Difficulty and Achievements

Four settings, one unlock chain

The game ships with an adjustable difficulty option, and the four settings are not all available from the start. A first run opens only the first three; the days remaining shown during that first run are story dressing only and do not affect progression. The four settings are named Wayfarer, Pathbreaker, Hellwalker and Sixty-Six Days in the English version.

Two things follow straight from that. High difficulty is not locked behind a clear — Hellwalker is selectable on day one. Sixty-Six Days sits one rung higher: you have to clear the game on Pathbreaker or above before it appears, and its saves sit apart from the other difficulties.

All four names are official, and the Chinese and English forms correspond one to one.

Pathbreaker is the setting you actually want to land on: nothing is locked behind the harder settings, and it is also the cheapest place to learn parry timing.

Difficulty can change, but Wayfarer is a one-way door

The three first-run settings can be switched mid-game from the pause menu, with no restart. But “you can change it” is not “you can take it back”: once you drop to Wayfarer, the save is permanently locked to the easiest setting, cannot go back up to Pathbreaker or Hellwalker, and there is no confirmation box or warning when you switch. Two reporters playing in separate sessions both hit this wall — one found out mid-boss-fight that there was no way back, the other wrote down “no prompt, no confirmation”.

The practical meaning is one sentence: if you want to drop down for a breather, make sure you are dropping to Pathbreaker and not Wayfarer. If you never meant to touch the harder settings anyway, dropping to Wayfarer costs nothing extra — it locks difficulty, not achievements.

The official line only says “everything except Sixty-Six Days can be switched freely” and does not mention this exception. The two are not in conflict: the official statement is design intent, what testers hit is an edge case the statement simply does not cover.

What changes when you turn it up

Three things move: enemy attack, enemy health, enemy behaviour. Hellwalker raises the first two by roughly thirty to forty percent and rebuilds the third.

The first two are ordinary. The third is where Hellwalker’s reputation comes from. Enemies stay in high-poise states longer, and attack strings stretch out with links and branch variations; the AI is designed around “how a human opponent would play in PvP” — it feints, stops mid-combo, and watches what you throw before deciding its next move.

Interestingly, this AI was tuned down late in development. The first version read inputs too much like a fighting game; it was changed so that “pressure comes from the toolkit”: bosses pin you in place with a ranged item and then close for the finish, rather than predicting your button presses.

This has a practical effect on how you learn. On Wayfarer and Pathbreaker you can eat a set you have never seen and live, then remember it afterwards. On Hellwalker an unseen set usually ends the attempt outright, and the information you needed never reached you. While you are still building move recognition, Pathbreaker teaches faster than Hellwalker.

One rule that does not change with difficulty: multi-phase boss checkpoints save per phase. Die in the second phase and you come back in the second phase, with supplies refilled, and do not have to replay the first.

Wayfarer changes enemy reactions, not numbers

Wayfarer is often taken as “easy mode”, but what it mostly changes is enemy aggression and reaction: enemies do not charge the moment you enter guard stance, and guard-break windows appear more easily. Boss health actually stays near the baseline — so a Wayfarer boss fight is not necessarily shorter, you just have more chances to grind it down.

That is also why it makes a good practice ground: it trains the same move recognition, it just changes “one misread ends it” into “one misread and you get another”.

The Sixty-Six Days clock changes the genre

This mode is worth understanding before you start, because its two rules bite each other if you are not ready.

Rule one: saving works differently. Sixty-Six Days saves sit apart from other difficulties, written automatically when you touch a bell, with no manual save and no loading back to before a mistake. It is also a one-way door: once chosen you cannot switch to any other difficulty, and failure means starting over.

Rule two: the days only go down. Each death costs one day, so 66 days is 66 deaths — spend all 66 and the run is over. The correct reading is “Hellwalker plus a life that drains faster than you can fight”: the same AI, the same movesets, and only 66 attempts before the save ends.

In the other difficulties the day count is only a narrative device: the story moves it forward (one record has Soul waking after the carriage falls with only 65 days left), but the system guarantees you reach the ending before it runs out, so there is no need to ration yourself over a countdown.

When the days run out, the run ends with a dedicated “death with regret” ending; once it plays, that save is over for good and the game asks whether to start again.

Together the two rules turn save points into a resource. A bell is no longer a convenience: it is a save, a resupply, and the only thing between you and losing an hour. Treat each stretch of map as a stage you must finish inside one bell-to-bell window, and the mode stops feeling arbitrary.

Expect to skip a good number of optional fights. Expect to walk around things that can kill you cheaply. That is not cowardice, it is the mode working as designed. The developers themselves said nobody can clear this mode without dying.

Achievements: the one confirmed rule

The confirmed fact is narrow but useful: any one of the three first-run settings can earn every achievement. No achievement is locked behind Hellwalker, and none behind Sixty-Six Days — in the producer’s words, even playing Wayfarer the whole way, you can get all achievements in a single run.

The full achievement list has not been published. Any page claiming a “complete achievement list” right now is guessing; before release, treat every list as unverified.

What it means for planning: you do not need to play a hard run for the platinum equivalent. Play the setting you like, and treat Sixty-Six Days as its own challenge rather than an achievement tax.

There is a new game plus, and it is not a straight replay

The second run is built around a roguelike-style structure rather than simply raising numbers. How that structure works is thinly covered in public material — which is the honest reading: the mode exists, its shape is not recorded yet.

One thing is certain: weapons you get in the first run all carry over to the second, with no re-farming. And that is exactly why the last dozen or so weapons really belong to the second run — most of them drop late, often from the final boss, when the first run has almost no fights left; only carried into the next run do they get used. Neither the second run nor Sixty-Six Days adds new story or new weapons.

Treat it in planning as another mode with its own rules, not the same campaign with bigger numbers.

Traps worth knowing before you commit

1. Jumping straight to Hellwalker “to learn properly”. You will spend your attempts on fights you cannot read yet. Pathbreaker teaches the same moves but leaves room to breathe.
2. Treating Sixty-Six Days as a difficulty slider. What it changes is the save system plus a 66-retry cap; difficulty is the smaller half.
3. Dropping to Wayfarer while lowering the setting. That setting locks the save, and getting back to Pathbreaker afterwards means a new run.
4. Hoarding manual saves in the normal flow. Manual saves are free there — save before a boss door.
5. Thinking achievements require a hard run. They do not; all three first-run settings count.
6. Judging the whole game by the first two chapters’ boss density. The first two chapters hold roughly twelve to fifteen bosses, and the early ones are gentle; a good share of them are optional or hidden — the real volume and difficulty come later, so do not use those first fights as the benchmark.

FAQ

Can I change difficulty mid-game? The three first-run settings can be switched freely from the pause menu; but once you drop to Wayfarer the save is locked and you cannot go back up to Pathbreaker or Hellwalker, with no confirmation prompt. Sixty-Six Days sits outside the four and cannot become anything else once chosen.

Does Sixty-Six Days add content? It runs at Hellwalker-grade difficulty with a 66-retry cap and a day limit. New content is not in what has been described; the only extra is the dedicated ending when the days run out.

When does Sixty-Six Days unlock? Clear the game on Pathbreaker or higher and it appears in the difficulty list; a Wayfarer clear does not count. Once chosen, its save is separate and cannot switch back.

Do achievements care about difficulty? The confirmed rule: any of the three first-run settings earns everything, and Sixty-Six Days is not needed either.

Is Wayfarer worth anything? Yes — it is where you practise parry timing and telling heavy attacks apart without paying tuition for every mistake. Its tweaks lean on enemy reactions rather than numbers, boss health stays near the baseline, so fights grind longer while misreads cost less.

Can I farm levels while stuck on a boss? No. Experience is a finite pool, and clearing every mob will not fill the next level; to get past it you go back and learn its openings, dodge windows and answers. According to preview coverage, Hellwalker’s early mobs are gentler than in comparable Souls-likes, which makes players relax; the real cliff is the optional bosses — but they are not plain stat walls either, and beating them hands you strong weapons early.

What happens when the days hit zero? The run ends with the designated ending and a short cutscene. After that the save is over for good and the game asks whether to restart — a real consequence, not a soft reset.