What’s the Difference Between Normal, Lockdown, and Forbidden Zone in Arena Breakout: Infinite?

Most extraction shooters have one mode, where no player is expected to be of an experience or skill level. What you take into raids doesn’t matter, only that you survive. In Arena Breakout: Infinite, things are different. There are three difficulties: Normal mode and the Lockdown and Forbidden Zones. Here’s how they work.

What Are the Different Modes in Arena Breakout: Infinite?

In principle, the three difficulty modes in Arena Breakout: Infinite function the same. You go into the raid with your gear and a squad, if you choose, then navigate to an extraction point. Along the way, you loot enemies, other players, and various containers for items to sell or use to barter for more and better weapons and gear. The process repeats infinitely. There are, however, two major areas where the higher difficulties in ABI differ: loot and enemy gear.

How are Loot and Enemies Different in Higher Difficulties in Arena Breakout Infinite

The base difficulty of Arena Breakout: Infinite, Normal, doesn’t offer the best loot. As you navigate the map, you’ll find:

• Most containers have the lowest-quality items. That means items like soap, toothpaste, various mundane tools, and low-value weapons and weapon parts.
• Rare items are just that: incredibly rare. In most cases, you need to not only reach one of the rare loot containers — safes, fancy briefcases, and chests behind locked doors — to even have a chance at getting anything worthwhile. In Normal, because of this loot disparity, the high-value locations are incredibly contested.

That doesn’t mean you can’t get gold or even red-rarity items during a Normal mode raid because there’s plenty of evidence out there that you can. However, you’re most likely to exit an average Normal mode raid with anywhere from 200,000-400,000 Koen in loot, provided the place wasn’t stacked to the gills. That number increases or decreases depending on how long you spend looting, how many other players you kill and rob, etc.

How Lockdown Zone and Forbidden Zone Differ from Normal in Arena Breakout: Infinite

Once you reach level 12, you unlock both the Lockdown Zone and Forbidden Zone difficulties, and what you can get out of these higher-risk areas is vastly increased. As an example, on Lockdown Zone Farm, if you go to the main office on the second floor or the Grain Trade Center, you have a good chance of getting a gold item out of the valuable sootcase on the center table. That’s next to impossible on normal.

There is a price to going into the Lockdown and Foribbiden Zones, however.

• Lockdown Zone: requires a gear value of 100,000 Koen and an additional 20,000 payment.
• Forbidden Zone: requires a gear value of 300,000 Koen and an additional 50,000 payment.

Put another way, just to get into the higher difficulty modes of Arena Breakout: Infinite, you and everyone else need to be much better outfitted. Better, more powerful weaponry. Heavier, more protective armor. Larger backpacks. And so on. Everyone else you face is subject to the same restrictions, and as such not only is everyone harder to kill, they hit a hell of a lot harder, too. They’ll also play differently because no one wants to lose the massive investment they made to get into the raid, so expect lots of holding angles or ballsy pushes when your opponents know they have an advantage.

That same idea holds true for AI in higher difficulties as well. If you expected the same mooks with base-level shotguns and no armor, sorry to disappoint. The enemies in Lockdown and Forbidden Zones are tougher, with better gear. That includes higher-tier armor, better guns (though not usually kitted), and better aim and ammo. That does, of course, mean you can make more money selling what you get from them, but like the other players you face, it makes them more dangerous, as well.

Which difficulty you play will depend heavily on your current Koen account balance and your risk tolerance. If you want to have a relatively easier time fighting newer players, Normal mode is fine. If you want the highest possible challenge for the highest potential reward, the Forbidden Zone is always there. I have some suspicion that Normal mode will become something of a two-way road. The one side is newer or poorer players going in undergeared in the hopes of making some easier money. The other side will be decked-out chads who want to fight each other with as little threat from AI as possible.

In any event, those are the main differences between Arena Breakout: Infinite‘s three difficulty modes: Normal, Lockdown, and Forbidden Zone. For more on the game, check out our guides hub.