LET’S PLAY: ULTRA HARDCORE DIFFICULTY [DX]

There’s all sorts of ways to make Minecraft more challenging. You could play it blindfolded, or on an exploding spaceship, to give two bad examples. Or you could try ULTRA Hardcore Difficulty [DX] by Logdotzip on the Minecraft Marketplace.

If you’re not familiar with Hardcore mode, it’s the game mode where if you die, your console immediately catches fire. Oh. Wait. No. We dropped that feature after that disastrous playtest session. Hardcore mode is actually the mode where you only get one life. Yep! One unlucky fall down a cliff or misguided Creeper hug and you get a PERMANENT game over.

With that happy thought in mind, we start a new game. But then we immediately wonder if we’ve loaded a world called Ultra Lovely No Difficulty [:3] by mistake. Because we start off in a house! And with a chest full of armor, bread, and weapons! That’s FAR more generous than how this mean little game usually starts you off…

Ah, but then we find a book in our inventory, Challenge Book. Just like its title promises, the book is full of 20 challenges that can be toggled on or off, and some of these sound like they could make Minecraft into the most horrifically unfair videogame ever made. Er, yippee?

Some of these don’t sound so bad (golden mobs? Cool!) and some of them sound absolutely merciless (burn in sunlight? Noooo that’s far too realistic! Why do you think we make Minecraft in lovely sun-free Sweden?).

But it would hardly be getting into the spirit of this Let’s Play if we didn’t turn on - gulp! - all twenty challenges. Having sealed our fate, we close the book and nervously step downstairs. But hey, it’s the map’s creator, Logdotzip! Maybe everything’s going to be fine :D

That’s when a pillager teleports into our house and shoots us, which immediately teleports us outside. Where we promptly explode. Game over.

Well then. That was a fun 43 seconds…

NEXT TIME MAYBE TRY KNOCKING???

We’ve got no one to blame but ourselves for this, which is a shame, because we adore blaming others for our mistakes. But this likely happened because we turned on ‘Arrows Explode’ and ‘Damage Teleports You’ and ‘Ambushes Happen’. Anyway, no point dwelling on the past. Time to start a new world and see if we can last a whole minute.

We notice one of the challenges is ‘Armor Slows You Down’. So we go to take off our armor and while we’re doing that, another Pillager ambush comes in, fires an arrow and GAME OVER. Again. This time we lasted 44 seconds. Hey, new best time!

A bling pig made of gold? We did worry the movie being a hit would go to their heads…

OK, call us a coward (a handsome coward?) but we’re gonna turn off that ‘Ambushes Happen’ challenge, otherwise this whole post will be about our thrilling adventures staring at the Game Over screen. We haven’t even managed to leave the house yet!

So we finally do leave the house and take a lovely breath of fresh ARRGHHHH. Oh yes - sunlight burns! Oh no - damage teleports us so we can’t run back inside! And since we’re currently on fire, we’re still taking damage, which is teleporting us all around (asquare?) the Overworld. And because we have ‘Three Hearts Mode’ on, soon it’s once again…

*Heaviest sigh imaginable*

OK OK OK fine. If we’re gonna ever manage an entire minute in this absurdly hostile world, we’re going to have to put only 10 of the 20 challenges on. Just while we ease ourselves in. And it works! This time, when we go out for some fresh air, our old pal the sun chooses to brighten up our day instead of burning off our face. Thanks!

Things take a turn, however, when we’re thrown ten feet into the sky, thanks to a challenge that does that to you every ten seconds. Oh, and fall damage is very much still on. We try to run under a tree in the hopes of just bonking our head on its leaves harmlessly, but the ‘Manhunt’ challenge means several hunters come and destroy us before we even launch back up anyway.

New best time: 1 minute and fourteen seconds! Wow?

Well, at least flying is fun! Less fun: landing.

Four funerals in, it’s becoming increasingly clear that stacking the challenges is only for the truly hardcore. The perfectionist players who are more hardcore than the middle of a diamond apple. Us? We’re apparently softer than the average pillow, so we’re gonna try a new game with only eight of the challenges. Hey, that’s still somewhat hardcore!

Not to brag, but I lasted an entire two minutes this time. I even managed to get an entire few feet away from the house! But then I was slain in battle by Minecraft’s deadliest mob. I refer, of course, to the hopping horror, the big-eared beast, the maleficent mammal that’s feared by all - the bunny rabbit.

The scariest screenshot in Minecraft.net history? NO. DOUBT.

Yes, even with just eight challenges on the go, this world is still tougher than a Warden made of Netherrite. What doomed me this time was the challenge ‘All Mobs Are Hostile’. Is there a more embarrassing way to perish in Minecraft than getting beaten up by a salmon? Asking for a friend.

Five new games later, we’ve barely scratched the surface of this brutal take on Minecraft! We never survived until nightfall, so ‘Haunting on Full Moons’ remains a worrying mystery. We also don’t want to know what happens if we’re in a ‘Banned Biome’. And anyone who turns ‘Fast Mobs’ on before heading underground is a lot braver than us…

Are YOU feeling braver than us? Probably, because we’re struggling to imagine anyone more cowardly. Make the hardcore Minecraft of your wildest dreams/nightmares by looking up Ultra Hardcore Difficulty [XD] by LogDotZip in the Minecraft Marketplace, or clicking this line of lovely green text.

Best of luck! And don’t forget to - oh, hang on. We’ve just died yet again. BAH.