Changelog

All notable changes to Player Difficulty are documented here. The format follows Keep a Changelog and this project uses Semantic Versioning.

Unreleased

1.1.0 - 2026-10-13

Same requirements as 1.0.0: Minecraft 1.21.1, Fabric Loader 0.19.5 or newer, Fabric API 0.116.10+1.21.1 or newer, Java 21. An existing config file keeps working: a key that is missing takes its default. The three display keys that did nothing in 1.0.0 now do something (all three are off by default).

Added

• Chat line when a milestone tier is reached, Scaling milestone reached: 1.50x., one line per tier, sent before the tier's commands run. Config key display.chatOnMilestone (default on). An owner who already puts a tellraw into a tier's commands may want to switch it off.
• Chat line to a player whose values an admin command changed, An admin changed your scaling values (relief grant 1 step). Scaling 1.86x -> 1.80x., only for a player who is online and who did not run the command themselves. Config key display.chatOnAdminChange (default on).
• Personal boss bar that counts a death penalty down, for clients without the mod too: Death penalty: damage 2:10 (in fights), hunger 4:05. It fills with the remaining time against the longest remaining time since it appeared. Config key display.penaltyBossBar (default off).
• Tab list footer Scaling 2.05x. Config key display.tabFooter (default off). Another mod that sets the tab list footer overwrites it, and the other way round.
• Public score under the player's name, M times 100 (the name tag reads 205 % scaling at 2.05x), as the scoreboard objective player_diff in the below-name slot. Config key display.belowName (default off). The objective is removed when the key is switched off, and an objective of another mod that already holds the slot is left alone.
• Bonus experience for the ender dragon. The kill is credited at the lethal hit as before, and the bonus is paid at each of the 11 awards of the dragon's death animation, with the player's multiplier of that moment. The injector (EnderDragonMixin) is optional: a pack mod that changes EnderDragon.tickDeath cannot crash the End, that award just pays no bonus. The config now has 113 keys.
• tools/bots/: a scripted multi-client test with vanilla-protocol bots (a developer tool; not part of the jar).

Changed

• The mod was renamed from Nytheria Scaling to Player Difficulty before the first public release. The mod id is now player_difficulty. An existing config file config/nytheria_scaling.json and an existing world data folder nytheria_scaling are moved to the new names on the first start. The commands, the config keys and the texts shown to players are unchanged.
• /scaling admin bootstrap <player> now also works for a player who is offline. The statistics are read from <world>/stats/<uuid>.json, and the stored gear peak is kept. The old answer The player must be online to be seeded again. is gone. A statistics file that is missing, unreadable or empty never wipes a record: the command answers No statistics found for <name>. and changes nothing. The command seeds whatever bootstrap.enabled says, as before.
• The three display channels update when an activity window ends, about every 20 seconds, with no smoothing in between.

Known limits

• No Mod Menu screen.
• The kill values of the bosses are still the configured overrides, not values measured from play.
• A dragon whose chunk unloads in the middle of its death animation pays no bonus after it is loaded again. If another mod replaces one of the two experience awards of the death animation, that award pays no bonus and nothing is logged.
• The boss bar, the tab list footer and the below-name score have not been looked at in the real pack.
• A deliberate death is not a loss in every respect; the gain is bounded and the validator reports it.

1.0.0 - 2026-10-13

First release for Minecraft 1.21.1 on Fabric (Fabric Loader 0.19.5 or newer, Fabric API 0.116.10+1.21.1 or newer, Java 21).

Added

• Per-player difficulty multiplier, 1.00x up to a cap of 2.50x, from three parts that each level off: active play time, kills and gear. Only active play counts; AFK, the death screen and being logged out do not.
• Effects on that player only: damage dealt to mobs is divided by the multiplier and damage taken from mobs is multiplied (2.0 times at the cap), after armour and enchantments. Mob health is never changed. Pets and summons count as the owner. Damage between players and damage no monster caused is not scaled. The extra damage of one hit is capped at a share of the player's max health.
• Bosses get half of each effect. The ender dragon is not scaled. Bosses are recognised through c:bosses, the mod's own tags and scoreboard tags.
• Kill score from the toughness and danger of each kill, shared by damage dealt, reduced for unengaged mobs, spawner mobs and repeated kills of one type.
• Gear rating from effective health and damage per second, read from attributes, with a peak that fades slowly and a gate that opens with combat experience.
• Builder rules: time without combat counts only a small fraction, and gear counts in full only after the player has fought.
• Death relief after a death caused by a monster: the multiplier drops by a bounded step and returns over about 30 active minutes. Relief is a budget that refills over 60 active minutes. A floor keeps 75 % of the gear part and 40 % of the time and kill parts out of reach of deaths.
• Death penalty in two parts on two clocks: 50 % more hunger for 5 minutes of active play, and 30 % less damage dealt for 5 minutes of fighting. Weaker at a low multiplier, stronger and longer for deaths in quick succession, with caps. No penalty and no relief for deaths caused by other players or by a command. Optional penalty kinds (max health, luck, experience gain, damage taken) are off by default.
• Rewards for a high multiplier: bonus experience and a chance of an extra loot roll per kill, and milestone tiers (default 1.5x, 2.0x, 2.25x and 2.45x, no commands set) that run commands once as the server console and add a tier tag to the player.
• Bootstrap for existing players: records are seeded once from vanilla statistics and current gear (bootstrap.enabled), and again on request with /scaling admin bootstrap.
• Config validator that reports in words when a change would make relief accumulate or make dying on purpose more attractive.
• /scaling top [page] lists at most display.leaderboardSize places (default 10, 0 to 100) in pages of ten; 0 switches the command off. general.debugLog writes one INFO log line per recorded death decision and per kill credit, never per hit.
• Commands: /scaling, /scaling top [page], and /scaling admin with get, explain, history, set, add, reset, bootstrap, freeze, exempt, penalty clear, penalty apply, relief grant, reload, check, config get and config set. The admin tree needs permission level 2, or the node player_difficulty.command.admin when a permissions API is present. config set rewards.milestones needs level 4.
• Optional client part: the multiplier on the pause and inventory screens with a breakdown tooltip, an optional permanent line, and the client command /scalingdisplay (screens, hud, off, reload). Clients without the mod can join; they use /scaling and one chat line after a death.
• Chat line after a respawn that explains the penalty and the relief (display.chatOnDeath), optional action bar line for clients without the mod.
• Placeholders %player_difficulty:multiplier% and %player_difficulty:tier% when Text Placeholder API is installed.
• Server config config/player_difficulty.json with a comment on every key, a reference file rewritten on every start, and one player file per world in <world>/player_difficulty/players/.
• Mod icon.

Known limits

• No Mod Menu screen.
• The config keys display.penaltyBossBar, display.tabFooter and display.belowName are accepted but nothing reads them in this version.
• The ender dragon's experience is not boosted.
• /scaling admin bootstrap works for online players only.
• A deliberate death is not a loss in every respect; the gain is bounded and the validator reports it.