[2019] Update 6.0 - Test Server

Version: v0.588
SteambuildID: 3692516
Client patch size: ~1.7 GB



New Equipment LeMat Mark II Revolver

• Re-imagining a classic: The LeMat Mark II is based on a vintage Civil War era caplock design, but modernized to load cartridges
  
• Single-action revolver with a second barrel that holds a single shotgun shell. Uses a small inventory slot
  
• Combines the advantages of a mid-range handgun with the firepower of a shotgun at a point-blank range
  
• Can toggle fire-modes between primary and secondary ammo type
  
• Fires 9 rounds of compact ammo with additional 18 bullets
  
• The shotgun comes with 3 additional shells
  
• The weapon benefits from the Fanning trait, but fans at a lower speed due to its bulky size.

Lebel M93 Bolt-action Rifle

• French bolt-action rifle design that set new standards to many upcoming rifles such as the Mosin Nagant, which would take inspiration from it in the following years
  
• Slightly dated and somewhat clunky to operate. What the weapon lacks with its lower rate of fire and less control, it makes up in ammunition capacity over its competitors
  
• Holds 9 long ammo rounds in a tubular magazine with one additional round in the chamber, but can only hold 5 extra rounds
  
• Unlike the Mosin Nagant, the Lebel rifle cannot be loaded using stripper clips and can only take one round at a time
  
• The weapon benefits from the Bulletgrubber and Iron Sharpshooter traits

Alert Trip Mine

• Portable trip mine that comes in a pack of 3 and takes a tool slot in the inventory
  
• Can be placed in the world and when activated produces noise and light to warn of possible intruders and to disorient them
  
• A placed Alert Trip Mine can be picked up and re-positioned again by any Hunters

Concertina Trip Mine

• Portable trip mine that takes a tool slot in the inventory
  
• Can be placed in the world and when activated creates a mini razor-wire mesh that can block windows, doors and narrow corridors and causes Rending damage
  
• A placed Concertina Trip Mine can be picked up and re-positioned again by any Hunters

New Traits Ghoul

• With the Ghoul trait, players instantly heal 50 hitpoints when looting a dead Hunter

Vulture

• The Vulture trait allows players to always loot dead Hunters they come across, even if they had already been looted by other players

Adrenaline

• Adrenaline enables players to instantly start recharging stamina when their health is critically low.

AI General AI

• Navigation improvements to prevent AI getting stuck while swarming around and/or traversing stairs; this included a rebalancing for smoother movement speeds while turning corners

Butcher

• Reworked the boss fight behavior of the Butcher
  • Rebalanced target selection when fighting multiple players to reduce oscillations.
    
  • The Butcher now moves at a slightly slower speed
    
  • Adjusted the frequency and accuracy of his ranged fire attack
    
  • The Butcher no longer drops on the knee after taking a large amount of damage, it now enters a ‘Frenzy mode’ instead
• Frenzy Mode
  • During Frenzy Mode, the Butcher receives a slight speed boost and charges forward chasing his target (matching the Hunter's sprint speed)
    
  • While charging forward, the Butcher performs continuous melee attacks, setting parts of the environment on fire
    
  • After some time, the Butcher drops out of Frenzy Mode and resumes his normal behaviour

Developer Note:
We finally found the time to look into the existing bosses. Last update, we focused on the Spider locomotion, and with 6.0, we now had a chance to look at the Butcher's core behavior. We wanted to make sure the Butcher feels more like a threat, but also making him easier to read and manage during the fight. For this, we wanted him to constantly switch from being the hunter to being the hunted, instead of giving players the chance to dominate the boss by forcing him on his knees as quickly as possible to deal extra damage. In order to help us make this work, we designed a new Frenzy Mode for the Butcher, replacing parts of his current behavior. This new Frenzy Mode allows the Butcher to remain mobile when taking damage, requiring players to keep moving more. We also tried to reduce frustration from his ranged fire attacks by making them less precise over distance and less frequent.
With these changes, the Butcher can now be more effectively fought inside his arena without players constantly running outside, but also require them to move around a lot more inside the arena to avoid him during Frenzy Mode. If those changes work out well, we also plan to look into the Spider's behavior in a future update. Please tell us what you think!

Audio

• Added a close proximity sound when near a red clue/rift that can be heard through walls to allow the detection nearby players.
  
• Added an audio ‘whoosh’ to throwing items when in the air
  
• Updated generator interaction audio timing to match visuals
  
• Improved fusee audio to increase readability in combat situations
  
• Increased audibility range of dynamite impact
  
• Adjusted Flash Bomb audio timing to match visuals

Gunplay Shotgun tweaks

• Hunters take slightly less damage from shotguns to limbs
  
• Shotguns lose damage slightly faster over distance
  
• Shotguns keep a slightly higher min-damage over a longer distance (max distance remains the same!)

• Added new Toggle Fire-mode button to allow changing between different states on some equipment (LeMat and Lantern only for now!)
  
• Lanterns can now be toggled on/off while carried around (dropping them will still turn them off all the time and pickup will always turn them on!)

Flash Bomb rework

• Full flash radius has been increased from 3 to 8 meters and time increased
  
• Players now only get a hit indicator for a successful full flash (partially flashing for a brief moment no longer registers as a hit to avoid confusion)
  
• Flash Bombs will produce a very minor flash up to 30 meters distance when looking at it (this is not strong enough to trigger a full whiteout effect)

Concertina rework

• Concertina wire now slows entangled players down, making it harder to run through them
  
• Slightly increased volume and size of the affected area when deploying a Concertina Bomb

Developer Note
We have reworked the way concertina wire is spawned into the world to make it more useful as a physical blocker, covering a larger area and making it harder to simply run through it. These changes also gave us more flexibility to introduce other concertina-based items, like the new Concertina Trip Mine tool that affects a much smaller area than the Concertina Bomb.

• Talon, Mace and Brawler weapon variants now have slightly less control and/or more recoil than their respective base weapons (use the weapon stats in the menu to compare them!)
  
• Normalized and increased melee range across all weapons
  • All heavy ranges except Cavalry Saber and Bayonet variants are now matched
    
  • All light ranges are now matched

Developer Note
To prevent the annoying and unreadable nature of the changes previously introduced, the focus has shifted from melee range to melee hit detection types. Instead of worrying how close you are to an enemy, you should worry about how to aim your weapon so that it can hit something that looks close enough (sledgehammer is a slim top-to-bottom swing, machete is a wide left-to-right swing etc.).

• Small special ammo packs now allow resupplying other special ammo types as well
  
• Chaos Bomb is back to its eight second fuse timer before being triggered, to give players a chance to clear the area and time their next move
  
• Romero 77 has been removed from random starting gear (only Romero 77 Handcannon and Caldwell 78 Rival Handcannon remains)

Hunters

• Added additional Hunter outfit variations to the recruits
  • 2 new Tier 1 outfits
    
  • 4 new Tier 2 outfits
    
  • 2 new Tier 3 outfits
• Adjusted several player interactions
  • Using Health stations in the world now is a hold interaction that lasts 2 seconds
    
  • Looting players now is a hold interaction that lasts 4 seconds (same as revive!)
    
  • Picking up world items (Sledgehammer, Lantern, etc) now is a hold interaction that lasts 0.3 seconds (same as looting other weapons)
    
  • All hold interactions allow the player to rotate around freely while in progress with the exception of clues and rifts.
• Burning or burned-out Hunters cannot be looted

Developer Note
This change is an attempt to introduce more choice into existing player actions. Now, players will have to consider whether it makes sense to burn a downed player. If they burn them, they lose the chance to loot the body. If they don't, that player's partner might have a chance to go for a revive. Burning should no longer be the given default choice. This also goes together nicely with the above mentioned changes to player looting, which now takes just as long as a revive. Looting is just as risky as reviving, preventing players from looting a downed hunter quickly and then setting the body on fire anyways. We are curious to see how this will change the current meta, so please share your experience on the test server with us!

Poison Damage Rework

• Hunters cannot heal while poisoned
  
• Poison duration reduced from 20 to 10 seconds
  
• Mithrandatist trait poison duration reduced from 10 to 5 seconds
  
• Antidote shot now lasts the duration of a full match (around 60 minutes)
  • Spider deals 100% damage, but without poison effect after using an Antidote shot
    
  • Swarms do a fraction of their original damage and have no poison effect after using an Antidote shot
    
  • Poison clouds don't affect players at all after using an Antidote shot

Developer Note:
Poison preventing to top-up health was something we had in mind for a long time, but couldn't really move forward with due to some technical issues. Now that these issues are resolved, we were finally able to introduce the poison feature like it was always planned to work. The idea is that being poisoned is a shorter, but much more dangerous state, where players will have to be very careful as they do not regenerate any health and cannot use First Aid Kits, Vitality Shots or health stations in the world while affected by poison. On the flipside, the Antidote Shot becomes a valuable counter to poison damage in general.

• Reduced throwing distance for Decoys and Blankfire Decoys to match throwing distance of regular explosives
  
• Reduced throwing range bonus from Pitcher trait

Developer Note:
The Pitcher trait has always been a controversial addition, with many players seeing this as a must-have and giving a massive advantage to throw grenades. While it still gives an advantage, the range bonus when using Pitcher has been reduced significantly now, giving a bonus of 25-30% more range depending on what you throw.

Meta

• Loading screen added to explain anti-camping clue mechanic
  
• Loading screen added for new fire-mode toggle button (for Lantern and LeMat only for now!)

Traits

• Ghoul trait added for 4 Upgrade Points (Unlocks at Rank 7)
  
• Vulture trait added for 2 Upgrade Points (Unlocks at Rank 72)
  
• Adrenaline trait added for 4 Upgrade Points (Unlocks at Rank 83)
  
• Pitcher trait cost reduced from 7 to 5 Upgrade Points

Store New Equipment

• Lebel Rifle – Rank 52 - $ 387
  
• Lemat Revolver – Rank 80 - $ 177
  
• Alert Trip Mine – Rank 30 - $ 45
  
• Concertina Trip Mine – Rank 82 - $ 90

Price Changes

• Concertina Bomb increased from $15 to $48

Onboarding

• Disabled new players being able to search for a random partner until they reach Rank 3
  
• Disabled new players being able to play Quick Play until they reach Rank 3

Performance

• Simplified collision meshes to improve server performance
  
• Improved view distances for world objects for better performance
  
• Improved shadow casting of world objects for better performance
  
• Concertina wire deployment checks are much cheaper and slightly faster now
  
• Ongoing server side performance improvements

World

• Improved collision meshes of world assets
  
• Some color corrections on world objects
  
• Improved level dressing and theme in some areas of both maps
  
• Improved lighting of some interior spaces for better readability
  
• Updated some of the signs
  
• Fixed some bullet penetration issues
  
• Fixed some floating assets in the level
  
• Fixed wrong footstep sounds on object surfaces
  
• Level dressing tweaks for Quickplay game mode
  
• General improvements and polish on some world objects.
  
• Animal Traps can now be better de-escalated again when the player walks away from them
  
• Fixed issue of player colliding with invisible Butcher dressing objects
  
• Ammo markup pass in and around some compounds to improve their ammo propagation

Elevator mechanic/interaction has been streamlined

Developer Note:
In order to make the elevator more useful, it can now be used from within the cage. The elevator will then simply move to its destination. From there you can do the same again to return to its start position. The cranks are used to call the elevator to your position. If you plan your exit strategy for leaving a boss pit e.g. you might want to position the elevator the way you can use it later on.

Resupply station changes on both maps to improve its randomization

• NEW spots on Stillwater Bayou (4): Northeast & Northwest of Port Reeker, Northwest of Pitching Crematorium, North of Catfish Grove
  
• NEW spots on Lawson Delta (7): North & South of Fort Carmick, Southwest of Wolfshead Arsenal, Northwest of Iron Works, Northwest & Northeast of Maw Battery, Northwest of Golden Acres, Between Nicholls Prison & Windy Run

Generator feature and markup changes

• Only one generator per area is available now at the same time which means randomized position in some compounds
  
• NEW placements in Stillwater Bayou: Blanchett Graves, Healing Waters, Chapel of Madonna
  
• NEW placements in Lawson Delta: Arden Parish, Iron Works

Stillwater Bayou

• Alain & Son's Fish - Layout changes to improve approaches / satellite
  
• Alice Farm - Added additional ways of getting in and out of the Butcher barn
  
• Lockbay Docks - Anti-Camping pass: Deadend issue of the Boathouse / Attached side building has been tweaked
  
• Catfish Groove - Additional timber logs to flank
  
• Scupper Lake - Reduced density of high grass in the eastern area
  
• Port Reeker - Tweaked entrances of 'Fish factory' boss building by replacing the sliding gates with crank operated gates
  
• Port Reeker - Easter egg/Hidden room is inaccessible now to block it from being a camping spot
  
• Blanchett Graves - Eastern entrance of the basement has been reworked to provide more options / both clue have been re-positioned / new stairs to get up onto the church level
  
• Blanchett Graves - Layout changes to make the basement easier to read and navigate for the player / basement floor has been lowered by 0.5m to improve gameplay space for bosses
  
• Blanchett Graves - Northern wall of the church has been raised
  
• Healing-Waters Church - Added an interactive bell to the church tower
  
• Healing-Waters Church - Fixed invisible ravens around the northern part of the church
  
• Blanchett Graves - Removed Butcher from being spawned inside of the tree pit

Lawson Delta

• Fort Carmick - Added trenches to the surroundings of Fort to provide better traversal options and more cover
  
• Lawson Station - New elevator at the tower to have shortcut bypassing stairs
  
• Bradley & Craven Brickworks - Anti camping: Additional way of getting into the boss pit
  
• C&A Lumber - Little pond south of the compounds has been tweaked in terms of cover and readability
  
• Windy Run - Anti camping: Sight blocker and terrain change have been added to the open fields

(Note: We have only listed the most important fixes and known issues due to space limitations. Please let us know if you face any bugs or issues, using our customer support site or social media and Discord channels)

• Fixed some clipping issues with the Butcher’s corpse on non-horizontal surfaces
  
• Hellhounds now follow their proper patrol paths again
  
• Fixed an issue where the Meathead could spawn too many leeches and Dead leeches could block the player’s movement
  
• Fixed an issue where the Meathead would sometimes become unresponsive in its ambient behavior
  
• Further fixing of visual 'jittering and popping' artifacts
  
• Fixed an issue where the AI would have a wrong orientation for a moment, when going into ragdoll
  
• Fixed some AI navigation problems
  
• Fixed an issue where the Spider would not always face straight upwards after dying, running the risk of not being able to interact with it to start the banishing
  
• Fixed an issue where players could randomly disconnect from the server
  
• Fixed a bug where inspecting a teammate would unintendedly accept currently selected mission
  
• Fixed a bug where the mouse cursor would get misaligned when switching resolution in full-screen mode
  
• Fixed an issue where switching weapons allowed skipping parts of their selection and cooking animations
  
• Fixed an issue where Hunter’s pain audio was not playing in some rare circumstances
  
• Fixed several locations where players could get stuck
  
• Fixed some lighting issues for Foggy Time of Day
  
• Fixed some instances where world items could not be picked up
  
• We have improved some physics proxies to avoid shots getting unintendedly blocked
  
• Fixed a bug where crows were not killed by lanterns
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented masked Hellhounds from being part of a Hellhound pack
  
• Fixed some areas that players could access unintendedly
  
• Fixed an issue that caused the walls of Healing Waters Church’s basement to cull too early
  
• Fixed some issues where AI could spawn in wrong places
  
• Fixed an issue where stutters would not open by melee hits
  
• Fixed a bug where swapping weapons did not work properly if the interaction was not held long enough
  
• Fixed some other audio issues
  
• Fixed some localization and text issues
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented players from collecting both challenge rewards at the same time
  
• Fixed an issue that caused the Yellow barrel’s fire patch to appear not completely visible
  
• QUICKPLAY: Fixed a bug where the Wellspring counter did not update properly with high latency
  
• QUICKPLAY: Fixed a bug where the HUD did not update properly after the Wellspring carrier disconnected

• Adrenaline trait is not working as intended.
  
• We are currently investigating a rare client de-sync issue whereby some entity positions and/or orientations are significantly beyond the normal network operating parameters. This issue has also been observed outside of the reported usage of flare guns, which leads us to believe it is a broader problem in general.
  
• In some cases vitality shots/medkits may not work properly (We are heavily investigating the cause of this issue and it will be fixed for the Live release)
  
• The client may crash in some cases
  
• Players might encounter an infinite loading screen when loading missions
  
• Players may encounter a ‘Failure Detected’ message while matchmaking
  
• One member of a team may not load into a game properly and stay on the ‘searching for server’ screen
  
• Nvidia Highlights currently do not work (We are currently investigating and working on a fix for the Live release)
  
• UI may get unresponsive in some cases (Restarting the game fixes the issue)
  
• There are some rendering issues over long distances where some assets may not get rendered
  
• There is a rare chance that Quickplay crates show up in Bounty Hunt missions (Without lootable items)
  
• There are still some cases where AI does not navigate correctly
  
• 'Send Friend Request' only opens the Steam overlay instead of actually sending a friend request (Please manually add someone as a friend instead in the meantime)