Is the normal difficulty the default one from before?

[Mörkö]

Haven't played for a while and now see that there are combat difficulty options. I guess normal is the exact same as before?

I found the default difficulty somewhat balanced and challenging; unless you are highly overgeared for the biome, but difficulty is just so binary in this game anyway. Do you find the harder combat difficulties fun and fair or do they lead to extreme cheesing? I just tried VH once and got one shotted by a starred skeleton archer while having 44 armor. Felt awkward.

[Suzaku]

Yes, normal is the default.

[Gladi8er65]

I have about 1000 hours solo / vanilla / "normal" (default), and also find it "balanced", but once hard mode was an option I switched over to that (solo / vanilla / hard-mode), nearly 200 more hours now, and find it closer to the challenge level I prefer... I found normal too easy after about the 2nd playthrough.

Edit: Essentially, once I learned all the mobs' moves, it got too easy.

[Mharr]

Yes, the problem with the higher difficulty slider settings is they amp up everything all at once and massively increase the number of attacks that can one-shot you via the stagger mechanics. If you want to experiment with difficulty I'd suggest using devcommands which can individually adjust player and enemy hit points, enemy speed (and size!), stamina costs and regeneration rates by any percentage from 1 to 1000.