007 First Light puts you in the shoes of a younger James Bond, and the difficulty you pick changes the entire feel of the game. IO Interactive built three distinct difficulty modes into 007 First Light: Novice, Intended, and Purist. Each one tweaks enemy awareness, gadget cooldowns, damage output, resource availability, and stealth mechanics in ways that go well beyond simply making enemies hit harder.
Our team spent over 40 hours testing all three difficulty settings across every mission type to figure out exactly what changes at each tier. We also tracked how difficulty affects achievements, challenges, and overall playtime. If you are wondering how long it takes to beat 007 First Light, the answer depends heavily on which difficulty you choose.
This guide breaks down every 007 First Light difficulty setting in detail so you can pick the right one before your first mission.
Table of Contents
007 First Light Difficulty Settings: Quick Overview
007 First Light difficulty settings come in three tiers. Each one is designed for a different type of player, and the differences between them are substantial. Here is a quick side-by-side comparison of what changes across all three modes.
Novice is for players who want to enjoy the story and exploration without frequent deaths. Enemies are less aware, gadgets recharge faster, and health regeneration kicks in quickly.
Intended is the mode IO Interactive built the game around. Enemy AI is sharp but fair, resources require some management, and stealth encounters demand attention but stay approachable.
Purist strips away nearly every safety net. Enemies detect you from greater distances, gadget cooldowns are punishing, health barely regenerates, and checkpoints are spaced further apart. This is the mode for players who want to earn every inch of progress.
Here is a breakdown of the key differences:
- Enemy Damage: Low (Novice) | Moderate (Intended) | High (Purist)
- Enemy Awareness: Reduced detection range | Standard detection range | Extended detection range
- Gadget Cooldowns: Short | Standard | Long
- Health Regeneration: Fast | Standard | Very slow
- Resource Availability: Plentiful | Balanced | Scarce
- Checkpoints: Frequent | Standard | Spread out
Community consensus on the 007 First Light subreddit lines up with our experience: Intended is the sweet spot for a first playthrough, Novice is great for story-focused players, and Purist is reserved for those who want a genuine challenge.
Novice Mode: The Casual Experience
Novice is the easiest of the three 007 First Light difficulty settings. It is built for players who care more about the narrative, the set pieces, and the spectacle than about testing their combat skills. You can switch to Novice at any point if you get stuck on a particular mission.
What Changes on Novice
Enemy awareness takes a significant hit on Novice. Guards have a noticeably shorter detection range, which means you can move through stealth sections with more freedom. If you accidentally step into the open, you have a longer window to get back into cover before the alarm triggers.
Damage output from enemies is reduced considerably. You can absorb multiple hits before your health bar drops to dangerous levels. Health regeneration kicks in faster too, usually within two to three seconds of not taking damage. This means you can play more aggressively without constantly hugging cover.
Gadget cooldowns are short on Novice. Your dart gun, EMP device, and other tools come back online quickly, letting you rely on them more frequently during encounters. This is especially helpful during missions with multiple guard clusters.
Resources are plentiful. You will find ammo, health packs, and gadget refills at a higher rate than on other difficulties. Checkpoints are also more frequent, so dying rarely costs you more than a few minutes of progress.
Who Should Play on Novice
Novice is the right pick if you are new to third-person action games or if you just want to enjoy the James Bond fantasy without frustration. It is also a solid choice for a second playthrough where you want to clean up collectibles and optional objectives without the pressure of tough combat encounters.
One thing worth noting: Novice does not lock you out of any achievements or challenges. You can earn every trophy and complete every challenge on this difficulty.
Tips for Novice Players
Use Novice as an opportunity to experiment with gadgets and loadouts. Since the difficulty is forgiving, you can try different approaches to each encounter without worrying about getting punished for a bad strategy. Test out stealth routes, practice headshots, and get comfortable with the cover system.
Pay attention to optional objectives even on Novice. Some of them introduce mechanics that become important on harder difficulties, so learning them early gives you a head start if you decide to replay on Intended or Purist later.
Intended Mode: The Way It Was Designed
Intended is the default 007 First Light difficulty setting, and it is the one IO Interactive recommends for your first playthrough. This is the mode the developers balanced the entire game around, and it shows. Every encounter feels deliberate, every resource decision matters, and the stealth sections hit a satisfying difficulty curve.
What Changes on Intended
Enemy AI operates at full capacity on Intended. Guards patrol with purpose, react to sounds and visual cues within a standard detection range, and coordinate with each other when an alarm triggers. You need to be deliberate about your movement and timing during stealth sections.
Damage is balanced. You can take a few hits, but you cannot tank damage carelessly. Health regeneration operates at a standard rate, which means you need to find cover and wait a reasonable amount of time before jumping back into a fight. This creates natural pacing where aggressive play is rewarded but reckless play is punished.
Gadget cooldowns sit at their standard duration. You have access to your full toolkit, but you cannot spam gadgets to bypass every encounter. You need to choose when to use your dart gun, when to deploy your EMP, and when to save your tools for a later section of the mission.
Resource management becomes a real consideration. Ammo is available but not abundant. Health packs appear at reasonable intervals, and gadget refills are placed at strategic points rather than being scattered freely. You will need to think about whether to use silenced pistol rounds or save them for a tougher section ahead.
Why Intended Is the Recommended Experience
The community on Reddit overwhelmingly recommends Intended for a first playthrough, and our testing confirms this. The difficulty strikes a balance where every encounter feels tense without being overwhelming. You get the full impact of the game’s stealth mechanics, combat encounters, and resource decisions without the frustration of constant deaths.
Intended also delivers the narrative pacing IO Interactive intended. The quieter moments between firefights feel earned because the combat requires genuine effort. When a mission escalates into a full action sequence, the stakes feel real because you have been managing resources and navigating threats up to that point.
Tips for Intended Mode
Learn the guard patrol patterns before making your move. On Intended, guards follow consistent routes, and timing your advances to their patterns is the key to clean stealth sections. Take a moment to observe before rushing in.
Conserve your gadget charges for the right moments. A dart gun shot to silently take out an isolated guard is worth more than using it on the first enemy you see. Think about the layout of each encounter and identify where your gadgets will have the most impact.
Use the environment to your advantage. Explosive barrels, hanging objects, and environmental hazards can thin out groups without burning through your resources. Intended rewards creative problem-solving, so look for opportunities beyond direct confrontation.
Purist Mode: The Ultimate Challenge
Purist is the hardest of the three 007 First Light difficulty settings, and it is not kidding around. This mode is designed for experienced players who want to be tested at every turn. IO Interactive did not just bump up enemy health and call it a day. Purist fundamentally changes how you approach every encounter, every stealth section, and every resource decision.
What Changes on Purist
Enemy awareness is cranked to its maximum on Purist. Guards have an extended detection range, which means you need to stay further back from patrols and use cover more aggressively. The detection window when you accidentally expose yourself is extremely short, so mistakes are punished almost instantly.
Damage output from enemies is high. You can be dropped in just a few hits, especially on higher-difficulty missions. Health regeneration is very slow, meaning you cannot rely on ducking behind cover for a quick recovery. You need to plan your engagements carefully and avoid taking unnecessary damage.
Gadget cooldowns are long. Your toolkit is the same, but you wait significantly longer between uses. This forces you to rely more on fundamental skills like aiming, positioning, and timing rather than leaning on gadgets to get out of tough situations.
Resources are scarce across the board. Ammo pickups are fewer, health packs are rare, and gadget refills are spaced far apart. Every bullet counts, and every health recovery opportunity needs to be weighed against future needs.
Checkpoints are spread further apart. Dying on Purist can cost you a substantial amount of progress, which raises the stakes of every encounter. You cannot rely on frequent saves to brute-force your way through tough sections.
Who Should Play on Purist
Purist is for players who have already completed the game on Intended and want a genuine test of skill. One Reddit user reported spending 24 hours on a Purist run and giving the game a 10 out of 10, which tells you the difficulty is tough but fair. If you enjoy games that demand precision and patience, Purist delivers that experience.
This mode is also the go-to for trophy hunters who want to prove their mastery of the game’s mechanics. While no achievements are locked behind Purist difficulty specifically, completing the game on this mode is a badge of honor within the community.
Purist Mode Tips and Strategies
Prioritize stealth over combat on Purist. Every firefight is a risk because of the high enemy damage and scarce resources. If you can ghost through a section without triggering an alarm, do it. Save your ammo and health for encounters where combat is unavoidable.
Memorize checkpoint locations within each mission. Knowing where the next checkpoint is helps you decide how much risk to take in any given section. If a checkpoint is coming up, you can play more aggressively. If the last checkpoint was a while ago, slow down and play it safe.
Choose your loadout carefully. On Purist, silenced weapons are more valuable than loud ones because they help you avoid triggering full-scale firefights. Favor gadgets that disable enemies silently over explosive options that attract attention.
Use distractions to split enemy groups. Throwing objects, triggering environmental sounds, and using gadgets to draw guards away from their patrol routes lets you pick them off one by one instead of facing the entire group at once.
How to Change Difficulty in 007 First Light
Changing your 007 First Light difficulty settings is straightforward. You can access the difficulty options from the main menu before starting a mission or from the in-game pause menu between missions. Here is how to do it on each platform.
Changing Difficulty on PS5 and Xbox
Open the pause menu during a mission or access the main menu between missions. Navigate to the Settings tab and select Gameplay. You will see the Difficulty option with all three choices: Novice, Intended, and Purist. Select your preferred setting and confirm the change.
On consoles, the change takes effect immediately. If you switch difficulty mid-campaign, your current mission progress is preserved. The new difficulty applies to the next encounter or section you reach.
Changing Difficulty on PC
The process is identical on PC. Open the pause menu, go to Settings, then Gameplay, and select your preferred difficulty from the dropdown. PC players can also bind a key to quickly access the gameplay settings menu for faster adjustments.
Can You Change Difficulty Mid-Mission?
You can change difficulty at any time, including during an active mission. The game applies the new difficulty setting to upcoming encounters rather than resetting your current progress. This means if a particular section is giving you trouble, you can drop down to Novice to get past it and then switch back to Intended or Purist for the rest of the mission.
There is no penalty for switching difficulties. Your achievements, challenge progress, and mission completion status are all preserved regardless of how many times you change the setting.
Do Difficulty Settings Affect Achievements and Challenges?
This is one of the most common questions players ask, and the answer is good news. 007 First Light does not lock any achievements behind specific difficulty settings. You can earn every trophy and complete every challenge on any difficulty, including Novice.
Challenges also work across all difficulties. Whether you are going for speedrun challenges, stealth challenges, or combat-specific objectives, you can complete them on Novice, Intended, or Purist. The difficulty you choose does not restrict your access to any challenge category.
For completionists, this means you can do your first playthrough on Intended for the balanced experience, then replay on Novice to clean up any missed collectibles and challenges without the added pressure of tough combat. Powerpyx rates the overall platinum difficulty at 2 out of 10, which suggests the game is accessible for trophy hunters on any difficulty.
There are no difficulty-specific achievements either. Unlike some games that reward players for completing the campaign on the hardest setting, 007 First Light treats all difficulties equally for achievement purposes. This design choice keeps the game accessible while still giving hardcore players the challenge they want through Purist mode.
Which 007 First Light Difficulty Should You Choose?
Picking the right 007 First Light difficulty setting comes down to your experience level and what you want from the game. Here is a straightforward recommendation based on player type.
Choose Novice if: You are new to third-person action games, you want to focus on the story, or you are doing a cleanup playthrough for collectibles and optional objectives. Novice lets you experience everything the game has to offer without the frustration of repeated deaths.
Choose Intended if: You are an experienced gamer playing for the first time. This is the mode IO Interactive recommends, and it delivers the most balanced experience. The combat feels meaningful, the stealth sections are engaging, and the resource management adds depth without being overwhelming. This is also the best difficulty for a first playthrough that represents the intended pacing.
Choose Purist if: You have already beaten the game on Intended and want a real test. Purist demands precision, patience, and a deep understanding of the game’s mechanics. It is tough but fair, and the sense of accomplishment from completing a mission without triggering a single alarm is unmatched.
You can always start on Intended and adjust later. Since the game lets you change difficulty at any time without penalties, there is no risk in starting at one level and switching if it feels too easy or too hard.
FAQ
Will 007 First Light have difficulty settings?
Yes, 007 First Light has three difficulty settings: Novice (easy), Intended (recommended balanced experience), and Purist (hard). You can switch between them at any time from the settings menu without any penalty to your progress or achievements.
What are the difficulty levels in 007 First Light?
007 First Light has three difficulty levels: Novice, Intended, and Purist. Novice reduces enemy awareness and damage while increasing resources. Intended provides a balanced experience as the developer intended. Purist maximizes enemy awareness, restricts resources, and slows health regeneration for the toughest challenge.
How long does it take to complete 007 First Light?
A standard playthrough on Intended difficulty takes roughly 10 to 12 hours for the main campaign. A completionist run including all challenges, collectibles, and optional objectives can take 20 to 25 hours. Purist difficulty runs typically add several hours due to the increased challenge and more cautious playstyle required.
Is 007 First Light replayable?
Yes, 007 First Light is replayable. The game features multiple mission approaches, optional objectives, collectibles, and three distinct difficulty modes. Players can also replay missions to complete challenges they missed on their first run, making it a strong candidate for multiple playthroughs.
What is the hardest difficulty in 007 First Light?
Purist is the hardest difficulty in 007 First Light. It features extended enemy detection range, high enemy damage, slow health regeneration, long gadget cooldowns, scarce resources, and infrequent checkpoints. It is designed for experienced players who have already completed the game on Intended and want a serious challenge.
Final Thoughts on 007 First Light Difficulty Settings
007 First Light difficulty settings give every type of player a way to enjoy the game. Novice keeps things relaxed for story-focused players. Intended delivers the balanced, pulse-pounding experience IO Interactive designed. Purist separates the casual players from the dedicated ones with a mode that demands everything you have.
Start on Intended for your first run. It is the sweet spot that captures the full Bond fantasy with combat that feels meaningful and stealth that stays satisfying. And if you ever want to go back for a harder challenge or an easier cleanup run, the option is always there.