Difficulty levels

Pathfinder: Kingmaker has several difficulty modes, listed below. Players can also set their own difficulty when starting a new game.

Story mode
The damage you suffer from enemies and traps is reduced by 80%. Enemies have significantly decreased power and cannot critically hit you.

Your character will not die after suffering a deadly injury. Instead, they'll fall unconscious until the end of the battle.

If all your characters fall unconscious, the game is over.

Easy mode
The damage you suffer from enemies and traps is reduced by 60%. Enemies have decreased power and cannot critically hit you.

Your character will not die after suffering a deadly injury for the first time. Instead, they'll be afflicted by the Death's Door condition. If a character with this condition suffers a deadly injury, they will die. Resting in a comfortable and safe place, such as Oleg's Trading Post, removes the Death's Door condition. Your character can still die from an instant death effect, energy drain, poison, or other similar condition.

If your main character dies, the game is over. If a companion dies, you can resurrect them with Raise Dead or a similar spell – an extremely expensive service unavailable to most adventurers.

Normal mode
The damage you suffer from enemies and traps is reduced by 20%. Enemies inflict reduced damage on critical hits.

Your character will not die after suffering a deadly injury for the first time. Instead, they'll be afflicted by the Death's Door condition. If a character with this condition suffers a deadly injury, they will then die. Resting in a comfortable and safe place, such as Oleg's Trading Post, removes the Death's Door condition. Your character can still die from an instant death effect, energy drain, poison, or other similar condition.

If your main character dies, the game is over. If a companion dies, you can resurrect them with Raise Dead or a similar spell – an extremely expensive service unavailable to most adventurers.

Challenging mode
Your character will suffer full damage from enemies and traps. Enemies will fight at full power and will have the usual chances of inflicting critical hits.

Your character will die after suffering a deadly injury.

If your main character dies, the game is over. If a companion dies, you can resurrect them with Raise Dead or a similar spell – an extremely expensive service unavailable to most adventurers.

Hard mode
Your character will suffer full damage from enemies and traps. Enemies will have increased power and will have the usual chances of inflicting critical hits.

Your character will die after suffering a deadly injury.

If your main character dies, the game is over. If a companion dies, you can resurrect them with Raise Dead or a similar spell – an extremely expensive service unavailable to most adventurers.

Unfair mode
Your character will suffer double damage from enemies and traps. Enemies will have significantly increased power and will enjoy the usual chances of inflicting critical hits.

Your character will die upon suffering a deadly injury.

If your main character dies, the game is over. If a companion dies, you can resurrect them with Raise Dead or a similar spell – an extremely expensive service unavailable to most adventurers.

Critical Hits
This option determines the power of all critical hits inflicted upon members of your party.
 * Off — members of your party do not suffer critical hits.
 * Weak — damage bonuses are not multiplied on critical hits suffered by your party, making critical hits significantly less deadly.
 * Normal — members of your party receive full damage from critical hits.

Death's Door
With this option enabled, your character and companions will not die after suffering a deadly injury, and will instead receive a "Death's Door" condition. If they suffer a deadly injury while under the effects of that condition — then they will die. If your main character dies, the game is over. Certain conditions and effects can kill a character without triggering Death's Door.

Dead companions rise after combat
With this option switched on, neither your character nor your companions will ever die from any damage or effect. They will only become unconscious, and will rise after combat is over.

Remove negative effects on rest
With this option switched on, blindness, ability damage and numerous other negative effects will be removed immediately upon resting.

Auto Level Up
Toggles automatic leveling-up for party members. When on, gaining levels happens automatically, and you can monitor how the hero's skills and abilities develop. You can turn off automatic leveling-up for any companion, but then you'll have to manage their development for the remainder of the game.
 * Off — custom leveling-up of all characters.
 * Companions — custom leveling-up of player's character. Companions are leveled-up automatically.
 * All possible — all characters are leveled-up automatically.

Enemy stat adjustments
This option adjusts the Difficulty Class of all rolls in the game, and the abilities of enemies.

There are seven options, three making them progressively easier, three in the opposite direction, and a normal one.

This option will be changed due to its name and functionality being confusing. The devellopers of the game explain what this option does at the moment here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/640820/discussions/0/1730963192537352029/

Damage to party
This option determines how much damage members of your party will receive from all sources (0.2x to 3x).

Enemy difficulty
This option determines whether the ability values of enemies are diminished or increased.

Options are Weak, Normal, Strengthened, and Insane.

The party's speed depends on the weight you're carrying
Toggles the encumbrance effect on a character's movement speed.

Kingdom management
Affects the difficulty of kingdom management. In 'Auto' mode, the kingdom is managed without the player's participation. Once enabled, the 'Auto' mode can not be disabled.

Manual settings are Easy, Normal, and Hard.

Only active companions receive experience
If you enable this option, only companions in your current party will gain experience. If there are less than six companions, each of them will receive increased experience.

Disable this option for all companions to gain experience, even if they are not in your current party.

Only skill user receives skill check experience
If you enable this option, only the character who rolls an ability check will gain experience for its success.

Disable this option for the whole party to gain experience for a successful ability check.

Last Azlanti Mode
Only one save slot is available in this mode. The game saves automatically in key points and upon game exit.

It should be noted that in this mode a game over means to have all save data deleted(for that character).

Immersive mode
This mode disables almost all interface hints in combat: lines of attack, current enemy actions, cooldown timers. It shows your characters' actions and enemies' health bars.

Additional options are available in the game.