Shadows over Loathing options

The Character Options menu in Shadows over Loathing allows you to choose a difficulty level, implement a few useful optional features, and maybe have a few laughs.

Difficulty

Alters the difficulty of fights, stat challenges, and some puzzles.

Nerdy details:

Most stat challenges are marked internally as low, medium, or high challenges. The game calculates the required stat for these challenges as follows:

• Each region is numbered, from 1 for Ocean City to 6 for Government Valley. The Prologue is region 0.
• The default requirement equals the region number plus 1, 2, or 3 for low, medium, or high tests, respectively. So on Normal, you'll see challenges ranging from 2 to 9 throughout the game.
• The difficulty setting subtracts 2 or 1 on Easy or Relaxed, adds nothing on Normal, or adds 1 or 2 on Hard or Eleven.
  • Yes, this means the hardest stat tests in the final chapter require 11 of a stat in Eleven mode.
• Suffusion of Shadow subtracts 3.
• Finally, if the total is less than 2, it is set to 2 instead.

Stat challenges that don't use this system aren't affected by your difficulty setting.

• Some — mostly in wander events — are marked internally as tier1, tier2, or tier3. These tests' requirements equal the region number plus 1, plus the tier number, plus 1 again if the region is 4 or higher.
• Ocean City Boardwalk games use fixed values of 3, 5,... 15.
• Stat tests in the Prologue are fixed at 2 or 3.

Pacifist Mode

Main article: Pacifist

Grays out dialog options that would result in combat.

Prevents you from entering a fight by any means, and disables in-game choices that would lead to mandatory fights. Some areas aren't accessible with this option enabled. Most side-quests are completable in some form as a pacifist, but not all.

Completing the game as a Pacifist gives the The Milk of Human Kindness achievement.

Dramatic Victory

You and your allies will jump for joy when you win a fight.

Your character and their allies leap into a dramatic freeze-frame every time you win a fight.

Invert Y Axis

Down is up and up is down.

Many games — especially first-person shooters — allow you to invert the Y axis of your controls. Some players are more comfortable with pushing "up" on the stick to look up, while others are more comfortable with pushing forward on the stick to "nose down" à la flight simulators.

This game instead lets you invert the Y axis of the display, turning the game world visually upside down.

No one is comfortable with this.

HDR Rendering

High dynamic range rendering.

This option doesn't actually do anything.

Weapon Durability

You know how to look for it now, but do you really want to?

Appears when you learn the Weapon Repair Aware perk, so you can disable it in case the joke isn't particularly funny or causes you grief.

WooOOooO

This option is haunted.

Has no effect on gameplay.

Show in-game time

The total play time will be displayed.

Skip confirmations

Removes food, potion, and cat boon effect replacement confirmation dialogs, etc.

Arachnophobia

You won't encounter any spiders.

Prevents you from encountering shadowy spiders while wandering. (Any other enemies affected?) You also won't find Beppo's Hole, meaning you can't meet Doc and thus can't earn the full Hobo Camp achievement.

Oddly, this option doesn't stop you from choosing the Spiders elective at S.I.T. (Admissions Office). You will be forced to fight spiders even with the option on. Of course, if this is a concern, you can simply not click the big button that says Spiders.

Arachnophilia

You will encounter so many spiders.

This option adds spiders to every fight: one friendly spider on your side and one random spider on the enemy side. It also adds special dialogue in spider-related places such as Beppo's Hole.

Arachnophonia

All combat sounds will be replaced with spider noises.

Appears when you enable Arachnophilia.