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STAR WARS Zero Company separates difficulty into three independent choices: the campaign tier, whether saves can be reloaded, and whether Operators die permanently. They are set separately, and only the first can be freely changed later.
Campaign Difficulty
The campaign is played on one of four tiers. They can be changed at any point outside combat, so a run that turns out too soft or too punishing does not have to be restarted.
Tier | Notes |
|---|---|
Story | The lowest setting, aimed at players who want the campaign and the characters more than the challenge. |
Normal | The default. Players experienced with squad tactics generally report it as undemanding and start higher; players new to the genre report it as appropriately tense. |
Hard | The common recommendation for players coming from other squad-tactics games. |
Expert | The highest tier. Higher settings lean on additional enemy reinforcements, which is a recurring criticism of how the difficulty scales. |
Completion of each tier is tracked by its own achievement, and they stack downward, so finishing on a higher tier also credits the ones below it. The global unlock rates make the drop-off visible: clearing the campaign on Story sits around fourteen percent of players, while Expert sits near one percent. See Achievements for the full figures.
Beskar Mode
Beskar Mode is a separate toggle, not a fifth tier. It removes the ability to load an earlier save, so the campaign runs on a single save file and every decision stands. It can be combined with any campaign tier, and pairing it with Expert is the hardest configuration the game offers; the achievement for doing so is the rarest in the game apart from the catch-all.
Beskar Mode carries a practical risk that has nothing to do with difficulty. Because it keeps one save, a crash at the wrong moment can end a run outright with no recovery, and losses of long campaigns have been reported. Known Issues and Bugs covers this.
Permadeath
Permadeath is its own toggle, switched on by default and able to be turned off. It governs whether Operators who fall in combat are gone for good. Hawks is exempt: he is required on story missions and his death fails the mission rather than removing him. Permadeath covers the injury system and how the toggle interacts with it.
Mission Difficulty Ratings
Separately from the campaign setting, individual missions carry their own difficulty rating so a squad can be matched to the job.
Rating | Meaning |
|---|---|
Risky | The lowest of the three published ratings. |
Dangerous | The middle rating. |
Extreme | The highest rating. |
A separate Critical flag marks missions that advance the story rather than describing how hard they are. Story-critical work becomes obligatory after a period rather than expiring the way optional work does. Operations and Tactical Missions covers how missions are offered and expire.
Restarting
A mission can be restarted from the game menu with the same Operators, which is the intended recovery route when a deployment goes wrong on a normal save. In Beskar Mode that option does not substitute for reloading, since the single save has already moved on.