Freeplay Difficulty

This page shows difficulty settings in freeplay.

## **Upkeep**

A soft population cap of 100% is set when upkeep is enabled. When your population goes over 100%, you can still build more brood tiles but the building cost increases every time a new brood tile is built. Upgrading cost isn't affected. Overall score decreases by 60% if upkeep is disabled.

Because worker population is separated from soldier population, upkeep also applies separately. Each worker contributes 1%. Each soldier (non-worker) contributes a certain percentage equal to 10% of their bulding cost.

## **Attacking waves**

Attacking waves can be enabled together with any victory conditions. You have 13 minutes free of invasion to build up your colony. Attacking waves come from a nearby spawner and invade your nest every 6 minutes afterwards. If you stay holed up in your nest, attacking waves will appear consecutively after you have finally dug to the surface. The inbetween time is shown in the top right corner of the screen.

Wave enemies are randomly generated based on your choices, without harmless enemies. They increase in number and strength over time. Uber creatures may appear from the 15th wave onward. Wave enemies aren't edible. Number and type of wave enemies is affected by environmental difficulty.

Only colony-originated units can interact with wave enemies.

You can only save after all wave enemies have been killed. Overall score increases by 10% if attacking waves are enabled.

## **Environmental difficulty**

Environmental dificulty affects number and variant of roaming enemies, preparing time, size and frequency of nest invasion, difficulty increasing speed. You can set the environmental difficulty of a freeplay game from easy to impossible. Overall score increases by 0%/ 40%/ 100%/ 140%/ 200%.

You can set starting environmental difficulty from 0% up to 60%/ 90%/ 120%/ 150%/ 250%. You can hover your cursor over the *Menu* button in the top right corner of the screen to see the current difficulty.

You can control the difficulty increasing pattern.

* **Constant**: Difficulty remains the same all the time.

* **Ramp**: Difficulty increases steadily over time. You can only set starting difficulty up to 100%.

* **Spike**: Difficulty remains the same most of the time. It occasionally spikes up for a random amount of time before returning to **Constant**.

* **Ramp with spike**: Difficulty increases steadily over time. You can only set starting difficulty up to 100%. It occasionally spikes up for a random amount of time before returning to **Ramp**.

* **Scale with colony**: Difficulty increases along with the number of brood tiles you build and upgrade.

* **Random**: Difficulty is randomized occasionally and stays there for a random amount of time.

You can control whether environmental difficulty increases drastically when you are about to reach the goal.

Food amount decreases the higher environmental difficulty becomes after it has reached 200%.

## **Powerscaling**

### **Descriptions**

Powerscaled enemies start appearing on the map after environmental difficulty has reached 100%. The extent of powerscaling will be unofficially called *rank* in this wiki to differentiate it from *level* of ant units.

Powerscaled enemies become larger, up to only triple their original size. Their stats are multiplied corresponding to their rank.

Health, attack damage and effects (damage-over-time, regeneration-over-time, buff, debuff) are calculated based on the following formula.

*Stat (rank x)* = *base stat* \* ([x + 1]2 \* 0.1 + 0.9)

Damage reflection and knockback distance is calculated a bit differently.

*Stat (rank x)* = *base stat* \* ([x + 1]2 \* 0.01 + 0.99)

If you enable creature information, rank is represented by a yellow star with a corresponding number right next to it. Rank 14 or above is represented by a star with a plus symbol.

Powerscaling doesn't affect underground enemies, wave enemies and landmark enemies.

### **Appearances**

Powerscaled enemies also appear in:

* **Babysitting**

* **Occupation**

* **Adventure**

* **Occupation 2**

* **Festive Spider**

## **Other settings**

You can control whether enemies fight each other. Enemies only fight each other infrequently, however. The infighting chance and duration increases along with difficulty. Overall score increases by 150% if enemy infighting is disabled.

You can control whether enemies can enter the underground area. You have a certain amount of time free of invasion to build up your colony, depending on starting difficulty. If the nest entrance has already been connected to the queen, it will be automatically excavated when enemies are about to invade. Overall score increases by 50% if nest invasion is enabled.

You can set the food amount that dead creatures grant from 0% to 300%. Overall score changes accordingly by 1% for every 5% increase or decrease in food amount.

If fog of war is enabled, enemies that are too far from your line of sight will be hidden. You can still see landmarks beneath the fog. Overall score increases by 150%.

## **References**

1. ↑ https://forum.slugdisco.com/index.php?threads/bug-fix-patch-0-1352-hotfix-0-1353.2355/
2. ↑ https://forum.slugdisco.com/index.php?threads/beta-test-0-21142-freeplay-changes-fixes.4164/
3. ↑ Confirmed by John on Discord (25/1/2023).