Hardcore Worlds opened at 11:00 UTC: the first 24 hours

At 11:00 UTC on 4 November 2026 Jagex opened Hardcore Worlds: 32 members-only worlds on their own servers where every character has one life. No experience boosts, no drop-rate boosts, a separate economy with its own Grand Exchange, and a Reaper waiting at the end of every mistake. The mode shipped without a poll, which is itself a story, and it was busy from the first minute.

How it works

• Start on Tutorial Island, speak to Death’s Delegate and accept Death’s challenge. You arrive with one free escape crystal; more cost 10,000 each.
• Die and the normal death happens first: you usually keep three items, four with Protect Item. Then the Reaper offers two doors.
• Reset wipes quests, skills and items and lets you start again, with a three-day cooldown on the Stronghold of Security’s gold after each reset.
• Transfer banishes the character to the main game permanently, keeping protected items and the bank.
• Whatever would have gone to a gravestone is gone either way. The rules match Hardcore Group Ironman.

The first day

1. 11:00 UTC: worlds open across PC, Steam, iOS and Android. World 343 and its neighbours fill immediately.
2. First death on Hardcore Worlds: M Hardcorpse, nine seconds after leaving Tutorial Island, verified by Jagex and announced in-game as the first of many broadcasts.
3. First completion of the TzHaar Fight Caves: HCW Deviate, also on launch day. The Fractured Archive and the Grandmaster combat achievements were still unclaimed on 7 November, according to the OSRS Wiki’s world-firsts table.
4. Jagex reported that one player had left Tutorial Island as a Hardcore character before the mode opened, built wealth on normal worlds and carried it in. It was dealt with publicly; the economy is meant to start from zero.

Population, live

The panel below reads the official world list every few minutes and counts the players on the Hardcore worlds, with a chart from the first sample this site stored. By one player’s count of the death broadcasts, 3,114 characters died on the first day.

Hardcore Worlds population

Players on the Hardcore worlds right now, from the official world list, sampled every 15 minutes.

Before you make a character

Read the rules and safety guide: which activities count as a real death and which are safe, because the list is not what veterans expect. Then the first-days route, which is built around not dying rather than levelling fast.