BetterDifficulty

BetterDifficulty makes Minecraft harder in a structured, progressive way. Instead of just cranking up the vanilla difficulty slider, it introduces a three-tier Game Stage system that scales the world's danger over time — and rewards you for it.

⚔️ Game Stages

The world progresses through three stages: Normal → Expert → Master.

Stages advance automatically when you reach key milestones — entering the Nether pushes the world to Expert, slaying the Ender Dragon unlocks Master. Alternatively, server operators can set the stage manually at any time with /betterdifficulty stage set <normal|expert|master>. All progress is saved and persists across restarts.

Per-player stages are also supported for servers that want individual difficulty scaling.

👾 Difficulty Features

Over 21 toggleable gameplay features activate and scale with your current stage. Every feature can be individually enabled or disabled in the config.

Mob behaviour

Mobs spawn with bonus HP, damage and speed on Expert and Master
Creepers can spawn charged, chain-react on death, explode through walls, and are immune to their own blasts
Endermen teleport aggressively toward nearby players and deal direct damage
Zombies and Skeletons have a chance to spawn riding a chicken
Pillagers carry functional firework rockets that home in on players
Evokers spawn with a Totem of Undying in their off-hand
Drowned summon a lightning bolt on death
Mob groups and spawn rate pressure increase at higher stages

World

Double loot drops (30% on Expert, 55% on Master)
Experience bonus (+25% / +50%)
Deadlier explosions deal extra direct damage to players
Monster hits apply Weakness and Slowness
Spawn blocker keeps monsters away from the world spawn
Killer Bunny can rarely replace a normal rabbit spawn
A zombie wearing your gear spawns when you die

🔴 Blood Moon

On any given night, a Blood Moon has a ~6.7% chance of rising. When it does:

Hostile mob spawn pressure on the surface doubles
Players cannot sleep until dawn
The sky, fog, and lighting shift to a deep crimson — visible on all clients in real time with smooth interpolation
Special mob variants spawn: armoured zombies and Power V skeletons by default, fully configurable via SNBT tags in the config
The event is announced server-wide in red text and ends automatically at dawn

The Blood Moon can also be forced or stopped at any time via /betterdifficulty bloodmoon force|stop. All state — including whether a Blood Moon already rolled tonight — persists across server restarts.

🎒 Treasure Bags

Defeating powerful bosses and completing world milestones rewards players with Treasure Bags — special loot containers that also track your collection progress.

Bag	How to obtain
Angler	Every 16 fish caught
Elder Guardian	Kill an Elder Guardian
Ender Dragon	Kill the Ender Dragon
Warden	Kill a Warden
Wither	Kill the Wither
Pillager	Win a raid
Elder	For modded/custom boss integration

Each bag has its own drop table — defined by JSON config files that generate automatically on first run. You can fully customise the item pool, weights, chances and stack sizes without touching any code. Hot-reloading the config with /betterdifficulty treasurebag reload applies changes without a restart.

Opening bags tracks which items you've unlocked in a Pokédex-style progress system, shown as a tooltip on the item itself. Progress syncs to the client and persists per player across sessions.

⚙️ Configuration

All features are controlled through a single config file. Key options include:

Enable or disable any of the 21 difficulty features individually
Blood Moon: chance per night, surface-only spawns, sleep prevention, visual intensity, custom special spawn rules
Treasure Bags: fishing requirement, tooltip visibility, fully custom drop tables per bag type

🖥️ Commands (permission level 2)

/betterdifficulty stage get|set <normal|expert|master>
/betterdifficulty bloodmoon force|stop
/betterdifficulty treasurebag reload

Inspired by the classic Bloodmoon and Majrusz's Progressive Difficulty.

Better Difficulty