Difficulty

Wildermyth has two difficulty settings: combat difficulty and overland difficulty. These are described as follows:

Combat difficulty mostly controls hero health, monster health, armor, and damage. High combat difficulty means heroes are more prone to getting killed in a given situation.

Overland difficulty mostly controls the pace of calamities, time pressure on the overland map, and the frequency of infestation and incursion. It can end up having a big impact on combat difficulty, too, because of calamities!

Hero stats

The starting stat values for a young adult human depend slightly on the combat difficulty level. They are:

	Storyteller	Adventurer	Tragic Hero	Walking Lunch
Health	7	6	5
Speed	1 (+3.4 for 2 natural legs)
Armor	1	0.4	0
Warding	0
Melee Accuracy	105	100		97
Range Accuracy	100			97
Stunt Chance	15			14
Bonus Damage	1	0.4	0
Potency	1	0.4	0
Dodge	50	45
Block	45
Recovery Rate	40	30	25
Retirement Age	45

Monster strength

The starting stats of each monster depend slightly on the combat difficulty level.

Additionally, Calamity cards that strengthen your foes are drawn at timed intervals on the overland map. The interval is shorter at higher overland difficulty levels. Calamity cards are also drawn after every battle, and the number of cards drawn in this fashion depends on the overland difficulty level.

	Storyteller	Adventurer	Tragic Hero	Walking Lunch
Card draw interval	220-240	160-180	120-140	100-120
Cards per battle	1			1.35

Some calamity cards boost monster stats. For these cards, the magnitude of the boost depends on the combat difficulty level:

	Storyteller	Adventurer	Tragic Hero	Walking Lunch
Protection	+1 Armor		+1 Armor, +1 Warding	+2 Armor, +1 Warding
Health	+20%	+25%	+30%	+40%
Damage	+1		+2

A number of calamity cards are removed at the end of each chapter, and this number depends on the overland difficulty. In particular, a small fraction of the total number of calamity cards are removed, and a larger fraction of the calamity cards collected above a threshold number are also removed.

	Storyteller	Adventurer	Tragic Hero	Walking Lunch
Remove one card per	7	9	11	14
Remove this fraction of cards above threshold	80%	70%	33%	0%
Thresholds:
Chapter 1	6	7	10	-
Chapter 2	10	12	18	-
Chapter 3	14	17	26	-
Chapter 4	18	22	34	-

Missions

At higher combat difficulty levels, enemies draw more monster cards in each mission. Typically, enemies draw one extra monster card at Walking Lunch difficulty, but the effect can vary by mission.

Within a mission, doors have a chance to start open at higher combat difficulty levels. The range of a monster's Alarm call also varies with combat difficulty level.

	Storyteller	Adventurer	Tragic Hero	Walking Lunch
Open door chance	0%	25%	50%	50%
Alarm range	8	10	12	14

Overland map

The chance for a tile to become infested and the chance for small groups of heroes to be ambushed in an infested tile both depend on the overland difficulty level.

Also, many aspects of incursions vary with overland difficulty: their frequency, their size, how fast they move, and how quickly they destroy constructions.

When a chapter has a time limit, the limit depends on the overland difficulty.

Resources

On Storyteller overland difficulty, mission victories grant 3 legacy points instead of the usual 2.