Difficulty

Difficulty is a feature in that alters aspects of the game in order to adjust how easy or hard it is. These aspects include the length of a day and the strength of enemies.

Upon creating a save file on the file selection screen, the player will be prompted to choose a difficulty. There are 3 options: Normal, Hard , and Ultra-Spicy , in increasing order of difficulty. The lattermost can only be unlocked once the player has completed the story mode in Hard difficulty, or completed the demo.

At any point in the saved game selection screen, the player can press to change a file's difficulty, but doing so prevents the player from earning any badge related to completing Story Mode in a given difficulty, in that file. If the player uses this option to change to the exact same difficulty the file is already at, nothing will happen.

Differences
The following is a list of known differences between difficulty modes. The Wii U version of Pikmin 3, which is most similar to Pikmin 3 Deluxe's Hard difficulty, is included for comparison's sake.

In other game modes
Internally, other game modes use rules based off of specific difficulty modes. Each stage is capable of specifying what difficulty mode it uses.

Badges
There are three badges the player can gain from completing Story Mode on any given difficulty, without changing it at any point.
 * Pikmin Challenger: Obtained by beating Story Mode on Normal, Hard, or Ultra-Spicy difficulty.
 * Pikmin Professional: Obtained by beating Story Mode on Hard or Ultra-Spicy difficulty.
 * Pikmin Master: Obtained by beating Story Mode on Ultra-Spicy difficulty.