The Sinking City 2 Difficulty Settings

The four modes

You can change it whenever you like

This is the most useful thing to know about the system. Difficulty is not a run-defining commitment — it lives in Pause → Options → Gameplay and can be changed mid-chapter, mid-area, and in practice mid-fight if you pause.

Since no trophy in the 23-item list requires a locked hardest-difficulty playthrough, dropping a notch for the Shoggoth or Slither Prime and restoring it afterwards costs you nothing at all.

What difficulty actually changes

Enemy damage and durability, and by extension how far your ammunition goes. Since supplies are the real constraint in this game, difficulty is effectively a resource dial: a higher setting means more rounds per kill and less margin for a mistake.

It does not change puzzle solutions, codes, collectible placement or the story. Everything on the safe codes page and the puzzles pages applies at every setting.

Which to pick for a first run

Restless Slumber, and use the pause menu when a fight goes badly. That gives you the intended tension — ammunition anxiety, real consequences for careless exploration — without turning a ten-hour game into a twenty-hour one.

Save Sleep Demon for Ex Oblivione Mode, where you carry progression and already know the routes.

If you want the story with less friction

Sweet Dreams exists for exactly that, and it can be made more forgiving still — including options approaching invincibility for players who want the setting rather than the survival economy. There is no shame in it, and there is no mechanical cost — the trophy list does not care.

Even on the easiest setting the systems still work as designed: you still need activator pens for crates, you still cannot go back to a closed chapter, and you still buy talents with investigation currency.

Difficulty and the rest of the site

One consequence worth spelling out: because difficulty does not touch codes, symbol orders or collectible placement, every solution page on this wiki applies to your run regardless of the mode you are playing on. The safe codes are the same on Sweet Dreams and Sleep Demon, and so is the obelisk order.

What changes is how much ammunition you have left when you get there.

Difficulty is not the only lever

• Talents open at the third safe room and change survivability significantly.
• Weapon parts reward committing to a rhythm rather than spreading upgrades.
• Avoidance is listed by the studio as a legitimate tactic.
• Night Ore is a free life if the mask is charged.

Most players who find the game punishing are missing two of those four, not playing on the wrong setting.