Iron Gate Studio finally showed the promised difficulty modifiers for Valheim, as revealed yesterday via Twitter by Lead Software Engineer and Game Designer Jonathan Smårs. The brief video shows six difficulty presets: Easy, Casual, Hard, Hardcore, Immersive, and Hammer. Below you can find their respective in-game descriptions.
Easy
Combat is easier and there are less raids on your base.
Casual
In casual mode, monsters will not attack you until provoked, there are no raids on your base, resources are more plentiful, you will not drop equipped items or lose skills on death, combat is a lot easier and events are based on your individual progress.
Hard
Combat is harder and there are more raids on your base.
Hardcore
Combat is a lot harder and monsters will raid your base more often. When you die all of the items you are carrying and skills gained are lost forever. You have no map and you may not use portals.
Immersive
In immersive you have no map and may not use portals, so you will need to use your wits to keep track of where you are in the world.
Hammer
In hammer mode, you can build all buildings for free. There are no raids on your base, and monsters will not attack you until you provoke them. Other difficulty settings are normal.
Those are just the preset modifiers, anyway. Valheim players will also have the opportunity to tweak specific mechanics to their liking, including combat, death penalty, resource rate, raid rate, the ability or not to move items through portals, whether there is any build cost or not, whether events are player based or not, whether there are portals or a map, and whether enemies are passive or not.
Valheim encountered enormous success when it first launched on PC, easily making it on Valve's list of best-selling 2021 Steam games. It had perhaps too much success for its own good, as the small development team took a while to release new content. The Mistlands update only arrived in late 2022, while Iron Gate was also busy with the Xbox launch that materialized last month alongside its debut on the Game Pass subscription service.
Iron Gate Studio confirmed that Valheim is currently exclusive to Xbox consoles for six months. About a month ago, Jonathan Smårs said the developers aren't currently looking at a PlayStation port, though he also didn't outright close the door to it.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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