Hello mercs!
This week I'd like to share the main theme of the upcoming content update to Dead Grid.
NEW MERC CLASS
If you're a fan of classic zombie movies, such as Day of the Dead, you may recall scenes of zombies being experimented on, trained and used as meat shields.
Inspired by these movies and TV shows, a brand new playable merc class has been added to the game, called Undead. This class is designed to offer a different play style of what you've been used to.
Undead mercs aren't the brightest characters in your squad. Decomposing brains suffer from frequent amnesia, granting them a chance to completely ignore your commands. What they lack in smarts is easily made up for with brute force, sending them into a mindless frenzy of swings and bites in a single turn.
Undead mercs are still zombies and zombies suffer from constant hunger. The stamina bar, used by living mercs, has been replaced with a system called Hunger.
In addition to hunger, undead mercs suffer from a constant decay, causing them to lose HP every turn. The severity of decay is tied to the intensity of hunger. On the plus side, hunger determines the crit chance of every swing, giving you the choice of doing more damage at the cost of higher decay.
Hunger, decay and amnesia can be modified through skills, training and equipment.
The new merc class comes with 15 all new skills!
In order to acquire these mercs, you'll need to first gather research components for the Lab.
Undead mercs cannot use traditional melee or ranged weapons, therefore a set of new weapons have been added to the game, specifically catered to work with the class. They are upgraded the same as any weapon and can be equipped into left or right hand, allowing you to mix and match.
SKILL CHANGES
As I mentioned in the past update, Tactician was due for a review. Many players expressed the Surveyor spec feeling very underwhelming, so I did a significant redesign of multiple skills. This also includes a selection of passive skills which was another common request.
A few skills for other classes have also been tuned, more details to come in full patch notes.
IMPROVED UNIQUE ABILITIES
Many unique weapons now support modifications to various class skills. These modifiers apply only to the merc carrying that weapon. Not all uniques are affected yet, but the system will be expanded on with further testing.
NEW ITEMS, QUALITY OF LIFE
Some of these accessories are directly based on your feedback.
A number quality of life features, also based on your feedback, have been added to the game.
Weapons can now be filtered by minimum item level.
Brie's stolen items are shown in Loot Haul when returning from a mission.
ETA
I'm not ready to announce the release date of this update yet, but development is reaching the final stages with QA coming right after.
Please stay tuned for more news and thanks for playing Dead Grid!
--Paul