7+ Years of Ironman in Tibia

Hi, I am Nefroti, most know me by name on Antica "Nefroti Ironman" or my reddit username "Nefroti".

I am currently 28, my cousin first introduced me to Tibia at age 4, if you can believe it, started playing when I turned 5. He wanted to use me as his UH maker and play Druid, but things didn't turn out the way he'd hoped. He was a great mentor to me, as he was in the top 25 on his server, if I remember correctly.

When I was younger, I wasn't very social; I just loved grinding. My reasons for staying with Tibia have changed over the years. From being obsessed with rankings, I now care more about being part of a community, which has made me come back after every break.

First, I played Druid till level 60. At the time, druids were a pretty bad vocation to level with, but during my time as UH maker, I also got EK that I had skilled for over a year, and after that, I started playing EK. I reached level 100 on it at age 7 and 200 at around age 10.

Later, I was sadly forced to sell that EK, due to dominando on my server, and I started playing RP. I have been RP main ever since, with my highest being 800 around when Falcons were added. Playing RP actually surprised a lot of people, since I was known for blocking Orshabaal on my old EK and being the reliable tank.

My choice of playing RP is actually pretty weird. I fell in love with the items "The Devileye" and "Molten Plate", I wanted to become an RP that can randomly 1-shot something. I also loved the idea of collecting rares, and RP has always been the best vocation to solo bosses with. I collected a lot of rares during my time, including those 2 items I mentioned.

I have multiple Ironman chars I currently play, but my main is obviously Nefroti Ironman. At the time of us speaking, I am level 437 on him. He was created on August 27, 2020, but I didn’t start playing him till 2022. So I've been playing him for 3 years now.

As for the biggest Achievement, it’s hard to say. There are so many things I am proud of, like: completing Demon Task, looting rares like Dwarven armor, Falon Bow, Falcon Coif, Turtle Amulet or Cobra Amulet, getting extremely hard achievements like “Forbidden Fruit”, or “Umbral Harbinger”.

But if I was to choose 1, it wouldn’t be anything I did on my char, it would be my contributions towards the Ironman community as a whole. I think I brought on a lot of new players to the “Dark Side” who now share the love of this mode. I love seeing the achievements of people who started playing, because I introduced them to this mode.

It’s a mode where you play with no market or trading, as simple as that. It’s a challenge meant to see what you can achieve yourself. Some players put other restrictions on it, but that’s how I define it.

There's a Minecraft server called “Hypixel”; they have a mode called Skyblock, it’s an MMO with playerbase numbers similar to Tibia, they have added probably the best Ironman mode I’ve seen, and from what I remember, around 30-40% of players main it since the implementation of it. I actually base my Ironman around their rules. I want to explore every part of the game, just like any other player would.

I see them as part of the game, even though I am not the biggest fan of Tibia’s P2W aspects. As an Ironman player, I can buy exercise weapons, which is actually how I spend most of the spare money I earn.

When it comes to stuff like boosts or prey from the store, I made a rule based on “Hypixel Skyblock”, I can buy Tibia Coins, but I can’t sell them. So if I wanted to buy stuff like exp boosts or prey cards, I will have to pay the extremely high price for it.

Oh, it depends on which Ironman play-through we are talking about. I usually don’t buy blessings till level 100, for example. On one Ironman play-through, I didn’t use offline training till level 100.

I honestly abandoned those extra restrictions, cause no matter if I use offline training, I will never be able to compete with someone who can buy lvl 8 with 120 distance fighting, while my current distance fighting without loyalty is 109 on lvl 437.

On my RP, probably getting level 200 and reaction to it or creating Crossbow of Destruction. It’s funny looking back at how hard it was to get the first 50 gold tokens, when now I can easily loot 20 a day without breaking a sweat.

I took a lot of breaks, so you could say I quit multiple times, but I came back every time. Ironman becomes more of a grind the more you play. 100-200 is especially brutal.

Doing Warzone 1-3 Access is a pain, since you need to collect minor tokens for Red Teleport Crystals for every boss entrance, and at the time, only the person with the highest damage got to loot the item, which gives you permanent access. That alone took me around 2 months.

Getting those 50 gold tokens was extremely hard as well, but none of those come close to grinding for imbues early on. Now I can rely on exchanging gold tokens for 3 basic imbues, but that wasn’t the case till level 300+.

I remember spending around 10 hours on Liberty Bay Braindeaths during rapid and I wanted to collapse from how frustrating grinding those brains was.

Community, sharing your journey with others. I can honestly say I wouldn’t be able to do it without the support from friends I made during this crazy journey.

It’s not something I did on my RP actually, I have an EK on Secura called “Iron Blocker”, I was part of a guild there called “Iron Snails”. As my name suggests, I was a blocker and we went on a team hunt to kill some demons. we dropped 2 MMS from it after only 25 demons.

Burnout is something that’s going to happen to every player. I think it’s important to take breaks and set goals for yourself so you can come back and accomplish them. I remember getting full Beggar addon. That was a brutal grind. I killed over 16 thousand apes during that.

From pure luck, it’s gotta be my Falcon Bow T1. I dropped one bow from a mini boss and not long after, Oberon has gifted me one as well, so I gambled and created it. Funny thing is that after the “Weapons Proficiency” update, it’s not a great bow anymore, and I am currently grinding for an upgrade.

I didn’t really hunt AOE as Paladin till level 280, probably 95% of my hunts were with crossbow hunting mobs 1 by 1, so money has not been an issue on RP since level 150 or so. I profited everywhere I went. Once you get your Rift Bow/Rift Crossbow with t2 imbues + backup with t1 imbues, money is not something you will worry about as RP.

When it comes to imbues, for basic ones, I rely on gold tokens I loot, when it comes to protection ones I made a Sorcerer, cause stamina is a massive issue on my Paladin. I invested a lot of money into making my prismatic set t2, since that was the best EQ I could have without insane RNG luck. I have looted Fabulous legs and multiple ghost chestplates since, so it’s a mix.

WZ6 Diremaws for 3 hours. I have killed close to 30k of them. So far, they are the best profit I can get on Ironman. I get at least 400k/h profit there, and that’s without including the value of all the suspicious devices I get.

I try to kill Warzone 4 boss every day twice for a chance to get Gnome Armor, and since I already entered WZ6, I go with a team to kill that boss as well. Other than that, I do around 30 bosses a day, so that takes 6 hours altogether.

I will say it’s a mix of profit and bestiarity/charms. I always love to visit new spawns. The current “hunting task” update is actually perfect for me, since I often have to hunt extremely random spawns for items needed for quests and achievements. I think it’s going to make Ironman leveling much faster in general.

I actually die quite often as of late, due to some internet problems that I have, but I recently had quite a memorable death, my first one while doing Scarlett Etzel. I never died on her on any char before, so if I were to give advice, even if you do something often, being comfortable can cause you to end up dead on a floor.

One word I hear the most is probably “Why?”

Not checking if the items they looted are used in a quest.

Thinking they will get similar results on a hunt compared to a video guide they saw.

Getting too cocky when starting a project and getting burned out. Planning is extremely important.

If it’s not vocation specific, I would have to say:

Rashid

Thieves guild quest (you will hate elephants after this one)

Djinn

The ability to sell loot is extremely important on Ironman. Also, a quick warning: you will probably start hating the Explorer Society quest because you have to do it so early on.

Soulcrushing, yet rewarding.

On my Paladin, I am doing Warzone to get Gnome Armor, trying to upgrade my bow to one of Inferniarch variants, but honestly hoping for “rending” one and Falcon Greaves. If I complete all those goals, I want to do Soulwar; it’s honestly my biggest goal on Ironman. Hopefully, I will do it around level 600. For smaller projects, I am working on “Shield Of Destruction”, “Tin Key”, and “Mage’s Cap”.

On my MS I am currently level 186. I want to finish up Grizzly Tasks, do Demon Task on him, and get him to level 300. Even though he is a side project, I want to use him to do more bosses.

One of the biggest issues with higher-level Ironman is that a lot of the progress is locked by pure RNG, and you can’t really grind for it.

Even little progress might bring you joy.

It’s not about punishing yourself. It’s a challenge to test yourself, sure, but A lot of people love to add rules that they end up hating, like not using offline training. It’s not supposed to be a punishment; we are playing a game at the end of the day. You are supposed to enjoy yourself; there are only so many hours in a day, don’t waste them.