Mortal Shell 2's latest update adds in an experimental new mode that adjusts the challenge based on how much you do or don't die

Mortal Shell 2 has just released its latest update, introducing an experimental adaptive difficulty mode that adjusts the game's challenge based on your performance. The Steam blog post explains that when you're doing exceptionally well, defeating enemies and bosses without any trouble, the game automatically makes the battles more challenging. Enemies gain additional damage, health, and break resist, making them harder to take down and more likely to stagger.

If you continue clearing encounters without dying, the enemies will scale past the toughest difficulties the game was originally designed for, and they will keep increasing as long as you keep winning. However, if you keep dying, the enemies will weaken. They will deal less damage, have reduced health, and resist. A cap is applied so that no single attack can take more than a certain fraction of your health bar, preventing you from being killed outright from full health. This applies only to regular gameplay, not while playing in Night Mode.

Interestingly, there is no visual indicator to show whether the game has become easier or harder. However, the developers plan to add such an indicator in the future. Apart from the adaptive difficulty mode, the update also features improvements to the logic around Gloom drops when you die, making it easier for players to retrieve lost Gloom. Additionally, the update includes bug fixes, performance adjustments, audio tweaks, and a few story changes.