Collecting defensive rings is an important part of Remnant 2, and you have a fine selection of options. One of them, the Hardcore Metal Band, remains a valid option even after the launch of Remnant 2: The Awakened King.
However, finding this thing can be a chore. And is it even worthwhile to get in the first place? Let’s discuss its upsides and downsides.
Where is the Hardcore Metal Band Ring in Remnant 2?
The Hardcore Metal Band is a Ring located in the Navigation Room event, a random event on the N’Erud planet. The event spawns on the hub world in a crashed ship. You can tell you’ve gotten the right spot if you spot a large, steel rectangle that, upon entering, scans you with a red light. The Band is settled directly in front of the console, so you don’t have to actually enter the room to get it.
Sadly, there is no way to guarantee that the Navigation Room event spawns in Remnant 2, and also no realistic way to quickly check for it. Since it can spawn in either the first or second Hub Area of N’Erud, simply checking outside of your spawn and refreshing the world can lead to frustration. You can jog a lap around the first hub to see if it spawned there, but this can lead to cut corners. The first hub has a lot of events—around 10 or so—that primarily spawn there, so you can run into a bad streak of luck.
We recommend doing the one to two required dungeons necessary to enter the second Hub World and checking both major hubs before restarting your adventure. Considering there are several new randomly dropped Rings in Remnant 2: The Awakened King, it might behoove you to check out N’Erud in general and maybe collect a handful of them. Engineers especially can run into some winners nowadays, like the A’taerii Booster, which can be found randomly on the planet.
Once you see the crashed ship, head inside and let it scan you. Don’t worry about failing this scanning; you’re not going to get punished by anything more than a locked door. The ring itself is on the floor next to the nearby console. You don’t have to break into the Navigator Room to get the Ring.
If you want to see what’s inside, you’ll need to find the Navigator’s Helm first. This Helm is on a rare Zombie enemy, which is trapped inside the Pounding Piston event. That’s right; you need an entirely different event to complete the Navigator Room.
Once you get the Helm, you can enter the crashed ship and get the Plasma Cutter Longarm, a powerful weapon that utilizes the Overheat mechanic.
Is the Hardcore Metal Band Ring good in Remnant 2?
The Hardcore Metal Band is a universally alright damage reduction Ring in Remnant 2. This is because every time you get hit, you get a stack of Bulwark for 10 seconds, which can build up to five total stacks. Bulwark ranges from seven to 25 percent damage reduction and is one of the best sources of DR in Remnant 2.
On lower difficulties, the Hardcore Metal Band can reliably keep you around for an extra hit. Depending on armor quality, it’s very possible to take two or three additional hits, which will stack your Hardcore Metal Band. That means, by itself, this ring can get 13 to 18 percent DR without you falling down, which is a feat no other Ring can handle.
Where this starts to look a bit shadier is on Apocalypse. This infamous difficulty mode makes it very easy to get one shot, especially by enemies that take a while to chip down like bosses. The Hardcore Metal Band is unlikely to give you two or three additional hits on this difficulty, even against attacks that hit many times in a short time.
This is without mentioning that the Ring requires you to get decked to build Damage Reduction stacks. Getting Damage Reduction after taking damage in a game as punishing as this is not exactly a vote of confidence for yourself. As you improve your dodging in Remnant 2, this ring is more and more likely to give you one or even zero stacks of Bulwark since you need to get hit within 10 seconds of the last time you got hit to get any value from this Ring at all.
Depending on your build, there are simpler ways to get Bulwark before you take any damage. The Fae Brusier and Guardian’s Rings are two excellent ways to do so with melee in mind. The Soul Guard gives you one per Summon. The new Dried Clay Ring grants a stack of Bulwark while also improving damage significantly if you can manage additional stacks.
