What's the BEST DIFFICULTY to Play STARFIELD & Any Difficulty Achievements?
How many Difficulty Options are in Bethesda Studios long awaited Space Odyssey STARFIELD? And are there any achievements locked to your difficulty choices?
STARFIELD
Leon 'The 1nteger' Fredango
9/11/20233 min read
STARFIELD is Finally HERE! Difficulty Intel...
After a bajillion years of development and delays; Bethesda Studio's FIRST new major Game IP in 25 years, Starfield, is finally out in what Microsoft is surely will be a new IP Win after a certain Redfall release lukewarm reception. With this new release, one of the many things we all wonder is what difficulty options are available? What difficulty should I play the game on for my first playthrough? And even how does the difficulty affect achievements, if achievement hunting is your thing? We'll, let's find out!
What does the Difficulty Settings in Starfield change?
So...what's the BEST difficulty to select when playing your first playthrough of the action RPG space epic Starfield? Well, you have 5 options: Very Easy, Easy, Normal, Hard and Very Hard. Pretty simple descriptive options at their core. Essentially, each difficulty scales the damage you'll receive in addition to the damage you'll deal. In addition to this, it increases your chances of bumping into legendary enemy variants while increasing your changes thus of better drops.
For those of you wondering if Starfield is gonna be one of those games that requires you to play multiple times or on ridiculous difficulty just to get all those precious, precious Xbox Achievements, you're in luck!
Turns out that not only is there NO difficulty-based Achievements in Starfield, but you can also change the game's difficulty in-game at anytime! Sweet!
In fact overall, according to our friends over at PowerPyx, aside being time consuming (100hrs+ of gameplay to get that Level 100 achievement 😳) there are very few missable achievements, especially when you take into account the ability to save-scum, autosaves and the flexibility to go back and complete stuff should you actually hit the ending before then accidentally.
Does Starfield have any Difficulty-Based Achievements?
Spent 200hrs playing Starfield to Level 100!
Is Starfield challenging enough? What Difficulty should YOU play Starfield?
With all this in mind, you may be asking yourself? What difficulty should I start my Bethesda Space adventure? Follow the streamer crowd and go in hardest difficulty? Go for a story-stroll and play it on Very Easy? Well, this depends on the facts above as well what your motivations are to get out of the game.
If you are wanting to play the game based one the core experience its creators Bethesda intended or are content creating or reviewing the game, I always think Normal is the way to go as this is the way most people are also going to experience it and can be fairly judge to be the default experience designed by the studio.
Since you can always change your mind later, if you find the combat to be too easy or not challenging enough, you can try a harder difficulty mid-game. Just remember that since difficulty in Starfield is just a stat adjuster, it is likely only going to pad the game on account of the additional reloads you might require or the longer time it takes you to kill the more buff enemies. However, you will get better drops since foes will be higher level & better equipped for your efforts.