Valor Mortis Difficulty Settings: Is There Easy Mode?

Valor Mortis has no difficulty settings: there is no easy mode, no story mode and no difficulty slider, and every player gets the same single difficulty. That was true at launch on 13 October 2026 and is still true as of November 2026 after the first two title updates. What the game does give you is a set of gameplay options and a lot of in-game tools that make the fights more manageable, and that is what this page walks through.

We checked this against the developer's interview with Insider Gaming, All Things How's tour of the options menus, PowerPyx's trophy roadmap, the metabot.gg mechanics data, Game Informer's preview and the patch notes for updates 1.004 and 1.005 in November 2026.

What the Developer Said About Difficulty

The decision was made on purpose. Asked by Insider Gaming in July 2026 whether the game would have difficulty levels, Szymon Bryla of One More Level answered, "No, on the day of release, Valor Mortis will not have difficulty levels." He added that the goal was a challenge that is "challenging, rewarding persistence, yet clear and fair." That puts it in the same camp as most soulslikes, where the fixed challenge is part of the design rather than something to tune.

The phrase "on the day of release" left the door slightly open, and some players read it as a hint that options could come later. As of November 2026 nothing has been announced. The publisher's post-launch plan names New Game+ for the fourth quarter of 2026 and a story DLC in 2027, and New Game+ is described as adding tougher enemies, not easier ones. If a difficulty change does arrive, it will show up in an official patch note first, so the update notes on Steam and the console stores are the place to watch.

What the Menus Actually Offer

Starting a new game skips straight past any difficulty screen. The main menu has only New Game, Credits, Options and Exit to Desktop, and the Options menu has five tabs: GAMEPLAY, VIDEO, AUDIO, MOUSE & KEYBOARD and CONTROLLER. There is no Accessibility tab. The GAMEPLAY tab is where the closest things to assists live:

• AUTO LOCK NEXT TARGET (on by default) moves your lock-on to the next live enemy when the current one dies, which helps in group fights.
• FIELD OF VIEW runs from 70 to 100 with a default of 85. A wider view makes it easier to track enemies flanking you.
• CAMERA SHAKE can be set to OFF, LOW or STANDARD. Turning it off keeps the view steady during big hits.
• SUBTITLES and SUBTITLE SIZE (small, medium or big), plus toggles for blood splatter and dismemberment.

On controller you can pick one of five fixed control schemes (DEFAULT, CLASSIC, DODGE/BLOCK SWAP, SHOULDER JUMPER and SHOULDER JUMPER 2), and on keyboard every action can be rebound. Moving dodge and block to buttons that feel natural to you is a real difficulty lever in a game built around split-second parries.

Why It Can Feel Uneven

Difficulty in Valor Mortis is set by where enemies are placed rather than by a mode. Regular enemies come in levels 1 to 6, and a Risen Soldier jumps from 100 Health at level 1 to 400 at level 6, so a new region can suddenly hit much harder than the last. Enraged enemies, marked by glowing red eyes, are tougher again and do not respawn once killed.

Previews flagged this. Game Informer's Wesley LeBlanc played more than 15 hours of a preview build, estimated more than 100 boss deaths and wrote that a boss could take about 60 percent of his Health in one hit even with his Health upgraded as far as he could. The launch patches have since adjusted things without adding modes. Update 1.005 on 23 October 2026 re-fitted hitboxes for many enemies and bosses to match their animations, tuned damage windows for enemies including the Risen Duelist, Eternal Guardsman and Howler, and made the Risen Lancer's red unblockable attack and the Risen Sapeur's push easier to read.

The numbers explain why early bosses feel brutal. Your character starts with 100 Health, and The Iron Marshall in Chapter III has a rush that deals 80 damage on its own, so a low-level character can lose almost the whole bar to one mistake. General Lothaire's unblockable leap hits for 50. Those values do not scale down for anyone, which is why a few levels in Maximum Health change the early game so much more than they seem to on paper.

The Rules That Decide How Hard It Feels

A lot of the frustration new players report comes from a handful of core rules rather than from enemy damage alone. Knowing them up front takes a surprising amount of sting out of the game.

• Death costs you your carried Catalysts. You drop every Catalyst you are holding where you fall. Die again before you get back to them and they are gone for good. Spending at a Lantern before a risky push is the single cheapest way to lower the stakes.
• Resting resets the world. Resting at a Lantern refills Health and Nephtoglobin completely, but it also revives every non-boss enemy in the area. Plan your rests so you are not clearing the same corridor three times.
• Dodges have short invulnerability. A dodge gives 0.25 seconds of invulnerability, roughly 15 frames at 60 frames per second, and a Perfect Dodge adds another 0.2 seconds. Dodging into an attack as it lands works better than rolling away early.
• Endurance runs out fast. You start with 80 Endurance and sprinting drains 10 per second. Blocks and melee swings also cost Endurance, which is why parrying is so valuable.
• Red means dodge. Unblockable attacks glow red. No amount of blocking will stop them, so treat a red glow as a cue to move.

None of these change with a setting, but each one becomes second nature with practice, and once they do, the fixed difficulty feels a lot more like the "clear and fair" challenge the studio was aiming for.

The Real Ways to Make It Easier

Without a slider, the game's systems are your difficulty settings. Most of them stack, and together they change how the game feels far more than an easy mode would.

• Level up. Health starts at 100 and every skill-board purchase helps. Two Maximum Health nodes add 80, and the Physical Resistance node cuts melee and ranged damage by up to 12%. When a boss is two-shotting you, an hour at one of the spots in the Catalyst farming guide is often the fastest fix.
• Parry instead of block. Blocking a hit still costs Endurance and lets half the damage through. A parry has a 0.2 second window, negates all damage and costs no Endurance.
• Use Ambers that forgive mistakes. Duellist's Focus widens the parry window and Iron Grip makes flask use faster and uninterruptible. The Amber guide explains how to slot and rank them.
• Upgrade the flask. More charges and stronger healing are the most direct way to survive a bad pull.
• Exploit weaknesses. Lothaire takes 40% extra fire damage, and several late bosses resist firearms, so matching your Transmutation and weapon to the boss is worth more than raw level. The weapon tier list shows which tools fit which fights.
• Respec when you get stuck. Your first respec is free, so trying a tankier spread of points for one boss costs nothing.

One more option deserves a mention: the Shield Transmutation, picked up in the University, gains Impenetrable Defence at level 4, which protects you from unblockable attacks. It is the closest thing the game has to a defensive safety net, and our look at how defense works without armor explains how it fits alongside Health and resistance upgrades.

Difficulty and Trophies

Because there is only one difficulty, there are no difficulty trophies to worry about. PowerPyx rates the platinum at 5 out of 10 and lists In His Own Image, the trophy for beating the final boss, as the hardest one on the list. Nothing is missable from a trophy point of view, and only one playthrough is needed, so the challenge is entirely about getting through the ten bosses. If you want to know which fight usually stops people, the General Lothaire walkthrough covers the first real test, and the playtime breakdown shows how much extra time a struggle with the bosses tends to add.

If You Would Rather Skip the Struggle

For players who want the story and the world without the wall of deaths, the store's Mega Modded Save is the nearest thing to an easy mode. It begins at the first Lantern of Chapter I with a level 264 character, every skill active, 999,999 Catalysts, a Ferrofluid Flask upgraded to 12 charges and 140 potency, and 99,999 reserve ammo. If you later want the intended challenge back, the product page notes that Reset Level on the Lantern's Level Up screen returns you to level 1 and keeps your Catalysts.

The save supports PS5 and PC only, not Xbox, and it is just the save, so you need your own copy of the game. See everything for this game on the Valor Mortis hub.

Frequently Asked Questions