After months of waiting, Starfield’s latest update has air-dropped today with a slew of new features and improvements for the game. This includes an all-new Extreme Difficulty setting, which sounds as ominous as it does exciting. If you’re wondering how to enable it or how it works, here’s our handy guide for how to use Extreme Difficulty in Starfield.
How to Enable Extreme Difficulty in Starfield
The newly added Extreme Difficulty setting in Starfield isn’t a traditional difficulty adjustment. It’s not an all-encompassing setting you implement at the start of or during your game. In the case of Starfield, various aspects of combat-related gameplay can now be adjusted up to an ‘Extreme’ difficulty.
To do so, head to the System Menu in-game and then scroll down to ‘Settings’. From there, look for ‘Gameplay Options’ and click on it. Near the top of the entire list you’ll see the following options:
- Enemy Combat Damage – Adjusts how much damage you take from enemies.
- Player Combat Damage – Adjusts how much damage your character inflicts on enemies.
- Enemy Ship Damage – Adjusts how much damage you take from enemy ships.
- Player Ship Damage – Adjusts how much damage your ship inflicts on enemy ships.
You can enable one or all of these at the same time to any one of the available difficulties, including Extreme. In addition, the higher you set the difficulty, the higher the percentage XP bonus as well. The highest is 6% on Extreme, and this can be stacked with each combat setting.
As you might have guessed, this new difficulty option is here to provide an “extreme” challenge and push your combat abilities to the absolute limit. So think carefully before placing yourself in a dangerous situation, especially on important missions.
Is Extreme Difficulty Worth It in Starfield?
The new Extreme difficulty can add a unique challenge to Starfield, particularly for those who prefer to push their combat capabilities. If you have solid gear, weapons, stats, and a powerhouse of a ship, it can be worth at least trying this new option. If you find it to be too much, you can always toggle it back to normal.
Otherwise, Extreme difficulty may not be entirely worth it, in my opinion. Even the simplest combat encounter can become too stressful and hinder your progress, especially if you’re still working through the story (for the first time). It can end up melting away your health and ammo stores a lot quicker, and vendors only restock those items so quickly, which can push you into a corner and deplete your funds.
All in all, I’d only recommend trying Extreme if you’re well into your endgame phase of Starfield, and are looking for a serious challenge.
That concludes our guide for how to use Extreme Difficulty in Starfield. We hope you found this helpful, and let us know if you’ve tried this difficulty yourself.
Be sure to check out all of our guides and news for Starfield, such as our list of facts you probably didn’t know about the game.
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