After trying various classes and difficulties on act 1, I stick with a hardcore fighter. I am at the beginning of act 3 (lut gholein).
My character: Str:150, Con:275, Wis:100, Cha:35, Destroyer Path, all skills except hook shot, death blow and war cry maxed out.
I use GZDoom 4.2.0 without highres textures, without brutal effects, but with OpenGL postprosessing “palette” tonemap and dynamic lighting because even if it is OpenGL, palette tonemap with dynamic lighting is as atmospheric as old beatiful software rendering like Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall.
So far my thouths are as follows. Please note that I use quick save and load in abundace. Also I dont use flasks. I craft them for xp and sell for gp.
- In this mod you quickly reach 3 digit character levels and gain max skill points. Since you can only use 4 active skills at a time, classes with no passive skills like necromancer and mage can only be improved upon their chosen path so far. After maxing their main build, you spend points to alternative skills and gain side builds but they are not as powerful as skills fitting your chosen path. If one can quickly switch active skills on the fly, mage is still viable on high level, but necromancer is not, because your pets disappear as soon as their regarding skill is removed from active skills tab. Hunter may be viable but I dont like her much to play for long. I want to play as mage and necromancer on hardcore but I don’t think mage’s arcane armor will hold as much as fighter’s hp. Necromancer doesn’t even have that. They need defensive passive skills to survive hardcore and damage reduction won’t cut it with their puny hp. Though I need to have patience and actually test them.
- Likewise, after gaining hundreds of stat points, lower difficulty levels become so boring. But on hardcore, you have to put so much on constitution that you just dont dump stats for dps to one shot kill everything in your path. So level ups are still exciting. Putting enough points for 35 charisma to buy cheapest armor is also a good divergence.
- In the first 5 difficulties the game after act 1 is too easy. Last 3 difficulties are somewhat challenging for fighter but only on hardcore the fighter has the sweetest challenge. Cleric has lesser dps, hence he has a harder time on hardcore because of immunities, pain resistance and massive hit points of monsters. Sacrifice skill killing you outright doesn’t help either.
Regardless, after act 1, you become so epic level that playing on doesnt feel rewarding enough. That's why I restarted over and over with different characters and difficulties. I guess most of my complaints can easily be solved by reducing experience multiplier to a small fraction like 0,1 but I got tired of restarting and playing with different combinations. So I am open to a suggestion for a sweet spot on xp multiplier to make it both challenging and rewarding through all the acts to the end. If someone can provide optimal class&path/difficulty/XPmultiplier combinations, than it would be awesome. So far my only suggestion is fighterDestroyer/hardcore/less than 1x.
Reducing xp multiplier may also solve most of the scaling problems. Wrath of Cronos doesn’t seem to be optimized for playing after character level 100. Dear Irontusk, if you know the total xp gain on your mod, maybe you can suggest an xp multiplier that should make a character at level like 150 at the end of everything the mod offers.
- I believe there are too many items on the ground. I always have spare “icons of defender”, too many “kraters of might” to carry around and unnumbered other artifacts and potions which I sell as soon as possible. Best artifact for me is torch.
- If you dont care about chasing monsters or %100 completion, then using "mask of terror" is like godmode cheating. As you pave the way with their corpses, only once in a while some monsters turn around and attack you.
- After you gain a flowing income of gold, putting as much armor as possible is fun. Having a charisma of 35 also helps which makes every piece of armor 50 GP for buy and sell. However, on hardcore difficulty you pay more for total armor than the value of an “icon of defender”. Let me elaborate:
There is a limit on how much armor you can put. On inferno difficulty, armor gives ½ of remaining armor for that slot. On hardcore it is ¼. For example; wearing one amulet (5 armor for fighter) gives 5*(1/4) rounded down = 1. Now fighter has 1 armor for amulet slot. There remains 4 points to put. Putting on another amulet gives 4*(1/4) rounded down = 1. Now fighter has 2 armor for amulet slot. If you wear one more amulet, that gives 3*(1/4) rounded down = 0. So you want to wear maximum 2 pieces of amulet for fighter, but more pieces of mesh armor or shield. Regardless, you dont want to spend too much on armor due to diminishing results because it exceeds the value for a single icon of defender. Therefore I suggest making the price of icon of defender much much higher to make buying so much armor a viable option. In my opinion, buying armor is a perfect money sink in the game. Buying “icons of defender” just cheapens the experience. Then again, glass cannon characters will still need icons of defender as armor reduced damage will still kill them, so maybe not make it pricy, I dont know. I think the best solution is making armor much more durable that well armored characters dont need an icon of defender.
Please remember that "living steel amulet" and fighter’s ambit incant do nothing on the last three difficulties.
Maybe throwing flasks left and right with impunity is also fun and good for spending extra money but I dont have an opinion yet. One day if I have patience I may play with an underwhelming character at hardcore difficulty and have to rely on flasks, then I will have an opinion.
- Succubi at the last level of act one stood there and did nothing. Their boss in the middle of them just damaged the succubi.
- Andariel died faster than most unique and some regular monsters.
- “Amulet of cleansing” didnt work against her damage.
- On hardcore, fighter’s concentration only works at max level (just like mage’s arcane shield)
- I dont think it is necessary to remove cheats like noclip on hardcore, at least until a later version, in case we get stuck on an untested part of a level.
- Even with low resolution, outdoor areas with trees lag. Maybe we dont need that many trees.
- Apples that give bonus to a particular attribute can be redistributed with scroll of reversion but that is a good thing.
- Hephisto: The Armorer didnt drop a bloodshard.
- In e2m7 "jail" there is a carver within a pillar. I cannot reach nor damage him.
I dont exactly know your view on jumping action but considering this as a Heretic mod and general layout of levels, jumping feels inappropriate and rude

So I consider it a bug when some neccessary movement can only be accomplished by jumping.
- like in e2m8 "the monastery catacombs" the top step of the narrow steep stairs is so narrow that the character cannot move on it and hence cannot climb the floor without jumping
- Some potions are unreachable without jumping but it is not important to search them out in my opinion.
Thank you again Irontusk for your time and effort for this beatiful mod. I had a wonderful home vacation thanks to Diablo 3D. Sadly I started working this week and have little time to play nowadays
Edit1: Due to hp scaling of spectres, almost every kill is a level up for me.
Edit2: As I feared, at the end of e3m2, the last door in front of end of the level didn't open, trigger lines at the side room didn't work either and since I was on hardcore I couldn't noclip my way out. Farewell my uber leveled hardcore fighter

Edit3: I will try Necromancer/Destruction/0.25xp
Edit4: That was too easy. Now trying Necromencer(Conjurer)/Torment/0.10xp