Explorers,
We’re excited to release our latest game update and hope that you’ll enjoy the changes in Scavengers. Check out all the new in-game updates that are now live!
With this update, we also performed an account wipe, resetting your account to level 1. To thank all our Explorers for their dedication and passion so far, we’ve credited active players with Pioneer Rewards - including some sweet cosmetic items based on what your account level was pre-wipe.
Social Features
We’ve heard your feedback that our social system could use a few improvements, especially to make it easier to find a party and stay together after elimination. In this update, we’re making it easier to play as a squad.
Here’s what’s changing:
- Parties are given the opportunity to stick together when leaving a match after being eliminated
- You can find players you recently played with and easily add them to your Friends List
- Party members now stay disconnected after match exit, even if they are eliminated
You can find recent players by opening up the Social menu and clicking on the Recent tab. Simply send a Friend request to add players to your Friends list and you’re ready to invite them to your squad!
Your full in-game name, including the unique identifier, has moved from the main lobby to the top of the Social menu. You’ll still need the full IGN (in-game name) to add players you haven’t recently teamed up with.
Research and Progression
Part of the reasoning for wiping progress now was so we could rework and improve parts of the Research system. We hope that as you progress and unlock Research, it will provide a better experience.
The power system was intended to reinforce session pacing and encourage playing multiple Explorers. Players’ perception of the system and prior experience with ‘Power’ mechanics resulted in some negative expectations that weren’t intended. We took this feedback on board and decided that the negatives outweigh the benefits of the system, so we’ve unplugged Power.
Here’s what changed:
- Removed Power from the Research System
- Overhauled and adjusted the Research unlocks and recipes
- Salvage contents and resources have been reworked to provide smoother progression
Sliding
Explorers can quickly and easily slide down a hill - until they jump. Landing after a jump forces you to stand, when sometimes all you want is to continue sliding. With this in mind, we’ve made some changes to sliding and jumping to make it more exciting:
- You can continue sliding even after an epic jump! While in the air, hit the CTRL key to go into a crouch. Upon landing, your Explorer will continue to slide without losing any momentum
- Jump animations have been adjusted to better fit each Explorer’s build
Cosmetics
We already announced the new cosmetics coming with this update, but those aren’t the only changes! We’ve also added some new emotes and Keeper frames.
Here’s all our new cosmetic adjustments:
- Added: Weapon skins
- Added: Account banners, emblems, and titles
- Added: New emotes for Explorer progression
- Added: New Keeper skins
Explorers
Kali
- Added: Heartseeker X-Fyre
- Deals fire damage over time on hit
- Kali now remains cloaked while reviving teammates
- Kali does not show up on the Radar while cloaked
- Fixed: No longer uncloaks from friendly fires
Tarik
- Added: Longstriker Desperado
- Chance to trigger an explosion when the target is killed by a headshot
- Adjusted: Stun Trap
- Stun Trap cooldown increased to 25 seconds
- Changes to Stun Trap effects when stunned:
- Improved worble effects
- Increased falloff for screen brightness and stun effects
Halden
- Added: Strike Rifle Vigor
- Chance to cause a brief slowdown effect on hit
- Curative Aura no longer cancels Executions that are in progress
- Fixed: Area of effect correctly matches visuals
Jae
- Added: Maverick Adze
- Deals double the damage against energy shields
- Causes a brief slowdown on hit
- Added: Maverick Depthcharger
- Deals bleed damage over time against enemies with no armor
- Refills stamina when hitting an enemy
Valora
- Added: Devastator Corsac
- Higher rate of fire, with a bigger magazine compared to Devastator
- Deals lower damage per shot
- Deals acid damage that will corrode enemy armor over time and deals additional damage to enemies without armor
- Added: Devastator Nemesis
- Fires a slow-moving bolt that can cause explosion damage upon impact
- Fixed: Accuracy penalty immediately after exiting sprint while using Devastator
Cruz
- Added: Cazador Shiver
- Deals freeze damage on hit
- Freeze damage slows down the target for a period of time and reduces their temperature
Talent Improvements
We’ve made updates to several Talents. We also heard your feedback that it can be difficult to determine what a Talent does. So, we’ve updated the Talent descriptions with more detailed information, to make it easier to understand what it does before you use it.
Here’s what has changed:
- Explorers with the Acrobatic trait (Kali, Valora, and Cruz) have had their Utility Talent Radar Blocker swapped with the Ninja Utility Talent Limbered Up
- Radar Blocker is now available to Jae and Tarik
- Talent descriptions updated with detailed information
- Many Talents have been reworked and rebalanced
- Fixed: Talents now work correctly after respawning
- Fixed: Power Surge will now trigger correctly
- Fixed: Heal Burst will now trigger correctly
- Fixed: Power Reroute will now trigger correctly
- Fixed: Cold Blood now lasts the entire match
Weapon Tuning
We did a weapon tuning pass, to re-balance many of the weapons in Scavengers.
The following weapons were adjusted:
- Longstriker and Predator Sniper Rifle
- Reduced the projective velocity
- Reduced the zoom magnification slightly
- Reduced vertical push recoil on snipers - they now settle closer to the original aim
- Added damage falloff
- Snipers now exit ADS (aiming down sight) to perform bolt action
- Warsong
- Damage decreased
- Sidekick
- Rarity changed to Uncommon
- Damage increased
- EF-1 Microburst
- Damage increased
- Zoom magnification increased slightly
- Opus
- Rarity changed to Epic
- Increased the damage
- Slightly increased the headshot multiplier
- Damage falloff extended slightly - targets can now be a bit further away before the long-distance effectiveness is reduced
- Sweeper and Renegade SMGs
- Damage increased at close range
- Snowpiercer
- Rarity changed to Rare
- Improved accuracy and damage when rapid firing, using short draws
- Deals bleed damage over time to unarmored targets
- Can rapid-fire much faster than other bows
- Harvester
- Deals additional bleed damage over time to unarmored enemies
- Outlander Melee Weapon Brainer
- Damage increased
- Outlander Melee Weapon Ripsaw
- Damage increased
- Outlander Melee Weapon Hackblade
- Heavy attack damage decreased
- Outlander Melee Weapon Chainshark
- Basic attack damage greatly increased
- Heavy attack damage slightly increased
- Letty’s Rosie revolver
- Reduced the headshot multiplier slightly
- Kali’s Heartseeker
- Damage falloff range extended
- Cerberus bow has increased accuracy
- Shockwave bow explodes on impact instead of attaching and exploding after a delay
We also made some adjustments to recoil spread. Overall, these changes should decrease your overall recoil spread, making it easier to hit your target.
- Reduced the movement accuracy penalty for all weapons except pistols
- Removed the movement accuracy penalty for only pistols
- Reduced the accuracy penalty after reloading
- Reduced the ADS recoil spread on many weapons
- This is most noticeable when using a Rattler, Sweeper, and Renegade
We’ve updated the maximum ammo capacity for some ammo types.
Here are the current values:
- Light: Decreased from 450 to 420
- Medium: 225 (No change)
- Heavy: Decreased from 90 to 60
- Arrows: 135 (No change)
- Shells: Decreased from 45 to 36
- Explosive: Decreased from 15 to 12
General Combat
- You can now sprint while reloading, and you will automatically transition back to a full sprint once reload completes. This makes for smoother, more fluid movement during combat
- Throwing a grenade no longer forces you to remain unarmed. After throwing the last grenade, your Explorer now automatically switches to the last used weapon
- Improvements to make using the controller easier:
- Increased the strength of the sticky aim
- Increased the hold duration to exit a vehicle to avoid accidentally exiting while pressing the reload button
- Fixed: The chance to land headshots when aiming at the chest is no longer easier than expected
General Gameplay
- The time of day is now randomized at the start of Expeditions
- New Challenges have been added to the game
- Improved messaging for players downed; kills, and teammate pings
- Your Keeper is more attuned to your status! The Keeper lights will change when you are too cold or have low health
- Warlords may now appear during Category 2 storms
- Gorthokk, Bylobog, and Omicron have been made more lethal to better combat Explorer teams that wish to take them on
- The final circle is smaller, and the final collapse happens more slowly
- Decreased the number of Growths (dynamic scoring objectives) that appear at a time
- Added more Supply Drop, Orbital Debris, and Data Uplink locations
Data and Data Uplinks
We made some changes around the Datapoints to improve clarity and make it easier to upload your Datapoints at the Data Uplinks:
- Data Uplinks now upload Datapoints faster
- Data Uplink speed increases when more teammates are nearby
- Players drop all their Datapoints if they are killed and eliminated after the Dropship has arrived
- Data tubes are now represented in denominations based on how many Datapoints they contain
- Datapoints can no longer be dropped from your inventory
Scrap
We’re continuing to adjust the in-game Scrap balance. We’re adjusting the amount of Scrap dropped when an entire team is eliminated, as it was a bit too high.
- The Scrap bonus for a full-team elimination has been reduced by 50%
Audio
- Weapon audio improvements across Explorer weapons, Wildcard weapons, and Outlander weapons
- Improved audio for boss objectives and AI factions
- New audio for teammates downed and respawning
UI
- Pings are now semi-transparent when aiming down sight (ADS)
- PlayStation controllers are now properly supported by the UI, with relevant buttons
- Improved item stacking in the UI. Your inventory will now smart-stack items if you have them split across different slots. You can also click or drag to combine them, they will stack up to the max capacity
- The enemy ping is now semi-transparent and no longer shows an icon to differentiate enemy types
- New background for the loading screen
Performance, Optimization, and Bug Fixes
- Improvements to overall performance and hitches seen in matches
- Continuous anti-cheat improvements
- Fixed: Several client and server crashes
- Fixed: Kill with a Grenade Challenge now completes properly
- Fixed: Players no longer get stuck in a crouch after exiting a vehicle
- Fixed: Enemies spawning inside level geometry
- Fixed: Environment bug fixes for improper collision, mantling failures, visible seams in the ground, and floating set pieces
- Fixed: Enemies clipping with environment assets while in combat
- Fixed: Rattler audio ending
- Fixed: Sound occasionally missing for the player shooting the Argonaut Splash
- Fixed: Snow piles can no longer be seen or shot through
- Fixed: Sickly Threshes spawning above a ground surface
- Fixed: UI elements disappearing upon exiting the Explorer loadout screen
- Fixed: Crafting icons appear small when first opening the Crafting menu
- Fixed: AI not always reliably executing downed players
- Fixed: Slide sound effects ending early
- Fixed: Some chests being unable to be looted due to being slightly underground or clipping with snow and other set pieces
- Fixed: Missing subtitles for Mother voice lines
- Fixed: Dropship collision issues
- Fixed: Attempting to craft weapons while downed corrupts the weapon crafting flow
- Fixed: Retch enemies missing their spit trail effects
- Fixed: Overseer spawning in the ground at Barricade Outpost
- Fixed: Leftover collision from bear corpses catches players and causes them to jitter
- Fixed: Missing text on unfriend prompt in Social menus
- Fixed: The leaderboard can clip with text chat
- Fixed: Data markers sometimes show up in regions the border storm has collapsed over
- Fixed: Sluka vomit attack doesn’t show its effects
- Fixed: Player loot dropping too slow
- Fixed: Player cannot close the map and leaderboard screens with their respective keybinds while spectating
- Fixed: Issues with Explorer hand positioning on a handful of weapons
- Fixed: Missing localized text on a variety of screens