Difficulty
| Type | Mechanic |
|---|
Difficulty in Matcha Flavoured changes much more than in vanilla Minecraft. Besides the vanilla effects, the world's difficulty decides how hostile mobs are modified when they spawn, how many hearts a death costs, whether the Wither effect takes hearts, and how far a player's maximum health can fall.
The pack describes its three difficulties in its language file as:[1]
- Easy: "For players who want to relax."
- Normal: "For players who want a challenge."
- Hard: "For players who want an unfair challenge."
Mechanics
Reading the difficulty
The pack reads the world's difficulty only when the datapack loads, and prints it to chat: "Your gamemode is Easy", "Normal" or "Hard", followed by "(You can change this in the world settings, make sure you reload the world after)".[2][3] After changing the difficulty, the world has to be reloaded (with /reload, by rejoining, or by restarting the server) for the pack's own rules to follow. Until then, the pack keeps using the old difficulty while vanilla uses the new one.
Automatic increase
On Normal, the difficulty is raised to Hard automatically when any player's minimum hearts drops to 5, which happens at their fifth progression milestone. Every player sees "Game is now set to Hard". The change can be undone in the world settings.[4] See Death#Minimum hearts.
Mob modifications
Each time one of the pack's "mundane hostile" mobs appears (zombie, husk, drowned, zombie villager, skeleton, stray, bogged, parched, creeper, spider, cave spider, slime, enderman, witch or silverfish), the pack checks it once and changes its attributes according to the difficulty.[5][6] Mobs not listed in the table keep their vanilla attributes. A dash means the vanilla value is kept.
| Mob | Attribute | Easy | Normal | Hard |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zombie (adult) | Max health | – | 10 ( × 5) |
15 ( × 7.5)
|
| Movement speed | – | 0.34 | 0.38 | |
| Step height | – | 1 | 1 | |
| Attack damage | – | – | 5 | |
| Jump strength | – | – | 0.6 | |
| Baby zombie, husk, drowned and zombie villager | Max health | 4 ( × 2) |
4 ( × 2) |
7 ( × 3.5)
|
| Husk (adult) | Max health | – | 30 ( × 15) |
40 ( × 20)
|
| Movement speed | – | 0.25 | 0.265 | |
| Attack damage | – | 10 | 15 | |
| Armor | – | 12 | 14 | |
| Follow range | – | 50 | 60 | |
| Knockback resistance | – | 0.9 | 1 | |
| Step height | – | 1 | 1 | |
| Movement efficiency (land and water) | – | 1 | 1 | |
| Skeleton, Stray, Bogged and parched | Max health | 10 ( × 5) |
10 ( × 5) |
12 ( × 6)
|
| Bow | – | Punch I | Punch II | |
| Creeper | Max health | 14 ( × 7) |
16 ( × 8) |
18 ( × 9)
|
| Cave Spider | Max health | 2 ( × 1) |
4 ( × 2) |
6 ( × 3)
|
| Movement speed | 0.35 | 0.4 | 0.42 | |
| Spider | Jump strength | – | 0.85 | 0.85 |
| Fall damage | – | none | none | |
| Effect | – | Weaving I (infinite) | Weaving II (infinite) | |
| Silverfish | Max health | 2 ( × 1) |
2 ( × 1) |
4 ( × 2)
|
| All of the above | Equipment drop chance | 0% | 0% | 0% |
Easy is close to vanilla mob behavior: zombies, husks and spiders are left unchanged, and only skeletons, creepers, cave spiders, silverfish and baby zombies are weakened. The Normal and Hard skeleton changes replace the skeleton's bow with a new one that has only Punch.
Summary
| Easy | Normal | Hard | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maximum health lost per death | 1 heart | 1 heart | 2 hearts |
| Lowest maximum health | 10 hearts | 10 to 3 hearts, by progress | 10 to 3 hearts, by progress |
| Wither effect | vanilla | takes 1 heart after 8 seconds | takes 2 hearts after 8 seconds |
 Raw Estus pickup
|
Regeneration V for 4 s, Resistance I for 10 s | Regeneration V for 2 s, Resistance I for 5 s | Regeneration V for 2 s, Resistance I for 5 s |
| Zombies | vanilla | fast, 10 ( × 5) |
faster, 15 ( × 7.5), stronger
|
| Husks | vanilla | slow tanks with 30 ( × 15) |
slow tanks with 40 ( × 20)
|
| Spiders | vanilla | high jump, leave cobwebs (Weaving I) | high jump, leave cobwebs (Weaving II) |
| Automatic change | – | raised to Hard at 5 minimum hearts | – |
History
| 1.10 | Difficulty support added: the difficulty now changes mob behavior, health and damage. Easy is described as "essentially vanilla mob behaviour". Beating the Ender Dragon raises the difficulty. |
|---|---|
| 1.12 | Husks slowed on Normal; husk attack damage lowered from 15 to 10 on Normal and from 20 to 15 on Hard. |
| 1.12.1-alpha | Killing the dragon no longer raises the difficulty on Normal; progression through advancements does instead. Baby zombies, husks and drowned have 2 hearts on Easy. Husk health on Normal lowered from 40 to 30. |
| 1.12.2 | Hard husks slowed slightly. The Wither effect takes hearts, except on Easy. Easy guarantees at least 10 hearts. |
Trivia
- The 1.10 release notes warn: "If you are playing on HARD, SET IT BACK TO NORMAL, unless you want to be angry".[11]
- The chat message calls the difficulty the "gamemode".
- An unused function would give Normal baby zombies 5 ( × 2.5); Normal actually uses the shared Easy and Normal function, which gives 4 ( × 2).[12]
- The developer added difficulty support after watching a video of a player new to Java Edition who was frustrated by the fast zombies. Having promised a pack for casual players, the developer made Easy close to vanilla while keeping the harder zombies on Normal and Hard for players who liked them.[13] The developer also regretted the word "casual" in the pack's first video, where it was chosen as the opposite of "technical" players.
See also
References
- ↑
lang/en us.json - ↑
setup/load.mcfunction - ↑
scoreboard/create scoreboards.mcfunction - ↑
difficulty scaling/increase difficulty.mcfunction - ↑
entity type/mundane hostiles.json - ↑
spawn mechanic/modify mob.mcfunction - ↑
easy modifications/check type.mcfunction - ↑
normal modifications/check type.mcfunction - ↑
hard modifications/check type.mcfunction - ↑
estus/estus effects.mcfunction - ↑ Matcha Flavoured 1.10 release notes
- "If you are playing on HARD, SET IT BACK TO NORMAL, unless you want to be angry"
- ↑
normal modifications/modify baby zombies.mcfunction - ↑ Klei Wright, "How Criticism changed Matcha Flavoured" (YouTube)
- "I made it so that the game scans the world, and as it's scanning, it detects the difficulty level, and it'll change the mob modifications depending on what that difficulty mode is. I did that specifically because of that one player that I watched who was becoming frustrated."
| Health | |
|---|---|
| World |
|
| Items | |
| Undead |
|
| Other hostile mobs |
|
| Bosses | |
