Once, I wondered what elite mode and the whole system of difficulty actually did, so I checked the wiki page on difficulty. http://wiki.spiralknights.com/Difficulty
Here is the stuff I get:
"Difficulty simply influences the odds of getting the best of those possibilities(of a pool of drops)."
Okay, so it has a better chance of getting the best loot. It's a bit confusing at first, but understandable.
"Enemies will have more health with higher difficulty"
Well, duh.
"Certain status conditions will be more intense on higher difficulty."
No wonder mecha knights deal statuses lasting for 15 seconds.
Now here is the stuff I don't get:
"Traps deal a different split of damage depending on difficulty."
Wait, just changing the split damage? Is it just for traps, or also for enemies?
How exactly is the damage affected in elite mode?
-Pery
I have never seen a detailed test or documentation of this. But if you believe what players say on the forums, Elite mode causes a lot of normal damage to be replaced with non-normal damage. For example, a construct that deals a mixture of normal and elemental will instead deal more elemental.
If you could find more detail, then that would be interesting.