Difficulty

The difficulty setting is unlocked after beating the game for the first time. To access the difficulty settings, you must talk to Asura in the Living Room and have him change the game's difficulty for you, or in the command console in the Nexus Chamber room. This difficulty setting also applies in the Training Room. You can also see what difficulty you chose before run by icon in a Mirage entrance. There are four different difficulty levels - Normal, Hard, Epic, and Real Mirage - and difficulty modifier - Pandemonium I and II - all of which change your gameplay a bit:

### Normal

The default difficulty, and the one everyone is used to playing on before they are more experienced. The highest rank you'll usually get when beating the game is an S. If the player is about to die, they will instead remain at 1 HP, release a massive shield blast effect, and a random hero other than the hero chosen by the player will appear alongside them, saying "I'm coming to help you!". This hero will use specific skills that will not have any styles, and have the same cooldowns as the original, as well as their default attack and dodges, will not mimic the currently equipped skin and will follow the player along for the rest of the game. Heroes who require resource management, such as Oli's bolts and Hillding's Wrath, will not use said resources and will simply have longer-cooldown skills. Additionally, after spawning the rescue hero, the player will remain unflinching and unable to be killed for 15 seconds.

### Hard

Unlocked after beating the game on Normal difficulty. While playing in Hard, you no longer have the hero rescue effect, more enemies spawn and enemies are a bit more likely to be elite. New, slightly more difficult enemies are released in most biomes as well.

* Samurai biome: Monk
* Undead biome: Pom Pom & Dah Dah
* Desert biome: Desert Night Light
* China biome: Pinky Tornado
* Wild West biome: None
* Elfland biome: Elfkin Sorceress, Pack Leader, Rabbit Leader
* Stronghold biome: Commander
* Norse biome: None
* Imperium biome: The long rooms are enhanced, now containing two Battle Engineers, two Artillery Operators, a Sergeant and Cavalry Soldiers
* Arcarune Biome: None

A new, stronger class of rare enemies - Champions - are further intoduced in each biome, except China. Meyer's trials now appear on the first floor of the biome/scene. The highest rank you'll usually get when beating the game is an SS.

### Epic

Unlocked after beating the game on Hard difficulty. Just like Hard, but many more enemies spawn and elite enemies are more likely to appear. Elite enemies can now spawn with a new boost: a permanent unflinching state that makes them very hard to take out. Stun is less effective here and stun protection kicks in faster. It's almost impossible to beat the game in Epic and not get an SSS rank.

### Real Mirage

Unlocked after beating the game on Epic difficulty. Just like Epic, but more enemies spawn in every room, and they have more health and deal more damage. Each floor now has additional enemy room. Health Potion drop rates from killing regular enemies and the appearance rates of Health Potion secret rooms are heavily reduced, although Health Potions can now be purchased in Shops at the cost of 70 Gold. Revive invincibility is taken away. All bosses are buffed to have insane amounts of health and new moves that make them much harder to cope with, and are now immune to all control effects. Moves that would usually apply control affects will now only apply slightly longer stun on them than regular attacks would.

### Pandemonium I

Pandemonium is a difficulty modifier, that is placed to the left of the difficulty option, and can be enabled or disabled separately. It is shown by a C followed by the number 1 in roman numerals. When this difficulty modifier is enabled, all enemies, including bosses, have double health and deal double damage, but you also get double gemstone rewards at the end of a run.

### Pandemonium II

Pandemonium II is a difficulty modifier. Just like Pandemonium I, it is placed to the left of the difficulty option, and can be enabled or disabled seperately. It is shown by a C follower by the number 2 in roman numerals. When this difficulty modifier is enabled, there is a list of modifiers added on runs:

* All enemies, including bosses, gain massively increased health and become massively more aggressive, based on stage progression.
* Champions spawn in pairs, and any champion can appear, even those that come from different biomes. There is a chance that you can meet two of the same champion in one room. Champions that typically spawn in pairs now can spawn as only one from pair (for example only one Champion Elf Archer, or only one Champion Bull, without Officer), but you can stiil encounter those champions in pair, so you get three champions in one room ( For example, pair of Champion Bull and Officerand also Champion Karakasa in same room).
* Sublimating Souls and Marks of Ouroboros no longer spawn at set points during a run, instead both of them now have a chance to drop from defeated enemies, and are guaranteed to drop after bosses. For Naga heroes, all four Combat Arts can be active at the same time. Despite the fact that since Sublimating Souls and Marks of Ouroboros no longer spawn at set points during a run, you can get only 11 Souls or Marks during a run, after collecting 11th one no more will spawn, even from bosses. Each Sublimating Soul will drop with a Transmigrating Soul. Transmigrating Souls will not be dropped by mini-bosses anymore when Pandemonium II is active.
* All gemstone rewards received at the end of a run are increased by 150% (when you died or defeated Asurendra).

## Trivia

* The sprite of the table in front of Asura shows little plaques of the first three difficulties, shaped like the lion, dragon, and asura designs of the first three Difficulty levels from the Difficulties menu. Real Mirage is not included because the mode did not exist when the game was released.