The lobby settings look like they might change a lot. They change two multipliers, one toggle, and how many people can join.
What difficulty does
| Difficulty | Creature health | Damage you take |
|---|---|---|
| Easy | 75% | 50% |
| Default | 100% | 100% |
| Hard | 125% | 125% |
Easy is the larger swing of the two. Creature health drops by a quarter, but the damage you take is halved, so the practical difference is mostly in how survivable a boss fight is rather than how long it lasts.
Who are you playing with?
Solo
Default is the intended balance. If a boss timer keeps beating you, Easy shortens the fight without touching income, so nothing you have earned or caught is worth less for it.
A small group
Keep friendly fire on only if everyone is careful with the shotgun’s 25 pellets and with dynamite. Difficulty scales health per creature, not per player, so a group on Hard still finishes fights faster than a solo player on Default.
A full lobby of eight
Health does not scale with players, so eight guns make every boss trivial on any setting. Hard is the only way to keep fights interesting, and friendly fire off is the only way to keep the lobby alive.
Hard raises both by a quarter. Against the largest health pools that is a real change:
| Creature | Health | Sells for |
|---|---|---|
 Mutated Bowhead Whale | 38,000 | $15,000 |
 Bowhead Whale | 20,000 | $8,000 |
 Pufferfish | 18,000 | $12,000 |
 Albatross | 7,800 | $13,000 |
Nothing else moves. Catch chances, bait prices, sell values and the drip rate are identical on every difficulty, so there is no economic reason to prefer one.
Friendly fire
Friendly fire is on by default. With it on, your shots damage the people you are playing with,
which matters most with the 
ShotgunShotgunCosts$150Sold onIsland 2+Damage maxed700 and its 25 pellets and with
DynamiteDynamiteCosts$25Sold onIsland 2+.
There is also a one-shot toggle, which makes any hit lethal.
How many players
A session holds up to eight. The game’s fights and economy are built around a smaller group, so a full lobby is closer to a party mode than the intended difficulty.
What happens when you die
Health and hunger run on fixed rules, all read from the player itself.
| Health at the start | 50 |
|---|---|
| Hunger bar at the start | 25 |
| After eating, hunger holds for | 60 s |
| Then hunger drops by | 1 every 10 s |
| At zero hunger, health drops by | 5 every 3 s |
| Health regenerates only above | 50% hunger |
| Regeneration starts after damage in | 5 s |
| Regeneration rate | 10 health every 2 s, costing 5 hunger each time |
| Health after being revived | 25 |
| Hunger after being revived | 10 |
| Invulnerable after a hit for | 0.25 s |
| Invulnerable after revival for | 2 s |
| Burning | 10 damage every 0.50 s |
| Poisoned | 10 damage every 1 s |
Hunger is the slow killer: once the bar is empty you lose health every few seconds, and health only regenerates while the bar is over half full, at the cost of more hunger. Eat something from the ground or the line before a fight rather than during it.
What a save keeps
The game autosaves on a five minute timer. A save records your inventory, the item you are holding, your baits, the creatures you have killed for the journal, the difficulty, and items left lying in the world with their positions.
That last one is worth knowing because it has not always been true. In the current build items on the ground are part of the save file rather than something that vanishes on reload.
Worth knowing Five minutes is a long autosave interval for a game where a boss fight can end badly. If you are about to try something expensive, the safe move is to trigger a save first by letting the timer come round rather than relying on it catching up afterwards.
Next Two achievements depend on the settings above. All 28 achievements covers which.