Hardcore Worlds Guide
One life, a fresh economy and the strictest death rules in the game. How to join, every world number, what actually kills you, and what happens after.
Updated 6 November 2026. Live since 4 November 2026, 11:00 UTC.
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What Hardcore Worlds are
Hardcore Worlds are a permanent, members-only world type announced at the RuneFest 2026 Summit on 3 October and released on 4 November 2026. They were not polled. Every character on them has one life, but unlike every previous one-life mode they are not ironmen: you can trade, use the Grand Exchange, and do group PvM with anyone on the world.
The worlds run at the exact pace of the main game. There are no XP multipliers, no drop rate modifiers and no boosts of any kind. The economy is completely separate: items and coins made on Hardcore Worlds can only be bought and sold on Hardcore Worlds, and every death that sends items to a gravestone deletes them from that economy for good. Jagex's own framing is that a million coins should feel like it did in 2007.
They have their own hiscores under the Game Modes section, their own in-game broadcasts for world firsts and notable deaths, and a shared hub in Death's Office, which is now un-instanced on every world.
How to join
- 1.Make a brand-new character. Only a character that has not finished Tutorial Island can enter. Existing accounts cannot convert, and nothing from your main carries over. The character needs its own membership.
- 2.Talk to Death's Delegate on Tutorial Island. She stands near the Magic Instructor's house, next to Paul the Ironman tutor. Choosing Hardcore Worlds with her is the opt-in. She then sends you to the Magic Instructor to finish the tutorial.
- 3.Arrive in Death's Office. Instead of Lumbridge you land in front of Death with a free escape crystal in your inventory. Buy more from him at 10,000 coins each, check the mirror for your Death Report, and leave when ready. Your home teleport now lands here too.
- 4.Hop to a Hardcore World. Any world from 634 to 674 in the table below. Death's Office is the one place where a Hardcore Worlds character and a main-game character can be in the same room, so friends can meet you there to join a clan or gift membership. Trading inside the office is blocked.
Membership from a bond on another character
The 3 November 2026 update added an option to the bond interface that applies the membership from a bond held by one character to any other character on the same Jagex Account, without converting the bond to tradeable. That is the cleanest way to member a fresh Hardcore Worlds character from your main's bonds.Disabled at launch
Last Man Standing and Bounty Hunter cannot be accessed on Hardcore Worlds. Jagex said it may enable them later. Everything else in the game is open, including raids, the Wilderness and Sailing.All 32 Hardcore Worlds
Taken from the live oldschool.runescape.com world list on 6 November 2026. The launch newspost says 30 worlds, but its own table lists 32 and the live list agrees. The east and west split for the United States follows the newspost; the world list itself only says United States. Activity labels are themed hubs, not restrictions: every world has the full game.
US East (10 worlds)
- 634Standard
- 635Guardians of the Rift
- 636Wintertodt
- 637Barbarian Assault
- 638Group PvM
- 639Standard
- 640Standard
- 641Standard
- 642Standard
- 643Standard
US West (8 worlds)
- 644Standard
- 645Forestry
- 646Pest Control
- 647Group PvM
- 648Standard
- 649Standard
- 650Standard
- 651Standard
Germany (5 worlds)
- 652Standard
- 653Blast Furnace
- 654Barbarian Assault
- 655Group PvM
- 656Standard
United Kingdom (5 worlds)
- 657Standard
- 658Tempoross
- 659Group PvM
- 669Wintertodt
- 670Standard
Australia (2 worlds)
- 671Standard
- 672Group PvM
Brazil (1 world)
- 673Standard
Singapore (1 world)
- 674Standard
A world switcher rework arrives with an engine update at the end of November 2026: game mode, region and members filters, activities shown on every row, and a compact view for desktop. Hardcore Worlds get their own toggle under game modes.
Death rules: stricter than HCIM
Hardcore Worlds use the Hardcore Group Ironman death ruleset, not the Hardcore Ironman one. Jagex's own guidance is to assume 99% of deaths are real. Almost every minigame that a Hardcore Ironman can die in for free is a real death here, including the Fight Caves, the Inferno and Nightmare Zone.
Unsafe: dying here is a real death
- Barbarian Assault - Safe for HCIM, deadly here
- Camelot training room - Safe for HCIM, deadly here
- Chambers of Xeric - Safe for HCIM, deadly here
- Dream World (Lunar Diplomacy) - Safe for HCIM, deadly here
- Fishing Trawler - Safe for HCIM, deadly here
- The Inferno - Safe for HCIM, deadly here
- Magic Training Arena - Safe for HCIM, deadly here
- Nightmare Zone - Use the exit potion, not death
- Pest Control - Other players can pull splatters onto you
- Player-owned house - Any death inside your POH
- PvM Arena - Added to the list at launch
- TzHaar Fight Cave - The Karamja elite resurrection is the only exception
- Random events - Yes, even these
- Rogues' Den maze - Safe for HCIM, deadly here
Safe: the complete list
- Castle Wars
- Clan Wars
- Soul Wars
- Emir's Arena
- TzHaar Fight Pit
- The Fremennik Trials - Only the fourth phase of the Koschei the Deathless duel
- Galvek fight replay - The replay only, not the quest fight
- Glough fight replay - The replay only, not the quest fight
- Fight Caves resurrection - Karamja elite diary reward only
- Zulrah resurrection - Western Provinces elite diary reward only
- Last Man Standing - Listed as safe, but disabled on Hardcore Worlds
Anything not on this list is a real death. That includes every quest fight, every boss, every raid, Sailing, the Gauntlet, Perilous Moons, the Fortis Colosseum and the Wilderness.
After you die: reset or transfer
Death happens in two stages. First it is processed like a normal death: you keep three items, or four with Protect Item, and PvP deaths follow the usual Wilderness rules. Then you are sent to Death's Office and must choose.
Reset
- - Wipes everything: quests, stats, inventory, bank, and the 3 or 4 protected items too.
- - You play on as if you had just stepped off Tutorial Island, on the same character name.
- - Unlimited resets.
- - Bank PIN and game settings survive the reset.
- - Stronghold of Security coins can be collected again, but only after a 3-day cooldown from the last time you took them.
- - Reaper's Raffle tasks and entries carry over between deaths.
Transfer
- - The character leaves Hardcore Worlds permanently and becomes a normal main-game account. No way back.
- - You keep the protected items, your whole bank, and everything in other storage (POH, STASH units, and so on).
- - Stats and quests stay. This is possible because Hardcore Worlds use the same save profile as the main game.
- - Your Hardcore Worlds hiscores entry ends; the character appears on the normal hiscores.
Escape crystal: set it up before you leave the office
You start with one. More cost 10,000 coins (down from 75,000) from Death in his office, Rick on the first floor of the Wizards' Tower, or the Mysterious Stranger in Ver Sinhaza. The Stronghold of Security pays out 10,000 coins, so your first spare is one dungeon away.
- - Manual: right-click Teleport sends you to your respawn point instantly.
- - Auto-AFK: Configure it to fire when you take damage (including zeros) after 2 to 300 seconds of no input. Typing, clicking, moving the mouse or the camera all count as input. It fires immediately on damage after a login or world hop, and never while you are moving.
- - Worn: wear it in the ring slot with the ring of life option and it behaves like a ring of life. Worn this way it cannot teleport you out of the raids and minigames below, so take it off for those.
- - Status effects: since November 2026 an activation also clears poison, burns and other status effects, so you do not teleport to safety and die to venom.
- - Wilderness: it is one of the few teleports that works up to level 30 Wilderness. Nothing saves you above 30.
- - Where it works that nothing else does: it teleports you out of Barbarian Assault, Chambers of Xeric, the Inferno, Pest Control, the Theatre of Blood, Tombs of Amascut and TzHaar-Ket-Rak's Challenges, all of which are real deaths here. It also auto-fires if you log out inside ToB or ToA.
- - It is consumed on use and stackable. Carry at least two once you can afford them.
What actually killed people on day one
Community data, not Jagex's: Reddit user cipherhub compiled the death broadcasts from a RuneLite chat log covering launch until midnight. It counted 3,114 deaths: 2,253 to NPCs outside the Wilderness, 343 to NPCs inside it, 277 to other players and 241 with no killer named. The first death of all, M Hardcorpse, came 9 seconds after leaving Tutorial Island and was verified by Jagex. The top killers were all low-level content.
| Killer | Deaths | Max hit | Where it happens |
|---|---|---|---|
| Giant spider (level 50) | 269 | 7 | Stronghold of Security floor 3, Varrock Sewers |
| Moss Guardian (level 84) | 146 | 14 | Glarial's Tomb during Waterfall Quest, unarmed |
| Jail guard (level 26) | 144 | 3 | Draynor Village jail, Prince Ali Rescue |
| Dark wizard (levels 7 to 23) | 105 | 6 | South of Varrock, Draynor crossroads |
| Witch's experiment (levels 19 to 53) | 85 | 5 | Witch's House quest |
Victims of giant spiders averaged total level 50 and victims of jail guards 45. Fire giants, further down the list, were killing characters averaging total level 137 in the Waterfall Dungeon. The survival guide walks through how to do each of those early tasks without joining the chart.
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The economy
Every previous separate-world mode either had no economy (everyone was an ironman) or a temporary one with boosted rates. Hardcore Worlds have neither restriction, so this is the first permanent fresh economy in Old School. Supply only comes from players who are alive, and every gravestone death removes items permanently.
What that means in practice right now: consumables, early gear and quest items trade at a premium because almost nobody has them yet, and raw gathering (fish, logs, ore, runes) is worth far more relative to the main game. Bonds exist on the Hardcore Worlds Grand Exchange like any other item, but their price there has nothing to do with the main-game price. The ironman money-making page is a good template for what sells, since the no-GE methods are exactly the ones a new economy rewards.
The launch-day gold smuggling. Within an hour of launch Jagex found characters with impossible wealth. One player had found a way to leave Tutorial Island flagged as a Hardcore Worlds character before launch, levelled and earned on normal worlds, and carried it across when the worlds opened. The account and its alts were banned about 90 minutes after launch. Jagex's figures: 115,563,777 coins entered, 103,175,293 were removed at the source, and roughly 12.4 million are suspected to have reached other players, which it is still tracing. No other vector (Clan Coffers, the PvP Arena) was found.
Broadcasts, hiscores and the Death Report
Death broadcasts (hotfixed 6 November)
Every world first and every notable death is broadcast across Hardcore Worlds, often with how and where. After two days of spam and people using it to parade offensive names, Jagex throttled it:
- - Your first two deaths always broadcast.
- - Your third death and beyond needs at least 100 total level.
- - Your fifth death and beyond needs at least 200 total level.
- - A coldfix the following week stops deaths beyond your 20th broadcasting more than once a day.
Hiscores and the mirror
Hardcore Worlds have their own hiscores under Game Modes (the table is hiscore_oldschool_hardcore_mains). A reset starts your entry from zero; a transfer moves you to the normal tables.
The mirror in Death's Office opens your Death Report, a summary of the current character's progress and notable achievements. Hardcore main accounts can use it on any world.
The Reaper's Raffle (4 to 30 November)
Death runs six bounty boards with 443 tasks across Exploration, PvM, Skilling, Quests, Achievements and the Wilderness. Each completed task is one raffle entry, with harder tasks worth 3, 5 or 10, and simply logging in to a Hardcore World during November is your first entry. Entries persist through deaths and resets, so dying does not cost you anything you have already earned.
There are over 100 prizes (official merch, a custom Death statue, Starforge PC bundles, Creator Crafted pieces, OSRSBricks sets), community World Goals that add cash prizes and a second Starforge PC, and the draw happens on a livestream on 8 December. Winners are contacted only through the in-game message system.
The task list, the easiest entries for a fresh character and the full prize breakdown are in the Reaper's Raffle guide.
Hardcore Worlds guides
Survival guide: the first 20 hours
Escape crystal settings, the Stronghold run, 43 Prayer, which early quests kill people and how to do them anyway.
Hardcore Worlds vs Hardcore Ironman
Every rule that differs, side by side, and which one you should actually make.
Reaper's Raffle: tasks, entries and prizes
All six boards, the safest entries for a low-level account, World Goals and World Firsts.
Hardcore Ironman guide
Safe training methods and the dangers list for the one-life ironman on normal worlds.
Frequently asked questions
What are OSRS Hardcore Worlds?
Hardcore Worlds are a permanent, members-only set of 32 separate OSRS worlds released on 4 November 2026 where every character has one life. They run at normal XP and drop rates with no boosts, have their own economy and Grand Exchange, and their own hiscores. Characters on them are main accounts, not ironmen, so they can trade, use the Grand Exchange and do group PvM with anyone on the world.
How do you join Hardcore Worlds?
Create a brand-new character and, on Tutorial Island, talk to Death's Delegate next to the Magic Instructor's house and Paul the Ironman tutor. Finish the tutorial with the Magic Instructor and you will arrive in Death's Office instead of Lumbridge, with a free escape crystal. From there hop to any world from 634 to 674. Existing characters cannot convert, and the character needs its own membership, which you can now apply from a bond held by another character on the same Jagex Account.
What happens when you die on a Hardcore World?
Death is processed normally first, so you keep three items, or four with Protect Item, and standard Wilderness rules apply to PvP deaths. Then Death offers two choices. Reset wipes everything on the character, including the protected items, quests, stats and bank, and you start again from Tutorial Island with unlimited resets. Transfer moves the character to the main game permanently, keeping the protected items, your bank and every other storage. Either way, anything that would have gone to your gravestone is deleted.
Which deaths are safe on Hardcore Worlds?
Hardcore Worlds use the Hardcore Group Ironman death ruleset, which is stricter than normal Hardcore Ironman. Only Castle Wars, Clan Wars, Soul Wars, Emir's Arena, the TzHaar Fight Pit, the fourth phase of the Koschei duel in The Fremennik Trials, the Galvek and Glough fight replays, and the Fight Caves and Zulrah resurrections from the Karamja and Western Provinces elite diaries are safe. The Fight Caves, Inferno, Nightmare Zone, Pest Control, Barbarian Assault, Chambers of Xeric, random events, the Rogues' Den maze, Fishing Trawler, the Magic Training Arena, the Camelot training room, the Dream World, the PvM Arena and your own player-owned house all count as real deaths.
Can you trade and use the Grand Exchange on Hardcore Worlds?
Yes. Hardcore Worlds characters are main accounts with full trading and Grand Exchange access, but the economy is completely separate from the main game. Items and coins can only be bought and sold within Hardcore Worlds, and every death that sends items to a gravestone deletes them from the economy permanently.
Are Hardcore Worlds the same as Hardcore Ironman?
No. A Hardcore Ironman is a self-sufficient ironman on normal worlds with one life and a longer list of safe deaths, and becomes a regular ironman after dying. A Hardcore Worlds character is a tradeable main on dedicated worlds with the stricter Hardcore Group Ironman death list, and after dying it either resets completely or transfers to the main game. You cannot be an ironman on Hardcore Worlds.
How does the escape crystal work on Hardcore Worlds?
Every Hardcore Worlds character starts with one escape crystal and can buy more for 10,000 coins each from Death in his office, Rick in the Wizards' Tower, or the Mysterious Stranger in Ver Sinhaza. It can be used manually, worn as a ring of life, or set to auto-teleport when you take damage after 2 to 300 seconds of no input, which covers disconnects. Its teleport works up to level 30 Wilderness, and since November 2026 activating it also clears poison, burns and other status effects. It is consumed on use.
Will Jagex restore a Hardcore Worlds character after a disconnect?
No. Jagex stated that Hardcore Worlds characters are handled exactly like Hardcore Ironmen: Player Support will not reinstate hardcore status on an individual basis for any reason. Only an issue with mass player impact would be reviewed.