Greetings Mercs!
Dead Grid initial development started in 2018. Nearly 4 years ago, it entered Early Access. Today, I’m super excited to finally release 1.0!
Built through years of iteration and refinement, this release exists because of the Early Access community. A huge thank you to everyone who played, shared feedback, and stuck with me throughout Early Access. Your contribution shaped the direction of the game!
Without further ado, let’s take a look at all the new features of content update 08.
A new 3D representation of the camp has been added to the game. There are now 8 rooms with individual progression tied to the campaign, assignments, and various upgrades.
A campaign has been added to the game leading to a victory screen.
Hovering over the region map header shows your main objective and over-all game score.
There are now 25 region locations. Some are tied to the campaign and some are optional.
Six new region locations have been added tied to the campaign.
Item rewards have been rebalanced at all region locations.
Many new enemy types, including elite and boss zombies with powerful abilities.
A new Area Cleared message has been added, replacing the original.
Every encounter now comes with a custom name, tied to the theme of the location.
Improved the visual indicator pending containers on area clear.
Mission scaling (mission repeats) now offers a new Enemy Threat system.
Weapons found at harder locations drop with a higher item level.
Missions now require fuel to reach, explained later in this post.
Added 12 new region modifiers designed to reduce the enemy threat of locations.
Added 3 new region modifiers tied to survivors.
Travel fuel is a new system introduced with 1.0, required to reach distant locations.
Fuel is automatically restocked and can further upgraded by spending intel points on Slade.
The early to mid game missions do not require much fuel.
Late game missions require a bit more planning, especially with repeats.
Fuel storage capacity can be upgraded by completing assignments for Slade.
In addition to the fuel restock by Slade, your camp's mission van can be upgraded to consume less fuel on trips by completing assignments for character Ray.
A new scoring system has been added to the game, called Glory.
This has no impact on game progression and is only used as a visual stat.
Glory is earned by killing enemies, completing missions and pulling off combos in combat.
Many combos now play a board announcer emote with over 50 emotes added to the game.
Combat Glory voice or visual emotes can be completely disabled in Game Settings.
All 15 survivors are now in the game and offer around 50 assignments with custom rewards.
Intel spent on survivors is no longer tied to single locations. Many survivors have been changed and offer all new abilities to help you in your camp.
The camp's survivors room shows all the intel spent from different locations.
Leader's trait tied to summoning sickness has been changed.
Previously, a Leader merc had to be in combat for the ability to trigger, now a leader only needs to be in your mission squad.
This change means Leaders no longer need to be the first merc (primary merc) in squad.
The formatting of all class traits has been improved.
Eliminated bosses now spawn a lootable area object with a selection of rewards.
Previously, eliminated bosses had to be looted which was frequently missed.
New accessories and gadgets were added to the game for you to discover.
Some gadgets now work while quipped on any merc in camp, not in your mission squad.
Lots of new consumables and trash items for a better variety of random drops.
Many new SMGs, Assault Rifles, and Sniper rifles all with custom art and models.
Firearms with silencers are now marked as special weapons since they behave different from the expected loud firearms.
Tutorial shovel has been replaced with a new axe that upgrades to a decent mid-game weapon.
Added new modifiers to non-unique melee and ranged weapons, granting additional tactical benefits. Weapons containing these modifiers have a custom card frame with a cog icon on the top left corner.
Parry chances offered by all melee weapons have been phased out.
Parry is now greatly boosted with by merc's training in Martial Arts.
Pistols and SMGs now offer a bonus to parry chance, playing into a small/light weapon theme.
Iimproved the parry chances of skills Tai Chi, Black Belt and Parry Master.
Enemies stunned through a parry reflect now remain stunned into player's turn, allowing you to setup additional combos with Skull Crush.
This feature grants a chance to select an additional card for draw at the start of every turn.
The mechanic is explained on the Skills UI.
This is a rework of an old system called Tactical Advantage, which was tied to individual mercs.
A bunch of non-class specific turn abilities were added to offer more options for getting supplies, boosting mercs in play, dealing damage, at the start of your turns.
Cards with armory point rewards are no longer drawn in hand during combat.
Points are still collected and consolidated on the Loot Haul screen as a summary.
The thought behind this change was to reduce card clutter in hand and also give an easy reference of collected armory rewards when returning camp.
The armory UI has also been improved with better tool tips, and a small tutorial.
The UI for locked labs has been improved.
Challenge modes no longer end, allowing you to experience the full game. This was a frequently requested feature by players who enjoyed the modified game rules of specific challenge modes.
A new challenge has been added, called Wasteland Purist.
Veteran, Apocalypse and Extinction difficulties have been slightly bumped while Easy and Normal remain the same from the last Early Access release. Boss enemies have a much higher chance to cause bleeding on all difficulty modes.
Apocalypse can now be switched to Extinction and vise versa mid game. This also covers challenge modes which start on Apocalypse by default.
Game Settings UI has been cleaned up with new accessibility and many feature tweaks.
Added a kiosk mode of hiding menus and UI from the title screen with 4 variations.
This option is available at the top right corner of the title screen and is useful for making thumbnails of videos.
Added 10 new music tracks to combat and camp.
Remastered all gunshot sounds for volume consistency and to reduce clipping of rapid firing guns.
Added 18 new achievements (Fame) for a total of 350.
A few old achievements have been reworked to reflect the new survivor mechanics.
Previously unlocked achievements on Steam are not reset with 1.0.
1.0 requires a full reset of previous game settings, saved games and in-game achievements.
An Early Access branch is be available to continue playing old saves, using the last EA build.
branch name: CU07 - Last EA Build (2025)
Updated engine to include Unity's security patch from 2025.
Mission location with 12 repeats is missing the vertical progress bar (visual bug only).
AR or SMG does not re-target remaining shots if the primary target is eliminated (occasional bug).
Cannot start a new assignment if remaining reputation is the same as required for the assignment.
Pressing (t) while renaming a merc or fallen zombie aborts the rename interface.
Some unique cards are missing card art, related to the Pristine condition added in CU07.
Upgrading flamethrower weapons in the Armory does not consume earned points.
Armory points do not drop when killing enemies with a flamethrower spray.
Flamethrower equipped on Nobu in combat is not properly aligned (visual bug).
Card details is wrongly placed (off-screen) while hovering over weapons in Armory.
Player is unable to finish the mission with all enemies eliminated. (rare case)
Flamethrowers found as loot and given to mercs during a mission cause a game error.
Event Precognition is not drawing a random class skill.
Enemies can occasionally spawn on area clear, by various status effects.
Many small fixes across tool tips and general game text.
This is a soft launch of 1.0 where the full version of the game is available to play. I will continue to monitor and push patches as needed. The store page will be refreshed a few days later, coming out of Early Access.
See you in Pine Valley! --Paul