Story Time: Why Chicken Is Bad For HC

My level 92 paladin, HammerHarry, was #75 on the HC Paladin Ladder and #361 on the overall HC Expansion Ladder at the time of his tragic passing earlier tonight doing public Baal runs for the community. He perished as he was establishing a safe TP inside Throne, surrounded by two packs of lightning ghosts and fetish dolls. This is usually when an SC player might chime in "Why weren't you using chicken!?" The answer to that question, IMHO, is what separates the SC player from the HC player: not truly understanding the nature of HC play. This reminds me of a conversation I saw in the main channel between @Gix and another player recently, and the other player was complaining about... among other things... repair bills at the blacksmith. Yes, this player was complaining about repair bills. This complaint was part of a larger complaint overall about gold, and then the topic of conversation turned to how much gold is lost upon death in the higher difficulties. But I digress: the point is, SC players don't understand that the nature of the game changes completely. You see, the HC player accepts that sooner or later, he or she will die. It's a virtual certainty. That's why it's so important to allow your party members to have looting rights on your corpse.

Just earlier today, before my own death, I was rushing a friend through hell and they got killed by Hell Mephisto because they weren't hanging back out of the way (this is how most deaths in HC go - doing stupidly reckless stuff because we forget it is HC and not SC). This person had chicken on. As soon as he died, he left the game. So did his corpse. He lost everything he had on that character because I couldn't loot it for him. Cut back to my own predicament. I had, among other stuff, perfect Enigma, perfect Arachnid's Mesh, perfect BK ring, SoJ, perfect HoZ, perfect Hoto, etc. Because I was not using chicken and I was running with a partner I trusted, he was able to loot me and save my gear so it can be used on a replacement toon. I only ended up losing a Pally torch, a couple of combat skillers, and a few hours of my time.

So the moral of the story is this: Yes, chicken might save you some of the time. But it won't save you all of the time, and eventually you will make a mistake and get killed. In those instances, it is much better to not have chicken active so that your party can loot you and save your gear. So turn off chicken and grab a partner instead!

 

Wow this is fantastic Advice!! Thank you very much for that story, and I am sorry about your Paladin!

 

Is still a safer way, but cap it at 1300+ hp.

 

@Ohmrune it's okay, my new Paladin HarryTheSecond is even better (tweaks to gear, build) and I've already eclipsed my old character's XP thanks to assistance in rushing/power-leveling from the other members of the great HC community on this server.
@ErrorIRL we should have a weekly thread where every week we spotlight a different trick for surviving in HC. I feel like we have a ton of players on this server who don't play HC because they're too afraid they're going to die lol.

 

That's true. For me, the scariest thing is the internet connection and i'm sure not everyone have the best connection.

 

One accident or lag in hc= ez rip


For me best is singleplayer hc