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Instanced Dungeon Difficulty

Instanced dungeons have a special setting to easily define different difficulties for the dungeon.

How it works

Difficulties are modeled in part after Final Fantasy 14's level sync system.

Elite armor and weapons get specific elite damage and elite defense based on their level, as you can see on items. When in an instanced dungeon with a difficulty on, the level of item will be temporarily and invisibly lowered to match the level sync.

Here is a specific example: a level 100 sword does 100 damage unenchanted. If a player is in an instanced dungeon with a difficulty that level syncs gear to level 50, the sword will act as a level 50 sword and do 50 damage.

However, if that sword has level 10 sharpness, it will still add the same amount of damage on top of the base damage.

This means that, in instanced dungeons with difficulties, what matters is not so much the level of the gear but the quality of the gear. Players seeking to beat the mythic difficulty will have to work towards getting high quality items from other instanced dungeons and possibly heavily interact with the item upgrade system.

This also makes it nearly impossible for veteran players to stomp on old high-difficulty content and provides an incentive to do it even if their level is well beyond the level of the dungeon.

Party system

To account for player parties, bosses are designed with specific powers which get more dangerous as more players join the arena. Additionally, bosses receive a health boost that scales with the number of players in the instance. The formula multiplies the base health by 0.75 for each player when 2 or more players are present.

Note: Health scaling only applies when 2 or more players are in the instance. Solo players face bosses with standard health values.

How to define a difficulty

Difficulties are defined in the dungeonpackager folder in the dungeon package file of instanced dungeons. This file is located at /plugins/EliteMobs/dungeonpackager/[your_dungeon_name]/[package_file].yml and should be alongside other dungeon settings like contentLevel and name.

Let's take a look at an example:

difficulties:
- levelSync: 60
  name: normal
- levelSync: 50
  name: hard
- levelSync: 40
  name: mythic

This sets three difficulties. Difficulties have two required fields: name and levelSync.

The name is the name of the difficulty, as will appear in the difficulty setting in-game. This can have any name.

The levelSync sets the item level cap for the instanced dungeon, as explained above in this page.

You can have as many or as few difficulties defined as you want. Simply add or remove entries to the difficulties setting using the same format.

Relative Level Sync​

Level sync can also use relative values instead of absolute numbers:

difficulties:
- levelSync: +5
  name: easy
- levelSync: 0
  name: normal
- levelSync: -10
  name: hard

Relative values are calculated from the dungeon's base content level. For example, if a dungeon has content level 60:

  • levelSync: +5 becomes 65
  • levelSync: 0 becomes 60
  • levelSync: -10 becomes 50

This is particularly useful for dynamic dungeons where the content level may vary.

Optional Difficulty ID Field​

When adding difficulties, their IDs will start counting from 0 and increase as you add more difficulties. You can also explicitly set an ID using the optional id field:

difficulties:
- levelSync: 60
  name: normal
  id: 0
- levelSync: 50
  name: hard
  id: 1

If not specified, the ID is automatically assigned based on list order (starting from 0).

Powers based on difficulty​

It is possible to configure bosses to only have powers at specific difficulties. Let's look at an example:

powers:
- filename: invulnerability_fire.yml
  difficultyID:
  - 1
  - 2

Note: this is a part of the configuration file of the custom boss!

In this case, the boss will only have fire invulnerability for difficulties with the ID 1 and 2.

Loot based on difficulty​

It is possible to configure bosses to drop loot specific to an instanced dungeon difficulty. Let's look at an example:

uniqueLootList:
- filename: himiko_boss_drop_axe_tank_normal.yml
  chance: 0.05
  difficultyID: 0

Note: this is a part of the configuration file of the custom boss!

In this case, the boss will only drop the loot himiko_boss_drop_axe_tank_normal.yml for difficulty 0 and has 5% chance of doing so.