Minecraft Dungeons:Difficulty

Difficulty is a mechanic $$ that influences the balance by affecting the challenge of gameplay.

Difficulty modes
There are three sequential difficulty modes: Default, Adventure , and Apocalypse. Defeating the boss at and completing it on a difficulty setting opens the next mode. On higher difficulty modes, mobs are harder to defeat, more numerous, and occur more often with new enchantments. However, equipment of higher power is rewarded to players as they traverse higher difficulties, alongside with new gear and artifacts drops and increased experience from mobs. Players can switch between unlocked difficulty modes at any time from the Select Mission Map, retaining all their equipment, and can re-play accessible missions at lower difficulty modes.

The three difficulty modes are depicted by a skull icon that appears more menacing at higher difficulty. They also have their own color, mob, and sound cue to represent the difficulty in the Difficulty Mode selection screen, with Default using blue (a mob and a chicken sound), Adventure with pink (a  mob and a  sound), and Apocalypse with red (a  mob and a  scream sound).

Difficulty exclusive equipment
Difficulty influences the equipment drop pool for missions. As the difficulty increases, some equipment that was already available in default appear in more locations and new equipment that cannot be obtained in Default become available.

At Adventure difficulty, the following equipment becomes available: •

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

• At Apocalypse difficulty, the following equipment becomes available: •

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

Threat levels
The higher the threat level, the higher the minimum and maximum power of weapons, armors, and artifacts that can drop during and after the mission. The number of enemies and the damage they inflict in a mission also increase.

For each threat level, a recommended power level is assigned to provide guidance to players. When opening the Threat Level Panel for a mission, the game positions the slider at a recommended threat level for the player based on the mission's recommended power and the player's power. This practice is known as dynamic game difficulty balancing. In a multiplayer game, the game instead uses the average power of all players present to determine a recommended threat level.

Some missions have a set minimum threat level. The only mission with no adjustable threat level is, the tutorial mission, which is always set at Default I and is inaccessible when set to Adventure or Apocalypse diffculty modes.

Apocalypse Plus
Apocalypse Plus is an extension upon the existing Apocalypse difficulty mode that aims to be, especially at its most difficult state, an "impossibly hard" challenge for players and encourage the use of "highly optimized" equipment setups.

Consisting of 25 threat levels appended upon Apocalypse VII, sharing the threat level slider, Apocalypse Plus applies stat enhancing modifiers to mobs and permit equipment classed as rare to drop more frequently, in addition to increasing the maximum equipment power obtainable.

Players unlock the first three Apocalypse Plus threat levels after completing any mission at Apocalypse VII. To gain access to the next triplet of threat levels, the player must complete a number of boss missions at the higher end of the accessible triplet. The number of boss missions required increases, up to a maximum of 7, with each threat level Triplet. Each boss counts only once per threat level.

Boss missions include:, , , , , , , , , , , , and.

The, and  aren't counted as boss missions despite them harboring one or two bosses.