Difficulty and death: what you lose and how to get it back

On Scavenge, Relaxed, Balanced and Survival you can go back for gear you lost: the bunker tells you the items are waiting where you died, and the clock is ticking. On Brave, Extreme and Rage, lost gear is gone for good. Items in the Pet Backpack are kept either way.

Difficulty presets

Preset	Enemy damage	Enemy health	Other changes	Lost gear
Scavenge	40%	40%	Very low recoil, very slow enemy reactions	Recoverable
Relaxed	60%	60%	Lower recoil, slower enemy reactions	Recoverable
Balanced	80%	80%		Recoverable
Survival	100%	100%	Slightly faster enemy reactions	Recoverable
Brave			“No return”	Lost for good
Extreme	150%			Lost for good
Rage	160%	40%	Much faster enemy reactions; bleeding is never removed; cannot be changed	Lost for good
Custom	You choose	You choose	Cannot be changed once selected	Your choice

Custom difficulty also sets the “Lost Items Count”, the number of death spots the game keeps. The launch FAQ says Rage unlocks after you clear the game on any difficulty. The Island Challenge used to lock to Balanced; since update 2.3.18 it follows your selected difficulty.

Getting lost items back

After a death, a Lost Items marker remains where you fell. Return in a later raid and interact with it to take everything back. A second death before you recover the first can cost you the older spot when the lost-items count is used up. Update 1.0.26 widened the interaction range for lost items and closed an exploit that made players invincible while using them during extraction.

What is never lost

• Pet Backpack: the game’s safe container; what you put in it stays with you on death. Its capacity grows with the Dog Trainer skills and a capacity item.
• Bunker progress: quests, buildings and stash are untouched by a death.

Saves and backups

Saves are stored locally (Windows: %appdata%/../locallow/teamsoda/duckov; Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/TeamSoda/Duckov/) and sync to Steam or Epic cloud saves. There are six save slots since update 1.2.5. To roll back, use Restore Backup at the bottom right of the save selection screen and pick a backup dated before the problem; the developers pointed players there after update 2.3.19 fixed a bug that deleted items from Display Cabinets.