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Hardened Combatant achievement in Tom Clancy's The Division

Hardened Combatant

Complete a mission in Challenge mode.

Hardened Combatant0
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How to unlock the Hardened Combatant achievement

  • mcnichojmcnichoj
    13 Mar 2016 13 Mar 2016 15 Jul 2016
    Update: This can be done in the DLC.
    (I also need to heavily update the solution below.)

    "Challenge mode" is a difficulty that's above "Hard" and you unlock it once you hit level 30. You can presumably only select it on stages you have completed on Normal difficulty previously.

    Here are some other things that have been brought to my attention.
    -The map you play doesn't need to be a "Daily"
    -The map you play on Challenge won't count towards the missions you have to play on Hard
    -Bonus armor destruction and special ammo can be very helpful
    -Have everyone in your group stack Smart Cover with the Recharge Skill mod, you'll basically be invincible
    The last one is very important, makes things a lot easier.

    The most common stage played to get this achievement done is "Lincoln Tunnel Checkpoint". It's pretty short and straight forward, enemies don't pop up behind you or anything.
    Here are two videos of people running through the stage:

    I put Maka's guide first because he gives tips while playing and that should be sufficient.

    Admittedly it's not that hard as long as you're prepped with proper gear and weapons. Most if not all of your stuff should be purple or gear that is level 28+.
    Your playstyle and what you bring can be very flexible but two people at the least should bring some type of healing abilities, anything that can get you more ammo can be useful and more importantly than anything else actually in game is patience.
    You'll mostly be sitting back just filling enemies with bullets. Then later in the stage you'll be jumping around like crazy to avoid nades when you get to the final boss waves.
    You're allowed to have your team get wiped, no one will respawn but you will reload the last check point.
    If you some how managed to get to level 30 without knowing you can revive people that die well you can, it just takes longer than a revive on a downed person does and the dead person can't move to a safe place for you to revive them.
    I don't know if the amount of players in your party effects the stats of enemies but it will not effect the amount of enemies.
    This can take anywhere from as little as twenty minutes and as long as over an hour depending on both luck and skill.
    If your game crashes and you're not host you can simply reboot the game and signing back in with your character should rejoin the match and you will still unlock it. If something happens to the host the party will be disbanded and you'll probably have to restart or if servers go down for any reason you'll definitely have to restart.

    All in all it's not too bad, just takes time. Good luck.

    Guide not helping? View 2 more guides for this achievement.

    Showing most recent comments. View all comments.
    grizzly861I'm not going to downvote for this, but it's very important to mention the mode is visibly "unlocked" at level 30, but you need World Tier 2 to actually be able to play any challenge mode.
    Posted by grizzly861 on 01 May 22 at 07:05
    brat trashjust to second the comment above, this doesn’t work on the underground DLC
    Posted by brat trash on 16 Jul 23 at 15:05
    brat trashjust to second the comment above, this doesn’t work on the underground DLC
    Posted by brat trash on 16 Jul 23 at 15:11
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  • a Fi1thy Casuala Fi1thy Casual
    30 Mar 2016 31 Mar 2016
    You can tell if a map has the "Challenge Mode" option because it will be marked with an orange light/line coming from the mission icon on the map. I am not certain when these get updated (daily, weekly, who knows?). You will unlock Challenge Mode after you hit level 30. There is a garunteed reward of High End gear upon completion.

    Challenge mode is a step above hard in two ways:

    1.) Instead of purple and yellow bullet sponges, you have just yellow bullet sponges.

    2.) Everyone is two levels above Max (Enemies = Level 32).

    You can jump into a group and do this at any point in the game, however I highly advise setting up a session for this, OR playing with people you know for this achievement. I jumped into a few games solo and was kicked just before the last boss went down multiple times so other people could bring friends into the game.

    Also, if you go to the Lincoln Tunnel mission solo, be prepared to stick around for a while since most people jumping into that game try for the boss respawn glitch to farm high end stuff. If you want the achievement, Lincoln Tunnel may be the easiest, but do it with people you know who also just want to get it done.
  • FreysiFreysi
    13 Apr 2020 14 Apr 2020 14 Apr 2020
    Just a short addition to what is already written above.
    * At gear level 275, I did this in the Lincoln tunnel mission. It was very easy.
    * Challenge needs WT2.
    * WT also affects the difficulty level of missions, so just do this in WT2, you don't need to do it on WT5.
    * For me, beating Lincoln tunnel on Challenge mode counted as a "Hard mode win" for the Know no Fear achievement.
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