Hello Hunters!
We know it’s been a bit quiet recently for ZERO Sievert content, but today that changes. It’s time to start looking at what’s coming in the next update.
August is shaping up to be a pretty exciting time for ZERO Sievert. We’ve got a solid mix of feature work, quality-of-life improvements and bug fixes all making their way to a bunker near you.
Overall, our goal is to make ZERO Sievert feel smoother to play and more intuitive. Some of these changes are based directly on your feedback, others are things we’ve spotted ourselves, and a few are just those little annoyances that have been sitting on our list for a while.
Smarter Ammo Management
This one sounds small on paper, but it should make life a lot easier in the middle of a firefight.
We’re adding automatic ammunition switching. Right now, if you run out of one type of ammo you can sometimes end up frantically wondering why your gun refuses to reload, even though you’ve got another compatible type sitting in your inventory.
With this update, if you’ve completely run out of your current ammunition, your weapon will automatically load another compatible round instead. It’s one of those quality-of-life features that hopefully just disappears into the background, you won’t really think about it when it’s working, you’ll just spend less time frantically tapping Y and more time shooting the things trying to kill you.
New 5.56 Ammunition
Speaking of ammo… we’re also introducing a brand new 5.56 round: M856A1.
One thing we noticed is that there’s quite a large jump between M855 and M955 ammunition. M856A1 fills that gap nicely, giving you another meaningful progression point before reaching the top-tier rounds.
You’ll find it appearing throughout the game too; enemies can spawn carrying it, it’ll turn up as loot, traders will stock it, it’ll appear as quest rewards, and you’ll be able to craft it yourself. And yes, because we know you’re all stash goblins, it also gets its own dedicated ammo container.
Bolt Cutters
Next up… bolt cutters. Or perhaps more accurately… finally, bolt cutters.
We’ve been watching plenty of your playthroughs recently (Oscar Mikey’s included) and let’s just say we’ve seen a few moments where players spend what feels like half their run desperately searching for a pair.
We do like a bit of progression, and not everything should be handed to you immediately. But if progress grinds to a halt because one fairly common tool refuses to spawn, that’s not really fun. So we’ve increased their spawn rate, and Mr Junk will also have a chance to stock them as part of his trader inventory.
Hopefully that strikes a much better balance between rewarding exploration and not leaving you completely at the mercy of RNG.
New Difficulty Menu
We’re also making improvements to the difficulty settings. We often get comments from Hunters saying the game is too hard, so (besides the usual “skill issue" and "get good” responses) we’re introducing a new lower difficulty option for those looking for a more relaxed time in the Zone.
We’ve also given the difficulty menu a bit of an overhaul so it’s clearer and easier to understand. Whether you’re brand new to Zakov or someone who enjoys making every raid as punishing as possible, the new menu should make choosing your experience much more straightforward.
Bug Fixes & Polish
Alongside the new features there’s a healthy list of fixes going in too.
One of the bigger ones is a move onto a newer runtime along with some additional tweaks, which should put an end to the crashes caused by an NVIDIA driver issue some players have been experiencing.
We’ve also fixed an inventory bug where your carry weight wouldn’t always update correctly after equipping a backpack, not the biggest issue, but a pain nonetheless.
And if you’ve spent time in the weapon modification screen, you’ll be pleased to hear we’ve expanded the installed attachment grid from four-by-two to four-by-three. That means larger attachments will finally display properly instead of looking like they’ve been squeezed into a space they were never meant to fit.
They’re not headline features, but they’re exactly the kind of improvements that make the game feel that little bit smoother every time you play.
And we're just touching the surface of what's coming in this update... We’ll share the full patch notes closer to release.
If you’d rather watch than read, check out the dev video here.
View game pageThanks, Hunters! See you in the Zone