Guide Hardcore Ironman Craftsman Guide Part I

So I died for the third time on my HIC class today, and decided to make a plan for what to do. Since I'm taking the time to do this anyway, I thought I'd make a guide on it since no one has done it yet. This is just a guide for the super early game, around the first dozen levels, to help people get in HIC. I will make more as I progress on my HIC class, but If you want me to make one earlier let me know. Now on to the guide.

Firstly, some general tips for the entire run, some might seem obvious but I still want to mention them.

Always minimize risk, and make sure you're with at least one friend/person to help you if you are doing anything with even remotely risky, like dungeons or mob grinding. Even if you are over levelled, all it takes is a couple seconds of lag or a game crash out of nowhere for mobs to overwhelm you when you literally cannot do anything. I lost two runs due to this, which partly was my fault for playing when I knew my internet connection was flimsy, but you get the idea.

Next tip is to only do one thing at a time, specifically if you are going to do a quest, finish it before you do anything else, don't go for a grind in the middle of it, don't farm any mats if you pass by a place with good nodes. Inventory fills up fast, and you may find yourself dropping the ingredients you just grinded for if your quest requires you to get specific items, which many quests do.
Only grind one crafting profession at a time; take armouring for example, you will need 2 free slots of inventory space for ore and logs, which increases to 6 when you refine them for t1-t3 ingots and wood, and maybe one or two more slots for ingredients, trying to grind more crafting professions at once is just asking for a headache. Use up all your paper before you move on to tailoring, etc.

At least for the early game, I would suggest levelling all 3 consumable professions, as they all have unique benefits and personally I am still not sure which one is the best, and people I’ve asked don’t seem to be confident saying that X is the best consumable profession. On top of this, I’m certain that at specific level ranges certain consumable professions will have better/more ingredients than others, for example cooking has 4 ingredients in the 30-39 level range, whereas alchemy has 10 and scribing has 8. Then for the 40-49 level range scribing has 4 ingredients, and alchemy and cooking have 7 and 6 respectively. You can browse Wynndata and try to decide which is the best profession and only level that one, but since early game professions are easy, I would just stick to all of them until you find a favourite, maybe you’re a chad and you have loads of friends to play with you when you are playing on your HIC class, you’ll get much more value out of scribing than me, and the other two profs might not be worth your time. Maybe you like to take things slower, and your fights take longer, so cooking might be a better fit for you. Maybe you like to go hard and fast and want the highest benefits, alchemy will be more suited to you. Still, I would suggest levelling them all until lvl 40 or 50.
However one thing to note is if an ingredient can be used for cooking/scribing and alchemy always choose cooking/scribing as cooking will last longer and scribing will give effect to multiple people.

Now you can level your professions in any order, but personally I go for: woodworking/weaponsmithing --> tailoring --> armouring --> scribing --> jeweling --> alchemy (I refuse to call it alchemism) --> cooking. The reason main for this is that it for the most part this levels up professions in order of importance, except for scribing and jeweling, and that is for the second reason. When levelling woodworking/weaponsmithing, you don’t have to craft weapons that you will use, so you can use up your mats in a way to end up with a string/ingot surplus if you have more than enough mats to reach the next stage in that profession, and you can use those extra mats to move on to tailoring right away, saving inventory space and time, generally being more efficient. From tailoring you can then create a situation where you end up with an ingot surplus and move on to armouring, then go for a paper surplus for scribing --> oil surplus --> jewelling --> oil surplus again --> alchemy --> grain surplus --> cooking. After this point just sell all extra mats to the item buyer, you can get a surprising amount of emeralds from then, even if emeralds aren’t that useful for HIC.
I am going to suggest builds every ten levels, unlike normal wynncraft one death will end everything so I believe having a build is important for the whole run.

Use this guide to look for places to gather raw mats:
https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/list-of-places-to-gather-materials.239484/

I (and many others) highly recommend going with Mage/Dark wizard for this, since you will need to craft your own health potions, being able to heal yourself anytime is a lifesaver. However if you really hate mage, the next class I would suggest is Warrior/Knight, having a higher base resistance to damage will help with survivability in fights, however my guide will mostly be focused around Mage.

You need to be careful which quests to complete, since some give you undroppable quest items that you won't need for the next 60 levels after the quest, which takes up your precious inventory space. Now you could use a glitch to force drop these items and do /fixquests when you need them again, but these items stack up and you will need to drop half your inventory by the time you do ToL to get all your quest items back, might as well leave those quests one stage from the end and finish them when you need the item. At the end of the guide will be a list of which quests you shouldn't finish, and what stage you should stop at.

Always keep at least one dungeon scroll on you when you can. They don't cost soul points to use, unlike normal scrolls, so they won't make you lose most of your items as if you had died. This will be incredibly helpful if you get stuck or soft-locked, and may save your run if you teleport from a sticky situation. (I've not confirmed this yet but I am 90% sure this should work)

NEVER GO AFK. No exceptions. Do /class if you need a toilet break or you mom yells at you to help her with something really quick (no really, it'll only take 20 seconds). Just /class, you might be farming mats in a safe area and don't want to wait 60 seconds to continue farming when you get back, but it's really not worth the risk.


Now on to the level by level guide:

Level 1
The guide starts during the tutorial, and no matter which class you pick, refine 3 paper, 6 extra ingots, and 3 extra string. This will be used to craft one full set of lvl 1 Armor as soon as you enter Ragni. When you are crafting your first weapon, I would suggest taking the time to make several wands, since Mage has the worst melee damage, having a weaker wand means even the weakest mobs take uncomfortably long to kill. For a fast wand, you should get a wand with at least 2-3 damage, with normal: 3-4, and slow: 4-5. Just anything that's not the worst possible roll will do for now. I tried using a 1-2 dmg wand and it was not fun :(
Make sure you grab a fishing rod after the zombie chase, it's by a pond on the right side after you exit the tunnel.
I would drop the ragni scroll as soon as you get it, since you are permanently on one soul point it will be the same as doing /kill, might as well save the inventory space and /kill if you get stuck.

level 2-10
First thing to do when you enter Ragni is to level up woodworking. Between doing quests and just killing mobs that are in your way you should be to get to level 10 fairly quickly, and you want to make a temp lvl 7-9 wand ASAP. This will do until you get some powders and woodworking ingredients, at which point make a decent wand to last you until lvl 20. Here are a few simple recipes in order of dps:
https://www.wynndata.tk/cr/560228640 note: highest dps, good dura. 5 strong flesh might take a while to farm however.
https://www.wynndata.tk/cr/308281516 note: high dps, lowest dura. Elemental wand. T1 powders are surprisingly easy to come across from mob drops and T1 chests on emerald trail.
https://www.wynndata.tk/cr/429007388 note: air wand, both Witherhead and Arakadicus are weak to air, making up for the lower dps and fairly low dura. Also works well if you put all your skill points into agility to avoid damage.
https://www.wynndata.tk/cr/463079981 note: fire wand, works well if you put all skill points into defence to take less damage.
https://www.wynndata.tk/cr/956069306 note: half arsed version of the first wand, replaces strong flesh with rotten flesh. Just over half the dps of the top wand.
https://www.wynndata.tk/cr/482586706 note: this would be used as a secondary weapon, just for the walkspeed bonus. Not sure if is worth the inventory space, but if you really wanted you could go for it.

After this you want to complete the quest tunnel trouble, fast travel between Ragni and Detlas will be essential. Detlas is a much better place to craft, all the stations are more centralized and easier to find, on top of this Ragni does not have a jeweling station.

Next up is tailoring. Once you get tailoring to level 10, there are a few options you can take as to what you want to craft:
https://www.wynndata.tk/cr/426951029 note: 12% walkspeed boots/leggings, can also stack with a full set of jewellery for a guaranteed 72% walk speed bonus, pretty sweet since you can't just open the bank and get out your 40/40 horse. If you can find any try to sub in feather of grace or two for even more speed, any more and the dura will tank.
https://www.wynndata.tk/cr/488930066 note: this one is if you decide to make an air wand, and requires quite a bit of rng. Also will be hard to farm these feathers since zombie grook spawns are not great.
https://www.wynndata.tk/cr/314646825 note: if you're really worried about surviving you can use this to help, has pretty good life steal even with poor rng. A full set of this will pretty much make you unkillable until lvl 20 as long as you spam left click on an enemy.
https://www.wynndata.tk/cr/682981699 note: if you're not too worried about dying and want to lvl up fast, this is the one for you. Dura is very good since grook feathers have no dura penalty, but have fun killing grooks in Detlas for an eternity.
https://www.wynndata.tk/cr/837925233 note: for those who say the best defence is offense, this is for you.

As for armouring, use the lifesteal, melee damage, or air damage recipes, or stack a couple of thunder powders, since both Witherhead and Arakadicus deal thunder damage.

Skipping scribing for now, with jeweling, there are a few options:
https://www.wynndata.tk/cr/614175930 note: 2 or 3 silk is up to you, 64 dura is a little low, use this if you're going for the air wand.
https://www.wynndata.tk/cr/503663007 note: XP gear, will require a lot of grinding since it's very rng based.
https://www.wynndata.tk/cr/189008199 note: poison ring, don't really see the point but I decided to include it anyway.
https://www.wynndata.tk/cr/962326796 note: best jewellery to craft IMO, no rng involved, guaranteed 72% walk speed bonus if used with pants and boots.

I will list all the notable consumable recipes in one section, here it is:
https://www.wynndata.tk/cr/371841298 note: pretty long lasting walk speed food, don't go lower than t2 mats thought, the dura will tank.
https://www.wynndata.tk/cr/453876604 note: same as above but includes royal cake slice.
https://www.wynndata.tk/cr/308380494 note: the only potion worth crafting IMO: pop this before the you finish off Witherhead, and see if you can make two runs on one charge, or stack as many spider eggs as you can on one pot.
https://www.wynndata.tk/cr/275315340 note: if you are putting your skill points in defence and making a fire wand, craft all your fireballs into scrolls. Even if there is no one to share it with there is no penalty for crafting a scroll over a potion (at least in the current version of the game).
https://www.wynndata.tk/cr/305907733 note: I mean you might as well use the cleaned saccharum...
You can also make earth, thunder, and air damage scrolls but I'll let you figure those out.

Quests:

• For Underwater, complete up to stage two of the quest, do not bring Pigman meat and milk to Sayrr. Finish this quest when you reach level 43.
• For Mushroom Man, complete everything except for the last stage. Finish this quest when you are lvl 68.
• For Maltic's Well, you can start it but don't go down the well and kill the witch. Finish this quest when you are lvl 68.
• For Grave Digger, you can do everything except for the last stage. Finish this quest when you are lvl 68.
• Don't even bother starting Cluck Cluck until lvl 74.
• For Corrupted Village, you can do everything except for the last stage. Finish this quest when you are lvl 68.
• Don't finish any of the WynnExcavation quests until you have unlocked WynnExcavation D.

If Ironman is giving you grief and you're really struggling with inventory management, I have included a picture as to how I organize my inventory, and have a few tips:

• When you are not levelling professions you can use the crafting materials space for more weapons and armour to sell, or to hold more consumables.
  
• If you are able to use a higher tier gathering tool you can throw away your current tool for more space.
  
• In the diagram I have not allocated space for liquid emeralds, since emeralds are less importance in and ironman run, try not to go over a stack of blocks until you need to.
  
• Try to keep your scrap at just below a stack.

 

Wow, I'm impressed at the crazy amount effort you put into this! Excited to see part 2.

 

It does, -840, 66, -1486, in the Southern Plaza with the trees & obelisk, hidden in the small, southernmost building:

Building:

Jeweling Station:

 

Some information you should put there: While you access a lootchest (not a daily rewards chest), mobs fully ignore you. This can save your life. About to be killed by a mob gang and have no mana/health? Open a chest. Just wait for health/mana to regen while inside the chest, and make a break for it afterwards when you see the mobs went away.

The same effect happens while harvesting something, as after the first few hits, if you do not move, mobs will ignore until harvesting is done. If you carry around a low level item, you can use this to charge your mana, as it will take forever to harvest the resource and mobs will ignore you. However, this comes at the cost of an inventory slot

Also, (Should be fine as a non-loopable macro keybind as macros for chat commands are allowed)
you should have a /class keybind. It can save your life.

About to die? /Class! Mobs will despawn if you wait like 5-6 seconds.

On fire/trapped? /Class! Fire will slowly disappear while inside the class room.

(/Class should be reworked tbh, rn so easy to abuse it )

A /Kill keybind for when you want to keep the shiny icon is also optional.

Lastly, there are no mob spawn spots in mountains. If not mear mobs, I would concider climbing mountains for slow yet very safe travel.

These are more general tips than anything, but should be extra useful for HIC.

 

I have been using single spell macros for a while, but have never thought of a /class or /kill keybind, that's a very good idea, definitely going to set them up ASAP.
This has also given me another idea, since I usually keep teleport scrolls I'm the same slot on me hotbar, it's also possible to make a keybing to instantly teleport, may be faster than a keybind /kill, as it is two buttons to use the teleport scroll.

 

here's how I generally organize my inv:

spots not in a box are basically anything that I pick up

edit:
for classes in an HIC I actually wouldn't pick mage unless you like playing the class, my list would be archer -> assassin -> mage -> warrior
but eh

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actually let me revise that:
archer/mage warrior assassin if you don’t know how to assassin

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honestly though just pick what you think will be fun