DifficultyEx

“Because the game shouldn’t get easier just because you got better.”

DifficultyEx is a Fabric 1.20.1 dynamic difficulty system built around PlayerEx: Director’s Cut and Data Attributes: Director’s Cut.

Instead of every zombie, skeleton, or custom boss feeling identical in every world, DifficultyEx assigns each mob its own level, then scales its health, damage, armor, and XP rewards based on:

The PlayerEx level of nearby players
The dimension it’s in
The biome it’s in
The structure it’s near
Optional per-entity overrides and blacklists

On top of that, it adds configurable RPG-style mob nameplates that show level and health above mobs’ heads, with support for both vanilla and Geckolib-rendered entities and optional integration with Traveler’s Titles.

🔹 Short Summary

DifficultyEx adds configurable, level-based mob scaling tied to PlayerEx, with biome/dimension/structure rules, XP/damage/armor/health scaling, and RPG-style mob nameplates.

✨ Core Features

🔧 Level-based mob scaling

Every time a mob is loaded into the world, DifficultyEx:

Looks at all nearby players in a configurable radius.
Reads their PlayerEx level.
Runs those levels through a configurable formula (x by default, via Crunch/exp4j).
Averages the result and applies a small random adjustment.
Clamps the final mob level using:
- Global max & min
- Dimension-specific min/max
- Biome-specific min/max
- Structure-specific min/max (nearest configured structure)
- Per-entity min/max rules (by ID or regex)

📈 Scaled stats (health, damage, armor, XP)

Using mixins on vanilla logic, DifficultyEx scales several stats per mob level using configurable percentages:

Health – mobs gain more max HP per level
Damage – mobs hit harder per level
Armor – mobs get tougher to damage per level
XP reward – killing higher-level mobs gives more XP

All of these are controlled under scalingLevelSettings in the config:

entityBaseHealthPercentage
entityBaseDamagePercentage
entityBaseArmorPercentage
entityExperiencePercentage

There’s also:

entityStartingLevels – per-entity starting level (by ID/regex)
entityMaximumLevels – per-entity max level (by ID/regex)
mobBlacklist – entities that should never be scaled

🌍 Dimension, biome & structure rules

DifficultyEx lets you shape where things are dangerous:

Per-dimension settings

dimensionSettings:

startingLevels["minecraft:overworld"]
maximumLevels["minecraft:the_nether"], etc.

Per-biome settings

biomeScalingSettings:

startingLevels["minecraft:soul_sand_valley"]
maximumLevels["minecraft:deep_dark"]

Per-structure settings

structureScalingSettings:

radius – how far a structure affects mobs around it
startingLevels["minecraft:ancient_city"]
maximumLevels["minecraft:ancient_city"]

The mod uses the nearest configured structure within the configured radius to clamp mob level, so you can make, for example:

Tiered dungeons with higher minimum levels
Specific structures that cap level to avoid absurd values
Dimension/biome “bands” (safe overworld, brutal nether, etc.)

👁️ RPG-style mob nameplates

DifficultyEx includes a full nameplate system rendered through mixins into:

Vanilla MobRenderer
Geckolib’s GeoEntityRenderer / GeoReplacedEntityRenderer

Features (all configurable):

Toggleable nameplates
Level text, via text.nameplate.level (e.g. Lv. 24)
Optional health bar
Optional health text (current / max HP)
Customizable:
- Render distance
- Show hostile mobs only toggle
- Y-offset above the mob’s head
- Scale
- Text color
- Background color
- Per-mob nameplate blacklist

These options live under client_settings.visualSettings in the config.

🧭 Traveler’s Titles integration (optional)

If Traveler’s Titles is installed, DifficultyEx adds a small compatibility layer:

When the biome title is updated, DifficultyEx sends a packet to the server.
The server calculates a level (based on your current environment & config).
The client updates the Traveler’s Titles biome title to include a level string (e.g. a “Zone Level” style display).

This is fully optional; if Traveler’s Titles is absent, the compat mixins simply never apply.

⚙️ Configuration

DifficultyEx uses owo-config with a generated config class:

File: config/difficultyex-config.json5
Mod Menu integration (@Modmenu) gives you a UI if Mod Menu is installed.

`global_settings.dimensionSettings`

Map from dimension ID to:

startingLevels
maximumLevels

Example:

"dimensionSettings": {
  "minecraft:overworld": {
    "startingLevels": 1,
    "maximumLevels": 50
  },
  "minecraft:the_nether": {
    "startingLevels": 10,
    "maximumLevels": 80
  }
}