Wartales HardMode

WarTales HardMode (some changes and text taken from Wartales Rebalance mod):

Wartales Build v1. 0. 45242 - Latest build as of Jan. 18, 2026  (read below on how to keep the version you are currently using).

Battle Difficulty and Leveling:

- The overall difficulty of fights are greatly increased and HP has been increased for more tactical fights. It can be very challenging, especially against ghost packs if you play on Extreme and Ironman. I only play on Hard and Limited.

- Requires a lot more XP to level and the amount of XP per kill has been decreased. Slow leveling is to counter leveling too fast on Adaptive Exploration. It still needs to be tested at higher levels past level 8. As an example, I have completed all of Tiltren and I am only level 3 with 6 party members.

- XP needed to level jobs have been greatly increased

Trait Balance:

- Skullbreaker provides a 20% bonus (from 50%), and 50% (from 100%) at level 2

- Destabilization decreases guard by 25% (from 100%), and 50% at level 2 - tooltip may still have vanilla values]

- Poison and burning DoT (damage over time) decreased

- Purge has been reduced by quite a bit

Attribute Balance:

- You can no longer put attribute points into mobility

- Constitution grants 4/6 HP per point for humans/animals (from 2/4)

- Percent chance for a critical hit no longer scales with power (i.e. attack stat); however, each willpower point = 1% critical chance

- Requires 20 willpower (from 15) to avoid death the first time in combat

- Career Plan cost 0 knowledge points to acquire and do nothing

Item/Equipment Balance:

- Skill Mastery and Extra ability manuals (first aid, wrath, run, aim, taunt) cost a lot more

- Decreased percentage of some oils

- Repair armor decreased from 10 to 5

Gold Acquisition:

- The reward for selling prisoners is greatly lowered

- Selling almost all item types is greatly lowered

- Repairing your armor at the blacksmith, healing injuries at the apothecary, and using the inn costs much less

Happiness Balance:

- Increased unhappiness for not feeding or paying your soldiers

Other:

- Other slight balances throughout the game to provide QoL, make it slightly harder, or slightly more reasonable (e.g., buffed the watchtower to stop escaping prisoners, decreased the time new adventurers appear at the tavern, etc.)

- Not recommended playing on Extreme mode. Enemies are much tougher and party members will be lost by ghost packs.

To install simply place the 2 files in the zip (res.pak, texts_en.xml) into your Wartales directory (normally X:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Wartales). Make sure to backup the two files before, as they will overwrite them!

Any update from Shiro Games will break this mod (as it replaces res.pak).

There are things you can try on your own,:

* Set the game to update only when launched, and then play the game in Steam's Offline Mode (if you EVER turn steam online it might try to update). I only update this mod on occasion and when I am play Wartales.