Call of Duty: Vanguard – Which Difficulty Should You Choose?

Call of Duty: Vanguard features a single-player campaign that takes players across all fronts of the war, but which difficulty level should you pick before starting the game? As per usual, there are four difficulty levels in Call of Duty: Vanguard, and they’re very similar to those featured in previous campaigns. Call of Duty: Vanguard has a wide variety of levels in the campaign though, so your difficulty will affect more than just your health and how much damage the enemies do. Here’s everything you need to know about difficulty levels in Call of Duty: Vanguard.

Call of Duty: Vanguard Difficulty Levels Explained

There are four difficulty levels in Call of Duty: Vanguard, and each of them is listed below.

• Recruit:  For players who are new to Call of Duty.
• Regular: Your abilities in combat will be tested.
• Hardened:  Your skills will be strained.
• Veteran: You will not survive.

These four difficulty settings have been featured in the Call of Duty series since its inception, so veteran players will already know what to expect from each of them. The Vanguard campaign is definitely skewed toward the easy side, however, so we recommend choosing Hardened if you want a challenging but fair experience. If you’ve played most of the Call of Duty campaigns before, then go ahead and try Veteran. It can be frustrating, especially with the number of enemies in some levels, but it makes the experience much more challenging

There are difficulty trophies/achievements in Call of Duty: Vanguard, so keep this in mind when selecting your difficulty level. You will get a trophy/achievement called “The Tip of the Spear” for completing the Vanguard campaign on Veteran difficulty. Finishing the campaign on any other difficulty level will unlock the “Phoenix Extinguished” trophy/achievement.

You can change the difficulty at any time during the campaign, but dropping the difficulty down from Veteran will prevent you from earning the trophy/achievement. Since there’s only a special trophy for Veteran difficulty, you can swap between Recruit/Regular/Hardened as often as you want without any consequences.

Call of Duty: Vanguard is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.