This mod adds a difficulty called Billion, where every enemy gets some new abilty or changed behaviour. Made with the Cybergrind in mind, the mod aims to make the game harder while not being a pain in the ass. Staying on the move and being aware of your surroundings is crucial. (any comments about providences in cg should be addressed to hakita)
Keep in mind that things might break if you use other mods that modify enemy behaviour
(Not designed for a new save, but starting from scratch can still be an extra challenge if you want)
Feedback is welcome so you can dm me on discord to share your thoughts or report bugs at @somebilly
For those who want to try their hands at some crazy bullshit then open the Configgy menu and press the toggle in the "Billion Difficulty" tab. Anyone who has ever at any point thought that Ultrakill couldn't get harder should think again. Don't use this in the cybergrind
If you plan on playing through this mode I'd recommend not checking the list of changed enemy behaviours until you've seen them yourself to keep things more "surprising". Also the level end screen will only show the difficulty as "BRILLIANT BILLION" if you go through the whole level without switching it off, otherwise there will be an asterisk (*) at the end
And if you want to know more, read until the end:
Now, I feel it's safe to say that difficulty plays a major role in how much you enjoy a game. Of course, even a fun game can start to feel like a boring slog if it doesn't incentivize you to push yourself in any way. The opposite is also true, as it quickly becomes frustrating when you keep losing over and over.
That's why mods like this one have a relatively small audience: out of all the people who see them, only some will try to play, and out of those only a small percentage will actually enjoy them (more likely as a novelty rather than simply enjoying at face value). However much you, the player, might end up detesting Brilliant Billion's level of difficulty, I hope that you understand that it was made from a simple desire to keep going higher, to not get stuck in the mire of having nothing to strive for while feeling there's so much more to the game, in a way that vanilla can't provide, and that you at least understand the vision and motivations for having such over-the-top difficulty. And unlike something like speedrunning, which has a tangible social aspect and a more or less defined path you have to follow, difficulty mods don't offer that, leaving you to rely purely on yourself. That, combined with the potential unintentional forcing of a specific playstyle which might not be suited for the player, contributes to how "alienating" mods like this can be.
Despite all of this negative talk, I can personally feel content with the fact that I set out to create this and managed to see it through to the end(?), however selfish that might be. Even if the final result could play better, be balanced better, or if you think it completely missed the mark, I will still be the one with more content to indulge in. Even still, I, the one who's telling you to play with the right mindset, can't always do that, but if I do feel frustrated, I treat it as a personal reminder to stop chasing arbitrary virtual achievements. Past the pointless pretentiousness, I can say that at least In my eyes, the BILLION might, in a way, actually be BRILLIANT perchance... but if you want to know what I really think then read the first letter of every sentence in this text
The changes are described compared to the brutal difficulty. Changes exclusive to the Brilliant Billion mode are marked with "BB"
Note: making enemies radiant in the sandbox with the spawner arm won't give them the right speed multipliers, so you'll need to use the buffs forceradiance on console command
BB: moves a lot faster, buffed health from 0.5 to 1.5 (radiant hp stays the same)
BB: projectiles are now homing
BB: enemies that get sanded now get overhealed by 5 hp (scales with radiance), the sand zone becomes bigger, and it shoots out a Mirror Reaper projectile when sanding enemies
BB: the projectiles move back and forth a few times instead of just stopping, and they don't get destroyed when colliding with walls
BB: shoots out 2 homing explosive projectiles instead
BB: enraging lasts for 10 seconds and the enrage explosion doesn't deal damage to enemies. Their boulder now creates a black hole when it hits something. An insurrectionist can't create more than 1 black hole at a time unless it's enraged
BB: spawns additional projectiles while doing attacks. Speeds up 1.15x times faster. Enrages at 50% health. Starts spawning big unparriable projectiles around itself when either below 50% health or fully blue (you can slide under the projectiles). When fully blue, there will be 2 circling projectiles stacked on top of each other at once (that you can't slide under)
BB: does stuff faster and has 1 more max hand
BB: takes reduced damage from revolvers, and damage frome explosions is clamped to 50% of its max health. Has a 50% chance to spawn the big orb when dying
BB: after they finish dealing damage to you, you get 4 ticks of afterburn with each one dealing 4 damage
BB: takes only 25% while not enraged. Spawns Minotaur goop when downed
BB: summons a Virtue beam targeted at you when doing the homing orb attack. The small green orbs are bigger, and become even bigger when enraged
BB: also shoots a Mirror Reaper projectile when interrupted
BB: they can now dodge while you're simply standing next to them (without needing to leave the dodge radius) with a 1.6 second cooldown, and they create a delayed Sisyphus explosion when they dodge
BB: creates a Mirror Reaper hand when placing a mine
BB: spawns oil after every attack
BB: the projectiles create shockwaves when exploding
BB: the small orbs are explosive
BB: they create a damaging shockwave when falling onto the ground, their projectiles do 0% friendly fire, and they take reduced damage from hammers
BB: creates a Mirror Reaper hand when stomping, the time between 2 dashes is reduced
BB: heals 1.2 hp every 1.5 seconds, unless the enemy has less than 8 health in which case it only get healed 0.9 hp
BB: the usual small orbs are explosive
BB: creates Virtue beams when doing the slam and clap attacks. The projectiles create shockwaves when exploding (when it's enraged, only every 3rd projectile will create a shockwave)
BB: the beams slowly move towards you, and now Virtues also fire blue Geryon beams. Enrages after 2 attacks
BB: beams rotate and are even larger, has another attack where it fires 2 Mirror Reaper projectiles. At 50% health it enrages and its attacks become harder to dodge. Damage from cannonballs is reduced even more. Also all damage they take is clamped to 50% of their max health
BB: faster attacks
If you want to use this difficulty with the Angry Level Loader, you'll need to
prefs set int difficulty 19You can skip to any level in the game with console commands:
scene Level X-X to enter a campaign or encore level (the other stuff is scene Endless for the cybergrind, scene uk_construct for the sandbox, scene 005a4f2ce549277458596ee0f0d6e88c for P-1, scene 1f290c2101e628540bf9c6d1d2140750 for P-2 and scene Main Menu)