STAR WARS Zero Company Difficulty Settings Explained

Before a campaign starts, three settings sit near each other, and the most common mistake is reading them as one ladder. They answer three different questions.

Rather than ranking the ratings, pick the experience. The answer is the setting that best matches what you selected — not an objective claim that one rating is better than another.

Pick one above. Nothing is preselected, because the honest answer depends on what you actually want from the run.

Every value below comes from the rating’s own description in the game’s string table, or from a recorded value in the difficulty rule set. Normal is the baseline, so Hard and Expert are compared against Normal rather than against Story.

The exact values behind the range, enemy and Bond rows are in the rule table further down. The quick table keeps the shape; the exact table keeps the numbers.

For players who want some challenging moments with lots of room for error. Enemies are easier to fight. An ideal experience for players new to this style of gameplay.

Those two recorded values are the only difficulty-side numbers in the rule set that apply to Story. This page does not invent a percentage for how much easier the rating feels.

Normal is the reference point, which is why every comparison on this page reads “Hard vs Normal” and “Expert vs Normal” rather than “Hard vs Story”. Nothing in the rule set modifies Normal: no range change, no Bond change, no Bacta restriction, no enemy accuracy change.

Best for: learning the systems without removing the game’s normal tactical structure. That is an intent match, not a verdict about the rating.

Hard is the first rating that changes campaign management rather than only combat. It is not “enemies have more health” — it moves range, relationships and recovery at the same time.

Expert is not Hard with bigger numbers. It pushes the same four dimensions further at once, which is why it is best described as combat, relationship and recovery pressure together.

The correct one-line summary of Expert is “combat, relationship and recovery pressure”, not “enemies have more health”.

These are the rule changes the production data resolves for each rating. Story and Normal sit on the shared baseline, so only the ratings that move away from it print a value.

Anything the data does not resolve — most enemy stat tables, absolute modifiers and per-rank health — is left blank rather than filled in from a second-hand source.

Only the four ratings EA presents as player choices are shown on this page.

Partly, and less than the “more health” shorthand implies. The recorded enemy-side rule in the difficulty set is the Story accuracy change; the Hard and Expert enemy entries are stated as tougher enemies with more damage rather than a published stat table.

The production data resolves no per-enemy, per-rating health table, so this page does not print one. The enemy-side values it does resolve are the Story accuracy change and the two enemy-rank health packages, which are a rank bonus rather than a difficulty setting.

Because difficulty is recorded across range, accuracy, damage and recovery at the same time, this page never compresses it into a single “X% harder” number.

The disabled Bacta Tank is the reason Hard and Expert change more than combat. Without instant recovery, an Injury stops being a spending decision and becomes a scheduling one.

1. 01Operator Injured
2. 02Normal: Bed or Bacta Tank
3. 03Hard / Expert: Bed only
4. 04One Cycle unavailable
5. 05Roster planning
6. 06Mission timing

On Hard and Expert an Injury stops being only a Credits problem and becomes a Cycle and roster problem: the only route back is a Bed, and a Bed costs campaign time.

That is why recovery Utilities and Medbay capacity carry more weight there, and why deploying an injured Operator is a scheduling decision rather than a spending decision.

Injury Guide →Den & Medbay →Recovery Utilities →

Why does weapon positioning feel harder?

1. 01Higher rating
2. 02Reduced effective weapon range
3. 03More movement needed to reach a good firing position
4. 04More exposure while repositioning
5. 05Positioning matters more than the weapon itself

There is no single “Expert is X% harder” score. The rating moves range, enemy pressure, Bonds and recovery together, and compressing that into one number would be meaningless.

Difficulty modifies the environment in which your weapon and range calculations operate. It does not rewrite the weapon’s own stats, and the full hit-chance model belongs to the Combat Calculator and the weapon pages.

Weapons →Combat Calculator →Mission pressure →

This is the part most difficulty summaries leave out. Hard and Expert change where each Operator pair starts, which pushes everything built on Bonds later into the campaign.

1. 01Higher rating
2. 02Lower starting relationship state
3. 03More Bond progression required before the pair is at full strength
4. 04Cross Training and support benefits come online later

The shipped descriptions state that starting Bonds are lower on Hard and much lower on Expert. They do not print a numeric starting offset, and the production data resolves none, so this page does not claim a tier count for it.

Bonds →Cross Training →Best Squad →

That is the difference worth carrying into the decision: the rating is a recoverable choice, and the toggles around it are what a campaign is actually committed to.

Beginner Guide →

Beskar Mode is not part of Expert. Every row above is a real combination, and Beskar can be played on any of the four ratings.

Answer four questions about the run you want. The output is a suggested configuration with the reasoning attached — it is a match to your own stated preferences, not a claim about the best way to play.

These are example configurations, not instructions. Each one is a different game, and none of them is the “correct” setup.

Set both sides up the way you are considering. The table shows what actually differs, including the case where the combat rules are identical and only the save commitment changes.

Two different ratings move range, enemy pressure, starting Bonds and recovery at the same time. That is why this comparison is a table rather than one “harder by X%” score.

Everything in this section is a strategy implication rather than a game rule. The ratings change the environment a plan operates in; they do not rewrite the abilities and weapons the plan is made of.

The hard part is knowing which parts of a plan come online later on a higher rating. Starting Bonds are the clearest example: nothing is removed, but a Bond-gated setup needs more progression before it is complete.

Operator builds →Best squad →Credits →

The shipped list carries a difficulty progression from an easy completion up to one that asks for Expert and Beskar Mode. Requirement wording below is the published text.

Do you need Permadeath for the Expert or Beskar achievements? The published requirement answers that directly, and so does the checker below.

You do not have to solve combat difficulty perfectly before your first mission.

The rating can be changed outside combat, so a first pick that turns out too soft or too punishing is recoverable. The settings worth thinking about more carefully are the campaign-level ones that cannot be freely reversed.

Nothing about Bacta availability or Bonds is a first-playthrough blocker: Hard and Expert disable the Bacta Tank, which is a recovery constraint rather than a reason to avoid the rating you want.

Beginner Guide →

Community experiences vary substantially with tactics-game experience, build knowledge, mission familiarity and whether Beskar and Permadeath are enabled.

This page does not present a community “best difficulty” and does not claim Expert is easy or brutal. Reports run in both directions, and neither is a rule.

If you are unsure, start where you expect to enjoy the combat. The rating itself can be moved outside battle; the toggles next to it cannot.