u/Ask_Aware

Does 37% chaos really makes a difference versus 10% universal dmg and 30% crit ? I know the nightmare damage is fixed 50% crit chance (and I have A3/4/5 enabled)

I’ll preface saying this : yes, I spent on refills. A lot. And if you guys don’t like it, that’s not my problem <3

So I reached lvl50 and with the weekly reset I can now give a report about the changes from HL 45 difficulties and HL 50 ones.

Character EXP, weapon EXP, beetle coins
No change here, the last difficulty unlocks at HL 45. I farmed those a lot before lvl50 thinking I’d save farming the rest for after unlocking the next difficulty.

Skill materials
Skills require both the weekly pilgrimage and the Houdini stage materials. While Pilgrimage still has 1 more difficulty to unlock at HL 55, Houdini stages reach max difficulty here.
However, the increase in drops is barely noticeable (pictures 1 and 2)
You still drop 1 purple skill materials per run in Houdini, and only 1 more blue one.

Pilgrimage only drops 3 boss items still, which is same as the previous difficulty. Hopefully difficulty 6 will drop an additional, otherwise you will need 2 weeks to get a character’s skills from 7 to 10. (The only change between dif 4 and dif 5 is… 3200 bettle coins)

Cartridges and modules
Here as well, HL 50 unlocks max difficulty. I saw a lot of talk about it guaranteeing 3 cartridges drops, but in fact it’s 2 guaranteed and a chance at a 3rd one. So far the 3rd one drop is about 50%, maybe a bit less. For modules, you gain slightly more rewind coins as well, and with the chance of dismantling an additional cartridge you get even more value.

Boss drops now have a fixed 8 items.
This means you can get 36 for your 70 to 80 in 4,5 runs instead of … 4,7 runs before HL 50. This was my most frustrating finding as I decided to wait until HL50 to farm my ascensions, and had already farmed enough xp for 4 lvl80s.

All in all, the higher difficulties don’t seem like they add a lot of value, except maybe for rabbit hole in the long run.