The difficulty levels are set by the player upon game creation, and each level changes many aspects of the game. The full details can be seen further down this page in the large table. Each level higher in difficulty setting increases the monster hit points and damage, as well as the exp/gold rewards for killing monsters, as well as completing quests, bounties, and side events. NOTE: Each difficulty level increases monster hit points by 60% and monster damage by 45% over the previous difficulty level, except for Hard which increase monster hit points by 100% and monster damage by 30%. This effectively means that one has to increase their damage 33% more than their toughness in order to ascend to the next difficulty level.