The difficulty level determines how challenging the game is to play.
Summary[]
In the game options, under "Gameplay", is a slider labeled "Difficulty" with the possible values:
- Easy / Normal / Core Rules / Hard / Insane
Alternatively, one of the following special difficulty levels can be chosen on the same screen:
- Story Mode (EE only)
- Heart of Fury Mode
The effects are:
| Difficulty level | Number of enemies |
Damage taken by party |
Additional benefits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Story Mode | normal | 50% |
|
| Easy | normal | 50% |
|
| Normal | normal | 75% |
|
| Core Rules | normal | 100% | - |
| Hard | more | 150% |
|
| Insane | most | 200% |
|
| Heart of Fury | ? | ? |
|
Effects[]
Number of enemies[]
Some maps in the game contain additional enemies if the difficulty is set to Hard or above at the time when the party first enters the map.
For example, the Orc Cave in the prologue contains:
- 36 orcs and 1 ogre on Core Rules and below
- 38 orcs and 2 ogres on Hard
- 41 orcs and 4 ogres on Insane
The additional enemies aren't automatically calculated according to some formula; they were hand-placed by the game designers.
There are also many maps in the game where the number of enemies is the same for all difficulty levels.
Damage taken[]
Every time a party member or other player-controlled character receives damage, the damage amount is scaled up or down according to the difficulty level.
Experience rewards[]
Unlike all the other difficulty level effects, this one gives your party a bonus rather than a penalty at higher difficulty levels: All experience rewards (both quest XP and kill XP) are scaled up on Hard and above.
This means that on higher difficulty levels, your party levels up faster (and thus becomes more powerful) than on Core Rules.
For details, see Experience#Scaling.
Scroll scribing failure[]
On Core Rules and higher, Mage party members make a dice roll each time they try to scribe a scroll into their spell book. The success chance depends on the character's Intelligence score. If they fail the roll, the scroll is destroyed without getting copied into their spell book.
This is especially punishing due to the fact that spell scrolls are scarce in this game.
On Normal difficulty and below, this game mechanic is removed and scribing scrolls always succeeds.
Hitpoint rolls[]
On Core Rules and higher, party members make a dice roll for additional hit points each time they level up. (Until they reach level 9 or 10, depending on class, after which they only get small fixed hit point gains.)
On Normal difficulty and below, they don't make these rolls and instead always get the highest number they could have rolled.
For example, a Fighter on Core Rules gains d10 (meaning: anywhere between 1 and 10) hit-points per level-up, whereas on Normal difficulty or below he gains 10 hit-points per level.
Death[]
Normally, when a party member dies, they remain in the party (with a greyed-out portrait) so that a Raise Dead or Resurrection spell (or equivalent temple service) can be used to bring them back to life.
However, on Core Rules and higher, if the killing blow is so strong that it reduces the party member's hit points below -10, the party member is chunked (body explodes into pieces) and they are instantly removed from the party with no way to bring them back (other than to reload a previous save-game).
On Normal and Easy difficulty, the irreversible form of death cannot occur for party members, so that even if they die they can always be resurrected.
On Story Mode difficulty, party members cannot die at all.
Luck[]
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