Now that IO has added in Freelancer Prestige, they really need to sort out the suppliers and Syndicate Reward Crates. I’ve just performed my fourth reset and every time I’ve gotten close to the end of collecting everything, the SRC will start to regularly have Merces in it instead of weapons I’m missing. Also when I’m down to final four or five items, the suppliers will start to have nothing available to purchase even though there are things they could be selling - and then after a mission or two of this in a row, one of the weapons I need will now be available to buy.
Both of these issues just drag out the process of grinding for these challenges and make it take longer than it needs to.
Well, I’d been holding off on playing Hardcore mode until this months update.
Today I finally completed it.
I went through a few fairly embarrassing fails, including one where I was basically at the exit of the final showdown and for some reason decided to open fire on an assassin that hadn’t spotted me yet. However, I’d say the mode largely isn’t as hard as I was expecting.
Here’s what I learned:
Don’t get greedy/impatient.
If you can wait instead of doing something that risks you getting spotted, then wait.
If you’ve completed the mission but there are couriers/a safe left, screw 'em.
If you realized you forgot a weapon in a spot that’s in any way unsafe to go to, screw it.
Save Missions With Safes
When starting a new syndicate, identify missions with safes in them and try to save them for when a “Open Safe” prestige objective shows up.
Save Missions With Easy Optionals
When starting a new syndicate, identify any mission that has optional objectives that look easy to complete, and try to save it for if the “Perfect run” prestige objective shows up.
Melee Kill Prestige Ojbectives
Try to use missions with many targets for any melee kill prestige objectives (for instance the Katana one). That way you maximize the chance that one of the targets has an easy setup for a close up kill.
Double-Check Gear / Prestige-Objective
Always check your gear/objectives right before leaving.
You might believe you have a tanto knife on you for the Katana objective, but do you really? Or did you just think about it and then forget?
Is the weapon you’ve brought of the right rarity for the objective?
Don’t get greedy/impatient.
Anyway, it was both frustrating and fun.
Once I loaded into Marrakesh with a “Katana kill” objective only to realize I hadn’t followed the “double-check gear” rule, and instantly left the mission.
Once I had killed all of my targets and got greedy/impatient. Instead of calmly walking to a distant exit on Ambrose I tried to get the keys for the boat in the cave and got absolutely obliterated by the soldiers in there.
I do think that the game should probably go “you’re about to load into this mission without a katana, do you really want to continue” for situations like that.
Bruiser suit doesn’t look as good in game as in the picture of it.
Yeah it’s a lot more manageable when you get into the habit of double checking your gear, planning escape routes before you do anything sus, mashing pause when things go wrong so you can think, etc
I haven’t heard the “be careful, be careful, and most of all… be careful good luck” mission intro in a while, they might have fixed it, but it’s the hardcore mantra for sure.
You don’t need to be close to the targets for melee prestige objectives, throwing the weapon in their face and running away as fast as you can works too
Oh yeah, this one is super important. I’ve made some top tier decisions I wouldn’t have otherwise made by simply pausing and going “OK, what are my options, and what are the related risks?”
You can just grab it back from the crime scene with a guard disguise when things have calmed down. It requires some patience but probably not as much as waiting for a good kill opportunity. Besides you don’t necessarily need to get the weapon back - on Hokkaido or Sgail you can easily get katana / tanto kills by using the weapons already available in the level
I do think Freelancer can turn it a definite grind for sure, but I think grinding as a term of use is dependent on how much you do a certain thing. Freelancer can burn you out (like anything!) if you do it for hours and hours on end at a time but I think if you approach it slowly - doing a couple of things at a time, it’s not so bad.
I’ve been grinding most of it when I can for those longevity challenges as well as Prestige. I watch something in the background so it hasn’t been so bad for me.
One last thing I will say though - personally, the campaign and leader/member challenges should have been toned down for better player accessibility. 250 leaders/1000 syndicate members would have been a bit fairer I think. 50 campaigns too.
Would you believe these are already the friendly toned-down versions of the challenges, & they were originally asking for things like 10,000 syndicate members
I am aware of that, yes. I just remember someone on here a while back suggesting further toned down values for the challenges and I wanted to reiterate their suggestion.
I’m about a third of the way through my first hardcore campaign and I’m mostly loving it.
This is a game where I love to experiment and dick around and push the boundaries of what I can get away with. I did a lot of that with normal Freelancer, and died regularly. It’s taken me a few months now to re-train my brain to be methodical and patient — which is critical to success in hardcore mode.
I also am glad I waited until the most recent patch for some bug fixes and basic QOL changes. The Prestige Objective “category” system is something I really wanted and am very grateful for, even if it does make the mode less punishing. I do not respond well to time trials.
After a successful hardcore run, I’ll start this new prestige path thingy.
I enjoyed my Hardcore run much more than I originally anticipated. Thankfully I was quite lucky and got a lot of ‘Headshot Kill-Legendary’ & ‘Melee Weapon Kill’ objectives rather than the Timed Challenge ones. Think I maybe got two or three or them during my entire run, so it wasn’t too bad and this was before the game update
Today, I got the second chance to try that particular PO and it worked this time .
I again used a phone with the target’s meeting type and the objective registered as completed as soon as I put the phone down.
I can’t tell you why it worked this time, it still seems random to me. But at least it’s working some of the time
I’m guessing it’s the same bug that I’ve seen mentioned with “no witnesses”: “kill only targets” is only completed when you exit the level, and will show up as completed in the results screen - but the HC PO check happens at the time you exit, before the cutscene, and at this moment “kill only targets” is not completed yet - so the campaign will fail despite all objectives appearing complete.
It’s probably gonna be extremely hard to fix that unless IOI implements an entirely new way of checking the mission failure state, that doesn’t involve the “mission failed” cutscene at all. In the meantime… don’t take “perfect run” as a PO in HC when there’s an objective that cannot be completed before exiting
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