how to unlock

[ween-8836]

How do you unlock the different difficulty levels, and should you play each level on all the different difficulties?

[Jennie-5128]

You unlock them by completing the "normal" difficulty level with three skulls on every part, and yes, the different difficulty levels are worth playing because you get better dropped items on the harder levels.

[Nightowl]

Yes, you definitely want to unlock the higher difficulties. By getting three skulls on each level in a difficulty unlocks a daily "special" level, that has much much much better drops than any of the regular levels. So yes, it's definitely worth it.

[rayquaza]

When you defeat a world on one difficulty setting you are going to unlock the following highest setting. Higher difficulties mean harder battles and, surely, better loot!

Normal - requires 3 Sands of your time to get started on a battle.

Hard - requires 5 Sands of energy to begin a battle.

Madness - requires 10 Sands of Time to get started a battle.

TIP: If it’s getting tough to earn a victory, try previous worlds on a higher difficulty!

[Trystangst]

There's definitely some confusion here.

You need to clear all of the levels in a difficulty to unlock a higher difficulty. You could theoretically clear them all with 0 skulls/stars/shards/whatever you want to call them and still progress both in terms of worlds and difficulty levels.

You need to clear all of the levels in a difficulty with 3 skulls/stars/shards/etc to unlock the secret location. This level can only be run once every 24/48/72 hours, but has excellent loot.

Madness requires 5 Sands, not 10. Normal requires 4 Sands. Hard requires 4-5 Sands.

There's no indication that loot quality is tied to your end of level "ranking" - and you only need to hit the objective once for it to count. Once you get all 3 it always shows all 3.