Hardcore V4.0 & 4.1 (may 1, 2013 – may 1, 2014)

Description:

At this point in the server's history, HC 3.0 had been unchanged for a long time. Due to rampant cheating popularized by hacked clients, as well as a large influx of players completing HC3.1, the goal was to make HC much harder.
With that in mind, themed segments of HC were conceived, based on the multi-pathed decisions used in HC2.0 and HC 3.0.

Many levels from HC 3.1 remain in this rotation, with an expansion of the paths being the newest feature. Another feature that returned from HC1.0 was multiple levels without checkpoints. This meant that levels 8-11 had to be completed in 1 life. This concept would be retained in subsequent iterations of Hardcore.

In summary, 4.0 has created the "legs" of hardcore that are iterated upon by almost every future version.

Leg 1: Introduction to the different map types.
Leg 2: Choosing a personalized path.
Leg 3: An endurance run with no checkpoints at the end.
After this iteration was implemented, staff determined that the Path of Ice and Fire was easier than the others, so the following revisions were made in the 4.1 Patch:

Snow Fort --> Snowstorm
Satyrs --> Demon
Hell Parkour --> Lava Parkour
This gave it sufficient difficulty to balance out the other paths. It's estimated that approximately 70 players completed this version of Hardcore.

This is the first of several versions that staff member AJDJ123321 led designs for.

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