Guardian's Influence
A threat counter that raises the pressure on your camp as days pass. Guardian's Influence is separate from your selected Difficulty mode: the two axes stack on top of each other, and the Guardian counter ramps at the same pace on every difficulty mode.
Ramp schedule
The Guardian counter starts at 0, raises to 1 on day 12, and raises one more step every 16 days after that. It caps at level 8. So the schedule is:
| Day | Guardian level |
|---|---|
| 1 - 11 | 0 |
| 12 | 1 |
| 28 | 2 |
| 44 | 3 |
| 60 | 4 |
| 76 | 5 |
| 92 | 6 |
| 108 | 7 |
| 124 onward | 8 (capped) |
Independent of difficulty mode
Difficulty mode does not change how fast the Guardian ramps. The day-12 / every-16-days / cap-at-8 schedule is the same on Easy, Normal, Hard and Very Hard. The difficulty mode you pick scales combat, economy and attrition; the Guardian counter scales weather, fatigue and natural resource drain. Your actual late-game difficulty is whatever difficulty mode you picked plus whatever Guardian level you are currently at, stacked.
Per-step effects
Each level of Guardian's Influence adds all of these on top of whatever difficulty mode is already doing:
| Effect | Per Guardian level |
|---|---|
| First guardian level-up | Day 12 |
| Days between guardian level-ups | Every 16 days |
| Max guardian level | 8 |
| Weather penalty per guardian level | +1 |
| Fatigue penalty growth per guardian level | +8% |
| Food attrition penalty per guardian level | -1 / step |
| Material attrition penalty per guardian level | -0.5 / step |
| Tempest extra gear condition loss | -2 per level |
| Drought water yield penalty | -5 per level |
| Fog radar point yield penalty | -5 per level |
At max level (8)
At Guardian level 8 on top of Very Hard, everything is at its harshest point in the run:
- Weather penalty offset is at +8, so every weather event hurts more than baseline.
- Workers and explorers accumulate Fatigue roughly 64% faster than baseline.
- Tempest weather strips an extra 16 Condition from gear during the day.
- Drought cuts water yield by 40 gauge points.
- Fog cuts radar point yield by 40 gauge points.
- Natural resource gauges drain faster on top of the Very Hard per-use drain.
See the full difficulty page for the Easy / Normal / Hard / Very Hard difficulty mode deltas.