quite possible to beat the zone without having any form of Auto Eat, and just make sure you time your manual eating right, since the damage of the spiders in the area is not too high.

Don’t do this, please

Otherwise, if you really don’t want to manual the dungeon, you should know the base max damage of the zone is 142, requiring 710 hp for AE1, 480 hp for AE2. This requires 6 million gold, which would require around 30 hours of active gameplay at Master Farmer, since you still don’t have auto looting. Bad idea.

Chapter II—B: Auto Eat 1

As soon as you have your hands on an Amulet of Looting, you can start to make money. A relevant point to make here, is that money making at this stage is a compromise between risk and reward. Consider the time it takes to farm up the food you need, and the time it takes to farm the gold you want.

Safe path

The safest way to make money, for now, is to kill   Cows, collecting their   leather, and upgrading it into   Green Leather through the shop. The selling price for   Leather is 50 GP, while the selling price for   Green Leather is 200 GP. By upgrading it, you effectively get 100 GP per piece of   Leather.

Assuming you’ve got the   Ice Sword, the average gold yield per   cow is 203 GP.

This chapter ends when you’re 40/40/40. Use   Adamant Dagger for idling   plants, and   Ice Sword for tougher enemies.

Chapter III: Mithril to adamant (g) + rune boots (g) + rune gloves

   Start: Amulet of Looting, AE1, 5x Mithril Armor, 40/40/40, Ice Sword, Adamant Dagger
   End: 4x (G) Adamant Armor, 1x (G) Rune Boots, 1x Rune Gloves, 70/40/70

How does it feel to be able to get FREE FOOD overnight?

While your next target is necessarily   Adamant Knights, you should know that leveling attack and defense up to 50 from your 40 stats will effectively reduce your (raw, without AE efficiency loss)   potato per knight count from 170 to 120. additionally, if you decided not to get the   Amulet of Calculated Promotion previously, you should definitely get it now, since you'll have extremely low accuracy on the next two knights.

Important note: DO NOT IDLE KNIGHTS. Make sure to always have more
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HP
than the max hit of the enemy, and try to eat food right after your attack timer ends, so you don’t reset an attack in progress. Eat until full HP, or at least until you have enough HP to survive any attack. The 2.6s interval of the   Adamant Knight is not really a danger provided you’re PAYING ATTENTION and have enough food. Your   Ice Sword is great for leveling
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Attack
, and your   dagger is fine for leveling defense. You may do this at   Statue, in preparation to gear upgrades, and thus your first Damage Reduction points!!

Each   Adamant piece has a 1/48 chance of dropping, which, mind you, is much better than the drop chances of   Rune Knight. Good luck on that! While you don’t really care about the   Green Boots nor the   Obsidian Cape, you may as well equip them once you get them. It will be a while until you replace the   Cape for anything else, but there’s no point wasting   Silver/  Gold bars on the   Boots. You will get   Rune Boots quickly anyway.

Upgrade the Equipment you get to (G) Adamant as soon as you get them, since each piece gives you 4% damage reduction.

Now, grind up enough Slayer Coins for the   Desert Hat, and 50
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Slayer
levels, so you can gain access to the
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Arid Plains
. You may as well kill   Master Farmers, for Gold Coins; or hit some   Statues for some   Gold and   Silver Bars, which are both Easy Slayer Tasks, meaning they’re free to reroll.

Now, why would you want to unlock Arid Plains? Well, there’s a few reasons:

Also, you don’t even need to manual these two enemies! After getting these upgrades, you should keep on to your hat (literally!), because your next weapon upgrade comes from the   Turkul Giant at the same area. You could also sell the hat, and rebuy it a bit later. The Slayer Coin cost is not too huge.

Farm up enough Gold to upgrade your Auto Eat to Tier II at Master Farmer. With Auto-Eat II you can idle   Turkul Giants, provided you have 23% dr and level
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50 HP
. With this, upgrade your weapon into the   Dragon Scimitar or, even better, the   Desert Sabre.


Farming at Master Farmer

The Master Farmer gives a total of 14 unique items. You want to prioritize your bank slots for the most rewarding items, taking the price and drop rate into account. This mainly comprises the Tree Seeds, requiring 5 slots. By reserving five slots for the Master Farmer grind, you get a total of 84% of the gold drops. That’s around 809 gp per kill.

oCualgl.png

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

And it was done.

Chapter IV: Adamant to full rune (g)

   Start: 4x (G) Adamant Armour, 1x (G) Rune Boots, 1x Rune Gloves, 70/40/70
   End: 5x (G) Rune Armour, 1x Paladin Gloves, Elite Amulet of Strength. 70/80/80, Sunset Rapier / Ancient Claw, AE3

The first thing you should do in this part of the story is to upgrade your   Amulet of Strength into an   Elite one, simply by farming more   Mummies. On average you need to kill around a thousand of them. You may wait to get the   Paladin Gloves until after getting   Rune Armor, or you may get it already. At this point you will use around 65 potatoes per   Paladin kill, and the chance to get them is 1/171. Not too hard.

The next step is to farm the feared shiny   Rune Knights, and upgrade your four armor pieces into   (G) Rune pieces, for a total of 29% damage reduction with the   Paladin Gloves. You will need a bunch of   Gold and   Silver pieces, farmed at   Statue. You may get Auto Eat III now, or after the 2nd loadout slot, and consider getting the 3rd and last loadout slot while at it too.

Assuming you already have 60
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Slayer
(and if you don't, then go get it;   Giant Crab tasks are your friend here), the last thing to get before moving onto the next section is a better weapon.
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Deep Sea Ship
is your next stop for a   Sunset Rapier to speed up killing   Pegasus. You'll be killing around 3300 of them to get 100   Ancient Claw Fragment which can be upgraded into the   Ancient Claw. This will be a great weapon until you upgrade it to the   Infernal Claw, which is still well off. Don't bother getting any   Dragon Claw Fragment from   Griffin yet, as they will just take up space. If you're lucky enough to get an   Ancient Sword before the   Sunset Rapier, then feel free to use it until you get to
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Volcanic Cave
, as it will drastically reduce your food consumption and the associated food farming time. After that, you'll probably only want to use it outside dungeons due to the high monster damage reducing the benefits of the lifesteal.

Chapter V: Rune (g) to ancient (g)

Ancient storyline

   Start: 5x (G) Rune Armour, 1x Paladin Gloves, Elite Amulet of Strength. 70/80/80, Sunset Rapier / Ancient Claw, AE3
   End: 4x (G) Ancient Armour, 1x Paladin Gloves, Elite Amulet of Defence, 90/99/90, Dragonfire Shield, Sandstorm Ring

  Elite Amulet of Defence from upgrading   Amulets of Defence, which are dropped by   Purple Goo Monsters, and   Silver Diamond Ring, dropped by   Mummies, are our best friends for now; the limiting factor for the remaining dungeons is how much DR you have access to.

Now that you've got full   Rune (G) and   Paladin Gloves for 32% DR, 88 hitpoints will allow you to idle
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Volcanic Cave
for your first useful cape, the   Fire Cape. At this point, you can expect to eat around 3000   Potatoes per kill without prayer.

You're probably noticing that   potatoes just won't cut it for food anymore, so switching to   Sweaty Monsters for   Salmon and   Lobster will reduce your overall time spent farming food. Expect to get food equivalent to 10.2 hp/kill in   Salmon, 6.25 hp/kill in   Lobster, and 2.3 hp/kill in   Shark. Swapping food sources often means that saving all 3 types of fish might not be worth it for some players.

Hopefully you find the
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Volcanic Cave
comfortable, as the goal is to get the   Ancient Platebody,   Ancient Platelegs,   Ancient Helmet, and   Ancient Shield. There are no Ancient Boots and   Dragon Boots are unobtainable on HCCO (as is the   Dragon Helmet,) so you'll continue rocking your   (G) Rune Boots for quite awhile. Getting the   Dragon Platebody and/or   Dragon Platelegs is only useful if you plan to upgrade them to (G), as you still need the extra DR that comes from the (G) upgrade. Once you get your full   Ancient Armor, make another visit to   Statues to finish off gathering   Gold Bars and   Silver Bars and upgrade everything to (G). Luckily the   Elite Chests you've been opening also drop plenty of   Silver Bars and   Gold Bars. In total, you'll need 6000   Silver Bars and 10,000   Gold Bars for full   (G) Ancient Armor. If you get all the   Silver Bars you need, move to   Purple Goo Monsters for faster   Gold Bars. You can also hold onto the   Amulets of Fury for the   Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs grind later; you'll need 10   furies in total.

After getting the   (G) Ancient Shield, there's nothing stopping you from immediately upgrading it again to the   Dragonfire Shield, so head to the   Green Dragons to get 7050   Dragon Bones. You can alternatively wait until getting some range levels, as   Green Dragons are slightly weaker to mage and range than to melee, but at this level, you shouldn't have any trouble, and the 8% DR of the   DFS will be very useful as a mage and range offhand for God dungeons.

Another grind that can be done around this time is the   Sandstorm Ring from   Sand Beasts, which will be your best-in-slot melee dps ring. (Note that as of v0.21, the   Sandstorm Ring can no longer be used to cheese early range and mage training; the special attack is now melee only.)

Once you have full   (G) Ancient Armor and   DFS for 43% DR (or 40% with   looting and   Sandstorm Ring, it's time to grind any remaining melee skills to ideally at least 90/99/90 while working your way towards 70 slayer for your next food upgrade -   Trout from   Raging Horned Elites or RHE; you can also take advantage of the   Gold Emerald Ring from   Mummies to speed up stat grinding. Once you get to this point, you can expect 447.8 hp in food for every kill! Once you start killing   RHE, hold onto the   Ancient Arrows they drop as they're your best arrows, even though they can't be equipped until level 70
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Ranged
. Additionally, the   Large Horns that they drop will likely replace   Master Farmers for GP farming, as the GP/hr is about the same (not to mention the food, arrows, and prayer points you're getting), with a much lower bank demand.

Ranged intro

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Ranged
is quite straightforward, but we’ve been putting it off for mainly two reasons: It doesn’t provide any real benefit until you start fighting wizards, or other magic monsters, and getting its gear without having the space in your bank or loadouts for the gear and weapon(s) will be annoying. Get your first two bows (level 5 lets you use   Oak Shortbow) from the   Ranged Golbin over at the
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Golbin Village
, and use the   Ice Arrows from the   Frozen Archer over at the
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Icy Hills
. These are almost as strong as   Rune Arrows, which you can start to use at level
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40
, but are much easier and cheaper to farm, and can be equipped from the very beginning. Literally all your next weapon upgrades, except if you go out of your way to get the   Yew Longbow from the Holy Archer at level
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40
, will come from the   Bandit Chest. At level
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30
you can upgrade to the   Maple Longbow, at level 50 you can use the   Magic Longbow, and finally you will get to use the   Redwood Longbow and the   Ancient Longbow at levels 60 and 70. An alternative (but less efficient) route for early ranged training is to kill   Thieves in the
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Runic Ruins
for throwing knives, which, due to their higher attack speed and inherent 15% ammunition saving, can help with early training. Once you get into higher levels you may consider using the   Adamant (worse than   Ice),   Rune and   Dragon Arrows you’ve collected from the   Bandit Chest. If you’re farming   Raging Horned Elite for food you may also use   Ancient Arrows in
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ranged combat
after level 70. Most of your ranged armor upgrades will come from the
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Spider Forest
, moving through   Green D'hide at level 40,   Blue D'hide at level 50,   Red D'hide at level 60, and finally into   Black D'hide at level 70. Upgrading ranged armor is much easier than for melee armor, as you can buy   Leather from the shop, which can then be used to buy   Green,   Blue, and   Red dragon leathers for upgrading their respective armor tiers. Alternatively, killing dragons in the
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Dragon Valley
can provide all chromatic dragonhide, including   Black.   Ranger Hat and   Ranger Boots are a nice bonus for saving ammunition while training, but after level 70, ammunition will be plentiful thanks to   Raging Horned Elites, so they aren't necessarily worth the time to grind out.

Magic Intro

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Magic
in this gamemode will mainly consist of casting air spells, since you can remove one colour from the rune costs. All spells cost air runes, but water, earth and fire runes additionally cost their respective runes.

This is a bad thing, for us, since we have no real way to farm a lot of runes yet, but we can get started by farming some catalyst runes at the   Vampire and the   Master Wizard. The   Vampire is probably best for now, since it is a ranged monster, meaning we can strike it with melee, even considering the drop chance and drop rates are lower than from the master wizard.

Catalyst Runes are the runes you use to power up your spells, while Elemental runes select which element you’re using. You can remove the cost for Elemental runes with staves, which we will abuse to completely nullify the air cost, and thus only use air spells.

The   Staff of Air reduces the cost by 1, allowing you to cast up to Wind Strike for free (20 dmg), the   Battlestaff reduces it by 3, allowing you to cast up to Wind Blast for free (130 dmg), while the   Mystic Air Staff reduces it by 5, allowing you to cast up to Wind Wave for free (170 dmg).

Keep in mind you will also need the Catalyst runes for each tier. Once you get to level
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30 magic
you can start wielding   battlestaves, and should therefore also cast Wind Bolts. No need for   Mind Runes anymore, so sell them all. After you can cast   Death spells, you might want to go back and forth between   Chaos Runes and   Death Runes, since they both deal decent damage, and are both farmed decently at the   Master Wizard for a while. Eventually, as you get more magic evasion through leveling
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magic
, you will only use   Death runes, as the   Necromancer stops hurting too much.

Ancient (g) to God gear and beyond (everything maxed, current end game)

Pre-Gods

It's about time to get your best-statted amulet, the   Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs, or FEZ. You don't have to do it now, as it provides the same 2% DR as that of the   Elite Amulet of Defence, but the other offensive and defensive bonuses are not to be underestimated. Refer to the FEZ/Guide for getting all the materials to make it. The

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Leonardo

pet is good to have by this point as well, as it's a free 1% DR. Another useful item to get around this time if you don't already have it is the   Sandstorm Ring, for its unavoidable special attack.

Aeris

Getting 99/99/99 melee stats is not a bad plan at this point, but before moving into the

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Air God Dungeon

, you'll want to have at least 90/90/90 melee stats, full   (G) Ancient melee armor,   (G) Rune Boots,   Paladin Gloves,   Dragonfire Shield,   Fire Cape,   FEZ or   Elite Amulet of Defence, and level 85

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Ranged

. This combination of armor will allow you to reach 43% DR and idle the

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Air God Dungeon

with as low as level 97 hp for 1000 total health, including the 30 hp bonus from the   DFS. If your hp is at least level 95, then you can even use the   (U) Ancient D-hide Vambraces for 2% DR more than   Paladin Gloves.

Your goal is to get full   Aeris God Armor from the   Scrolls of Aeris, with the   Stormsnap being optional. The   Aeris Godsword is wholly unnecessary, as you'll want to keep using the DR of the   DFS awhile longer, though all of the godswords can be used for non-dungeon grinding.

You'll want to hold on to the

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Air Shards

which can be upgraded into   Air Chests, containing various crossbow bolts. These won't be enough to supply you for the

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Water God Dungeon

but will at least save you some time grinding ammunition in the future. The   Deadeye Amulet and the   Deadeye Ring are each pretty good DPS increases for Ranged, but DR is so tight in most god dungeons that you may not be able to use it over the   FEZ.

Glacia

Hopefully you've gotten the   Finn, the Cat pet by now, because the 10 max health bonus makes DR and max hit calculations much easier, not to mention potentially saving you 1% DR here and there. That and the

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Leonardo

pet will be assumed from here out for the sake of example gear, just for simplicity, alongside level 99

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Hitpoints

.

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Water God Dungeon

will be done with

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Ranged

. Your goal is 49% DR. While it's much easier to reach this threshold with the

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Ancient Crossbow

from

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Dragons Den

and a   Dragonfire Shield, gathering bolts from either   Air Chests or

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Slayer

resupplies is pretty tedious (though autoslayer helps, and again,   Giant Crab tasks are your friend. Use basic resupplies for the most ammo per SC,) so an alternative

if you have level 88
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Prayer

is to use the Stone Skin prayer and the   Ancient Longbow, full   Aeris,   FEZ,   Silver Diamond Ring, and a   Fire Cape. Without level 88 prayer, you'll have to use a shield. If you do go the

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Ancient Crossbow

+   DFS route, then   Aeris provides enough damage reduction for you to wear otherwise fully offensive gear, including the   Deadeye Amulet,   Deadeye Ring, and the   Cape of Prat or   Ranged Skillcape.

Regardless of your gearing, the goal is full   Glacia armor in 5 pieces from the   Scrolls of Glacia, with the   Warlock Ring from   Water Chests being a neat bonus and the   Warlock Amulet not being very useful. The   Glacia Godsword is not worth grinding for, nor is the   Cloudburst Staff. The cloudburst doesn't provide any air runes, which are required for all standard spells, so where you can use a 2h staff, you'll likely want to use your   Mystic Air Staff to prevent needing to farm   Wizards for air runes, but most of the late-game magic content requires a wand and shield anyway, so it's moot. Maybe you could use it for an ancient magicks setup with Icicle Volley, but   Ancient Runes are also a pain to get in bulk.   Water Chests are actually the best place to farm ancient runes due to the low drop rate and amount from   Magic Chests. Hold on to a   Magic Wand (Elite) if you get one and have the bank space to spare, as it's the best one-handed wand you'll have access to for awhile.

Terran

With full   Glacia, a   Mystic Air Staff, and 45% DR, you can go do the

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Infernal Stronghold

to get your   Infernal Cape and get 10   Infernal Cores to upgrade your   Ancient Claw (and   Dragon Claw if you don't have one yet) into the   Infernal Claw for melee farming.

Terran must be done with mage and has a very tight window for gearing and Damage Reduction. Specifically, your attack speed needs to be faster than 3 seconds and you need 47% DR. In a worst case scenario,   Terran will increase your attack interval by 33% for 2 turns then stun you for 1 turn. If he hits you while you're stunned, you'll take an additional 30% damage, drastically increasing your necessary DR to safely idle.

As with the

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Water God Dungeon

, there are two ways to do the

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Earth God Dungeon

: you can use a   Mystic Air Staff,   FEZ,   Skull Cape, and   Silver Diamond Ring and use the Surge I Aurora to just barely make your attacks fast enough to avoid being smacked while stunned and slowed, or use a   Magic Wand (Elite),   Miolite Shield (or   Dragonfire Shield if you're lazy),   FEZ,   Skull Cape, and the   Warlock Ring, which is fast enough to not worry about needing surge.

There are also two reasonable choices for spells. Gathering   Ancient Runes is a slow process, but it allows for the use of Wind Surge, which will shred through the dungeon at around 250 casts per kill for 3.7 kills per hour with the wand or 350 casts per kill for 2.3 kills per hour with a staff. On the other hand,   Death Runes are much easier to gather in bulk from   Necromancers so you could instead use Wind Blast at around 350 casts per kill for 2.5 kills per hour with a wand or 800 casts per kill for 1.5 kills/hr with a staff. Using Ancient Magicks is not recommended, even with a   Mystic Air Staff, as while you can get 5.5 kills per hour with this gear, it also costs almost 600 ancient runes per kill.

TL;DR - farm ancient/light runes and use wind surge for the staff setup, or farm death/air runes and use wind blast for the wand setup.

The goal is to get an   Earth Layered Shield and least 4 pieces of   Terran armor from   Scrolls of Terran, though 5 is, of course, ideal. Make sure you finally put your   (G) Rune Boots to rest; they've earned it. Terran isn't necessary to upgrade your melee gear further to   Ragnar armor, but you will need a few Terran pieces to reach the DR threshold for

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Into the Mist

. Again, the   Terran Godsword isn't worth grinding out due to the DR opportunity cost of not being able to wield a shield and not having access to Damage Reduction Potions. You'll also want to get both a   Guardian Amulet and a   Guardian Ring from the   Earth Chests, which provide BIS DR in their respective slots (10% for a necklace when below 50% hp, 5% otherwise, and 2% for a ring.)

Ragnar

Ragnar is completely optional for game progression, as   Ragnar God Armor actually has LESS damage reduction than   Terran God Armor, though it has much higher strength and melee attack bonuses.

  Wasteful Ring is required to do

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Fire God Dungeon

as a CO, so grab some   Climbing Boots, head over to the

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Perilous Peaks

and kill some   Wicked Greater Dragons. While you're there, you might as well stock up on   Jadestone Bolts from   Hunting Greater Dragons, if you have the food to spare. While they're the best bolts in the game, the food necessary to grind them out in any notable amount may dissuade you from changing away from   Topaz Bolts or   Sapphire Bolts from slayer resupplies. Range is your best option for the

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Fire God Dungeon

due to the 1300 magic max hit of the final boss,   Ragnar. Even once you have your   Wasteful Ring equipped, you'll need 63% DR to idle

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Fire God Dungeon

, which at this point, can only be done with the   Guardian Amulet or the

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Erran

pet from

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Earth God Dungeon

plus   FEZ and otherwise full tank gear. We only have access to 66% total DR from ranged (with wasteful) until after

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Into the Mist

. Full   Aeris,   Earth Layered Shield,   Infernal Cape, and Stone Skin will only get you to 60% DR. If you aren't after full collection log completion and just want to speed your way to

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Into the Mist

and T90 weapon farming, then pick up 2 pieces of   Ragnar Armor. The helm and platebody provide the best offensive bonuses, and all pieces have the same DR, so these will be the best bang for your buck.

Unfortunately, the   Ragnar Godsword isn't of any use to us without Damage Reduction Potions to make up for the lack of a shield, nor is the   Big ol Ron. The strength of the   Sandstorm Ring means that the   Fighter Ring isn't any good for endgame monsters, and the stun effect of the   Fighter Amulet is overshadowed by any other end-game amulet due to its lack of actual stats (specifically DR.) If you can afford to give up the DR of a necklace, you're better off using more   Ragnar Armor and a   FEZ or just toss on your   Amulet of Looting. This means that the   Fire Chests are more or less useless for progression.

ITM

TBD

Ocean stuff

TBD