Duskfade Difficulty Settings: All Four Modes Explained
What each Duskfade difficulty setting changes, which one the developers call the true experience, and why no trophy forces you onto the hardest mode.
Duskfade ships with four difficulty settings, and the only thing they change is how much damage you take. Nothing is locked behind them: you can switch mid-game, and no trophy or collectible requires a specific mode.
The four settings, in the order they read
| Setting | What it changes |
|---|---|
| Story mode | You take no damage at all. A pure story and exploration run. |
| Apprentice | You take very little damage and struggle to die. |
| Clock master | The game’s real baseline: a normal run where you die a couple of times per level. |
| Master clock maker | A genuine challenge. You take a good amount of damage, and bosses or large groups are guaranteed to cost you a couple of attempts. Checkpoints stay plentiful. |
Those descriptions come from a full review that played through several of them. They are not a menu screen, so treat the middle tiers as the reviewer’s reading: Story mode and Master clock maker are the two ends. Apprentice and Clock master sit between.
Which one should you pick
- Want the story, the art and the platforming without friction? Story mode. It is not a punishment mode in reverse: collectibles, quests and trophies all stay available.
- First action-platformer, or rusty? Apprentice gives you room to learn enemy patterns and movement without a boss retry loop.
- Comfortable with the genre? Clock master reads as an ordinary difficulty setting: you die a couple of times per level, which is the pace most action-platformer players expect.
- Chasing a challenge run? Master clock maker is the one that tests the combat system properly; reviewers who picked it say the bosses finally demand studying attack patterns.
The settings are named rather than numbered, and the names lean on the game’s clockpunk vocabulary. That reading comes from the list itself, not from a developer statement we could verify.
Can you change difficulty later?
Yes. One reviewer notes you can switch difficulty at any time, and the trophy guide confirms nothing in the trophy list depends on the setting. If a boss is blocking you, dropping a tier costs you nothing but pride.
What difficulty does not affect
- Trophies and the platinum. Play on Story mode if you want the fastest completion; no trophy requires a particular setting.
- Collectibles, side quests and the 100% checklist. They are tied to the world, not the difficulty.
- Story branches and endings. The choices are not gated behind a mode.
What actually makes the harder settings harder
Carnage-style stat inflation is not the design here. The enemies hit harder, which turns the defensive half of the combat system into the part you actually need: dodges, deflects and the timing on your heavy attacks. If you move up a tier and start dying, the combat guide covers the systems the harder modes lean on.
Sources
- QuickSwitch — Duskfade Switch 2 review and analysis (video, names all four settings and their damage behaviour)
- Nater Baiter Gamer — Duskfade walkthrough on Clockmaker difficulty (video, a full Clockmaker run played on PS5)
- ChapterCheats — choosing a difficulty for Duskfade (hint page, four settings)
- Guslok — Duskfade trophy guide and roadmap (no trophy requires a difficulty; Story Mode is valid)