Mechanic
Zero Company difficulty and beskar mode explained
The pre-release achievement list names four difficulty tiers — Story, Normal, Hard and Expert — with achievements for completing the campaign on each. Beskar Mode is separate: an ironman-style option with no reloading of earlier saves. The hardest achievement in the list asks for Expert and Beskar Mode together. Permadeath is on by default and can be disabled.
- Confidence
- Strongly supported
- Verified
- 19 August 2026
- Version
- pre-release (no retail build)
Where these names come from, and how far to trust them
Not from EA. The four tier names are read off achievement titles — there are achievements for completing the game on Story or higher, Normal or higher, Hard or higher, and on Expert. That is strong evidence the names are the game's own, because achievement text is written against the shipped interface. It is still inference about the settings menu rather than a description of it.
There is also a live disagreement worth recording rather than resolving. One previewer counts four difficulty choices and places Hard as the third-highest of four; another describes three. The achievement list supports four. Until someone captures the menu, this page states the evidence and its sources rather than picking a winner.
Beskar Mode is not a difficulty
It is an ironman-style option: you cannot reload an earlier save. That is orthogonal to how hard the enemies hit, which is why the hardest achievement names both Expert and Beskar Mode rather than treating one as implying the other.
The build consequence is the point of this page. On a normal run, a squad wipe is a reload. On Beskar Mode it is the campaign. Every piece of squad advice that treats a risky opening as acceptable because you can retry is advice for a different mode — and this site's build pages generally assume you can retry.
How it interacts with permadeath
Permadeath is enabled by default and can be turned off. An Operator taken to zero health receives an Injury, and three Injuries mean permanent death on standard difficulty — note the qualifier, because whether that threshold moves with difficulty is not published.
Stacked with Beskar Mode, permadeath makes an Operator loss permanent in both senses: you cannot heal it away and you cannot reload past it. That combination is where the Medic's Injury prevention, Hawks' inability to permanently die, and any build that spreads capability across four Operators rather than concentrating it stop being preferences and start being requirements.
Confirmed
The rules as officially stated
- Achievements exist for completing the campaign on Story or higher, Normal or higher, Hard or higher, and on Expert.
- An achievement exists for completing the campaign on Expert with Beskar Mode enabled.
- Beskar Mode is described as an ironman-style mode in which earlier saves cannot be reloaded.
- Permadeath is enabled by default and can be disabled.
- Three Injuries mean permanent death on standard difficulty.
Planning
What this means for squad building
- Read every build on this site as written for a run you can retry. On Beskar Mode, weight survivability and Injury prevention above damage.
- A squad whose plan depends on one Operator has one point of campaign failure once permadeath and Beskar Mode are both on.
- Hawks cannot permanently die, which makes any Hawks-centred build structurally safer on the hardest configuration than its raw numbers suggest.
- Do not assume enemy statistics scale predictably between tiers. Nothing published says what a tier actually changes.
What we don't know yet
The game has not been released. These are open questions we have chosen not to guess at.
- What each difficulty tier actually modifies — enemy health, accuracy, count, or the Injury threshold.
- Whether the four names above are exactly what the settings menu shows.
- Whether difficulty can be changed mid-campaign, and whether doing so forfeits achievements.
- Whether Beskar Mode can be enabled on any difficulty or only above a certain tier.
- Whether permadeath can be toggled independently of Beskar Mode.
- Whether the three-Injury threshold changes with difficulty. The wording 'on standard difficulty' implies it might.
Questions
Common questions
The way these come up in search, answered directly.
- What difficulty settings does Zero Company have?
- Four are named by the pre-release achievement list — Story, Normal, Hard and Expert — plus a separate ironman option called Beskar Mode.
Related mechanics
Sources
- Complete Star Wars Zero Company Trophy List — How to Get All Achievements & Trophies
Insider Gaming · Tier 2 — Achievement list · accessed 19 August 2026
Supports: Full trophy table — Very High Bond as a named relationship threshold, and the named pairings reaching it, including two astromechs and two Custom Operators; completing a mission with four astromechs; equipping four Weapon Mods to one weapon (“Fully Geared”); applying a Focus Point; using Force Push or Pull to knock one enemy into another; knocking an enemy out of the combat space; defeating enemies from higher elevation; landing a shot at 10% or lower Chance-to-Hit and missing at 90% or greater; the difficulty tiers Story, Normal, Hard and Expert, and Expert with Beskar Mode. Published 2026-08-17
- Star Wars Zero Company Trophies
PSNProfiles · Tier 2 — Achievement list · accessed 19 August 2026
Supports: Trophy list — independent corroboration of the trophy descriptions and of the Very High Bond terminology.
- Star Wars Zero Company Xbox achievements
TrueAchievements · Tier 2 — Achievement list · accessed 19 August 2026
Supports: Achievement list — independent corroboration of the same requirements, including the four-Weapon-Mod achievement and the difficulty tiers.
- Star Wars Zero Company: A New Hope for Turn-Based Tactics
Xbox Wire · Tier 3 — Hands-on preview · accessed 19 August 2026
Supports: Combat and squad sections — Advantage accumulating when a squad member successfully deals damage, and capping at 10; respeccing Hawks from Scoundrel into Gunslinger to exploit a Weapon Mod that applied an accumulating Burn status on every attack; unique-specialisation recruits being unable to respec the same way; an astromech with no basic attack, carrying three different Utility items with two uses each; a Concussion Grenade knocking enemies clean out of the combat space. 15-hour preview build.
- Lead Zero Company To Victory on August 27
Electronic Arts · Tier 1 — Official · accessed 6 August 2026
Supports: Operator introductions; 3 Action Points per turn; Advantage caps at 10; the eight Specializations; Bonds in the Personnel Facility; Hawks' species options