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Guide: L2 Hostility - Difficulty, Traits, & Progression

Note: These mechanics and recommendations are subject to change due to ongoing ATM: Arcana Balancing with the L2 system.

Introduction

L2 Hostiles adds an adaptive difficulty system where mobs become stronger and gain special abilities (Traits) based on player progression and location. It aims for a more dynamic and challenging experience compared to vanilla or mods like Champions, Scaling Health, or Infernal Mobs, featuring player-specific difficulty scaling and mechanics for creating safe zones. For information in the curios specific for L2Hostility click here.

Understanding L2 Difficulty & Mob Levels

L2 features an adaptive difficulty system. Mobs gain levels, Traits, increased health, and increased damage based on several factors. You generally won’t encounter high-level mobs with powerful traits early on.

  • Mob Level Factors: A mob’s level is determined by:
    • The dimension it’s in.
    • The biome it’s in.
    • Its exact position (distance from origin/spawn).
    • The difficulty level of nearby players.
    • The entity type (some mobs have base level adjustments).
  • Player & Chunk Difficulty: Difficulty is tracked per-player and per-chunk section. Killing mobs increases these values; dying decreases player difficulty.
  • Mob Equipment: Higher mob levels can also affect the equipment and enchantments mobs spawn with (primarily applies to vanilla mobs using vanilla equipment).

  • Checking Difficulty: Use the Hostility Detector item or check the Difficulty Information tab in your inventory/player screen to see the difficulty level of your current location and your personal difficulty.

    Difficulty Information Tab

Ways to Increase Player Difficulty

  • Kill Mobs: The primary method of gaining difficulty.
  • Drink a Cursed Bottle: The most efficient way to quickly raise difficulty, giving +50 levels per bottle consumed.

  • Wear Difficulty Curios: Equip specific Curios that grant bonus of +50 difficulty levels. The currently available options are shown below:

    Curios For Difficulty Increase

    (Note: From left to right: Curse of Envy, Curse of Greed, Curse of Lust, Curse of Warth)

    Abyssal Thorn

    (Note: Abyssal Thorn can only be wear in the L2Hotility - Curse curios slot while the other 4 can go in the Charm slot)

  • Visit New Dimensions: Entering dimensions for the first time can increase difficulty giving a +2 lvl of difficulty for each dimension. Most of the dimensions will add a multiplicative of 1.5x of you current level allowing to mobs to reach a maximum level of 3000; in the overworld this multiplicative vary between 1x and 1.5x.

  • Travel Far from Origin: Moving a significant distance away from the world spawn point increases difficulty.
  • Explore High-Difficulty Areas: Visit biomes or dimensions that inherently possess a higher base difficulty rating.

Ways to Decrease Player Difficulty

  • Die: Player death reduces difficulty (ensure the keepInventory gamerule is false for this to apply).

  • Drink a Bottle of Sanity: The most efficient way to quickly lower difficulty.

    Sanity Bottle

  • Use a Hostility Orb: Creates a localized safe zone (chunk section) around the orb where difficulty is permanently nullified, preventing high-level mobs from spawning there. To use it, equip Detector Glasses and hold the Detector Glasses in your off-hand while placing/interacting with the Hostility Orb.

    Using the Hostility Orb setup

  • Wear Difficulty Nullifying Curios: Equip specific Divinity Light that force your difficulty rating to 0. (Currently unobtainable due to the required trait Killer Aura being disabled by default).

  • Wear Difficulty Maintainer Curios: Equip the Curse of Sloth to prevent gaining further difficulty levels from most sources.

    Curse of Sloth

Expected L2 Progression Path

This outlines the general steps expected for progressing through L2 content:

Looting Charms

(Note: From left to right: Unpolished Looting Charm, Magical Looting Charm, Chaotic Looting Charm, Miraculous Looting Charm)

  1. Craft the Lv.1 Looting Charm: Unpolished Looting Charm.
  2. Use the Looting Charm to obtain vanilla materials not typically available in the Overworld (via mob drops).
  3. Craft the Lv.2 Looting Charm: Magical Looting Charm.

  4. Kill mobs that possess specific Traits (Adaptive, Cursed, Erosion, Corrosion) to collect Cursed Droplets. Alternatively, burn mob drops in fire/lava for a low chance to obtain droplets (Nether Stars have the highest chance at 1/64 - check JEI/EMI for details). You can do the same automation setup as the one showed below for the Hostility Essence.

    Cursed Droplets

  5. Craft a Bottle of Curse using Cursed Droplets.

    Bottle of Curse

  6. Obtain Captured Wind. Craft Wind Capturing Bottle, get at least a Novice Spell Book from Ars Nouveau (higher tiers spellbooks and gear is recommended to have more mana), and create a spell like Self -> Launch -> Amplify x3 -> Glide (Note: you need to be gliding to it to work). Spam this spell with empty bottles in your inventory to fill them.

    Wind Capturing Bottle Ars Spell For Wind Bottle

  7. Craft a Chaos Ingot.

    Chaos Ingot

  8. Craft the Lv.3 Looting Charm: Chaotic Looting Charm.

  9. Craft the Curse of Envy. Equipping this enables mobs to drop Trait Symbols corresponding to their traits.
  10. Continue killing mobs to collect specific Trait Symbols.
  11. Use Trait Symbols as crafting ingredients for better gear and potentially other L2 items.

  12. Craft the Curse of Gluttony. This provides a more sustainable source for Bottles of Curse.

    Curse of Gluttony

  13. Burn Bottles of Curse in lava/fire to obtain Hostility Essence. The chance is low (1 in 512), so automation is recommended. Example: A Barrel feeding bottles onto a Create Chute over lava, with a Sophisticated Storage Barrel + filtered Magnet Upgrade nearby to collect the essence.

    Hostility Essence Automation Example

    Magnet Upgrade filtered to only accept Hostility Essence

  14. Craft a Miracle Ingot.

    Miracle Ingot

  15. Craft the Lv.4 Looting Charm: Miraculous Looting Charm.

Note: You can equip multiple Looting Charms and Curses simultaneously to benefit from all their effects at once.

Recommendations & Strategies

Note: Enchantments from L2 Hostility can often be crafted using materials obtained via the Looting Charms.

  • Essential Enchantments: Prioritize obtaining the Hardened (mitigates Corrosion/Erosion) and Insulator (reduces Repelling/Pulling force) enchantments.
  • Damage Types: Focus on dealing Magic or Abyss damage types, as some traits resist physical damage (e.g., Reflect, Dementor). Be aware of the Adaptive trait, which allows mobs to gain resistance to damage types they’ve taken recently.
  • Potions & Magic: Utilize potions and magic systems effectively (e.g., Ars Nouveau, Iron’s Spellbook). Cursed potions/weapons are needed for the Undying trait (but Undying is disabled by default).
  • Helpful Gear/Items: Consider using items such as:
    • Flame Thorn (from L2Hostility) combined with magic damage wands (from Glimmering Tales).
    • Imagine Breaker (from L2Hostility).
    • Abyss weapons (from L2Weaponry).
    • Void Touch enchantment (from L2Complements).
    • Detector Glass (to see invisible mobs).
    • The various Curio items added by L2Hostility (28 total!) offer significant boosts and abilities.
    • Hostility Detector (to check current difficulty levels).
    • Hostility Orb (to create safe zones).

L2 Traits Overview

Mobs gain traits based on their level and player difficulty. Higher-level traits appear as difficulty increases. Use the in-game Patchouli book (or JEI/tooltips if applicable) for detailed info on specific traits. To see how to make a Mob Farm to get these traits go to the Enderman Farm (L2 Trait Symbol Focus).

(Default Disabled Traits: Undying, Killer Aura, Ragnarok are powerful Legendary traits that are DISABLED by default in the configuration but can be re-enabled via config/datapack.)

Regular Traits

  • Fiery: Ignites attacker/target on hit.
  • Invisible: Mob and equipment are invisible (use Detector Glass).
  • Protection: Gains Damage Resistance effect.
  • Regenerate: Regenerates health slowly.
  • Speedy: Moves very quickly.
  • Tank: Gains significantly more health and armor.
  • Shulker: Shoots shulker-like projectiles applying carried potion effects (no levitation).
  • Gravity: Increases gravity nearby (fall faster, jump lower).
  • Moonwalk: Decreases gravity nearby (fall slower, jump higher).
  • Counter Strike: Dashes back at the attacker after being hit and landing.

Advanced Traits (Appear Lv.100+)

  • Adaptive: Remembers damage types recently taken and gains resistance to them. Higher levels remember more types.
  • Reflect: Reflects direct physical damage (use projectiles or magic).
  • Grenade: Shoots explosive projectiles periodically.
  • Growth (Slime-only): Grows larger when healed to full health. Can become very large.
  • Split: Splits into two copies with half level and the same trait (Split level -1) upon death. Copies drop no loot.
  • Drain: Removes random positive effects and extends negative effects on hit. Deals more damage if the target has negative effects.
  • Reprint: Copies target’s equipment enchantments on hit. Damage increases based on target’s total enchantment levels.
  • Corrosion (Lv.200+): Damages target equipment durability based on missing durability on hit (Counter with Hardened enchantment).
  • Erosion (Lv.200+): Damages target equipment durability based on remaining durability on hit (Counter with Hardened enchantment).

Potion Traits

Inflict corresponding status effects on hit:

  • Blinder: Blindness
  • Distorter: Nausea
  • Levitater: Levitation
  • Stray: Slowness
  • Weakener: Weakness
  • Poisonous: Poison
  • Withering: Wither
  • Cursed
  • Soul Burner
  • Freezing

Legendary Traits (Unlock after killing Rank 5 trait mob, Appear Lv.100+)

  • Dementor: Immune to physical damage; attacks bypass armor.
  • Dispelling: Immune to magic damage; attacks bypass magic protection. Can temporarily disable enchantments on target’s gear.
  • Teleport: Teleports to avoid physical damage (use magic).
  • Repelling: Pushes entities away (Counter with full Insulator set).
  • Pulling: Pulls entities closer (Counter with full Insulator set).
  • Undying (DISABLED BY DEFAULT): Respawns after death unless killed with Cursed effect.
  • Killer Aura (DISABLED BY DEFAULT, Lv.300+): Deals periodic AoE damage (range indicated by particles).
  • Ragnarok (DISABLED BY DEFAULT, Lv.600+): Temporarily “seals” target’s equipment/curios on hit. Hold the item to unseal.

Mod Interactions & Trait Whitelists

L2 Hostiles includes specific configurations and mob assignments for several mods and traits.

General Mod Interactions

  • Twilight Forest:
    • Naga: Min Lv.50.
    • Mini-bosses: Min Lv.100.
    • Other bosses: Min Lv.150.
    • All bosses gain Cursed + 1 other fixed trait.
    • Boss spawners craftable using trophies, relevant trait symbols, and Chaos Ingots.
  • Ice and Fire: (Not ported to 1.21.1 yet)
    • Dragons: Min Lv.100, 3 fixed traits (incl. Regen, Adaptive). Do NOT gain Tank. Handle high-level Regen/Adaptive carefully!
    • Ghosts: Gain Dementor at high levels (Magic damage required).
    • Sirens: Gain Drain and Distorter at high levels.
  • Cataclysm:
    • Mini-bosses: Min Lv.100, 2 fixed traits.
    • Bosses: Min Lv.200, 3 fixed traits.
    • Bosses >Lv.600 may carry special Curios making them extremely dangerous.
    • Ignis & Ancient Remnant (v2.4.24+): Spawn minions; >Lv.400 spawn protectors that grant damage immunity.
    • Note: Once a Cataclysm boss is killed, other mobs in the area might spawn with its weapons.

Specific L2 Trait Whitelists

These lists indicate which specific mobs are eligible to spawn with certain L2 Traits (when difficulty is high enough).

Adaptive

twilightforest:carminite_golem
twilightforest:upper_goblin_knight
twilightforest:lower_goblin_knight
cataclysm:coral_golem
iceandfire:dread_knight

Dementor

twilightforest:wraith
twilightforest:mist_wolf
iceandfire:ghost

Dispell

deeperdarker:shattered
deeperdarker:stalker
deeperdarker:sculk_snapper
deeperdarker:sculk_leech
deeperdarker:sculk_centipede
deeperdarker:sludge
deeperdarker:shriek_worm

Reprint

twilightforest:minoshroom
twilightforest:minotaur
twilightforest:redcap
twilightforest:redcap_sapper

Split

minecraft:zombie
minecraft:zombie_villager
minecraft:zombified_piglin
minecraft:drowned
minecraft:husk
minecraft:skeleton
minecraft:wither_skeleton
minecraft:stray
minecraft:spider
minecraft:cave_spider
minecraft:creeper

L2Hostility | CurseForge