In a recent interview with Game Rant, Minecraft Dungeons developers Mans Olson, Nathan Rose, and Daniel Bjorkefors shared new information regarding the game's scaling difficulty settings as well as the item rarity system. It seems that the team put extra care when working on the accessibility features and difficulty in particular to make sure the experience would be satisfying for everyone. This was in no way an easy task, but from the sounds of it, the game will excel in this factor.
Minecraft Dungeons releases on May 26th, and the dungeon crawler style of gameplay has required some things that are fundamental to Minecraft to change. One such thing would be the game's lack of crafting mechanics, making players rely solely on loot drops. Beyond this, the developers are cognizant that much of their target audience is younger, but still wanted to make a game that would be enjoyable and (at times) challenging for everyone. The key to getting this down was by letting the player decide what kind of game they wanted and letting them tailor the experience to themselves.
Minecraft Dungeon Developers Talk Adjustable Difficulty Scaling
Minecraft Dungeons is going to be played by a very wide demographic, and the developers knew as much when designing it. One of the main challenges of overcoming this fact was creating systems that were accessible enough so that young children would enjoy playing the game but not so simple that it would bore the older crowd that will no doubt also be playing. When asked about this, the team responded with an explanation of how the difficulty system works and the ways it allows players to choose what kind of experience they want to have:
"The way that works helps us achieve both, so we have three main big difficulties and on each of those we have a threat slider, we call it. So there are six sub-difficulties. We recommend one that's sort of appropriate for you as you play it, that suits your power level and the gear that you have equipped, but you're welcome to change that. You can go lower or higher if you want to. That means that for players who want to, you can get a relatively easy experience and fast paced, and for players who want a real challenge, you can usually get to that as well by just bringing the difficulty up."
Essentially, there are three factors that determine how hard the game is: the difficulty level, the threat level, and the number of players. Each of these three factors can be controlled by the players fully, making an extremely customizable game. The three base difficulty levels, Normal, Adventure, and Apocalypse, adjust the game in much the same way any typical "normal, easy, hard" type of difficulty level would. The real change here is that each level comes with a "threat slider," which allows the player to make the game much more challenging or much easier. At each point there is a recommendation for where the threat level should be, but nothing is stopping the player from raising or lowering it.
Minecraft Dungeons Developers Talk Item Rarity System
In Minecraft Dungeons, there will be three main levels of item rarity. Base items are the lowest rarity, and will no doubt be the most common. Things like standard bows, wooden swords, and the like will fit into this tier and will be found frequently as loot drops. Beyond this, rare items are more powerful and will be somewhat less common. Unique items on the other hand, are both rare and incredibly powerful, and they will certainly help players get an edge in the next few dungeons. That said, players shouldn't worry too much about loot early on, as gear will quickly be replaced.
"We have different rarities of items. We have base items, rare items, and what we call unique items. They are super rare. The Diamond Sword is a unique version of the sword."
As the player levels up, the items that drop from enemies will become more powerful as well. This means that it is theoretically possible for a common, wooden sword found at level 50 to be more powerful than a unique, diamond sword found at level one. Because of the way Minecraft Dungeons allows the player to get their enchantment points back when breaking down an item, there is never any reason not to use the best weapon available to the player at the time. This is in an effort to focus on making Minecraft Dungeons fun rather than difficult for the sake of being difficult.
Minecraft Dungeons releases on May 26th for PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.