Hard mode points: how to spend 0 to 60
How a layer is priced, how the tier is computed, and how to land exactly on a paying tier.
Your tier is simply the total you have spent. Every shard layer costs a certain number of points, the points add up, and the sum is the tier the run is played at. There is no second scoring rule behind it.
Everything that makes hard mode confusing comes from two details on top of that: a shard’s layers are not all priced the same, and only one reward tier pays out per run.
What a layer costs
A shard has layers, and each layer carries its own step price. Raising a shard to layer 3 costs the first three steps added together — not three times a unit price.
Most of the time the steps are identical and the difference does not show. It shows on exactly two shards, and they are the two you will lean on most. Ferocious Claws and Tenacious Body both run 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2 — six layers at a point each, then a seventh costing two, so maximum is 8 rather than 7. Proliferation does the same in miniature: 1 then 2, full cost 3.
That single detail is what makes the last layer of a big shard a bad buy. You pay double for the seventh layer of Ferocious Claws, and enemy damage goes from +48% to +56% for it.
The whole board, priced
Seventeen shards, in three types. Demon shards make the enemies harder, World shards change the run’s world and economy, Plan shards attack your build and your rewards.
| Shard | Type | Layers | Step prices | Full cost | What the layers do |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ferocious Claws | Demon | 7 | 1,1,1,1,1,1,2 | 8 | Enemy damage +8% per layer, up to +56% |
| Tenacious Body | Demon | 7 | 1,1,1,1,1,1,2 | 8 | Enemy HP +15%, then +25/35/45/55/65/75% |
| Protective Armor | Demon | 3 | 1,1,1 | 3 | Enemy Defense grows by 2, 4 or 6 as stages pass |
| Agile Claws | Demon | 2 | 2,2 | 4 | Enemy move and attack speed +20%, then +35%, in combat |
| Evil Energy | Demon | 1 | 1 | 1 | Damage to Super-Armoured enemies drops from 65% to 50% |
| False Vanguard | Demon | 1 | 2 | 2 | Mini bosses become stronger |
| Combat Stance | Demon | 1 | 3 | 3 | All bosses attack more aggressively |
| Festival of Blood | Demon | 1 | 3 | 3 | Enemies heal 15% on hitting you; minibosses and bosses 6% |
| Decline | World | 3 | 2,2,2 | 6 | HP recovery effects −5%, −10%, −20% |
| Severed Exchange | World | 2 | 1,1 | 2 | Merchant Barter +20, then +40 |
| Rebellion of Machines | World | 2 | 1,1 | 2 | Trap damage +100%, then +200% |
| Proliferation | World | 2 | 1,2 | 3 | Regular enemy count +10%, then +25% |
| Deterioration | Plan | 4 | 1,1,1,1 | 4 | HP restored on level up −10/25/40/60% |
| Tension | Plan | 1 | 1 | 1 | No potions during boss fights |
| Dizziness | Plan | 2 | 2,2 | 4 | One, then two fewer artifact and tablet choices |
| Dispossession | Plan | 2 | 2,2 | 4 | Boss-dropped tablets fixed to grade 1, then grade 2 |
| Heavy Heart | Plan | 1 | 2 | 2 | Start with Heavy Heart, an artifact with no abilities you cannot discard |
Everything at once totals 60 points. That is the ceiling, and it matters in a moment.
Protective Armor is priced like a cheap shard and does not behave like one. Its defence is not a flat bonus — it adds its value again for every stage past the first, so at layer 3 it is nothing on the opening stage and a great deal of enemy defence by the end of a run. And enemy Defense reads the same logarithmic curve yours does, the one where the early points bite hardest: the first 40 Defense an enemy gains removes 30.8% of every hit you land on it. A modest-looking number is a real bite out of your damage — damage math has the whole curve.
What a clear actually pays
Thirteen reward tiers, all paying talent points:
| Tier | 3 | 6 | 9 | 12 | 15 | 18 | 21 | 24 | 27 | 30 | 35 | 40 | 50 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Talent points | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 5 |
Three rules govern them, and getting any of them wrong costs runs:
- A reward is paid for clearing a run at that tier, not for assembling a plan at it.
- A run pays one tier. The tier you cleared at, and nothing else.
- Skipped tiers are never backfilled. Clearing at 50 pays five points — not the twenty that the whole ladder is worth. The game says it plainly: take the tiers one at a time to earn all the rewards.
The full ladder is twenty talent points, and collecting it takes at least thirteen separate clears: a tier-50 clear earns five of them and leaves every rung below still waiting.
Why overshooting wastes points
The reward tiers sit at fixed totals. Spend 3 and you are on the tier-3 reward. Spend 4 and you are still on the tier-3 reward, playing a harder run for the same one point. The panel tells you the excess as it happens; the fix is to plan the total, not the shards.
The good news is that exact totals are always reachable. Twenty-six layers on the board cost a single point each — the first six of both big scalers, all of Protective Armor and Deterioration, both layers of Severed Exchange and Rebellion of Machines, Proliferation’s first, plus Evil Energy and Tension. With that many one-point steps you can always trim a plan down to land precisely on 3, 6, 9 and every rung after.
At the top the arithmetic stops being kind. The maximum is 60 and the highest reward tier is 50, so a maximum-everything run spends ten points on difficulty that pays nothing at all. If you are turning every shard on, do it for the achievement, not the talent points.
A budget that works
The cheap climb, in the order that hurts least:
- Tiers 3 to 9. Start with the shards whose downsides you can play around rather than the ones that scale with the whole run. Tension (1) only matters if you rely on potions in boss fights; Rebellion of Machines (1 and 1) only if traps hit you; Severed Exchange (1 and 1) only at merchants; Deterioration (four layers at 1) only if you lean on level-up healing. That is nine points of tier from shards a careful run barely notices.
- Tiers 12 to 21. Now add Ferocious Claws and Tenacious Body a layer at a time. They are a point each, they scale smoothly, and they are the honest difficulty in this system — more enemy damage and more enemy HP, nothing tricky. Protective Armor’s three layers fit here too if your damage can afford the defence.
- Tiers 24 to 35. The two-point shards. Dizziness (fewer choices) and Dispossession (worse boss tablets) hurt builds that need one specific piece, so take them when your build is robust rather than precise. Heavy Heart costs a bag slot for the whole run — check what a lost slot does to your layout on the bag planner.
- Tiers 40 and 50. By here you are buying Combat Stance, Festival of Blood, Agile Claws and Decline, which change how fights are fought rather than how long they take. Under Festival of Blood every hit an enemy lands heals it, so getting hit costs twice — though in co-op that healing scales down with party size.
Two habits make the climb cheaper. Stop the big scalers at layer 6, where the steps are still a point each, and buy the seventh only when you need exactly two more points. And decide the total first, then fill it — the hard mode planner prices any combination the way a run charges it, names the tier you land on and shows the overshoot before a clear is wasted on it.
What the points are for
Talent points — and hard mode is one of only two places they come from, the other being the Talent Point entries at the village tree, which is a different purchase in a different currency (the two systems, side by side).
Spend what you already have before you climb. Wrath’s level-10 boss damage and Endure’s level-20 revive are exactly the perks a hard run wants, so the order you raise talents in decides whether tier 30 is a grind or a formality — and your costume choice matters more here than anywhere, since several costumes give up the defence a high tier is trying to take.