Alan Wake 2: Best Difficulty Settings [My Go-To Guide]

Alan Wake 2 focuses on mystery-solving skills and intense battles against monsters. It features three generic difficulty modes, each with its own flavour and level of combat. This guide explains the difficulty modes in Alan Wake 2 and will help you choose the best one for you.

Story Mode

The Story Mode is a pretty simple one, offering an easy gameplay experience to players. I suggest that beginners or people new to the horror genre should try this. The reason is that this difficulty primarily focuses on the lore of Alan Wake 2 and immerses them in the mystery-solving aspect.

You can find abundant resources, including ammunition, weapons, and other items. Finding extra stuff like weapons will be helpful but not necessary as your survival won’t depend on it much. Weapons will do extra damage while your character will take less in return, making combat relatively easy, and it won’t become a hurdle in your playthrough.

Normal Mode

In my opinion, Normal mode is the ideal one as it presents you the best of both worlds Alan Wake 2 has to offer. It combines combat and puzzle-solving characteristics, giving you a balanced environment for the game. Players can concentrate on the story while enjoying the combat experience.

Survival is a bit tough in this mode, as it steps up the levels of fights, exploration, and resource utilization. Additionally, your character’s weapon damage and durability are slightly reduced; hence, you must remain cautious when taking on any encounter.

Hard Mode

The hard difficulty mode is built for hardcore players with significant knowledge of Alan Wake 2 gameplay mechanics. Therefore, I prefer you to complete the story at least once before trying this. The combat will be the most challenging part, as you must use your items, ammunition, weapons, and every other skill effectively to survive here.

To stay alive, you must pay attention to your resources and explore areas entirely so as not to miss out on anything important. Overall, the availability of resources is significantly less, giving you a hard time managing them, and you must discover new weapons to deal with the more durable enemies. Finally, the weapon’s damage is comparably lowered, so decide wisely when engaging enemies and target their weak points.

Nightmare Mode – Expected To Come Soon

As per the official Alan Wake 2 tweet, the new game plus mode, known as Nightmare, will most likely come soon, presenting an even more deadly experience. It features an alternative narrative with more mysteries, brutal fights, and rare supplies. It unlocks once you have completed the game in any difficulty.

This new difficulty will allow you to keep your items, weapons, and upgrades from the previous walkthrough and continue with them from the fresh beginning. There is no final date regarding its release, but hopefully, it will be available in future updates.

How To Change Difficulty?

Changing the difficulty settings is pretty straightforward. Go to the pause menu and then select the “Difficulty” option, and from there, you can set it according to your choice. You can change the difficulty anytime; however, it requires you to restart your progress from the last saved checkpoint.

Alan Wake Difficulty Settings Compared

Here is a comparison table of Difficulty settings in Alan Wake to give you a quick overview:

Story	Focuses more on the Story Combat is easy.	– More Resources – Weapon Damage High – Durability High
Normal	Balance of Story and Combat	– Reasonable Resources – Weapon Damage Medium – Durability Medium
Hard	Focuses more on intense Combat.	– Very Limited Resources – Weapon Damage Low – Durability Low

My Choice For Best Difficulty In Alan Wake 2

I went with the Normal option, and I advise most players should choose the same, as it provides an equal opportunity to enjoy both fights and the lore without causing much stress.

Although for newcomers, I suggest selecting the Story option to get familiar with the game’s mechanics, skilled players can unarguably try the Hard mode.

Take a look at other exciting Alan Wake 2 guides:

• Alan Wake 2 Chapters List [All Missions]
• Alan Wake 2 Screwdriver [How & Where To Get Them]
• Alan Wake 2 Screwdriver [How & Where To Get Them]