Halo’s classic difficulty levels of Easy, Normal, Heroic, and Legendary are back in Infinite, but the game’s new structure means swapping difficulty is a little bit of a buried option compared to past games.

Halo Infinite brings a lot of changes to the adventures of Master Chief, the largest among them the interesting and surprisingly effective switch to a semi open-world format in the form of the Zeta Halo, a go-anywhere world that acts as something of a wrapper for the rest of the campaign experience, which includes both open-ended battles and more linear affairs.

This change has had a knock-on effect on much of the structure of the games. For instance, you don’t just boot into missions from the main menu now, which means that you can’t change difficulty easily before booting up a specific menu. In fact, the difficulty option is fairly buried - you select a difficulty when you first start the campaign, and the most obvious menu options will always use that difficulty from then on.

The same is true of Skulls, the unlockable modifiers that can really change the Halo experience, as is tradition. Skulls have to be collected in your campaign, but they can’t be turned on and off on the fly - the only way to activate them is through the main menu, and it isn’t necessarily obvious how.

On this page, we’ll quickly explain how to change the difficulty setting in Halo Infinite when you’re part-way through a campaign, and likewise for how to turn on skulls.

How do you change Difficulty in Halo Infinite?

First of all, you’ll be given the option to pick a difficulty and turn on skulls any time you start a new campaign. That’s the first menu option when you select ‘New Game’. But if you want to adjust difficulty or toggle skulls to make things easier, harder, or whackier, you’ll need to quit out of your game and head back to the menu.

• Navigate to the main menu
• Do not select ‘Continue’. That immediately loads your last save with the same settings you had before.
• Instead, choose to ‘Load Game’. This gives you a menu with four save game slots - you can have up to four campaign save files at once.
• Select your save file. This will bring up a screen which, like the ‘New Game’ menu, gives you the option to change the difficulty or turn skulls on or off.
• Er…
• That’s It.