Difficulty

Curious Expedition offers three difficulty settings, which affect how challenging the game will be. From easiest to hardest, they are: Tourist Trip, Expedition, and Certain Death. Difficulty settings cannot be changed during a game.

Difficulty is known to affect:

1. Base Sanity cost of movement. Each leg of travel has a base cost of 0 Sanity on Tourist Trip, 5 on Expedition, and 15 on Certain Death.
2. Loot. You get more and better loot on Tourist Trip.
3. Magnetic mountains. They are not present at all on Tourist Trip, and are slightly more common in prehistoric biomes on Certain Death.
4. Temples. Do not appear on Tourist Trip.
5. Golden Pyramid access. When playing on Expedition or Certain Death, the Golden Pyramid in Expeditions 4 to 6 will be buried or locked, requiring extra actions or items to access it. On Tourist Trap, only pyramids on Prehistoric worlds will require this extra step.
6. Return trip. On Tourist Trip or Expedition, your expedition ends as soon as you discover the Golden Pyramid. On Certain Death, you must return to your ship after finding the Pyramid in order to succeed.
7. Mummies. If you are playing on Expedition or Certain Death and have a mummy in your inventory when you camp, it may rise up and attack you during the night. This does not happen on Tourist Trip.
8. Shrine disasters. The void disaster will not happen after looting a shrine on Tourist Trip.
9. Resting at Missions. It is cheaper on Tourist Trip.
10. Cave dangers. You will not lose a companion or run into giant spiders while exploring a cave without a light source on Tourist Trip.
11. Number of enemies in combat. Many enemy groups are larger on the higher difficulty levels.
12. Fleeing combat. On Tourist Trip, you will only get a small Sanity penalty for running from combat, but on the higher difficulty levels you will lose more Sanity, items, or even companions.
13. Standing penalties. There are no Standing penalties for killing enemy groups or dynamiting terrain on Tourist Trip.
14. Compass accuracy. The compass is much less accurate on Certain Death, even when the map is mostly explored.
15. Unlocking explorers. Certain explorers (such as H. P. Lovecraft) can only be unlocked while playing on Expedition or Certain Death. Fulfilling the conditions on Tourist Trip difficulty doesn't count.
16. Score. Your final score is reduced by 20% on Tourist Trip, and increased by 20% on Certain Death.
17. Achievements. Some achievements cannot be triggered when playing on Tourist Trip. Platinum frames, which are needed for the Obsessive Explorer achievement, can only be unlocked by winning games on Certain Death.