![MechWarrior 5 - Understanding the difficulty](/images/posts/77b06ad8b16b4de257fb31af7a5c2c5a-0.jpg)
The difficulty can be checked in the Starmap, and after accepting a contract.
As you may have noticed, you have a Universal Clan reputation that increases with each successful contract. It's at the top right of the main menu, next to the skull icon. It not only represents how far you've come as a mercenary, but provides a general idea of your progress in the game.
On the Starmap, each conflict zone will have a Recommended Clan Reputation, and clicking on a system will display it in the System Info section at the bottom right. So, let's say you highlight Cole Harbor: you'll see it in the Free Worlds Commerce Hub, which has a recommended reputation level of nine. What this is trying to tell you is that you should be able to take contracts in this system by the time you reach that rank, due to all the new mechs and gear you've collected to get there.
It's not perfect at all: you could have sold or destroyed a herd of rank-crushing things, so think of it more as a barometer of your progress. What matters most is the actual difficulty level of a mission.
This increases higher relative to the reputation of the clan, so if you grind up reputation rank two systems, you should expect the difficulty to be around ten on the one to one hundred scale. Move up to reputation rank fourteen and you will find that the difficulty is suddenly ninety-five out of a hundred.
The difficulty is related to the level of the pilot, not just to the equipment.
What this number indicates is a few things: the overall density of enemies (the higher the number, the larger the swarms), the tonnage of enemy mechs (the greater the difficulty, the more mechs you will encounter more and more). heavier), and enemy "precision". Enemy Accuracy is a bit opaque at a glance, but it basically works with a few hidden enemy damage per second modifiers. As the difficulty increases, the enemy's damage per second cap also increases. This is why enemies seem to sniff out less difficulty more often, but hammer you with more precise attacks as the ladder goes up.
To mitigate this, you need to improve your personal damage avoidance stat (Evade), as well as that of your spear. This is crucial, as a pilot with four avoidance points will be demolished in contracts with more than 40 difficulties. Think of it like this: one point is good for a mission with a difficulty of ten, and two is good for a difficulty of up to twenty; all this moving upwards to the maximum of ten points avoiding better dodging attacks at the maximum difficulty of one hundred. Pair this with the Damage Mitigation (Armor) stat for better survival.
You can embark on a lower level mission and be successful, but you will likely take more damage to your robot, lose equipment, and maybe even a lancemate that was not prepared for battle. It's essential that you recruit new pilots with higher skill caps and upgrade them to tough contracts if you're hoping to grow into harder content without wanting to pull your hair out. Not only will you and your spear take less damage and come out alive, but you will also deal more damage to enemies.
Ergo: Level up players, collect better gear levels and heavier mechanics, then dominate your enemies. That's all about MechWarrior 5. For more guides, keep an eye on our guides page.