The Blood of Dawnwalker ships with four difficulty presets and a set of individual controls underneath them. Difficulty can be changed at any point during a playthrough rather than being locked in at the start, so a player who finds a particular boss or region unmanageable is not committed to it. See Combat for the systems the settings tune.
The Four Presets
Preset | Character |
|---|---|
Story | The lowest setting, aimed at players who are here for the writing and the choices rather than the fights. |
Fair | The standard setting. |
Challenging | A step up, where the directional reads have to be reliable. |
Duelist | The hardest setting, built around the fully manual directional system with the on-screen indicator off. |
Separate Enemy Controls
Beneath the preset, three enemy values can each be tuned on their own, so a player can raise one axis of difficulty while lowering another rather than accepting a single bundled setting.
Setting | What it changes |
|---|---|
Enemy health | How long enemies survive. |
Enemy damage | How hard a mistake is punished. |
Enemy attack speed | How much reaction time a telegraphed attack allows. |
Attack speed is the one that changes the feel of the game rather than its arithmetic. Slowing enemy animations at the easier settings gives more time to read an incoming angle, which affects the timing layer instead of inflating or deflating numbers.
The Directional Indicator
An on-screen indicator shows the angle of an incoming attack, and the shield element of it turns orange during the perfect block window. It can be switched off, which is what the harder presets are built around. Removing it moves the read from the interface back onto the animation itself. See Directional Combat.
Two automated alternatives sit alongside the manual system for players who would rather not commit to a direction on every input. Omniblock defends in all directions at once and omniattack picks the swing angle automatically, both trading precision for higher stamina consumption. They are options rather than a difficulty tier, and can be used at any preset.
What Difficulty Does Not Change
The time system. There is no setting that removes, extends or slows the thirty day deadline. See 30-Day Cycle.
Region level locking. Each region fixes its difficulty to Coen’s level the first time he enters it, inside a floor and a ceiling set for that region, and the preset does not override that. See Exploration.
The consequences of the hunger. Losing control at low health at night is a narrative event, not a combat failure state, and no preset switches it off. See Blood Craving.
Accessibility Options
Alongside the difficulty controls, the console listings declare a set of accessibility features including adjustable difficulty itself, control reminders, game pausing, manual saving, controller remapping, adjustable stick sensitivity and inversion, and play without rapid button presses, motion controls, touch controls, vibration or adaptive trigger effects. The radial ability menu slows time rather than pausing it outright, so some pressure remains during ability selection. See System Requirements for the full platform capability lists.