Wasteland 3 is the latest entry in inXile Entertainment’s RPG series, but it wants to cater to players no matter how much experience they have with the franchise. Those who have played the previous two entries will want a challenging experience, but newcomers won’t want their playthroughs to be as hardcore.
To ensure that there is a mode for everyone, Wasteland 3 comes equipped with four difficulty options. Each one relates to a different difficulty setting — easy, normal, hard, and extreme — and they come with certain rules if you select them. The options are:
- Rookie (easy mode) – This is for players who value story over combat, and want their battles to be less-than-lethal
- Wastelander (normal mode) – This is the default option. It’s for new and returning players who wish to experience the game as it is meant to be played
- Ranger (hard mode) – The third difficulty option is reserved for veteran Wasteland players seeking a real challenge.
- Supreme Jerk (extreme mode) – Wasteland 3’s nightmare mode. It’s a brutal affair, and even veteran players will struggle to make it out alive.
Ranger and Supreme Jerk modes come with friendly fire automatically enabled, so be aware that you can hurt your teammates if you play on these difficulty modes.
If you want to, you can customize each difficulty setting to fit the way that you want to play Wasteland 3. You can toggle friendly fire on for Rookie and Wastelander difficulties if you’re a masochist, or turn it off on Ranger and Supreme Jerk if you don’t want to inadvertently kill your favorite squad members. To learn more about friendly fire in Wasteland 3, you can read this guide.
