so read a few articles and there’s two difficulty settings - Easy vs Hard - which you can only change from Hard to Easy midgame, not the other way around - and that deals with combat difficulty and then there’s Classic vs Casual - which deals with whether or not there’s permadeath, and that can’t be changed midgame
so you could make the combat difficult but still not have permadeath, or vice versa
dunno why I’m reading all this, no intention to buy this game for at least another six months