This is a feedback post based on my experience so far in Vessel of Hatred hardcore.
I have played the game since launch last year, and switched over to the HC community starting in Season 2.
I just hit 17 on my Spirit Born, in HC. I have almost died more times than I can count. I am playing on Hard setting.
I took a break from D4 near the end of last season, and coming back I am not having fun. HC is supposed to be a challenge, but it’s not supposed to be so dang stressful that I cant even breath for a moment while leveling a new toon. Right now the 2nd difficulty setting feels more akin to WT3 helltides. Here are some things i have encountered:
-
Monsters re-spwan at such a fast rate outside of Helltide, I have almost died too many times. If I want to take even a split second to look at my gear or use a skill point, I HAVE TO GO TO TOWN if i don’t want to die.
-
Monster respawns happen no matter what and happen even mid dialogue or mini cut-scene.
-
Monster respawns include onslaughts of elites on the level of what we would see in Helltide. So at lvl 8 i was getting mobbed by all sorts of crazy elites every other respawn or sometimes i would get multiple elites in one respawn.
Example of all of the above:
I was at the bridge in Gea Kul, had just killed all the monsters. Talked to big guy after, and go to click at the end of the bridge to interact and start the next cut-scene. AS I DID THIS I WAS SUDDENLY SURROUNDED BY MONSTERS ATTACKING ME. Thankfully i did not die, BUT… when I came to from being healed in the jungle, before the dialogue scene with the healer could finish i was surrounded by monsters, not just any monsters but 3-4 ELITES all of which had Waller, poison, lightning, cold, fear etc. I could NOT continue the quest or story because i had to run away. I ended up using all my health pots and hopping on and off my mount. I was down to 0 HP potions and 1/3 HP running around blindly trying to find the nearest town. I BARELY made it to a town, PISSED and STRESSED. I couldn’t go more than a few paces before running into another pack of elites and then having MORE elites spawn on me.
It’s bad enough we have ZERO cheat death options, but this feels super unbalanced.
1 Like
They adjusted the difficulty don’t play on hard…
2 Likes
I am well aware of the change.
8 difficulty levels, the 2nd one shouldn’t be THIS hard.
The respawn times plus so many elites and champions dont make sense at such low levels outside of helltide even on “hard”.
If i was lvl 50 then sure throw everything at me. I am used to playing harder difficulties overall, so this is comparing to all my time in HC on D3 and D4 and how this feels now leveling a new toon.
Expansion just launched. They added 8 difficulties because… No one was asking for them. I am sure adjustments will be made. Glad they didn’t add 16 difficulties. Also t1-4 players are on different realms.
They removed profane mindcage it made it possible to play t1-3 difficulties in the same map. Now everyone is segregated. Again no one was asking for these systems…
S5 was decent, putting game in the right direction, why overhaul and change everything yet again. Probably because it won’t sell expansions.
1 Like
I have been playing on T1 since I hit 60 and it is incredibly easy. Moving to T2 the HP jumps so much I am not doing enough damage anymore. So I stayed on T1 got more gear and now just face roll anything on T1 but T2 is still so slow. I think there will be an adjustment honestly.
1 Like
I’ve been playing HC quite a bit in D4 and the OP is touching on some key differences between base game and VoH.
The one that threw me for a loop was the monsters showing up in mainline quests dialogues. You can’t take time to read/listen to the dialogue because monsters and aggro from a screen away and attack or just spawn next to you. WTF? The story in VoH is brief as it is and now we have to rush thru half of it to avoid dying? Note – not cutscenes, the prompt driven dialogs
Mob density and elites are way overtuned compared to prior seasons. Running NORMAL still gives you 3 champions in a pack of 6-7 other monsters. On the lowest setting, at level 2 you’re fighting 10 monsters with debuffs and status effects like poison and freeze.
And then there’s the one shot bugs. Or maybe just one bug. But no matter how much life, barrier, and damage resist you have you will eventually die from something. I’ve seen reports of 4000 life, 1000+ armor, max resist, with hefty DR go down in T2/T3. This isn’t just some ladder boss trick mechanic, this happens from random mobs in the over world.
Right now HC in VoH is painful but the snooze fest of normal mode would put me to sleep faster than a bottle of Ambien.
1 Like
The Scroll of Escape still exists. And there’s the Mercenary who will pop a shield bubble when you become injured (drop below 35% health). Neither are real “cheat death” mechanics but they’re all we’ve got. But they don’t compensate for the bugs.
This feedback was based on pre-merc and having not found a Scroll of Escape yet. I think I was lvl 22 when I logged out with no merc and barely gotten to a random town alive
Appreciate hearing you saw similar weirdness with the monster spawns and density.
SADLY … it won’t matter anymore… I was mid Boss fight with the corrupted spirit guy who splits into 2 versions halfway thru. Had just hit 50 and my whole screen went dark. My PC bricked mid fight so my toon is likely dead…still hadn’t found a Scroll of Escape at lvl 50
no cheat death especially in this kinda sitch really sucks.
I haven’t finished the campaign story for VoH coz of this since I’m waiting on repairs, tried Xbox but it’s asking me to buy VoH again …so yeah ROUGH start to this expansion oof.
1 Like
The issue is that you are playing on hard and expect the game to be not stressfull.
Hard is intended to be hard aka stressfull.
So I have leveled 3 HC characters this season, the slow solo way. Generally, start in Normal difficulty for between levels 1-20 and try to unlock your class mechanic on Normal as well. (SB quest is really long) Once you have a few yellows, you can start to temper on gear, ideally on rings or gloves. Even when first starting out, you’d have a few generic temper manuals, like natural finesse, but do not try to re-roll. Only after, then switch to Hard. Around level 30-40, if you have a few legendaries, you can then switch to expert. But for the first playthrough and through the campaign, you can likely stick to hard from level 30-50.
Its just not efficient starting out on Hard. It’s even possible to start out on expert, but it’ll be incredibly slow and little reward.
2 Likes
Where are the Scrolls of Escape we need for the Disconnects we are getting?
Why do we need a Scroll for a DC?
2 Likes
My random thoughts on this topic…
The jump from T1 to T2 is quite steep. I was melting T1 for a while before I could start doing T2. But then I did some more temper optimizing and T2 became pretty easy and safe (though slower). At least until today when I went to finish the campaign and got instagibbed by falling floor.
Hard is really not that hard but you need to stay on top of your gear upgrades (don’t need tempers but aspects help a lot) and you need a reliable spammable source of barrier or healing. Potions alone won’t be enough to sustain you.
I didn’t realize mindcage was gone - thought I’m just not finding it. i agree that having the torments all segregated really splinters the already small HC community. Not sure what a good fix for that is though.
The tank Merc helps A LOT. I think he is pretty much now mandatory for all HC players.He does a lot to makes things easier and can keep you alive through various situations and potentially disconnects.
I think you’re right for the most part, but I wouldn’t say mandatory.
I say this because I was deep into T3 before I remembered, oh yeah, you can get runewords and mercs to help you out 
I had been having too much fun on my Rogue and didn’t want to risk losing it to stuff like, I dunno, the floor randomly falling out from under me 
RIP
He kept me alive through several lag spikes and probably at least one disconnect. The endless taunts and 1shot protection (if you have good reductions and barriers) and very helpful.
I haven’t experimented with runewords too much but the best combo I found is cast 3 basic skills in a row (or any skills don’t remember) to activate necromancer’s decrepify curse. Any class that uses a lot of basic skills will constantly trigger this and it gives you a lot of damage reduction, slow, and chance to execute too.
2 Likes
Yeah for sure if I’m doing any risky stuff, I’ll be trying all that! Good tips!
1 Like
Yeah i think my mistake with starting fresh on Hard, was i applied the logic from prev seasons, WT2 really wasn’t that hard at all, and it was how i started every single season from the start. So my brain was like ok, HARD the SECOND difficulty shouldn’t be too bad right?
Now, 4 deaths later, and in Torment 1, what you’re saying makes a lot of sense. It’s pretty wild though how much of a difference it makes when you hit 20+ AND have aspects and merc to help you. My feedback really was about 1-20 with no merc starting fresh.
I ended up basically doing similar to you. But hey… now im just grinding away… and the loot tables are so borked… so im headed back to D3 HC on friday til they make more improvements in D4 
1 Like