Difficulty

This article is about quest difficulty. For the difficulty of skill checks and saving throws, see Difficulty Class.

There are six different quest difficulty settings in DDO: Solo, Casual, Normal, Hard, Elite, and Reaper. In addition, there are three tiers of play: Heroic for levels 1-20, Epic for levels 21-30, and Legendary for levels 31 and above. A combination of difficulty setting and tier defines content difficulty, ie. Heroic Elite or Epic Hard. Epic and Legendary are often be used interchangeably by players when referring to quests with Heroic and Legendary versions, and if the tier is omit it's often easy to spot the tier via the level of the party leader.

Higher settings are more challenging and more rewarding in terms of Experience, Favor, and loot. Not all difficulties are available for every quest.

Initially, only Solo, Casual and Normal difficulties are available to Free To Play and Premium characters who've never finished the quest before. F2P and Premium characters who have undergone True Reincarnation once can begin Heroic quests on Hard difficulty, while VIPs or characters with two or more past lives can begin quests on Elite and Reaper difficulty. Completing a quest on any difficulty unlocks difficulties up to and including one setting higher. For Epic and Legendary quests, players may enter these on any difficulty as soon as they wish and completing an Epic/Legendary quest on a given difficulty unlocks the respective Heroic difficulties.

While in a party, the first player to enter a quest can usually choose from any difficulty that at least one teammate has unlocked through quest completion. This may not work, particularly if an NPC teleports you into the quest, such as Gladewatch Outpost Defense - in this case, a player and/or the party leader must select the difficulty and load into the quest before the players that haven't unlocked it.

Quests which feature Solo difficulty have no other difficulty settings. A listing of solo-only quests can be found here. Quest-like challenges do not use these difficulty settings at all - they allow the player to select a quest level to play at and scale content based on it. Challenges generally function the same as a quest played on Normal difficulty.

Players may also choose to purchase one-time items in the DDO Store that allow them to unlock a single entry into a quest at a difficulty they have not yet unlocked - options are available for Hard and Elite entry, with the latter also allowing entry on Reaper difficulty.

Solo

• Only available for a select number of quests.
• Dungeon Scaling does not apply.
• Loot level is reduced by 2. Rewards from questgivers are unaffected.
• Enemies and traps have lower CRs and DCs, suitable for a single player.
• Levers, locked doors, secret walls, etc. have reduced CRs and DCs, suitable for a single player.
• Enemy misses become Grazing Hits on unmodified rolls of 19.
• Some enemy special attacks have no effect.
• Rest shrines can be used every 5 minutes.
• There is no XP penalty for reentering the dungeon, though the XP bonus for not reentering at all can be lost.
• You must solo. You cannot have teammates or hirelings. Artificer and Druid pets, as well as summons, are allowed.

Casual

• Dungeon Scaling has greater effect than on Normal difficulty.
• Favor gained is 50% that of Normal, dropping fractions.
• Dungeon quest XP is 50% that of Normal.
• Optional XP bonuses are worth 200%.
• Encounter size and density is unmodified.
• Enemies' and traps' CRs and DCs are scaled down two levels.
• Levers, locked doors, secret walls, etc. have reduced CRs and DCs.
• Enemy misses become Grazing Hits on unmodified rolls of 19.
• Enemy Damage Reduction is disabled.
• Loot level is reduced by 1. Rewards from questgivers are unaffected.
• Some loot that is guaranteed to appear on other difficulty settings has 50% the chance of appearing.
• Rest shrines can be used every 5 minutes.
• There is no XP penalty for re-entering the dungeon, though the XP bonus for not re-entering at can be lost.

Normal

• Dungeon Scaling is in standard effect.
• Enemy misses become Grazing Hits on unmodified rolls of 19.
• Enemy Damage Reduction is 50% effective.
• Rest shrines can be used every 15 minutes.

Hard

• Dungeon Scaling is in reduced effect.
• Favor gained is 200% that of Normal.
• Dungeon quest XP is ~107.5% that of Normal.
• Encounter size and density is increased.
• Enemies' and traps' CRs and DCs are increased.
• Levers, locked doors, secret walls, etc. have increased CRs and DCs.
• Enemy misses become Grazing Hits on unmodified rolls of 17-19.
• In early content, enemy casters may have access to stronger spells.
• Enemy Damage Reduction is 75% effective.
• Enemies can become a Tier 1 Monster Champion.
• Loot level is increased by 1. Rewards from questgivers are unaffected.
• Rest shrines are single-use. Some quests have fewer.

Elite

• Dungeon Scaling is in limited effect.
• Favor gained is 300% that of Normal.
• Dungeon quest XP is 113.25% that of Normal.
• Encounter size and density is significantly increased.
• Enemies' and traps' CRs and DCs are significantly increased.
• Levers, locked doors, secret walls, etc. have significantly increased CRs and DCs.
• Enemy misses become Grazing Hits on unmodified rolls of 15-19.
• In early content, enemy casters may have access to more, stronger and better spells. Casters in later Heroic content often gain Maximized spells at this difficulty.
• Enemies can upgrade to a Tier 1 or 2 Monster Champion.
• Loot level is increased by 2. Rewards from questgivers are unaffected.
• Rest shrines are single-use. Some quests have fewer.
• Some quests will feature unique objectives.

Reaper difficulty

Reaper difficulty was introduced in Update 34 and aims to challenge the most skilled and geared players.

• Nearly all quests allow entry on Reaper difficulty - the exceptions are solo-only quests and a selection of quests that do not allow the difficulty for mechanical reasons or because they are intended to be played as the "tutorial" line of quests for new players.
• Reaper difficulty allows players to select from ten sub-difficulties by selecting a number of Skulls - from 1 to 10 - in the entry window.
• Reaper is identical to Elite for Favor and Saga rewards.
• Dungeon quest XP is identical to Elite, aside from an extra 50% Delving Bonus on the first completion.
• Reaper difficulty grants Reaper experience equal to ((50 + 3 × Normal quest level × Skulls) × Length Bonus) where Length Bonus is based on the duration of a dungeon; 0.8 for Short, 1 for Medium, 1.2 for Long, 1.4 for Very Long. An additional 200% is awarded if this is the first run of this dungeon on Reaper with this incarnation.
• Encounter size and density is identical to Elite, with two exceptions: Reapers have a chance to spawn with any enemy, increasing based on the number of Skulls; and many more enemies will be Tier 1, 2 or 3 Champions.
• Enemies gain improved damage and saves, while players are made weaker, with the exact amounts depending on the number of Skulls.
• Traps, levers, locked doors, etc. have DCs identical to Elite, however traps will deal more damage.
• Enemy misses are Grazing Hits on unmodified rolls of 15-19.
• In early content, enemy casters may have access to more, stronger and better spells. Casters in later Heroic content often gain Maximized spells at this difficulty.
• Loot level is increased by 2. Rarer rewards are more common depending on the number of Skulls. Rewards from questgivers are unaffected.
• Rest shrines are single-use. Some quests have fewer.
• Some quests will feature unique objectives.
• Reaper difficulty features a level lockout system: players cannot enter a Heroic quest on Reaper difficulty if they are more than four levels above it, while Epic and Legendary quests allow players to be up to six levels above.
• A player that exits a Reaper difficulty quest cannot reenter without resetting the instance.

Epic tier modifications

• Quests in the level range 20-30 count as being epic tier (excepting a few level 20 quests in primarily level 19 packs, which are treated as heroic quests.) These quests feature several extra modifications to compensate for increased player power at epic tier:
• Monster DR is 100% effective at all difficulties in Epic tier quests.
• In Epic Hard and higher difficulty settings, enemies have Epic Ward. Orange named enemies gain Deathblock. Charm spells have significantly shorter duration.
• Some quests have fewer shrines when compared to their heroic version.
• Epic Resilience: Monsters in Epic Elite get a special bonus to save against magic, and only magic, while they are healthy. This doesn't affect non-magical effects. There's a similar but smaller bonus on Epic Hard.

• "Magic" in this case means all spells, and possibly some other abilities/effects that we've explicitly marked as magical over the years.
• This starts at +6 to saves, drops to +4 once the monster is hurt at all, and then to +2 when between 50% and 75% health. Below 50% health they receive no bonus. (Vargouille ^{ARCHIVE ME!})

• Enemy casters in quests with a low Heroic level may change their spell selections entirely in the Epic version of the same quest. Most casters in Epic content gain Maximized spells.

Legendary tier modifications

• Quests at level 31 or above count as being legendary tier.
• The adjustments in Legendary tier quests are fairly similar to Epic tier, but monsters gain an additional buff, Legendary Ward, which prevents certain rare effects that deal damage equal to a percentage of a monster's health.
• At quest level 35 and above, monsters also gain a buff called Legendary Power improving their Fortification and Fortification Bypass.
• Reaper XP gained in Legendary tier content is doubled.

Raids

Although raids aren't a difficulty setting, they do impose their own special rules much like difficult settings do. Here's a short list of some of them:

• Casual difficulty is never available for raids, they are intended to be challenging adventures not suited to casual play. Normal, Hard, Elite, and Reaper is available for all raids.
• Dungeon Scaling is disabled, regardless of quest difficulty.
• Hirelings may not be summoned in raid dungeons.
• Many special items from the DDO store are disabled while in raids, including:
  • Summoned Repair Shop
  • Summoned Rest Shrine
  • Rest of the Eladrin statuette
  • Resurrection cakes of any type
• Several raids feature some form of lock out. Either early on the raid, just before the main boss fight, or both. This is to prevent you from releasing and coming back in to try again without restarting from the beginning.

Difficulty History

Epic history

Epic info box

Main article - Epic (This has NOT been fully updated since level 21-25 and Epic Destinies were implemented.)

• Enemies, traps, bosses and sometimes even objectives are massively scaled up, see main article for full details.
• Only level 20-25 characters may enter.
• Enemies have Epic Ward.
• Orange named enemies have Deathblock.
• Enemy misses become Grazing Hits on raw die rolls of 13-19.
• Rest Shrines can only be used once. Some quests have fewer shrines when compared to elite.
• Epic was originally intended to be a massive step above elite quests, and purely for the "best of the best". These days it's been tweaked downwards to just slightly harder then a level 20 elite quest would otherwise be, and thus very doable by a wider range of players.

See also

• List of Epic quests
• List of Raids
• Reaper difficulty