Difficulty

Compare the configured settings for Story and Survival. Custom lets you choose your own settings. Temperature values are modifiers, not temperatures in degrees.

Preset configuration

These are the configured Story and Survival values. The conditional equipment-wear calculation is explained below. The other values remain raw configuration; their units and gameplay formulas have not been verified. Taken damage reduction is not a verified percentage change to final health damage.

Setting	Story	Survival
Food depletion	0.5	1
Energy depletion	0.7	1
Damage taken	0.8	1
Sprint stamina cost	0.5	1
Stamina regeneration	1.5	1
Maximum stamina	1.25	1
Chopping stamina cost	0.7	1
Mining stamina cost	0.7	1
Starvation damage	0.25	1
Frostbite penalties	0.5	1
Exhaustion penalties	0.5	1
Hunger penalties	0.5	1
Movement penalties	0.5	1
Clothing durability loss	0.5	1
Cold zone modifier	1.4	1.6
Ambient temperature modifier	0.8	1
Blizzard temperature modifier	1.1	1.3
Storm temperature modifier	1.05	1.1
Weapon durability loss	1	1
Keep quick-slot items on death	Yes	Yes
Maximum tombstones per player	10	10
Friendly fire	Yes	Yes

Combat hits and equipment wear

For positive combat hits through this player hit path, Taken Damage Modifier is applied before armour reduction and equipment wear. Lower values increase the amount used at that stage.

This path ignores hits while god mode is on or the character is dead. Hits from another character of the same player class require Friendly Fire.

Before rounding, the intermediate amount is incoming damage × (2 − the stored modifier). Story’s configured 0.8 gives about 1.2× and Survival’s 1 gives 1× at this stage, when those values are in use.

Equipment wear requires a mapped hit location, an occupied slot, a valid equipped item and a valid inventory. The amount is first truncated to a whole number, then divided by 3 using whole-number division. Wear can therefore stay unchanged even if the intermediate amount increases.

These intermediate factors do not establish a final health-loss percentage, every damage source or the preset active in your save.