Does difficulty Matter?

[Reginleif]

Hi, new player here. A filthy casual in this particular field, in fact. I started playing through game pass on the Xbox Series X and I quite like it.

But I'm not the kind of person who typically enjoys challenge against NPCs/mobs.

I believe I read there are no achievements tied to difficulty but that doesn't mean there aren't other things you lose out on. If I crank any of the difficulties down, do I lose out on anything besides the hypothetical "challenge"? Are there characters I don't meet, gear I lose out on, locations I don't get to go to, etc?

[WarBucks]

nope its all the same items and abilities. the one thing is the boons.

When boons are unlocked they are unlocked for the difficulty you are on and everything lower.

Id just start playing on standard or even dread. See how it goes from there. you can change difficultys when ever you want and still retain the characters

[Ravenfeathers]

There are achievements associated with higher difficulties such as complete a legacy on Dread or nightmare and destroy all plague hearts on lethal.
Besides that it just adds challenge.

I've just been playing on standard to build my legacy pool and may try harder difficulties eventually.

[Reginleif]

Tell me more about legacy. I've seen it mentioned in brief elsewhere but I'm not sure I understand what that is.

Is that like the vaunted "New game +"?

[Ravenfeathers]

You have 4 different leader types. Builder, Sheriff, Trader and Warlord. After you destroy all plague hearts you get leader legacy missions. When you complete all those that is classed as completing a legacy for that game and the survivors in that game are added to a legacy pool and you can choose 3 out of those to play in your next game and you also get a legacy boon based on the leader type you completed it as you can add to your next game.