Difficulty & Player Scaling

Monsters in Nytheria hit harder and take more punishment the stronger you become, and they ease off when you struggle. This page is part of Combat & Gear and covers the per-player difficulty mod, its death penalty, the armor damage limit and the Boss Ultimatum rule.

How it works#

Player Difficulty, shown in game as "Nytheria Scaling", gives every player a personal multiplier. It starts at 1.00x and grows with your active play time, your kills and your gear, up to a cap of 2.50x. It is made for Nytheria, runs on the server and ships enabled. It is not a world-wide setting: two players in the same world have different values, and pets count as their owner.

Three parts add up to your multiplier:

Time. The part has a weight of 0.35 and reaches 63 % after 16 counted hours.
Kills. The part has a weight of 0.6 and a kill-score scale of 600.
Gear. The part has a weight of 0.55. It is rated from your effective health (scale 20 to 420) and your damage per second (4 to 26), with a defence weight of 0.6. Combat experience gates it: the gate starts at 0.25 and is fully open at a kill score of 200 or after 15 combat hours.

Only active play counts. Time that is not spent fighting counts for 5 %, so a player who mostly builds stays low. Bosses carry their own kill values, for example 40 for the Ender Dragon and 30 for the Wither.

What the multiplier does#

At the cap, a monster needs 2.5x the damage from you to die, although its health is unchanged, and it deals 2.0x damage to you. Values between 1.00x and the cap fall in a straight line between those figures. The extra damage of one hit is capped at 70 % of your maximum health. Bosses receive half of each effect: 1.75x toughness and 1.5x damage at the cap. The Ender Dragon is not scaled but pays bonus experience. Player-versus-player damage, environmental damage, knockback and effect durations are not scaled.

High multipliers also pay out. At the cap you gain up to 100 % bonus experience and up to a 50 % chance of one extra loot roll, which does not apply to bosses. The mod defines milestone tiers at 1.5, 2.0, 2.25 and 2.45, but the pack configures no commands for them.

Numbers and settings in Nytheria#

Setting	Value	What it means for you
Multiplier range	1.00x to 2.50x	2.50x is the cap
Damage needed to kill a monster at the cap	2.5x	Monster health is unchanged
Damage you take at the cap	2.0x	Linear between 1.00x and the cap
Largest extra damage of one hit	70 % of max health	Protects against one-shots
Boss effect	Half	1.75x toughness, 1.5x damage at the cap
Bonus XP at the cap	+100 %	Up to the full bonus
Extra loot roll at the cap	50 % chance	Not on bosses
Death penalty: hunger	Exhaustion x1.5 for 5 active minutes	You get hungry 50 % faster
Death penalty: damage	-30 % for 5 minutes of fighting	You deal less damage
Armor Damage Limit	0.2	One hit removes at most 20 % of a piece's durability

The death penalty#

Every death except one caused by another player or by a command starts a penalty. For 5 active minutes your hunger rises by 50 % (food exhaustion x1.5), and for 5 minutes of fighting you deal 30 % less damage. If you die again within 15 minutes the penalty stacks up to level 3, and each extra level adds 0.25 to the hunger factor and takes 5 % more off your damage. The penalty is weaker at a low multiplier. A death caused by a monster also gives some relief, one step of 0.25 that wears off over about 30 active minutes.

The hunger penalty multiplies with HungerDial, which makes all food exhaustion 0.65 of vanilla. While both are active, you drain hunger at 0.65 x 1.5 = 0.975 of the vanilla rate, which is about vanilla speed. Dying costs you more than the items in your grave, so read Death, Graves & Respawning before a risky fight.

Checking your value#

Run /scaling to see your multiplier and its breakdown, or /scaling top to see the leaderboard of 10 places per page. Both are open to every player. Admins also have /scaling admin .... The optional client command /scalingdisplay switches the client screens and HUD, and the tab footer, boss bar and below-name display are off. See Commands.

Armor Damage Limit#

Armor Damage Limit protects your gear from a single hit. The setting is 0.2, so one hit can remove at most 20 % of a piece's maximum durability, and the protection list is empty, so every piece is covered. Armor values are not capped at 30 either, because AttributeFix lifts the vanilla caps. See Armor & Accessories.

Boss Ultimatum#

Boss Ultimatum (Modpack Utils Series) adds a rule to some boss fights that punishes player deaths. From the third player it kills, every further player death restores the boss to half of its maximum health. Only direct kills count, which means players the boss itself kills. The Ender Dragon follows its own rule: it heals a flat 120 HP per player kill from its 2nd.

The rule covers 15 bosses: all four Bosses of Mass Destruction bosses, the Ender Dragon, the Wither, the Valkyrie Queen, the Sun Spirit, the Slider, The Eye, the Blackstone Golem, the Soul Reaper, the Piglin Beast, the Stalker and the Invoker. It does not cover Cataclysm, Twilight Forest, Astral Dimension or Eternal Starlight bosses, the Void Shadow, the Warden or the Elder Guardian. For the bosses themselves see Bosses, and for the dragon fight see The Ender Dragon.

Tips#

Keep the multiplier in mind before a fight. A strong build pushes it up, and a builder who hardly fights stays near 1.00x.
Check /scaling to see how your gear and kills shape the value.
After a death, play carefully for a few minutes: the extra hunger and the 30 % damage loss both run out on their own.
Bring food. The death penalty raises your hunger for 5 active minutes.
In a fight with a Boss Ultimatum boss, avoid dying: repeated deaths undo your progress.

In the quest book#

No quest asks about the multiplier or the death penalty. The boss quests of the book use the same fights as the Bosses page.