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Rogue Company Update 1.44 December 16 Brings Artic Shield Content

First Watch Games is ending 2020 with a bang for Rogue Company! The studio has released the Rogue Company update 1.44 December 16 patch and this is for the Artic Shield content drop! There’s a new Rogue, a new event, a new practice mode and more.

Check out the official patch notes below along with today’s patch roll out schedule.

Rogue Company Update 1.44 December 16 Patch Notes:

Schedule:

All  servers will come offline December 16th at 10:00 AM ET (15:00 UTC) for the Arctic Shield update! We anticipate our maintenance to last approximately 3 hours for this massive patch.

Note: Xbox One and Xbox Series X users, due to some technical issues, tomorrow may require extended maintenance during which time the game will be unavailable for you. Rest assured

Arctic Shield

Rogue Company is heading to frozen north this holiday season to prevent the latest in a series of attacks on a cable laying ship!  Bundle up and strap in for your drop into our newest map, Glacier which will have the Rogues fighting in both interior and exterior areas for dominance. This update also introduces the newest member of the team, Sigrid. With a ballistic shield and abilities to keep her mobile, she’ll lead the charge and fearlessly assault enemy positions.  Learn more about Arctic Shield by reading below!

New Rogue: Sigrid

The newest member of Rogue Company is not only tough but equipped to create new opportunities in the fight. A former special forces operator from Europe, Sigrid keeps her body in absolutely perfect condition and is a fearless rogue who excels at spearheading assaults to punch through enemy defenses. Primary Weapons D40-C SMG S12 Tactical Shotgun   Secondary Weapon Warrant

Gadgets:

  • Semtex Grenade
  • Adrenaline Shot

Perks:

  • Evade
  • Shredder Rounds
  • Nimble Hands
  • Tenacity
  • Tracker Rounds
  • Lifeline

Active Ability:

Ballistic Shield: Blocks all incoming damage from the front.

Passive Ability:

Athletic: Immune to slowing effects and moves faster when crouched

Mastery Rewards

Avatar:

Banner:

Border:

Spray:

New Map: Glacier

A cutting edge, fully automated cable laying vessel, the Domain, has been hijacked by Jackal in the Arctic and it’s up to Rogue Company to take it back. Glacier features frantic close quarters combat, quick rotations and generous flanking opportunities.

Frigid Haul Event

Happy Holidays from Rogue Company! The holiday season is here and it’s a time of giving!  We have a series of gifts lined up for you which can be earned just by playing the game!

  • Reward 1:  Money Bags Spray
  • Reward 2:  Locked in Border
  • Reward 3:  Hot Cocoa Anvil
  • ​Reward 4:  Data Pirate Avatar
  • ​Reward 5: Mistletoe Secondary Wrap
  • ​Reward 6: GG Spray
  • ​Reward 7: InstiGator Talon
  • ​Reward 8: Groovy Banner
  • ​Reward 9: Dirty Falcon Emote
  • Reward 10: Nutcracker Title
  • ​Reward 11: Frozen Festivities Primary Wrap
  • ​Reward 12: Mistle-Ro Ronin

Spectator (New!)

In order to better facilitate competitive play and our community based tournaments, we are introducing an early iteration of Spectator mode.  In Custom games, you’ll have the opportunity to move between various team members and view their gameplay.

  • At this time players may only occupy two slots as Spectators
  • When you enter any Custom Lobby, if a slot is available for Spectator, you will see the option to “Become a Spectator.”
  • If you are currently already a Spectator you will see the option to “Become a Player” to move back to one of the available teams
  • Players may be moved by the Host from each team to the Spectator group and vice versa
  • Once in a match you may switch your view between various players via (controller button)/left mouse button to the player of your choice

New Practice Mode (Strikeout)

The Strikeout Practice Mode is now available!  Jump in with bots to train, test new strategies, or warm up on any of the currently available Strikeout maps:

  • Canals
  • Icarus
  • Windward
  • Favelas
  • Factory
  • Skyfell
  • Vice
  • Lockdown
  • The Arena

ROGUES

Dima Based on recent performance data, Dima is underperforming as a Rogue and we are making some adjustments to shift him to a stronger position.  We have revamped his passive ability and buffed the damage randius of his MIRV projectiles.

  • Burnt (Passive): Enemies hit by explosives are revealed for a short duration.
  • MIRV Launcher inner radius increased from 2.75m to 3.0m.
  • MIRV Launcher outer radius increased from 4m to 4.5m.
  • Fixed an issue where sometimes the MIRV Launcher grenade would collide with objects.

Fixer

  • Increased ability activation sound volume and range.
  • Increased ability expiring sound volume and range.

Gl1tch

  • Fixed an issue that was preventing Gl1tch from hacking the APS device successfully

Phantom

  • The Nano Smoke ability will now block Fixer’s Thermal Vision.
  • Fixed an issue with the LR15 that was causing it to fire slower than intended

Scorch

  • Reduced the sound range on her ability.

WEAPONS

A3 Salvo (Scorch)

  • Reduced time between bursts but retained the same fire rate

Arbitrator (Scorch & Anvil)

  • Fixed an issue where Pellet Spread Accuracy was inconsistent at various levels.

MX-R (Dahlia, Trench)

  • Fixed an issue where the Base and Level 1 Upgrade had the incorrect range.

MLX Maw (Anvil)

  • Slightly reduced the maximum Bloom.

LMP-X (Gl1tch)

  • Increased Falloff Damage

LR15 (Phantom)

  • Fixed an issue where her un-scope speed was inconsistent at different upgrades

SKL6 (Chaac & Glitch)

  • Fixed an issue where Pellet Spread Accuracy was inconsistent at various levels.

Tyr (Fixer)

  • Fixed an issue where this rifle  didn’t have constant damage falloff.

GADGETS

APS (Trench and Anvil)

  • Level 1 upgrade now increases the max count from 1 to 2.
  • Level 2 now increases durability and detection radius.

C4 (Talon, Anvil, and Fixer)

  • Slightly increased throw distance at all levels.

Tripmine (Saint)

  • Damage was increased from 100 to 125.

Perks

Cloaked

  • Players with cloaked now show up “cold” when Fixer uses Thermal Vision.

Nimble Hands

  • Fixed an issue where the Weapon Swap Bonus Speed was slower than intended.

Maps

The team has spent time extensively reviewing The Arena map for performance and crashing issues. We believe this map should provide a better experience and it will be available with this update.

Made various bug fixes, collision adjustments, and object fixes to the following maps:

  • High Castle
  • Lockdown
  • Factory
  • Skyfell
  • Favelas

Canals

  • Added spawns on the Defender side of the map to the Warship.
  • Fix an issue where the camera could see through various walls.

Icarus

  • Reduced a sightline from A site to half wall.

  • Moved the cover near half wall to fix the sight line to B site.

Lockdown

  • Adjusted the location of the Tower site in Strikeout to be larger and have area at ground level

Vice

  • Added cover to the street.
  • Removed mantle wall between mid and street.
  • Add additional cover around A Site.
  • Add cover around B Site.
  • Raised fountain cover to correct height in the mid area.
  • Add back the zip line from the attacker beach head to Cafe to balance out the attacker side.

Windward

  • Moved B site away from the zipline to prevent attackers from defending the bomb on near the starting point
  • Attackers can now plant bomb on both sides of the blue building on B Site.

 

  • Reviewed and adjusted Strikeout spawnpoints
  • Fixed a ledge in Windward players were not meant to climb on to
  • Players can no longer see name plates through the Church windows.

Bug Fixes (Collision, OOB volumes, Navmesh, Prop adjustments)

  • High Castle
  • Lockdown
  • Factory
  • Skyfell
  • Favelas

GAME MODE

General

  • Fixed an issue where assists were rewarding more cash than desired.

Strikeout

  • Spawn immunity is no longer cancelled when shooting.
  • Spawn immunity has been reduced from 5 seconds to 4 seconds.
  • Assists now give $500.

Extraction

  • Hacker Bonus cash increased from $250 to $500.
  • Counter Hacker bonus cash increased $250 to $500.
  • Down cash increased from $500 to $1000.
  • Assists now give $500.

Demolition

  • Down cash increased from $500 to $1000.
  • Assists now give $500.
  • Suicides now deduct $500.

Aim Assist

  • We’ve reduced the strength of Aim Assist for players using a Controller on PC. All other platforms remain the same.

Rogue Mastery:

  • Added a new Mastery Reward preview screen

  • New Titles are available at Rank 10!
    • Anvil – Indomitable
    • Chaac – Seeking Redemption
    • Dahlia – Tactician
    • Dallas – The Cowboy
    • Dima – Bombastic
    • Gl1tch -1337
    • Lancer – Influencer
    • Phantom – Headhunter
    • Ronin – Rookie of the Year
    • Saint – Good Samaritan
    • Scorch – The Brooklyn Burna
    • Sigrid – Fearless
    • Talon – Underworld Enforcer
    • The Fixer – 20-20 Vision
    • Trench – Heart of the Team
    • Vy – Toxic
  • Updated Rogue Mastery frame progression (frame updates at Mastery levels 1, 5, and 10)
  • Added new level 10 mastery reward (Title)
  • Added new Awards for mastering 5, 10, and 15 Rogues.
  • Added new statistic, Rogues Mastered.
  • A Rogue Mastery screen has been added allowing you to see all available rewards.
  • Improved the outline effect on ally and revealed character models
  • Improved healthbar feedback when a player takes damage or is in the downed state.
  • Added a flashing yellow overlay to emphasize when a player is affected by spawn immunity.
  • Fixed a bug when a player’s gadget slot was affected by the jamming ability.
  • Rearranged and updated several UI elements on the main lobby screen for added contrast.

UI:

  • Rogue portraits will now display on the Scoreboard
  • Rearranged and updated several UI elements on the main lobby screen for added contrast.
  • Updated gamepad prompts for the Xbox controller

Quality of Life:

  • Improved lighting in the Main Lobby
  • Players may now adjust the color of their crosshair via the settings
  • Reduced the size of the HUD objective message text
  • When Auto Pick-up is enabled, melee weapons will not automatically be picked up.
  • Ally name colors have been changed from Blue to White
  • Introduced new Player Identity item type – Titles

Bugs:

  • A bug with players receiving double elimination cash for assists has been fixed
  • Inviting a player to a Custom Lobby with no available slot should no longer prevent players from queueing from other matches.
  • Fixed an issue that caused characters to glow if The Fixer died while using his Thermal ability
  • The Perky award should now be available when purchasing 3 perks in a single match
  • Fixed an issue where a player could get stuck joining a match and freeze
  • Fixed a crash that was caused when happened after joining a party
  • Players can no longer place the bomb on top of an APS
  • Fixed an issue where players rejoining a match would not correct back to voice channels correctly
  • Players should now be able to shoot through barbwire
  • Fixed an issue with scoreboard spacing that would prevent players from being able to report, ignore, etc… a selected player.
  • Player is unable to open player options of a teammate whose position is swapped with the player in scoreboard.
  • Fixed an issue where damage numbers would sometimes not appear
  • Fixed an issue that would open the Scoreboard when you used Sprays and Emotes
  • When your Gadget is hacked, this effect should no longer persist into the next Round
  • Disconnecting before halftime and reconnecting after halftime will no longer reward additional cash
  • A gap is observed between the disabled elevator frame and the wall next to it. (Arena)
  • Players are no longer able to climb on a tree in the Arena map

Rogue Company is now available to download for free on PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, PC and Nintendo Switch.

Source: Reddit

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Alex Co

Father, gamer, games media vet, writer of words, killer of noobs.

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Elite Dangerous Update 1.52 December 16 Fixes Pulse Wave Analyzer, Anniversary Livestream Happening Tomorrow

Frontier Developments has released the Elite Dangerous update 1.52 December 16 patch, and it’s for fixes. Or rather, it’s for a specific fix! Head on below for the official note from the studio.

Elite Dangerous Update 1.52 December 16 Patch Notes:

Here’s the announcement from Bruce G, Community Manager at Frontier Developments:

Greetings Commanders,

Firstly, we’d like to thank you for your continued patience and support with the Pulse Wave Analyser issue. The challenges of working from home while also developing the largest ever expansion for Elite Dangerous have resulted in a far slower turnaround on this than we’d have liked.

That being said, we’re glad to confirm that a fix for the Pulse Wave Analyser will come in a patch on Wednesday 16 December. We understand how important this issue is to the Elite Dangerous community, and will endeavor to fix similarly important issues as quickly as possible moving forward.

Thanks once again for your understanding.

o7

In addition to that, the studio also announced that to celebrate the game’s 6th anniversary, a livestream will take place this Thursday! There will be Twitch drops for those attending the digital event, and there’s also a special guest from the dev team, Garath Hughes, who will discuss combat mechanics. For more on that, head on over here.

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Alex Co

Father, gamer, games media vet, writer of words, killer of noobs.

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Dirt 5 Update 2.00 December 16 Adds Wheel Support, Holiday Content & More

Heads up, racing fans! Codemasters has released the Dirt 5 update 2.00 December 16 patch which adds wheel support to the racing game, brings some holiday-themed content, improves matchmaking, and more! Read on for more details below.

Dirt 5 Update 2.00 December 16 Patch Notes:

‘SNOW LIMITS’ FREE CONTENT PACK – New Playgrounds items, new liveries, new Ice Breaker circuit, new customisation items and the option for Snowy conditions in Playgrounds all added, for free to all players

WHEEL SUPPORT – Extensive selection of wheels supported for DIRT 5 across each platform, including Thrustmaster, Logitech and some Fanatec devices

VISUAL

  • Further general visual and performance improvements across the board, including visual updates to the ‘Prioritise Frame Rate’/120hz mode on Xbox Series X
  • Further FPS improvements when using Image Quality mode on Xbox One and PS4
  • Fixed issues causing flickering lights during night-time events
  • PC: Further fixes for reports of crashes and startup issues
  • Fixed issue causing game freezes in the Career – Sponsors tab when selecting an Amplified Edition sponsorCAREER 
  • Fixes for crashes occurring at the beginning of some Career events for some players
  • Added option to listen back to previous podcast episodes from a playlist
  • Fixed visual bug in Career mode that shows the player earning more than the maximum amount of Stamps after completing ThrowdownsONLINE 
  • Technical changes made to the matchmaking process; search times for lobbies have been increased to improve the likelihood of live lobbies being found
  • Friends lobby size increased to eight players
  • Fixes for crashes occurring when exiting active multiplayer eventsSPLIT-SCREEN 
  • Fixed multiple bugs causing crashes and performances issues in split-screen play
  • Audio fixes for low volume in split-screen modePLAYGROUNDS 
  • Leaderboard display adjusted to show faster target times
  • Resolves occurrences of objects being available for the wrong event typeGENERAL
  • Amplified Edition entitlements fully unlocked for Amplified Edition pre-order players
  • PS5: Fixed issue with Trophies not unlocking. Any Trophies earned during this issue should unlock for players after completing one event
  • Further improvements made to AI behaviour, particularly in races with large grids
  • Fixed instance of cars triggering a track reset incorrectly on Arizona – Merrick Butte location
  • Fixed issues causing crashes in the post-race menus
  • Sprint cars: changes made to handling model following community feedback
  • Display fixes for PS4/PS5 Trophy images and text
  • General stability and quality of life improvements across each platform to improve your experience
If you haven’t bought the game yet, go read our review and see why we were impressed with Codemasters’ latest racing game. Speaking of Codesmasters, the studio will soon be joining EA’s stable of studios, as the two companies have agreed on an acquisition earlier this week

Source: Dirt

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Alex Co

Father, gamer, games media vet, writer of words, killer of noobs.

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Nioh 2 Update 1.20 December 16 Brings Data for DLC 3 The First Samurai (Update)

Team Ninja is poised to release the final DLC drop for Nioh 2 titled The First Samurai tomorrow on November 17! However, the game data for it is available now with the Nioh 2 update 1.20 December 16 patch! Read on for details.

Update 12/17/20): Official patch notes have been released by Team Ninja! We’ve updated the post to reflect it.

Nioh 2 Update 1.20 December 16 Patch Notes:

Additional content “Taichi Samurai Secret History”

▶ ︎ About how to play “The First Samurai Secret History”

* It will be an element that can be released by purchasing the additional content “Taichi Samurai Secret History” or “Nioh 2 Season Pass”.
  • Added new story “Taichi Samurai Secret History”
    * To play “Taichi Samurai Secret History”, you need to clear the main story.

  • High difficulty mode can be played
    • Difficulty “Shura no Yumeji”
      You can unlock it by purchasing one or more of the three paid additional contents (DLC) (*) or “Nioh 2 Season Pass” and capturing “Ayakashi no Yumeji”. .. In “Shura no Yumeji”, you will be able to acquire more powerful equipment, soul charges, and picture scrolls, and the upper limit of player level and skill level, and the limit value of + value due to soul matching will also increase.
    • Difficulty “Enlightenment Dream Road”
      Purchase any two or more of the three paid additional contents (DLC) (*), or purchase the “Nioh 2 Season Pass” and unlock by capturing “Shura no Yumeji”. I will. In “Enlightenment Dream Road”, you will be able to acquire more powerful equipment, soul charges, and picture scrolls, and the player level, parameters, upper limit of skill level, and the limit value of + value due to soul matching will also increase. Also, “Kamiho”, which is a higher rarity than “Sacred Treasure”, will now drop.
    • Difficulty “Nioh’s Dream Road” All
      three paid additional contents (DLC) (*) or “Nioh 2 Season Pass” can be purchased and unlocked by capturing “Enlightenment Dream Road”. In “Nio’s Dream Road”, you will be able to acquire more powerful equipment, soul charges, and picture scrolls, and the player level, parameters, upper limit of skill level, and the limit value of + value due to soul matching will also increase.

      * Paid additional content “Ushiwaka Senki” is being distributed / “Heiankyo Demon Den” is being distributed / “Taichi Samurai Secret History” is being distributed
  • New end content “Naraku Jigoku” will be added
    . It will be released at the same time as the difficulty level “Nio’s Dream Road”. To unlock, you need to purchase all three paid additional contents (DLC) (*) or “Nioh 2 Season Pass”.

    * Paid additional content “Ushiwaka Senki” is being distributed / “Heiankyo Demon Den” is being distributed / “Taichi Samurai Secret History” is being distributed

  • Addition of new secretary skills
  • Addition of new youkai, souls, and youkai techniques
  • Added new guardian spirit
  • Added new weapons, armor and accessories
  • Added new gestures and copies
  • Added new trophies, titles and play records
  • Added special effects and alignment effects to equipment and picture scrolls that can be obtained from “Nio’s Dream Road” and “Naraku Jigoku”.
Free update
  • Added new martial arts skills (all weapon types)
  • Added new ninjutsu skills and yin and yang skills
  • Added new “hairstyle”, “face decoration” and “body decoration” to the appearance settings
  • Added the function to play the played thought Amrita voice again in the menu setting “Thought Amrita Voice”.
  • Added a function to enable / disable some martial arts that cannot be customized because there is no command frame on the skill acquisition screen.
Adjustment
  • Adjustments related to youkai and guardian spirits
    • Fixed a bug where power damage increased according to the mission level for guardian spirits and some youkai skills, and now power damage increases as the player grows for all youkai and guardian spirits. Change
  • Adjustments for each youkai technique
    • Cost mitigation adjustment
      General Seto
      Kamaitachi
      White Tiger
      Yomi Raijin
    • Increased damage
      Gozu demon
      daidarabotchi
      ghost demon
      Seto Gen.
      ōnyūdō
      Tsuchigumo
      Karasutengu
      Oniryooni
    • Speed up the attack speed
      ghost demon
  • Player adjustments
    • Adjusted to temporarily release the opponent’s “one difficulty” when hitting a martial art that is derived when the opponent’s energy is cut off
    • Adjusted the production to make it easier to understand the success of the back martial art “Hiiragi”
    • Adjusted the back martial art “Evil Demon Slayer” to make it easier to hit enemies during lock-on.
    • Adjusted the Kusarigama martial art “Gale Kick” to make it easier to hit
  • Adjustments about the enemy
    • Adjusted so that lightning does not fall when the feat is successful for a big skill that involves a lightning strike of “Nue”
  • Mission-related adjustments
    • Adjusted the number of mission clears required to open each difficulty level
    • Adjusted the number of item drops when defeating some bosses that have no difficulty
    • Adjusted various tutorials at the beginning of the game to be displayed at a more appropriate timing
    • Change the enemy who uses the big move first according to the tutorial timing change of the big move at the beginning of the game
    • Addition of “Instruction” function to “Company”
      During the mission, you can transition to the tutorial mission of the training ground.

      * After clearing the main game, it will change to “Stone of Difficulty”.
  • Adjustments related to various effects and abnormal conditions
    • Adjusted the damage of the special effect “Iwagashi” at high count, the duration of the advantageous effect, and the grace period for increasing the count after guarding.
    • Increased the amount of additional energy recovery for the special effect “Deep Heart”
    • Added the ability to increase the power damage of martial arts to the special effect “Deep of Takeshi”
    • Added the ability to activate “Zanshin / Heaven”, “Zanshin / Mind”, and “Zanshin / Earth” to the special effect “Deepness of Technique” even if the maximum recovery of energy is not successful.
    • Changed the following special effect names and descriptions from “attack reflection” to “damage reflection” Damage reflection (Amritagauge
      )
      Damage reflection (magical power)
      Damage reflection (bow damage)
      Damage reflection (lost health rate)
      Damage reflection (anti-poison ) )

      * Only the name has been changed, and the actual effect content has not changed.
    • Adjusted the effect of the special effect “Reflecting the amount of added magic power (Amritagauge)” downward.
    • For the special effects “Addition of magical power when hitting an arrow” and “Addition of magical power when hitting an arrow or item”, the amount of magical power added when activated by a youkai technique has been adjusted downward.
    • Adjusted the effect value of the special effect “Magic power addition amount (undamaged)” given to the soul fee upward.
    • If you recover from paralysis with items etc., adjust so that you will not be paralyzed again for a certain period of time
    • Changed to show some special effects that did not appear in “Reburn” of rarity “Kamiho”
    • When the rarity is increased by the special effect “Soul-matching and inheriting rarity”, the value of the special effect is changed to the value equivalent to that rarity.
    • Adjusted so that special effects that enhance the youkai skill are not given to the souls who do not have the youkai skill.
    • Adjusted the duration of the Yin-Yang technique “Jyogaku” upward
  • Other adjustments
    • Adjusted the probability of getting “Hyakuki Yakou Emaki” and “Hyakuya no Kaori” from other players when playing with Marebito.
    • After opening the dream road of enlightenment, it is expanded so that “Shinboku spirit coal” can be forged using “Shards of sacred treasures” etc.
    • Expanded to display the number of picture scrolls in the picture scroll mission selection screen
    • Adjusted so that the appearance of “Fujiyoshiro” can be identified by the notation of the enemy in which “Hyakuki Yakou Emaki” appears.
    • Changed the setting to hide expenses and possessions in “Blacksmith”‘s “Copy” to fix it until the copy screen is exited.
    • Adjusted the martial arts that can be obtained when “Yoshitozuka” is used by other players
    • Changed to avoid being attacked by other players while worshiping at the company during online multiplayer
Bug fixes
    • Fixed a bug that the attack power of youkai and youkai techniques was lower than expected when level sync was applied.
    • Fixed a bug where player characters could warp when switching weapons at specific times during action
    • Fixed a bug that the special effect that reduces energy consumption does not activate in the back martial art “White Tiger Claw”
    • Fixed a bug that the sword / back martial art “Iizuna Drop” would appear against youkai when a strong attack was input from the step.
    • Fixed a bug that hatchet evasion attacks may not be activated depending on the stance or sword removal state.
    • Fixed a bug where the damage of some guardian spirits called by the boss was lower than expected in high difficulty missions.
    • Fixed a bug that when the roasted ball and sea moon powder thrown by “Oezo” are reflected by the effects of “Rebellion”, “Naginata Kama Martial Arts, Kaiten Blade”, they are split into multiple parts and reflected.
    • Fixed a bug that the sea moon powder thrown by “Oezo” can be reflected by the effect of “Repulsion” even after the explosion.
    • Fixed a bug that the feat may not succeed for the big skill of “Yomi Raijin”
    • Fixed a bug where if you attack immediately after defeating “Ushitooni” and “Matooni”, you can regroup.
    • Fixed a bug where shooting down “Ittan-momen” to the head with “Hamaya” could lead to continuous revenge.
    • Fixed a bug that the ghost bullets fired by “Yaksha” could not be canceled by attacks or “barriers”.
    • Fixed a bug that the player may look back immediately after the start of the boss battle if the left stick is pressed when transitioning to the boss area.
    • Fixed a bug that the achievement level of “Stone of Difficulty” is not accumulated when defeating certain “Fujiyoshiro (Yumeji Hen)” and “Kashinkyoshi”.
    • Fixed a bug in the boss battle of the main mission “Heian Palace Hell Weird” where the title “Yomi Raijin” could not be obtained when “Yomi Raijin” was completely defeated without losing his life from “Aya Doman”.
    • Fixed a bug in the submission “Sakurashita no Kien” where the key could not be obtained if the enemy lost his life or worshiped the company without picking up the key to drop.
    • Fixed a bug in the training ground mission “Darkness Creator” where the weapon used was fixed even though you had multiple wooden weapons.
    • Fixed a bug where “Azai Nagamasa” could fall off the stage on certain stages of the picture scroll mission.
    • Fixed a bug that the hill does not break in the picture scroll mission where “Ushioni” appears.
    • Fixed a bug where worshiping a company with certain procedures could prevent enemies in the uncleared darkness from resurrection.
    • Fixed a bug that the volume of some sounds may be reduced when attacked while worshiping the company
    • Fixed a bug where NPCs accompanying you could not get up and be rescued while they were down.
    • Fixed a bug where if you participate in a mission as “Marebito” while possessing “Stone of Difficulty”, only the enemy’s maximum health will be high and you may see that your health is reduced.
    • Fixed a bug that the special effect “Mystery” can be used while the special effect “Mystery” is activated.
    • Fixed a bug that the effect time of the special effects “Onmyodo” and “Ninjutsu” was extended by the mystery of “Yin and Yang”.
    • Fixed a bug where special effects that increase attribute damage did not work for youkai techniques.
    • Fixed a bug that inheritance does not occur when there is no grace or alignment effect even though there is a space in the special effect frame of the base in soul matching using the special effect “Soul Alignment and Grace Inheritance”.
    • Fixed a bug that the special effect that activates the advantageous effect when using Yin and Yang is activated even when using “Shinsei”.
    • Fixed a bug that the special effect “Persistence of disadvantageous effect” shortens the time of “Straw doll curse” of “Yaksha”.
    • Fixed a bug that the consumable item “Taionjin no Sake” couldn’t prevent abnormal conditions of pure and youkai attributes.
    • Fixed a bug in “Forging” of “Blacksmith” that the products made by forging may become the same at regular intervals.
    • Fixed a bug that “Customer level” does not increase even if you spend money in “Modify” of “Blacksmith”
    • Fixed a bug that the transplant destination may not be selected when transplanting is possible in “Soul Matching” where “Grace Inheritance” or “Rarity Inheritance” occurs.
    • Fixed a bug where “Bishamon Ji” and “Blood Sucker / Spider Cut” could not be obtained with normal drops.
    • Fixed a bug where the “robustness” of the armor “Armor of the Buddha’s Heart” and “Armor of the Tamura’s 裔” was incorrect when the rarity was “Most Great Specialty” or less
    • Changed the weapon performance of the weapons “Oki Tachi” and “Kinagi Naginata Sickle” from being a slash
    • Fixed a bug that the “Filtering” item may disappear in the “Auxiliary function” of the equipment screen under certain conditions.
    • Fixed a bug that something like a line might be displayed when the size of “Face decoration” in “Appearance settings” was reduced.
    • If you change the setting of “Short range weapon display” in “Game settings” to “Do not display when sword is delivered” and hold “Long range weapon” with “Hand back” equipped, the equipment will be hidden. Fixed a bug
    • Fixed other minor bugs

Original Story (12/16/20):

No actual gameplay-related changes have been revealed just yet, and we suspect that’ll be the case until the DLC 3 content drops tomorrow. For those curious, here are the new stuff to be added with The First Samurai DLC:

Contents to be added
■ New story “Taichi Samurai Secret History”
■ Higher difficulty mode  ■ New youkai / souls and youkai techniques
■ New guardian spirits  ■ New weapons / armor / accessories
■ New secretary skills  ■ New end content Addition etc.

New story “Heiankyo Demon Den”
The protagonist visits Kyo to explore Sohayamaru’s past and finds a company with an old box. When I tried to find out, Sohayamaru shined brightly again and landed in Kyoto in the middle of the Heian period as “Marebito”. Contrary to its name, Heiankyo at that time was full of youkai threats. But there were also heroes who confronted them.
The greatest demon warrior in history and the strongest onmyoji in history. Its subordinates and colleagues. Fighting with them, the protagonist learns the feelings that have been passed down to his time and the connection to the past.
* To play “Heiankyo Demon Den”, you need to clear the main story.

New weapon type “back”

The back of the hand is a weapon that is worn so as to cover the fist and beats the enemy. It is intended to increase the power of hand-to-hand combat and strengthen the ability to receive. Compared to other weapons, it has a flowing continuous attack, and often interweaves kicking techniques to connect the attackers.
* It will be available from the beginning.

High difficulty mode “Enlightenment Dream Road”

You will be able to acquire more powerful equipment, soul charges, and picture scrolls, and the player level, parameters, upper limit of skill level, and the limit value of + value due to soul matching will also increase. Also, “Kamiho”, which is a higher rarity than “Sacred Treasure”, will drop.
* You will be released by capturing “Shura no Yumeji”.

Addition of new youkai / soul charges and youkai techniques

Even more vicious new youkai block the way than the main story. New youkai souls and youkai techniques will also be added.

  • New guardian spirit
  • New weapons / armor / accessories
  • New secretary skills
  • New gesture / copy
  • New trophies / titles / play records
  • Special effects and alignment effects given to equipment that can be obtained in the dream road of enlightenment

Once the official patch notes are released, we’ll update the post.

Those looking to get the complete package, the Nioh Collection is coming to the PS5 this February 2021! Read up on that here.

Update: Official patch notes for Nioh 2 update 1.20 has been released and we’ve updated the post with it.

Source: GameCity

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Alex Co

Father, gamer, games media vet, writer of words, killer of noobs.

Home > News

Hunt Showdown Update 1.16 December 16 Released for Patch 1.4.8

Hunters are in for a treat as Crytek has just released the Hunt Showdown update 1.16 December 16 patch today, and this brings the 1.4.8 patch to both consoles and PC! Players can expect new gameplay features, character tweaks and more. Head on below for the official patch notes.

Hunt Showdown Update 1.16 December 16 Patch Notes (1.4.8):

Hunters,

Below are the update notes for 1.4.8. on both Console and PC. Some differences will be highlighted with the term Console only if they are specific to console. The current known issues are split into two sections, “PC and Console” and “Console Only” and are being updated regularly when new issues are noticed.

Happy Hunting!

Highlights

Additional Looting OptionsThis update brings a new looting opportunity to keep an out for on your treks through the Bayou. As with everything loot/ammo related in hunt, the “rule of two” applies to these new items.

The following items are now scattered throughout the world:

  • Envelopes that can contain one of the following:
    • 1000 Hunter XP.
    • 500 Bloodline XP.
    • 3-6 Upgrade points.
  • Small bags:
    • <25 Hunt dollars.
    • <3 Blood Bonds.
  • Trait charms:
    • These items will instantly unlock a random trait for your Hunter.
  • Blueprints:
    • These items will unlock the next available item unlock available for the currently equipped item (e.g holding a weak vitality shot while collecting the blueprint will unlock weak stamina shot.)
  • Gun oil (cosmetic only):
    • Oil that will clean your currently equipped weapon.
  • Meatheads:
    • Trait charms have a chance to drop from killing Meatheads.

Developer Note:

Looting in Hunt has always been an exciting experience. Whether it is desperately looting a dead hunter for extra supplies or trying to sneak those thousands of Hunt Dollars out while using a budget loadout, the action has always evoked the primary emotions that Hunt is built around. With this addition, we have 2 aims:

  • We want to add more value to the specific Hunters you use when ranking up (improve the risk/reward balance that we have always tried to keep prevalent in Hunt: Showdown).
  • Allow for more opportunities to explore the map and ensure there are benefits to doing so.

Additional traits have been available in quickplay for a while, but we wanted to find a good way to tie acquiring traits in to Bounty Hunt and we feel this is a good way to achieve that goal. The main difference in bounty hunt is that the charm drop shows which trait will be unlocked, so you can decide if you want to collect it, unlike in quickplay where the traits are randomly given for investigating clues. Each charm will contain a different trait, so it is up to you if you want to take one or leave it to your partner(s) (“rule of two” applies to trait charms also). This method also means that meatheads are a much more worthwhile investment in terms of time vs reward.

These new ways of levelling your hunters will mostly benefit new and low rank/newly prestiged players, as many of the traits will not be available to purchase at that early stage.

Watch TowersA new addition to the landscape of the Bayou; Watch towers have now been added in several locations.

  • Hunters will have a chance to find supplies such as ammo/ health or weapons at the watch towers, though it will contain less than you find at the regular supply points.
  • Make sure to check the top of the tower when you pass by as there will always be something to find.

Lawson Delta:

  • Watch tower added on top of the Bunker between Sweetbell Flower and Fort Carmick

Stillwater Bayou:

  • Watch tower added in the swamp between Pitching Crematorium and Lockbay Docks.
  • Watch tower added to the hillslope north of Healing Waters.

Hunting towers:

  • Hunting towers have also received an upgrade. Hunters will have a chance to find either an ammo box, health station or weapon in the tower.

New Weapon Variants

Winfield M1873 Musket-Bayonet

  • An elongated variant of the Winfield M1873 with a Bayonet and a slightly larger magazine
  • Holds an extra +2 rounds in the elongated tube magazine
  • Levering shoots at a slightly reduced rate of fire than other Winfield M1873 rifles

Nagant M1895 Officer Carbine Deadeye

  • An Officer Carbine variant with a Deadeye scope.
  • Reduced shoulder aim accuracy due to the mounted scope.
  • Recoil is harder to control in ADS due to increased zoom.

New Legendary Weapons

Vagrant

  • Legendary Winfield M1873C Silencer
  • A vagrant known as the tin-man rattled around the city with a large bag of cans, harmless until a malicious Hunter threw them into the bay. Able to save but a few, he decorated his Winfield M1873C Silencer with the remainder, and set out for revenge – silent as a whisper.

Death Letter

  • Legendary M1895 Nagant Officer Brawler
  • Death pens no warning of His coming, and for Hunters and soldiers alike, the sound of gunfire is the only correspondence foretelling their demise. This Nagant’s personalized engraving appears to reference an old Civil War ballad written by one who would later become a Hunter – delivering his own dark tidings with each deadly shot, death incarnate.

DeSalle’s Silence

  • Legendary Sparks LRR Silencer
  • The favored Sparks LRR of the elder DeSalle brother, a man whose business ventures would not have been as successful without the occasional enforced silence.

Gunplay

Concertina bomb

  • Explosion delay decreased to ~0.5s (previously ~1.5s).

Melee changes – Hatchet, Talon, Heavy Knife & Machete

  • Slightly changed the attack angle of the Hatchet and Talon attachments to ensure hits are more reliable.
  • Slightly changed the attack angle of the Heavy knife to ensure hits are more reliable.
  • Slightly changed the angle of the normal attack for the Machete to ensure hits are more reliable.

Officer Carbine

  • Slightly Increased the recoil of the Nagant Officer Carbine.

Antidote shots

  • Antidote shots no longer reduces the damage taken from poison-based attacks (e.g spider bounce, stings from the Hive Swarms
  • Poison cloud damage remains unchanged and will reduce damage by 100%

Developer note:

Up until now, if you were attacked by the spider or a hive while an antidote shot was active, the physical damage that was caused was also reduced. We felt that this was a little unbalanced especially in instances like the spider frenzy, which made it possible to tank the spider far more effectively than intended so with this change, the physical damage will from attacks such as these will be applied as normal while still ensuring you remain poison free after an interaction with a spider or Hive.

Aim Assist (Consoles Only)

  • Increased aim assist strength for Water Devils

Hunter

Trait Rework: Ghoul

  • New description: “Killing grunts at close range restores a small amount of health”.
  • Radius of 25m, similar to Necromancer and Serpent traits.
  • Health will be granted only if you instigate the damage, you do not have to land the killing blow to benefit from the health gain.
  • Restores 5hp per kill.
  • Price increased to 7 points (this is subject to change based on test server feedback).

Developer note:

In our opinion, Ghoul is a trait that has a lot of untapped potential (as well as a low pick rate) and could use some attention. We wanted to ensure that the trait remains true to its theme of replenishing health from the dead, however we wanted to make it less situational. In the past, players could only benefit from it if they dared to loot a hunter in combat, but in most instances that was not the main goal of looting in a fight (the main goal usually getting another consumable or tool charge to benefit the fight).

We wanted to turn the Ghoul trait into something that is more versatile and offer it as a more of a tactical option through any stage of the game. The trait can now help to preserve your health items for the important PVP fights later in the round and as a result should help hunters be less reliant on searching for health stations throughout the match.

Interaction Outlines

  • Option added to the menu to allow you to customize the highlighting outlines of interactable items (doors, windows, etc.)
  • This option does not alter the UI prompts from showing in the top right corner of the screen when in range of an interactable object.

The options are as follows:

  • All: Current behaviour – all interactable object are outlined frequently.
  • None: Turn of fall outlines for interactable objects and partner outlines.
  • Exclude Door and windows: Similar to “all”, but doors and windows will no longer be highlighted (does not affect other interactable objects)

Developer note:

This change is meant to address two long standing requests from the community. Some have wanted to remove more UI elements from the game to be able to record cinematic content more efficiently.

For others, it has always been hard to track opponents behind doors or windows in certain lighting conditions. We understand that our veterans know where every accessible door and window are so we want to provide them with the option to forfeit interaction highlights for a better overview of what is going on behind the doors/windows.

Bounty Hunt

Banishing a Boss

  • Initiating the banishing process with now restore all lost health chunks as well as replenishing all your health.

Developer note:

Previously, it was unclear to a lot of players as to what was restored by the banishing process. To remove some of the ambiguity that came from using different health chunk set-ups we have made it so that all health chunks are restored, and your health pool is refilled. So, if your team starts the banish, you are in back in the fight – no questions asked!

Dark Sight Boost

  • Investigating a clue while carrying a bounty token will now restore 1 second of Dark Sight Boost. We hope this will encourage Hunters to be more inclined to run the gauntlet if there is a second target.

Extraction Points

  • Changes made to ensure that all extraction points will not spawn next to each other. One extraction point will always be at least 500m away from the other two.

Developer note:

We like challenging rounds as much as the next person, but we must acknowledge that certain randomly generated elements in the game such as the location of extraction points, can lead to unfavorable situations for those that want to focus on objective play.

With this change, we want to eliminate one of the most extreme cases that limits potential exit strategies. The available extractions may still be in roughly the same area, however, setting the distance of one to at least 500m will give better options to extract so that you may live to die another day.

Leaderboard

  • Player will be shown on the leaderboard only if they meet all those conditions:
    • Logged in within the last 30 days.
    • Have at least 100 kills in Quickplay or 100 Kills or Assist in Bounty Hunt.
    • Didn’t opt out from showing their stats publicly.
    • Not banned.
    • Played at least 50 hours.

MetaUnlock Rank Changes

  • Duster is now available at Rank 1 (previously Rank 20).
  • Spyglass is now available at Rank 1 (previously Rank 24).
  • Machete is now available at rank 24 (previously Rank 12).
  • Nagant M1895 Officer is now available at Rank 12 (previously Rank 36).
  • Winfield M1873 is now available at Rank 20 (previously Rank 42).

Developer note:

In preparation for update 1.5, we are moving around some items so that we can evenly distribute the unlocks before adding the new unique Winfield M1876 and M1887 that were teased in our most recent blog post. In addition to this, some items have been moved to Rank1 to allow for more variety in the early levels and more choice when it comes to selecting preferred melee tools.

The Nagant officer family now unlocks shortly after the Caldwell Pax, which give players more choice when it comes to assembling balanced loadouts as well as adding more quality weapons around those ranks rather than having a focus on the quantity of weapons available (example combining single shot rifles or shotguns with a rapid-fire handgun and vice versa). The same applies to the Winfield, which is now sitting between the Martini Henry and Sparks LRR unlocks.

Faster Progression: XP Overspill for Equipment Unlocks

  • XP earned during a mission with any piece of equipment will now overspill into the next unlock within that equipment family.

Developer note:

Due to some technical issues. The experience from the last hit, that resulted in the death of an AI would not carry over (overspill) into the next unlock, but all XP after this was applied as normal. This has now been resolved and any overspill XP will be applied correctly going forward.

e.g. player requires 10 XP to unlock the Romero handcannon. Killing a Hive grants 20 XP, which will unlock the weapon and open the next unlock gate, but that extra 10 XP was lost.

Store

Price updates

  • Nagant Officer Carbine is now $155 (previously $80)

New Weapons added

  • Added Nagant Officer Carbine Deadeye for $211
  • Added Winfield Musket-Bayonet for $137
  • New Legendary Weapons added
  • Added Legendary Winfield M1873c Silencer “Vagrant” for 200 Blood Bonds
  • Added Legendary Nagant Officer “Death Letter” for 200 Blood Bonds
  • Added Legendary Sparks LRR Silencer “DeSalle’s Silence” for 400 Blood Bonds

Roster

  • Added new possible name variations for Hunter recruits

Miscellaneous

  • Tweaked a calculation tied to the texture streaming memory budget to improve the game’s performance.
  • Improvements made to the overall game stability and fixed multiple issues that was causing a memory leak with the renderer.
  • The “Rank” text has been replaced by a dedicated icon on the Lobby screen
  • A new icon representing the Traits was added onto the trait selection bottom bar in the Roster and Upgrade pages.

Bug Fixes (PC and Console)

AI

  • Fixed an issue with the pathfinding for some AI that could become stuck on corners (Meathead, Butcher, Grunts).
  • Fixed an issue that resulted in caged dogs not taking damage from a burning player.
  • Fixed an issue that meant players could receive damage from caged dogs while standing directly beside the cage.
  • Fixed an issue that resulted in crows and ducks reacting incorrectly to the sounds of the Silenced Spark LRR as if it were the regular Sparks LRR.

Misc

  • Fixed an issue where deployable items such as the Bear Trap could be placed on concertina wire.
  • Static (unlit) lanterns will now make a sound when shattered.
  • Choke bombs will now extinguish Alert trip mine flares.
  • Fixed an issue where lanterns in boxes were difficult to interact with.
  • Fixed an issue that resulted in Decoy fuses not being resupplied while having the Decoy resupply trait.
  • Fixed an issue where explosions would not influence farm bells (ding!)
  • Fixed an inconsistency in the exhausted state melee damage for the Mosin Nagant Obrex variants.
  • Fixed a crash that could potentially occur when shutting down the game.
  • Fixed an issue that could result in being attacked by an immolator during the “waiting for players” stage when spawning in South-East Lawson Delta. (they just wanted a hug!)
  • Fixed a rendering issue where certain geometry would flicker in an out at specific points in Healing Waters Church.
  • Fixed an issue where players could become stuck on some bunkbeds in Wolfshead Arsenal (no sleeping on the hunt!)
  • Fixed an issue that could cause a player to become stuck at a hut by the river near Arden Parish.
  • Fixed a spot in Catfish where hunters could become stuck.
  • Fixed an issue where a hunter could vault through a roof in Sweetbell Flour.
  • Fixed an issue where AI would pop in too close to a Hunter in Fort Carmick.
  • Fixed a number of issues that resulted in not being able to pick up hammers and axes.

Known Issues (PC and Console)

  • New “+” symbols will appear in the store and news after a game restart, even if no new items are available.
  • In some cases, on the recruitment page, an insanely high amount of hunter dollars will be displayed in the “hire” section. This is purely visual and is only visible when no recruits are present.
  • When purchasing a DLC that contains 2 Hunters, the 2nd legendary hunter pop up will not be displayed.
  • A butcher extinguished with a choke bomb can still set you on fire with the final death swing (so don’t get too close).
  • In some cases, the spider frenzy will end if you leave the boss area.
  • In some cases, weapons can disappear through the floor after swapping with another weapon.
  • Some buttons in the store can disappear when selecting different filter options.
  • It is possible to dismiss all hunters.
  • Depending on the sprinting state, you may encounter some inconsistencies with movement speed while stopping bleeding/fire.
  • Some LoD transitions are delayed.
  • In certain cases, where there is a slowdown between client and backend, it is possible to reshuffle a number of times, in these cases you will use more blood bonda than intended.
  • In some rare cases, the extraction icon will show the incorrect message (such as being revived in the extraction while spectating, the revived player may still see “Your partner is down, Revive them!”. This is purely visual and the timer will count down as normal.
  • In some cases, when at rank 100, the value of bloodline XP in the game summary may show double what was earned.
  • Incorrect ammo reserve details can sometimes be shown when looting a weapon.
  • In rare cases, the concertina wire will not damage players.
  • ELO arrows are not displayed in the killcard if the player that killed you has their stats are hidden.
  • In some cases, shooting at birds from a distance will not cause them to fly away.
  • Whisper indicator will stop once the Assassin has been killed.
  • Duster melee chaining may not work as intended after several melee attacks.
  • Any lootable weapon that spawns in the tutorial is not kept when leaving the mission.
  • When using Gunsligner, melee cannot be used during weapon preparation.
  • When using Gunslinger, chained (repeated) shots are less reliable.
  • When using Gunslinger, cancelling a reload can result in extra inputs needed to get back to ADS.
  • Disconnecting from the game while interacting from a metal gate will cause the action to continue.
  • Switiching firemodes while dual weilding the Lemat does not return you to the correct stance and continues to play the audio loop.
  • The Butcher will not stop its attack when extinguished by a choke bomb.
  • Thrown world axes will not damage hive swarms, but will bounce off them.
  • Buy button on the sole survivor page will show an incorrect value if no survivors are available.
  • Weapons sway may increase when landing after a jump.
  • Spectator mode: Clues may appear with a pink glow outside of Darksight.
  • Picking up a weapon can sometimes result in the weapon not being shown (showing as empty handed) if you move to far during the interaction phase. Switching the weapon again should resolve this.

Known issues (Console Only)

  • In some cases, you may encounter a freeze/stall during the start of a Trial.
  • There may be a drop of 3-4fps when exiting Darksight.
  • AI are less responsive in comparison to the PC version.
  • Pop up does not appear correctly when linking your account to be awarded 5000 hunt dollars.
  • The “sell all” function will also sell the selected items that are currently equipped to your hunter in the roster/equipment screen.
  • In some cases, you may encounter some inconsistencies in button behaviour when buying something in the roster/equipment screen.
  • Some text for the controller shortcuts may be cut off while in the lobby screen.

This is the last content drop for the year, and once we learn more regarding Crytek’s 2021 plans, we’ll be sure to let our readers know.

Source: Reddit

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Alex Co

Father, gamer, games media vet, writer of words, killer of noobs.

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Wasteland 3 Update 1.12 “Meat Maker Marinade” Released

Developer InXile Entertainment has released Wasteland 3 update 1.12 )also known as 1.2.0) or what the studio calls the Meat Maker Marinade!  There are huge issues resolved in this title update which you can read about below.

Wasteland 3 Update 1.12 Patch Notes: (1.2.0 Meat Maker Marinade):

Highlights

  • Balance changes have adjusted some core systems to ensure a true wasteland experience. Developer commentary is included below from David Rogers to help explain the thought process and intentions behind the changes.

  • We finally resolved the issue that could cause the two starting Rangers’ attributes to go into the negative. Thanks to everyone who had to deal with this for your patience.

  • We resolved a few progression blockers which were giving some of you grief, including the Yuma County Speedway door and Little Hell gondola.

  • The incredibly annoying slamming-into-cover issue is now addressed! If you still want your controller to vibrate endlessly we hear there are apps for that.

  • [PC/Xbox] Brazilian Portuguese and Italian subtitles are now available!

  • Note: These additional subtitles are expected to be available on PlayStation by early next year.

Gameplay

  • The intro cinematic and live-action short are now viewable from the main menu under a Special Features option.

  • When switching away from and back to the original two Rangers, their attributes will no longer change to negative values.

  • Resolved an issue where characters would play the cover animation repeatedly when moving into cover from a crouch.

  • Sawblade ammo has been added into merchants and enemy drop tables.

  • You were right. More sniper ammo has been added into the intro Ambush scene.

  • Vendors have smartened up and will no longer trigger Antique Appraiser on junk that you’ve repurchased.

  • Fixed an issue where Yuma County Speedway Doors were not interactable under certain conditions.

  • Fixed two conversation issues with Liberty that could fail to advance and require restarting the game.

  • Fixed an issue where the Rebel Scout would not appear in Hoon Homestead after being sent there to meet [redacted].

  • Fixed an issue with the Photon Amplification Lens that caused the UI to fail to load.

  • Medical Marvel should now be working as intended. For realsies.

  • An issue preventing players from completing the ‘Unwelcome Guests’ quest, which previously would not allow them to confront Mama Cotter, has been resolved.

  • Resolved an issue preventing the Varangian Blood perk from activating upon an ally being downed in combat.

  • Resolved an issue where Rangers could get another blank disc and redo the quest to talk to the Machine Intelligence after transferring a certain consciousness into a certain somebody.

  • The Machine Commune faction’s AI has been flashed with the latest firmware, and the Commune will now no longer hate the Rangers after they upload an important quest element.

  • Shooting a cryo rocket at the barrels next to the Scorpitron in the Tellurium Mine will no longer cause the explosion to explode infinitely. We respect physics, and infinite explosions require infinite energy, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense within the scope of this very realistic and very cool video game story.

  • As rad as this was in theory, if not in practice, the Kodiak is now no longer able to Monster Truck through Scorpitrons—no matter how much dew from the mountains may have been consumed beforehand.

  • Pay no attention to the mysterious DevCube behind the curtain! The DevCube that was not meant to be seen with mortal eyes has been removed from the Paint Mines. May it live forever in our hearts.

  • The deer in Santa’s Workshop can now be tamed without a bunch of backtalk.

  • Several weapons that previously did not produce scrap or mods when field stripped now do. Cha-ching!

  • Fixed the text describing headshots’ bonus effect. It’s always done +75% damage, but it previously displayed ‘+175% damage’ in error.

  • Added the “Cog Pendant” into the game. This is a backer item we intended to have in the game when it released, but it wasn’t there. So we fixed that.

  • Fixed an issue that would softlock the initial Jodie Bell hostage cutscene if the player swapped to the second character right before the cutscene.

  • Fixed an exploit that allowed the player to redo the Reagan questline after talking to the Machine Intelligence after completing a certain quest objective.

  • Fixed an issue where flame jets were invisible while they were active. (Fun fact: ‘The Invisible Flame Jets’ was the name of our prog-rock band back in the 80’s).

  • Removed the random Godfisher in the Yuma Speedway after the Godfishers leave camp. Go home, random Godfisher, you’re drunk.

  • Fixed an issue where Drilldogs didn’t attack until all other enemies had died.

  • Fixed an issue where Doctor NPCs wouldn’t heal the players to full health.

  • Fixed an issue where Mortar Strike would not consume rocket ammo.

  • Killing Dee Sharp in the Scar Collector Mines while Cordite is in the party will no longer softlock the cutscene.

  • Fixed an issue where the Spirit Animal perk provided buffs for the whole party, and not just that particular character.

  • Fixed an issue that prevented players from lockpicking the doors in the Sans Lux Apartments, even if they had the requirements.

  • Lucia now speaks up when a player first walks into the Marshals’ station in Downtown.

  • Fixed an issue where the Survival skill was giving some of the custom Rangers the “Charm Animal” skill for free.

  • Failing when trying to fix Morningstar now displays explosions before a fade to white to really hit home the fact that you are a failure.

  • Fixed an issue where the player couldn’t get “The Stink” off when using an Antidote. Be thankful this game isn’t scratch n’ sniff.

  • Fixed an issue where grenade trajectories would get blocked while inside the Clown Museum’s bigtop.

  • Fixed an exploit where vehicle upgrade items could appear in the player’s inventory if the utility upgrade was unequipped.

  • The Clown Museum ballerinas are no longer active before the player arrives.

  • Fixed an issue that prevented the player from saving Austin Pease if they didn’t initially have the money to free him, and also fixed an issue where players were able to pay half the required amount for that task.

  • The quest “War of the Worlds” should now complete properly when the player wipes out all the robots in the mines.

  • Players can now reach max reputation with the Monster Army.

  • Fixed an issue where players, while in high cover, couldn’t activate self-use items while using a two-handed blade.

  • Fixed an issue that could cause the Dorsey rocketeer on the dam fight to be invisible during that battle.

  • Crit damage values should no longer dip into negative values and heal enemies… Total head scratcher, that one.

  • Fixed an animation issue that would cause the player to slide if they shot and moved from a crouched position.

  • Firing on an NPC who can use deployable turrets will now result in their turrets correctly turning hostile as well.

  • Fixed an issue that prevented the player from talking to the Weaponsmith in the Bizarre Interior without visiting The Warrens.

  • Resolved an issue where an enemy would infinitely rotate after tripping the alarm in the Scar Collector Mines’ Security Habitat

  • Fixed an issue where loading an autosave during the Fishlips fight would prevent the player from being able to fight Fishlips.

  • The Patriarch and his Guards will now always be hostile if the player decides to go on a murder-spree outside of the palace or in Downtown.

  • Fixed an exploit that let the player get infinite cash from Paris in the Bizarre Exterior.

  • Fixed an issue that prevented the player from completing the Counterintelligence Mission.

  • Fixed an issue where swapping weapon slots and modding the primary weapon would put the mod on the secondary weapon.

  • Fixed an issue where the player couldn’t complete the Santa’s Workshop questline unless they tricked Santa to check for cookies.

  • Fixed an issue where players couldn’t complete the Santa’s Workshop questline if during the fight Sugar Plum Mary was killed.

  • SAL is now prevented from occasionally chiming in on the radio and playing music during combat in Denver.

  • Players who pick the “Mopey Poet” background will now get the +5 Evasion bonus as intended.

  • Melee characters who start combat in cover will now face the correct direction on start.

  • Updated Turret enemies to fix highlighting issues.

  • Fixed an issue that would cause Masato to disappear if you gave him the ramen but didn’t recruit him to Ranger HQ.

  • The Smuggler Devastator enemy type will now attack instead of cower behind cover and do nothing.

  • Fixed a conversation choice with Vivisecto where the player’s choice was nonsensical. (Isn’t it possible that all choice is in fact nonsense? Something to think about.)

  • Fixed the logic for blackjack games in Cartel Nightclub after the first few hands.

  • The Ranger General’s Hat now correctly provides the stat boosts stated.

  • Fixed multiple issues when reviving a downed player character.

  • Fixed a rare issue where the targeting line during combat wouldn’t disappear.

  • Fixed an exploit where the benefits of crouching persisted after saving and loading.

  • Fixed an issue where the Kodiak’s health wasn’t being saved properly.

  • Terminals in the Monster Army Bunker should now reward experience for “Nerd Stuff” skill checks.

  • Removed one of the two “Goodbye” options in Hallie’s conversation.

  • Fixed an issue where an enemy’s arms would stay highlighted red after being targeted with a Precision Strike.

  • Pvt. Pellegrin no longer plays pretend soldier, and will now hold his gun like a good guard back at Ranger HQ.

  • Increased the talk radius of Major Tomcat when you see him on the bridge.

  • Fixed an exploit that would generate healing when swapping weapons while certain status effect buffs were active.

  • Fixed an issue where the player would get ejected from the conversation with Hardee Knox for seemingly no reason.

  • Fixed an issue where the Area of Effect circle disappeared on certain terrain.

  • Fixed multiple issues with Precision Strike not highlighting enemies/enemy parts properly.

  • Fixed a rare issue that made the Cannibals up front in the Cannibal Jamboree not hostile even after killing their friends. (Fun fact: ‘Pacifist Cannibals’ was the name of our punk band back in the 80’s).

  • Fixed an issue in the endgame where [redacted]’s Scouts weren’t getting revealed by the Fog of War during the conversation with them.

  • Fixed an issue where Jarrett’s knife could appear to not be properly attached to his hand during his first line of dialog.

  • Area of Effect abilities that are self-centered (ex. Rally) now work if the player is crouched.

  • Vehicle wreckage should now no longer obscure characters during the final fight.

  • Fixed an issue where status effects were ending too soon after combat ended.

  • Fixed some issues with the Night Rider Horn, Michael.

  • Fixed an issue where during the Tinker combat, the enemy’s first turn wouldn’t end if the player attacked first.

  • Fixed a minor combat grid issue in Ranger HQ Razorback encounter area.

  • Fixed an issue where the save spinner UI element would stay on the screen permanently after the game was saved.

  • Fixed a missing combat grid issue in one of the random encounter areas.

  • Fixed a weird issue where shotguns and flamethrowers with damage type mods installed could act like pistols and fired single bullets rather than the correct ammo.

  • Scotchmo’s animations have sobered up now and work as intended.

  • Fixed an issue where getting ambushed by Tinker pulls a bear into combat.

  • Fixed an issue with Irv’s dialog with the bookseller.

  • Fixed an issue where MacTavish was unreachable in his Ranger HQ cell, and could not be talked to.

  • Destroying the Reagan statue early will now properly update the mission, “A House Divided.”

  • Fixed an issue that occasionally caused the start point for the Scar Collector Mines to be in a different location.

  • Bill will finish his “Gotta go find my gun” bark before running off to his dea… err.. Destiny!

Balance

  • The XP needed to level up has been adjusted. XP requirements for levels 8 through 20 have been only slightly increased, while XP requirements from 20-30 have been greatly increased. This brings the functional max level down to around 27, from around 29.

  • “We were finding that players were finishing the game at a higher level than we expected, and beyond level 8 players did seem to chronically over-level their content. This resulted in skill checks feeling less demanding than we desired. We really want players to deliberate over every point spent. The goal of this adjustment in the XP curve is to ensure players who are 100%’ing our content are still experiencing some friction in the late game, while being sure that players who don’t want to do everything and who still complete the main story are able to reach the necessary level to complete the final quest.”

  • For existing players, you won’t lose any levels, but your next level up will have the correct experience requirement. This will result in your next level up being just a little further away than it was before.

  • Reduced the effectiveness of Aramid Pads and Trauma Plate Inserts to 2 and 4, down from 4 and 6.

  • Reduced the effectiveness of the Lights Out perk down to +100% from +200%.

  • Changes to critical hit chance:

  • “Critical hit chance was getting much higher than we wanted, and was having an outsized impact on combat. Enemies were critically hitting players too often, which didn’t feel good, and player critical hit chance was getting up too high, particularly for characters who weren’t necessarily even trying to build for crit chance. These new changes target bringing overall crit chances down, mostly for characters who aren’t consciously building for crit chance. We did this rather than bringing down the maximum crit damage. We like big damage numbers, they feel good, but we want them to be the exception, not the norm.”

  • Critical hit chance for NPC’s has been reduced to about 62.5% of its previous value.

  • Critical hit chance granted from the Intelligence stat has been reduced to +20%, from +25%.

  • Critical hit chances granted by gear, mods, and the cat companion have been reduced.

  • The Focus drug grants less critical hit bonus than it did before (but still a lot). +15 down from +20.

  • High level light armor helmets no longer grant bonus crit chance. Instead we’ve given them status effect resistance or Evasion bonuses.

  • Assault rifles have been given +3m range.

  • Congrats! You’ve made it halfway through the patch notes. Get yourself a snack.

  • The Gopher Hunter perk has been buffed to decrease enemy cover effectiveness by 40%, up from 25%.

  • “The goal with these two changes is to buff the assault rifle, but also to give it a different use-case vs. the SMG. While the SMG is about heavy damage and high risk flanking maneuvers, the assault rifle should be a reliable work-horse that can deliver consistent damage when it’s needed while staying safe behind cover.”

  • Characters who have been stunned will gain a “Stun Protection” status effect after it wears off, stopping any character from being stunned two turns in a row.

  • Tier 4 and 5 loot crates have a reduced chance to drop above-tier gear, making tier 5 and 6 weapons rarer earlier in the game.

  • Shotguns and flamethrowers have had their Torrent Strike damage reduced to 200% of weapon damage, down from 300%.

  • Pistol Pete will no longer use the Trick Shot ability.

  • Weapons and armor now display their level, making it easier to compare items and understand if your gear is at the appropriate level for your characters.

  • Sniper rifles have had their bonus strike rate reduced. Low level sniper rifles have no bonus strike rate, but will start to gain the stat at higher levels.

  • High level sniper rifles now cost 7 AP to fire, up from 6.

  • “This is largely to ensure sniper rifles maintain the tradeoff of being incredibly hard to fire twice in a turn, while still being powerful.”

  • Animal Companions, Followers, and Deployables will now distract enemy NPCs less, or more, based on your difficulty setting. Players playing on Supreme Jerk will find that enemies are much more focused on attacking Rangers vs. deployables and followers, while players on Rookie difficulty should still be seeing their animals tanking significantly for their team.

  • “We saw a dominant strategy form in which lots of low-level animal companions were being taken, along with many of the followers, which resulted in them having too large an impact on combat (namely in how much damage they soaked up). We know people love their animals and generally will reload their save game until they survive the fight, so rather than killing your furry friends off, we’re limiting how much the enemies are shooting them vs. your own Rangers. This, combined with reduced follower tanking will hopefully put a larger emphasis on debuffs at higher difficulties.”

  • Deployables now have a maximum level they’ll scale to, stopping them from being overly impactful in the late game. The most notable change is that Machine turrets will stop getting better after level 14, while laser turrets will scale up to lvl 20.

  • The skill needed to install a Razor Box weapon mod has been reduced to 6, from 10.

  • Satoshi’s case is now more valuable to vendors.

  • Rocket launchers now cost 4 AP to reload, up from 2.

  • Cheebus now sells Tier 5 gear, down from Tier 6.

  • Jackhammer shotgun’s AP to fire is increased to 5, up from 3.

  • Food items are now more expensive (AP) to eat in combat.

  • Pre-order bonus weapons have had their vendor value lowered, so if they’re sold they do not dramatically impact the intended economy.

UI & Controls

  • Added a keybind option on PC for “Loot All.”

  • The minimap should now always default to on.

  • Utility items will now sort as Armor when filtering items.

  • Double-clicking a character portrait on the HUD now centers the camera to that character. What a time to be alive.

  • Fixed an issue where premade Rangers weren’t showing up in the “Manage Squad” Screen.

  • Player health can no longer show below 0 when downed.

  • Fixed an issue that would cause enemy UI stats to disappear if the player opened and closed the inventory menu up a lot.

  • An issue that prevented some quirks from being selectable during character creation has been resolved.

  • Fixed an issue where the first slot of the inventory could be unresponsive. You’re the first slot! Come on… Be better, first slot.

  • Fixed an issue where the “Sell Junk” keyboard shortcut wouldn’t work.

  • Minimap image no longer does a jitter dance when you move the camera separately from your rangers.

  • [Gamepad] The ‘A’ prompt now appears when highlighting an NPC to talk to.

  • [Gamepad] Resolved the issue that made it impossible for a companion to join if their dialog was cancelled.

  • [Gamepad] Fixed an issue that made laser tripwires unable to be disarmed with a gamepad.

  • [Gamepad] Removed the second close button option in the controls option menu.

Console

  • Additional stability improvements made to assist with older console crash rates. Work will be continuing in future updates to further reduce crash potential.

  • New Feature – While out of combat, press Y (Xbox) or Triangle (PS4) to go into targeting mode.

  • Unplugging a controller while the game was “thinking” caused some issues, specifically during saving/loading, and during character creation. We didn’t think that was good, so we fixed that.

  • Fixed multiple issues where console saves and load screens would hang or cause the game to crash.

  • [Xbox] Fixed an issue where the player could get stuck in a merchant screen immediately after adding a new party member.

  • [Xbox One] Fixed an issue where the initial dialog was not heard nor seen at the Arapaho Caravan.

  • [Xbox One] Fixed an issue that caused colored lights to appear on the combat UI grid.

  • [Xbox One] Button prompts seen in the main menu now use the correct UI font.

  • [Xbox One] The Dorsey prisoner no longer clips into the wall in Ranger HQ.

  • [Xbox One S] The game should no longer crash if the user leaves the game open on the world map for an extended duration.

Co-op

  • Players are now forced to be on the same patch version to play together.

  • We’re even more confident that we’ve fixed the issues causing infinite loads in co-op. We’re looking at you, persistent 33% load hang (as well as some other nasty outliers)!

  • Fixed an issue that prevented players from accessing the Multiplayer menu with just the keyboard.

  • Fixed an issue during the world map where both players were hearing different radio calls.

  • Fixed an issue where speech bubbles would persist after an enemy died.

  • The chat window background now appears with a cool misty cloudy background instead of a translucent blue.

  • Fixed an issue that caused the radio voiceover to cut out for the guest.

  • Fixed an issue where the initial dam combat sequence was zoomed in too much.

  • Fixed an issue where GOG players could not host a Direct Connect multiplayer session.

  • Fixed an issue where the guest would get stuck in any conversation with a skill check involved if the host wasn’t there in the conversation.

  • Fixed an exploit that allowed players without the pre-order bonus content access to it by joining a host with that content.

  • Fixed an issue where Serial Killer Quirk didn’t work on guest players—now you can kill to your heart’s content.

  • Fixed an issue where calling for a tow (P.S. did you know you can fast travel back to Ranger HQ from the world map by clicking on the radio?) would sometimes not move the Kodiak back to Colorado Springs.

  • Fixed an issue where the landscape bars from the intro movie would persist during the initial Ambush attack.

  • Fixed a desync issue on the world map that would cause the guest to be stuck on a loading screen while the host could drive around normally.

  • Fixed a desync issue on the world map that would cause the guest to witness a world event while the host did not, and would still be able to drive around.

  • Fixed an issue where guests could not heal with quickslot items.

  • Fixed an issue where the button prompts were not being localized during multiplayer sessions while in the Manage Squad menu.

  • Resolved issues that could occur while one player attacked while the other was in the Hire Companion screen.

  • Fixed a UI issue on the client side that would prevent status effects from appearing after loading a different level.

  • Fixed an issue that would break the player’s camera if the other player left mid-character creation.

  • Fixed an issue that caused the guest to see incorrect skill information on the host’s characters.

  • Fixed an issue that would create autosaves for the guest as well as the host.

  • [Xbox One] Fixed an issue where the garage doors in Ranger HQ would appear closed for the guest.

  • [Windows Store] Fixed a very specific issue where the font did not fit within the UI buttons while in borderless windowed mode in Polish or French while using the very large text size option. Phew.

  • [Windows Store] Fixed an issue that would prevent the host from reviving the guest’s custom rangers.

  • [Windows Store] Fixed an issue where a misleading error message displayed when a player attempted to join another player whose lobby was set to “Block.”

  • [Windows Store] Fixed an issue where a player would be unable to do anything after the other player left or was kicked from the session.

  • [Windows Store] Players should now be able to connect to hosts via Direct Connection.

  • [Windows Store] Fixed an issue that could prevent the guest from being able to load a save after exiting a multiplayer session.

Art & Audio

  • New makeup options in character creation. Get fabulous, treat yourself!

  • Payaso Bastard, Ditso Gogo, and Tricksters have had their models and textures adjusted.

  • We’ve made general visual effect cleanups and enhancements throughout the game.

  • The Frozen Lake in the Godfisher Windfarm now has ice.

  • The minimap in The Warrens is now aligned properly..

  • Fixed a logic issue that caused non-hostile NPCs to only cower during combat.

  • Fixed an issue that caused weather to show up inside the dentist building outside of the Bizarre.

  • The patrolling nightclub goon near Delgato’s cell in the back will stop doing a half-jig mid patrol.

  • The turret inside MacTavish’s Machine Shop now shoots louder bullets.

  • Fixed a Kodiak weapons animation issue.

  • Destroying crates with objects on them will have all objects on top be destroyed instead of just the crate.

  • Animatronics no longer play a human death cry when they die. They’re creepy enough as it is.

  • The flying flags freakily flapping ‘n flailing ‘round near the mechanics garage in Yuma have calmed down now and will not clip through their poles.

  • Star-that-Dreams will no longer lurch around when the player talks to them.

  • Scar collectors were a little too quiet in their compound in Yuma.

  • Fixed an issue that caused Prasad’s fixing sound effects to persist even after she left.

  • Cleaned up the Radio lighting on the world map.

  • Fixed various weather issues in Downtown Colorado Springs.

  • Cleaned up the Fog of War in the Airport Commune to prevent players from seeing behind the curtains…

  • When using Precision Strike weapons to kill an enemy, the proper “blown off limb” animation will now play. Hooray!

  • Raised up the lights in front of Manifest Destiny so characters won’t clip into the vehicle.

  • Fixed the lighting inside the Playground area of the Warrens.

  • Fixed the lighting inside the Old Survivalist Bunker.

  • Fixed the positioning of one of the Suncatchers in Garden of the Gods.

  • Fixed a broken texture in the Bizarre.

  • Fixed an issue with Flab’s Radio call not being heard when the player leaves the Bizarre.

  • Scotchmo’s oral thrush is under control, and his tongue is no longer white.

  • Melee fist combat impacts on human NPCs now have sounds, just like in the movies. PHOOSH!

  • We can hear your fear. The Fear status effect now has a sound.

  • Fixed an issue where Morningstar would be the only speaking companion on the world map.

  • Fixed one of the Scar Collector explosion animations to now display correctly.

  • Reagan AI has learned more animations. It’s a neural net processor, a learning computer.

  • Fixed an issue where the audio was missing when the player clicked on the ground to move the squad.

  • Fixed the lighting in the final combat encounter.

  • Fixed some overlapping VO between General Woodson and Corporal Gonzales in Ranger HQ.

  • Fixed an issue where Vic’s beard and eyebrows could appear duplicated and not set on his face right.

  • Fixed an issue where a second explosion sound could be heard every time the player entered the Airport Commune and Santa’s Workshop.

  • Healing using a Medic Pack should no longer play the heal sound effect multiple times.

  • The robot arms in the Department of Energy’s Scorpitron room now have sound.

  • Fixed the lighting in the Department of Energy near the Scorpitron.

  • Luck bonuses now play a sound effect when they trigger.

  • Shooting a Synth now has a satisfying impact sound.

  • Healing from an Antidote will now play a more appropriate sound effect.

  • Fixed the Kodiak character portrait so it no longer shows up as a black rectangle.

  • Animation improvements and polish for Drools. (Fun fact: ‘The Polish Drools’ was the name of our first synthpop band back in the 80’s.)

  • Bomb Hoppers have their SFX working now.

  • Adjusted the alignment and animations on the Main Menu selections.

  • Removed ‘Land of Confusion’ from playing in the shuttle in Airport Commune.

  • ‘America the Beautiful’ no longer plays outside of combat.

  • Wind effects should now properly be seen during the Ambush Site level.

  • Fixed the UI Contrast levels of non-highlighted Main Menu options.

  • Fixed various weapon models during character previews in the inventory screen.

  • Fixed a bug where character animations would freeze up if the player clicked too rapidly.

  • [Windows Store] Fixed an issue where tattoos were not properly showing up on tattooed faces.

Misc.

  • Auto detecting graphics settings now takes resolution into account when determining the recommended display settings.

  • Improvements have been made for 21:9 display resolutions.

  • Fixed an issue with save games in Yuma County Speedway taking an abnormally long time to load.

  • Found and squashed instances of infinite load times that could occur when transitioning from Ranger HQ as well as from other specific maps.

  • The Marshals’ Law pistol no longer says revolver under it.

  • The idle frequency for the Golden Toaster companion has been reduced. Also, the game now ensures that idling stops for endgame and conversation states.

  • Improvements have been made in regards to the pacing of the epilogue.

  • The game now displays an item’s level inside the tooltip (weapons and armor).

  • The toaster altar display name has been localized.

  • Fixed localization of the word “Any” in Polish.

  • Improvements have been made to player companions’ animation rotation speeds.

  • Changed out a certain Ranger’s coffee from decaf to fully caffeinated. This individual should no longer repeat the very things they just said.

  • Right clicking on the radio allows players to interact with movement on the world map.

  • Fixed an issue that caused background text to stretch across the screen.

  • Removed the Debug Crates from the Gas Mask Kids scene.

  • Fixed an issue that would cause the game to stay in windowed mode if it was swapped to fullscreen mode on a non-supported resolution.

  • The game should now properly launch in fullscreen mode, as selected.

  • Changed the save game naming clickable area to make it easier to click on.

  • Starting a new game and immediately returning to the main menu no longer displays letterboxing permanently.

  • Fixed an issue that caused the chat log to remain permanently stuck on the screen.

  • [Windows Store] Found some placeholder text in the Main Menu. Removed it.

The studio also had this to say regarding subtitles support for PlayStation gamers:

One important note for our PlayStation players, is that due to supernatural forces beyond our control, the new Brazilian Portuguese and Italian subtitles will unfortunately not be coming to PlayStation with this patch. We’re still trying to get them in before the new year, but as end-of-year console releases are tricky, this may be something to expect in early January.

If you haven’t picked up the game yet, go read our review to see what we made of it.

Source: Wasteland 3

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Alex Co

Father, gamer, games media vet, writer of words, killer of noobs.

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Modern Warfare & Warzone Update 1.30 Rolled Out, Includes Black Ops Cold War Integration

It’s finally time, Call of Duty fans! Infinity Ward has rolled out the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare & Warzone Update 1.30 patch, and while this releases a few fixes for Modern Warfare, this also integrates Call of Duty: Warzone into Black Ops Cold War starting with Season 1! Head on below for the official list of fixes.

Modern Warfare & Warzone Update 1.30 Patch Notes:

PLAYLIST UPDATE:

MODERN WARFARE:

  • Boots on the Ground War
  • Blueprint Gunfight
  • Face Off
  • SnD Double Down
  • Realism Gun Game

GENERAL FIXES:

  • Fix for a bug on Hackney Yard that could prevent Minotaur from performing an execution 
  • Fixed bug where some players were unable to obtain a Nuke after obtaining the correct number of kills 
  • Fixes to help the Wheelson path up various terrain 
  • Fixed a bug where the ‘Revive’ prompt while playing Cyber Attack was appearing inconsistently 

WEAPONS:

  • Fennec: Increased damage range
  • ISO: Increased damage range

WARZONE* 

Maps

  • Rebirth Island
    • An all-new Battle Royale experience for Warzone.
    • Intense, close-quarters action with a 40-player count and similar play style to Mini BR.
    • New Gulag available in traditional Battle Royale modes.
  • Verdansk 
    • New Gulag
      • Prepare to be dragged to an interrogation room, strapped to a chair, and thrown into an all-new arena: a makeshift replica of the original Nuketown map layout with both home interiors and backyard barricaded off, focusing the duel to a confined central arena.

Events

  • Rebirth Island Seasonal Event 
    • 16 new challenges for those dropping into Rebirth Island for the first time to earn Calling Cards, Charms, Emblems, Stickers, a special “Noxious” LMG Blueprint and more, along with additional secrets to uncover!

Modes

  • Rebirth Island: Resurgence
    • Respawn every 30 seconds until the final circle, or the last squad is left standing. 
    • Killing an enemy provides you with extreme clarity on where the rest of that enemy team is located. 
    • The Gulag is closed during this event (likely for some deep fumigation).

Weapons

  • Black Ops Cold War weapons added:
    • 6 Assault Rifles, including the new Groza AR in the Season One Battle Pass System
    • 6 Submachine Guns, including the new Mac-10 SMG in the Season One Battle Pass System
    • 4 Marksman (Tactical) Rifles
    • 3 Light Machine Guns
    • 3 Sniper Rifles
    • 3 Pistols
    • 2 Shotguns
    • 3 Launchers, including the M79 Special launcher
    • 1 Melee weapon

Operators

  • Stitch (Warsaw Pact)
    • Unlocked via Battle Pass Level 0.
    • Legendary Operator Skin unlocked at Tier 100.
  • Vargas (Warsaw Pact)
    • Black Ops Cold War Operator available in Warzone starting in Season One.
  • Song (NATO)
    • Black Ops Cold War Operator available in Warzone starting in Season One.

Vehicles

  • Attack Helicopter
    • Similar to the regular Helicopter but with one major exception: Mounted on both side rails is a belt-fed minigun that can be controlled by squad members. 
    • Available on both Verdansk and Rebirth Island at the start of Season One.

Progression

  • Career
    • Added new Career menu to track progression from Military Ranks to Season and Prestige Levels.
    • Progression menu removed from Barracks.
    • See Global section above for full Cross-Game Progression and Prestige details.
  • Gunsmith
    • Attachments unlocked for Black Ops Cold War weapons will be available through the Gunsmith, allowing players to modify weapons for use within Warzone.

Challenges

  • Daily Challenges 
    • Coming to Season One: Receive a set of 3 new Daily Challenges every day from across 3 categories: Reconnaissance, Combat, and Support.
    • Swap Challenges in and out to suit your play style and optimize your progression.
  • Warzone Missions
    • Mastery Challenges and Missions from previous seasons remain available.

General

  • Removed the Juggernaut reward from Subway and Stadium Easter Eggs. 
  • “Strange Magic” / “Time of the Season” Watch will no longer be visible through walls. 
  • Players will be longer be able to clip inside of Loadout packages. 
  • Added collision to Airport to prevent an exploit.
  • Addressed an issue where Park or Baker Operator Skin listings could show a repeating “Name” skin that could kick the player back to the menu when hovered over.
  • Addressed instances where War Tracks could continue to play when exiting vehicle

GLOBAL

Battle Pass*

  • Up to 100 tiers of unlockable items available in the Battle Pass System at the start of Season One, including two free weapons (Mac-10 at Tier 15, Groza at Tier 31), plus new Operator Skins, Weapon Blueprints, War Tracks, 1300 COD Points, 2XP Tokens, and more.
  • Black Ops Cold War Battle Pass System progress can be earned in Black Ops Cold War, Warzone, and Modern Warfare at the start of Season One.
  • Unlocked Vehicle Skins will be unique to each game (Black Ops Cold War and Warzone).

Progression*

  • Cross-Game Progression
    • Player progression will be synchronized across Black Ops Cold War, Warzone, and Modern Warfare at the start of Season One based on your current Season Level in Black Ops Cold War.
    • All previous unlocks from Black Ops Cold War and Modern Warfare (weapons, Perks, Scorestreaks, or Killstreaks) will remain unlocked.
    • 1,000 new Season Levels available at the start of Season One after completing Military Ranks.
  • Season One Progression
    • Level 50: New Prestige, Emblem, Prestige Key, Weapon Blueprint, Battle Pass Tier Skip
    • Level 100: New Prestige, Emblem, Prestige Key, Battle Pass Tier Skip
    • Level 150: New Prestige, Emblem, Prestige Key, Battle Pass Tier Skip
    • Level 200: New Prestige, Emblem, Prestige Key, Battle Pass Tier Skip, Prestige Master Calling Card, all Season Challenges unlocked
    • Level 250-1,000: New Prestige Key every 50 levels

Challenges*

  • Season Challenges
    • Unique sets of 20 Season Challenges added for both Multiplayer and Zombies.
    • Challenges are unlocked every 10 Season Levels, with all Season Challenges unlocked by Level 200.
    • Once unlocked, players can continue to earn progress toward completing these Challenges during future seasons.
    • New Calling Cards available for completing all Season Challenges, plus a Master Calling Card for completing the full set each season.

Operator Missions*

  • All Operator Skins come with Operator Missions in Season One.
  • Play MP, Zombies, and Warzone to earn additional XP rewards and Operator Skin variants.

Stability

  • Added various stability fixes.

UI

  • Addressed various UI issues.

That’s it! We’re unsure how Warzone updates will work in the future: whether it’s going to be released alongside Black Ops Cold War updates or on its own. That said, we’re going to keep an eye out and will let our readers know once a new one is live.

Source: Treyarch, Infinity Ward

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Alex Co

Father, gamer, games media vet, writer of words, killer of noobs.

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Black Ops Cold War Season 1 Patch Notes, New Content Available Revealed

While players managed to download the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Season 1 data file very early today (or yesterday for most), most of the new content included can’t be accessed until Season 1 starts later at 11 p.m. PT/2 a.m. ET. Not only that, but players didn’t know what changes were made with the patch, though that’s changing now with the Black Ops Cold War Season 1 patch notes!

Head on below to see the weapon tuning changes, new content roll out that will be available later today and more.

Black Ops Cold War Season 1 Patch Notes:

Patch Notes: Black Ops Cold War, Warzone, and Season One Content

Read below for patch notes for our latest Black Ops Cold War game update, as well as all the new content and experiences to expect in Black Ops Cold War and Warzone when Season One drops on December 16th.

* = Denotes content or feature available at the start of Season One.

GLOBAL

Battle Pass*

  • Up to 100 tiers of unlockable items available in the Battle Pass System at the start of Season One, including two free weapons (Mac-10 at Tier 15, Groza at Tier 31), plus new Operator Skins, Weapon Blueprints, War Tracks, 1300 COD Points, 2XP Tokens, and more.
  • Black Ops Cold War Battle Pass System progress can be earned in Black Ops Cold War, Warzone, and Modern Warfare at the start of Season One.
  • Unlocked Vehicle Skins will be unique to each game (Black Ops Cold War and Warzone).

Progression*

  • Cross-Game Progression
    • Player progression will be synchronized across Black Ops Cold War, Warzone, and Modern Warfare at the start of Season One based on your current Season Level in Black Ops Cold War.
    • All previous unlocks from Black Ops Cold War and Modern Warfare (weapons, Perks, Scorestreaks, or Killstreaks) will remain unlocked.
    • 1,000 new Season Levels available at the start of Season One after completing Military Ranks.
  • Season One Progression
    • Level 50: New Prestige, Emblem, Prestige Key, Weapon Blueprint, Battle Pass Tier Skip
    • Level 100: New Prestige, Emblem, Prestige Key, Battle Pass Tier Skip
    • Level 150: New Prestige, Emblem, Prestige Key, Battle Pass Tier Skip
    • Level 200: New Prestige, Emblem, Prestige Key, Battle Pass Tier Skip, Prestige Master Calling Card, all Season Challenges unlocked
    • Level 250-1,000: New Prestige Key every 50 levels

Challenges*

  • Season Challenges
    • Unique sets of 20 Season Challenges added for both Multiplayer and Zombies.
    • Challenges are unlocked every 10 Season Levels, with all Season Challenges unlocked by Level 200.
    • Once unlocked, players can continue to earn progress toward completing these Challenges during future seasons.
    • New Calling Cards available for completing all Season Challenges, plus a Master Calling Card for completing the full set each season.

Operator Missions*

  • All Operator Skins come with Operator Missions in Season One.
  • Play MP, Zombies, and Warzone to earn additional XP rewards and Operator Skin variants.

Stability

  • Added various stability fixes.

UI

  • Addressed various UI issues.

MULTIPLAYER

Maps

  • The Pines (6v6)*
    • Coming to Core and Hardcore map rotation at the start of Season One.
  • Raid (6v6)*
    • Coming to Core and Hardcore map rotation at the start of Season One.
  • Nuketown ’84 Holiday (6v6)*
    • Coming to Core and Hardcore map rotation at the start of Season One.
    • Available in Nuketown ’84 Holiday 24/7 playlist at the start of Season One. Hardcore Nuketown ’84 Holiday also available in Quick Play.
    • Replaces Nuketown ’84 during Season One holiday event.
  • Gunfight Maps (2v2)*
    • Coming to Gunfight mode at the start of Season One:
      • Game Show
      • ICBM
      • U-Bahn
      • KGB
  • Nuketown ’84 (6v6)
    • Adjusted spawns to reduce spawning in longer lines of sight to reduce spawn-trapping.
    • Added spawns in and around mid-map to reduce spawn-trapping.

Game Modes

  • Gunfight*
    • Available at the start of Season One.
    • 2v2 showdowns. First duo to win six rounds wins the match.
    • Includes four new maps: Game Show, ICBM, U-Bahn, and KGB.
  • Prop Hunt*
    • Available at the start of Season One.
    • One team of Hunters scours the map for the other team disguised as Props throughout the environment.
    • Map list includes The Pines, Cartel, Checkmate, Moscow, Nuketown ’84 Holiday, and Garrison.
  • Hardpoint
    • Additional spawns added for all Hardpoint zones on Crossroads Strike.
    • Adjusted spawns for Hardpoint zone 2 on Moscow.
    • Addressed an issue where players could capture a Hardpoint outside of the yellow house on Nuketown ‘84.
  • Domination
    • Addressed an issue where zone borders would show as contested before the round started. 
    • Addressed an issue where the announcer would incorrectly state an “almost won” line to the losing team.
  • Free-For-All
    • Players will now join matches already in progress less frequently.
  • Search & Destroy
    • The bomb waypoint will now fade when in line of sight.
  • Control
    • Overtime Defense will now be given to the team that has fewer total deaths during the previous 4 rounds.
    • Removed several defender spawns that were too close to the A zone on Garrison.
  • VIP Escort
    • Addressed an issue where the VIP’s third-person model would not match their first-person view during Exfil. 
  • Fireteam
    • Addressed an issue where the Cruise Missile HUD effects would play while in the Fireteam Spawn overhead menu.
    • Addressed an issue where the Fireteam Spawn overhead HUD effects would be present during Best Play.
    • Fixed a rare crash in Fireteam: Dirty Bomb related to the Sentry Turret.
  • Custom Games
    • CDL Control
      • Reduced capture time from 60 seconds to 45 seconds.
      • Addressed an issue where the lives remaining UI would not properly display the correct number of lives.

Featured Playlists*

  • Raid the Mall
    • Available at the start of Season One. Includes a moshpit of 6v6 modes on Raid and The Pines.
  • Gunfight
    • Available at the start of Season One.
  • Prop Hunt
    • Available at the start of Season One.
  • Nuketown ’84 Holiday 24/7
    • Available at the start of Season One. Includes a moshpit of 6v6 modes on Nuketown ’84 Holiday.

Weapons 

  • New Weapons*
    • Mac-10 SMG available for free at Tier 15 in the Battle Pass System at the start of Season One.
    • Groza assault rifle available for free at Tier 31 in the Battle Pass System at the start of Season One.
  • Assault Rifles
    • AK-47 
      • Reduced headshot multiplier.
      • Reduced damage for 20″ Spetsnaz RPK Barrel.
    • Krig 6
      • Reduced headshot multiplier.
    • FFAR 1 
      • Increased damage ranges.
      • Reduced recoil.
  • Submachine Guns
    • Milano 821
      • Increased effective damage ranges.
    • KSP 45 
      • Increased effective damage ranges.
    • Bullfrog 
      • Increased effective damage ranges.
  • Tactical Rifles
    • M16
      • Reduced maximum effective range.
      • Reduced fire rate.
    • Tactical Rifle Charlie
      • Reduced headshot multiplier.
      • Reduced maximum effective range.
      • Reduced fire rate.
      • Reduced damage for 19.8” Task Force Barrel.
    • Attachments
      • Adjusted Barrel attachments that improve fire rates for tactical rifles.
  • Light Machine Guns
    • M60
      • Increased ADS speed.
      • Increased weapon swap speeds.
  • Sniper Rifles
    • Sniper Rifle Charlie
      • Increased damage multiplier for upper chest to allow for a one-hit kill without attachments.
      • 22.6″ Tiger Team Barrel will now increase one-hit kill zone to upper arms.
      • Recoil adjusted for higher shot power.
  • Pistols
    • Magnum
      • Increased effective damage ranges.
      • Increased fire rate.
  • Shotguns
    • Hauer 77 
      • Decreased damage ranges.
      • Decreased damage range for 25.2” Task Force Barrel.
    • Shotgun Bravo
      • Decreased damage ranges.
      • Decreased fire rate.
      • Decreased damage range for 24.8” Task Force Barrel.
    • Attachments
      • Adjusted Barrel attachments that improve fire rates for shotguns.
  • General
    • Reduced the amount of player knockback when being damaged by bullet weapons.

Perks

  • Flak Jacket
    • Reduced explosive damage mitigation.
  • Forward Intel
    • Increased viewable mini-map area.
  • Ninja
    • Removed protection from Field Mic detection.
  • Spycraft
    • Added full immunity to Field Mic detection.

Equipment

  • Frag Grenade
    • Slightly increased damage.
  • Molotov
    • Slightly increased damage.
  • Stimshot
    • Reduced heal speed.

Field Upgrades

  • Field Mic
    • No longer detects users who are crouch-walking, ADS walking, or swimming. 
  • Gas Mine
    • Increased damage.
    • Removed detonation delay.
    • Reduced how much a player will be slowed when affected by the gas.

Scorestreaks 

  • H.A.R.P.
    • High-Altitude Reconnaissance Plane shows both enemy positions and their directions on the mini-map.
  • Cruise Missile
    • Addressed an issue where the Cruise Missile HUD effects would display after a Cruise Missile killcam. 
    • Addressed an issue where using a Cruise Missile from a Care Package could clear score earned toward the player’s equipped Cruise Missile Scorestreak. 
  • RC-XD
    • Addressed an issue that allowed the RC-XD to push teammates.

General 

  • Quick Play will now display the player’s last selected tab between Core and Hardcore by default.
  • Addressed an issue where Friendly Fire penalties would be applied for self-kills in Hardcore modes.
  • Addressed an issue where the camera could not access the entire map in Crossroads.

ZOMBIES

General

  • Added support for 2-player splitscreen.

Stability

  • Added various stability fixes.
  • Added stability improvements for Host Migration.

Weapons*

  • Mac-10
    • Mac-10 SMG added to Mystery Box with weapon rarity/attachment variations once owned.
  • Groza
    • Groza assault rifle added to Mystery Box with weapon rarity/attachment variations once owned.

Die Maschine

  • Support*
    • Cruise Missile
      • Cruise Missile added as new Support weapon starting in Season One.
  • Leaderboard*
    • “Die Maschine” leaderboard updated to start tracking Highest Round completed instead of Total Rounds completed.
  • Salvage Rewards
    • Refactored Round Milestone Salvage awards to ensure a more even distribution and higher amount awarded to all players.
  • Exfil
    • Addressed an issue that could prevent zombies from reaching the Exfil area fast enough to be cleared.
    • Addressed an issue that sometimes caused an excessive number of Megaton enemies to spawn during the Exfil event.
    • Addressed a rare issue that could cause the Megaton to become stuck outside of the map during the Exfil event.
    • Addressed an issue that allowed completing Exfil while in the Dark Aether in the “Die Maschine 20 Round” playlist.
  • Field Upgrades
    • Addressed an issue that could cause the player to lose charge on a Field Upgrade when swapping classes to one that had the same Field Upgrade equipped.
    • Addressed an issue where Field Upgrades that have an active duration were able to earn progress toward the next charge while still active.
  • Equipment
    • Addressed an issue that prevented the Cymbal Monkey from automatically being picked up and stacked if one was already in the player’s inventory.
  • Pack-a-Punch
    • Addressed a timing-specific issue that caused the Pack-A-Punch to become non-functional.
  • UI
    • Addressed an issue that could cause the “Swap and Attach” prompt to appear on weapon pickup prompts under specific circumstances.
  • General
    • Closed various map exploit areas.
    • Addressed an issue that could cause the left hand of a Dual Wield weapon from receiving Weapon Skill upgrades.
    • Addressed an issue that prevented players from Pinging the Mystery Box.
    • Addressed a rare issue that could prevent Plaguehounds from triggering their death visual effects.

Dead Ops Arcade 3

  • Gameplay
    • Added various enemy and weapon tuning.
    • Closed various map exploits.
  • Leaderboards*
    • Leaderboard stats reset for Solo/Duo/Trio/Quad (boss defeats, high score, high round) at the start of Season One to allow for a fresh start based on updated gameplay tuning.

Onslaught (PS4/PS5)

  • Gameplay
    • Increased early Surge spawn rates for a faster-paced experience.
    • Filling up the Surge meter now immediately clears the area.
  • Maps
    • The Pines*
      • Available in Onslaught at the start of Season One.
    • Nuketown ’84
      • Added various exploit fixes.
  • Enemies
    • Addressed an issue that prevented Plaguehound toxic kills from contributing to Orb Power.
    • Addressed various pathing issues for the Megaton.
  • General
    • Addressed a rare issue that could cause Salvage to drop in Onslaught when using certain attachments.

PC

Stability

  • Added various stability fixes.
  • Addressed an issue that could cause the game to occasionally crash when quitting the game.

General

  • Updated recommended driver version for NVIDIA GPU to 457.30.
  • Updated recommended driver version for AMD GPU to 20.11.01.

WARZONE* (Update available 11PM PT Dec. 15)

Maps

  • Rebirth Island
    • An all-new Battle Royale experience for Warzone.
    • Intense, close-quarters action with a 40-player count and similar play style to Mini BR.
    • New Gulag available in traditional Battle Royale modes.
  • Verdansk 
    • New Gulag
      • Prepare to be dragged to an interrogation room, strapped to a chair, and thrown into an all-new arena: a makeshift replica of the original Nuketown map layout with both home interiors and backyard barricaded off, focusing the duel to a confined central arena.

Events

  • Rebirth Island Seasonal Event 
    • 16 new challenges for those dropping into Rebirth Island for the first time to earn Calling Cards, Charms, Emblems, Stickers, a special “Noxious” LMG Blueprint and more, along with additional secrets to uncover!

Modes

  • Rebirth Island: Resurgence
    • Respawn every 30 seconds until the final circle, or the last squad is left standing. 
    • Killing an enemy provides you with extreme clarity on where the rest of that enemy team is located. 
    • The Gulag is closed during this event (likely for some deep fumigation).

Weapons

  • Black Ops Cold War weapons added:
    • 6 Assault Rifles, including the new Groza AR in the Season One Battle Pass System
    • 6 Submachine Guns, including the new Mac-10 SMG in the Season One Battle Pass System
    • 4 Marksman (Tactical) Rifles
    • 3 Light Machine Guns
    • 3 Sniper Rifles
    • 3 Pistols
    • 2 Shotguns
    • 3 Launchers, including the M79 Special launcher
    • 1 Melee weapon

Operators

  • Stitch (Warsaw Pact)
    • Unlocked via Battle Pass Level 0.
    • Legendary Operator Skin unlocked at Tier 100.
  • Vargas (Warsaw Pact)
    • Black Ops Cold War Operator available in Warzone starting in Season One.
  • Song (NATO)
    • Black Ops Cold War Operator available in Warzone starting in Season One.

Vehicles

  • Attack Helicopter
    • Similar to the regular Helicopter but with one major exception: Mounted on both side rails is a belt-fed minigun that can be controlled by squad members. 
    • Available on both Verdansk and Rebirth Island at the start of Season One.

Progression

  • Career
    • Added new Career menu to track progression from Military Ranks to Season and Prestige Levels.
    • Progression menu removed from Barracks.
    • See Global section above for full Cross-Game Progression and Prestige details.
  • Gunsmith
    • Attachments unlocked for Black Ops Cold War weapons will be available through the Gunsmith, allowing players to modify weapons for use within Warzone.

Challenges

  • Daily Challenges 
    • Coming to Season One: Receive a set of 3 new Daily Challenges every day from across 3 categories: Reconnaissance, Combat, and Support.
    • Swap Challenges in and out to suit your play style and optimize your progression.
  • Warzone Missions
    • Mastery Challenges and Missions from previous seasons remain available.

General

  • Removed the Juggernaut reward from Subway and Stadium Easter Eggs. 
  • “Strange Magic” / “Time of the Season” Watch will no longer be visible through walls. 
  • Players will be longer be able to clip inside of Loadout packages. 
  • Added collision to Airport to prevent an exploit.
  • Addressed an issue where Park or Baker Operator Skin listings could show a repeating “Name” skin that could kick the player back to the menu when hovered over.
  • Addressed instances where War Tracks could continue to play when exiting vehicle.

If there’s any stealth changes made by Treyarch, we’ll be sure to let our readers know.

Source: Treyarch

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Alex Co

Father, gamer, games media vet, writer of words, killer of noobs.

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Ponpu Review: “Intergalacduck” Adventure

This past console generation saw a massive surge in indie and small developer games being released. With the increased accessibility of publishing options and all three big console manufacturers creating robust indie developer programs, anyone with passion and the determination to get a project across the finish line is likely to be able to put it out in some form. The result has been a huge boom in unique indie and small developer game experiences no big triple AAA publisher would normally risk. Both for nostalgic purposes and I imagine for costs sake, a fairly large portion of these games have had pixel art graphics. But with Ponpu, Argentinian-based developer Purple Tree Studios, mostly known for their series of Cartoon Network licensed games, break this mold. Read on for our Ponpu Review!

Out of This World

Ponpu is at its core an action exploration game with an art style that makes a serious impression. Normally I prefer to not start off by talking about the visuals but I think the visuals are this game’s best feature. The whole game is done in a mostly-black-and-white drawn mildly anime style. The only color being the four different variants of eyes the space ducks you’re playing as have and the feathers and keys you’re collecting in the single player. The striking visuals are far and away the most memorable part of the game. While not as singular as Cuphead for example, it stands on its own. If you like graphic design or put a lot of stock in graphics and visuals then this game is likely worth the cost of admission.

A Quack Word On Story

The story is presented in a short but striking psychedelic introductory cutscene. The Duck God has awakened and sent out his servants to overtake the galaxy. The Secret Duck stands opposed to this tyranny and has taken under his wing one of Duck God’s servants that accidentally fell out of the giant eggs flying through space to invade the cosmos. Plainly said, the fiction is wild if not strongly emphasized.

I want to touch briefly on the audio design. It isn’t nearly as unique or dramatic as the visuals. It does its job and it isn’t obstructive to the game, but it’s basic. This is one of the better “listen to a podcast or your own music” games I’ve played recently. There is one exception to this though. The voice for the announcer at the title screen and at the beginning of a level run is an incredibly stark contrast to what you’re seeing. I was actually pretty taken aback when I first heard it and I kind of dig it. I think it adds to some of the bizarre nature of what the game seems to be going for.

Where the Rubber Ducky Meets the Road

The single-player campaign is split into six worlds, each with three levels and a boss. The gameplay is clearly inspired by old school puzzle and arcade games. It’s simple, but it has the associated difficulty that those older games have. As a cosmic duck, you have four abilities at your disposal: dropping an exploding egg, deploying a shield that works similar to the shield in Super Smash Bros. in that it slowly deteriorates and then stuns you if you hold it, and a selection of egg bombs with special attributes like digging into the ground as a mine or staying in place until you detonate them. The main mechanic is spitting out an explosive egg and then pumping your shield to send it sliding in a straight line. In fact the whole game is constructed on a grid system that the player character and the enemies walk along. Ponpu is built on the precision of having the game run on the four cardinal directions.

Deploying your shield both launches a deployed egg, and stuns nearby enemies. Just like ducks do in real life!

What Ponpu is not so great at is variety. There are a handful of different types of breakable obstacles in the levels, and even fewer types of enemies. Each of the six worlds has a different theme; things like Caves, Computer Labs, and Lagoons. But for the most part these are all skin swaps on the same elements. You smash things with your bombs, running out of the way to avoid them bouncing off the walls back at you, and try to kill enemies before they get to you. The different worlds and themes end up playing largely the same just with increased difficulty. I’m not necessarily saying that this is a knock on the game. But if you aren’t really into these mechanics or really taken with the art style, it can be repetitive.

There are two different saving graces for the campaign: The length and the bosses. The game does get difficult, and in my run I found myself having to redo levels several times, but ultimately, it’s only 18 levels that are roughly 10 minutes each assuming you complete it on a single run. Where the game gets interesting is in the boss battles. Each opens to a large rectangular room and you have to learn the bosses pattern and figure out how to exploit it. The easiest comparison most might make is Dark Souls, but this is more in the old tradition of the top down Legend of Zelda games and the like. These fights are probably the thing I enjoyed the most about Ponpu. 

Four Little Psychedelic Cosmic Ducks in a Row

The repetitive nature of the single-player might not be the hold back for people it normally would be though, as Ponpu has an emphasis on multiplayer. Three of the four options on the main menu are for the different multiplayer mode. There’s Coin Collector, Paint Battle, and Deathmatch. As one can imagine these involve up to four players running around one of a number of stages sliding egg bombs towards each other. 

Multiplayer can at times look like a high-five party at The Color Run.

The rules for each mode are what you would expect. Sliding bombs in Paint Battle causes them to paint the ground your color and whoever has the highest percentage of the map their color… well, you get the idea. In my time with the game I was not able to find an online match. Granted I was playing on an Xbox One so I imagine that players on a PC or PS4 might not have the same issue. It wasn’t a big deal though, as Ponpu’s multiplayer is fully playable in local play against humans as well as the option to play against bots. The multiplayer is fun and chaotic. It’s the same mechanics as single player, but it’s good for some fun. I imagine especially so to play with people who don’t normally play a lot of games or with kids.

Ultimately, I would say that Ponpu is a good game, if not perhaps not a great or superior one. It’s something I would recommend if you need a palate cleanser or something that isn’t complex. If you like this type of combination of old school mechanics and modern art style I’d say you ought to give it a try. And if nothing else, it’s a nice quick game that seems perfect for an adult with a job and responsibilities.  I’ll say this, I’m tempted to reach back into Purple Tree Studio’s back catalogue. Here’s hoping they get more opportunities to make original content.

Score: 7.5/10

Pros:

  • Fantastic Anime Inspired Visual Design
  • Psychedelic Fiction
  • Fun Fast Paced Multiplayer
  • An Appropriately Short Snappy Campaign.
  • Fun Bosses

Cons:

  • Can be Overly Repetitive
  • An Overall Thin Experience
  • Some difficulty finding Online Matches

_______________________________________________________________________________

A Ponpu review code was provided by the publisher. Game reviewed on Xbox One S. Click HERE to read SP1st and MP1st’s review and scoring policy. Ponpu is now available on all platforms.

Tim Lawrence

Home > News

Among Us Is Now Available on the Nintendo Switch

Fans of Innersloth’s popular multiplayer game Among Us can now play the social deduction title on a brand new platform, as Nintendo has released their port of the game for the Nintendo Switch today, and it’s priced at a firm $5.

Here’s the reveal trailer for the port — which was featured on the latest Nintendo Direct.

For those new to Among Us, the concept is pretty simple — 4-10 players are gathered onboard a ship, where tasks are done by Crewmates while sabotage and killing off members are done by Imposters. The game was originally released on Android and iOS on June 2018, before getting a port for PC on November that same year and now for the Nintendo Switch. The game has won several awards and accolades, including “Best Mobile Game” and “Best Multiplayer Game” at The Game Awards this year.

Here’s the official description from Nintendo’s page for the game.

An online and local party game of teamwork and betrayal for 4-10 players…in space!

Play with 4-10 player online or via local WiFi as you attempt to prepare your spaceship for departure, but beware as one or more random players among the Crew are Impostors bent on killing everyone!

If you missed it, check out our previous feature on the new Airship map coming to Among Us here.

Tim Villasor

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Overwatch Update 3.02 December 15 Brings Winter Wonderland 2020

It’s the holidays, and that means holiday-themed events are coming to online games and Overwatch is no different. Blizzard has released the Overwatch update 3.02 December 15 patch and this introduces the Winter Wonderland 2020 event, alongside new features, bug fixes and more.

Overwatch Update 3.02 December 15 Patch Notes:

WINTER WONDERLAND 2020

Overwatch Winter Wonderland is back. Unwrap new cosmetics, earn weekly rewards, and freeze your foes in the new 4v4 holiday brawl, Freezethaw Elimination!

Celebrate the season with Winter Loot Boxes. Unlock festive new seasonal items—including legendary skins like Conductor Reinhardt, Ice Empress Moira, and Penguin Mei—along with wintery items from previous years. Plus, play the returning Snowball Deathmatch, Yeti Hunter, and Snowball Offensive holiday brawls!

Learn more about Winter Wonderland on PlayOverwatch.com.

GENERAL UPDATES

New Feature: Priority Pass

In an effort to help address the population imbalance between Tank, Support, and Damage roles, and the longer queue times that Damage players often encounter due to this imbalance, we’re introducing the new Priority Pass feature. Players can earn Priority Passes by choosing Flex when they queue, with more passes earned for wins than for losses. Use a Priority Pass to decrease queue time for a role currently experiencing higher traffic.

Priority Passes may not be used when playing a group of 5 or more. Since we try to pair large parties against other large parties, and parties this large already contain a good balance of roles, we do not anticipate that using a Priority Pass would actually reduce queue times. As such, we don’t want players to waste their passes if this wouldn’t have a noticeable effect towards the feature’s goal.

Feature Update: Replay Viewer Custom Spectator Options

We have added a new options menu to the Replay Viewer, accessible via the Media Controls. Our goal is to give our players more control over how the Replay Viewer looks and behaves in order to navigate replays more easily, as well as make awesome content! These additional settings include the ability to independently toggle UI elements, modify player outline strength, disable objective capture sounds, and adjust the spectator camera behavior. We’ve also added 0.75x and 1.75x playback speeds to give you finer control.

New Options:

  • Team 1 Banner
  • Team 1 Heroes
  • Team 2 Banner
  • Team 2 Heroes
  • Status Messages
  • Playback Indicators
  • Game Mode Specific HUD
  • Kill Feed
  • Player Names
  • Player Health Bars
  • Player Outline Strength
  • First-Person Health
  • First-Person Ultimate Meter
  • First-Person Ability and Weapon Info
  • First-Person Crosshair
  • First-Person Hero HUD
  • First-Person Activity Feed
  • Objective Capture Sounds
  • Time Skip Interval Length
  • FOV Change Per Zoom
  • FOV Interpolation Rate
  • Maximum Free Camera FOV
General
  • Mix of game sounds has been adjusted to give third person footsteps more prominence

WORKSHOP UPDATES

New Workshop Features
  • [PC-Only] Inspector Log File

When the setting Enable Workshop Inspector Log File [PC-ONLY] is enabled, any log entries written to the Inspector Log will be written out to a local file on disk. When the custom game ends (or if you disconnect), the current log file will close. A new log file will be opened each time you are in a new custom game that writes out a log line via Log To Inspector.

New Workshop Values
  • String Slice

BUG FIXES

General
  • Fixed a bug that caused the health display for heroes with a small amount of damage to appear at full health
  • Fixed a bug that caused the “Default to Friends” option on the competitive leaderboards to not persist between game sessions
  • Fixed a bug that caused the “Leave as Group” option while leaving games to not persist between game sessions
  • Fixed a bug with Role Queue Beta season stats displaying the same ratings for all roles
  • Fixed a bug that allowed some damage-over-time abilities to charge certain heroes’ ultimate abilities during the duration of their activated ultimate ability
  • Fixed a bug that caused pain exertion sounds to not trigger properly
Maps

Eichenwalde

  • Fixed a bug that caused broken Castle doors to disappear from the game client after a player respawn

Ilios

  • Fixed a bug that allowed players to land on an unintended map location

Temple of Anubis

  • Fixed a bug that caused the first capture point to have a higher capture point volume than intended
Heroes

Baptiste

  • Fixed a bug that resulted in his left forearm animating incorrectly during his Scout emote

D.Va

  • Fixed a bug that would allow D.Va to use Call Mech immediately after ejecting from her mech in rare conditions

Echo

  • Fixed a bug that caused her hero portrait to reflect a cloned unit during end of round flows of PvE game modes
  • Fixed a bug that would cause her to become stuck in the previous spawn point

Sigma

  • Fixed a bug with his Medal victory pose that would cause him to clip into allies during specific victory lineups

Sombra

  • Fixed a bug with Sombra’s hair animation not appearing correctly during her “Hacked” victory pose

Widowmaker

  • Fixed a bug that caused her to spawn with an abnormal amount of health

Wrecking Ball

  • Fixed a bug that caused the length of his grapple ability to be shorter than normal
  • Fixed a bug that caused the camera to appear beneath the ground if Wrecking Ball shifts into ball mode while his model is still loading

Once we get a new patch for the game, we’ll let our readers know. You can read up about the Winter Wonderland 2020 event and the skins in it here.

Source: Overwatch

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Alex Co

Father, gamer, games media vet, writer of words, killer of noobs.

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Hitman 3 Opening Cinematic Prepares Us for The End of The World of Assassination Trilogy

Fans of the Hitman franchise are no doubt ready to see the final chapter of The World of Assassination Trilogy, and IO Interactive is prepared to deliver as they release the official opening cinematic to Hitman 3 — which gives us a glimpse of where the story will go for Agent 47 and his mission.

Here’s the opening cinematic for the game as released by Team Hitman.

Accompanying the cinematic is the overview of the plot and where the story goes.

Agent 47 is reunited with his long-lost friend Lucas Grey as they begin their hunt for the partners of Providence. Witness the opening cinematic to the game and prepare for the dramatic conclusion to the World of Assassination trilogy.
In case you missed our previous feature on the different ways to kill on Hitman 3, check it out here.
Hitman 3 will be released for PS5, -S4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Google Stadia, PC, and Nintendo Switch via Cloud-based gaming on January 20, 2021.

Tim Villasor

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Cyberpunk 2077 Developers Address Performance Issues and Why the Game Didn’t Get Delayed Again

Following the negative backlash and subsequent apology made over the numerous bugs and performance issues the PS4 and Xbox One versions of Cyberpunk 2077 had, CD Projekt Red followed things up by addressing those problems during an unscheduled investor call why they did not decide to delay the game again after receiving so much criticism for the performance of the last-gen release of the long awaited game.

During the investor call addressing numerous questions which was reported by IGN, CD Projekt Senior Vice President Michał Nowakowski basically admitted that they they did not look into the last-gen versions properly, and didn’t feel any pressure to launch or delay the game again after it went through three different release date changes within this year.

“I wouldn’t say that we felt any external or internal pressure to launch on the date – other than the normal pressure, which is typical for any release.”

“It is more about us looking – as was previously stated – at the PC and next-gen performance rather than current-gen. We definitely did not spend enough time looking at that.”

The interview went on to inquire how the game passed certification for release on XBox and PlayStation, which Nowakowski points out was “a matter of trust” from the companies to theirs.

“In terms of the certification process and the third parties,” Nowakowski explained, “this is definitely on our side. I can only assume that they trusted that we’re going to fix things upon release, and that obviously did not come together exactly as we had planned.”

Despite hinting at the possibility that they could have the delayed the last-gen versions and went with just a PC release, Nowakowski made it clear that the Next-Gen versions were not ready to be released either.

“[Next-gen consoles] get a completely different version of the game, so it’s not like we could have decided at any point recently to ‘flip the switch’, so to say, and change the old-gen version to the next-gen version and release only on next-gens. As you have noticed, there is no native next-gen release. The game runs on next-gens and takes advantage of how next-gens are performing, but it’s not like we had a next-gen version in our hands and decided to keep it on the shelf.”

Be sure to check out more news and updates on Cyberpunk 2077 here in MP1st.

Cyberpunk 2077 is now out for PS4, Xbox One, Google Stadia, and PC. The PS5 and Xbox Series X|S versions will be released at a later date.

Tim Villasor

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Minecraft Update 2.20 December 15 Drops 1.16.201 Changes

Mojang has deployed a rather small update to the super hit Minecraft and it’s live now! This update will show up as the Minecraft update 2.20 December 15 patch for console gamers, or what the studio calls the 1.16.201 patch. Head on below for the official list of changes.

Minecraft Update 2.20 December 15 Patch Notes:

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Alex Co

Father, gamer, games media vet, writer of words, killer of noobs.

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Neverwinter Update 8.43 December 15 Now Live for Consoles

Cryptic Studios has released a new Neverwinter patch on PS4 and Xbox One! The Neverwinter update 8.43 December 15 patch brings a small number of fixes and gameplay-related changes.

Neverwinter Update 8.43 December 15 Patch Notes:

Release Notes

Items and Economy

General

  • Rage of Bel rings are no longer unique, so should be retrievable from mail, auctions, etc. once more. They now more directly state in their tooltip that only one can be equipped at a time.
    • Known issue: There’s currently a typo stating that players can only wear “on” at a time.

Art, Audio, and Animation

Animation

  • The Siege Bear combat power’s animation, FX, and damage dealt should now more closely synchronize.

Character Art

  • Certain Divine Raid items now properly display, instead of just being invisible.
  • Divine armor from the Redeemed Citadel should have fewer clipping issues.
  • More missing visuals for Dragonborn characters have been added, mostly focusing on Redeemed Citadel rewards.

Once we get wind of the next Neverwinter patch, we’ll be sure to let our readers know.

Source: ArcGames

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Alex Co

Father, gamer, games media vet, writer of words, killer of noobs.

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New Destiny 2 Weekly Reset December 15, 2020

Guardians, the new Destiny 2 weekly reset December 15, 2020 activities refresh summary is now live on MP1st! Same as before, we have the full list of modifiers, Nightfall mission, rewards and more all in one handy spot!

New Destiny 2 Weekly Reset December 15, 2020:

Nightfall – The Ordeal: The Scarlet Keep

Modifiers:

  • Nightfall: The Ordeal: Adept
    • Martyr: Exploder units have more health.
  • Nightfall: The Ordeal: Hero
    • All previous modifiers
    • Champions: Unstoppable: This mode contains Unstoppable Champions, which cannot be stopped without an Unstoppable mod.
    • Champions: Barrier: This mode contains Barrier Champions, which cannot be stopped without an Anti-Barrier mod.
    • Champions: Hive: This mode contains both Barrier and Unstoppable Champions, which cannot be stopped without an Anti-Barrier or Unstoppable mod, respectively.
    • Hero Modifiers: Extra Shields
    • Hashladûn’s Serenade: Arc damage increased. Knockback damage and distance increased.
  • Nightfall: The Ordeal: Legend
    • All previous modifiers
    • Equipment Locked: You will not be able to change your equipment after this activity starts.
    • Match Game: Enemy shields are highly resistant to all unmatched elemental damage.
    • Legend Modifiers: Locked Loadout & Match Game & Extra Shields
  • Nightfall: The Ordeal: Master
    • All previous modifiers
    • Chaff: Radar is disabled.
    • Master Modifiers: Champions: Mob & Locked Loadout & Match Game & Extra Shields
    • Champions: Mob: This mode contains additional Champions.

Rewards:

  • Powerful (Tier 1) reward: Get 3 points by completing runs. Higher difficulties grant more points.
  • Pinnacle reward: Get a score of 100k. Since modifiers are fixed, this requires a high difficulty run.

Weekly Crucible Rotator: Showdown

“This combat drill will test you from start to finish. Stay on your game, lest you find yourself on the wrong end of the final showdown.” —Lord Shaxx

Fight for Valor by defeating opponents and preventing revives. Win the most rounds or face off in an elimination showdown.


Vanguard Burn: Void Singe

The other modifieres rotate daily, check out the Daily Reset Thread for them!


Europa

  • Eclipsed Zone: Asterion Abyss
  • Empire Hunt: The Warrior: Defeat Eramis’s military commander, Phylaks, the Warrior.
  • Exo Challenge: Simulation: Agility: Simulated Skill-Set Training: Test your dexterity as you move against the Vex.

Legacy Activities

  • Moon:
    • Wandering Nightmare: Fallen Council (Archer’s Line)
    • Trove Guardian is in Anchor of Light
    • Nightmare Hunt: Isolation: Defeat the Nightmare of Taniks, the Scarred.
    • Nightmare Hunt: Pride: Defeat the Nightmare of Skolas, Kell of Kells.
    • Nightmare Hunt: Servitude: Defeat the Nightmare of Zydron, Gate Lord.
  • Dreaming City: Growing Curse
    • Petra is at Divalian Mists.
    • Weekly Mission: The Oracle Engine – The Taken threaten to take control of an irreplaceable Awoken communications device.
    • Ascendant Challenge: Cimmerian Garrison, Chamber of Starlight
    • Blind Well: Hive, Plague: Cragur

Eververse Bright Dust Offerings

Name Description Type Cost
Concentrated Mattergem An Upgrade Module ionizer created from refined Mattergems. Consumable 200 Bright Dust
Glimmershard A shard with the ability to generate Glimmer during combat. Consumable 250 Bright Dust
Scavenger’s Boon A transmutation device with the ability to create planetary materials. Consumable 250 Bright Dust
Hard-Packed Shell For Ghosts who never shy away from a (snowball) fight. Ghost Shell 2850 Bright Dust
Graceful Spin 10/10 Emote 700 Bright Dust
Rocket-Propelled Bobsled It’s more than just a Sparrow. Vehicle 600 Bright Dust
Dawning Festiveness Apply this Dawning shader to change the color of your gear. Shader 40 Bright Dust
Lucent Night Hunter Bundle Contains a full set of Dawning 2020 Hunter universal ornaments. Bundle price reduced for each item you already own. Package 6000 Bright Dust
Northlight Hunter Bundle Contains a full set of Dawning 2019 Hunter universal ornaments. Bundle price reduced for each item you already own. Package 6000 Bright Dust
Frostveil Hunter Bundle Contains a full set of Dawning 2018 Hunter universal ornaments. Bundle price reduced for each item you already own. Package 1200 Bright Dust
Winterhart Hunter Bundle Contains a full set of Dawning 2017 Hunter universal ornaments. Bundle price reduced for each item you already own. Package 3600 Bright Dust
Polar Vortex Some days you get the bear. Some days the bear gets you. Vehicle 2500 Bright Dust
Glad Tidings “This may be the ‘Last Safe City,’ but we’ve still gotta look out for each other.” —Suraya Hawthorne Ship 2000 Bright Dust
Emberwick Shell For Ghosts who lead others home. Ghost Shell 2850 Bright Dust
Get That Bread Mmm, freshly baked! Emote 3250 Bright Dust
Comfort Dance A nostalgic dance to help one simply feel better. Emote 700 Bright Dust
Icecapade A bit wobbly, aren’t you? Emote 400 Bright Dust
Cocoa Projection Equip this item to change your Ghost’s projection. Ghost Projection 500 Bright Dust
Dawning Hope Apply this Dawning shader to change the color of your gear. Shader 40 Bright Dust
Neopop Wave Equip this shader to change the color of your gear. Shader 40 Bright Dust
Celestia Equip this shader to change the color of your gear. Shader 40 Bright Dust
Shower of Gifts Modifications for your ship’s transmat systems, so you’ll always arrive in style. Transmat Effect 450 Bright Dust
Snowy Entrance Modifications for your ship’s transmat systems, so you’ll always arrive in style. Transmat Effect 450 Bright Dust
Sweet Entrance Modifications for your ship’s transmat systems, so you’ll always arrive in style. Transmat Effect 450 Bright Dust

Weekly Bounties

Shaw Han, Cosmodrome

Name Description Cost Requirement Reward
Public Disturbance Complete public events on the Cosmodrome. Heroic public events grant the most efficient progress. 1000 Glimmer 3 Public events XP & Glimmer
Full Spectrum Defeat combatants on the Cosmodrome with Arc, Void, and Solar damage. 1000 Glimmer 25 [Arc] Arc & 25 [Void] Void & 25 [Solar] Solar XP & Glimmer

The Crow, Spider’s Enforcer

Name Description Cost Requirement Reward
Fallen Boss Culling: Elemental Defeat a Fallen boss with Elemental damage. 1000 Glimmer 4 Fallen boss defeated XP
Hive Boss Culling: Stasis Defeat a Hive boss with Stasis damage. 1000 Glimmer 4 Hive boss defeated XP

Stay tuned this Friday for the first entry for Trials of Osiris this season!

Thanks, Reddit!

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Alex Co

Father, gamer, games media vet, writer of words, killer of noobs.

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Rainbow 6 Siege Update 1.99 (01.000.003) Deployed for Patch Y5S4.1

Ubisoft has released the Year 5 Season 4.1 (Y5S4.1) patch for Rainbow Six Siege (Rainbow 6 Siege)! Console gamers should see this as Rainbow 6 Siege update 1.99 (01.000.003 on PS5), and this is a small download clocking in at just 977MB on PS4, and 875MB on PS5.

Check out the official Rainbow Six Siege Y5S4.1 patch notes below along with the file sizes for each platform.

Rainbow 6 Siege Update 1.99 (01.000.003) Patch Notes:

Y5S4.1 PATCH SIZE

Below you will find the download sizes for each platform.

  • Ubisoft Connect: 1.07 GB
  • Steam: 803.2 MB
  • Xbox One: 1.02 GB
  • Xbox Series X: 1.02 GB
  • PS4: 977 MB
  • PS5: 875 MB

TWEAKS AND IMPROVEMENTS

GAME HEALTH

Custom Game Timers

  • A pause/resume timer option has been added to lobby creator’s menu options during the Planning Phase for Online Custom Games. This setting is accessible by click the Menu icon found in the top right of the screen.
  • This pause timer has a default timeout setting of 10 minutes that we can modify on our end.

BUG FIXES

LEVEL DESIGN

  • FIXED – Various defuser planting and retrieval issues in specific areas on maps.
  • FIXED – Minor rappel issues present on Skyscraper and Plane maps.
  • FIXED – Several glass resistance and destruction issues present on Bank and Outback maps.
  • FIXED – Drones are able to pass through multiple objects and textures.
  • FIXED – A multitude of LOD issues present on Skyscraper map.
  • FIXED – Line of sight issue present between the railing and wall in 2F Exhibition Room on Skyscraper map.
  • FIXED – Misaligned textures and clipping are present on various surfaces on Skyscraper map.
  • FIXED – Deployable gadgets can be heavily obscured in table debris in 2F Geisha Room on Skyscraper map.
  • FIXED – Compass location is missing in drone view on top of the fence in EXT Ventilation Units on Skyscraper map.
  • FIXED – An Operator will spawn on top of the display case on the north side of 2F Exhibition Room on Skyscraper map.
  • FIXED – Ceiling vents are not visible underneath the ceiling in 2F Shrine on Skyscraper map.
  • FIXED – Several collision issues present when destroying items on Skyscraper map.
  • FIXED – Various gaps and seams present between objects on Skyscraper map.
  • FIXED – LOD issue present on a box located at the south side of 1F Cargo Hold on Plane map.
  • FIXED – A gap is visible between the west wall and ceiling in 1F Garage on Clubhouse map.
  • FIXED – Players can clip at the NE corner of the EXT Roof on Border map.
  • FIXED – Attackers can navigate to certain points on Coastline map to create an unfair line of sight.
  • FIXED – Lighting issues on Skyscraper map create various hiding points for Operators and their gadgets.
  • FIXED – Some cardboard boxes have a delay when being destroyed on Tower map.

OPERATORS

  • FIXED – Twitch’s Shock drones and Echo’s Yokai drone are shooting when the player begins to pull the trigger rather than the end position of the trigger.
  • FIXED – Inputs for Operator drones and cameras are not swapping when left-handed controls are selected.
  • FIXED – Montagne can melee and extend his shield in the same animation.
  • FIXED – Sound effects aren’t present when Tachanka melees an indestructible wall or item with the Shumikha Launcher.
  • FIXED – Fire sound effects are present even when fire does not emit from Tachanka’s weapon.
  • FIXED – Rook’s facemask is white instead of the intended color on several of his headgear options.
  • FIXED – Players are unable to pick up Aruni’s Surya Gate after deploying it on the western window at 1F Reception on Kafe Dostoyevsky map.
  • FIXED – Zero’s Argus Camera experiencing several functionality issues on Skyscraper map.
  • FIXED – Echo’s Yokai drone clips with various objects on Villa and Fortress.
  • FIXED – Finka’s Adrenaline Boost has a slight audio issue near the end of the sound.
  • FIXED – Lion’s EE-ONE-D drone is not visible on his arm when activated in Article 5.
  • FIXED – Tachanka’s Shumikha Launcher projectiles are colliding with invisible walls.

USER EXPERIENCE

  • FIXED – Overlapped text is present on the warning screen.
  • FIXED – Some charms are clipping or overlapping each other.
  • FIXED – When multiple controllers are paired, not all of them are able to control the game.
  • FIXED – Visual customization is not displaying on Operator weapons in the Operator View after pressing the “Equip to All” button.
  • FIXED – Performance/Resolution mode settings don’t apply on the PS5 console after a reboot.
  • FIXED – Incorrect message displays when a player attempts to reconnect to a match.
  • FIXED – Various visual issues present with Battle Pass progression.
  • FIXED – Changing the resolution in the options menu makes the background flicker black and white.
  • FIXED – Voice chat frequently cuts off or is heavily distorted when CVAA is activated.
  • FIXED – When matchmaking in Quick Match, a Connection Failure message appears for some players.
  • FIXED – Score and timer are occasionally missing from HUD elements.
  • FIXED – Minor spacing and line-break text errors in menu and descriptions.
  • FIXED – Collision audio for certain ceramic tiles is playing the sound of metal footsteps.
  • FIXED – Multiple small clipping issues present on Operator uniforms.
  • FIXED – Rooftop reinforcement notification is present even though the system is off.
  • FIXED – The “Safety First” Core Challenge does not unlock in certain situations.

This is most likely our last Rainbow 6 Siege update for 2020, but once we get wind of another one, we’ll make sure to let our readers know.

Source: Ubisoft

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Alex Co

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Spellbreak Update 2.00 December 15 Chapter 1 The Spellstorm Now Live

Developer Proletariat has released the Spellbreak update 2.00 December 15 patch, or what the studio calls Chapter 1: The Spellstorm! Spellcasters can expect new story-related quests, new gameplay elements and of course, streamlining of current features and more.

Spellbreak Update 2.00 December 15 Chapter 1 The Spellstorm Patch Notes:

Chapter System

  • With Chapter 1, we’re introducing 72 new story and honor quests and 50 levels of rewards, along with the story that will delve into the origins of the spellstorm.
  • You’ll meet NPCs outside of the match who will help you uncover the mysteries and direct you on your quests.
  • Over the course of the Chapter, the world itself will update with a few new gameplay elements as the story unfolds…
  • The story quests, which will form the core of the story, will be completely free for everyone, while the honor quests will require a Chapter Pass.
  • There are three ways to get the Chapter Pass:
    • For 1000 gold, you can unlock a Chapter Pass with a 25% bonus to your Chapter reputation. It’s important to us that you’ll never be forced to pay real money to experience the complete story so we’ll try to always offer an option you can purchase with gold.
    • There’s also the Spellslinger bundle, which includes a Chapter Pass with a 50% bonus, a Bag of Gold, and the Steely-Eyed Spellslinger outfit.
    • Finally there’s the Warlock bundle, which includes a Chapter Pass with a 100% bonus, a Mountain of Gold, and the Steely-Eyed Spellslinger and Sinister Warlock outfits.

Daily Quests

  • We wanted to make daily quests more meaningful as well as provide players with a steady source of income so we’ve made one pretty large change to them…
  • Daily quests have been tiered out in terms of rarity and now award 5/10/20 gold each.
  • A number of the daily quests have been added, changed, and removed as well.

Steam Release

  • Spellbreak is now available on Steam and, of course, Steam works with cross-play and cross-progression.
  • Players can view their Steam friends and join their parties from the friends screen.

UI

  • Queue timer now counts up instead of down.
  • Added main menu notification for the following actions into the friends menu:
    • Party invite
    • New friend via an accepted request
    • Friend requests
  • Quests are now visible in-game in the tab menu.
  • Players can now disable controller vibration entirely in the settings menu.
  • Match experience screen now shows up when a player leaves a match early after being exiled.

World

  • Deadmoss has been completely redesigned, including a new Castle Bogmore, Deadmoss Canals, Slums, Dreadcurtain, and more.
  • Sawtooth Mountain has been reworked to be easier to traverse.
    • We heard that there were some fights on the mountain at the end of a match that were not great so we’ve made this much easier to get around.
  • Added POIs for Fernfall Garrison, Cloister, and Wayfarer’s Crossing
  • Added different sound effects depending on what sort of surface a player is traversing.

Clash

  • Clash matches now end with a mercy ruling if one team is more than 20 points up on the other.
    • Being on the losing side in a runaway game isn’t great, so this should end those games more quickly.
  • The score needed to win a match now updates based on how many people remain in game.
    • If people are dropping, the score will lower accordingly.
  • Vital stone now correctly revives you one time every time you respawn.
    • robust.
  • Fixed some instances where Armor Shards could appear on the ground in Clash.
  • Amulets should always give mana on respawn in Clash.
  • Fixed a bug causing players to score an assist every time their opponents get Exiled, even if the player only damaged them once in the entire match.
  • The scoreboard at end of the match is no longer erroneously auto-skipped after a few seconds.
  • Fixed a bug preventing players from exiting the end of match screen with a controller.

Balance and Gameplay

Misc. Gameplay

  • Unfortunately, we found a bug in Updraft after we had submitted the build, so it’s currently giving a reduced boost from where it was in 1.2. It’ll be fixed in a future release. Sorry!
  • The Recovery talent now recovers 35% of damage taken (down from 50%).
    • Recovery’s been the dominant pick for a while now and we wanted to scale it back. Hopefully this makes room for other talents / builds.
  • The Shadowstep rune once again clamps momentum.
    • This was an unintended change in 1.2 and has led to certain builds / classes becoming far too strong. We’ll be keeping an eye on those classes as well, but we didn’t want to change them when they’ve historically not actually been a problem.
  • Upgrading to a higher tier rarity of rune now correctly instantly lowers the cooldown of the new rune.
  • Reduced lateral movement speed while dropping from portals by 33%.
    • Prior to this change, it was possible to cover a lot of ground on the initial drop. This lead to portal choice being less important and let people spread out without much regard for their choice. By slowing the movement, we want to make the choice of drop more important.

Frostborn and Frost Gauntlet

  • The Frost Gauntlet sorcery, Flash Freeze, has had its cooldown reduced to 15s (from 20s).
    • A 20s cooldown on a hard to use and self-centered sorcery left this as one of the weaker sorceries. Reducing its cooldown by 25% will let players make use of it more often both offensively and defensively.
  • The “walls” of Flash Freeze are now significantly higher.
    • Speaking of defensive, the Flash Freeze barrier would often let people “just jump” and shoot in from above.
  • The Invulnerability provided by the Tundra skill is now visible on the character.
    • While it’s short-lived, adding a visual component to Tundra’s effect gives players on both sides of an encounter a better feel for how long it lasts.
  • Flash Freeze has had its visuals reworked.
  • The Icicle skills now also removes the mana cost for a fully charged Ice Lance.
    • We wanted to better reward players for committing to the long-held shot.

Lightning Gauntlet

  • We’ve heard a lot of feedback around Lightning being too strong and impossible to deal with and while some of the feedback centers around the Conduit skills, only changing them wouldn’t do much to adjust those who use it as an offhand, so we’ve opted to just tone its damage down by ~15-20% across the board.
  • Adjusted Lightning Spell Damage downwards:
    • Common: 5-7 (was 6-8)
    • Uncommon: 6-8 (was 6-10)
    • Rare: 6-9 (was 7-11)
    • Epic: 7-9 (was 8-11)
    • Legendary: 7-10 (was 9-12)

Stone Gauntlet

  • Stone’s Shockwave spell remains one of the most damaging spells in the game and while “just jump” is a popular meme/counter, there are plenty of situations where that ends up not working out so well and you end up being punished heavily without much recourse, so we’re making a few changes to how Shockwave works at its edges.
  • Slightly reduced maximum height above ground at which Shockwave does damage.
    • It’s often hard to tell if you’ve been hit fairly or if there was latency or other factors in play, but in lowering the height at which it can damage you, it should now be easier to perform the aforementioned jump without getting your feet chunked.
  • Shockwave now decreases its damage at range. The reduction starts at 25m and ramps down to 50% damage reduction at max distance (40m).
    • Shockwave was never meant to be a “poke” tool but it’s often used as one. While we’re going to leave that ability in place, by reducing the damage at longer ranges, we’re making it more possible to outrange a stone user and be rewarded.
  • Fixed issue where Shockwave traveling up or down slopes would sometimes hit players too high above the ground. This is primarily making visuals line up with reality so you’re not hit while clearly above it.

Pyromancer

  • Pyro has one very strong thing going for it that makes it very prevalent at all levels of play and one thing that actively works against it, especially for more skilled players, and occasionally would chunk someone hard without much rhyme or reason. We’ll be addressing both of them.
  • Increased damage falloff of Combust AOE.
    • Combust often felt like you could miss your shots completely and still be heavily rewarded. We’ve made the falloff much more dramatic so while it’s the same size, you’ll need to miss by narrow margins to get the same damage.
  • Conflagration now spits out 6 smaller fireballs instead of 4.
  • Smaller Conflagration fireballs now Ignite players instead of damaging them directly.
  • Smaller Conflagration fireballs no longer block other projectiles.
  • Conflag often felt like a crapshoot when it went off. The smaller fireballs often wouldn’t hit anything and you’d even sometimes end up blocking your own subsequent shots, especially if you were trying to combo something. By increasing the amount of splinters, it’s now more likely that you hit other players and by changing them into Ignites, it avoids the “shotgun” effect where all of them could hit someone at once depending on how they were moving.

Tempest and Wind Gauntlet

  • Tempest and the elemental interactions around wind have classically struggled to keep up with the other classes and interactions and we wanted to juice them up a bit.
  • Ignited or Toxified tornadoes apply an additional 4 damage per second to targets inside or near their base.
  • Electrified tornadoes now shock players near their base.
  • The Squall skill now activates immediately once a player is in the air.
    • This returns to the very original version of this skill from wayyy back in the pre-alpha so we’ll be keeping an eye on it but it feels like it works in the current meta.

Misc

  • A number of emotes have had sound and visual effects added. This is going to be an on-going process and we’ll be adding more in future releases.

Playstation

  • Fixed an issue causing Playstation players not to receive their purchases until the game is restarted.

Switch

  • Fixed a bug where players could turn on airplane mode while loading into the main menu to break navigation.
  • Fixed a bug preventing sound effects from playing while opening a chest or Mana Vault.
  • Fixed a bug that caused music to stop during the match start countdown.

Xbox

  • It’s now easier to see friends/teammates Xbox profiles in various UIs.

All Platform Bug Fixes

  • Individually purchasing all items in a bundle now correctly disables the purchase button.
  • Fixed a bug where spectating another team could cause the wrong UI to appear while spectating.
  • Fixed a bug causing players to hear but does not see players who joined them after attempting to join a full party.
  • Fixed a bug causing health numbers to not appear when the Armor bar is empty.
  • Players will no longer have to relog if content rolls over while they’re logged in.
  • Fixed a bug preventing input on talent selection the first time it’s opened with a controller and again after each match.
  • Activating Chronomaster rune no longer causes the mana bar to display incorrectly.
  • Pressing “yes” and back at the same time while making an account no longer makes the game unresponsive.
  • Losing internet connection while starting the game no longer causes an infinite loading screen.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause mage rank icons to appear black in Mastery’s rewards screen until the player changes anything in the collections menu.
  • Cloudbursts no longer disappear from previews in the collections menu.
  • Players should once again receive XP at the end of a match if they’re spectating someone who exiles themselves.
  • Vital Stone talent VFX is no longer misaligned with the character model while observed by other players.
  • Fixed some hitches while picking up items.
  • Sound effects should no longer continue to play on the exiled screen.
  • Fixed a bug where the back button was not functional at first try when entering the Talent Selection screen right after launching the title
  • Fixed a bug where double-clicking the stop button on the chapters screen to stop the VO would cause audio to play twice.
  • Fixed a bug causing armor damage vfx to look distorted when viewed by other players.
  • Consuming an armor shard is now canceled if the player is filling armor caused by using a stone gauntlet with the Ambidextrous talent and the stone gauntlet is dropped.
    • Yeah, exactly.
  • And of course, a bunch of rare crashes on all platforms.

If you haven’t downloaded the game yet, head on over to our review to see why it deserves some space in your harddrive.

Source: PlaySpellbreak

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Alex Co

Father, gamer, games media vet, writer of words, killer of noobs.

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Fallout 76 Update 1.48 December 15 Ushers in Season 3 Scribe of Avalon (Update)

Bethesda has releasd the Fallout 76 update 1.48 December 15 patch and this ushers in Season 3 Scribe of Avalon! This brings in new rewards, gameplay changes and loads more. Head on below for the details.

Note that the game is currently undergoing server maintenance, though the patch has been rolled out at this time.

Fallout 76 Update 1.48 December 15 Patch Notes (Season 3, Scribe of Avalon):

Update: Full patch notes have been revealed by Bethesda for Scribe of Avalon!

Update Version 1.5.1.3

Check the download sizes below for today’s patch on your platform of choice:

  • PC (Bethesda.net): 5.0 GB
  • PC (Microsoft Store): 11.9 GB
  • PC (Steam): 5.7 GB
  • PlayStation 4: 9.2 GB
  • Xbox One: 11.6 GB

Fallout 76 Season 3 Has Begun!

  • We’re kicking off Fallout 76 Season 3 with the all-new “Scribe of Avalon” Scoreboard, where you will join the intrepid time-traveling historian, K.D. Inkwell, to investigate the mysteries of a medieval civilization.
    • The new Scoreboard features 100 ranks to achieve as you and Inkwell work to find and preserve technology in Avalon over the coming months.
    • As always, we’ve added a host of new rewards that you will unlock as you rank up, including Power Armor paints, Weapon Skins, Outfits, themed cosmetics, C.A.M.P. items, in-game currencies, consumables Perk Card Packs, and more.
    • This Season, we’ve also implemented several new types of rank-up rewards that are available for the first time ever, like Lite Allies, Backpack Flairs, Perfectly Preserved Bubblegum, the Antique Speed Bag, and Perk Coins.
  • We’ve made a few adjustments for Season 3 that you may want to keep in mind as you dive in:
    • For the first time, we’ve added several bonus rewards to the Scoreboard for Fallout 1st Members at certain rank milestones, which can be claimed in addition to the normal rewards those ranks offer.
    • We’ve implemented some new Challenges in the Daily and Weekly rotations, as well. These include Shelters-themed Challenges, and Challenges to take down different enemies, like Blood Eagles and Mothman Cultists.
    • Finally, last season’s Weight Bench reward is now available for purchase from Gold Bullion vendors so that players who missed it have another opportunity to grab one.
  • Head to the Seasons page on Fallout.com and read our recent Season 3 Preview article to get more information about Season 3, as well as a check out the rewards that will be up for grabs.

Items

  • “Core Vault” Objects: We’ve added a few new items to the set of “Core Vault” C.A.M.P. objects that are unlocked after you complete the “Home Expansion” quest, including a Foundation version of the Core Vault Floor, a new Doorway Wall, and a Vault-themed door to match.

Bug Fixes

Art & Graphics
  • Power Armor: The headlamp on the Blue Demon Power Armor Helmet now shines in the correct direction in third-person view.
  • Underarmor: The Brotherhood of Steel Camouflage Infantry Uniform no longer clips through equipped outfits.
C.A.M.P. and Workshops
  • Ammo Converter: Flamer Fuel can now be sold using the 100x sell option, and Railroad Spikes can be purchased using the 100x buy option.
  • Defenses: The Encampment Gate is now centered between its posts.
  • Defenses: Encampment Fences can now be snapped to the left side of the Encampment Gate.
  • Exploit: Addressed a C.A.M.P. budget exploit related to Patio Chairs.
  • Spooky Sound Machine: The Spooky Sound Machine can now be placed at the same time as the Fog Machine.
  • Vault Catwalk: Straight sections of Vault Catwalk can now be properly snapped to corner pieces.
Challenges
  • Combat: Killing the Scorchbeast Queen now counts toward “Kill Different Kinds of Tough Enemies” Combat Challenge progress.
  • Combat: Killing the Flatwoods Monster now counts toward “Kill an Alien” subchallenge progress for the “Kill different kinds of human-like creatures” Combat Challenge.
  • Combat: Killing a Small Frog now counts toward “Kill Different Kinds of Critters” Combat Challenge progress.
  • Combat: Killing a Hermit Crab now counts toward “Kill Different Kinds of Arthropods” Combat Challenge progress.
  • Combat: Killing Mirelurks and Fog Crawlers now counts toward “Kill Different Kinds of Aquatic or Semi-Aquatic Creatures” Combat Challenge progress.
  • Combat: Killing Cave Crickets now counts toward “Kill different Kinds of Insects and Bugs” Combat Challenge progress.
  • Daily: Fixed an issue that prevented some Holotapes from counting toward “Listen to an Audio Holotape” Daily Challenge progress.
  • World: The “Discover the Overseer’s C.A.M.P.” World Challenge now displays the correct reward icon in the Challenge menu.
Items
  • Armor: Red Viper Armor Skins can now be favorited for use in Nuclear Winter.
  • Headwear: Red Viper and Camouflage Skins can now be applied to the Urban Scout Mask.
  • Plans: Fixed an issue that prevented the Plan for the Poodle Sleeping Bag from dropping as a reward for level 50+ players in Daily Ops.
Performance and Stability
  • Client Stability: Fixed a PC client crash that could occur when fighting Scorched in the Forest.
  • Client Stability: Fixed a PlayStation 4 client crash that could occur when exiting another player’s Vault Atrium Shelter.
  • Client Stability: Fixed an Xbox One client crash that could occur when entering the Foundation Supply Room during the “Supplying Demands” quest.
  • Performance: Fixed an issue that could cause client hitching during gameplay.
Quests and Events
  • Property Rights: Sheena no longer spawns inside a wall during the “Speak to Sheena” objective.
Shelters
  • Build: Floors and other objects can now be built at the spawn point inside Shelters, excluding items like Traps and Pressure Plates.
  • Floor Décor: Potted Plants can now be built near Shelter ceilings more easily, and no longer sometimes place outside the playable area.
  • Entrances: Fixed a case where Large Shelter Entrances could not be placed near water.
  • Entrances: Objects built on top of Large Shelter Entrances no longer clip through the pre-existing metal beams.
  • Programmable Objects: Light Boxes, Switches, Cycling Lights, and other objects that can be “programmed” now retain their settings between play sessions.
  • Wall Décor: Fixed an issue that could cause the Eat-o-tronic to clip into the floor when built inside the Vault Lobby Shelter.
  • Wallpapers: Only Wallpapers that the player owns can be placed inside of Shelters.
  • Wires: Wires attached between Generators and certain powered objects, like Decontamination Showers, now persist after exiting and re-entering a Shelter.
Sound
  • Collectron Stations: Added Sound effects that will play when opening or closing the container attached to Collectron Stations.
User Interface
  • Atomic Shop: Fixed an issue that could prevent further menu navigation in the Atomic Shop after purchasing a Bundle.
  • Help Menu: Added Shelters information to the Fallout 76 Help Menu.
  • Inventory: Opening a Holiday Gift no longer causes the player’s current selection to automatically move up one row in the Aid menu.
  • Scoreboard: Purchasing multiple rank-ups quickly no longer sometimes causes the rank-up button to become non-functional.

76 Banner Season3 KeyArt 750x300

On December 15, we’re kicking off our third Season, which will introduce the new “Scribe of Avalon” Scoreboard. This Season, you’ll step into the world of Astoundingly Awesome Tales to aid the intrepid time-traveling historian, K.D. Inkwell, as she investigates the mysteries behind an explosion of technologic advancements in the medieval civilization of Avalon.

Of course, we’ve added a host of new rewards that you can earn as you and Inkwell explore the past. As with previous Seasons, you will be able to claim a reward for your characters every time you achieve one of this Season’s 100 ranks. These include themed cosmetics, C.A.M.P. items, in-game currencies, Perk Card Packs, consumables, and more. There are also several new types of rank-up rewards, like Lite Allies, which will be available for the first time! Finally, we’ve added a number of bonus rewards that Fallout 1st Members can claim at certain milestones in addition to the standard rewards those ranks offer.

SEASON 3 REWARD HIGHLIGHTS

Season 3 brings a broad assortment of rewards that will be yours for the taking as you rank up. It offers brand-new cosmetics, like Guild of Antiquities and Vertiguard Power Armor paints, a set of K.D. Inkwell themed cosmetics, and weapon skins, as well as a variety of items for your C.A.M.P., like the Gold Collectron Station, and the Red Rocket Vending Machine. As mentioned above, we’re also introducing a number of items that will be making their debut as rank-up rewards:

  • Lite Allies: You will be able to claim two new “Lite Allies” during your Season journey. They will offer unique benefits, like healing or feeding you, in place of sending you on Daily Quests.
    • Yasmin Chowdhury – Yasmin is a cooking vendor who will replenish your hunger and thirst once every 24 hours. She also has uncommon, and sometimes rare, cooking Recipes for sale.
    • Solomon Hardy – Solomon primarily deals in medical supplies. He will also heal your HP, Rads, and Diseases in exchange for Caps.
  • Backpack Flairs – Bring more personality to your favorite Backpack by modding it to add new cosmetic Backpack Flairs at an Armor Workbench.
  • Antique Speed Bag – Practice your punches by brawling with the Antique Speed Bag in your C.A.M.P., which will temporarily increase your Agility.
  • Perfect Bubblegum – Chew some Perfectly Preserved Bubblegum to completely replenish your hunger and thirst, and remove the need to eat or drink for an hour.
  • Perk Coins – Rank up your Legendary Perks more quickly by filling your pockets with some Perk Coins.

Check out some of the new items and cosmetics that will be available this season right here.

Once Bethesda releases the official changelog, we’ll update the post. 

Update: Bethesda has released the complete changelog and we’ve updated the post with the pertinent info.

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Alex Co

Father, gamer, games media vet, writer of words, killer of noobs.

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SMITE Update 11.62 December 15 Welcomes The Legendary Tanuki

Hi-Rez Studios has released a new god in SMITE today! The SMITE update 11.62 December 15 patch welcomes The Legendary Tanuki, Danzaburou! Head on below for his skills, new event detals and more!

SMITE Update 11.62 December 15 Patch Notes:

Dubious Savings
  • Every time Danzaburou actively gains gold, he stores 10% into one of his money pouches instead. When a pouch is completely filled, Danzaburou gains bonus gold and a permanent Physical Power increase before switching to a larger money pouch.
  • Pouch gold: 80/140/200/300
  • Bonus Power: 10 per pouch
  • Bonus Gold: 180/265/350/500

Fool’s Gold
  • Danzaburou rolls out 3 money bags that pass through and damage Enemy minions but stop on Enemy gods, slowing as they travel. Gods hit are damaged and Intoxicated, dropping a gold coin that Danzaburou or his ally gods can pick up to provide him 10 gold. When a money bag stops moving, it reveals to be an explosive which detonates after a short delay. Subsequent hits of the money bag or explosions deal 20% damage.
  • Damage : 70/125/180/235/290 (+80% of your Physical Power)
  • Explosion Damage : 30/55/80/105/130 (+30% of your Physical Power)
  • Intoxicate Duration : 0.6/0.8/1/1.2/1.4s
  • Cost : 70/75/80/85/90
  • Cooldown : 12

Alluring Spirits
  • Danzaburou takes a swig of his sake bottle, gaining health, before hurling it in front of him dealing damage to Enemies in the inner circle. The bottle of sake applies stacks to Enemy gods in the area slowing, and upon reaching 3 stacks, taunting (with no DR) them towards the sake bottle. Enemies that take more than 30% of their max. Health while taunted are broken out early.
  • Healing : 30/50/70/90/110 (+20% of your Physical Power)
  • Damage : 80/130/180/230/280 (+70% of your Physical Power)
  • Slow per stack : 10% for 1.5s (3 stacks max.)
  • Taunt Duration : 1s
  • Hits to Break : 2/2/3/3/4
  • Cost : 60/65/70/75/80
  • Cooldown : 16/15/14/13/12

Tanuki Trickery
  • Danzaburou creates a field where he moves faster, is slow immune and takes less damage from basic attacks. Enemies in the field are slowed by 20%. If Danzaburou leaves the field it disappears turning him into a leaf among other decoys that mimic his movement. In this state his movement speed is increased, he is still slow immune and can pass through Enemies. After a short delay from transforming, any hit from Enemy gods or if Danzaburou himself attacks, he will revert back.
  • Movement Speed : 10/12.5/15/17.5/20%
  • Leaf Movement Speed : 20/25/30/35/40%
  • Reduced Basic Attack Damage : 20%
  • Field Duration : 5s
  • Leaf Duration : 4s
  • Cost : 70
  • Cooldown : 16

Uproarious Rocket
  • Danzaburou summons a magical leaf which transforms into a large bamboo rocket! While preparing, Danzaburou can aim the rocket within 180 degrees to lock onto Enemy gods or he can refire this ability to become the rocket. Once fired the Rocket will pass through and damage Enemy minions, stopping on the first Enemy god hit damaging and stunning them while dealing 50% damage in a larger area.
  • Damage : 300/360/420/480/540 (+110% of your Physical Power)
  • Stun Duration : 1/1.1/1.2/1.3/1.4s
  • Cost : 100
  • Cooldown : 90
SMITE FRIENDS EVENT

Welcome to the SMITE Friends event! This event celebrates SMITE’s many friendships, featuring our brand new besties: Ymir and Danzaburo, the most dynamic duo out there! This event will have 6 purchasable Exclusive Skins in total with 2 Skins releasing every 2 weeks. Each Skin will have an initial discount of 25% for that release only. Purchase all 6 Skins to unlock the Unlimited Phoenix Fury Kukulkan Skin!

When purchasing a Smite Friends event Skin you will also receive a Gift Token of a certain gift type (Emote, Voice Pack, Tier 2 Skin, or Awesome Gift). Gift Tokens allow you to send a gift to a friend on your friends list, in the gift store, or to maybe make a new friend by giving a gift from the end of match lobby to a stellar teammate! Send your friends gifts this season and spread the joy of friendship!

Purchasable Event Skins:
  • Molten Destroyer Cthulhu Skin
  • Don Zaburou Danzaburou Skin
  • Malware Monarch Persephone Skin
  • World Tour Nemesis Skin
  • Zero Gravity Nike Skin
  • Witching Hour Freya Skin
Event Reward Items:
  • Unlocking 1 Skin: Tanuki King Pedestal + Voice Pack Gift Token
  • Unlocking 2 Skins: 3x XP/Worshiper/Battle Pass Booster + Emote Gift Token
  • Unlocking 3 Skins: SMITE Friends Music Theme + Tier 2 Skin Gift Token
  • Unlocking 4 Skins: 5x XP/Worshiper/Battle Pass Booster + Voice Pack Gift Token
  • Unlocking 5 Skins: Your Pal Player Title + Emote Gift Token
  • Unlocking 6 Skins: Phoenix Fury Kukulkan Skin + Awesome Gift Token
QUALITY OF LIFE
End of Match Lobby Update
  • All Screens in the end of match lobby have had art and design updates
  • Each screen has more interactable elements, and many screens have alternate views to show graphs, or more details on stats and progression.
    • Results Screen
      • This screen will now only show vital information, currency, worshipper, and ranked progress to reduce clutter
    • Scoreboard Screen
      • Scoreboard has been updated artistically
      • Additional tabs to show stats and item details have been added to the bottom of the screen
    • Details Screen
      • Details have been updated artistically
      • Has an additional tab to show the info in graph form instead of a table
      • Once in the graphs screen you can select specific stats to compare for each player
    • Progress Screen
      • This is a new screen that features some info that used to be on the Results screen but with more detail
      • Has an additional tab for more detailed math breakdowns on how currency/progress was calculated
      • Has an additional tab for more detail information on accolades and achievements earned
Buff Camp Spawn Animation
  • Updated Clash to use the modern Conquest presentation, meaning all maps are now using the updated presentation.
In-Game Item Store
  • Updated to include items with stats in their passives
    • Magical Penetration
      • Stone of Binding now appears.
    • Attack Speed
      • Shogun’s Kusari now appears.
Kill-Streak Timer
  • Kill Streaks in SMITE are awarded if you kill multiple enemy gods within a certain timeframe, with each successive kill extending the timer.
    • Increased the time for multi kill credit from 10s to 15s
SPL Voting Update
  • Tournament Mode voting will be enabled for SWC which has a different structure than normal voting
  • This screen can be accessed by moving ahead Week by Week in the VOTE section of the Esports Hub
BUG FIXES
UI
  • Fixed an issue where the shading on Death Icon’s was darker than intended
  • Fixed an issue where the “mute voice comms” button was also muting all text/VGS
  • Fixed a spectator issue where players disconnecting interfered with key mapping.
  • Fixed an issue where god builder could crash while accessing it – we highly recommend that people double check their builds before they play as the fixes might have resulted in some items changing order.
Joust
  • Fixed an issue where Healing and Mana chalices could be refilled outside of the Fountain
Gods
  • General
    • Introduced some code to prevent gods from missing dashes at point-blank range
    • Modified the way stealth works to better handle skins with translucent materials (Bacchus Blobchus as an example).
  • Bellona
    • Fixed an issue where the Defiant skin would play default audio
  • Cerberus
    • Fixed an issue where CC Immune targets would take no damage from this ability
  • Hachiman
    • Fixed an issue where the circle component of Hachiman’s dash would still deal damage and stun enemies even if he was interrupted by CC before this attack occurred. It will now be canceled properly
  • Hel
    • Fixed an issue with the passive from her light stance not properly affecting healing.
  • Loki
    • Fixed an issue where enemies who stealth as Loki uses his Ultimate on them would prevent Loki from firing the 2nd attack of his Ultimate
    • Fixed issues where Loki’s achievements didn’t work with his new kit
  • Nu Wa
    • Allied gods who are actively channeling abilities will now be revealed instead of stealthed when standing in Nu Wa’s fog
  • Poseidon
    • Fixed an issue where his ability could sometimes have an inconsistent hit area
  • Xbalanque
    • Fixed an issue where one of his achievements read “stanked” instead of “stacked”
  • Yemoja
    • Fixed an issue where Yemoja could not be launched by her Riptide in certain situations
Items
  • Fixed many issues where items were not being filtered into the proper categories when the stats came from their passive effects. The following items will now show up in the listed filters:
    • Reinforced Greaves – Physical Protection, Magical Protection
    • Reinforced Shoes – Physical Protection, Magical Protection
    • Blackthorn Hammer – MP5, CDR
    • Shield of Regrowth – Movement Speed
    • Talisman of Energy – Movement Speed, Attack Speed, MP5
    • The Sledge – Physical Protection, Magical Protection
    • Shifter’s Shield – Magical Protection
    • Stone Cutting Sword – Physical Protection
    • Lotus Crown – Magical Protection
    • Mage’s Blessing – MP5
    • Shogun’s Kusari – Attack Speed
    • Wind Demon – Penetration
  • Hand of the Gods
    • Now will deal damage to clash camps on the allied side of the map
  • Buff Potions
    • Fixed an issue where these would replay their FX and Audio when gods changed stances/forms. This fix was attempted last update but has unintended side effects and had to be reverted. This is our 2nd attempt to fix.
7.12 BALANCE (LIVE WITH THE LAUNCH OF 7.12!)
Game Modes
  • SWC Conquest
    • Before we say goodbye to the Seasons 5-7 Conquest Map, we have one more major tournament to play on it! To add some flair to the World Championships and send this map out with style, we have added a few visual features.
    • Logos
      • The SWC Logo is feature on each side of the center lane of the map
    • Past Winners
      • Statues of all previous World Champion skins have been placed throughout the map
    • Trophy
      • The iconic SWC Thor’s Hammer Trophy has replaced a wall by the Pyromancer
    • Banners
      • The banners inside both Chaos and Order bases feature team logos from the SPL teams that will be competing at Worlds
  • Corrupted Arena
    • Our final time limited Adventure returns for one update this December: Corrupted Arena. Push your enemies into death pits in this crazy twist on the Arena Game Mode!
    • The map has received a lighting update
    • The special relic that pushes enemies back will be available on the map
  • Clash
    • The map has received a lighting update
    • This map will now feature the more modern and responsive jungle buff drop flow
Items
With SWC and Season 8 on the horizon, we are happy to keep all Items in their current states.
Gods
Unlike items, there are a few gods we want to take the edge off before the SWC. Ra, Erlang Shen, Persephone, Yemoja, Sobek, and Set are all high contenders that have either not been nerfed recently or still need a slight nerf. The nerfs may look light in some cases but our goal isn’t to remove these gods from competitive play but to bring them more into line with more with the other highly contested gods. We are also bringing in a few buffs for everyone else! The gods being buffed are either in ways that we think will feel better in the long term or pose low risk to the Worlds stage. We look forward to Worlds and of course Season 8 which is bound to bring some spicy changes!

 

RA
The sun is shining on Ra lately! A few buffs across the season have finally resulted in him being one of the top gods in the competitive conquest meta. Ra’s healing deployable now provides a lot of additional stats to his teammates, and these numbers are clearly too high. As Ra has just recently entered the competitive scene, we are being careful to not send him back to where he was before. With these changes he should still be a clear contender, but also clearly weaker than he is right now.

SOLAR BLESSING
  • Decreased Physical Power from 10/15/20/25/30 to 8/11/14/17/20
  • Decreased Magical Power from 20/25/30/35/40 to 14/18/22/26/30
  • Decreased Protections from 10/15/20/25/30 to 8/11/14/17/20
ERLANG SHEN
Erlang Shen might be able to spot weakness, but given his popularity and strength, we are struggling to find his. With the raw power provided by Spot Weakness he has a variety of build paths and can be difficult to fight effectively. Bringing down the power bringing up his mana cost should be just the touch needed for the SWC.

SPOT WEAKNESS
  • Increase mana cost from 60 to 60/65/70/75/80
  • Decrease base damage from 15/30/45/60/75 to 15/27/39/51/63
PERSEPHONE
Persephone has brought a lot of unique gameplay to SMITE, but unique can quickly become paired with frustration. Her garden has high highs and low lows, her ability to revive and damage enemies can turn getting a kill into despair, and her ult is often powerful even when it misses. For SWC we want to reduce this final point, softly addressing a point of frustration for the World stage. Going forward we may look towards larger adjustments to Persephone, tackling all the points of frustration listed above.

GRASP OF DEATH
  • Decrease ult deployable HP from 5 to 3 if it hits a wall instead of a player
YEMOJA
The river goddess has achieved something that very few other gods have: 100% pick/ban rate through an entire pro season. Yemoja has been hit with a few nerfs, tempering her performance in ranked and casuals, yet she is still the number one most contested god in the pro league. Riptide is especially more powerful at pro levels of play, so we are applying a nerf to that ability. Her Ultimate also has high skill cap potential with its timing and position, and is getting a slight nerf.

RIPTIDE
  • Decreased Slow from 30% to 20%

RIVER’S REBUKE
  • Increases from 100s to 110s at all ranks
SOBEK
The Nile Crocodile has been turning gods of all types into unsuspecting prey. Sobek has risen in the ranks of the duo lane, resulting in him being one of the most contested supports in SPL and Ranked. Sobek brings strong CC and control with his signature pluck, but he can also threaten to solo kill squishies with his damage. We are bringing down the damage on his ult to prevent Sobek from taking such favorable trades against enemy backliners.

LURKING IN THE WATERS
  • Decreased Base Damage from 350/500/650/800/950 to 300/450/600/750/900
SET
The Usurper has been bringing the hurt in multiple roles. His flexible style of play is exciting but is too potent. Skewer is getting an increased cooldown, creating a larger window to fight Set and slowing down his poke and clear.

SKEWER
  • Increased Cooldown from 8s to 9s
THE MORRIGAN
A huge quality of life buff is being added for The Morrigan in this update. She will now have the ability to retain jungle buffs and potion buffs throughout her normal form and ult forms. Previously, if The Morrigan was relying on elixir of speed, using her ultimate would cause her to lose this effect temporarily. The same would apply to things like red buff, or power potions. Now she will be permanently buffed by this effect. It should be noted that The Morrigan does not copy the buffs or consumable effects of her opponents, only their item build. This has not changed.

CHANGELING
  • Now transfers any jungle buff or consumable potion effects she has currently active onto her transformed state in her ultimate.
ZEUS
We did it, Reddit! The king of the gods has heard the will of his subjects, who pointed out a possibly Quality of Life buff for Zeus. Most ranged deployables in SMITE are allowed to be fired over walls, and we agreed that Zeus’s shield throw should also be allowed. We don’t plan to apply this rule to every ability in the game, as some might have thematic or mechanic elements that don’t merit going over walls, but we are changing this for Zeus and for a few other gods.

AEGIS ASSAULT
  • Can now place this ability in locations over walls
YMIR
“Wall go more places now, thanks Zeus!” – Ymir

ICE WALL
  • Can now place this ability in locations over walls
TERRA
“I literally make walls, it’s about time!” – Terra

CRUSHING EARTH
  • Can now place this ability in locations over walls
BELLONA

The time has come for the glory of Rome to be restored. Bellona is often a difficult character to buff, as she always seems one step away from taking over the solo meta. After some direct nerfs and losing many of her core items, its looking quite safe to buff her again. We are focusing heavily on QoL with these buffs, adding a lot more fluid functionality to her kit, and adding some power to the parts of her kit that feel clearly lacking, like the flag left behind on Eagle’s Rally.

MASTER OF WAR
  • Increased Passive duration from 4s to 7s.

SHIELD BASH / BLUDGEON / SCOURGE
  • Increase weapon duration from 5s to 7s
    • If Bellona is mid-swing when this timer expires, she will complete the swing with her Weapon. If this hits a target, she will reset the timer and not swap back to her Base weapon.

EAGLE’S RALLY
  • Now Provides Magical Power to allies as well as Physical Power
    • Magical Power: 35/45/55/65/75
  • Increased Physical Power from 10/20/30/40/50 to 20/30/40/50/60
  • Increased Flag Duration from 6/7/8/9/10s to 8s at all ranks
CTHULHU
In this update we are adding a nice amount of clarity to the madness that Cthulhu can create. While in his ultimate form there will be a special offset to make sure his opponents can see what buffs and debuffs he currently has applied.
  • Added a visual offset to buff and debuff effects applied to Cthulhu while in his ult state. This slightly moves these effects toward your player camera so Cthulhu’s persistent effects (like thorns) can be more clearly seen.
HEL
In our large healing pass last Update a few issues were created for Hel. These are largely bug fixes but they do have balance implications. Hel’s passive was not working as intended in more ways than one, and these will be fixed in this update.

STANCE ATTUNEMENT
  • Fixed an issue where her passive was only increasing healing from abilities and FG buff – now should increase heals from all sources
  • Fixed an issue where her healing bonus wasn’t properly ramping up over time with her passive meter
  • Fixed an issue where an unintended temp icon was being displayed on her buff bar
LOKI
We are seeing very promising stats from Loki since his rework. His popularity is remaining quite high (possibly due to Raphael) and he is putting up well balanced win-rates near 50% and the middle of the pack for gods. In ranked we have seen many more players trying him out in both jungle and solo, making him one of the top 10 most played gods at high ranked conquest. We are still seeing a good amount of concerns from Loki players about Flurry Strike, leading to this change. We are holding our ground on the abilities speed, this was an important part of the rework and Loki’s opponents need that reaction time. However, we are shifting the base damage to help his early jungle clear even more and increasing the scaling to make sure this ability stays impactful throughout a match.
We do hear the concerns around Flurry Strike and the speed of this ability, leading to this change. We want to make this ability feel rewarding to land but are holding our ground about the speed of this ability. The goal of the rework was to reduce frustration and the ability to see, react, and counter this ability is absolutely critical to that goal. We are increasing the final hits damage early to help his Jungle clear while boosting the scaling for Loki players in any role.

FLURRY STRIKE
  • Increased Final Strike Damage from 40/65/90/115/140 to 55/75/95/115/135
  • Increased Final Strike Scaling from 60% to 70%
TYR
We have been looking closely into power and protection scaling on god abilities. On many cases using nice even numbers results in too weak or too strong scenarios at certain god ranks. Tyr’s Change Stance is mostly used with 1 rank in it, providing a disappointing amount of stats for most of the game, so we are leaning into this being a better one point wonder.

CHANGE STANCE
  • Increased Assault Stance Power from 0/10/20/30/40/50 to 0/18/26/34/42/50 Physical Power
  • Increased Defense Stance Protections from 0/10/20/30/40/50 to 0/18/26/34/42/50 Protections
AO KUANG
The Dragon King briefly showed up during the peak of the Hecate meta, but then disappeared as quickly as he had risen up. Ao Kuang’s passive rewards him for timing his engagements in between jungle rotations, but the current value was simply too slow to be reasonably stacked. We are speeding that up while also reverting a nerf to dragon call which brings back his ability to opt into basic attack focused builds.

DRAGON KING’S SWORD
  • Decrease power-up time from 20s to 12s

DRAGON CALL (REVERT)
  • Increase Attack Damage 30/45/60/75/90 to 35/50/65/80/95
SYLVANUS
This little old man doesn’t need to feel like a little old man. He is riding a massive tree beast after all! We are increasing a set of his base stats to increase his mobility, lane clear, and damage potential. We do think its likely that we will look more into Sylvanus in the future, possibly by giving him a new passive.

GENERAL
  • Increased Base Movement Speed from 365 to 370
  • Increased Base Attack Speed from 0.85 to 0.9
  • Increased Base Attack Speed per level from 0.6 to 0.8
ARTIO
Bear or Druid: Which will you choose? Artio is designed with some buffs and debuffs that require hitting enemies with abilities from both stances. In order to maximize those you had to consider delaying your abilities to a slower flow that was rarely worth the payoff. We are increasing the durations of these effects so Artio can play normally and still reap the rewards.

ENERGY SURGE (MAUL PREY) 
  • Decreased Mana Cost from 50/55/60/65/70 mana to 40/45/50/55/60

DECOMPOSE
  • Increased duration of debuff from 4s to 6s

SHAPESHIFT
  • Increased duration of buff from 4s to 6s
AH MUZEN CAB
At one point AMC was the King Bee, but oh how the mighty have fallen. We are reverting a nerf that Ah Muzen Cab received when he was a top pick to bring him closer to the rest of the hunter meta in todays SMITE scene.

STINGER (REVERT)
  • Increased Base Damage from 255/335/415/495/575 to 275/355/435/515/595
  • Increased Physical Power Scaling from 100% to 110%
APOLLO
Apollo finally saw his play during the SPL and it was So Beautiful. In celebration (and to help him not be a single pick) we are boosting So Beautiful’s base damage. This ability is a true straightforward damage ability and should shine as such.

SO BEAUTIFUL
  • Increased Damage from 80/140/200/260/320 to 90/150/210/270/330
ARTEMIS
The Goddess of the Hunt continues to inspire heating debates in the SMITE community. She tends to perform very well in all modes and skill levels, even at high ranked Conquest, yet she is generally considered far below the meta. Artemis sacrifices mobility and early pressure for high control and huge late game damage, which is a risky but effective strategy. We are giving Artemis slightly more control over her CC by increasing the range of her trap. This ability can be extremely powerful when used in combat, and we expect this buff to create a lot more opportunities for Artemis to turn the fight around.

TRANSGRESSOR’S FATE
  • Increasing the deploy range from 35 units to 40 units
CHAAC
It’s time to move like a Jaguar! When Chaac brings down the Thunder he will now be a force to be reckoned with. Late game he can struggle to fill that frontline bruiser role, but with up to 70% Mitigation he can tactfully use it to avoid major bursts before bringing the AoE silence.

STORM CALL
  • Increased Damage Mitigation Chaac gains while Channeling from 50% at all ranks to 50/55/60/65/70%
AH PUCH
Another one that people have been asking for nonstop: Ah Puch! This god is in a difficult balance state because he tends to be one of the strongest performers in non-Conquest modes. We have forever said that its ok for some gods to not be SPL Conquest viable as long as they have strong dedicated players across the game, and Ah Puch falls into that spot. We are giving him some small buffs to hopefully help out his Conquest game by decreasing the chances he runs out of mana. We will keep a close eye on this god and potentially plan some bigger changes in Season 8.

GENERAL
  • Fixed an issue where boss monsters could kill Ah Puch’s deployed corpses

UNDEAD SURGE
  • Decreased Mana Cost from 70/75/80/85/90 to 60/65/70/75/80

CORPSE EXPLOSION
  • Decreased Mana Cost from from 60/65/70/75/80 to 60 at all ranks

FLEETING BREATH
  • Decreased Mana Cost from 70 at all ranks to 60/65/70/75/80

For the new god skins, head on over here.

SMITE players can expect another content drop before the year is done on December 29.

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Alex Co

Father, gamer, games media vet, writer of words, killer of noobs.

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