Riding Shotgun

Has it really been a whole month since we debuted the Green Zone difficulty level and delivered the piratical Plunder Pack? It has indeed, and we’ve been busy with another round of gameplay improvements.

Here’s a list of highlights from this update. You can read more details about each item below, along with a full recounting of other improvements and bug fixes.

• Vehicle Tune-Up: Our mechanics have improved performance for all vehicles in the game.
• Shotgun Upgrade: We’ve drastically upgraded the zombie-stopping power of the humble boomstick.
• Drucker County, Enhanced: We made this plateau map more visually appealing and much friendlier for drivers.
• Free Bloodmobile: Use your radio to call in this unique vehicle for your community. Available for a limited time!
• World War 2 Pack Returns: Older weapons are now in loot, and new weapons and outfits are available from the Bounty Broker.

Vehicle Tune-Up

You depend on your vehicle’s performance, whether you’re speeding down the highway or dodging zombies on windy dirt roads. As a result of your feedback, we went under the hood to review and improve vehicle performance across our entire fleet of cars, trucks, SUVs, and vans.

Next time you’re driving, look for these highlights:

• Increased acceleration to escape juggernauts intent on wrecking your ride
• Better off-road performance, allowing you to drive over rough terrain without getting stuck
• More power in reverse to help back out of those annoying ditches that keep jumping in front of you
• Revised terrain and tire interaction to better capture the different “grip” on roads, dirt, mud, and water
• Audio remixed to follow new torque and acceleration curves

Shotguns Get a Shot in the Arm

Blowing away the evil dead with your boomstick delivers visceral excitement that no other firearm can match. To better deliver on that integral part of the zed-killing fantasy, we’ve drastically improved shotguns in the game.

Here’s what to expect:

• Shotguns reliably deliver kills inside five meters.
• Shotguns offer crowd control to about 20 meters, scoring knockdowns and dismemberments.
• Shotgun noise dropped significantly and is now comparable to a 5.56 round, so their use draws less unwanted company.

Your shotgun remains less effective at longer ranges (that’s rifle territory), and it’s not ideal for stealthy kills. Instead, it’s the best weapon for mowing through zombie hordes, or for delaying oncoming zeds when you need to retreat. Try one out today!

Drucker County Map Improvements

Our experience building the Providence Ridge map inspired us to review our existing maps to see where we could improve their quality. We identified Drucker County as deserving of some artistic love, so we unleashed a team of landscapers and architects on the entire area. Their goals: to enhance the map’s visual interest and improve player navigation.

To enhance visual interest, our team added infrastructure around select buildings to better “ground” them in their locations, added signage and set dressing to some base locations, and added details to non-playable spaces that felt a little barren. Taken together, these result in a more attractive and immersive space to explore.

Since Drucker County has never been the friendliest place for vehicles, we also prioritized a better driving experience. Our team smoothed out terrain, removing several tons of rocks that interfered with off-road travel or created frustrating dead ends. We added new dirt roads that show up on the Map screen to highlight easier routes. Finally, we placed signage, fences, and other visual guides to help drivers stay safe.

If it’s been a while since you visited Drucker County, we encourage you to get behind the wheel and check it out!

Free Bloodmobile for all Players

Speaking of getting behind the wheel, all players now have a new radio command allowing them to have a unique Bloodmobile vehicle delivered to their community.

Each community can use this radio command once for free; after that, calling for a new Bloodmobile will cost Influence.

This radio command replaces the Wizard Van option and is available only for a limited time. To view your radio commands, open your Inventory and tab over to Radio Commands.

World War 2 Pack Returns, With an Upgrade

The brand-new World War 2 pack adds 8 new weapons to the game, plus 2 items of clothing and a unique firearm attachment. These items are drawn from or inspired by the European theaters of combat, and most are available by completing bounties for the Bounty Broker.

• Ceremonial M1A1 Thompson: This beautiful submachine gun remains pristine and fully functional, thanks to years of loving maintenance.
• OSS Silent Night: Military historians claim this permanently suppressed revolver never existed as anything but a prototype. But they’re all dead, so no one can stop you from appreciating its power, accuracy, and surprising range.
• MP40 Submachine Gun: This 20th-century German weapon of war, brought to America as a battlefield prize, provides an exceptionally controllable assault platform thanks to its smaller caliber, modest fire rate, and longer frame.
• FBI Fighting Rifle: This vintage weapon is based on the military BAR and delivers large-caliber firepower with surprising control. Each rifle is equipped with a special Vintage Rifle Compensator attachment (see below).
• Soviet PPSh-41: A famous WW2 close assault weapon, known for its high rate of fire, sturdy construction, and simplicity of use. This one also features a permanently attached brake, and it’s been added to loot tables so you can find it by scavenging.
• Danger Dog PPSh-41: A skilled post-apocalypse gunsmith heavily modified this Soviet submachine gun to face today’s nightmare world. It includes a welded-on AK-style suppressor, modified action to support three-round bursts, and other optimizations.
• Antique German Trench Tool: This “folding spade” is loud, weighty, and quite capable of hacking zombies to pieces.
• Tank Hammer: You might be surprised how many problems a tank can have that are most easily fixed by hitting it very hard with a large hammer. Works on zeds, too.
• Aviator Helmet: Your friends will all be jealous of this vintage leather flight helmet, complete with aviator goggles.
• Combat Helmet: This classic Army green helmet is an enduring symbol of service under fire.
• Vintage Rifle Compensator: This antique muzzle attachment provides stability, power, and durability. It is ONLY found on the FBI Fighting Rifle, but it can be removed and attached to any weapon that accepts a muzzle brake.

In addition, all weapons previously found in the World War 2 Pack (last seen in January of this year) have been added to the loot tables and can be found by scavenging in the world.

What’s Coming and Going

The return of the World War 2 Pack means that we must say farewell — for now — to the Bundle Up Pack. Remember that you keep anything you already own, but you can’t acquire more items from retired packs.

In August, we welcome the Go Bag Pack (last seen in March) back to the game! In addition to the 9 weapons originally featured in that pack, we’re adding 3 new bounties that let you earn some brand-new items.

All Go Bag bounties will be completely reset when the pack returns in August, so whether you’ve seen this pack before or it’s all new to you, the Bounty Broker will have 12 tasks for you to complete. We’re also implementing some tweaks to reward those of you who have already finished some or all of these bounties — more news on that as we get closer to the Go Bag Pack’s release date.

To make way for this returning pack, the Anniversary Pack will be retired in August, so be sure to complete those bounties soon!

Other Fixes and Improvements

Loot Container Distribution

We’ve made a tweak to the way loot containers – the objects you open up in search of guns, resources, and other useful stuff – are distributed among buildings in each newly populated map. This adjustment aims to reduce frustration and create moments of excitement on long-haul scavenging runs.

• Originally, a typical building included 5 or 6 lootable containers for the host player, which often held slightly more items than you could carry home.
  • This resulted in many scavenging runs ending halfway through a building, leading to some frustration.
• We’ve altered the container distribution so that most buildings now offer the host player either 4 or fewer containers, or 8 or more containers.
  • Each map still offers the same overall amount of loot. It’s just spread a little less evenly among buildings.
  • Container distribution for client players is unchanged.
• In most cases, when you explore a new building you should either think, “Yes, I have plenty of room to collect all this stuff and bring it home,” or “Wow, this building has more stuff than I could ever carry! What a bonanza!”
  • Extra points if you use the word “bonanza.”

This only applies to newly populated maps. Your existing settled communities will have the same distribution of containers both before and after the update.

Systems

• If you start a new Green Zone game, and you’ve unlocked legacy boons at higher difficulty levels, the Green Zone versions of those boons should now be available to you, no matter when you unlocked them.
  • Previously, Green Zone boons were showing up unreliably if you unlocked their higher-difficulty versions prior to Update 18.
• You can now craft Toolkits and Advanced Toolkits at the Auto Shop, because what else would it be for?
  • This includes brand new bulk-crafting options that actually make the Auto Shop the ideal place to craft them.
• We revised the UX for the experience of securing a site and revealing its container icons to make that experience friendlier.
  • Icons that are through a wall from you show up “hollow” to make it clear that they are in another room.
  • Icons for containers on porches and other close outdoor locations are now visible from indoors.
• We restructured our music playlists and increased the amount of variation in playback across all game modes.
• We corrected some icons in the closet that weren’t showing accurate colors for the associated outfit items.

Gameplay

• We made some fixes to the way noise stats are calculated for revolvers.
  • It used to be that .357 revolvers were louder than .44 Magnum revolvers, which didn’t make sense.
  • So now all revolvers are quieter than they were before, but .44 Magnum revolvers are the loudest by a small margin.
• Weapon sway is now realigned to correlate better with barrel length. Expect to see more stability from .50-caliber rifles and long-barreled revolvers than you did before.
• If you have an ally firing “through” you harmlessly (due to the lack of friendly fire), you will no longer see gouts of blood splashing out of your body, sending you mixed messages about the sort of danger you’re in.

Balance Tweaks

• We fixed a bug that was causing the Big Boss (the upgraded Military Truck) to take engine damage twice as fast as any other vehicle.
• The Spec Ops AW sniper rifle is now six pounds lighter, making it only one pound heavier than the standard Arctic Warfare.
• The CM1-A Breacher now features the benefits of a Professional Choke, as that was the original intent for that weapon.
• We increased the magazine size of the Echo-S3 Shotgun to 6+1 to keep it competitive among all the updated shotguns.
• The mighty sword known as Excadaver has lost some luster over the years. To ensure that it still feels like a potent reward, we boosted its lethality, dismemberment, and ease of use.
  • The Sweet Skull Sword also gains some improvements, though to a lesser degree.
• The Pyro Launcher’s effectiveness against plague hearts has been reduced. It’s still quite effective against groups of zombies, but no longer shall it reign supreme as the gimmicky destroyer of hearts.

Miscellaneous

• We made further adjustments to the maps (beyond the refresh of Drucker County) in response to minor bugs with collision, textures, etc.
• We also fixed a few grayscale interior lighting bugs that crept into Update 18.
• We fixed a crash that could occur when engaging with plague wall fights in Heartland.