The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing III
56 Achievements
1,000
25-30h
I'm so Hardcore!
You have finished the game with a Hardcore character.
70
0.1%
How to unlock the I'm so Hardcore! achievement in The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing III - Definitive Guide
I had not long finished VH 1 using the excellent guide written by MushaConvoy
So I followed the same principles, the only negative is that this time there is no 'panic button' to escape if you get into trouble, but the game is a lot easier than the first, so you should be fine.
Class: Protector
Difficulty: Casual
Stats
Everything is going into Body - nowhere else
Skills
The Spike Strike is very powerful, even at the very end it was 1 hit killing most enemies, and stops you from being swarmed - you want to max this out. Also maxing out Mightbane Spikes and Field of Spikes
The other focus is on Smashing Blow which you will want to max, initially focus enough to unlock Vampiric Onslaught which you will want to max out.
I periodically spent points on Aura of Vigilance to keep up my defence/resistance stats to make sure I was levelling with the enemies - I ended up with 8 points in here, I wasted 3 points on Aura of Fortune to try and get better equipment, don't think it made a difference, so could be spent elsewhere
I also put 4 points into Frost Sphere with 2 in each of the passive skills it has.
Auras
I placed 3 points into Rampage
When the 2nd slot is unlocked I worked towards 10 points into Ward Wisdom, with the 2 passive skills also unlocked.
I put two points into Hunter's Rejuvenation to help keep that HP topped up - this one is probably optional
Katarina
Set her to Ghost mode.
Ability Points all will be spent on Body.
Skills All under the Sentinel Tab, the first 4 in the left column
I had maxed out Empowering Presence and Gift of Resistance, which you should work on first.
I had 6 points in Incorporeal Defense and 5 in Spectral Boon
Perks
As you unlock them through natural playthrough I used:
Veteran Hunter
Survivor
Golem
Bully
Berserker
Precise
I carried the last 4 points right until the end, they aren't required but I would advise to respec (through Gaspar in the lair) and put 100 points into Dexterity so you can grab:
Gunslinger
Then move 100 into Willpower to get:
Resistive
and finally into Luck to get:
Destructive
Devastator
Make sure to put all your points back into Body when finished.
Items
I just went with the auto-equip, no set was needed like the first game, I spent little effort on Essence improvements, I did periodically ensure I had enchanted my items with Saffi, but only when I was back at the lair, mainly to try and boost resistances to be on the safe side.
These are my final stats as a reference:
1. Make Katarina the tank, with buffs to your defenses and survival.
2. Be ranged in some way shape or form.
3. Make sure to have an escape skill, doesn't matter which one
4. Put about 25-30% of stat points into body.
5. Do side quests to get permanent boosts.
Check out the video for a more in depth explaination
Look up the Black Widow steam guide. That’s what I used and you’ll be damaging enemies before they can even come close to touch you. But again you can do this with any class. Protector works great for tanking. Throw everything into Body and it’ll be very hard to kill you on causal. Or be a Constructor and just have your mechanical minions do all the work for you while you sit back and chill. Plenty of steam guides out there that’ll tell you how to perfectly build each class to survive hardcore, even hardcore on fearless (but again just stick to causal difficulty)
My skills were Blink Assault 15 max
Shadow Jolt 15 Max (Important to get cooldown)
Shadow Warriors 2 (1 on each)
Shadow twirl (useless)
Auras
Telekinetic Aura
Hunters Rejuvenation
Power for Blood
Perks
Mentor
Wraith
Wight
Bond of Fury
Bloodthirsty Ghost
Veteran Hunter
Uncanny Fighter
Survivor
Berserker
Ghost Whisperer
Most of the times you will be using Shadow Jolt and Blink Assault.
Hardcore Mode is a "one life" mode where if you die, your save file gets deleted. I personally used the same character type as I did in my main playthrough, since I was comfortable with how it played and what skills to use. You can certainly try a new class if you want to. The one change I did make was to ensure most of Katarina's skill points went toward skills that increased Van Helsing's survivability (rather than her own damage and health). This way you'll be able to take a bit more punishment if you get caught off guard by a swarm of enemies or a boss-type.
Since all you need to do is finish the game, and you likely got the majority of the game's achievements during the main playthrough, you can basically go straight to the mission objective on every map, which will speed this up quite a bit. However, if you missed any of the three missable achievements, be sure to go for those.
If you do ending up dying, you can quickly hit the home button on your controller, then choose "manage game" from the tile on your dashboard and delete your save game from your console. The game only uploads to the cloud every few minutes, so if you do this fast enough, you'll be able to delete the local save and sync the cloud save back to your console with the character still alive. I only died once during my run, but it worked no problem.