In The Division, even after the update 1.4, there will still be difficulty levels: Normal, Hard, Challenging, and Heroic. What influence do they have considering the World Levels?
Massive presented significant changes a few days ago that the update 1.4 will bring in October. This includes “World Tiers,” which determine the level of your enemies and the gear score of your loot. With this new feature, they aim to make the difficulty and progression simpler, clearer, and more logical.
There are a total of four Tiers in the World Levels. Depending on the respective Tier, you will receive items with fixed maximum gear scores. The enemy levels are also fixed:
- Tier 1 = 0-163, Enemy Level 30
- Tier 2 = 164-182, Enemy Level 31
- Tier 3 = 183-204, Enemy Level 32
- Tier 4 = 205-229, Enemy Level 33
Level 33 will be the new maximum for enemies.
Once you have optimized your gear within a Tier, you will be overpowered for that World Level and can proceed well-equipped to the next. However, you will never be forced to play the more difficult Tier. You can always downgrade to a lower Tier. To gain access to the next higher level, you first need a certain gear score.
It should be noted: All enemies (including all adds) can drop the best loot in the respective Tier – albeit with significantly lower probability than named elite enemies. For example, if you are currently in Tier 2, random enemies can also drop items with 182.
This raises the question: If the Tiers influence the enemy level and all enemies can drop the best loot – then what do the difficulty levels Normal, Hard, Challenging, and Heroic bring?
Not better loot, but more loot
First:
- In each of the four Tiers, you can set difficulty levels for specific activities.
- The Challenge Mode (Challenging) is only available starting from Tier 2.
- The Heroic Mode is only available in Tier 4, and only in raids.
The difficulty levels have the following impact on the game:
- Normal: Predominantly normal enemies.
- Hard: All normal enemies become veterans. Veterans become elite enemies.
- Challenging: All enemies are elite. Moreover, the enemy archetypes and composition change.
To prevent the jump between Hard and Challenging from being as drastic as before, the Challenge Mode scales its difficulty based on the size of your team. This makes it achievable for the majority of solo players as well. Only the raids are always designed for four players.
But why would one choose a higher difficulty if one can already obtain the best gear at “Normal”?
Higher difficulty levels do not mean better loot, but rather more frequent access to the best loot. In other words: You will always have access to relevant loot, but if you want to progress faster, you need to increase the difficulty.
This means: Even solo players can gradually progress – albeit at a slower pace than if they were playing in a team.
Detailed information about the World Tiers in The Division can be found here.
