Here's some facts about the hardcore difficulty

• Unlocks after beating Hardest (Or beating the game once? not sure)
  
• Death is permanent
  
• Seems to be played on Normal difficulty (Monster stats and morale wise)
  
• Can't use battle rez
  
• Can't buy rez sticks
  
• Can't buy "Forgiveness" to bring people back into the guild
  
• You can't save, you have to rely on the Auto Save feature which still auto saves every day

The only real difference between normal and hardcore is that death is permament. This means that if a raiders dies during any point of a fight you can't bring them back to live and they will be gone as if they've left the guild.

If your own character dies you're instantly met with a Game Over screen.

This guide will assume you're familiar with boss tactics as you've already cleared the game once. If not you can finish my boss guide here

• Make sure to gear up before moving on to the next tier
  
• Don't move to bosses you don't have the required DPS / HP for.

Since you instantly game over after your own character dies it's best to go as a tank since they have the most health. If you do not want to play as a tank make sure you equip your own character with a lot of +HP items so you can survive anything.

To easily grind out the best loot with the lowest risk I chose the Daily reset period. This allows you to run the same instance over and over again and it's reset every time. Sometimes you do not want to face a certain boss until your raid is geared up and the daily resets enable you to farm the earlier fights.

Tier 1 consists of the following raids

• Tutorial
  
• Evil Orc Army

Since no raid damage is being dished out you can cut the druid and get an extra Cleric to increase tank healing.

• 1 Warrior tank
  
• 3 Cleric Healers
  
• 3 Rogues
  
• 1 Wizard
  
• 1 Bard
  
• 1 Mage

Clearing the Evil Orc Army will probably be one of the more difficult feats to do.

Since your tanks will get massacred at the start I decided to farm the first Ax Orc several times until I got my tank and healers some gear. Once each of them has at least 1 item you can start progressing towards the Orc Captain.

Once you have cleared the Evil Orc Army once you can immediatly move on to the Upper Fire Caverns.

This tier consists of the following raids

• Upper Fire Caverns
  
• Evil Orc Castle
  
• Troll Village

• 1 Warrior Tank
  
• 2 Cleric healers
  
• 1 Druid Healer
  
• 3 Rogues
  
• 1 Wizard
  
• 1 Bard
  
• 1 Mage

This is the easiest and least risky raid to do in this tier. Just make sure you have melee DPS that can deal with the fire bombs in time and move back your melee on the Magma Giant if you your melee has the base 20 HP.

• 2 Warrior tanks
  
• 2 Cleric Healer
  
• 1 Druid Healer
  
• 2 Rogues
  
• 1 Wizard
  
• 1 Mage
  
• 1 Bard

Just to be save you will want a second tank for the final fight. You also want to alternate the position of your raiders so no more than 1 person gets hit by the random fireball of the Draconic Advisor.

Also make sure you do not risk attacking the Beast while he is on a rampage, one unlucky crit can cause you to lose members of the raid quite fast.

• 2 Warrior tanks
  
• 2 Cleric Healers
  
• 1 Druid Healer
  
• 2 Rogues
  
• 1 Wizard
  
• 1 Mage
  
• 1 Bard

The most risky raid from this Tier, make sure you have most of the gear from this tier and ready to move on to the next Tier before attempting this.

On the fight with Lil' Bitey make sure you have 40 HP on all your raiders or risk losing a player.

To reduce the risk of losing a player I chose to equip everyone except the melee with the Purple Trinket. This increases their HP pool quite a bit and helps reduce random AoE deaths.

This raid consists of the following raids

• Fiery Center
  
• Dragon's Lair
  
• Insect Temple

• 2 Warrior tanks
  
• 2 Cleric Healers
  
• 1 Druid Healer
  
• 2 Rogues
  
• 1 Wizard
  
• 1 Mage
  
• 1 Bard

This is the only raid in this tier where you only need relatively good geared tanks and healers to clear the first 3 bosses. Make sure to avoid the stomps from the magma giants.

Absolutely do not move to the final boss of this instance until you're mostly equipped with loot from this tier. His random nuke will kill players if you do not kill him fast enough. It is recommended to have at least 60 HP on all your characters before moving onto the next fight.

I lost a cleric here once on the second to last round because he had 50 HP and got hit by the random damage.

• 2 Warrior Tanks
  
• 2 Cleric Healers
  
• 1 Druid Healer
  
• 2 Rogues
  
• 1 Wizard
  
• 1 Mage
  
• 1 Bard

This is your raid of choice to farm gear from this Tier. Just make sure you have tanks with gear from this tier for the first fight and have every member on at least 50 HP to survive the whelp fight.

• 1 Warrior Tank
  
• 1 Cleric Healer
  
• 1 Druid Healer
  
• 3 Rogues
  
• 2 Wizards
  
• 1 Mage
  
• 1 Bard

This raid will be easy if you raid has at least 50 HP and you can manage to kill the tantacles in 2 round each regardless of circumstance (Think mind controls). Probably best to save this instance for last since it takes quite some time to clear.

The best raid to farm gear is the Dragon's Lair. Make sure all your raiders exceed 100 HP before attempting the Undead Army. This is for the Frozen Lich fight.

Make sure to pay attention in this final raid as a simple misstep in the first fight will cause an instant wipe.

Bring some Heal up potions from the shop to help keep your tanks up on the horsemen fight.

• 2 Warrior Tanks
  
• 2 Cleric Healers
  
• 1 Druid Healer
  
• 2 Rogues
  
• 1 Wizard
  
• 1 Mage
  
• 1 Bard

Make sure you do not make any mistakes during the Abominable Abomination fight as this will cause an instant wipe.

If everyone in your team has over 100 HP you will have no problem with the Frozen Lich fight. If even 1 player doesn't have 100 HP and can die at the Frozen Lich fight it will make the final fight impossible. If you have only 9 raiders on the last fight one of the orbs will not transform and keep 9999 HP. Additionally any damage you dish out to it will be reduced to 1 forcing you to spend nearly 1000 turns just to kill it or load a game.

Once the final boss is dead you're greeted with a small congratulations from the developer, you crazy person you!