Posting on official forum: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/7885048593#11
The following are my own thoughts from playing HC on D3 since around late July.
– Best thing first time around is maybe to play a class you feel comfortable playing. It looks like you deleted some of your previous characters but whatever you were most familiar with playing on softcore, try that out first. Or better yet, just do all 5 and see which ones feel the most [b]fun[/b] during the first few quests of Act I. Notice the operative word -> FUN. My main on SC is a wizard but after the excruciating experience of progressing through 1.0.2/1.0.3 Inferno with the class compared to how my monk handled it, my first HC character was a monk (because I enjoyed how it played from 1-60 and also how well it handled pre-1.0.4 Inferno). Shortly after, I did create a wizard but stopped playing it around level 26 back in late August.
– I like to play balanced; not necessarily all defensive or all offensive in terms of play style. I like to explore/clear out the outer edges of the map first before working the middle areas (and when possible, I like to clear areas from the bottom upwards – field of view tends to be better). For maps like the Keeps, I keep mental notes of the larger open areas as well as the route I came from (potential escape routes). I also take note of environmental features (mounds/hills, areas which bottleneck that I can use as a crowd control mechanism, caves/side dungeons which I immediately enter and clear out the beginning part since I can use this as another escape route, making note where a waypoint or healing well is located).
– Patience: on softcore, I never really played to rush (power leveling) or for efficiency so this wasn’t a huge adjustment for me. It’s just a personal play style preference. Some players may bring an overly aggressive style which can lead to a higher probability of a dead character.
– Treasure goblins: the only time I will try to chase one is if I can re-position myself to chase him back from where I came from (i.e. to areas previously cleared). Once he has started moving towards an area I haven’t yet explored yet, I’ll just let it go.
– Don’t take deaths in vain. Each one should be a learning experience if that death was caused by your own mistake. My first monks death was my own doing because I woke up 4 smoldering constructs at the same time while heading down the correct route to open the last shadow lock (I should’ve stopped when the first two came out of their hiberated state and taken those out first along with the other trash mobs). One thing I noticed from playing on HC is how much more aware I’ve become regarding the limits of my character (based on gearing, skills selected, and content encountered). Death from disconnect/lag are what they are now until the server side detection (which can actually keep you in game for up to 50 seconds before the server even realizes that you’ve been disconnected and therefore, begins the 10 second countdown to remove you from the game) is addressed.
– Complacency: all too easy to fall into especially once you reach a point where you are able to face roll content. Blizzard’s monster algorithm though will sometimes throw these curveballs at you (like the nightmare set of affixes for the particular character class and skill set you are using). I play with a mindset that once I leave town, it may be the last time I’m coming back if I play carelessly. So I’m always expecting to see the worst possible affix combo in some areas of the map. When I completed Inferno HC on my wizard earlier in the week, this is exactly what happened; elite phasebeast/succubus pack in the tower, elite soulrippers right after the first sin heart, elite phasebeast pack in the core of arreat for Act III and teleporting mallet lords in Act IV plus Nekarat blocking the final route to the Great Span. But I was mentally prepared to handle all of that and how to play each one of those which made the encounters more fun than harrowing.
– The journey in hardcore is part of the reward: As previously mentioned, once I leave town, there are no guarantees I’ll make it back alive with that character. On softcore, death has a small price. On hardcore, you lose your character and all the gear equipped/in your personal inventory + whatever is on your follower. Thus everytime you do make it back alive, that in itself is a sort of reward which cannot be replicated when playing my softcore characters. Great loot is also much more difficult to come by on the AH which leads to a new appreciation for the items which do drop when playing. Certain pieces of lower level gear (below 40 for example with vit+main stat) are actually rare (not even half a page at times). I therefore keep most of my leveling gear so that I don’t have to re-hunt for such pieces. Likewise, I earned some decent gold farming some of this late normal and nightmare gear.
