Scaling Health Mod — Guide
Difficulty Mechanics
The core of the mod is the Difficulty system, which is tracked at three levels: Player, Global, and Area.
Difficulty Types
- Player Difficulty: An individual value for each player that increases slowly over time (default: 0.0016 per second). It can also increase by killing mobs or decrease upon death, depending on configuration.
- Global Difficulty: A world-wide value that affects all players equally. It typically increases at a set rate regardless of player activity.
- Area Difficulty: When a mob spawns, the mod calculates the difficulty of that specific location. This is used to determine the mob's health and damage bonuses.
Area Difficulty Calculation Modes
| Mode | Description |
|---|---|
| AVERAGE | The average difficulty of all players within the search radius. |
| WEIGHTED_AVERAGE | Similar to average, but players closer to the spawn point have a higher impact. |
| MIN_LEVEL | Uses the lowest difficulty level among nearby players. |
| MAX_LEVEL | Uses the highest difficulty level among nearby players. |
| DISTANCE_FROM_SPAWN | Difficulty is based solely on how many blocks the spawn point is from the world origin. |
| DISTANCE_FROM_ORIGIN | Difficulty is based on the distance from coordinates (0,0,0). |
| DISTANCE_AND_TIME | A combination of weighted average player difficulty and distance from spawn. |
Blight Mobs
Blights are extremely powerful, elite versions of standard mobs. Any hostile mob has a small chance to spawn as a Blight, which increases as the Area Difficulty rises.
Characteristics
- Visuals: Blights are permanently engulfed in purple fire, making them easy to spot even underwater.
- Stats: They possess significantly higher health (often 2x to 10x), increased movement speed (Speed V), and higher attack damage (Strength III).
- Special Properties: Blight Creepers always spawn as Charged Creepers. Blights are immune to suffocation damage and fire damage.
- Drops: Blights drop significantly more experience (default 10x) and have a high chance to drop 0-2 Heart Crystals.
Items
Scaling Health adds several items to help players survive the increasing difficulty or manipulate the world's challenge level.
Crystals and Shards
| Item | Function | Image |
|---|---|---|
| Heart Crystal | Permanently increases max health by 1 heart (2 HP). Consumes XP on use. | |
| Power Crystal | Permanently increases base attack damage by 0.5 (quarter heart). | |
| Heart Shard | Obtained from mining or mob drops; 9 shards craft one Heart Crystal. | |
| Power Shard | Obtained from mining or mob drops; 9 shards craft one Power Crystal. |
Healing Items
- Bandages: Restores 30% of maximum health over 60 seconds. Requires 5 seconds of use time (holding right-click).
- Medkits: Restores 70% of maximum health over 35 seconds. Requires 5 seconds of use time.
- Heart Dust: A crafting component obtained by crushing a Heart Crystal in a crafting grid (yields 24 dust).
Difficulty Manipulators
- Cursed Heart: Increases the player's difficulty by a set amount (default: +10) when used. Found in dungeon chests.
- Enchanted Heart: Decreases the player's difficulty by a set amount (default: -10) when used. Found in dungeon chests.
- Chance Heart: Randomly increases or decreases difficulty when used.
Blocks
The mod adds two primary ores that generate in the Overworld to provide players with scaling materials.
- Heart Crystal Ore: Drops Heart Crystal Shards. It generates at various heights, with Deepslate variants appearing below Y=0. Vein sizes are typically 1-3 blocks.
- Power Crystal Ore: Drops Power Crystal Shards. Rarer than Heart Crystal Ore, it also features a Deepslate variant in lower depths.
Both ores require at least an Iron Pickaxe to mine and provide a significant amount of experience when broken.
Recipes
Most items in Scaling Health are crafted using the standard 3x3 crafting grid.
Crafting Table Recipes
| Result | Ingredients |
|---|---|
| Heart Crystal | 9x Heart Crystal Shard (Full Grid) |
| Power Crystal | 9x Power Crystal Shard (Full Grid) |
| Heart Dust (24) | 1x Heart Crystal |
| Bandage | 3x Paper + 3x Heart Dust |
| Medkit | 2x Bandage + 2x Heart Dust + 1x Iron Ingot + 1x Glistering Melon Slice + 3x Terracotta |
Note: Bandages and Medkits apply a "Bandaged" effect that slows movement speed by 25% while healing is active.
Mob Health Scaling
Mobs gain extra health based on the Area Difficulty. There are four primary scaling modes:
- ADD: Adds a flat amount of health based on difficulty (e.g., +20 HP regardless of base health).
- MULTI: Multiplies the mob's base health by a factor derived from difficulty.
- MULTI_HALF: Multiplies health, but the multiplier is reduced for mobs that already have high base health (default mode).
- MULTI_QUARTER: A more conservative version of MULTI_HALF for minimal scaling on bosses.