Hard Mode?

What's the fastest and easiest way to Hard Mode?

I have all three campaigns and not a single one has been completed.

Would it be a Prophecies character?

And does that only open Hard Mode for the particular campaign completed?

EDIT:

I forgot to ask if Henchmen are upgraded for the Hard Mode stuff?

To unlock Hard Mode for a campaign, you must complete its final mission. Note that this means for Prophecies, you do not need to complete the Titan Quests to unlock hard mode. I suggest going through all the campaigns on NM before tackling one on HM.

Henchmen will be upgraded, with the exception of some henchmen which appear during festivals, such as the Mad King's Guard or Snowmen. In general though, you'll want to be using the normal henchmen.

You have to complete all missions in a campaign to unlock hard mode. It unlocks hard mode for that campaign only, but for all the characters on your account. And henchmen are leveled to 20 for hard mode.

HM missions are not of any concern or desire at the moment.

My goal is simply to open HM for my 55/600 Monk and my 55 Necro.

As you well know I'm sure, farming in NM is a lost cause as drops are complete junk.

Currently I have a Prophesies character down in Marhan's Grotto. Would it be faster to continue on with her and open HM for Prophesies (since there are a ton of good farming spots there) or run through EOTN missions (because it's a short campaign) and open that?

Maybe stating my intent from the beginning would have been better :P

I would say Factions is the easiest to get through and the quickest personally but I haven't beaten Nightfall. Prophecies maybe if you can get a quick run to Iron Mines early on but I am not sure if you have to be ascended for any of the later missions or not.

Thunderhead Keep, Ring of Fire, Abaddon's Mouth and Hell's Precipice to complete Prophecies.

Iron Mines of Moladune for an easy armor infusion, though you don't actually need to finish it.

Sanctum Cay, Dunes of Despair, Thirsty River, Elona Reach and Augury Rock if you are a Proph native and want all your 200 attribute points(and to change secondaries if you have no other campaigns).

Well here's how long it took me to complete campaigns (playing very consistently)
Proph: bout a month and a half (was newb then )
EoTN: Four Days
Factions: Two Weeks
NF: One week.

but as far as farming spots for your 600 monk I'd go with NF (Torcqua etc). If you have a char at marhan's grotto then i'd think getting proph finished first would be smart because most UW/FoW groups that you might wanna do later require hardmode and form in ToA.

my 2 cents

u dont^^
but if you are not getting a service for the missions i would recommend to get infused as mursaat will rip u apart

prolly not what you want to hear but...

It would be best to go through Prophesies to just plain learn the game. Nightfall to get heros tho the basic heros come early in the campaign.

If you start prophesies you can go to Cantha (Factions) then to Nightfall to pick up the heros once you get to Lion's Arch. You will also pop to lev 20 fast once you get to Factions main city

Factions is fast but no heros.

You will have a HARD time in hard mode as a new player with no heros and little understanding of game mechanics and with a skill set limited to what you get from a single campaign.

It takes time to learn what you need to know and collect all the advantages offered but in the end it will make for a more enjoyable experience.

Good luck

quick edit: Hard mode is only opened in a campaign at least one of your
characters has finished

1. fastest campaign to complete is prophecies - pre to post ascalon can be done in maybe an hr or less ( getting out soon as possible ) then run basically from ascalon to droks then to thk - get missions run and your in ring of fire then more or less run to end via a few missions.
*** This is based on the team being strong enough to cope with 1 weak player as well as sightings of low lvl players in ring of fire.
The above could possibly be done in 8 - 12 hrs - which im sure others can correct me on.
Factions would be second fastest with nightfall last as both have locked sections.
Ascension isnt necessary in prophs an can be done after considering player wont be high enough to actually fight.
Just remember that hardmode on prophs wont give access to hardmode on other campaigns as you need to do each one seperatly

Do factions...Proph is ridiculously long. Nf is extremely boring. Factions is somewhat entertaining and short n sweet.

You are missing the point. Prophecies is a well written, well planned game.
People who love PvE had the most fun in Prophecies. The longer the better.

As for the other two. Nightfall was better than factions, which was ridiculously short.

Now, (for the op) as far as the two missions, do factions first. You finish faster. then go to prophecies and have someone run you to TOA.

Then you will be able to do Underwold and FOW from Prophecies and factions.

Yup. Completing a campaign unlocks HM for that campaign and only that campaign. So if you completed Proph, HM will be unlocked for all your lvl 20 chars while they are in Proph. If you want to play HM is Factions, you'll still need to get a char to finish Factions.
The non-max henches are buffed to lvl 20 with appropriate armors lvls and attributes. Their skillbars also have their elites added. None of the henches receives buffs beyond that.

But to answer your original question, Proph is likely the quickest. You can have someone run you to Thunder Head Keep, and then its 4 missions till HM is unlocked. Playing start to finish though, Factions is quickest and has the easiest of missions.

Nope just the last mission. You can skip the ones in between(provided that's an option).

If you are gonna quote me, do it right! Don't just copy and paste, pretending its your own.