Is there friendly fire in Wasteland 3?

Wasteland 3 isn’t for the faint-hearted. inXile Entertainment’s latest RPG is a violent affair, and its strategic combat system takes no prisoners. That includes your own squad, who can take damage from the game’s various enemies, and who can be burned, frozen, or poisoned.

Most of those secondary effects, and the general depletion of your squad’s health meters, will come from enemies, but what about friendly fire? Does it exist in Wasteland 3, and if so, can you turn it off?

Yes, there is friendly fire in the game. If it’s enabled, it will mean that squad member ranged attacks can hit your teammates if they are in the line of fire. It doesn’t affect area-of-effect items or abilities, however, such as grenades.

Thankfully, friendly fire comes with some caveats. Friendly fire is only enabled if you select Ranger or Supreme Jerk difficulty at the start of a new game. These correspond to Wasteland 3’s hard and extreme difficulties, respectively, so it’s best to only choose one of these options if you are a veteran of the Wasteland franchise.

The game’s easy and normal modes, Rookie and Wastelander, have friendly fire toggled off by default. However, you can enable it if you want to add an extra challenge on these difficulties. To do so, head to Options on the start screen or in the pause menu. Access the Gameplay sub-menu, and scroll down until you see the Friendly Fire option.

You can toggle this on or off using the left or right actions on your controller or keyboard or tapping the A button on Xbox One, the X button on PlayStation 4 left-clicking your mouse on PC. To save this setting, you can hit the “save and close” button or key to confirm it.