The Difficulty Update

It's finally time for us to release the long awaited difficulty update!

We listened to your feedback and we reworked the game's difficulty while still preserving the challenge of the game for those that want it.

The Old System

Previously, the game had four levels, each one harder than the next:

• Scout, awarding a Bronze Star

• Venturer, awarding a Silver Star

• Explorer, awarding a Gold Star

• Pioneer, awarding a Diamond Star

However, not only did some people find the game too hard even on Scout, many also thought there was too big a gap between the different levels. We also had people who wanted to mix and match levels, for instance, have the item rewards and extra mutation rates of Pioneer combined with the Undo of lower levels.

Despite all that, we wanted to make sure experienced players could keep enjoying the same game they'd been enjoying since release!

Here is how we decided to address those different issues:

Relaxed mode

For those that really want the most casual experience possible, we added a relaxed mode where killed creatures come back to your deck (no permadeath) and all creatures get fully healed between battles.

We hope this will allow a greater variety of players to enjoy the game!

New Baseline Difficulty

The new base difficulty is called Standard and it corresponds to the old "Scout" difficulty.

Rather than being labeled as an "easy" mode, it is now more appropriately referred to as the standard, baseline difficulty for Decktamer.

Intermediary Levels

To solve the issue of the excessive difficulty spikes from one level to the next, we added an intermediary "Journeyman" level between Standard (formerly Scout) and Venturer. Therefore, the progression now goes like this:

• Standard (which used to be called Scout), awarding a Green Star,

• Journeyman, awarding Bronze Star

• Venturer, awarding a Silver Star

• Explorer, awarding a Gold Star

• Pioneer, awarding a Diamond Star

Some of these difficulty presets have been slightly adjusted but don't worry, Pioneer stayed the exact same.

What's more, we also added optional intermediary levels between those, for people who want to be guided extra smoothly up the curve. These are called Standard+, Journeyman+, Venturer+, etc.

These new levels should make progressing from a beginner to an experienced player an overall smoother and less punishing experience.

Please note that to access these, you must first beat the game in Standard, then select "Challenge" in the difficulty selection menu.

Customization

To allow players to mix and match the settings of the different levels (or even play the game in a version even harder than Pioneer!) we came up with a list of modifiers you can use to customize your very own difficulty settings!

The game will evaluate your settings and award you a star that corresponds to their difficulty.

The modifiers in question are:

• Undo Amount Per Battle

• Heal Between Battles

• Heal Before Boss

• Starting Items

• Item Rewards

• Encounter Choice Reroll (more about that below)

• Enemy Strength

• Boss Strength

• Syringe Damage

• Taming Chance

• Heal on Tame

• Starter Choice

• Creature Permadeath

To customize your settings, click the Gear Button in the "Challenge Runs" menu.

Steam post image The difficulty bar will update in real time as you adjust the sliders!

You can also share your settings with other players or import another player's settings by using the green button in the customize menu.

New feature: The Encounter Choice Reroll

Present only in lower difficulty levels, this feature gives the player more control over the game's RNG by allowing to generate a new set of enemies / item rewards / events.

In Standard, it can be used once before each encounter. In higher difficulties, it can be used only a handful of times in the entire run, and of course, there's no reroll in Pioneer (but then again, you can customize that!).

Conclusion

This update took some time to come out but we hope it will make the game better. The difficulty of the game was definitely one of the biggest criticism of the game and we hope this update will address that by essentially allowing you the player, to adjust it to your heart's content.

In the meantime, we'll be working on the next updates in our roadmap!

Thank you for your support and see you soon!