My Ultimate Hardcore Ironman Journey

    Hello! I'm new to this forum, but I've played Guild Wars for a long time, and just recently found out about this challenge! I've read several other people's attempts and journey of replaying this loved game, and decided to give it a shot myself! Edit: I've decided not to stream, but I'll post updates here.

    So, here are my rules, this will also be done on a fresh account bought from the 20 year Celebration sale.

    * No trading with players (unless I'm sending stuff to my alts, I will never receive items)

    * No Bank or Material Storage, everything I want to keep must remain in my inventory.

    * No Consumables, Summoning Stones, etc that help to play, also no tomes (though on a fresh account it won't be much help anyway)

    * No usage of Material, Rune, or Weapon Traders.

    * Can only use skills after unlocking them myself by quests, local skill trainers (cannot purchase skills that say Unlocked). For Heroes, I must have obtained that skill for them to use as well. If I want Koss to have Hundred Blades, I have to cap it myself. (this will allow me to easily figure out what skills my heroes can use if I restart and my heroes have previously unlocked skills.)

    * Must play through campaigns in order (Prophecies > Factions > Nightfall > Eye of the North > Beyond (Maybe). However if a Non-Proph Character is used, as soon as they can, I'll switch to Prophecies and run to Ascalon to start.

    * No Heroes until Nightfall and Eye of the North

    *Oh yeah, and If my character dies they get deleted, the scariest rule of them all.

    My Goals:

    * Beat the campaigns in order and get the Protector Title, once I do that, I'll allow myself to use Heroes in every campaign to get Guardian (because I'm not sure If I can get bonuses on certain missions in Hard Mode with just Henchies)

    * If I can do that, I'll probably try to aim for elite armor, maybe try to do some harder challenges like FoW, UW, DoA, etc, (though I'm not entirely experienced with those, so either I'll allow cons at that point or think of something else... I'll cross that bridge once I get to it)

    * Try to work on completing titles, GWAMM maybe?

    * Obby Armor? (maybe allow Mat traders since again, I'm not experiences in FoW and UW... I don't know yet)

    * Complete on more professions.

    My experience with trying not to die is farming the Kilroy quest for Survivor, so I think this'll be interesting, definitely challenging, but very fun. I'm excited to start on this, and to hear more from your own attempts.

    This is Iron Shadow Bomb, I used a randomizer to choose the Profession, Sex, and appearance to make it interesting.

    He's an Assassin starting in Factions, once I get to Kaineng Center, I'll ship to LA, and run to Ascalon to do the proper start.

    I'll try to remember to take screenshots to post updates. I can see this going pretty well, and also very terribly with lots of deaths, ^^^^^^

    Edited once, last by Sir Bonral (July 26, 2025 at 1:07 AM).

    Well, this was quick, almost 2 hours in and I died. I was at Zen Daijun and a few too many afflicted with their soul explosions did him in. Didn't even make it off the Island ;(;( I knew Assassin would be hard though.

    And now...here's a new randomized character, Iron Volley. I have better hopes of survivability with a Ranger :D:D

    I'll probably try again tomorrow, and without afflicted explosions I think I'll last a little longer. Till then.

    Quote from Sir Bonral

    Well, this was quick, almost 2 hours in and I died. I was at Zen Daijun and a few too many afflicted with their soul explosions did him in. Didn't even make it off the Island ;(;( I knew Assassin would be hard though.

    And now...here's a new randomized character, Iron Volley. I have better hopes of survivability with a Ranger :D:D

    I'll probably try again tomorrow, and without afflicted explosions I think I'll last a little longer. Till then.

    Hello. Hoping you will enjoy ur iron journey. Will follow ur updates.
    PS Sent you inv to Ironman guild if you like to join ☺️

    A few of us have an ironman discord channel if you want to join even if just to chat there. You can also playthrough with us if you'd like (looks like we have the same rules other than delete on death and we just started in proph). There's 3 of us right now (Warrior, Ranger, Mesemer) and we were thinking about seeing if we could beat normal without heroes or hench and then add heroes for HM, but we might need a 4th for that at our game knowledge and skill level.

    We are finding that limiting total amount in group (no hench taking up slots) coincides very well with relying on drops for weapons. We've been solo farming drops for each other as we progress.

    Either way... have fun and welcome to the forums and back to the game!

    I personally dont do iron man but i could see maybe using material trader and weapon trader (blue weapons, eotn vendors) could be helpful. i mean you'll eventually get 100k on your character and not using material vendors can keep you locked when you cant trade players either, or stash in storage. Also if you dont plan on using storage that might get hard to keep drops. eventually you run out of space keeping all materials and such on the character, yes you trade yourself but a fresh account with nothing in storage panes already isnt going to give you an advantage of any sorts. just means when you get a stack of materials it can go into storage, you never know what materials you'll need down the line, unless you just plan it out ahead and merch everything else.

    I guess it depends on how much I want to hate myself haha. Yeah I'm still unsure if I want to change some rules or not, but I can if I feel the need to as I play, it'll just depend. Good points though. Maybe since I'm doing a deathless run, should grant me use of the chest for storage, not to grab items I never got previously, but to save drops like you said. I might end up doing that, we'll see.

    Thanks for the Guild Invite!

    Yeah I'd love to join the Discord, and I'd be tempted to make a character to join you, but with my work schedule I can be pretty limited to time on certain days, and I'd rather not hold you up if you're waiting on me haha.

    -Totally rocking the IRON cape

    Slow start to this character (been busy lately) but I'm out of Pre. If I can survive the searing.. I can do this nonsense I set for myself :D:D

    Welcome to the guild! I usually don't use capes but I have been using ours... Baklawa did create a sweet cape :) Here is our discord. https://discord.gg/FKjqEyXdAj

    In terms of traders, storage, and platinum. I definitely appreciate that I made a fresh account and was able to use storage on my first playthrough, which is my warrior that has a journal on here. For my second playthrough I put my warrior on pause and moved all my materials into her bag and I have two complete rows of bank slots so the bottom one is the warrior and the top is the ranger. I do not think I would enjoy having to keep everything in my bags as much, but understand why some people go this way when they have non-iron characters on the account. If you use no traders, you do hit 100 platinum pretty quickly. My Ranger has done a lot of farming (LDOA and farmed weapons in North Kryta Province) and the only thing keeping her from hitting 100k is refilling on lockpicks, salvage kits, and ID kits. If I was not lockpicking all chests, I'd already be over 100... so it IS a problem. You can offset this further later on in your journey by collecting all skills in the game, paying vendor for sweet tooth & drunkard titles, etc.

    Edited once, last by Adinay (August 6, 2025 at 2:31 PM).

    Update! So far still alive with the Ranger, playing at range is a lot better than a squishy Assassin. Almost died at Ruins of Surmia, and had to map out. Beat Nolani Academy (though, for some reason I thought that during the Bonus, if you dropped the tome, the spirits would stop attacking, but I'm glad I tested it out first before just rushing in.) Currently at Yak's Bend, got Fur armor to make the cold trek over the Shiverpeaks, and pet the Yaks as is required by law. lol.

    Still very much enjoying the game in this manner. :)