Difficulty

**Difficulty** is an optional gaming scale affecting several in-game aspects in one's game. Difficulty settings are well known throughout the gaming industry, and *Yandere Slayer* features many different difficulty settings and effects.

## Difficulties

In order from easiest to most challenging, most *Yandere Slayer* games have the following difficulty settings:

* **Very Easy** Suitable for first-time players.
* **Easy:** Suitable for inexperienced or novice players.
* **Normal:** Suitable for average players.
* **Survivalist:** Suitable for advanced players.
* **Expert:** Suitable for skilled players.
* **Nightmare:** Unlocked by beating the game on Expert (or Survivalist, if Expert is not available).

*Yandere Slayer 4* features a downloadable mode known as Slayer of Slayers, which is not to be confused for a difficulty mode; rather, it features modified versions of certain campaign missions.

## Gameplay Changes

The difficulty the player chooses will alter several aspects of gameplay. Difficulty generally affects the following aspects (actual effects vary on a per-game basis):

* **Damage taken:** On Nightmare, most of the players' armors will be lucky to survive one bullet hit, while on Easy more advanced armors can very well take ten bullet hits before flatlining from damage.
	+ *Yandere Slayer 1*: On all difficulties except Nightmare, armors automatically repair and lose their damage status. The tougher the difficulty, the slower the repairs. However, on Nightmare, armor damage does not regenerate, and the amount of damage saves at checkpoints.
* **Enemy performance:** On tougher difficulties, enemies may be more evasive and aggressive, being harder to hit and attacking the player more actively.
* **Enemy strength:** Tougher difficulties may make enemies more resilient, requiring more damage to take them down. This mostly applies to the games up to and including *Yandere Slayer: Hot Pursuit*.
* **Enemy composition:** Higher difficulties may spawn additional enemies and/or change the location of specific targets. This is common practice in the series regarding the spawning of named love rivals; otherwise, this notably applies to various missions in *Yandere Slayer 4*,
* **Player equipment:**
	+ **Weapons:** On Very Easy, armors have far more than enough weapons to complete the chapter, while tougher difficulties will require more careful use of a player's limited weapons. In *Yandere Slayer 4* whenever the player runs out of standard weapons, they will receive two extra weapons after several seconds. This applies for all modes except "Casual -Easy-", where the player has access to infinite standard weapons right at the start of the chapter.
	+ **Swords:** In games swords can be limited, it tends to apply only in the higher difficulty, while lower ones provide infinite swords. *Yandere Slayer: Hot Pursuit* is a notable exception, where sword battery is limited on all difficulty settings.
* **Armor regenerate:** In games that feature a Return Line, the player's armor will not be regenerated when using it on Nightmare difficulty. The same applies to *Yandere Slayer 4's* frontline returning.
* **Anti-death assistance:** In certain games, lower difficulties will allow the player to survive crashes with the ground, only receiving damage instead.