World Hostility

World Hostility (commonly known as difficulty) is the game option that affects how difficult the game is in terms of environment and survivability. This option exists in both single player and multiplayer modes. The story mode also has world hostility option.

Hostility Levels
There are 3 levels of world hostility. The name of each level is different depending on the game mode: Northgard or Ragnarok.


 * Level 1: low in Northgard, medium in Ragnarok
 * Level 2: medium in Northgard, high in Ragnarok
 * Level 3: high in Northgard, extreme in Ragnarok

Although the names are different, the levels have the same impact for common things on both game modes. The reason for the difference in naming is the fact that Ragnarok has an inherently more hostile environment.

Impact
The following things are affected by world hostility:


 * Food Consumption: The higher the difficulty is, the more food your villager consume.
 * Wood Refund: The amount of wood gained upon destroying building is less the higher the difficulty is.
 * Happiness Requirement: The higher the difficulty is, the more happiness your villagers will require. Also, not upgrading the town hall will tax 1 happiness earlier on higher difficulties.
 * Neutral Unit Spawn: Usually more neutral units exist in tiles the higher the difficulty is, and they will respawn faster in draugr tombs and wolf dens.
 * Neutral Unit Attacks: Neutral monsters will attack more often, and possibly with more numbers, the higher the difficulty is.
 * Myrkalfar Attacks: Myrkalfar will start attacking earlier the higher the difficulty is, and they will attack with more numbers as well.
 * Military Experience gain: The higher the difficulty is, the less military experience you get per unit killed/lost.
 * Disasters: They will happen more frequently the higher the difficulty is. Besides, each disaster is more difficult to handle the higher the difficulty is.
 * Building upkeep: The amount of kröwns consumed to sustain buildings will be slightly higher following difficulty.