A new unique, harder experience for Tears of the Kingdom

Tears of the Kingdom Challenge Mode Open Beta v0.5

Mod description

This mod aims to make Tears of the Kingdom harder by adding new, more dangerous enemies and tweaking game mechanics for a more challenging and interesting experience with the game. It is recommended to start a whole new save with this mod for the best experience possible!

Note: This mod is currently in version v0.5, a partial release from August 24th 2024. it contains Golden enemies and non-Flux Seized Construct (& their weaponry and materials), as well as Lynel weapons and a couple of optional gameplay changes. The rest of the content of the mod will release at a later date. Thanks for your understanding.

Discord Server link

Features

• All scalable enemies (Bokoblins, Moblins, Lizalfos, Horriblins, Boss Bokoblins, Lynels, Soldier Constructs and Captain Constructs) were scaled by one rank. For example, all red Bokoblins are blue in the mod. At least one specimen of each base enemy will stay, for Hyrule Compendium, Quests or Armor upgrades.
• All scalable enemies now have a new rank (Golden for all Monsters, Seized for the Constructs), stronger, tankier, faster, but also more rewarding with their unique fusable materials and better overall drops.
• New weapons were added, or readded! Lynel weapons are back. You can also get the standalone version of Lynel weapons here, thanks to Godzilaa4 for making the mod! Zonaite weapons also got a new rank of weapons in order to make them more interesting in mid and late game.
• A wide array of map changes were made to the surface, mostly to add more Lynels to the map and make the enemy camps more diversified. No more Bokoblin only camps!

Options

This mod comes with multiple options that when all activated represent what we envisioned when creating it, but that we are aware won't please everybody, that is why they are options. (You will need to use TKMM to be able to choose for each option.)

Additions

• Brazilian over American English: Playing with the American English language will instead use the brazilian translation made by the Triforce Heroes Team (for the vanilla game) and Godzilaa4 (for the Challenge Mode part).
• Cook or Die: It's impossible for the player to eat raw materials, and cooked food (e.g. Boiled Egg, Frozen and Roasted food) is no longer able to stack. (recommended)
• Dangerous Bokoblin Baskets: Elemental fruits thrown by Bokoblins from their baskets have the area of effect of associated elemental gems.
• True Demon King's Army: Custom Demon King's Army made more interesting and way harder. (recommended)
• Challenge Mode enemies are faster: All enemies introduced in Challenge Mode are faster than their previous counterparts. (recommended)
• All bosses buff: Bosses are all stronger and faster, Dungeon bosses deal gloom damage. (recommended)

Buffs

• Better Defense Up meal effect: The Defense Up meal effect is buffed in order to make it viable and interesting against Attack Up. Level 1 goes from 4 to 12, Level 2 goes from 12 to 24 and Level 3 goes from 24 to 48. (recommended)

Nerfs

• Higher Gloom damage multiplier: Gloomed enemies in the vanilla game inflict 0.3x times their damage converted to gloomed hearts. This was changed to 0.8x their damage. (recommended)
• Hitstun nerf for Link: Most of Link's attacks do not interrupt enemies' actions. (recommended)
• Nerfed Flurry Rush: Link's Flurry Rushes inflict less hits. (recommended)
• Oblivious sages: Sages don't attack enemies. (recommended)

Rebalances

• Rebalanced Armor upgrade cost: Armor upgrades that need scalable enemy parts will require the level above, to take into account the Challenge Mode scaling. (recommended)
• Rebalanced modifiers: Each weapon, bow and shield has now its unique ranges of modifier values. (recommended)
• Rebalanced mounted Lynel damage: To take into account the DPS of weapons, one handed weapons deal less damage on the back of Lynels and two handed weapons deal even less damage.

What's next?

As you read earlier, this is only an open beta, incomplete version of the mod. The full release (v1.0) has no release date planned as of now, but you will be reminded when the date is finally set. The full release will have those features:

• All mini bosses (Molduga, Gleeok, Frox, Flux Construct, Hinox and Talus) now have a new, unique more powerful rank, wielding unique fuse materials. You can learn more about them in the Challenge Mode - Rumors book in the Room of Awakening.
• The six Monster Camps involved in the Monster Control Crew quests have been severely buffed, making a hard late game challenge. They were given new, powerful and unique reward for three of them, so don't forget to check them out!
• The Challenge Mode - Rumors book in the Room of Awakening also holds precious information on reports of very dangerous beasts roaming in Hyrule, said to be even stronger than Golden enemies.

It will also have the following options added:

• Enemy Health Regeneration: Most of the enemies regenerate slowly their health on a %age basis, until they regenerated 100% of their health. The regeneration rate is smaller when the enemy has more HP. Made by MaxLastBreath.
• All enemies scale: Very unrecommended option unless you want to suffer. This makes it so that all map enemies scale automatically if possible, regardless of their map parameters. Basically, all camps will be full golden in NG+, and will become full golden at some point after playing in non NG+.
• Nerfed charge attacks: Link's charged attacks take more time to charge and take more stamina. Two handed weapon charge attack does less damage. (recommended)
• No natural Gloomed hearts regenetation: Gloomed hearts no longer regenerate on the Surface or under lightroots. This is heavily recommended because some new enemies will have your heart UI glitched without this option. (recommended)

How to play

The mod is distributed in versions 1.1.0, 1.1.1, 1.1.2, 1.2.0 and 1.2.1. Each version will have two distributions, Base and Recommended. Base contains the basics of Challenge Mode: All the new content and enemies scaling by one rank, and that's it. Recommended is the same as Base, but with all recommended options enabled. Install the mod like you would install any other mod.

Sadly, we can not share .tkcl (for TKMM) files yet, but know that you can grab the .tkcl file form the Discord server (linked above). This .tkcl file is version agnostic, meaning you can install it on any version. Know that it's required to install the .tkcl with the latest version of TKMM (the one you build yourself) instead of the latest stable release, which has bugs breaking the mod currently.

If you want to make Challenge Mode compatible with other mods you're playing with, you may use TKMM, but again it's recommended to use the latest built version. Know that compatibility patches are in the works for Dark Army Resurrection and The Second Quest. A compatiblity patch will be made for Waikuteru's Randomizer once both mods reach their v1.0.

If you encounter an issue

Please report the issue in the #bug-report channel of the Discord server, detailling your game version, platform, issue and if possible with a crash log. We will try to help you and fix the issue if it has to be fixed the quickest possible. Thanks!

Thank you very much for playing, I hope you have fun!!