Minecraft Dungeons:Difficulty

Difficulty is a mechanic $$ that influences the balance by affecting how challenging the gameplay is.

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. 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 assigned a skull icon that is used to depict them, with each skull becoming more menacing, possibly to represent the increased challenge provided with each difficulty. They also have their own colour, 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.

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 Squid Coast, 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 optimised" equipment setups. Consisting of 20 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 Apocalypse Plus after completing at Apocalypse VII.