No Spoilers Please, But... normal or hard difficulty for best 1st experience?

[AgentZerØ]

I started my game on Normal difficulty, should I start over on Hard? I know very little about the mobs in this game (no spoilers please - I don't want to know anything about them yet!), so this is not me asking because I think it's too hard. I just don't want to waste so much time on the gathering and building only to find out I am unhappy with the difficulty.

This is my first survival game and I am absoltely loving it. I started playing this past Friday night after I got home from work and before I knew it, It was Sunday night and I had logged about 30 hours of play, lol (I cringed while typing that!).

Long story short, I see myself dumping 100s (1000s?!) of hours into my first playthrough. My head is spinning from all the possibilities there are with what I can build, lol. I want to get the best experience possible, especially since this is my first and probably most memorable experience in this genre (the first is always the best!).

[{FU}TheForgeryTTV]

You should only switch to hard if you want a challenge. I'll try my best to not spoil you too much but I can say this.

I don't think I really spoiled anything below but I decided to hide it just in case.

On hard, there will be more enemies and they will be tougher. You also can't pause time anymore when you use the inventory. Animals also appear less and drinking polluted water is more damaging and doesn't quench thirst as much. Restoring health is much slower. You will also feel the damaging effects of being cold much faster, this is a big warning coming from me.

Basically, I think you will spend more time surviving and fighting enemies on hard than building your base. If you want to focus more on building/expanding your base, you might want to put off hard until you gain more experience or are sure you can handle it.

[Andi]

I'd suggest to play normal to learn about the basics, fighting strategies, tricks in building and so on, but then skip hard and jump directly into hard survival when you feel ready.
Only in hard survival you get the full game content and full survival aspect, have to watch calories, weight etc.

[{FU}TheForgeryTTV]

Originally posted by Andi:

I'd suggest to play normal to learn about the basics, fighting strategies, tricks in building and so on, but then skip hard and jump directly into hard survival when you feel ready.
Only in hard survival you get the full game content and full survival aspect, have to watch calories, weight etc.

Funny enough, that's exactly what I did too. The calorie stat is something that should be taken carefully into consideration. I didn't do that, and my strength went really low. On the bright side, I was able to sprint really fast that I could outright outrun almost every enemy.

[phoenix_death12]

Originally posted by SkuLLy:

Long story short, I see myself dumping 100s (1000s?!) of hours into my first playthrough. My head is spinning from all the possibilities there are with what I can build, lol.

woohoo a new builder hopefully! :D <3

[AgentZerØ]

Originally posted by phoenix_death12:

Originally posted by SkuLLy:

Long story short, I see myself dumping 100s (1000s?!) of hours into my first playthrough. My head is spinning from all the possibilities there are with what I can build, lol.

woohoo a new builder hopefully! :D <3

It is literally all I've done, lol. I have no idea what is really going on in the game story-wise or if there are any objectives. I just paddle my raft around and prospect the land for new areas to build on. :D

Thanks to everyone who chimed in and gave me some advice. I will stick with normal and wait to try the expert difficulty.

[Axz]

I'm in exactly the same boat (pun intended), I started out on normal on the west side of the island and went right for the coast, found a little island just far away from the mainland that patrols wouldn't see me (but not so far out that I'd have to dodge sharks) and built a small camp hidden behind a small hill.

I just gathered as much resorces as I could, built a houseboat and set off up north with the idea of setting up a camp in the frozen north. I quickly found out that I wasn't equipped to deal with the area and my temp' camp hidden at the absolute most north part of the coast keep getting discovered, so I retreated back down to my western island.

I went south and followed the coast all the way around to the most south-east part of the map and found a small group of islands even further from the coast than the western islands. They are pratically perfectly safe spots, no sharks and more turtles, seagulls and fish than you'll ever need. However I have seen various types of enemies patrolling right along the coast, it's VERY rare, I've been there nearly 30 days and I've only seen it twice. They *might* get close enough to see you (if you're VERY careless, like, stupidly careless), but if they can't swim then those islands are 100% safe :P If they CAN swim....... just keep an eye on the coast, just in case.

The only downsides to those islands are that there are no sources of sticks or logs nearby, you'll have to build a small raft and then build 2 log holders on it (and then another small raft with 2 stick holders on it). Sticks aren't that bad as with 2 holders and a stick bag you can bring back 60 at a time, but logs are a pain as even with 2 holders you can only bring back 14, which makes building with logs take MUCH longer than anywhere else.

Also the islands are annoyingly...... uneven, 2 of the islands are pretty big and you can build as good as anything on them, but if you're not custom building / using foundations then there's not much room to place things that won't be at an angle.

I've been gathering resorces for so long I feel I've overleved the difficulty and was considering changing it to hard through the console cammands.