Hello mercs!
I'm thrilled to announce the latest content update for Dead Grid today. This marks the game's fifth significant update, and it's entirely dedicated to addressing player requests for enhanced character and item progression, something that many players have been eagerly anticipating.
Let's begin with the quick overview of the major changes with full patch notes at the end of this post.
SKILL ATTRIBUTES
Each skill now presents a passive attribute node, allowing players to allocate surplus points to boost the hit points of all mers within the same class. A maximum of 90 additional points can be invested per class, totaling 450 across all classes. Furthermore, the cap on the maximum points attainable per class has been raised to 120.
ARMORY
A new Lab component has been added, called The Armory. To access this system, players can unlock it by completing the Military Truck mission location, where the survivor character Ray is discovered.
After unlocking it, you'll begin to occasionally receive armory upgrade points each time you deliver a killing blow using a specific weapon type.
These points can then be spent to upgrade the item level of your weapons, including unique (orange) weapons. In addition, you'll be raising the item level of future weapon drops of the same category.
At times, you may come across skill selection choices that allow you to accumulate additional points for a randomly chosen weapon group at the beginning of each turn.
Your Armory progression is persistent to future replays to the game, offering a significant advantage of early upgrades.
MERC DISCOVERY
New mercs are now automatically discovered (in a random order) after completing mission locations for the first time. They will show up in your Gear - Recruit tab. Survivor character Ramon has been reworked to offer a discount of reputation needed to recruit each merc. You can spend Intel points on Ramon to offer a deeper discount and these points can be refunded when you no longer need them.
NEW SURVIVORS
2 new survivor characters can now be unlocked granting assistance at different mission locations.
Loaf gives 2 powerful combat consumable which can be used or kept as loot at the end of your mission. These consumables can be combined into a bottle to offer even better variants. Loaf is unlocked by completing mission location Forest Outpost.
- Power Surge - melee attacks deal double damage, lasts 2 turns
- Perfect Vision - ranged attacks cannot miss, lasts 2 turns
Marco deploys landmines which can affect all enemies in combat during their turn, causing them to explode on movement. The explosion damage scales with you merc's training in explosives, similar to grenades. Marco is unlocked by completing mission location Pine Valley PD.
NEW CARDS
As usual, the update brings a range of new weapons, consumables, junk cards, etc.
And yes, there is a sniper rifle with a silencer!
The backgrounds of many cards have been revamped to showcase a better theme.
NEW MISSION LOCATION
A new mission location has been added, called Forest Outpost. This mission is not covered under the extended tutorial and will start scaling in difficulty early on, while still somewhat on the easy side in terms of the enemy types you'll face.
ACHIEVEMENTS - FAME
45 new Steam achievements for a total of 290.
WHAT'S NEXT?
I've been focused on finalizing the remaining region missions to introduce a completion phase to the game. Even after reaching the victory screen, players can choose to revisit and replay locations. This next phase also involves refining enemy mechanics and overhauling existing missions to enhance the overall gaming experience. Your feedback has been awesome!
Happy Thanksgiving for those of you celebrating in the US. Please stay tuned and consider leaving a brief review of the game, as it greatly helps in its discovery.
FULL PATCH NOTES - EA 0.5.12
NEW SKILL HP ATTRIBUTE SYSTEM
- The passive HP attributes on the skill tree have been reworked into manually assigned slots.
- You can now invest skill points to grant passive HP to all the mercs of the same class.
- This system allows for 90 more skills to be spent per class.
- Total class earned skill points have been raised from 60 to 120.
LAB - ARMORY
- The Efficiency Lab station has been phased out and replaced by a completely new system called Armory.
- Armory allows you to upgrade the item level of all weapon types with points gathered during combat.
- Armory is unlocked by discovering survivor Ray, after completing mission Army Truck on any difficulty.
- Once unlocked, armory points will have a chance to drop on any kill for the weapon used to make the kill.
- Upgrading any weapon increases the max item level of future drops in the same weapon category.
- Earned armory points are carried to all future replays of the same, similar to the other Lab upgrades.
- Weapons of any item level can now be equipped on lower ranked mercs, which was not possible before.
- The weapon proficiency (training) requirement to equip higher item level weapons has also been phased out due causing a lot of confusion with many players.
REWORKED MERC RECRUITMENT
- Survivor character Ramon has been completely reworked and is no longer used to discover new mercs.
- New mercs are now found by completing mission locations for the first time. They will still appear in the gear recruit tab as before.
- Spending intel points on Ramon can be used to reduce the reputation cost of recruiting new mercs, which goes up with each each new merc.
- Ramon's reputation discount comes from multiple mission locations where he is available and these points can now be refunded.
- This allows the player to have the option to push for a higher discount early on, but still recover the invested intel points down the road.
NEW MISSION
- A new misssion has been added, called Forest Outpost, unlocked by completing the Gas Station.
- This mission is meant to be about the same difficulty as Dear Estelle and is not covered by the tutorial scaling.
NEW SURVIVOR CHARACTER: Loaf
- Discovered by completing the new mission Forest Outpost.
- Loaf offers 4 powerful consumables to aid in melee and ranged combat. They cannot be found or purchased from the trader.
- Consumables granted by Loaf can be saved for use in other missions, or sold to the trader.
NEW SURVIVOR CHARACTER: Marco
- Discovered by completing mission Pine Valley PD.
- Marco deploys landmines on random enemies in combat with a chance to explode on movement during the enemy's attack turn.
- This mechanic is similar to Ned's barbed wire, but instead of low consistent damage, explosion scales with trained mastery by each merc.
NEW CARDS
- 10+ new female zombies, medical workers, bag looters dropping loot on kill.
- 10+ new unique weapons, randomly found as loot.
- 10+ new food and drink consumables.
- 10 area opportunity cards to collect armory points, can appear in skill selection on every turn.
- 1 new boss enemy on the new mission.
- 4 new consumables granted by Loaf.
NEW REGION MODIFIERS
- 3 silent modifiers to increase the drop chance of armory upgrade points for melee weapons
- 7 loud modifiers to increase the drop chance of armory upgrade points for ranged weapons
ACHIEVEMENTS (FAME)
- 45 new achievements for a total of 290.
- Ramon's previous achievement has been refactored for his new mechanic.
BALANCE
- Slightly rebalanced early game scaling on the first few missions.
- The damage scaling of all weapons has been adjusted to coincide with the armory upgrades of item levels.
- All weapon trade values have been rebalanced due the much higher scaling of item levels.
- Weapon rewards from completed assignments will now mostly grant higher item levels than before to compete with drops.
- Rebalanced and increased the bonus damage of explosion proficiency by 50%. This is trained by indvidual mercs.
- Added more female zombie variants to different mission locations and hordes.
- Reduced trader's stock refresh reputation cost from 5 to 1 as reputation is now also used by the Armory.
MISC
- Replaced the company logo video a static loader for a smoother transition to the main menu.
- Slightly reworked the graphics on the Main Menu.
- Revamped the art of the region map with more icons representing key missions locations.
- Improved the theme of the board Initiative button along with its's tooltip.
- Reworked the 2D death animations of enemy cards with a new effect and sound effect.
- Reworked the background art of many consumable cards for a more consistent look.
- Reduced the frequency of survivor emotes when spending intel points in mission details.
- Added hotkey 'x' to trigger Initiative in combat.
- All undiscovered mission locations now appear on the region map.
BUG FIXES
- Game error when adding/removing mercs from the squad in a rapid sequence.
- Game error when selecting some merc characters for recruit due to missing emotes.
- Players are able to earn more than intended skill points in a class.
- Revenant skill Viscous Bite is not increasing the default 5% bite chance.
- Multiple achievements added in CU04 reported with missing icons.
- Explosive scaling from points spent in training was not being calculated correctly, resulting in lower damage.
- Missing image for the Gas Station Vest (uncommon) accessory.
- Prerequisite requirements to unlock some mission location are not correct.
- Remaining uses of survivor character Brie is reported as a negative number.
- Many minor issues not reported by players, found during the development of this update.
Please post your issues and suggestions in Discord or the forums. Thank you!
--Paul