An Introduction to Modded Difficulties¶

Post Info
Author	u/littlebobbytables9
Post Date	2022-06-07
Original Post Link	An intro to modded difficulties

Since a lot of the posts in here are going to reference difficulty mods, I thought it would be good to have a quick overview of the various mods and the effect those have on gameplay.

Why Difficulty Mods?¶

Haz 5 has an upper limit when it comes to testing skill and builds. Past a certain individual skill level solo stops being interesting very quickly unless you attempt increasingly arcane self-imposed challenges like random builds, no-mod builds, and the like. You can do an ok job testing individual skill in multiplayer by carrying very poor teammates, but finding those teams is inconsistent and ultimately it's only a test of your individual skill. Ultimately, there is no way for haz 5 to test good teamplay, because a good team will steamroll any vanilla content put in front of them, so we have to turn to mods for missions where good teamplay is required.

Similarly it's also hard to test builds in haz 5. Essentially any build with sufficient individual skill is enough to excel and even carry in haz 5, so it's difficult to test comparative statements about different builds. You can take builds or even team compositions entirely devoted to either single target or AOE with none of the other, and it doesn't have much of an impact on success rate simply because neither of those things are required to succeed in haz 5. Worse, even what "good" means is warped by the environment- if winning is practically guaranteed no matter what, builds or strategies that have high ceilings but require more setup or time end up looking impotent as everyone else kills all the enemies before you can execute- in the extremes, a "kill stealing meta" where having high kills on the score screen is seen as proof of a good build even if their contributions ultimately amounted to nothing, because contributing nothing isn't punished by vanilla content.

So that's where difficulty mods come in, or at least the difficulty mods that we at r/technicaldrg are interested in (see the breakdown later in the post). They provide an environment that tests both individual skill and also teamplay in multiplayer. They provide an environment that makes it very obvious the differences in power level between builds. They require balanced compositions with strong single target and AOE. The good ones preserve vanilla balance as much as possible. And they're very fun to play.

What they are not, ideally, is a power fantasy. While combining difficulty mods with other mods that buff weapons or make other changes is a perfectly legitimate way to play the game, here we focus on preserving the vanilla game as much as possible. All of the changes are there to make the game harder, with a few exceptions out of necessity: if you don't increase doretta health and reduce the nitra cost of resupplies it makes unfun failstates much too likely, much more likely than in vanilla. Doing this keeps balance aligned with vanilla while still making the game much harder/more skill testing. Therefore even if you're only interested in haz 5, the posts in this subreddit will still be valid.

How to Use Difficulty Mods¶

While there still exist standalone mods for some of these on mod.io, the Custom Difficulty mod has basically made them obsolete since it can reproduce any other difficulty mod while also allowing fine-grained control of any of the variables, changing difficulties without having to disband the lobby, changing resupply cost and enemy cap without additional mods, and many other advantages.

It can be a bit overwhelming at first, but Custom Difficulty is easy to use if you just copy-paste difficulty strings from this repo which has strings for many of the common difficulties like haz 6, 7, and 6x2. If it doesn't have a string for your desired difficulty and that difficulty exists as a standalone mod, you can simply enable both mods and Custom Difficulty will import the mod allowing you to save it as a new difficulty string.

Custom Difficulty Presets

Link: https://github.com/trumank/drg-custom-difficulties

If you'd like to try your hand at modifying an existing difficulty, creating a new difficulty, or simply understanding what all these numbers mean, Virryn wrote a great guide to Custom Difficulty that you can read here.

Custom Difficulty Guide

Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/131FqOl0FnwiAslvvDSYkV35oBQXYx2kH0oZYwEpjoBI

But I'll give special attention to the most important one here:

The Enemy Count Modifier¶

The common factor with nearly every difficulty mod is that they all increase the EnemyCountModifier field in the hazard file. This variable serves as a multiplier on nearly¹ all spawns in the game so turning it up means more bugs. Doubling it will cause twice the bugs to spawn, so if you ever see "5x3" or "6x2" that means taking the base difficulty, in this case haz 5 or haz 6, and then multiplying EnemyCountModifier by the multiplier.

Example

{
    "EnemyCountModifier": [
        0.85, // 1 player scaling
        0.85, // 2 players scaling
        1.25, // 3 players scaling
        1.5   // 4 players scaling
    ],
    // ...
}

Enemy Cap¶

The game has a limit on the number of enemies on the map at any one time, which by default is 60 swarmers and 60 enemies. Playing mods that increase the Enemy Count will quickly run into this cap, blunting the effect of the increased spawns. Playing even just 5x2 will feel very different with the vanilla enemy cap compared to a higher enemy cap, and if you want to play very high modifiers like 5x6 or 4x20 for the memes, you'll need to raise your cap extremely high. For most difficulties people actually play, though, a cap of [90, 120, 180, 180] is going to be sufficient, where the array goes from 1 player to 4 players.

Example

{
    "MaxActiveEnemies": [
        90,  // 1 player scaling
        120, // 2 players scaling
        180, // 3 players scaling
        180  // 4 players scaling
    ],
    // ...
}

Another cap that exists in the game is the enemy aggro cap. By default only 32 enemies can be aggroed on a given player at any time, so if you have more than 32 enemies on the map in a solo mission (or more than 128 enemies in a 4 player mission) then the other enemies just path around randomly until a slot opens up. Unfortunately, there is no way to change this with mods, at least not yet, and it means that very high multipliers become more frustrating than difficult, as once you fill the map with bugs they'll only come to you at a relatively slow but continuous trickle rather than all at once.

Common Difficulty Mods¶

A Path to Hazard 6x2

For people who have never played modded difficulties or are new to modded difficulties, a reasonable progression from Hazard 5 to harder difficulties (e.g. Hazard 6x2) is to play the following chain of difficulties, becoming more comfortable in each before progressing to the next difficulty:

\( \text{Hazard 6} \to \text{Hazard 5x2} \to \text{Hazard 6x1.5} \to \text{Hazard 6x2} \)

Hazard 6 lets you become more familiar with increased enemy movement speed, more disruptive enemies, increased attack damage, and other stats that are changed from Hazard 5.
Hazard 5x2 lets you become more familiar with larger swarm sizes.
Hazard 6x1.5 is harder than Hazard 6, but still not as hard as Hazard 6x2, letting you become more familiar with larger Hazard 6 swarms.
And finally is Hazard 6x2.

Starship Troopers / Starship Troopers Elite¶

The most common difficulty mod by far, starship troopers is equivalent to haz 4 with a x2 modifier and STE a x3 modifier. Haz 4 movement speed means that being able to kite is basically a cheat code and in combo with halfway reasonable AOE removes much of the difficulty.

Hazard 5 with Multipliers¶

The second most popular difficulty mod, most people play 5x2 with some 5x3 and the occasional 5xtoo much lobby. Many people view these as just AOE fests, which is mostly true. While increasing the enemy count modifier does lead to more bugs, making AOE better, it does also increases the number of menaces, mactera, praetorians, etc. so there is also an increase in the value of or need for single target damage. But haz 5 speed and damage means these difficulties are still pretty forgiving, so they can be a good intro to modded difficulties.

Hazard 6¶

Finally the good stuff. A longer explanation from Ike himself is here, but the general idea is that Haz 6 started with a straightforward extrapolation from the jump from haz 4 to 5, and then was adjusted with the goal of making a fun higher difficulty that preserved the base game balance as much as possible. Note that some of the information in that document about what various difficulty fields do is wrong, refer to virryn's document to be safe.

Enemy speed and damage is increased in haz 6, making kiting less effective (though still obviously useful) and punishing poor movement or being out of position. Large enemy health increases, and higher Enemy Diversity means a larger portion of the swarm is the more interesting enemies rather than just grunts. Stationary enemy spawn rates are kicked way up, much higher than a straight extrapolation, which makes different mission types feel very unique and further increases the value of single target damage.

Overall ike did a good job making single target damage just as necessary as AOE clear. It's arguably more valuable, since you'll usually want at least 2 single target focused teammates while generally only needing 1 focused on AOE, though that's more a product of how each functions- twice as many grunts requires barely any more AOE to deal with, while twice as many menaces will require twice as much single target.

This is the difficulty I would most recommend to people starting to get bored with haz 5.

Hazard 7¶

7 is pretty much just more of 6. Even higher enemy speed and projectile speed makes it very punishing, especially with higher enemy damage on top. Very difficult and very much a test of individual skill- it's easy to die to haz 7 bullshit if you aren't 100% paying attention (and sometimes when you are lol). Slows, like that from sticky flames, become less effective since base move speed is so high, so to actually hold a position with sticky requires more lines or additional CC on top. Single target damage is arguably more important than AOE since there are so many special and disruptive enemies.

Hazard 6x2¶

Haz 6 with a x2 multiplier. This is the hardest difficulty that is commonly played. Compared to haz 7 it has more but more forgiving enemies. Compared to 5x2 there is a much higher need for single target damage because of the swarm composition changes and the increase to stationary difficulty and enemy health, making it very balanced. In contrast to 7 it's more a test of team composition and synergy rather than individual skill (as much). Working effectively with your team and mastering group movement through the cave is very important.

Hazard 5x2 Spicy Edition¶

This one is new and actively updated, but aims to be a middle ground between 5x2 and 6x2 to aid in that adjustment (or allow more experienced players to play a similar difficulty with more room for not tryharding). Several variants exist at various points on the spectrum from 5x2 and 6x2.

Hazard 7x1.5, 7x2, 6x3, etc.¶

Steps up from 6x2, these difficulties are rarely played and require a solid team. 7x1.5 is the most comparable, generally being more punishing to mistakes but having a slightly smaller number of enemies compared to 6x2. If you're playing these you probably didn't need to read this post lol.

Excludes regular brood nexus swarmer spawns, swarmer egg spawns, rival enemies, and dreads. ↩

Last update: 2022-09-12 18:59:58