Arma 3 mission difficulty: Recruit, Regular, Veteran

Arma 3 has four difficulty choices: Recruit, Regular, Veteran and Custom. You can set one for each mission in the rotation (the list of missions the server plays, in order), or one for every mission. A server made from the store starts with Difficulty for every mission on Regular.

What the four mean

• Recruit, Regular and Veteran are the game’s three ready-made levels.
• Custom uses the settings stored in the server’s own profile. The panel does not edit them. On a Loafhosts server the profile is in serverprofile/home/Player in Files. Bohemia Interactive says the -profiles option does not work on Linux and the profile then goes to ~/.local/share/Arma 3 - Other Profiles, so on a server you run yourself, look there.

One difficulty for one mission

1. Open the Missions page.
2. In Rotation, find the mission.
3. In Difficulty for (mission name), choose Recruit, Regular, Veteran or Custom.
4. Choose Server’s difficulty to give the mission no difficulty of its own.
5. Choose Save.

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The list starts with Server’s difficulty, then Recruit (1), Regular and Veteran, and ends with Custom (2).

The page says: “Saved. The server plays this rotation from its next start.” On a running server it says “next restart”. The mission playing now does not change.

One difficulty for every mission

1. Open the Config Editor.
2. Open server.cfg and find the Game card.
3. Set Difficulty for every mission to one of the four choices.
4. Choose Save in the bar that reads “Unsaved changes”. On a running server the page then says “Saved. Restart the server to apply the changes.” On a stopped one: “Saved. The changes apply when the server starts.”

The game calls this setting forcedDifficulty. Its help in the Config Editor says “Custom takes the profile’s own settings.”

Which one wins when a mission has its own difficulty and the whole server has a forced one: not checked on 2.22.154089 as of 13 November 2026. Set only one of the two if the result matters. A server made from the store has both: the forced level on Regular, and two sample missions in the rotation, one at Regular and one at Recruit.

By hand

In the game’s own server.cfg, the server-wide level is one line, and a mission’s own level is inside its entry in class Missions:

forcedDifficulty = "Regular";

class Missions
{
    class Mission1
    {
        template = MyMission.Altis;
        difficulty = "Veteran";
        class Params {};
    };
};

On Loafhosts, use the pages above: the Missions page keeps the class Missions block.

Change the difficulty of the mission playing now

1. Open the Players page.
2. In Mission, choose Play another mission.
3. Pick the mission. It can be the one already playing.
4. In Difficulty, choose a level. The server’s own leaves it as the server has it.
5. Choose Play it now.

If it does not work

• The level is not what you expected. A mission can have its own level and the server can have a forced one. Which wins is not checked (see above). Set only one.
• Mission options still do nothing. The server may start with -autoInit in Extra Start Parameters. That makes the game ignore mission parameters, the choices a mission’s author built in. See the -autoInit notice.
• The change is not there after Save. Restart the server with Restart at the top of the page. A saved rotation is used from the next start. A restart drops everyone who is on.
• You cannot find the server-wide level on the Missions page. It is not there. The Missions page keeps the rotation. Use the Config Editor for the server-wide level.

More about the game: Arma 3 servers.

Sources: Bohemia wiki: Server Config File, Bohemia wiki: Startup Parameters

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