Hello Responders!

As the Halloween season approaches, we’re excited to announce our October update Camp Blood! This update brings our first post-launch map as well as our first post-launch gameplay system, two types of content we plan to offer regularly in future releases. We’ve also continued to look into community feedback and elevate fixes and improvements players want sooner from us. Here’s a glimpse into the major changes coming soon:

Stay and Slay Awhile

Set on the outskirts of Warren County, New Jersey, Ruby Lake is our latest Survival experience inspired by the campsite slashers of the 80s. The CRC is assisting the National Guard in ensuring the extraction of civilians from the wider area, with zombies goaded into the now-vacant facilities as distraction. 

Troop Cabins

Ranger Station

Camp Pavilion

Retire & Reap Rewards  

Our goals with Retirement are twofold: offering up a long-term, prestige system for players seeking greater accomplishment in No More Room in Hell 2 and giving all players a path towards powerful items that will make a tangible difference in Hell Mode.

When you visit the Responder screen, you’ll immediately see the Distinguished Service Rank as well as the option to retire Responders. Oh, and two additional loadout slots unlockable through Distinguished Service! 

Distinguished Service is a new leveling system that rewards experience exclusively through retired Responders. You can preview how much XP each retirement would provide, based on their accomplishments and skills up to this point. Responders must reach level 100 before being eligible for retirement, but you can check in on your potential progress at any level!

Distinguished Service has its own rewards track with unlocks at every level. An additional loadout slot is the first major unlock, with cosmetics and new gameplay features in later levels. For Camp Blood (1.2), there will be 20 Dedicated Service levels at launch with additional levels added in future updates. 

Here is a preview of the new perks and passive items that are available only through Distinguished Service: 

Experimental Features

One of our most requested features at launch was the addition of subtitles, something we spoke on the complexity of adding back in our Beyond Armageddon blogpost. We’re excited to share that an experimental version of them will be available as a part of 1.2!

This iteration will be limited to CRC dialogue. It also will not currently support different variations of lines meaning the actual spoken dialogue will vary often. However, this is a big step forward for accessibility and ensuring all players know what’s occurring and where to go next.

Improvements & Fixes

For controller players, we’ve added additional settings that allow you to adjust both your left and right stick deadzones independently. We’ve also been working to continue to improve various menus and their navigation alongside the new additions due to Distinguished Service.

We’ve also got a suite of bug fixes to address various issues seen since Resupply, including the disappearance of the player report option. This will restore the ability for players to log bad actors in-game for us and speed up enforcement! We’ve also made some design changes in response to community feedback around bug-like behavior, including adjusting firearm damage to be no longer affected by being out of stamina.

An Update on Squadding Up

We’ll end off this preview with an update on our most major outstanding issue: players having issues squadding up with friends. We’ve made significant progress towards a fix, however the planned change is a much more substantive one than meets the eye.

In order to confidently resolve this and other issues our party system has, we’ve worked to migrate over to an entirely new system for squads. Client-side, there should be no discernable difference in how parties operate, but we’d appreciate players reporting any strange behavior or issues they have once it's released to help us ensure it’s a better system. We’ll share more details when we know the exact release window for this change, but didn’t want to leave it out of this blog!

As always, stay safe out there!

The NMRIH2 Dev Team