Kingdom Come: Deliverance Hardcore mode is a punishing experience designed for those seeking a truly immersive and challenging adventure. There are a lot of changes that provide a more authentic and challenging experience by removing many of the conveniences found in normal mode. It introduces a myriad of limitations and difficulties that significantly change the gameplay experience.
In Kingdom Come: Deliverance Hardcore mode, it’s important to be prepared for the increased difficulty and potential for frustration. In this guide we’ll be covering all the hardcore mode challenges, achievements, how to counteract the nightmarish negative perks, and a lot of extra helpful tips to help you on your journey!
[Written by our own Eluminum]
Content
Hardcore Mode Challenges & Tips
Why Play Hardcore Mode
We know Hardcore mode is not for everyone. It requires a high level of patience, skill, and dedication. If you’re not prepared for a brutal challenge, it’s best to stick to the normal mode. But why play Hardcore mode?
Immersion
The limitations and challenges of Hardcore mode create a more immersive and realistic experience. We’ll discuss these changes in more detail later in this guide.
Challenge
You’re looking for a truly demanding and satisfying gameplay experience, and if normal mode isn’t challenging enough for some reason, Hardcore Mode is a great option.
Achievement
Beating the game on Hardcore is a major feat and a source of pride. Plus, you’ll unlock some rare achievements to brag about!
Hardcore Mode Achievements
Hardcore Henry
Finish the game in Hardcore mode
Just finish the game in hardcore mode, if you follow this guide you should have no problem. The game will force you to get two negative perks so just pick the easiest ones for you, personally the easier picks are Nightmares & Tapeworm/Brittle Bones. I’ll explain further in the Negative Perks section.
Kingdom Did Not Come
Die for the first time in Hardcore Mode
This one is the easiest to get and you will get it. You don’t need a guide for this.
‘Tis but a scratch
Finish the game in Hardcore Mode with all negative perks
This is the hardest achievement in the game. If you are an achievement hunter and just want to get it over with then you just need to follow all the tips in this guide and make it into a less frustrating experience. I will talk about how to counteract all the negative perks later in this guide.
Hardcore Mode Challenges & Tips
Here I will be telling you all about the different challenges you might face with Hardcore Mode, including some tips & tricks that I have learned to help you deal with them.
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Gameplay Challenges
Exploration: In Hardcore mode, navigation becomes a challenge without the compass, map markers, or fast travel. A helpful workaround is to head to Rattay and obtain bird cages from Huntsman Berthold in thequest ‘ A Bird in the Hand… ‘. Dropping these cages on the map will reveal your location. Remember that the quest needs to be set as active to be able to see the map markers!
Don’t like the bird cage trick? You can still place your own custom markers on the map and it will appear on your compass whenever you’re near them, just look out for important landmarks and use the roads and shrines as reference to figure out where you are, it’s also important to always remember that the sun rises on the east and goes down on the west!
Resource Management: Due to higher costs, careful resource management is essential in Hardcore mode. Food and repair costs are significantly increased, so I suggest you loot everything you can and store it in your personal chest or your horse. You can also repair your own armor and weapons to save money but you need to train your Maintenance skill. Find a blacksmith, they usually have a grindstone lying around and you can grind your maintenance level by repeatedly sharpening and dulling any weapon. You can also get free clothing repairs from Theresa after you finish the quest to Court Theresa, you will get it during the main quest Keeping the Peace from the watchman Nightingale.
Increased Difficulty: Combat is more deadly and you heal slower so I suggest to just avoid combat unless necessary. Be sure to train with Captain Bernard whenever you can so you are at least ready for when the time comes that you can’t avoid a fight.
Combat and Perks
Visual Cues: Another important thing you have lost is your health and stamina bar, you can still check your health though by opening your inventory and looking at your character screen. The directional star for combat is also gone and you just have to rely on your instinct, look at the visual cues carefully and use your mouse movement accordingly.
Perk Changes: Some of these great perks have less benefit to your character now:
The Thickblooded perk now reduces the chance of bleeding from a foe’s strike as opposed to reducing bleeding rate.
The Revenant perk no longer regenerates health slowly at any given time, but only speeds up health gain during sleep.
The Contemplative perk is not available.
Loot and Progression
Reduced Treasure: The Chests from non-DLC Treasure maps won’t contain top-tier items like St. George’s sword or Augsburg plate chausses. You will still have access to the remaining contents of the chests though.
Manual Saves: Auto-saves from quests are disabled in Hardcore mode. To save your progress, drink Saviour Schnapps, sleep at camps or inns, or save and quit. Consider buying rooms permanently for frequently visited locations by choose the ‘rent for a few nights’ option. Also remember that when saving and quitting, the game will create an exit save which will automatically delete itself when you load the game, so don’t rely on it.
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NPC Changes
Runt’s Armor: The only “Boss Battle” in the game, Runt is now much harder to kill and you cannot beat him easily just by going for his head like in normal mode. He is now equipped with a helmet and an overall better armor. I suggest learning master strikes from Captain Bernard before attempting to beat Runt, equip your best weapon and armor and hope for the best.
List of Negative Perks
When going into Hardcore Mode, the game will require you to pick at least two negative perks. These Negative Perks can significantly impact your character’s abilities, forcing you to adapt to their limitations. Below I will list all the negative perks and their impact on your character, as well as how to deal with each of them.
Nightmares
Your character has nightmares and all your stats are reduced by -2 after waking up. To counteract this is simple, just sit and use the wait function to skip two hours and you’re back to normal!
Claustrophobic
Wearing a full face plated helmet makes your attacks weaker. To counteract this just wear an open face helmet, the Bell shaped kettle hat is your best option.
Hemophilia
You bleed significantly faster. I advise you to avoid combat during the early stages of the game where you are particularly vulnerable. To counteract this, equip sturdy armor to minimize bleeding.
Numbskull
This one is really simple, it just reduces the experience you gain. It shouldn’t be an issue aside for some extra grinding and difficulty on stat checks. To counteract this, the primary solution is to get some Bard Potions to compensate for the lower Speech levels in the early to mid stages of the game. Also remember to keep talking to everyone to level up Speech, each dialogue option gives you XP!
Consumption
Your stamina regenerates slowly. This is barely noticeable in my opinion, just keep leveling up your Vitality by running and jumping, training with Captain Bernard helps too.
Shakes
Your character’s hands shake a lot so you will have some difficulties on activities that require precision such as archery, lockpicking, and pickpocketing. To counteract this you have to reach level 5 on any of these skills to reduce the shaking so keep training them whenever you can, and also consider saving whenever you will do any of these activities.
Tapeworm
You get hungry faster. Pick up every food you can take and store them in your personal chest or your horse. To counteract this, I recommend you to stock up on foods that don’t spoil like dried meat, dried mushrooms or other easy to find stuff like fruits and veggies. You could also apply a preserver potion to a food item and increase its durability, but it’s not really worth it unless you are trying to save some really high-quality food items.
Somnambulant
Sleeping has a chance of causing you to wake up in a different place, usually not more than 50 meters away. To counteract this, you can reduce the chances of sleepwalking by closing all the exit doors before sleeping or completely negate it by locking the doors.
Brittle Bones
Your bones are very fragile and you will take higher fall damage and can get easily injured. To counteract this try to avoid high jumps and ledges, and get the Featherweight perk when you can to reduce fall damage.
Other Tips
- Time doesn’t move forward in Skalitz at the start of the game so grind your Herbalism skill by picking up all the nettle around town, you should at least get it to level 5 and pick up the +2 charisma bonus for having herbs in your inventory (around 30 should trigger it.) You can also get a permanent +2 on Vitality by picking up enough poisonous herbs, you should have this by picking up a lot of nettle.
- Near the end of the prologue before taking a horse to escape, whistle and a horse should turn around and walk towards you, DON’T take that one, take the other one nearest to you (the one with the green saddle) instead and it will have the best saddle in the game, the Noble Saddle. Immediately put it in your inventory as your horse will disappear later. Don’t worry about getting a new horse for now as you will be receiving one later as a reward for a main quest.
- As stated in this guide, use the sun to determine east and west. You can go into your player profile and check the clock, if it’s past noon then the sun is on the west.
- Savior schnapps are you savior literally.
The best way that I’ve found for brewing savior schnapps: Pour wine. Place 2 belladonna into grinder. Throw 1 nettle in pot. Bellow 5 Times, without taking a break between bellows. Grind Belladonna, throw in immediately once done grinding, should still be boiling. Do not bellow more, vial right after boil effect ends. Fire can still be going.
A few easily accessible spots for an alchemy table:
1. Alchemy bench in Rattay at the back of Apothecary’s house.
2. In Gertrude’s hut, north of Talmberg, west of Uzhitz, and south of Pribyslavitz. You can also buy alchemy ingredients from her.
3. Brother Nicodemus has an alchemy table in the Sasau Infirmary near the Monastery. He also sells alchemy ingredients.
- Always stock up on bandages and arrows! After the prologue you can go back to Skalitz and loot the corpses for some good equipment, be very careful though and save before you attempt it!
- If you have the Woman’s Lot DLC make sure to grab your dog companion Mutt by talking to Theresa!
I hope this guide helped you! Leave a comment below for feedback and suggestions, or just to say thanks!
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