How much does the difficulty setting influence?

[Jet]

I know it makes combat harder, but does it make your cult harder to manage too? Does it give you more followers with negative traits or skew resource drops or anything like that?

[Speaker Terenus]

Can't say. I did my first playthrough on max difficulty, and only struggled a few times with certain bosses.(never more than a an hour of being "stuck" though).

As for the cult side of things, I did notice that most of my followers had negative traits upon first being recruited, but as you progress none of the drawbacks cult-side seem to matter. Again I have no reference for lower difficulties, but my followers were eating pretty shoddy meals for 90% of the game. Could be me sucking at cult management, or it could be an aspect of the difficulty.

Moral of the story is that even on max, this game isn't very difficult at all. I encourage others to play on max if only to make oneself feel cool about it; it's not going to make your playthrough feel full of suffering.

[Demonic Toaster]

https://cult-of-the-lamb.fandom.com/wiki/Difficulties?so=search

[Red Bat]

It affects surprisingly little actually. The biggest impact is vastly increasing the rate of draining meters in the cult, causing them to grow hungry, old, and drain faith faster. This can be dealt with later on with rituals as their length is unaffected. You also start with 1 heart on the highest difficulty, but if you are thinking of turning the difficulty up to begin with, you probably aren't getting hit much anyway. It does cause you to die a few hits sooner with Glass Cannon and Golden Fleece though.

I gave up on Normal a few hours into it and jacked the difficulty up to very hard and only barely noticed the difference.

Worth pointing out any doctrine that generates money is almost always inferior to the other choice on Very Hard due to the difficulty barely impacting money generation compared to everything else.

[Toni 'Bō' Jones]

Difficulty level affects everything, literally. From dungeon enemies, to bosses, to managing your cult (hunger, faith, followers traits, their age) and even rooms layout (you get more complex rooms with more enemies on more extra hard).

It might be hard at the beginning, especially if you're new to the game, unaware of the mechanics and also, slow exploration player. That's where the core challenge is - to survive your first week (up to day 11-12) and adapt to speed and needs of your cult. By the time you're done with your first dungeon run (technically, the second, because very first one is still a tutorial and faith and hunger are unaffected) your faith may be down significantly, some of your folks might be starving and, most likely, one person dissenting against your cult, which would basically means him leaving (or dying by your hands) cos jail isn't available yet and you won't be able to re-educate them without it.

If it's your your second. third ect playthrough you will manage everything better and, depending on your skills and speed, might avoid early case of rioting. After 15-20 days with good managing system you should be handle things relatively easy and your main thing is to not lose dungeon runs. This is very critical early on cos, if defeated, you will come home with empty hands, your cult will hate you for that, and most likely things will escalate more so try not to die often.

Speaking of crusades - I think it is less noticeable thing on extra hard once you gain additional heart and adapt to fights. Enemies deal more damage, have more health and your own damage is lower [depends on what dif lvl you compare with], but it is not *that* critical, especially after beating the first Bishop, cos you will have enough hearts, better weapons, powerful curses and more cards to manage your run. The true difficulty for me was cult management, especially faith, which may or may not be bugged for me, but I've had harder times looking after my dudes rather than fighting. I love to play slow and destroy every object during my crusades too, so that can down your overall time spent during the run.

I also decided to experiment and played on medium difficulty for the first time (my all other saves are extra hard) and the difference was massive. Game felt SO chill, comfy and cozy, compared to rushing anxiety on Extra Hard (I'm talking first time experience). When usually, early on, extra hard, you wake up every morning and look forward to sermons cos your faith is desperately down bad, on medium I didn't even have to perform them regularly cos faith was always high. I dealt with first 3 mini-bosses relatively quick (cos less rooms due to less difficulty) and my faith was barely close to half, nobody dissented, I have twice amount of followers that I usually have during extra hard, and hunger as no longer an issue. It honestly felt boring to play after Day 10, even tho it was relaxing to just chill around your camp.

Also, this was posted in a different topic - all credits to the OP. You can see all the stats, and also that the game will adjust the difficulty, according to your skill level. If you will constantly die on your crusades, the stats will drop in your favor.

Originally posted by CyberShadow:

Setting	Easy	Medium	Hard	ExtraHard
PrimaryDifficulty	Easy	Medium	Hard	ExtraHard
SecondaryDifficulty	Easy / Medium / Hard	Easy / Medium / Hard	Easy / Medium / Hard	Easy / Medium / Hard
HealthDropsMultiplier	2 / 1.5 / 1.25	1.2 / 1 / 0.9	1	1
ChanceOfNegatingDeath	0.4 / 0.4 / 0.2	0.2 / 0 / 0	0	0
PlayerDamageMultiplier	1.5 / 1.25 / 1.25	1	1	1
InvincibleTimeMultiplier	2.5 / 2 / 1.5	1.25 / 1 / 1	0.85 / 0.75 / 0.65	0.65 / 0.5 / 0.4
EnemyHealthMultiplier	0.5	1	1.25	1.5
EnemyRoundsScoreOffset	-3 / -2 / -1	-1 / 0 / 0	0 / 0 / 1	0 / 2 / 3
LuckMultiplier	4 / 3 / 2	2 / 1.5 / 1.3	1.2 / 1 / 0.8	0.8 / 0.75 / 0.6
DungeonRoomMultiplier	0.75 / 1 / 1	1	1 / 1.1 / 1.2	1.2 / 1.3 / 1.3
DeathPeneltyPercentage	15	25	30	50
EscapedPeneltyPercentage	10	15	20	25
DripMultiplier	0.6 / 0.7 / 0.8	0.9 / 1 / 1.1	1 / 1.1 / 1.2	1.4 / 1.5 / 1.6
HungerDepletionMultiplier	0.5 / 0.6 / 0.7	0.8 / 1 / 1.1	1 / 1.1 / 1.2	1.4 / 1.5 / 1.6
IllnessDepletionMultiplier	0.5 / 0.6 / 0.7	0.8 / 1 / 1.1	1.15 / 1.25 / 1.5	1.85 / 2 / 2.25
DissenterDepletionMultiplier	0.5 / 0.6 / 0.7	0.8 / 1 / 1.1	1.15 / 1.25 / 1.5	1.85 / 2 / 2.25
TimeBetweenDissentingMultiplier	0.5 / 0.6 / 0.7	0.8 / 1 / 1.1	1.15 / 1.25 / 1.5	1.6 / 1.5 / 1.7
TimeBetweenDeathMultiplier	0.5 / 0.6 / 0.7	0.8 / 1 / 1.1	1.15 / 1.25 / 1.5	1.6 / 1.5 / 1.7
TimeBetweenIllnessMultiplier	0.5 / 0.6 / 0.7	0.8 / 1 / 1.1	1.15 / 1.25 / 1.5	1.6 / 1.5 / 1.7
TimeBetweenOldAgeMultiplier	0.5 / 0.6 / 0.7	0.8 / 1 / 1.1	1.15 / 1.25 / 1.5	1.6 / 1.5 / 1.7

When there's more than one value per difficulty, the game picks one according to your skill level, which it measures as the ratio of damage done vs. damage taken.

[Jet]

Interesting, thanks for the thorough replies.

I appreciate that this game isn't too intense because I am truly awful at dodging and would hate to lose my favorite followers, but have to admit I would love to experience the unholy union of Rimworld and Binding of Isaac.

[Ykarv]

Combat is so fun on extra hard, but managing the cult gets sooooo damn annoying

[MadConsular]

really need to just limit dodging, being able to dodge without any cost is too op