Welcome to Guild Wars 2 — Classic Hardcore, a player-driven Hardcore community and challenge for all Tyrian adventurers!

This event is open to the Guild Wars 2 community as a whole and everyone is welcome to give Hardcore a try. However, for the sake of fostering a community and preserving the integrity of the challenge, the in-game guild [cHC], its Discord server and the Hardcore Addon provided by Raidcore will all serve as the foundation for this initiative. Our Hardcore Community is based on the NA server. Since using a free-to-play (F2P) account is the base requirement for this challenge, EU gamers can join us on the NA server as well.

Are you up for the challenge? Then check out the Rules section below for more details.

These rules serve as guidelines for joining the [cHC] in-game guild. However, if you want to do your own ironman runs with stricter rules, or if you want to limit your engagement with the guild to have more of a solo-experience, you are completely allowed.

Since there are no server splits between the retail and F2P versions of the game, and seeing as there is no official infrastructure for Hardcore (HC) communities, the spirit of the challenge is critically important. It's up to us to respect and enforce the rules. Trading with and/or transferring items from a retail to an HC account is banned from our Community (with the exception of clearing the house).

• You MUST play on a free-to-play (F2P) account and verify it by signing up on this page using your API key. You can create an API key here.
• This helps us maintain the challenge's integrity within the cHC guild and ensure players that are playing strict rules (ie, HC only partys) are able to guarantee their rulesets remain intact.

• You MUST delete characters on death.
• The inventory of a character is considered "Unsafe" meaning, if you die and you have high-value items in bag slots, they must be deleted with the character.
• The "Bank" of an account is considered "Safe". This includes the Material Storage.

• Player-to-Player Trading is allowed exclusively among Hardcore Community members.
• As the community finds items, especially in regards to legendary weapons, you may be inclined to sell a Precursor. This can be sold to the guild, and you will receive fair market value — or a price agreed upon by buyer and seller. Any items sold to the guild will be placed in holding and can be bought for market value at any later time. "Service Accounts" exist in [cHC] to help facilitate a marketplace for FOUND or ROLLED (Mystic Forge Rolling) Precursors.

• Rules regarding alternate characters:
• Alts are allowed within the community, though the entire account is considered HARDCORE. Some achievements may be particularly dangerous. In the event you choose to work on achievements for an item on a main character, be aware that if it requires death, you can use an alt as a sacrifice to ensure your main remains eligible for HC. This can also be used to acquire a Gift of Battle, if you do not want to risk your main character in World versus World. For example, some gamers may choose to use their main, while streamers may choose to use an alt to avoid stream-snipers.
• Alternate characters are a grey area, as they can be heavily abused. Please be cautious in regards to using expendable alts and ideally limit their usage to only extremely high-risk scenarios, certain-death achievements, or WvW zones.

The primary goal of Hardcore is to get as far as you possibly can without dying. Engaging with holiday and Rush events is encouraged. Besides surviving, there are many more milestones that can be achieved — anything from Guild Missions, Bounties, Treks and Puzzles to crafting rare items and defeating Raid encounters. Here is a sneak-peek of what you can expect:

• Crafting Generation 1 legendary weapons.
• Completing the core story and Living World Season 1.
• Completing the Memory of Old Lion's Arch achievement and acquiring the Lion's Pride gizmo.
• Completing all Fractals (tiers 1-100) and all Challenge Modes.
• Completing the Old Lion's Court Raid encounter on Challenge Mode.
• Acquiring the Fractal Capacitor backpack.
• Obtaining the Dungeon Master and Dungeoneer titles.

Resources about F2P goals, functional F2P builds, guides for Dungeons and more will all be available on the cHC Community Discord. Hope to see you there!