EDC plays Amnesia: The Dark Descent (Hard Mode, Full Playthrough)
Channel: EricDotCom
Date: 2021-10-05

In this video, Eric continues to play games that already have millions of playthroughs uploaded.

HARD MODE:
`Significantly fewer tinders and less oil (I found ~23 tinders out of 151 in normal mode, spawns seem deterministic, contrary to what the wiki says [needs citation])
`Manual saving only (costs four tinders each time)
`Reaching 0 sanity causes death
`Enemies detect you more easily, are faster, do more damage, and take longer to despawn
`There is no danger music to signal when enemies spawn/despawn (you have to stick your little head around the corner and check yourself)

I've played through this game maybe 10-15 times now and have every achievement in the game, but it's STILL a nerve wracking experience, *especially* on hard mode. I didn't think I'd manage a deathless run but I managed to avoid all the sanity meter cheese apparently.

I think I recorded all the diary entries and most of the notes; I had to be careful about how much stuff I wanted to look for as this game is very scary and I didn't feel like going out of my way to die for a piece of paper.

I had a few attempts with commentary but it really didn't fit the atmosphere. Also, since I've played this game so much, I don't get scared by it anymore and you don't have your classic screaming let's player. There are however, a few moments of genuine panic; I've labelled them for you in the timestamps below. I think my frantic 180s and run-like-hell's are more effective at conveying my genuine terror than anything I could say at the time.

00:00 Rainy Hall
05:55 Archives
13:13 Wine Cellar
16:00 Laboratory
17:55 Refinery
21:55 Cellar Archives
24:45 Guest Room
29:07 Study
32:34 Storage

37:50 Storage gets real
Up until storage, minus the water monster encounter, pretty much every encounter is easily avoidable/non-lethal. In storage, you're asked to get to the end of a linear level then go back with several monsters in your way. Long story short, it's when the game gets serious. I hate it.

38:55 Storage gets really real
You can see me twitch a little and go, "is that a monster walking towards me?" before I toss the box and run. 

40:20 "Ok, I think he's leaving-"
I peek the corner, see the enemy walking away, get closer to the corner, peek again, and for a half a second you can see the grunt coming back. 

46:52 Machine Room

59:35 Prison South
1:05:48 Prison North
Prison is my least favorite part of the game. It's pitch black, enemies spawn close, and the area is nonlinear so it's hard for me to tell what I'm walking into until I'm there. Not a lot of panic moments, more of an excruciating drawn out chain of several encounters.

1:20:55 Control Room
1:26:22 Cistern
1:33:12 Morgue

1:35:10 Eric dies IRL
This is one of the most dangerous encounters in the game. You're trapped in a tiny room with a brute, who can 1-shot you even on normal difficulty. Your sanity is set very low after the inoculation and the only places to hide are in the sanity draining rooms with all the dead bodies. 

I knew the brute spawned there, but what I didn't know was he's scripted to instantly break the door if you try to open it. Then he broke down the door to my hidey hole too. If he had taken just a single step into that room...

1:37:41 Sewers
Not a bad level. It's well lit, enemy encounters are predictable, and safe spaces are pretty well defined. But from here on out, most encounters are with brutes so everything is just that bit more dangerous.

1:52:40 Chancel I
1:58:19 Transept

2:04:17 Choir
The last dangerous area in the game. I still have no idea where the spawn triggers are since the area is so open. It's not dark, but visibility is zero and it's easy to get caught without cover. 

Looking at the map, I somehow missed all but one of the encounters (the one on the bridge). Area might be safer than I thought as long as you crawl along the walls on your hands and knees.

2:17:39 Cells
2:25:27 Chancel II
2:28:32 Inner Sanctum

Saved five times: before storage, before prison, before morgue, before choir, before weyer's tonic. Basically, I would do all the relatively safe objectives first then make a save before the game got hard.

The last save was a panic save; I thought I was about to run out of sanity. My original plan was to save before the Inner Sanctum, as those blood rituals have high sanity drain and are unavoidable. It doesn't really matter when you save after choir as long as you do it; you don't want to go through twice.

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