Sephiria Hard Mode: All Modifiers and 60

Hard Mode — internally Root's Retreat — is not a difficulty slider. It is a points budget you spend on individual cruelties, and the total you have spent is your tier. Clearing a tier is what pays out.

Unlocking it

Clear Chapter 2, then talk to the Tree and choose the Hard Mode dialogue keyword. It moved to dialogue in patch 0.7.55, having previously been a straight Destiny Inscription purchase; if the dialogue stops appearing after you clear Chapter 4, a later patch added an unlock path through the Destiny Inscription menu instead. You enable it at the dungeon entrance.

Tiers run 1 to 60. The cap was 30 before 1.0.

The rule that catches everyone

You can only claim the next reward tier per clear. Clearing tier 30 five times walks you up to tier 15 — it does not jump you to 30. Overshooting the requirement gives you nothing extra.

So the efficient path is to clear tier 1, then 2, then 3, in order. Setting a punishing tier early feels productive and is not.

The modifiers

Seventeen are documented, split across the game's three groups. Their maximum tier values sum to exactly 60, which is a decent check that the set is complete.

Demon — enemy stats

World

Plan

Which modifiers are cheap and which actually hurt

Cheap tiers for the reward: Evil Energy (1 tier), Tension (1 tier), Severed Exchange (2 tiers) and Rebellion of Machines (2 tiers) are the least disruptive per tier point if you are climbing for the Talent Points. Severed Exchange only costs money; Rebellion of Machines only punishes carelessness around traps.

Disproportionately painful: Dizziness removes choices when you pick up artifacts and tablets, which attacks the build system directly rather than your HP bar. Deterioration at maximum cuts level-up healing by 60%, and level-ups are a primary heal source. Tension is one tier but changes boss fights categorically — no potions means no recovery mid-fight.

Festival of Blood deserves a note. Enemies heal 15% of their HP when they damage you (bosses 6%), which turns any build that trades hits into a stalemate. In multiplayer, patch 1.0.21 scaled the healing down with party size — 66% effectiveness at 2 players, 50% at 3, 33% at 4 — because four players getting hit was healing bosses faster than the group could damage them.

The reward schedule

That is 20 Talent Points in total from Hard Mode, which is what takes you from the 25 available in Destiny Inscription to a full 45.

Note there is no achievement above tier 30. Steam's global stats show 44.0% of players have cleared tier 1, 30.1% tier 15, and 19.4% tier 30.

What changed in 1.0

The cap went from 30 to 60 and six new elements arrived: Festival of Blood, False Vanguard, Deterioration, Tension, Heavy Heart and Proliferation. Existing modifiers were deepened — Protective Armor gained a third level, Ferocious Claws and Tenacious Body went from 5 levels to 7 with the final level costing 2 points.

One modifier was removed: Lingering Regret (No Duplicate Artifact Combos) was deleted in 0.900.6 as incompatible with the reworked combo system. If you find it listed somewhere, that page has not been updated since April 2026.

A climbing route

Because rewards come one tier per clear, the sensible approach is to add the cheapest available modifier each time rather than build a "theme."

Start with the 1-tier and 2-tier entries — Evil Energy, Tension, Severed Exchange, Rebellion of Machines, False Vanguard, Heavy Heart — which gets you to tier 11 with relatively little pain. Then work up Ferocious Claws and Tenacious Body level by level, since each level is roughly one tier and enemy stats are the modifier type your build can most directly answer. Save Dizziness, Deterioration and Combat Stance for last.

Not verified

TEAM HORAY's 1.0 announcement says 18 Hard Mode elements. Only 17 are documented, and those 17 sum to exactly the 60-tier cap. The eighteenth is unaccounted for — it may be a counting difference on the developer's side, or an element nobody has catalogued. We are not going to pad the list to reach 18.

Difficulty ratings you may see attached to individual modifiers ("Threat: Easy / Extreme") are one player's subjective assessment, not game data.