Updated difficulty levels

Update (10/4/13)

The new difficulty system is now documented on the Broad difficulty page. There are calculators and everything.

Original post

Difficulty watch: 60% (5 July '13)

The devs have messed with the challenge levels. I'll quote Tesuji (writing here on the official forums), since he's summarised it so nicely:

Here is what appears to be the new version:

• 10%: almost impossible (+6 CP on success, +4 CP on failure)
• 20-30%: high-risk (+5 CP on success, +3 CP on failure)
• 40%: tough (+4 CP on success, +2 CP on failure)
• 50-60%: chancy (+3 CP on success, +1 CP on failure)
• 70-80%: modest (+2 CP on success, +1 CP on failure)
• 90%: low-risk (+2 CP on success, +1 CP on failure)
• 100%: straightforward (+1 CP on success)

This is compared with the old version:

• 10%: almost impossible (+5 CP on success, +3 CP on failure)
• 20-30%: high-risk (+4 CP on success, +3 CP on failure)
• 40-50%: chancy (+3 CP on success, +2 CP on failure)
• 60-70%: modest (+2 CP on success, +2 CP on failure)
• 80-90%: low-risk (+1 CP on success, +1 CP on failure)
• 100%: straightforward (+1 CP on success)

So much for all those challenge information sections; it's good to get actual numbers though.

Edit: More tweaking is going on; many actions now have a 'broad' difficulty level:

Probability of success = 0.68 * (Quality Level) / (Difficulty Level)

which means the outcome is uncertain for a much broader range of skill levels. e.g. Join the dancers 2 appears to have a difficulty level of 150, so that a character with Persuasive 150 has a 68% chance of success, while at Persuasive 60 there's a 27% chance. Note that the displayed probability is rounded down.

Edit the second: The new Difficulty Levels seem to (so far) be the same as the old Difficulty Levels. In the old system, that was at the higher of the two levels classed as 'chancy' (with a 50% chance of success). In the new system, it'll give a 68% chance of success at the same level. The action rewards are often commensurate with the level e.g. success gives you 50 Rostygold when the Difficulty Level is 50.

Edit the third: To amend the previous note, the standard difficulty level seems to be ~68% now (amended the numbers above to reflect this; initially it was 70%). What fun. For the curious, the descriptors are:

• 0-10%: almost impossible
• 11-30%: high-risk
• 31-40%: tough
• 41-50%: very chancy
• 51-60%: chancy
• 61-70%: modest
• 71-80%: very modest
• 81-90%: low-risk
• 90-100%: straightforward

The source for these is this StoryNexus doc (Appendix B); since verified (29-100)%.

Edit the fourth: Oh ye gods: now the difficulty multiplier is 0.66. On Of course, he needn't get his own hands dirty... I expected the Difficulty level to be 80, but at that level I got a probability of 66%. Changing my Shadowy to each increment between 80 and 90 gave me consistent results for a multiplier of 0.66; checking one I did a week ago (Go for the throat!) confirms that the probability has dropped since then. Certainly keeps me on my toes...

As I noted above: when in doubt, the difficulty level almost certainly matches the higher of the two 'chancy' levels under the old system (e.g. if it used to be chancy at 55-56, the difficulty level is most likely 56).