Knights and mercs, a new update is trickling down from the gleaming corporate towards the neon-baked streets of New Boston. Update #220 updates the Death Save rules for lower difficulties (allowing mercs to be knocked out of the mission but not die and for missions to fail correctly), added new hotkeys for Timeline manipulation in the Safehouse, improved balance of Matrix Hosts by Faction type, fixed the 1-frame T-Pose at the start of mission deploy, made all higher level Wounds a bit worse and fixed a big pile of F10s.
We are hard at work mixing bug fixes, polish, and final rule changes with more big content hits. Last update added a new proc-gen mission object and next update is going to blast a major story - so stay glued to this page. If you are enjoying the relentless pace of additions, please take a moment to leave a review. Remember, you can always edit it later.
Death and Death Save Redo
This change has been coming for a long time - the review thread about it on Discord is old.
Tldr; the new Death Save % rules work like you would probably expect unlike the old rules that just made you kind of immortal.
(Old Rules) As we like to explain our changes and reasoning in full, I will quickly explain the old system. Every Difficulty had a Death Save % from 100% to 0%. Whenever you take Damage that would reduce you to 0 HP (dead!) and you were already Bleeding Out, your character rolls their Death Save %. If this roll passes, in the old rules, you simply stayed Bleeding Out and gained back some HP, basically "bouncing" back to life.
Notably, Difficulties like Brutal and Chrome had 30% or 20% Death Save, meaning you might take a fatal hit and just walk out the other side with more HP than you went in with ... ?
(New Rules) Death Save % is rolled whenever you take Damage that would reduce you to 0 HP (dead!) and you were already Bleeding Out to see if you survive the hit. Regardless of the result of your Death Save, you flop on the ground and are knocked out of the mission. The Combat Log shows whether you died permanently or survived by Death Save %.
Permanently Dead or Survived Dying, you are knocked out of the mission. This allows missions to fail, even on lower difficulties, without achieving game over or permanent loss of characters.
And Death Saves values have been rebuilt for high Difficulties - Normal is now 50%, Hard is 25% and Brutal and Chrome are ... well, sorry to say it, 0%. Of course, you can customize your Difficulty to your heart's content and play any way you like, these are just the starting defaults.
So, this does make the game harder. In the case that you are losing a mission or taking deadly hits, you will lose faster and harder than before. But this was always the design and the "everliving zombie" Death Save was a mistake that took too long to correct.
3 New Timeline Hotkeys
Three new bindable hotkeys have been added to make controlling the Safehouse timeline easier. There is Start (V), Stop (B) and Toggle (N) by default. You can rebind them as you please, depending on which ones you want to use. This helps reduce any complicated movement you might have been doing between pause and play, if you like having rapid-fire control over the timeline.
In addition, we've improved how the ESC (or B on controller) works in the Safehouse. If the Timeline is running, hitting ESC will stop the timeline where it used to stop the Timeline and open the pause menu. If the Timeline is not running, now it will just open the pause menu. So, ESC functions as a nice Stop Timeline hotkey if it is running.
Better Matrix Balanced Based on Faction
In previous updates, we adjusted the Matrix Host color grading by faction so that Street and Syndicate Factions were prevented from rolling the top colors like Orange, Red or Ultra (this is cyberpunk, ultra is a color!!!!)
With Update #220, we've improved this system as well to include the Matrix Q-Sec AI. In the same way that it makes sense that a street gang can't field a Red host, it makes sense that they can't get access to Pit Viper Q-Sec AI. Street Gangs will have access to lower Q-Sec like Boas and Sidewinders, while Syndicates can reach higher, even sometimes (if rarely) fielding a Pit Viper.
All High-Level Wounds - Worse!
In fixing a bug where Brainburnt 1 and Brainburnt 2 were found to be the same level, we completed an analysis of the Wounds that might have matching stats. With this analysis completed, we've ramped up the bad parts of higher level Wounds a bit more and fixed all the duplicates. You're going to have extra incentive to get your Wounds treated early now and "carrying" a Level 4 Wound is just going to hurt more.
Fixed T-Pose in Mission Deploy Screen
For oh-so-long there was a 1-frame T-Pose that you could spot your mercs holding when you first entered the mission deployment screen. It would only happen once per visit to the safehouse and it was fast enough you might think, "Did that really happen?"
We are so glad it is fixed!
And More F10s!
Quality and polishing are a big part of what we are working on daily as we head toward launch. This update includes another big wave of F10 fixes, including resolving issues with controllers in Victory/Defeat screen, fixing the duplicated Rarity filter in Cold Storage, resolving the T-Pose in mission deploy and fixing a bug that could cause the game to lock up if your current character was gunned down by enemy Overwatch.
Thanks for all your F10s! We are fixing daily.
v1.9.145 - 3/5/2025
- Fixed rules for Death Save - when reaching 0 HP and Bleeding, you go down and roll a Death Save % instead of staying immortal
- Survived/Dead is revealed at end of mission for those mercs who went down
- Allows Easy/Normal difficulty games to fail missions by mercs being eliminated (dead or survived)
- 3 new hotkeys can be bound - Start, Stop and Toggle Safehouse Timeline
- Pressing ESC or (B) in the Safehouse will first pause the Timeline if it is running before opening game pause menu
- Improved balance of Street/Syndicate/Milsec hosts to ensure they have fair Response Levels as well, Street Gangs cannot field Diamond Cobra RL
- Worsened the effect for all higher level Wounds, more reason to get them healed, harder to ignore
- Fixed bug where the current character being killed by enemy Overwatch could lock up the game
- Fixed issue where Brainburnt Wound Level 1 and 2 were the same
- Fixed 1 frame T-Pose appearing first time you load mission deploy screen
- Fixed issue with Rarity filter appearing twice in Cold Storage tabs
- Fixed controller input issue in Victory/Defeat when a mission is multi-stage the selection could get stuck
- Fixed issue with mission deploy and long character lists that could cause the character UI to become misaligned