Difficulty

Pascal's Wager has two difficulty levels in story mode, Casual and Normal. Dance of the Throne (Arcade) adds a third, Hard (named Expert in the code, difficulty id 3). The game never shows the actual numbers. Casual changes three things about your hero (damage taken, Stamina and Poise), adds guideposts, and locks 31 achievements. Enemy placement and enemy stats are the same as Normal. A separate hidden item, the Egg of the Bearer, halves damage on any difficulty.

What each level changes#

Hard changes only the enemies. On the player side it counts as Normal, because the game converts any level above Normal back to Normal for combat.

Casual in detail#

• Damage reduction. Every damage value aimed at your hero is multiplied by 0.65: normal hits, trick and trap hits, and health-draining statuses such as Bleed or Poison (Status effects#Damage over time formula). It does not reduce Sanity loss. Where this sits in the calculation: Damage formula#8. Difficulty and the Egg.
• Poise +130. Heroes have 0 base Toughness, so on Normal almost any hit staggers you. With 130 on Casual you absorb the first two ordinary hits (most enemy hits deal 51 Poise: 739 of the 939 enemy move rows with any Poise damage) and the third staggers. Terrence has no Poise Regen, so his bonus may not refill by itself. The worked example and the regeneration rules are in Poise and stagger (calculated; not tested in game).
• Stamina +20%. For example, Terrence starts with 363 stamina instead of 303 (table in Stamina#Maximum stamina).
• The TapTap cloud-demo build used stronger values (×0.5 damage, +230 poise, +50% stamina). They do not apply to the PC release.

Switching difficulty#

You choose the difficulty when starting a new game. In the Gameplay settings you can later downgrade Normal to Casual. This needs a hold-to-confirm and cannot be undone, and the game saves immediately. There is no way back to Normal. Casual's stamina and poise bonuses are applied when the hero's stats are next initialised (for example after a load or rest). The damage reduction applies immediately (inferred from where each is applied).

Achievements locked by Casual#

Each achievement has a minimum difficulty. 51 can be earned on any level and 31 need Normal. The Normal-only ones include every ending and chapter achievement (Crazy Prologue, Father and Daughter, Wedding under the Moon, Deicide, The Apostasy, Demiurge's Destruction, ...), the five Dark Mist maze ranks (Dark Mist Lord to Dark Mist Drifter), the character-story achievements (The Hero Who Went Astray to The Foreign Swordsman), Legendary Courier, Endless Nightmare and Empress of the Eternal Night. See Achievements.

Egg of the Bearer (beginner item)#

Egg of the Bearer (item 10018) is a key item that works on any difficulty:

• While it is in your inventory, all damage you take is halved (×0.5). This stacks multiplicatively with Casual: 0.65 × 0.5 = ×0.325. It covers hits and damage-over-time.
• A special status icon appears on the HUD while you carry it.
• How to get it: in the first chapter, an interaction asks whether you want to eat it. Answering yes completes quest 15087, which gives you the egg. A matching prompt lets you give it back (quest 15088).
• It is removed on New Game Plus (flag GamePlusRemove, and the restart code deletes it explicitly). It is also consumed when you start an Obsession Challenge boss fight.
• Having the Egg's HUD icon on screen marks the run as having used it. The mark is cleared at every New Game Plus restart (together with the Egg itself), so Legendary Courier effectively checks that you reach the fourth journey (GameLoopMax = 4) without the mark in that final run (inferred from the restart code).
• The game's own flavour text mocks people who take it.

Hidden mechanics#

• Casual and the Egg reduce damage after every other calculation (armour, resistances, guarding), as the very last multipliers (before rounding and shields; see Damage formula#9. Rounding, shields and death).
• Casual does not touch enemy health, damage or AI. The whole difference is on your side.
• The settings menu can only lower the difficulty. A Casual save can never earn the 31 Normal-only achievements, even after switching.
• In Arcade, choosing Casual loads the Normal enemy table; Casual there only changes the player-side bonuses and the ledge-fall rule.

Sources#

• reference/lua_src/luascript/logic/battle/battledata.lua: 18–22 (levels Casual 1, Normal 2, Expert/Hard 3), 124–143 (Hard clamped to Normal; Egg flag).
• gamedata/playerdefine/animalbase_value_define.lua: 22–28 (CasualDamageRatio 0.65, CasualToughnessAdd 130, CasualEnergyRatio 0.2, cloud values, NoobItemDamageRatio 0.5).
• luascript/logic/playervalue/animalbase_value.lua: 200–215 (Casual base bonuses), 2006–2023, 2701–2707, 2883–2889 (damage multipliers), 3135–3156; logic/status/status104.lua: 15–50 (damage-over-time).
• luascript/structdata/fs_savestory.lua: 1125–1136 (Casual uses the Normal enemy pattern), 2039–2047; fs_itemlist.lua: 127–153 (Egg check, removal on restart); ui/controller/challengectrl.lua: 598–616.
• luascript/controller/controllerstorymode.lua: 249, 1693–1699, 6822 (road signs), 6301 (minimum difficulty for achievements), 9440–9441 and 1528–1541 (Legendary Courier); ui/controller/settingctrl.lua: 440–460 (one-way switch); ui/controller/lobbymainctrl.lua: 2574–2578.
• luascript/structdata/ms_arcademonsterproperty.lua: 26–41 (Casual → Normal table); logic/player/animalbase.lua: 1526–1528, 13680–13690 (Arcade Casual ledge rule).
• Tables: es_achievement.lua (leastUnlockDiff: 51 rows = 1, 31 rows = 2; AchievementId 20005); es_itemdata.lua ItemId 10018 (GamePlusRemove 1); es_storyquest.lua rows 184–185 (QuestId 15087/15088); es_storydialog.lua rows 151, 155; es_arcademonsterproperty.lua (Level 2 vs 3 MonsterLevel); GameText UI_ANNO_GAMEMODE_CASUAL, UI_ANNO_CHANGEGAMEMODE, UI_COMMON_GAMEMODE_HARDCORE.
• Verified in a second pass: es_skilldata.lua ToughnessSub of the 939 enemy rows with any Poise damage (739 rows = 51, 16 rows = 999; recounted in build/wiki/pass/scripts/combat/c4.py), es_heropropertydata.lua PropertyId 14 (ToughnessRecovery; absent for HeroId 10001), fs_savestory.lua 1255 (Restart clears the Egg mark), mainmenuctrl.lua 4466–4473 (the Egg's HUD icon sets the mark), es_arcademonsterproperty.lua (77 matched hero/grade pairs, median +5 levels, range 0 to +22).