Difficulty Settings

Difficulty settings let the player choose how hard the game is. Each choice is a few multipliers for damage taken, enemy health and loot, and every other rule asks them. A hit never rounds down to nothing, an enemy is never born dead, and changing the setting mid-fight keeps each enemy's share of health.

Also called: Difficulty levels, Difficulty modes, Easy normal hard, Difficulty picker.

Paste this to your AI

Copy it into Claude, Cursor or ChatGPT. It already has good values and the usual mistakes in it.

Add "Difficulty Settings" to my game.

What it should do: Players come with very different skill and patience. A choice they make themselves lets a newcomer finish the game and gives an expert a real challenge, without building two games.

Build it exactly as this state machine. First check that it fits my game, then build it like this:

```mermaid
stateDiagram-v2
  [*] --> normal
  relaxed: Relaxed
  normal: Normal
  hard: Hard
  locked: Locked in
  relaxed --> normal: picks normal
  relaxed --> hard: picks hard
  normal --> relaxed: picks relaxed
  normal --> hard: picks hard
  hard --> relaxed: picks relaxed
  hard --> normal: picks normal
  relaxed --> locked: locks the choice
  normal --> locked: locks the choice
  hard --> locked: locks the choice
  locked --> [*]
```

Use these starting values:
- damageStep: 0.5 x
- healthStep: 0.25 x
- lootStep: 0.25 x
- minDamage: 1 points

Watch out for these common mistakes:
- A small hit rounds to nothing: Tell your AI: round the damage, then never go below the smallest damage you chose, and let a hit of zero stay zero.
- Changing the setting in the middle of a fight: Tell your AI: keep the same share of health on the new maximum, and never let a living enemy round down to zero.
- Small loot never improves: Tell your AI: round loot with a random roll that is passed in, so 1.25 gives one most of the time and two now and then, and the average is right.
- The multiplier is applied twice: Tell your AI: ask for the multiplier in exactly one place, where the damage reaches the player, and nowhere else.
- A locked choice that can be bypassed: Tell your AI: keep the lock beside the setting itself and check it in the one place that changes the level.
- Mixing the setting with other help: Tell your AI: keep help options separate from the setting, so the player can combine them.

Do not change anything else in the game. Do not claim anything without proof: model what it takes, and show me what your solution rests on and how I can see that it works. If you cannot show something, say you do not know. When you are done, tell me in plain words how to try it.

Or skip this and connect the MCP: your AI then finds all of this by itself.Connect the MCP

What it does

Players come with very different skill and patience. A choice they make themselves lets a newcomer finish the game and gives an expert a real challenge, without building two games.

How it runs, as a diagram

Everything it can be in, and what moves it on. Your AI builds from exactly this.

Good starting values

What usually goes wrong

How to check it works

• The setting is normal. The player takes a hit of 10 from an enemy with 80 health and the enemy drops 4 coins: The hit is 10, the enemy has 80 and the drop is 4.
• The setting is relaxed, with the starting values. A hit of 10 lands on an enemy with 80 health: The player takes 5 and the enemy has 60 health.
• The setting is hard, with the starting values. A hit of 10 lands on an enemy with 80 health: The player takes 15 and the enemy has 100 health.
• The setting is relaxed with the damage step at its largest, 0.9. Hits of 1 and 3 land: Both do 1, and a hit of 0 still does 0.
• The setting is relaxed with the health step at its largest, 0.9. An enemy with 1 health and one with 4 health are made: Both start with 1 health.
• A drop of 3 coins on relaxed, and rolls spread evenly from 0 to 1. You take the average of the loot over all the rolls: The average is 3.75, and on hard the average is 2.25.
• The game starts on normal. The player chooses hard: A hit of 10 now does 15, and the change is counted once.
• The setting is normal. The player chooses normal again: Nothing changes and no change is counted.
• The player chose hard and locked the choice. The player tries to choose relaxed: The setting stays hard.
• An enemy with 30 of 60 health. The setting changes so its maximum becomes 90: It has 45 of 90 health, still half.

Works well with

• Health and Damage: The multiplier belongs where damage reaches the player, so the weapon and the enemy never scale it again. Let the damage rules work out the hit first, then apply the multiplier once.
• Loot Table: The loot setting multiplies the amount, not the odds. Roll what drops first, then scale how many.
• Meta-Progression: Upgrades earned over many runs and a difficulty the player picked both change how hard the game is. Show both, so the player knows what they chose.

Clashes with Dynamic Difficulty: A game that adapts quietly can undo the setting the player chose, so a player on hard finds the game easing off. Make the adapting part work inside the chosen setting, or switch it off on the hardest setting and tell the player.

Common questions

Where it comes from

We could not find a reliable origin for this one yet.

Where this mechanic comes from has not been researched yet.

Games are named only as references. Names and marks belong to their owners, and nothing here is endorsed by them.

What was checked

• 17 tests pass on the reference code.
• The state diagram was checked against the code, at the default values and at every listed low and high value.

This is what separates the blueprint from a catalogue entry: the values on this page come from code that runs.

Your AI gets the code

Tested example code comes through the Spielerando connection, so your AI can use it right away. How to connect it