Endfield's High Difficulty group is fifty stages that are really twenty-five fights, each filed twice. The first copy runs at Lv.60 under a plain name. The second runs at Lv.90 with the same name and the word Agony after a colon. Nothing else in the stage list uses that suffix, and none of the fifty costs stamina.
That last part is the practical reason the list matters. Only the 30 Resource stages list a stamina cost at all, so High Difficulty is not a resource decision. What it is in the data: fifty fixed-level fights with no entry cost. Below is every encounter with both versions, the tier naming that the three multi-stage modes use, and a note on what the files do not record.
All 25 encounters and their Agony versions
Ordered by internal id. Both links go to the stage record. The level column is the only difficulty number the dataset carries.
The pattern holds across all twenty-five rows: base at 60, Agony at 90, and a thirty-level jump every time. There is no encounter with two Agony tiers, and none with an Agony version below 90.
What actually changes between the two
On paper, one field. The description text is byte-identical between the base stage and its Agony version in 25 of 25 pairs, so the flavour you read on the stage page is not telling you how the harder version differs. The internal id is the same string with an _s appended, and the name is the same string with ": Agony" appended. The level is the only value that moves.
Ritual Vortex is a fair example. Both records carry the same paragraph of scene-setting, both list no stamina cost, and the only visible difference on the page is 60 against 90. If you are trying to work out what the Agony run adds beyond raw stats, the data will not answer it. Level is the whole signal.
The suffix systems, mode by mode
Three of the game's multi-stage modes label their tiers in the stage name, and each one uses a different vocabulary. This is where a lot of confused searching comes from, because the tier word is what people remember.
| Mode | Stages | Tier words in the name |
|---|---|---|
| High Difficulty | 50 | Agony (25 stages; the other 25 carry no suffix) |
| Season Tower | 24 | Normal (8), Brutal (8), Hard (8) |
| Boss Rush | 23 | Reflection (8), Extension (8), Calamity (6), Pandemonium (1) |
Two readings follow. First, Agony is exclusive to High Difficulty: it appears on no stage outside these twenty-five. Second, the modes escalate differently. Season Tower gives every encounter three tiers, evenly. Boss Rush does not: Rhodagn alone gets four, and the two Fragment mini-bosses get two each. High Difficulty sits in between, with a flat two tiers per encounter across the board.
Where the 50 sit among 299 stages
The stage file holds 299 records across 20 category labels. Two things stand out once they are side by side: High Difficulty is the largest group, and Resource is the only group that charges stamina.
| Category | Stages | Level range | Stamina |
|---|---|---|---|
| High Difficulty | 50 | 60–90 | 0 |
| Factory | 49 | not listed | 0 |
| Resource | 30 | 20–85 | 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 |
| Tutorial | 24 | not listed | 0 |
| Season Tower | 24 | 60–90 | 0 |
| Boss Rush | 23 | 40–90 | 0 |
| Challenge | 21 | not listed | 0 |
| Duo | 16 | not listed | 0 |
| Character | 15 | not listed | 0 |
| Training | 12 | not listed | 0 |
| Character Trial | 9 | not listed | 0 |
| Event: Monster | 8 | not listed | 0 |
| Ss | 5 | 80–80 | 0 |
| Worldlevel | 4 | 40–60 | 0 |
| Wuling A | 3 | not listed | 0 |
| Weeklyraid | 2 | not listed | 0 |
| Contract | 1 | 80–80 | 0 |
| Race | 1 | not listed | 0 |
| Story | 1 | not listed | 0 |
| Wuling B | 1 | not listed | 0 |
The Resource group is thirty stages costing 40, 50, 60, 70 or 80 stamina, six stages at each price, and it is the only place in the file where entry has a cost. Everything else, including all fifty High Difficulty stages, lists zero. Most records store no level either: only 7 of the 20 categories fill that field (High Difficulty 60–90, Resource 20–85, Season Tower 60–90, Boss Rush 40–90, Ss 80, Worldlevel 40–60, Contract 80), while the other 13 store it as zero.
What the names do and do not tell you
Every one of the twenty-five base names is unique across the whole 299-stage list, so a search for any of them lands on exactly one record. The ids run indie_hard001 to indie_hard025 with the Agony copies suffixed _s, which makes the pairing mechanical to check: 25 base ids, 25 suffixed ids, no gaps in the sequence.
The names are evocative and uninformative in equal measure. Rampaging Shields, Bolts and Shadows, Sea of Loathing, Melting Point of Flesh: none of them names an enemy, a faction or a region, and the records carry no enemy list. So the files cannot tell you what you fight in any of the fifty. The descriptions are scene-setting too, not roster.
Where the data stops
- No rewards. The stage records hold a name, a category, a level, a stamina cost and a description. Nothing about first-clear rewards, repeat rewards or currency.
- No enemies. No link from a High Difficulty stage to any enemy entry.
- No unlock conditions. Nothing says what has to be cleared before an encounter appears.
- No official wording. Neither "High Difficulty" nor "Agony" appears anywhere in the 150 official notes this site archives, from December 2023 to October 2026. Both are labels from the game data, so treat them as internal grouping rather than confirmed menu text.
- No per-stage date. The ids are sequential, which implies an order of addition, but no date is stored.
If you came looking for what the Agony run actually adds beyond a level 90 tag, the file will not tell you. It can tell you which encounter pairs with which, that neither copy costs stamina, and that the tier word is used nowhere else in the stage list. That is the whole of what is recorded.
Sources
- Stage names, ids, categories, levels, stamina costs and descriptions:
stages.json(299 records), read 2026-11-04. - Absence of the terms in official text checked against
news.json(150 notes, 2023-12-08 to 2026-10-30). - Other mode breakdowns: Boss Rush, Season Tower, Delver of the Cryptic, Factory stages. Stage index: /stages/.