Difficulty

Difficulty

Tooltip

Difficulty causes monsters to have increased damage and life, as well improving the items they drop.

Certain Bosses with increased difficulty will gain new abilities and begin to drop exclusive items, and have a reduced number of Respawn Attempts.

Difficulty above 4 has no additional effect.

Difficulty is an optional mechanic for certain endgame encounters that increases the area level, monster life and damage, decreases the number of respawns available, and adjusts the odds of receiving certain boss-exclusive uniques of these encounters. Increased difficulty may also cause certain monsters or encounters to gain additional skills or effects. Difficulty is capped at 4.

Difficulty can be set before opening portals to the pinnacle encounter at the Realmgate. Each subsequent difficulty requires completing the pinnacle encounter at the previous difficulty. Higher difficulties also require more splinters to access (x50 at Difficulty 1, x75 at Difficulty 2, and x100 at Difficulty 3).

For specific details on the effects of difficulty on each area/encounter or pinnacle boss, see the respective pages:

Encounter	Location/Boss	Splinters
Expedition	Expedition Logbook - Olroth, Origin of the Fall	Runic SplinterRunic SplinterStack Size: 300Consume at least 50 Splinters at the Realmgate to travel to the Kalguuran Tomb.
Delirium	Simulacrum	Simulacrum SplinterSimulacrum SplinterStack Size: 300Consume at least 50 Splinters at the Realmgate to enter the Simulacrum.
Ritual	Crux of Nothingness - The King in the Mists	Petition SplinterPetition SplinterStack Size: 300Consume at least 50 Splinters at the Realmgate to travel to the Crux of Nothingness.
Breach	Twisted Domain - Xesht, We That Are One	Breach SplinterBreach SplinterStack Size: 300Consume at least 50 Splinters at the Realmgate to enter the Twisted Domain.

Version history

Version	Changes
0.3.0	Currently, access to most Pinnacle Content requires the same key at the easiest, and most difficult version of the content. This creates a negative feeling where at lower difficulties, instead of wanting to run the content, you're often better off just selling it to someone who can run it at maximum difficulty. To address this, each content (excluding The Arbiter of Ash) will now drop Splinters, which will not form into singular Items. Instead of using the singular, combined item in the Realmgate, you can now just bring your Splinters. Upon inserting the splinters into the Realmgate, an interface will appear allowing you to pick your difficulty, each with a different entry cost. As a result of this change, the corresponding Atlas Passive Trees no longer affects the difficulty of the content, and has been changed to purely affect the content in the Maps on the Atlas. The Arbiter of Ash Boss fight is now a static difficulty encounter with infinite portals (previously only infinite portals at difficulty 0). The rewards of this fight now match the previous difficulty 4 rewards.
0.2.0f	Pinnacle Bosses now have unlimited respawn attempts at Difficulty 0.
0.1.0	Introduced to the game.