Helldivers 2 features nine difficulty modes with players starting the game at Trivial. Find out more about the difficulty level differences, best difficulty settings, and how to change difficulty in the game.

Difficulty Levels Differences

List of Difficulty Settings

Gameplay Gets More Challenging

As you progress in the game and unlock more difficulty settings, various aspects of the game will change depending on the difficulty selected. As early as the Medium difficulty, players will be introduced to Heavily Armored Enemies. Each successive difficulty setting also includes more outposts for players to clear.

New Enemies in Higher Difficulties

Difficulty Setting	New Enemies
Trivial	・ Trooper ・ Dropship ・ Devastator ・ Scavenger ・ Warrior ・ Brood Commander
Easy	・ Berserker ・ Commissar ・ Stalker
Medium	・ Cannon Tower ・ Scout Strider ・ Hulk ・ Bile Spewer ・ Hunter ・ Charger ・ Hive Guard
Challenging	・ Tank ・ Bile Titan

As the difficulty level increases, the variety of enemies that you may encounter will also increase. For example, Hulks, which can only be encountered in Elimination Missions in lower difficulties, will now spawn as normal mobs in harder difficulties.

List of All Enemies and Factions

Collect More Sample Types

Common Sample	Rare Sample	Super Sample

In addition to stronger enemies and outposts, there will be more samples available for you to collect. Common Samples can be collected at any difficulty while Rare Samples are available starting with the Challenging difficulty. Super Samples can only be obtained starting from the Suicide Mission difficulty.

How to Get All Samples

Earned XP and Requisition Scales with Difficulty Level

The total amount of XP and Requisition Slips earned from completing missions depends on the difficulty level you're playing at. A higher difficulty setting will reward you with more XP as opposed to a lower difficulty setting.

How to Farm XP Fast

Best Difficulty Settings

Easy and Medium for Beginners

For players new to the game or aren't experienced with the genre, Easy and Medium difficulty settings provide a good starting point to the game. There are more objectives needed and enemies are also tougher, allowing players to get into the swing of things while getting used to a challenge.

Extreme and Suicide Mission for More Experienced Players

Players looking for more demanding gameplay can look to the Extreme and Suicide Mission difficulties. Although not the most difficult from the game's settings, these provide a considerable challenge for players as there are even more objectives on top of the tougher enemies you can encounter.

Suicide Mission and above are also the only way to get Super Samples which are needed to purchase endgame Ship Modules.

How to Change Difficulty

Change Difficulty from Galactic War Screen

Players can change difficulty settings by interacting with the Galactic War table on your ship. The difficulty setting can be seen at the bottom of the screen as shown in the image above and you can change this depending on which missions you've completed.

Complete a Difficulty Setting to Unlock More

All players will have to start with the Trivial difficulty. This is the easiest difficulty setting available in the game and features Primary Objectives and Enemy Patrols. For those that wish to take on the other difficulty settings, you will need to clear a mission of the preceding difficulty.

This means that players wanting to play on Easy will have to clear a Trivial mission while those that want to play Helldive will have to clear a mission from Trivial to Impossible.

Helldivers 2 Related Guides

Beginner's Guide to Helldivers 2

All Tips and Tricks