DSE Needs a Proper Hard Mode

[Karitha]

When Don’t Starve shifted toward a much easier game play style with DST, it made many long-time players resentful. I expect DSE to be even easier, aiming to appeal to the average player, since most people find dying in a rogue like survival game frustrating. Because of that, I don’t think they will prioritize a niche group like us.

To address this while still staying true to their uncompromising vision, they should add a proper hard mode. Not a lazy solution like simply increasing spawn rates or boss health, and not limited challenge modes like “Lights Out.”

What I’d like to see is a well designed Hard mode that genuinely punishes mistakes and rewards taking risks, similar to Terraria’s difficulty settings, where Expert mode introduces different enemy behaviors, items, and boss phases etc.

[Juny Pear]

I'd vastly prefer if mob behaviors and items stayed available regardless of mode/settings and if there simply was an easier preset of settings that tweaks damage and hp a bit, as well as a more difficult one which would be the "intended" balancing. The last thing I want is for dse to fully lean into a terraria sort of direction because at least in my eyes that sort of design does not fit dst at all, and I don't imagine it fitting dse either even with it being a different game.

Having a ton of customizability with things like world settings is to this day still a fairly overlooked part of ds and dst when it comes to spicing up your experience outside of turning off some kind of annoying mechanics and I'd rather have more of a focus on those rather than forcing you to play the mode that is supposed to be a hard mode but then just becomes the default balancing by locking the actual cool stuff behind it. If dse does end up being far easier than what we've seen so far then playing around with settings like that would imo be more than sufficient for the sake of keeping things challenging.

[Hungry French]

X10 HP for every enemy 😁

[Jakepeng99]

23 hours ago, Karitha said:

When Don’t Starve shifted toward a much easier game play style with DST, it made many long-time players resentful. I expect DSE to be even easier, aiming to appeal to the average player, since most people find dying in a rogue like survival game frustrating. Because of that, I don’t think they will prioritize a niche group like us.

To address this while still staying true to their uncompromising vision, they should add a proper hard mode. Not a lazy solution like simply increasing spawn rates or boss health, and not limited challenge modes like “Lights Out.”

What I’d like to see is a well designed Hard mode that genuinely punishes mistakes and rewards taking risks, similar to Terraria’s difficulty settings, where Expert mode introduces different enemy behaviors, items, and boss phases etc.

I don’t think you understand. Im pretty sure the game is meant to be harder than DST if you read the store description.

 

[Antynomity]

DST tried to do a hardmode with rifts and they fumbled it so hard I'd rather them not try again 🙁

[Karitha]

22 hours ago, Juny Pear said:

The last thing I want is for dse to fully lean into a terraria sort of direction because at least in my eyes that sort of design does not fit dst at all, and I don't imagine it fitting dse either even with it being a different game.

I don’t see why you think that way. For example, what would make a Deerclops fight feel out of place if it had something like a laser attack, similar to the Winter Feast version, or another creative mechanic? It could even drop its antler as a weapon, not something essential to progression, but a solid optional item you can choose to use or ignore in Hardmode.

Additions like this would increase replayability and give players a reason to start another DST run.

22 hours ago, Juny Pear said:

Having a ton of customizability with things like world settings is to this day still a fairly overlooked part of ds and dst when it comes to spicing up your experience outside of turning off some kind of annoying mechanics

I agree with you to an extent. Customization is great, and it definitely has room to be expanded further.

But when it comes to challenge, simply increasing monster counts or tweaking damage values doesn’t really create a proper hard mode. The rewards stay the same, so it ends up feeling like a flat, artificial difficulty increase rather than meaningful progression. You can already create grindy challenges like limiting resources or cranking up enemy spawns to extreme levels but that’s not the same as a well-designed hard mode.

As I mentioned before, I’m just repeating the same point: challenge alone isn’t enough it needs to be structured and rewarding to actually feel like a true hard mode.

On 5/10/2026 at 5:24 PM, Karitha said:

Not a lazy solution like simply increasing spawn rates or boss health, and not limited challenge modes like “Lights Out.”

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1 hour ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Im pretty sure the game is meant to be harder than DST if you read the store description.

Really? I checked steam store and couldn't find anything about being harder. Could you please share it with me if i missed something?

[Juny Pear]

59 minutes ago, Karitha said:

I don’t see why you think that way. For example, what would make a Deerclops fight feel out of place if it had something like a laser attack, similar to the Winter Feast version, or another creative mechanic? It could even drop its antler as a weapon, not something essential to progression, but a solid optional item you can choose to use or ignore in Hardmode.

Additions like this would increase replayability and give players a reason to start another DST run.

Well the thing about this is, does this need to be locked behind hard mode? I'd be down for bosses having more than a single sought after drop and more interesting attack patterns, I just don't think they have to be tied to game modes or anything of that sort. If they did that the choice of which mode you wanna play isn't about difficulty so much as it is about "how much of the game do you want in your game". And even if it encourages replayability more, that aspect can be covered in other ways too, like more unique worldgen between playthroughs, or even things like character choice [provided it's a bit more permanent than post celestial portal dst]. Hell, I'm sure elsewhere is gonna receive updates and that will certainly drive replayability, though obviously not as naturally or as permanently.

It's why I brought up world customization because if its specifically difficulty that's an issue to someone, then if theres some more indepth settings like attack speed or maybe even range or a toggle for knockback mechanics the difficulty part itself would already be covered fairly well. And if it's variety on subsequent playthroughs that's the issue then having more variation on which biomes or mobs generate each world would help with that aspect a ton as well, that's like an aspect of terraria that I think would be quite interesting to be expanded in dse. And for those who don't like having it be random, giving the option to choose or enable all of them would work quite well.

And if that doesn't work there's presumably still modding to spice things up. 

[Jakepeng99]

2 hours ago, Karitha said:

Really? I checked steam store and couldn't find anything about being harder. Could you please share it with me if i missed something

It’s mainly just theories to do with the tags.

Mainly the exclusion of the sandbox tag suggesting it would be way more survival focused.

Though in general i see it as really unlikely that they make the game easier than DST, a common complaint with DST is that it’s getting easier and stuff, it would be weird if they doubled down and made an easy game.

[Karitha]

54 minutes ago, Juny Pear said:

snip

I understand your point and I respect your opinion, but I don’t feel the same way about it.
The settings and presets in DST aren’t quite what you’re imagining, and I don’t expect DSE to go much further than that either. Realistically, I don’t think the developers will implement highly detailed settings for every aspect of gameplay content.

That said, I think this kind of system worked very well in Terraria, and I believe it could work in Don’t Starve as well. Like I said, even though I don’t agree, I do understand where you’re coming from.

47 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

It’s mainly just theories to do with the tags.

As I know tags are added by users.

Spoiler

 

50 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Though in general i see it as really unlikely that they make the game easier than DST

This is exactly why I want a separate hard mode. Many new players already find Don’t Starve difficult, and even DST is genuinely hard for a lot of people, trust me on that. When I play with my friends, I can see them struggling to manage everything at once, like health, hunger, sanity, and temperature. I completely understand that. I can’t expect everyone to perform like players like us with 1,000+ hours in the game. But that doesn’t mean the game should be made easier for everyone. A dedicated hardcore mode would solve most of the complaints around this issue.

Personally, I don’t want to increase hound attacks just to make the game enjoyable for myself. That doesn’t feel challenging, just feels annoying.

[Mike23Ua]

56 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

It’s mainly just theories to do with the tags.

Mainly the exclusion of the sandbox tag suggesting it would be way more survival focused.

Though in general i see it as really unlikely that they make the game easier than DST, a common complaint with DST is that it’s getting easier and stuff, it would be weird if they doubled down and made an easy game.

I have a feeling that the games mobs will be easier to kill (significantly less health & maybe damage too) but to make up for that… there will be more mobs that can spawn then normal (see the horde of creepy dead doll things) we can’t really judge too much on ONE trailer for the game, but I’m thinking these things might periodically try to attack the player, perhaps even during every night cycle rather then just being every 7th day like hound waves.

It also looks like there may be more naturally hostile mobs toward the player, compared to the ones you have to go out of your way to find..

AND the fact that Wilson was chasing down food before a larger creature swoops down and gulps it up for itself, has me thinking the new game may have mobs that actually try to go out and get their own food (thus competing with the player for it)

But just in the way the game “World” itself is generated will now be a new challenge to players, because instead of being able to do like you could in DS+Its DLCs, or DST and literally just run away from threats in a Straight Line until they line up one by one in a pretty line that’s chasing after you (so you can kill them one by one) You will now need to account for running OFF cliffs, or having to go AROUND or over Mountain Walls when kiting, fleeing, battling, etc…

But As far as an actual “Hard Mode” goes, it would either have to be a world Gen selection you can pick from the start of the game, OR just like rift content in DST (hard mode) very very few people will actually get to witness or play any of the content that’s locked behind it.

Which is why it would be better to just make the content accessible to ALL players to enjoy, rather than just the handful who can reach it.

 

[Antynomity]

1 hour ago, Karitha said:

snip

5 hours ago, Karitha said:

I don’t see why you think that way. For example, what would make a Deerclops fight feel out of place if it had something like a laser attack, similar to the Winter Feast version, or another creative mechanic? It could even drop its antler as a weapon, not something essential to progression, but a solid optional item you can choose to use or ignore in Hardmode.

Come to think of it I don't think I'd mind a hardmode if it actually affected more things and wasn't just an extra stuff slapped on top of the game, I appreciate what they tried with rifts and mutated bosses on the surface but not only are those fights extremely tedious because of inflated health pools, you're also basically fighting 2 separate bosses each fight instead of an empowered boss.