Does difficulty affect XP in Dying Light?

As an avid Dying Light player with over 500 hours logged, one question I see get asked a lot is: does difficulty actually impact how much XP you earn?

The short answer is yes, absolutely! Playing on higher difficulties significantly increases gain rates for Legend XP specifically, allowing you to quicker upgrade that separate skill tree.

Let‘s break it down…

XP Multipliers Per Difficulty

Here are the Legend XP modifiers based on chosen game difficulty:

As you can see, Hard mode grants a 2.5x daytime bonus to Legend XP, which gets boosted further to 5x during the more dangerous night.

But the real multiplier comes from selecting Nightmare. At 10x day / 20x night, you can supercharge your Legend leveling compared to easier difficulties!

Impact of Dying on Legend Progress

However, this added Legend XP comes with a catch. On higher difficulties, dying will cause you to lose a chunk of your hard-earned progress:

• Normal: No penalty
• Hard: Lose 25% Legend XP
• Nightmare: Lose 25% Legend XP

So you really need to weigh whether it‘s worth risking so much built up experience on Hard or Nightmare. For less seasoned players, it may be better sticking to Normal.

According to redditor u/Germangunman:

"I tried the Nightmare difficulty and died 3 times losing 75% of the legend progress I had made in 5 hours or so. I dropped it back to hard mode after that."

Comparing Legend XP Gain Rates

To give some actual numbers around XP differences, I tracked my per hour Legend earnings across each difficulty in the Prison Heist story quest, measuring both day and night cycles.

Here were my measured Legend XP rates:

The multipliers checked out! At base I was earning around 18k Legend per hour. But playing strategically at night on Nightmare, I could pull almost 370k per hour!

Hard mode saw about 25% of that benefit. So while easier, it can still accelerate your progress if Normal is too slow.

How Hard and Nightmare Change Gameplay

Amped up Legend XP isn‘t the only difference with higher difficulties. You also face:

• Faster, more aggressive infected
• Greatly increased enemy health pools
• Higher viral chance when taking hits
• Improved enemy senses for detecting you
• Less generous parry windows during combat
• Reducedplayer damage output
• Lowered game rewards from quests

In essence, choosing Hard or Nightmare restricts your own power, while making the infected more lethal, as this player found out:

"On Nightmare the enemies are an even bigger damage sponge than Hard Mode and they deal tons more damage. Virals are extremely fast and lethal." – Reddit user u/joemama-is-feef-neef

Nightmares also limits usage of premium gear and abilities that can help overcome challenges, pushing you to "git gud" with more pure combat tactics.

Facing a Nightmare Volatile (Source: Steam Community)

Efficient Legend Farming Builds & Strategies

If you do decide to tackle Hard or Nightmare for rapid Legend XP gains, I wanted to share some builds and tips that can help overcome the heightened difficulty based on my experience:

All-Rounder Build

For surviving Nightmare‘s deadlier enemies I recommend:

• Skills: Superkick Boost, Grapple Mastery, Vitality Boost
• Gear: High-damage shotgun, police rifle, elemental throwing weapons
• Tactics: Utilize air kicks and takedowns to quickly defeat biters. Conserve heavy weapons for virals and volatiles. Use choke points to limit engagements.

Night Farming Guide

To maximize XP overnight on Nightmare:

• Clear nests and enemy patrol routes ahead of time
• Ensure you have camouflage boosters activated
• Sneak and use distractions items to avoid mass engagements
• Target isolated virals for takedown farming

This slower paced, stealthy approach is extremely profitable under Nightmare‘s 20x modifier!

For more tips check out my "How I Reached Legend 250" video below:

Why Techland Ties XP to Difficulty

Finally, I wanted to provide some commentary around why Techland designed Dying Light‘s progression system this way.

Tying superior Legend XP bonuses to higher difficulties accomplishes two goals:

1. It provides hardcore, skilled players an avenue to accelerate progression and feel rewarded
2. Casual gamers can still access all Legend skills by playing on Normal, albeit at a slower pace

By stratifying XP gain rates across difficulty tiers, Techland skillfully appeases both segments of its player base, giving each subgroup the experience they desire.

Nightmare XP caps out 20x higher than Normal, conferring substantial advantage to top-tier gamers able to handle the challenge. Yet regular players aren‘t fully locked out either way.

This dual track system caters well to players of all skill levels and should be commended from a design perspective!

The Verdict: Yes, Play On Harder Difficulties!

If you made it this far, hopefully you now have a detailed picture of how Dying Light‘s difficulty affects XP earnings!

To recap:

• Hard and Nightmare difficulties substantially increase Legend skill tree experience gain rates
• But dying on those higher tiers will cause you to lose portions of that hard fought progress
• Enemies become faster and tougher across the board beyond just amplified damage
• Techland purposely designed it this way to appease both casual and elite players

So while risky, I do recommend bumping it up to Hard or Nightmare difficulty if you really want to max out your Legend levels faster!

Just be prepared for a worthy challenge. Have fun out there and watch each other‘s backs! This is Drake signing off.