Moonlighter 2 Difficulty: Easy to Hardcore Explained

The five modes

Mode	Added	Enemies	On death	Notes
Easy	Launch	Weaker and more fragile	Relics lose half their quality	The developer’s description: “the ideal experience for newcomers”
Normal	Launch	Fair challenge	Relics lose half their quality	The intended experience
Hard	Launch	Stronger and tougher	Relics lose half their quality	”Every swing counts”
Expert	Blob-Life (May 2026)	Brutal	You lose the relics in your backpack	Everything costs more and Endless Vault thresholds are bigger
Hardcore	Version 1.0 (Sep 2026)	Unforgiving	You lose your progress and start again	Announced as the ML1-style rule set

Easy, Normal and Hard can be changed from the menu at any time. The Steam forum’s “difference between expert and hard” thread had no developer answer as of 3 September 2026; the patch notes above are the only official description.

What “losing relics” means in practice

On the three standard modes a death is expensive but recoverable: the relics come home at half quality, so a bag of 60-quality Epics becomes a bag of 30-quality Epics. On Expert the bag is gone. The pendant is the answer on every mode: it leaves the dungeon instantly with everything intact, so the only real risk is greed. Boss fights are the exception, since you cannot leave mid-fight.

Expert specifics

The Blob-Life notes list three changes: relics are lost on death, prices are higher, and Endless Vault thresholds are larger. The published threshold table is for the standard modes; Expert values have not been documented.

Hardcore specifics

Version 1.0 describes Hardcore as losing your progress on death and starting from the very beginning, with a “skip intro” request already in the forums. It is the closest thing to the original Moonlighter’s rules, where a death cost the whole run’s loot.

Sources: TechRaptor starter guide (difficulty descriptions), Blob-Life patch notes, Version 1.0 launch post, Steam forum threads (Sep 2026).

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