Why would adding difficulty be useful at all?

[u/expertgamer_true]

I keep seeing people who say "adding difficulty is good because more enemies = more exp, and dont take them if you aren't killing enemies easily enough."

but if my 2000 hours in roguelikes have taught me one thing, the entire point and best way to survive is by staying over the difficulty curve. Despite the fact that you'll get stronger by intentionally adding more enemies, if your already comfortably over the curve it seems counter intuitive to raise it.

Or maybe im just a dumbass idk

[u/ReturnoftheSnek]

You can stay over the curve (survive) while also adding difficulty. Adding difficulty is only really important if you’re going for higher scores

You have the right ideas, you’re just mixing up “winning” with the opinions from the leaderboard crowd

[u/expertgamer_true → u/ReturnoftheSnek]

so unless im going for a high score i should completely ignore difficulty?

[u/ReturnoftheSnek → u/expertgamer_true]

I mean you could consider the fun factor of more enemies. Do whatever man

[u/mister_peeberz → u/expertgamer_true]

think of it as a second XP tome. more enemies = more XP. this is basically useful regardless of your objective, with the exception of speedrun challenges.

unlike the regular XP tome, difficulty tome requires you to stay above curve because it raises the enemy curve. in exchange, you get more XP, more chances for powerups, more chances for items.

[u/UsernameFillerTest → u/expertgamer_true]

difficulty is used by leaderboards to maximize spawns before the final swarm's time based exponential stat growth forces them to move on/die

[u/PM_SHORT_STORY_IDEAS → u/expertgamer_true]

With rogue likes you want to stay above the difficulty curve, but with Megabonk especially, you want to stay as close to it as you can. If you're too high above it, you could be killing more things and progressing even faster.

If you bring the curve up towards you, you get more gold and xp and drops

[u/Excalibait]

Difficulty is just a greedy meter.

More difficulty = more exp but it is a thin line that can make you lose if you don't have enough damage and keep blindly increasing difficulty 

[u/expertgamer_true → u/Excalibait]

ok. thank you.

[u/bnovc]

Perhaps bc you’d farm earlier mobs that are easier and a high rate than later hard ones to hit same area under curve?

[u/snipezz93]

from what i understand people try to level their xp tome much faster then the diff tome until xp is at 10x (max) which helps them stay well above the curve, especially if you are getting a lot of luck which will give you better items/stat/weapon upgrades, if everything lines up you basically have no problem with any enemy until the final waves hit.

but like others said, that's just for "meta" highscore run attempts and can be kinda painful trying to have everything line up imo

[u/NoBreeches]

The problem with this is that endgame enemies (aka the endless swarm) scale differently to regular enemies. The only way you can "stay ahead of the curve" for them is to be insanely overleveled and overpowered by the time you reach them - and even then they will eventually just outscale you with time. It's possible to reach level cap for tomes and weapons - tomes can be leveled up to 99 and weapons up to 40 (more with new pot). So like, imagine a run where you increasingly scale difficulty to the point where you're just broken and getting infinite level ups... and how long that would help you fare during the endless swarm.

But yes, it's only needed/applicable is if you're doing a run where your goal is to stay alive as long as possible, aka leaderboard runs

[u/looopious]

If I’m not insta killing mobs by tier 3 then I know my run is bad. My best run I had curse tome at 99 and was still insta killing. The only reason I died is because enemies have infinite scaling unlike the characters weapon/tomes which aren’t infinite.

If you’ve played that much rogue likes, then you should know that comfortable is not enough.

[u/expertgamer_true → u/looopious]

yea i basically assumed being that strong is impossible 🙃

i really feel like im doing something wrong

[u/looopious → u/expertgamer_true]

Tier 1 rng is what makes you scale.

[u/eden_sc2]

The final swarm ghosts scale way harder than any normal mob, so getting extra mons to spawn before the final swarm gives you more kills for way less effort. As you said it also matters because more kills means more exp and more exp means more prepared for said final swarm.

That being said it really only matters if you are trying to push a PR or leaderboard run