Update R80: Expedition Difficulty Levels

Hey everyone,

Update R80 has arrived!

EXPEDITION

Expedition has got a major overhaul: it now has three difficulty levels – Regular, Challenging, and Extreme.

Why? First of all, we want people to play at the difficulty they want. Secondly, we want to eliminate the frustration new players may face when they plunge into the Expedition whirlpool head first. Thirdly, old expeditions tended to take a lot of time, and not all of us have this luxury. A game session in easier Expedition variants takes less time.

New players will have to play the Expedition Tutorial and complete an extraction to be able to play a regular expedition. Then the player needs to have completed three extractions to open the Challenging and Extreme Expeditions. If it is not your first day in Shatterline and you’ve opened at least ten Season Pass levels (even for past season passes), all Expedition variants will be accessible from the get-go.

As you have correctly surmised, Regular Expedition is the easiest one. It offers you only the first and second threat levels and only two sectors to explore. There are no dungeons, no frustrating and difficult contamination modifiers, and no super deadly bosses. Even extraction encounters will only happen at threat level 2. Surely, in Challenging Expedition things get more difficult, and could get really nasty in Extreme Expedition.

Other Expedition changes:

• Contract and activity rewards increased. Furthermore, with the introduction of different difficulties, the contract reward quantity now depends on Expedition difficulty, not the threat level as it was before.
• The chances of getting rare resources from activities and dungeons also increased.
• Three new contamination modifiers were added.

PROGRESSION

Weapon progression time considerably decreased while the number of experience points needed to open weapon tiers 4 and 5 decreased as well (by almost 30 and 50% respectively).

BALANCE CHANGES

Pill's Quantum Nullifer has got some more rebalancing:

• Before the present change, the ability removed enemy projectiles and froze enemy AIs within a 10-meter radius for 3 seconds.
• Now, the projectile-removal radius decreased to 6 meters. The initial AI freeze works as a freezing blast within an 8-meter radius. Then, while the ability is active, the freezing continues working within a 4-meter radius around the player.
• The ability visual effects were improved to boot.

Shotguns rebalance:

We admit that killing with a shotgun with hip fire may be way too easy. So we decided that playing with a shotgun shall be rewarding when you shoot while aiming.  Therefore, if you hip fire with a shotgun, you will experience decreased accuracy and increased pellet scattering compared to ADS shooting. 

All shotguns' damage decreased by around 10%, but their effective distance increased by 10-20% and overall operational distance increased by 50%.

With these changes, all weapon attachments that increase accuracy or decrease pellet scattering grew in importance.

This change is not cast in stone. We will monitor the game data and your feedback and will adjust accordingly.

MELEE WEAPONS

We are expanding the melee arsenal with Kite's Tactical Machete.

UI/HUD IMPROVEMENTS

Now equipped operatives perks are shown on the Pre-Battle Screen for Episodes and Expedition.
When you open the PvE Perks screen, one of the perks will always be already selected by default. It will be the perk you selected before. If none has been selected before, the system will select the perk available for acquisition.

The Armory screen was overhauled: not only does it look better now, the information is easier to read.

Item or perk cards you pick from boxes in Expedition were improved: the visuals of the resource cost on the bottom of the card were updated, and the cards from the Chosen stashes are adorned with Crystalline.

The Escort mode HUD improvements:

• Updated rounds announcement visuals.
• Progress bar improvements in terms of the payload movement direction, distance to the closest checkpoint, and the number of players inside the payload area.
• We introduced a new payload state icon and its color scheme, the colors being the same for the payload area marker. It's blue for the team that needs to convoy the payload when this team is pushing it, red for the defending team when the payload is being convoyed by the attackers, yellow when the payload control is contested, and grey when there are no players from either team nearby. If the payload is being pushed by the defending team, the icon turns red for the team that needs to convoy it and blue for the defending team.

BUG FIXES

• Fixed issue in Expedition where crystalline birds could attack Brisa while she was cloaked.
• Fixed issue in Expedition where the “Hunt Glassheads” contract continued counting the kills after its completion.
• Fixed issue in the Expedition Tutorial where black textures appeared on the roads after the player killed Lava Glassheads.
• Fixed issue in the Expedition Tutorial where the Decontaminator panel showed the lock icon even if the player had enough Salt to activate the Decontaminator.
• Fixed issue in Expedition where Spitfire failed to rotate to follow the player’s movement.
• Fixed issue in Expedition where grenades failed to explode on impact with the Power Stones. A similar bug was fixed where frag grenades or grenades from Mongoose’s grenade launcher didn’t explode on hitting the tree-like spore trap’s weak points if the Explosive Expansion perk for Mongoose was equipped.
• Fixed issue in Expedition where groups of AIs could spawn under terrain across multiple locations on the map.
• Fixed issue in Expedition where events spawned too often at threat level 2.
• Fixed issue in Expedition where the result screen showed 0 collected resources if Expedition was a failure.
• Fixed issue in Expedition where Spitfire could spawn under terrain.
• Fixed issue in Expedition where spawn points were deactivated during the fight at the payload.
• Fixed issue in Expedition where the Strafer Depot HUD marker was visible without the scanner use.
• Fixed multiple issues in Expedition’s Chaser Hunt dungeon.
• Fixed issue in Expedition where the Salt counter reset to zero when another player joined the game session in the middle of the match or when a player respawned after switching to another operative, but set back to the previous value when another salt deposit was picked up. We also fixed a similar bug where players couldn’t activate the Decontaminator if they were killed and changed the operative, which led to resetting the Salt amount to zero.
• Fixed issue with missing damage feedback when shooting at Behemoth’s weak points.
• Fixed issue where a weak spot appeared on Gardener’s body after death.
• Fixed issue in the Border Control episode where Stilt’s area attack visual effects remained on the player’s screen if the player respawned after having died during this attack.
• Fixed issue with the Red Lake outro cutscene where Orbit was always displayed with an active ultimate.
• Fixed issue in the Hephaestus episode where a player would be left at the elevator boarding platform if the other two players activated the elevator and the said player didn’t move onto the platform.
• Fixed issue in the Twin Stilt episode where an incorrect navigation marker was shown on the minimap.
• Fixed issue where the picture became blurred in one of the Intro Mission scenes with Echo if FSR or DLSS options were enabled.
• Fixed issue on the Promenade PvP map where there were gaps between several objects on the map, and a player could shoot through them.
• Fixed issue where the text chat hint was visible during a PvP match replay.
• Fixed issue where an incorrect ammo count was displayed on HUD for the Dragonfly sniper rifle if it was used with the Magazine Boost perk and the AM4-T MAG attachment.
• Fixed issue on the Weapon Customization screen where sometimes the weapon could shift to the left side of the screen when a player cycled through different weapon paints.
• Fixed issue where Orbit’s ultimate activation wouldn’t break a door.
• Fixed issue in the Shooting Range where yellow triangle markers above bot heads were positioned slightly to the right of the targets.
• Fixed issue where the descriptions of Malva’s Perseverance 3 and 4 perks had errors in the amount of increased health.
• Fixed issue where Pill always switched to the primary weapon after using the Quantum Nullifier, notwithstanding what weapon had been in use before the ability was activated.
• Fixed issue with the non-working Momentum Booster perk for the Λ-9 Legatus assault rifle.
• Fixed issue where the Momentum Booster perk refilled more bullets into the magazine than its capacity allowed.
• Fixed issue in the Invasion mode where the boss could fail to spawn.
• Fixed issue where sometimes a player could leave the squad when joining a match before the “Connecting…” message appeared, but still be placed into the same match with the former squad members.
• Fixed issue with the Presarm VX-7 sniper rifle where the player couldn’t perform a shot right after the weapon was reloaded if the AM4 MAG attachment was equipped.
• Fixed issue where weapon stickers were not visible on the weapon in the Armory, but were visible in the game.
• Fixed issue with incorrect Malva’s Armored Headgear cosmetic item localization (used to be CPL Headphones).
• Fixed issue with camera clipping with the 90-degree FoV.
• Fixed issue where all Mongoose’s head customizations were locked if the player had any upper headgear on Mongoose and the lower headgear automatically equipped after purchase.
• Fixed issue where the Master Expeditor task’s description failed to mention that a specific number of sector bosses needed to be defeated in Expedition in one run.