Stellar Blade: Difficulty levels Stellar Blade guide, tips

The Stellar Blade game can be challenging, so you may be looking for information on lowering the difficulty level. This page of the guide describes the 2 main difficulty levels, the available additional difficulties, and the 2 skills that make it much easier for you to win battles.

Last update: 14 May 2024

Does Stellar Blade allows choosing a difficulty level? On this page of our guide, we explain whether there is a Story Mode available, how adjusting the difficulty level affects the game, how to make gameplay easier thanks to useful upgrades from skill trees and settings from the options menu.

• Choosing a difficulty level
• Adjusting the difficulty level mid-game
• Additional facilitations in game options
• Skills facilitating perfect parrying and dodging
• Equipment for easier parrying and dodges

Choosing a difficulty level

Stellar Blade has 2 basic difficulty levels available. These are:

1. Normal mode - The default option. Aside from standard encounters, the boss battles on this setting may prove to be challenging. To be able to play effectively on this difficulty level, you need to master parrying and dodging, which are vital elements of the gameplay.
2. Story mode - Intended for people who want to focus on following the plot. The game doesn't suddenly become very easy, but the opponents are clearly less demanding, inflicting less damage and losing health points much faster.

Changing the difficulty level mid-game

1. The choice of difficulty level at the beginning of the game is not binding, as you can also change it mid-game. To do that, enter the options menu and go to Gameplay tab - the option is at the very top of the list.
2. Changing the difficulty level will reload the latest camp, so you cannot dynamically change the difficulty level mid-encounter.

Additional facilitations in game options

In the game settings, you can also find several other options that can lower the level of challenge, and some of them are related to accessibility features. These are:

1. Automatic QTE success - You don't have to win QTE scenes which normally may lead to a critical hit being inflicted or resisted by the heroine. With the option enabled, all QTE scenes will be automatically successful.
2. Aim Assist - This is a built-in aim assist for all types of ranged attacks. Its default value is 5, but you can increase it to make the crosshair stick even more.
3. Auto lock-on when attacking - This option is enabled by default, helping your attacks reach the opponent.

1. After choosing the story mode, the game will also suggest enabling the assist that helps in responding to enemy attacks.
2. Time can slow down and a counter indicator can be displayed on the screen when an enemy uses a strong attack - you will have significantly more time to react and press the right button.

Skills facilitating perfect parrying and dodging

Stellar Blade is a game in which timing of dodges and parries play an important role. This mechanic can be quite demanding, as by default the margin of error is small. Eve can easily receive damage if, for example, you failed to respond in a timely fashion.

Both actions can be greatly facilitated with certain passive skills from the character tree.

1. Focus Boost from Survival tree - Makes perfect parrying easier.
2. Reflex Boost from Survival tree - Makes perfect dodging easier.

Each of these skills costs 2 SP and can be unlocked very early in the game (first visit on Eidos 7).

1. Later in the game, we also recommend unlocking the Threat Detection skill from the Survival tree.
2. This skill allows you to more easily perform Blink and Repulse, moves that let you deal with blue and purple attacks.

Equipment for easier parrying and dodges

1. The Reflex-Type Exospine can help you use parries and dodges.
2. Level up this Exospine to level 3 and the window for perfect parries and dodges will increase even further. This stacks up with the effects of the skills mentioned earlier.