Is there any advantage to playing on Hard?

[Chrisern]

Is there any advantage to playing on Hard difficulty, like better drop rates of rare items or more XP?

[iRaged]

Hard mode is more fun on first play through. However the end game requires lots of grinding and you can simply drop the game to Story mode if you don't have the time to grind up all the mats to upgrade weapons.

[Quasinerdo]

I'm on Very Hard playing NG+ and it seems to easy so far. I'm hoping it becomes very hard as I move through the campaign again.

I currently have all legendary gear and full skill trees where I want it so I think it's just that I'm high level for the new beginning?

[Quasinerdo]

Hard made the late game more interesting and if you play all side quests like I do you will find your level and gear makes "normal" too easy and perhaps boring.

[Zloth]

Originally posted by Quasinerdo:

Hard made the late game more interesting and if you play all side quests like I do you will find your level and gear makes "normal" too easy and perhaps boring.

I think that's the key. The more you are playing the game, the harder you will need to make the difficulty. If you are playing most every quest, going out to upgrade all the armor/weapons you have interest in, learning to use all the different weapon types, and so on then you're going to need a higher difficulty. If you're planning to just use what you're given and blow through the main quest with a couple of hunter bows, the harder difficulties are going to be pretty fraggin' hard. (And long, too.)

This isn't one of those games that gives greater rewards for playing at harder difficulty. I think there's an achievement for playing through on the hardest difficulty, but that's it.

[acowsik]

Originally posted by Quasinerdo:

I'm on Very Hard playing NG+ and it seems to easy so far. I'm hoping it becomes very hard as I move through the campaign again.

I currently have all legendary gear and full skill trees where I want it so I think it's just that I'm high level for the new beginning?

Playing on higher difficulty with all the best gear to begin with is not really a challenge... you should have started a new game on VH or UH...

I am playing NG on UH difficulty and I am getting my ass kicked in some fights... playing on a lower difficulty for me personally is just below my expectation and satisfaction level and unlike HZD, I can get the UH achievement on an NG playthrough itself so I want to get that out of the way first.

I played HZD only on UH (both NG and NG+) and NG+ UH was an utter joke with the Shield armor and the Banuk weapons I had obtained from my NG UH playthrough.

I didnt bother doing any of the side quests or other activities and just only did a speedrun of the main quests cos I had achieved 100% in game completion on both the main game and DLC on my NG run which was on UH anyways.

However on HFW I will be doing NG+ on story to make it easy to grind the champion tokens cos I will have already experienced the main game and DLC on UH prior to that and having to do all of them again to get all possible tokens, I dont want to do that on UH at all.

[Thornok]

you can switch difficulty at any time or did i miss something

[acowsik]

Originally posted by Thornok:

you can switch difficulty at any time or did i miss something

You can only do that if you are playing on Very Hard or below where you can change at any point. Ultra Hard doesnt allow that and you are locked in all the time. You have to stick with it or start over.

[Chrisern]

So to sum up: There is no more XP or increased drops when playing on harder difficulties, only the challenge and bragging rights? What about achievements?

[Black Hole]

Nope not really a reason that is of benefit to play on the hardest settings.

Game has enough farming enough as it is I stick to hard mostly.

[Mhill]

I was playing Ultra Hard, did Main story and Burning Shores Story without much of an issue, well except for the Apex SlaughterSpine part which was a nightmare during the DLC Story. That was really hard...

Enduring and a few of the Hunting Grounds are basically impossible. Even with a fully upgraded IRIV bow with coils, you just don't do enough damage, and the instant death is something that really irritated me.

I've gone back to normal for the time being to upgrade a few things and 100% data points, i'm planning on going Ultra Hard again to do 100% completion (ingame 100%) that is.

But from what i've been seeing all over Youtube, most ppl that are smashing Ultra Hard with ease are Coil duplicators from a few years ago and those that cheesed Enduring and some Pitmasters with Trap tricks.

I spent so much time on Ultra Hard i'm Level 93 lol

[acowsik]

Originally posted by Mhill:

I was playing Ultra Hard, did Main story and Burning Shores Story without much of an issue, well except for the Apex SlaughterSpine part which was a nightmare during the DLC Story. That was really hard...

Enduring and a few of the Hunting Grounds are basically impossible. Even with a fully upgraded IRIV bow with coils, you just don't do enough damage, and the instant death is something that really irritated me.

I've gone back to normal for the time being to upgrade a few things and 100% data points, i'm planning on going Ultra Hard again to do 100% completion (ingame 100%) that is.

But from what i've been seeing all over Youtube, most ppl that are smashing Ultra Hard with ease are Coil duplicators from a few years ago and those that cheesed Enduring and some Pitmasters with Trap tricks.

I spent so much time on Ultra Hard i'm Level 93 lol

Playing UH with legendary tier weapons is not the same as playing a new game on UH where you start from scratch and have to earn everything. I hope to achieve 100% in game completion on my NG UH run with 100% datapoints too but it is definitely not an easy task... some of the fights are pretty rough.

I played HZD twice on UH and after experiencing NG on UH, UH on NG+ was an utter joke with the Banuk weapons and shield weaver armor... this is the difference I am talking abt.. I was able to just fly through the main quests in like 10 hrs and got the plat.