Originally posted by vinyblaster:

Originally posted by Faceplant8:

I agree that no-map doesn't really change the difficulty... until you get to Mistlands, assuming you're also playing no-portal. You can get lost extremely easily, and, besides the obvious issues of having to scramble for a place to sleep at night, you can also get into situations when you're food is running out and/or your weapons and armor are breaking. Not to mention the difficulty in acquiring wood.

I think no-portal makes even more of a difference, for all of the reasons listed above, but also having to potentially run across dangerous territory multiple times, rather than taking the express flight. Not to mention just being able to go to your main base at night to restock and reload, and being able hop in your portal at the first sign of danger to do the same.

For me, though, I don't think any real difficulty increase is very meaningful unless you're playing permadeath. I played permadeath until ML came out, and stopped because I thought it would be difficult to get all the way to ML without dyeing once, and I was probably right.

I think I'm about ready to switch back to playing PD because, any time I get into a difficult situation, or contemplate something challenging, I always have it in the back of my mind that it really doesn't matter, since I'll just respawn and have to work through getting my stuff back (or not).

For me, without PD, nothing really seems like a challenge. Take on a 2* soldier with knives and Fenris armor? Sure! It's not like it's going to be game-over.

I'm currently following a PD YT series where the guy is currently exploring mistlands so definitely possible.

Based on some other comments I feel like we would need to agree on a definition of "difficulty" first.

Originally posted by Veseljko:

Mods can change difficulty a lot. Specifically Creature Level and Loot Control mod.
This mod scales difficulty on 3 basis:
1. Stronger enemies further away from start point
2. Enemies become stronger with each boss killed
3. Enemies become stronger based on days passed in your world

There are also zone levels - Enemies become stronger when you keep slaying them in the same zone. It goes up to level 3 which means more starred enemies will be spawned in that zone. And cooldown timer for zones to reset to level 0 is really long (dont remember exactly, but this can be configured). Also, if you increase one zone to level 3, all the neighboring zones will be increased to level 2 and their neighboring zones to level 1.

And if this is not enough for you, it also has two more tweaks for enemies - colors and infusions. So you will be fighting armored fire infused greydwarfs, regenerating frost infused trolls etc…

Everything is adjustable and if you want to set enemies to more than 2 stars, i suggest to add another mod that will improve your stats. Epic loot or jewel crafting mod is a good choice, together with honey+ mod for a slightly better foods.