So my buddy and I are opening the last box of the saga expansions and I read through the rule book. The keyword included is Dire which basically means ***SPOILER**** the threat elimination level is now 99. It makes a reference to Valour cards, which trigger at 80 instead of 40. I thought I read somewhere that the secrecy threshold moved from 20 to 40 with Dire but that was neither in the instructions, nor could I find the original source of my thought. Does anyone know if this is the case? If not, there is no sense in bringing a secrecy deck since threat reduction is basically thrown out by the keyword.

Well, if the rules don't say the secrecy threshold is raised, it probably isn't!

The Dire keyword doesn't do anything for Secrecy.