Difficulty

Van Helsing: Final has five standard difficulty levels and five that unlock after reaching specified level with the character. In addition player can toggle hardcore mode at the start of the game which makes death permanent.

During the main campaign you can change difficulty at any point without penalty and the health and damage of the enemies will instantly reflect to the changes. Difficulty levels do not affect what loot you can get and playing on the harder difficulties can actually slow down your farming for loot due to how much longer it takes to kill things. Extra gold and experience bonuses do however help with increasing enchanting costs and experience requirements.

## Standard difficulty levels

If you're new to the genre it's recommended that you pick **normal** difficulty. For ARPG veterans the recommended difficulties are **hard** and **heroic**. You can also try starting out on **fearless** but keep in mind that the **game has not been properly balanced for it** and as such it makes the game very restrictive in terms of what builds and skills you can use.

Balancing problems with fearless difficulty (and above) come from the crazy enemy health multipliers. Many of the skills in the game simply cannot dish out enough damage to comfortably deal with enemies that have 300% additional health. Farming for gear isn't really and option as enemies level up with the player and you receive more than double the experience making it very difficult to keep up with gear without exploits. This means in order to be succesful in fearless you'll need to be good at abusing game mechanics and utilizing the loot you can get.

### Casual

* Enemies have -40% health
* Enemies deal -30% damage
* Maximum fate points per day 5

### Normal

* Enemies have +0% health
* Enemies deal +0% damage
* Maximum fate points per day 15
* +10% more gold

### Hard

* Enemies have +60% health
* Enemies deal +30% damage
* Maximum fate points per day 25
* +10% gold find
* +15% more experience

### Heroic

* Enemies have +156% health (Incorrectly displayed as +150% in game)
* Enemies deal +70% damage
* Maximum fate points per day 35
* +80% gold find
* +80% more experience

### Fearless

* Enemies have +310% health (Incorrectly displayed as +300% in game)
* Enemies deal +135% damage
* Maximum fate points per day 50
* +130% gold find
* +130% more experience

## Unlockable difficulty levels

Inhuman ordeal difficulties are end-game difficulty options meant for well geared usually max level characters looking for more challenge along with the additional bonuses. While first Inhuman ordeal difficulty unlocks at level 25 it's likely that you're not actually prepared for it at that point unless you're looking forward kitting mobs that can take you ages to kill.

While Inhuman ordeal difficulties improve the odds to find rare items it's generally more efficient to lower game difficulty to use equipment with as much magic find as possible with both Player and Katarina. Using Trophies like Harpy feather (+100% magic find and +20% HP to enemies) and Electromagnetic spindle (+25% magic find and +10% HP to enemies) is good way to quickly boost magic find. In adventure mode you should aim to keep Spoils of Triumph at 100% for tripple the change to find epic items.

The extra experience, gold find and maximum fate points per day bonuses can however be useful for buying set items from Pigasus, leveling Glory and collecting fate points.

### Inhuman ordeal 1

* Enemies have +600% health
* Enemies deal +285% damage
* Maximum fate points per day 65
* +200% gold find
* +200% more experience
* +50% chance to find epic items
* Level required: 25

### Inhuman ordeal 2

* Enemies have +1200% health
* Enemies deal +470% damage
* Maximum fate points per day 80
* +300% gold find
* +300% more experience
* +100% chance to find epic items
* Level required: 50

### Inhuman ordeal 3

* Enemies have +2400% health
* Enemies deal +685% damage
* Maximum fate points per day 110
* +450% gold find
* +450% more experience
* +200% chance to find epic items
* Level required: 70

### Inhuman ordeal 4

* Enemies have +3700% health
* Enemies deal +970% damage
* Maximum fate points per day 150
* +600% gold find
* +600% more experience
* +400% chance to find epic items
* Level required: 80

### Inhuman ordeal 5

* Enemies have +9000% health
* Enemies deal +1500% damage
* Maximum fate points per day 200
* +1000% gold find
* +1000% more experience
* +600% chance to find epic items
* Level required: 90

## Enemy level scaling

Enemies scale to players level but this doesn't happen immediately after level up but instead when player enters new area or re-enters the old one (i.e teleport to town and back). If player wants to keep enemies in the area at the level they where when one entered, then player should avoid using teleports or otherwise exiting the area before its been cleared. Katarina can be sent to town to sell any excess.

" *The scaling had to be done because of the addition of the Adventure mode. Simply because there are two game modes that players can hop in and out of, scaling is a must, or one game mode would become trivial after spending time in the other.*"
― megabull
## Enemy stat growth

### Health

Enemies have base min and max HP value ranges for each monster from where game randomly picks Base HP for each enemy. With these base values game calculates health values for each monster at level one.

Enemy health on level 1
 Hard
 Heroic
 Fearless

Knowing the health at level one can calculate the HP for each monster using formula:

* `Level1 HP + (Level1 HP * ((HP Modifier - 100) / 100))`

Growth modifier values can be found from HP column in the Enemy stat growth table Enemy stat growth table.

### Attack

All enemies have base attack of 100 which means you can look at the attack values in Enemy stat growth table directly. Enemy attack determines how much you get out from your defense and resistance values.

Formulate for defense damage reduction:

* `100 - ((attack / (attack + defense)) * 100)`

Note that the formulate can be off be 1% from the value displayed in game.

### Enemy stat growth table

Table below shows how enemy base stats scale according to player level. Values are in percentages so for example enemies will have 3% more health when player character is at level 2 and 6% more when level 3.

1. ↑ NeocoreGames developer megabull on scaling
2. ↑ | Post by NoFoodAfterMidnight
3. ↑ Games config: AverageProperties.cfg