Most Enjoyable Set of Ironman Mods?

I've been thinking about this a bit, trying to come up with good combos. Curious what others are thinking. If the community agrees on a standard set of rules for community Ironman, i'd be down to replace the OP with them. Maybe even come up with rules for a giant Ironman league to run on top of the next Challenge league...


Mods that separately increase Monster Damage, Life, Speed, Elemental Damage and Number of Projectiles: I feel like these are mostly personal taste. No matter what else is chosen for Ironman, it will already be pretty difficult. So, I don't foresee using these immediately. Maybe further down the line, when things start to get a bit stale?

Reduced Player Resistances: This one is similar to the above, except that it has interesting direct effects on the gearing process (and passive tree and Bandit choices). Depending on the % you add, it can have a pretty severe impact, and at any % could make for some interesting decisions. Rares become more important and uniques lose some, for example. A good mod for rare-only no-BIS ARPG gameplay.

No Stashes: One of the most interesting mods, certainly. I feel like this one is pretty automatic for any sort of Ironman. I also like that it strongly incentivizes playing the game rather than being a town-warrior.

No Magic or Rare Items Drop aka Gucci Hobo: I'm not sold on this one. I'm sure i'll have some fun with it at some point, but i'm not sure i want it in my go-to Ironman leagues. I suspect it might be overly tedious due to extreme difficulty. Also, the idea of having to tailor your character to whatever Uniques drop, while a fun change of pace, isn't my idea of what i want to be playing regularly.

No Vending: This one is pretty subtle. It doesn't have a huge impact on gameplay, but I again like the idea of disincentivizing spending time in town. We lose IPD and +1 spell gems recipes, gem purchases, gem-flipping, vending Uniques for alch shards, etc. Not a gigantic impact, and I can't think of any downsides for the purposes of Ironman...?

Famine: This is for the purists, I suppose. Personally during race seasons I found this one to be a little tedious sometimes, so I'm not convinced I'd be down to include it in my go-to private leagues. On the other hand I don't like the idea of turning off stashes and vending but leaving this on - you'd only be portalling to town for flasks, which seems a little cheesy. Certainly it adds an extreme challenge, far more than you imagine before trying it. HC Famine is just crazy.


And then from there, how do normal league choices combine with the above?

HC vs Standard: I'm leaning towards Standard for now. Everything we can choose from makes the game a lot harder. Adding HC on top of that, might make it a little too tedious for now... We don't want to scare everyone away from private leagues right off the bat. :)

SSF vs Trade: I'm having trouble imagining Ironman + Trade. For e.g. without a stash, carting things around to trade doesn't sound fun. At all. Then again, if you get something absurdly valuable that you can't use, it would be really bad to feel like you have to merge your character to the parent league... Group self-found could be fun. Ironman party play as well... SSF would mean you use your currency for its purpose and relatively quickly, which seems fun. This one is all pretty nebulous to me atm.

Challenge league or Not: I think it could be fun to run a huge Ironman league on top of the start of the next league. I'd prefer to run private leagues on top of the challenge leagues, but i'm not sure how popular that idea will be. Probably a small minority, if we're to look at the size of Trade challenge leagues vs SSF.


So overall I'm tentatively leaning towards: Challenge league, Standard, SSF, no mods, no -res, Famine OFF, Guccihobo OFF, no Stash ON, no Vending ON.

If anyone knows what people like Karvarousku were thinking of doing, do tell.

[reserved, just in case]

I’m leaning towards league, softcore, SSF, a bunch of mods, no/some? -res, no magic/rares, rest off.

Mainly because I hate the need to constantly pick up and ID things in SSF until mid-late league and enjoy using currency to craft stuff. IDing slows down mapping the most IMO. Picking up more low tier currency for crafting might suck though. I want a stash because I know I’ll want to save things for different builds. Vendor recipes and alchs from uniques are too valuable for me to part from. I’ve beaten all the endgame bosses multiple times in SSF already, so adding a shitton of mods will make it feel like an achievement again.

I'm think I want to try a hard, live of the land kind of league.

The mods I'm thinking is HC trade league, lots of extra monster life, around -20% resistance, no stash.

I am also considering no magic or rare items and (maybe) no vending. These last mod might make it a bit to tedious, could maybe not have them and give the monsters even more life and damage. But at the same time I like the idea of very little time in town and that excitement when you get an alchemy orb or an essence.

Personally I'm not going to rush, I just want to enjoy slowly making my character stronger and struggling to get through the game. The goal for me would be just to get to maps.

Anyway a bit more on topic regarding your Ironman proposal I would have to disagree with not making it Hardcore. Since Ironman to me means no second chances. Your idea sounds more like SSF without a stash. Don't think its fair to call that ironman.

Also regarding no vending options this does have the effect that you will run out of scrolls very easily.

I personally feel that 'No Stash' and 'Famine' do not really enhance gameplay, they just create additional frustrations.

Famine in particular seems pointless; it just means that if you start running out of life flask charges you will teleport to some low level zone and farm for flask charges.

I think any ironman mode should be focused on the difficulty of the primary gameplay (fighting monsters) rather than making things extremely inconvenient.

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TheMipchunk wrote:

Famine in particular seems pointless; it just means that if you start running out of life flask charges you will teleport to some low level zone and farm for flask charges.

Yeah that's an issue. From what I recall, in most Ironman rulesets repeating zones is not allowed. No way we could force that here, unless GGG adds that as an option in future.


Edit:

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inkube wrote:

Anyway a bit more on topic regarding your Ironman proposal I would have to disagree with not making it Hardcore. Since Ironman to me means no second chances. Your idea sounds more like SSF without a stash. Don't think its fair to call that ironman.

Yeah I guess default Ironman is pretty straightforward: No Stash, No Vending, Famine, HC.

If GGG wanted you to enjoy private leagues, they wouldn't be releasing them.