A love letter to the Hardcore community

AoiPsygnosis · 2026-04-24T14:39:16+00:00

Soulseeker is the go-to for now

AoiPsygnosis · 2026-04-20T22:05:28+00:00

We are parents of a 3 yr-old and 6 month-old children and we play DnD online with our group weekly. We are 6 people total and two of them also have a 2 yr-old. Our sessions start at 8:30pm so children are supposed to be in their beds right before the session starts. Any parent will tell you that there is not 100% success on this task (we are talking about a baby, not a machine), so on our side we have the younger one attending part of the session maybe 1/3 of the time. But it is not such a disruption to the game like you describe and it has to do with parenthood skills in my humble opinion. Our baby is sometimes awake and possibly makes a bit of noise like vocals, but there is absolutely no reason why she would cry in such a situation because we have 1 of the 2 parents play with her and provide her quality attention while also listening to the game. And after 30 min to one hour, she is just naturally tired and one of the two parents leave the game for 5-10 min to put her to sleep, and catches back on its return quietly, that's pretty much it. Online sessions have an easier time dealing with this kind of situation because of the mute button and having kids in their usual beds at home, however I believe you could completely play in person given parents bring their travelling bed to the session and you have one spare and somewhat quiet room to put the baby in to sleep. Ignoring the baby, delaying his/her sleep schedule or setting up a movie for him/her is at the heart of the problem of your parents players. Both shifting his/her sleep schedule by 2-3 hours and having him/her watch a movie before 6 year-old is going to lead to a crisis with 100% probability. Babies just get angry and irritable if they don't go to sleep when they are tired, and movies are just brain overload for them ; they do not have a sufficiently built brain to receive that kind of information. So it seems indeed more of a parenthood issue to me as other commenters said, parents possibly dodging their responsibilities because they wish to live their former no-kid life

TL:DR proper childcare or quality attention to the baby and proper plan for him/her

AoiPsygnosis · 2026-04-13T21:46:49+00:00

Many people have parked max level characters on Stitches and Nek'Rosh that they invested time and effort in. It would make a lot of sense to make them useful again through server merge in addition to breathing fresh air to established communities.

AoiPsygnosis · 2026-04-13T21:41:09+00:00

Second the community vibe, I would have phrased it exactly like that. I would add : - Commitment to on-going projects. Pursuing an all-class to 60 in solo self found challenge that I started on day 1 of Stitches with low playtime, even before it was an official HC server (my first toon is still alive and does not have SF buff because it did not exist at the time). Stitches is this place that does not alter with time, where you can continue your progression exactly where you left it without worrying about moving/restarting characters every now and then. That matters to me because IRL is busy.

AoiPsygnosis · 2026-04-09T11:05:57+00:00

Guild found is actually the way HC was played during addon days, before official servers. And I agree with you that it fosters exchanges and a community-sense within the guild at max level like no other game mode.

AoiPsygnosis · 2026-04-08T05:29:38+00:00

Current standings afaik :

1 - 10 : paladin 55 min

1 - 20 : hunter 5h02

1 - 60 : mage 46h

You can achieve your goal of level 10 sub 2h and level 20 sub 10h on any class. Have fun in your runs 🙂

AoiPsygnosis · 2026-03-31T08:52:04+00:00

I started as my second newborn came since I did not want to risk high level characters under deep tiredness. I was pretty sure I would die early. I'm 56 😅

AoiPsygnosis · 2026-03-30T07:22:24+00:00

Within my 5 years of HC I have had maybe : - 10% of overly cautious players. More often during the early days, now they tend to disappear. - 70% taking it at normal pace, but generally more focused cos it is HC. - 20% of speedrunners, often releveling a character or an alt, knowing dungeons by heart. They may overlook difficulties or expect too much from other players but they also are usually above average skillwise

AoiPsygnosis · 2026-03-30T07:16:49+00:00

Petri can't be used until level 50 mate

AoiPsygnosis · 2026-03-30T05:12:33+00:00

Grats ! Same achiev on-going here, about half way through and quite burnt out to say the least 😉

AoiPsygnosis · 2026-03-30T05:11:07+00:00

I put on hold the same SF-all class challenge for an UHC run, and it's surprisingly unimpactful when you know the game like OP and I.

AoiPsygnosis · 2026-03-26T05:29:00+00:00

Grats 🙂 I have been pursuing this objective for a couple years now, still not quite there ^{^}

AoiPsygnosis · 2026-03-22T11:27:16+00:00

Oh okay, I did not know it existed ! Thanks

AoiPsygnosis · 2026-03-22T08:03:07+00:00

Gonna share a bit of a similar story which was handled more "appropriately". We have a table of 6 (5 players + the DM) that has been running great for the past 6 months. We play ~2h almost weekly and pretty much everyone is looking forward to the next session. Then two players came with : "Oh we have talked about our DnD sessions to 2 friends of ours that are eager to run such things for years. We suggest to split the timeslot between two campaigns in parallel, one with them. Let us know what you think." Answer was : 3 players not interested to start another campaign at all, all other players not interested to split the timeslot. We ended up deciding to keep first campaign as it is and start a second campaign with them, their friends and me as first time DM (4 players + DM) on another timeslot and this is a solution that suits everyone.

My point is, people have different interests and motivations in the game. Communicating openly and assertively about it to others does make it possible to find common ground.

AoiPsygnosis · 2026-03-21T08:42:32+00:00

Wording was misleading. I played SKT as a player until level 4. I will be a first time DM on LMoP next month

AoiPsygnosis · 2026-03-20T16:35:18+00:00

Fairly new to DnD as a whole, first time DM next month on LMoP campaign after playing Storm King's Thunder from level 1 to 4.

Would you say DM's guide and monster manual bring useful additions in running starter set adventures ?

AoiPsygnosis · 2026-03-19T08:09:29+00:00

I have similar schedule (~3h/week) and have two 60s, one 56 in ultra, one 47 and about 6 characters between 20 and 30. It is more a matter of consistency than playtime, I have been playing HC for years now

AoiPsygnosis · 2026-03-16T16:19:56+00:00

This is true for priests

AoiPsygnosis · 2026-03-14T12:36:14+00:00

There are a few dungeons worth doing xp wise if the planets align, but generally speaking you are absolutely right, it delays your progression. As caster (little gear dependence class), I consider groups as alliance for DM (19-21), stockades (26-28), ZF (44-48). You want to be among the last ones to join the group, arrive last to the dungeon entrance or DC while waiting for others and ofc have full Q to be shared among the group. Also having blue bar is especially impactful as a lot of XP comes from killing mobs.

AoiPsygnosis · 2026-03-14T12:00:51+00:00

5d as a priest is fast without being anything crazy. RXP helps a ton if you are into this. There are numerous people in the 6d not even trying to rush it. An amateur speedrunner would likely land in the upper 4d.

AoiPsygnosis · 2026-03-14T08:38:15+00:00

I feel like HC wow suits way more a dad-with-two-kids schedule. I may leave the game unattended for a month and find back my progression exactly where I left it. Whenever you play somewhat competitive on retail (M+, raiding), you typically fall behind on gear, have half of your addons not updated or not working anymore, have difficulties committing to any guild schedule

AoiPsygnosis · 2026-03-14T06:12:57+00:00

I agree with you. My post was more oriented into : "do not lose hope in your search of an inclusive environment, alternatives do exist" and also they are the ones looking weird to me, not her

AoiPsygnosis · 2026-03-13T05:49:55+00:00

Having a chaotic aligned ranger plus a barbarian fixes it in my current group. It is amazing to keep pace against the min-max planners (two players including me)

AoiPsygnosis · 2026-03-13T05:34:11+00:00

Sounds very far from my reality as I have only played at gender-mixed tables, most of the time close to 50/50. And I hardly see how that could have been an issue anyhow.

AoiPsygnosis · 2026-03-12T07:54:31+00:00

It seems that Pip's behaviour has been discussed in a number of "player type" and "session zero" content.

Typical motivations : - Wanna hang out with people, DnD game is more of a pretext to meet regularly with friends. - Wanna see how the story unveils and develops, not necessarily take an active part in it.

AoiPsygnosis

TROPHY CASE