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
Perception	10
Recovery Rate	40	30	25
Retirement Age	45
Charisma	15
Tenacity	15

Monster strength

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:

	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 Walking Lunch combat difficulty, enemies draw one extra monster card in each mission.

Within a mission, doors have a chance to start open at higher combat difficulty levels:

Difficulty	Starts Open
Storyteller	0%
Adventurer	25%
Tragic Hero	50%
Walking Lunch	50%

Additionally, the range of a monster's Alarm call varies with combat difficulty level:

Difficulty	Range
Storyteller	8
Adventurer	10
Tragic Hero	12
Walking Lunch	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.