Base difficulty is pretty straightforward but wait for spring 2025 since thats when hardcore mode drops. Might be interesting, the base game already makes you work for it with tougher combat and survival stuff but hardcore mode really cranks things up. No fast travel or autosaves, gotta rely on schnapps or sleeping to save your progress and the combat gets way more intense since they remove those helpful direction markers. Plus, youll need to pick two permanent debuffs at the start, which definitely spices things up especially with stuff like slower stamina regen or taking more fall damage. Combat feels different too since they rebalanced how armor works and made stamina way more important to manage, so keep that in mind before jumping in

Worth noting the map becomes way less helpful without player markers, so youll need to actually learn the lay of the land. tip: might wanna practice navigation in regular mode first since its gonna be crucial when hardcore hits