Difficulties

When a player starts their game, they have the option of playing as three different slugcats. Monk and Survivor both spawn in the same location and have the same story (being led by the yellow overseer to Moon then to Five Pebbles) with the only gameplay differences being features or changes that make Monk easier than Survivor. Monk (Yellow), Survivor (White), and Hunter (Red) correspond to easy, medium, and hard difficulties, respectively.



Yellow Slugcat: The Monk (Easy Difficulty)
The Monk is described as being more in-tune with nature than the average slugcat. Predators are less common and slightly less aggressive, and less food is required for the player to hibernate. Karma gates will also remove their karma level requirements after their first use, meaning the player cannot get trapped and can easily backtrack after entering a region they can’t progress through. Creatures are also much more quick to befriend or forgive Monk. The only significant downside is the Monk's reduced damage when throwing spears, meaning killing the sparse predators will be harder than normal, and even not killing weak enemies like Squidcadas or Noodleflies in one hit. Colored pearls are absent from the Monk's journey, locking off much of the optional lore, due to Monk placing farthest in the timeline so all of the data has faded over time. The Monk is designed for players seeking a more peaceful experience.



White Slugcat: The Survivor (Normal Difficulty)
The classic Rain World experience, white slugcat has standard karma gate requirements, requires 4 pips of food to hibernate, and must deal with the ever-present threat of predators. Deals the standard (1) amount of damage for spears and encounters more creature variety (For example, Dropwigs are absent from Monk but occasionally appear as Survivor).

Red Slugcat: The Hunter (Hard Difficulty)
The Hunter is a very different experience from the other two modes, and takes considerable dedication to complete. The Hunter is carnivorous slugcat, described as being karmically imbalanced. Despite being called carnivorous, any plants are edible but only give 1/4th of a food point. The Hunter will happily make a meal out of any dead creature, unlike the other two characters who cannot eat corpses. On the other hand, common bats will only give 1/4th of a food point for added difficulty. Because they are ‘karmically imbalanced’, karma flowers will not spawn as this character. Predators will spawn in greater numbers, and some which were hidden away in only a few corners of the world or restricted to lineages like the Red Lizard or King Vulture are now much more ubiquitous. Although the journey will be difficult, the Hunter is adapted to it. The Hunter is faster and stronger than other slugcats, and also has the ability to carry a second spear on their back. Their heightened metabolism will require more food per cycle than other slugcats, forcing the player to battle for their survival and seek food from dangerous creatures.

The Hunter's journey is significantly different from the other two, starting relatively near the entrance to Subterranean in Farm Arrays. The Hunter holds a strange green neuron fly, a spear on its back, and a pearl in its stomach when it spawns. The Hunter has a cycle limit, starting on Cycle 19 and counting down to Cycle 0, where you will start having very damaging effects similar to starvation with added visual effects. If you manage to survive beyond Cycle 0, the cycle count will descend into negative numbers and each rest will make the effects of Hunters afflcition much worse until it’s impossible to survive at around Cycle -13 or Cycle -14.