HCCO/Guide

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

The majority of this guide is written by Username, mazunki, and @ERRORMONSTER#8764 of the Discord community. If you have any questions, or if anything is wrong, please make sure to reach out to any of us. Feel free to edit the guide or add anything to it as needed.

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

What is HCCO?

HCCO stands for Hardcore Combat Only. This implies that you cannot use any non-Combat skills at any time, and must play on Hardcore. There is a secondary challenge, 12b, which means you may not buy any Bank slots, and are limited to the 12 provided to you by default. This guide is aimed more towards 12b players, but playing without this restriction just means you can spend less time on bank management.

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

Defence should be the first combat skill that you level, as it greatly reduces the amount of damage that you will take from Plants (roughly by half). Attack should be second, Strength should be last. Since you have a low chance to hit, it’s more important to level Attack rather than Strength.

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 initially, 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. At the start, you’ll have to eat manually to ensure that you won’t die. Later on, you will unlock Auto Eat, so eating will be less of a worry.

Chapter I: Gearing Up

To start, you should have: Nothing!
At the end, you should have: 4 Steel Armour pieces

You should get to about 10 in all melee combat skills (usually expressed as 10 / 10 / 10) by fighting Plants. After that, it’s time to start getting your first bit of equipment.

After you have a decent stack of food from fighting Plants, 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 have the gear from 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 here since it's easier to get them from the Steel Knight next. ( 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 Attack and Defence and the Scimitar on Strength when killing most monsters, but again, daggers should be used on Plants due to their 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 Strange Cave. It acts as a decent early Shield, before you get the Mithril Shield. However, it's optional.

Chapter II: Mithril Armour

To start, you should have: Full Steel Armour, 10 / 10 / 10, Steel Scimitar
At the end, you should have: Amulet of Looting, Auto Eat - Tier I, Full Mithril Armour, 40 / 40 / 40, Ice Sword, Adamant Dagger

The next Knight after Steel is Black. However, you 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 Silver Ruby Necklace 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).

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. You may equip the Sword, too, but consider sticking with the Scimitar for now, to efficiently level up your Strength skill before equipping the Ice Sword for a long while.

The last thing to consider before moving on to the Ice Monster is to get an Amulet of Calculated Promotion from the 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 Armour, or even before getting the Platebody, as it is a really good upgrade at this point. The drop rate is 10% at the Ice Monster in the Icy Hills. The Ice Sword is better at grinding Strength than all weapons from a lower tier.

Now, before you go away from the computer, or to sleep, it’s time to upgrade your dagger. You can get a cheap Adamant Dagger from the Purple Goo Monster. More damage to Plants? Good stuff.

Chapter II-A: Amulet of Looting

The Amulet of Looting 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 Armour, and having around 40 / 40 / 40, it will take you around 5000 healing from food per run of the 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.

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  6,000,000, 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: Making Money Early Game + Auto Eat 1

As soon as you have your hands on an Amulet of Looting, you can start to make money. 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 GP you want.

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

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

Important: As you farm Cows early game, Master Farmers later in the game, or Statues for gear upgrades, it is ALWAYS recommended to use free the easy Slayer reroll to get your current objective, as all 3 of them are included.

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

Chapter III: Mithril to (G) Adamant

To start, you should have: Amulet of Looting, Auto Eat - Tier I, Full Mithril Armour, 40 / 40 / 40, Ice Sword, Adamant Dagger
At the end, you should have: Almost full (G) Adamant Armour, 70 / 40 / 70

While your next target is Adamant Knights, you should know that leveling Attack and Defence up to 50 will effectively reduce your healing per Knight from 1700 to 1200. 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 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 Attack, and your dagger is fine for leveling Defence. You may do this at Statue, to prepare for gear upgrades, and thus your first Damage Reduction points!

Each Adamant piece has a 1/48 chance of dropping. Good luck on that! While you don’t really care about the Adamant 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. Upgrade the Equipment you get to (G) Adamant as soon as you get them, since each piece gives you 4% Damage Reduction.

Chapter III-A: Making money early-mid: Master Farmer + Auto Eat II

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 Farmers grind, you get a total of 84% of the GP drops. That’s around  809 per kill.

Chapter III-B: Late to mid Game food: Slayer

It is highly recommended to build up 150,000 Slayer Coins as Auto Slayer is a great purchase to idly build up Slayer Coins. With them, you can purchase Standard Resupply, which nets you both a useful 150 Crab and 500 Magic Bones per purchase. This tends to be the most efficient HP per Slayer Coin, and is worth saving up for. These can be used throughout the rest of the game for easy food.

As per usual, free rerolls may be used to acquire Master Farmer as your Slayer task.

Beware of Wizards when using Auto Slayer, and ensure they can not bypass your Auto Eat threshold. They should be skipped either way, as they will consume a lot of food due to their high accuracy on melee armour.

Chapter IV: Upgraded Boots, Gloves, and Weapon

To start, you should have: Almost full (G) Adamant Armour, (G) Rune Boots, 70 / 40 / 70
At the end, you should have: Almost full (G) Adamant Armour, (G) Rune Boots, Desert Wrappings, Dragon Scimitar, 70 / 40 / 70 Auto Eat - Tier II

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

BEWARE: Do not Auto Eat Potatoes in the Arid Plains unless you have at least Auto Eat - Tier II. You will lose all your Potatoes instantly.

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

• Sand Treaders from Turkul Riders — -0.1s to all attacks, good for farming lower level monsters.
• Rune Boots from Turkul Riders — Excellent upgrade, easier to get than from Rune Knights.
• Desert Wrappings from Turkul Archers — 2% Damage Reduction gloves, best until Paladin Gloves.

Also, you don’t even need to manual these two enemies! After getting these upgrades, you should hold on to your hat (literally!), because your next weapon upgrade comes from the Turkul Giant in the same area. You could also sell the hat, and buy it again a bit later. The Slayer Coin cost is not too huge. Farm up enough GP to upgrade to Auto Eat - Tier II at Master Farmer. With AE2 you can idle Turkul Giants, provided you have 23% DR and Level 50. With this, upgrade your weapon into the Dragon Scimitar or, even better, the Desert Sabre.

Chapter V: (G) Adamant to Full (G) Rune

To start, you should have: Almost full (G) Adamant Armour, (G) Rune Boots, Desert Wrappings, Dragon Scimitar, 70 / 40 / 70 Auto Eat - Tier II
At the end, you should have: Full (G) Rune Armour, Paladin Gloves, Elite Amulet of Strength, 70 / 80 / 80, Sunset Rapier / Ancient Claw, Auto Eat - Tier III

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 can wait to get the Paladin Gloves until after getting Rune Armor, or you can farm it now. 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 Bars, farmed at Statue.

You should get Auto Eat - Tier III and a second Extra Equipment Set. You should also consider getting the third set now, too.

Assuming you already have Level 60 (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. Deep Sea Ship is your next stop for a Sunset Rapier, a great upgrade.

Don't bother getting any Dragon Claw Fragments 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 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 VI: (G) Rune to (G) Ancient

To start, you should have: Full (G) Rune Armour, Paladin Gloves, Elite Amulet of Strength, 70 / 80 / 80, Sunset Rapier, Auto Eat - Tier III
At the end, you should have: Full (G) Ancient Armour, 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) Armour and Paladin Gloves for 32% DR, 880 Hitpoints will allow you to idle Volcanic Cave for your first useful cape, the Fire Cape. At this point, you can expect to eat around 30,000 HP worth of food per kill without Prayer.

At this point, you should be using Standard Resupplies for your food needs. If you prefer to fight monsters instead, then 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.

Once you have the Fire Cape, you can farm the Sandstorm Ring from Sand Beasts, which will be your best-in-slot Melee DPS ring. You can even use Safeguard if you'd like to farm it sooner, as it will speed up your Volcanic Cave clears.

Hopefully you find the 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 a while. 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 Armour, 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 6,000 Silver Bars and 10,000 Gold Bars for full (G) Ancient Armour. 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 Fury Amulets 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 7,050 Dragon Bones. You can alternatively wait until getting some Ranged levels, as Green Dragons are slightly weaker to Magic and Ranged than to Melee, but at this level, you shouldn't have any trouble, and the 8% DR of the Dragonfire Shield will be very useful as a Magic and Ranged offhand for God dungeons.

Once you have full (G) Ancient Armour and Dragonfire Shield for 43% DR (or 40% with Amulet of 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 Level 70 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 Raging Horned Elites, hold onto the Ancient Arrows they drop as they're your best arrows, even though they can't be equipped until Level 70. 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.

Chapter VI-A: Ranged

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 weapons will be annoying.

Get your first two bows; Level 5 lets you use Oak Shortbow) from the Ranged Golbin over at the Golbin Village, and use the Ice Arrows from the Frozen Archer over at the Icy Hills. These are almost as strong as Rune Arrows, which you can start to use at Level 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 40, will come from the Bandit Chest. At Level 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 Level 60 and Level 70.

An alternative (but less efficient) route for early Ranged training is to kill Thieves in the 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 Ranged after Level 70.

Most of your ranged armor upgrades will come from the Spider Forest, moving through Green Dragonhide at Level 40, Blue Dragonhide at Level 50, Red Dragonhide at Level 60, and finally into Black Dragonhide at Level 70.

Upgrading Ranged armor is much easier than 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 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.

Chapter VI-B: Magic

Magic in this challenge 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 spells 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. However, we can get started by farming some catalyst runes from 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 our powerful Melee. Even considering the drop chance and drop rates are lower than from the Master Wizard, this will be faster overall.

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 Apells.

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

Keep in mind you will also need the Catalyst runes for each tier. Once you get to Level 30, you can start wielding battlestaves, and should therefore also cast Wind Bolt. 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 Magic, you will only use Death Runes, as the Necromancer stops hurting too much.

Chapter VII: (G) Ancient to God Gear and Beyond (everything maxed, current end game)

Pre-Gods

It's about time to get the Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs. It has 1% more Damage Reduction than the Elite Amulet of Defence, in addition to offensive and defensive bonuses. Refer to the FEZ Guide for getting all the materials to make it.

Aeris

Getting 99 / 99 / 99 melee stats is not a bad plan at this point, but before moving into the Air God Dungeon, you'll want to have at least 90 / 90 / 90 melee stats, full (G) Ancient Armour, (G) Rune Boots, Paladin Gloves, Dragonfire Shield, Fire Cape, FEZ or Elite Amulet of Defence, and Level 85. This combination of armor will allow you to reach 43% DR and idle the Air God Dungeon with as low as Level 97 for 1000 total health, including the 30 HP bonus from the Dragonfire Shield. 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 Armour 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 Dragonfire Shield a while longer, though all of the godswords can be used for non-dungeon grinding.

You'll want to hold on to the Air Shards which can be upgraded into Air Chests, containing various Crossbow bolts. These won't be enough to supply you for the 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 Leonardo pet will be assumed from here out for the sake of example gear, just for simplicity, alongside Level 99.

Water God Dungeon will be done with Ranged. Your goal is 49% DR. While it's much easier to reach this threshold with the Ancient Crossbow from Dragons Den and a Dragonfire Shield, gathering bolts from either Air Chests or Slayer resupplies is pretty tedious. An alternative if you have Level 80 is to use the Stone Skin Prayer and the Ancient Longbow, full Aeris Armour, FEZ, Silver Diamond Ring, and a Fire Cape. Otherwise, you'll have to use a shield.

If you do go the Ancient Crossbow + Dragonfire Shield route, then Aeris Armour 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 Armour 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 staff doesn't provide any Air Runes, which are required for all standard spells, so where you can use a staff, you'll likely want to use your Mystic Air Staff to prevent needing to farm Wizards for Air Runes However, most of the late-game magic content requires a wand and shield anyway, so it's moot 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

You may choose to farm up the Dragon Claw and Ancient Claw now, if you haven't done so already. Dragon Claw Fragments are farmed from Griffins in the High Lands, while Ancient Claw Fragments are farmed from Pegasi in the same area. You will need 100 of each to make the claws. However, you can also leave this grind for after Into the Mist, as it is primarily useful for Melee farming.

With full Glacia Armour, a Mystic Air Staff, and 45% DR, you can go do the Infernal Stronghold to get your Infernal Cape and get 10 Infernal Cores to upgrade your Dragon Claw and Ancient Claw into the Infernal Claw.

Terran must be done with Magic 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 Water God Dungeon, there are two ways to do the 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 I.

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.

The goal is to get an Earth Layered Shield and least 4 pieces of Terran Armour 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 Armour, but you will need a few Terran pieces to reach the DR threshold for 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 Armour actually has LESS damage reduction than Terran God Armour, though it has much higher Strength and melee attack bonuses.

Wasteful Ring is required to do Fire God Dungeon as a CO, so grab some Climbing Boots, head over to the 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 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 Fire God Dungeon, which at this point, can only be done with the Guardian Amulet or the Erran pet from Earth God Dungeon plus FEZ and otherwise full tank gear. We only have access to 66% total DR from Ranged until after 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 Into the Mist and T90 weapon farming, then pick up 2 pieces of Ragnar Armour. 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 Armour and a FEZ or just toss on your Amulet of Looting. This means that the Fire Chests are more or less useless for progression.

Into the Mist

The Dungeon Equipment Swapping upgrade is required to complete Into the Mist. The minimum recommended gear is full Terran, Aeris and Glacia God Armour, but it can be completed pre-Terran just with more active strategies (swap Terran Gear for Ancient Gear and swap Earth Layered Shield for Dragonfire Shield.) Recommended skill levels are 90, 90, 90, 90, and 90, Level 99 and Level 76. Each of the 3 phases of the boss can only be damaged by an attack type that matches their own. Melee vs melee, ranged vs ranged, magic vs magic. The DR numbers provided assume a max HP of 1000 from Level 99 and Finn, the Cat. (500 max HP after affliction).

You can either Auto Eat your way through this dungeon, or hold down the Eating button in order to spam food when it is available. (NOTE: This functionality is not possible until v1.1; until then, you can rapidly click/tap the button.)

The most important thing to understand about Into the Mist is the Affliction debuff, which lowers your max HP by 1% for every stack and stacks up to 50 times. Every time an attack hits you while in this dungeon there is a 70% chance to gain a stack of affliction. This means that in long fights, your max HP will drop to 500, which puts your Auto Eat threshold at 200. The only way to remove affliction is to defeat the current monster or run.

Afflicted Monsters

For Afflicted Monsters, you will want to be using your strongest Melee, Ranged and Magic sets. Swap sets according to the attack style of the monster to gain Combat Triangle advantage. Due to the variability of the monsters you face, this phase can either be very easy or very hard. Keep your eye on your current Auto Eat threshold (which will drop from 400 to 200 as the fight continues), and the max hit of the monster you are currently facing (keeping in mind status effects like sleep, stun, and freeze.) You will likely need to eat manually in this section. This phase is not a race against time, unlike Phase 1 and 3 so there is no need to rush.

Mysterious Figure - Phase 1

Recommended Gear: Terran or Ragnar Armour, FEZ, Guardian Ring or Fighter Ring, Darksteel Dagger, Earth Layered Shield, Infernal Cape
Recommended Prayers: Protect from Melee, Chivalry
Combat Style: Stab

Attacks

Mark of Death (50%) (Auto Eat req: 34% DR)

• An unavoidable attack that deals 300 damage, and applies +1 stack of Mark of Death to you (Maximum 3 stacks). Mark of Death gives 50% decreased damage reduction regardless of number of stacks. One stack is removed after each of your turns.

Cursed Edge (35%) (Spam Eat)

• An avoidable attack that slices at you 2 times, dealing 600 damage each.

Reap and Return (15%) (Auto Eat req: 56% DR)

• An avoidable attack that hits 7 times, plus an extra time per Mark of Death stack applied to you. Deals 450 damage each and heals the enemy for 100% of damage dealt. Removes all Mark of Death stacks from you after attack.

Strategy

For this fight, it is very helpful to use a weapon with attack speed lower than 2.6. This means that you can avoid getting hit while you have a stack of the Mark of Death debuff. Mark of Death is survivable with Auto Eat at max affliction provided you have at least 34% DR. Cursed Edge can kill you through Auto Eat at high affliction stacks, so spam eat for this attack once its max hit is higher than your Auto Eat threshold.

With 56% DR, you can survive Reap and Return using just Auto Eat even at maximum affliction stacks. This fight is a race due to the healing the boss receives from Reap and Return. For this reason we use Protect from Melee to limit the amount of healing the boss can do. It is important to not use Sandstorm Ring, since the special attack will stop you from clearing the Mark of Death stacks before being hit. Darksteel Dagger is very strong here due to how the bleed scales with enemy max HP.

Mysterious Figure - Phase 2

Recommended Gear: Aeris Armour, Deadeye Amulet or FEZ, Deadeye Ring or Guardian Ring, Ancient Throwing Knives, Earth Layered Shield, Infernal Cape or Cape of Prat.
Recommended Prayers: Eagle Eye, Sharp Vision
Combat Style: Rapid

Attacks

Mark of Death (50%) (Auto Eat req: 34% DR)

• An unavoidable attack that deals 300 damage, and applies +1 stack of Mark of Death to you (Maximum 3 stacks). Mark of Death gives 50% decreased damage reduction regardless of number of stacks. One stack is removed after each of your turns.

Concealed Danger (35%) (Auto Eat req: 56% DR)

• An avoidable attack that hits 1 time(s), plus an extra time per Mark of Death stack applied to you. Deals 450 damage each. Removes all Mark of Death stacks from you after attack.

Shadowstep (15%)

• The enemy is surrounded with mist, gives the enemy +20% Global Evasion,+40% Damage Reduction and -20% Attack Interval for 1 of the enemy's turn. If buff is already active, perform a Normal Attack instead.

Normal Attack (Instead of repeating Shadowstep while the effect is already active) (Spam Eat)

• 772 Ranged Damage

Strategy

For this phase, we are once again avoiding the Mark of Death debuff by using a fast attack speed weapon. In this case, our attack must be faster than 1.75 which Ancient Throwing Knives with the rapid attack style allows us to do. Mark of Death is survivable with Auto Eat at max affliction provided you have at least 34% DR. With 56% DR, you can survive Concealed Danger even with maximum affliction.

The attack which you must watch out for is the normal attack, which happens instead of Shadowstep if the boss already has the buff (the attack bar of the boss will be blue rather than yellow). This attack can kill you through Auto Eat at high affliction stacks, so spam eat for this attack once its max hit is higher than your Auto Eat threshold. This phase is not a race against time, so slow and steady will work for this phase.

Ahrenia

Recommended Gear: Glacia Armour, FEZ, Warlock Ring or Guardian Ring, Magic Wand (Elite), Miolite Shield or Earth Layered Shield, Skull Cape or Infernal Cape
Recommended Prayers: Mystic Might, Augury
Spell: Gust or Slicing Winds

Attacks

Shadow Burst (70%) (Spam Eat)

• Fire off 3 large, avoidable, dark explosions that deal 800 damage each. Gives you -1% Global Accuracy that stacks up to 40 times.

Into the Mist (15%)

• The enemy disappears into the Mist. Gives the enemy +10% Damage Reduction each time they are hit for the duration of this attack (Stacks up to 10 times) and gives Regen that heals 10% of the enemy's max Hitpoints over 10s.

Fallen Light (15%) (Auto Eat req: 50% DR)

• The Mist breaks away and the sky opens up to an unavoidable, falling ray of Darkness, dealing 400x15 damage over 2.8s.

Strategy

For this fight, you will first and foremost need to achieve accuracy higher than 33,334. This allows us to stay above the 20,000 accuracy requirement for Ancient Magicks while accounting for max stacks of the Shadow Burst debuff. Once you achieve the required accuracy, you should then try to get at least 50% DR. How you achieve this combination of stats will depend or your exact Magic level and which pets and gear you have currently collected. It isn't possible to reach the DR needed to survive Shadow Burst even at low affliction stacks, so you will need to spam eat whenever you see Shadowburst (this will be most attacks).

Into the Mist healing the boss means this fight is a race against time. This is why we're going to use 100% accuracy Ancient Magicks. Gust is a good choice, but Slicing Winds will also get the job done. Fallen Light can be survived with Auto Eat at max affliction as long as you have at least 50% DR. It is important to use Auto Eat for Fallen Light since that will allow you to attack without being interrupted by manual eating.

Melvor Idle version v1.2.2 (Released: 15th November 2023)
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