Last week on our developer livestream we gave you a sneak peek of a new feature coming soon — customizable difficulty!
Instead of choosing an overall difficulty level that applies to all aspects of the game, we’re bringing you the ability to design your own personal apocalyptic recipe.
The three major aspects of gameplay (Action, Map, Community) can each be set to their own difficulty, using the now-familiar settings of Green, Standard, Dread, and Nightmare.
Under Difficulty Selection, you will be able to use the Custom Difficulty Settings menu to create your own combination. Here’s how it will appear in-game:
Let’s break down the three major categories you will be able to customize.
ACTION
“How hard is it to defeat enemies?”
The first slider adjusts the number and toughness of zombies, the rarity of freaks, the deadliness of hostile humans, the durability of vehicles, and the virulence of blood plague. It’s the best way to adjust your moment-to-moment tension level.
COMMUNITY
“How hard is it to build and maintain a thriving community?”
This slider tweaks the challenge of building and maintaining a healthy community. Skills might improve faster or slower, morale becomes easier or harder to keep up, and resource costs and influence gains are increased or decreased, among other variables.
MAP
“How hard is it to find useful items and resources?”
The final slider makes it easier or harder to scavenge the world and find the resources, weapons, items, and vehicles you need to survive and thrive. This slider also increases or decreases the number of plague hearts on your map.
A couple of things to keep in mind:
- Any achievement that was previously tied to a single overall difficulty zone is now tied to the minimum difficulty set across all of your sliders. For example, you can earn the True Grit achievement with a mixed set of difficulty settings, as long as all three sliders are set to Dread or higher.
- In Multiplayer, only the host has the ability to change difficulty sliders. When you join another player’s game, you’ll receive a notification of that game’s Action slider setting.
- Changing your Action or Community slider will not require you to relocate to a new map. Only a change to your Map slider will force your community to a new version of your map.
This feature is coming soon but does not have an announced release date yet.
For a look at more of the content coming in the next update, join us on Monday, 3-4pm on our livestream. Peeks will be sneaked.
As always, thank you so much for playing! And if you already know what custom difficulty combination you’re eyeing, tell us about it in Discord!
