Content Update 06 - Out Now!

Hello mercs,

I'm thrilled to announce the latest content update 6 for Dead Grid is available now!

This update marks the largest overhaul to the game since its initial launch in Early Access. The main focus of this update is to introduce a new progression system called Elite Perks, perform a major sweep of graphical updates, optimize performance, and elevate the overall quality of the game as it approaches the final push to 1.0.

This post will dive into all the changes in detail. Let’s get to it!

DEAD GRID - CU06 - PATCH NOTES

BUILD 0.8.36

GEAR MANAGEMENT

• Larger fonts, cleaner frames, reduced clutter, more consistent look.
  
• New weapon sorting options by Ammo and Durability (requested in feedback).
• Items of no value can now be sold to the trader (as a way to get rid of them).
• Equipped shields on mercs now show a durability instead of shield damage.

MERC TRAINING

• The UI for merc training has been reworked to offer a cleaner look.
  
• Increased the ammo gain from training for Pistols, SMGs, ARs MGs and Shotguns.
• Points spent in unarmed combat now restore percent of HP instead of flat +HP.
• Cost of training respec has been greatly reduced, now tied to the number of points spent.

SKILL CHANGES

• Leader passive trait has been completely reworked and now removes summoning sickness from mercs coming into play. With a leader in your squad, you no longer have to wait a turn to attack on any encounter. This was a frequently requested feature.
• Enforcer and Commando mercs now grant passive benfits on adjacent mercs only. Strategically reposition mercs in combat (with arrow keys) to gain the benefits of those passives.
• 16 new skills have been introduced, phasing out some older (less used) skills. Leaders received the largest overhaul of skill changes due due to their complete rework of the passive trait.
• Some phased out skills have been converted to random events.
• Many skills received updated art for a more cohesive look.
• Skills UI has been improved to show better fonts and larger icons.
  

NEW PROGRESSION: ELITE PERKS

• Elite Perks start unlocking from the first mission Meet Slade and can be found in the skills UI.
  
• Many of the perks buff the existing skills and some focus on weapon types.
• Each class currently comes with 8 perks, unlocked on a per save basis (unlike the Lab).
• Revenant perks are still in development.
  

NEW CARDS

• 10 new random events.
• 15+ new consumables, randomly found as loot.
• Seasonal items such as Mad Scientist and Warm Brains are now offered off-season.
• Around 40 new unique weapons added to the game.
  
• Close to 50 uniques from past releases have been buffed and re-balanced to utilized various skills.
  

MISSION DETAILS

• Recommended squad power has been reworked for the new enemy scaling and different difficulty modes.
• Hovering over the recommended squad power gives you quick preview of the approximate enemy health pool at the location based on the repeats of this mission.
  
• Small tutorial for unspent location intel points to help new players unfamiliar with this mechanic.
  

ALL NEW SCENERY

• Completely reworked all outdoor locations with new scenery. This covers all missions with outdoor environments, aiming for a more consistent theme across the Pine Valley region.
• In total, this rework covers around 30 locations, most focusing on the outdoor scenery and a few indoor locations, such as the final encounter of Warehouse.
  
• All hordes now come in unique outdoor environments, no longer borrowed from existing missions.

COMBAT BOARD UI

• Improved many tool tips to explain the noise bar, threat cards, unaware cards and killing spree.
• These can be disabled in Game Settings by seasoned players.
• Killing spree now tracks the total consecutive kill count, going up even at max spree.
  
• Added a new animation when alerting distant enemies for a more impactful effect.
  

COMBAT NOISE

• A portion of the remaining noise on area clear is now carried to the next encounter, depending on the difficulty of the game. The actual number is shown in a tool tip over the noise bar at the top.
• Playing on the Easy game mode still offers the traditional mechanic where all noise is removed on area clear.
  

CARD UI

• Completely reworked card details with a fixed scrollable window to reduce screen clutter.
• Use the mouse wheel to scroll through the details.
  

ENEMY CHANGES

• All eliminated zombies now include a short bio of their recent activity in Pine Valley and what put them to their final rest. This activity is generated through an in game algorithm which I can improve upon further feedback.
  
• Loot bags and area objects spawned on board from the enemy threat are now always followed by a random minion card, from the enemy threat pool. This should reduce many turns where an item (such as a loot bag) was drawn leaving the player with nothing to attack, unless they trigger Initiative. Played event cards should not be affected by this change.
• A completely new enemy scaling algorithm was added in this update. The goal is to offer a more consistent curve for increasing the enemy difficulty and their rank. The game is now 1 major update away from 1.0, so I need to use this opportunity test more scaling changes, which have been long overdue. Here is a quick peak at the scaling curves of 5 difficulty levels.
  
• Enemy Frenzy (granting damage per turn) mechanic has been drastically reworked to proc on a chance, based on the type of enemy and the difficulty mode. A visual effect was added to spot Frenzy procs much easier on every enemy in play. As before, it's encouraged to replay easier locations to improve your squad, more relevant on the harder difficulty modes.
  
• The game is tuned around the NORMAL mode with EASY offering a big drop in HP scaling as well as a lower base damage and proc chance on Frenzy.

MISSION COMPLETE

Improved the mission complete screen with larger fonts and additional stats.

MERC CHANGES

• Reworked 3D models for characters Hudson, Don, Max and Grave.
  
• Hudson is now fully voiced (previously using a generated voice).
• At this point all 15 available mercs are human voiced.

WEAPON RE-BALANCE AND ARMORY CHANGES

• Slightly increased the the noise caused by all firearms, excluding all weapons with silencers.
• Since the introduction of the Armory in content update 5, I overlooked the damage scaling of shields. Shields could be upgraded to a point where they deal damage comparable to, or even greater than, many blunt weapons of the same item level, while still providing defensive benefits. This made many non-shield weapons less advantageous, so shield damage has been significantly reduced—roughly to half of their sharp or blunt counterparts. However, shields continue to remain viable in combat, particularly due to their high chance to stun.
• Unique items can no longer be upgraded in the Armory. One of the primary purposes of the Armory is not only to upgrade the level of items but also to increase the item level of new drops within the same category, which includes new unique items that could be useful for your squad. The ability to upgrade unique weapons had made finding and upgrading non-unique items less appealing. The goal of this change is to make discovering new uniques with a higher item level than your current best weapon more exciting. Keep in mind that many exceptional-quality (purple) weapons are nearly as powerful as uniques, so upgrading them remains a viable and effective option.
• All uniques now drop with the highest Armory rank upgrade of the same weapon type, so you should no longer find low level uniques which never feels good.
• Armory now shows the item level of drops for each weapon type, so you no longer have to click through each weapon to see this info.

TRADER STOCK REFRESH REWORK

• Reputation is no longer used to refresh Slade's stock.
• Purchasing an item with a value of 50 supplies or more grants 1 trader favor.
  
• Completing any mission now grants favor points with Slade, used to refresh his stock.
• Intel points spent on Slade can increase the favor points by completed missions for a total of 6.
• Intel points spent on Slade no longer increase the unique item chance appearing for sale.
• Slade offers new special items which grant addition favor points when purchased.
  

ALL NEW CHARACTER CREATE FLOW

DIFFICULTY MODES

• HARD mode has been renamed to Veteran.
• New difficulty mode, called Extinction.
• Starting on Apocalypse or Extinction will now bypass the initial tutorial mission, you arrive in camp with the following:
  -- 30 supplies
  -- 0 reputation
  -- Standard 2x4
  -- Degraded Snubbie
  -- 1 Bandage
  -- 1 Trader Favor
  -- Vendor stock is shown on day 0
  NOTE: Challenge modes have individual starting loadouts and not affected.

NEW CHALLENGE MODE - LONE WOLF

NEW TITLE SCREEN

The new title screen is much more optimized and should load the game a lot faster, especially when returning to the main menu from a game in progress.

GRID MAP

• Increased the speed of movement across multiple empty tiles.
• Noise remaining after a combat encounter is now displayed on the grid map.
  

IN-GAME XP PROGRESSION REFERENCE

• Added a reference table of XP gain to reach different ranks, available on the Training gear tab.
• Note, XP is consistent for all enemy ranks by design, allowing you to replay earlier missions to rank up if needed.
• The actual XP you gain depends on various buffs from gadgets, consumables and region bonuses. This is just a baseline reference for the curious eyes.
  

MISSION CHANGES

• Two new late-game hordes added to the game.
• 2 new bosses on the 5th horde mission.
• A new boss on the Prison Transfer mission.
• Added an additional small encounter to mission Lost Convoy for a total of 3.
• Reworked the mission lore of many locations to prepare the game for the final story.

MUSIC

• 12 new combat music tracks for a total of 35, some older tracks were phased out.
• 2 new camp music tracks a total of 10.
• New title screen track (old one phased out).
• New Audio Settings option to toggle between different music themes in camp.

FAME

• 20 new achievements for a total of 315.
• A few existing achievements received fixes.

FULL LIST OF NEW SKILLS

• Combat Medic - new support skill, similar to Commando's ammo box but focusing on HP.
• Replenishment - new passive focusing on self healing.
• Tai Chi - slightly reworked mechanic from Retaliation.
• Black Belt - slightly reworked mechanic.
• Optimize Loadout - returned mechanic from Apocalyptic Pet (which is now an event)
• Advance - new passive skill.
• Leadership - completely reworked the original passive of the same name.
• Firestarter - new passive skill replacing Fire Blade.
• Firefighter - new passive skill replacing Razor Sharp.
• Sashimi - converted to a passive skill.
• Urban Gunslinger - completely reworked the old mechanic.
• Full Auto - reworked mechanic.
• Iron Grip - reworked mechanic.
• Stunburst - new passive skill.
• Calibration - new passive skill focusing on sniper rifles, bows and crossbows.
• Weak Point - new target debuff offering high damage on critical hits.

GAME PERFORMANCE

• Game engine upgraded from Unity 2019 to Unity 6, this was long overdue and required a lot of small changes causing this long gap between updates.
• Performance optimization was a big focus of all the scenery rework, which now includes new video options to disable dynamic shadows. You should see much better performance slower GPUs while maintaining a similar visual quality.

CONTROLLER / STEAM DECK

• FIXED: Game error when rapidly selecting skills at the start of turn.
• FIXED: Card details are automatically turned on for player cards in hand/play, should be hidden by default, toggled by (Y).
• Left Trigger (LT) button now lets you toggle between melee/ranged without having to deselect the current target. Button (B) continues to work as before, but does deselect the current target. Left Trigger (LT) still lets you draw ammo if the hand area is selected using the D-PAD.
• Reworked the indication of the selected hand/play zone while playing with a controller.
• Performance of all missions on Steam Deck should be greatly improved, especially with the dynamic shadows option off.

GAME SETTINGS

• Added new options to toggle 3D cutscenes for attacks at melee, range or both.
• Added new music options for Combat and Camp, letting you fine-tune your music tracks.
• The last used saved games page is now remembered when returning from a mission.
• There were many tweaks to Game Settings in this update, so your old settings should be reset to default.

GENERAL BUG FIXES

• Mission "Prison Map" is not unlocked after completing "County Jail".
• Camp hotkeys are triggered while renaming mercs with characters matching those hotkeys.
• Silenced firearms weapons still indicate noise in card details, instead of their silenced effect.
• Silenced sniper rifles play a loud shot instead of silenced, audio bug only.
• Cannot get rid of (sell) free cards that ended up in inventory from random loot drops.
• One HP attribute the middle Commando skill spec is granting incorrect HP values.
• Dialog for skills on cooldown ("C" key) is sometimes not working.
• Exhausted merc on area clear cannot loot area objects, even if stamina is restored with consumables.
• Entering a blank value in min item level sorting options causes a game error.
• Explosion damage boost from legacy Lab progression (phased out in CU05) still gets applied.
• Flanking Maneuver triggers Frag Out which should only work on a ranged attack.
• Flanking Maneuver reduces killing spree stacks by 1 when triggered during enemy's turn.
• Flanking Maneuver and Assist sometimes trigger gas looters to explode after a melee strike.
• SMGs and Assault Rifles continue to shoot their full payload at eliminated targes, wasting ammo.
• MG attacks continue to shoot at eliminated targets causing animation issues, sound clipping and ammo waste.
• MG attacks do not properly switch targets when the primary target is eliminated.
• Region mod "High Ground" is not granting bonus XP on kills with a sniper rifle.
• Region mod "Silent Elimination" is not granting bonus XP on a melee killing blow.
• Region mod "Palms of Death" is granting bonus XP on a ranged attack, should be unarmed only.
• Grid map toggles on/off multiple times on mission start causing a screen flicker when starting a mission.
• Fixes of typos and triggers for various reported achievements and throughout the game.
• 2 undead enraged idle animations slowly sink the model into the ground.
• Enraged undead continue attacking the mercs after a fatal strike, occasionally causing death animations to break. The intended mechanic is for the enemy to stop attacking after a fatal strike, allowing the merc to either die or instantly heal using a consumable from their bag. This adjustment should also prevent scenarios where the instant heal occurs, but a subsequent attack still kills the merc.
• The display order of mercs added to the squad in gear management is not restored when loading a saved game. Note, the preserved squad display order will only work on new saves going forward.
• Removed the ability to damage and explode lootable vehicles. This was specifically causing confusion with Slade's Truck on the first mission, making new players think they must destroy the truck. Blowing up vehicles also caused some issues with achievements and killing spree.
• Revenant skill Vicious Bite is not being applied, leaving the chance at base 5%.
• Revenant bite attack is missing 3D damage numbers during a 3D cutscene.
• Eliminated enemy by a Revenant bite remains standing (animation bug).
• Video settings are missing support for the common 1440p resolution (2560x1440).
• Launching a game on an ultrawide resolution causes Game Settings elements to be off-screen. The game will now attempt to detect a supported resolution on the first launch and revert to 1080p as a fall back. Non-supported resolutions would need to be played in Windowed mode until more resolutions are added. If your monitor changes to a lower resolution since the last time you played and you're unable to change the resolution directly from the game's settings, you can use the following console command to force a resolution of 1920x1080.1. Make sure you're not in Game Settings (hit ESC to close).
  2. Activate the console with the "`" (tilde) key.
  3. Enter the following command: 1080p
  4. Return to Game Settings, adjust your actual resolution and press Apply to save.

SAVE COMPATIBILITY

Due to such a drastic change of skills across different classes, I recommend starting a new game. Previously saved games should still load and give you a full skill point refund, but the testing of legacy saves was not extensive. This is the first time in 3 years I've had to recommend starting fresh.

LEADERBOARDS

Leaderboards for all challenge modes have been reset. This is the first reset in over a year.

WHAT'S NEXT?

Here is what I'm focusing on next for update 7.

1. Finish the campaign.
2. Rework the Assignments system to unlock and start by spending reputation.
3. More assignments with new rewards.
3. Finish the last 2 survivors which have no mechanics at the moment.
4. Introduce more boss and area object mechanics so each mission/location feels more unique.

Big thanks to everyone for the recent feedback, bug reports and testing of the preview builds!

Please post your issues and suggestions in Discord or the forums.

See you in Pine Valley!

--Paul