We’re making the world merry this holiday season with a new update designed to brighten up your nights!
Enclaves across the map are stringing up lights, turning themselves into beacons of warmth and cheer, while the zombies are visibly shrinking into the darkness.
- We’ve added five new holiday hats that pair excellently with our existing holiday sweaters.
- Providence Ridge has received a visual overhaul, with new terrain, foliage, background vistas, and lighting for both day and night.
- Enclave bases and outposts now light up at night, so the people of our world no longer have to live in darkness!
- You can now reliably earn the Shots in the Dark achievement from Heartland, thanks to a small scavenger hunt.
- Zombie density is now displayed on the map screen, so you can watch the zombie population recede as you destroy them.
… and that’s only the beginning. So let’s unwrap Update 28 and see what’s inside!
Limited Time Pom-Pom Hats
Log in before January 10th and we’ll unlock five new holiday hats in your closet.
Each hat is designed to match one of our five holiday sweaters from yesteryear, which are also available during the same time window!
- Candy Stripe Pom-Pom (matches the Candy Cane sweater)
- Decay Pom-Pom (matches the Decay the Halls sweater)
- Light Pom-Pom (matches the Reindeer Lights sweater)
- Nightmare Pom-Pom (matches the Holiday Nightmare sweater)
- Snowflake Pom-Pom (matches the Blue Snowflake sweater)
We’re also bringing back our classic holiday Wizard Van, for a less-specific amount of time. Maybe we’ll forget about it and leave it up for most of the year again!
Redecorating Providence Ridge
We’ve given Providence Ridge a graphical overhaul, bringing it up to the new visual standard set by Trumbull Valley in the Homecoming Update.
- The terrain has been repainted for a more natural look.
- The foliage and rocks have been swapped out with fancier foliage and rocks.
- The sky has been redone, with all-new outdoor lighting throughout the day, and a creepy green-tinged nightmare after dark.
- We’ve added new vista elements to the horizon, to create gorgeous views you can take in from the many mountain overlooks across the map.
Enclaves Now Feature Lighting … not Looting
Enclaves no longer sit around in the dark all night, waiting for you to bring them the precious glow of your flashlight. They now string up lights of their own, creating little warm beacons of hope in the darkness.
Your own outposts also light up at night, to give the impression that humans live and work in these places, and that civilization has not entirely been dimmed by the apocalypse.
Incidentally, you can no longer loot the containers at enclave bases while the people are standing right there. You’ll have your turn if they leave town.
Zombie Density Map
We now shade the map darker red in places with dense zombie populations, and lighter grey in places where the zombies have been cleared out.
As you defeat zombies and clear infestations, you can actually see the impact your actions have on the map, and then watch the zombies slowly trickle back in after you leave.
We now also save the effects of your actions on zombie density, so when you come back to the game after a break, the swath you cut through the map is still waiting there for you to admire.
Shots No Longer in the Dark
One of our least-earned achievements is the aptly-named Shots in the Dark — the one that requires you to collect all six Echo Lab weapons on a single run through Heartland.
The reason this achievement is so rare is because the loot system actually makes it very unlikely that all six weapons even appear in a given run. That wasn’t how we meant it to work, but … it’s what we shipped.
Now, armed with the new Discoveries feature from the Homecoming Update, we were able to go back in and create a little scavenger hunt across the map, which guarantees that all six weapons now appear, every single time.
We look forward to more than 0.31% of you finally being able to get this one.
Doomsday Pack
Players who bought the Ultimate Edition of State of Decay 2 were entitled to the Doomsday Pack — a set of radio commands that would call in a unique collection of rewards, including a vehicle, weapons, and supplies.
Some players had a lot of trouble accessing those rewards, and multiple attempts to fix the issue have had spotty results.
So rather than let those players continue to struggle, we’ve released the Doomsday Pack rewards to everyone, the way we did with the Independence Pack and Daybreak when the Juggernaut Edition was released.
Enjoy Doomsday, everyone!
Quality of Life Improvements
We’ve also continued our quest to make State of Decay 2 more fun in all sorts of ways, with every single update. Check out the tweaks and improvements below.
Environment
- The sidewalks in Heartland have been nerfed. You should now be able to walk all over them.
- We added claim objects to a few sites in Trumbull Valley that were previously unclaimable.
Gameplay
- Human AI now only shoots at targets it can actually see, avoiding some fruitless shooting into walls and obstacles.
- We improved muzzle flashes to be more consistently attached to the muzzles of ranged weapons.
User Interface
- We now highlight the last vehicle you used on the map, to make it easier to find your ride when you parked it in the middle of a vehicle graveyard.
- The badges on new radio commands now disappear immediately as you highlight them, and the game remembers which ones you’ve already cleared.
- We now pause the game when Change Maps screen is open, to prevent you from being eaten by zombies while planning your road trip.
- The weapon HUD is no longer visible when you are sitting in a vehicle, as it was prompting you to perform actions that you could not actually perform there.
- The swap weapons button on mouse and keyboard now works with the inventory panel open, regardless of where your cursor is.
- We fixed a situation where you could accidentally delete a muzzle attachment.
- The messaging is now clearer when a facility action is disabled because of another ongoing action.
- We got rid of a weird green checkmark next to the population listing for an enclave.
Bases and Facilities
- You can now upgrade a vehicle by interacting with the parking slot in person, using an upgrade kit in your inventory.
- We replaced an accidental temporary icon that would appear when the Haven Device was powered down.
Missions
- We removed a nonworking developer item from the weapon-sellers' wares in the Warlord: Weapons for All
- You now have the option to cancel IzzBee’s Breaking the Code mission in Trumbull Valley, like you can with many other Homecoming missions.
- The Clean Slate mission with the military enclave no longer spawns infestations on top of other enclaves.
Miscellaneous
- Geoffrey added a few Easter eggs to the game as a nod to his favorite video games podcast. You can watch him do it here: https://youtu.be/ta1KsgVi64M
