Difficulty
The four night guards are the difficulty menu
Frickbear's 3 does not ask you to pick Easy or Hard. It asks you to pick a person, and their salvage quota quietly sets the entire run's difficulty.
Verified against v2.0.2
Quick answer
Jeremy is Easy with one salvage per location, Mike is Normal with two, Vanessa is Hard with three and Fritz is Lunatic with four. Higher quotas mean more nightly threats and more tokens, plus faster animatronics and more expensive upgrades.
All five endings are reachable on every guard. Custom and modded characters are not tied to a difficulty tier and get their own difficulty selector instead.
The comparison table
| Guard | Tier | Salvage quota | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jeremy Fitzgerald | Easy | 1 | Slowest animatronics, cheapest upgrades. |
| Mike Schmidt | Normal | 2 | Faster movement, two threats per salvage. |
| Vanessa Shelly | Hard | 3 | Three per location, sharper audio cues. |
| Fritz Smith | Lunatic | 4 | Four per location at maximum aggression. |
Jeremy Fitzgerald — Easy
The tutorial guard, except the game never says so. One salvage per location means your nightly threat list grows by a single name at a time, which is the only way to actually learn a cue before the next one arrives.
- Salvage quota: 1 per location
- Animatronic speed: Slowest
- Upgrade cost: Cheapest
Jeremy is the most visibly damaged of the four. His bandaged face sets the tone: this is a guard who has already been through something.
Mike Schmidt — Normal
Two salvage per location and a noticeably faster office. This is the pacing most players settle on: enough pressure that the night has texture, enough slack to recover from one mistake.
- Salvage quota: 2 per location
- Animatronic speed: Fast
- Upgrade cost: Standard
Mike is written as the weary professional. His lines treat the hauntings as a job hazard rather than a mystery.
Vanessa Shelly — Hard
Three salvages per location, sharper audio cues and higher shop prices. The jump from Mike is not just volume; the economy tightens at the same time the office does.
- Salvage quota: 3 per location
- Animatronic speed: Faster
- Upgrade cost: Expensive
Vanessa is the only guard who can directly help the missing children, and her route leans into that. She is a separate character from Vanny in this continuity.
Fritz Smith — Lunatic
Four salvages per location at maximum aggression. Every night is a full roster check, and the door slot system from 2.0 matters most here because you are juggling more simultaneous threats than any other difficulty.
- Salvage quota: 4 per location
- Animatronic speed: Fastest
- Upgrade cost: Highest
Fritz is the comic extreme: a guard who is delighted by the animatronics. He also gets the only survivable version of the Evil ending epilogue.
Which guard to pick
Pick by what you are trying to finish, not by how good you think you are.
- First completion: Jeremy. Fewer threats means you learn the audio language without a four-way pile-up.
- Second ending, same night count: Mike. Double salvage with a manageable office.
- Ultimate route: Vanessa or Fritz. You need tokens and route items fast, and both quotas accelerate income.
- Every scene, every epilogue: Fritz. He changes at least one ending outcome, and Lunatic is where the roster actually gets stressed.
The salvage planner shows what each quota does to your token income before you commit a night, and the endings guide covers which routes each guard can still reach.