Update 10: The Bounty Broker Update

Update 10 launches at 12:01am PT on Wednesday, July 31 

The Bounty Broker Update introduces a brand-new mechanism for earning new gear, a brand-new weapon pack, along with other major improvements, including:

• Large reductions to load times and to the size of the game on the hard drive.
• Gameplay improvements to dodging, using items, and targeting interactions.
• An oft-requested re-balance of the Red Talon recruits.
• A restoration of the long-lost military character models.

Details are listed below.

Bounty Broker

• The Bounty Broker is a new character who provides you with a straightforward way to try out new gear as it is added to the game — you just have to complete a few jobs for him first. Here's what you do:
  • Track the Bounty Broker down at his van in Cascade Hills, Drucker County, or Meagher Valley.
  • Talk to him to see a catalog of available gear, and the bounties you must complete to earn it.
  • Select the bounties you want to pursue. They appear in the upper-right corner of your HUD, and persist across all your communities.
  • Complete the bounties and return to the Bounty Broker to receive the promised gear as your reward.
  • Once you've unlocked a piece of gear, you can buy additional copies of it for Influence, in any community.
• The initial catalog features bounties that unlock the new Critical Response weapons (listed below).
  • We also included the World War II weapons from the previous pack, unlocked by default for everyone. This replaces the Historical Weapons Dealer, who will no longer appear.

Critical Response Weapons Pack

• The Critical Response Weapons Pack is a celebration of police and firefighters in the wake of the zombie apocalypse. It includes the following weapons:
  • Firearms
    • Police Sniper Rifle (5.56mm Scoped Rifle)
    • RC-9 Police Carbine (9mm Sighted Rifle)
    • Police M590A1 (Pump-Action Shotgun)
    • SWAT 416 (5.56mm Assault Rifle)
    • UMP SMG (.45 Caliber Submachine Gun)
    • MP5SD (9mm Suppressed Submachine Gun)
    • Backup Boss (9mm Revolver)
    • G34 (9mm Pistol)
    • G26 (9mm Pistol)
  • Melee Weapons
    • High-Angle Rescue Hatchet (Bladed)
    • Military Riot Club (Blunt)
    • Police Riot Club (Blunt)
    • Metal Nightstick (Blunt)
  • Close Combat Weapons
    • Police Knife
    • Rescue Knife

General

• Community Request: We significantly improved load times across the board, particularly on the Xbox, significantly reducing the time it takes to get into the game or into a new map.
• Community Request: We significantly reduced the footprint of the game on the hard drive, as well as the download size of future updates. (The update that gets us here is still pretty big.)
• We now provide a direct link to support.stateofdecay.com in the Settings menu (under "Help & Support") for players who run into bugs and other technical issues.
  • It also includes a QR code, if you prefer to get there via your phone.

Gameplay

• You now use the direction of your camera (instead of your character's facing) to choose which interactive object to target.
  • This makes some situations (like entering the left rear door of a vehicle instead of refueling it) much easier to get right.
  • There is a new option on the Settings/Gameplay menu to change it back if you liked the old way.
• There are new keybinding options that allow you to split Dodge and Stealth onto separate buttons. If you want to try it out, here are some approaches we like:
  • On the keyboard, we recommend C for dodge and G for stealth.
  • On the Xbox controller, we recommend B for dodge and clicking the Right Stick for stealth (giving up zoom functionality for scoped weapons)
• Using items like painkillers, grenades, and mines is now much more reliable and responsive while moving and dodging.
• Dodging while tired or injured is now quicker, and you can follow up with another action sooner.

Inventory

• Community Request: You can now hold the "Drop" button in your inventory to drop only one item from a stack. Ideal for sharing consumables with friends.
• Community Request: We added safeguards against modded "glitter bombs" leaving a million Parts in hapless supply lockers.
• You can now unload weapons in supply drops.
• The game no longer claims that you can unload the weapons in a trader's inventory, because that would be rude.

Characters

• Frequent and Emphatic Community Request: You can once again meet and recruit survivors who dress in green military clothing, many of whom have military backgrounds and skills. Here is where you might encounter them:
  • The classic storyline about a disaffected soldier in a military enclave now features survivors in military clothing, as it did when the game was first released.
  • Any ambient mission now has a small chance of spawning survivors in military clothing.
  • For a limited time, we are offering a "Find Military Survivors" radio command, allowing the very patient military enthusiasts in our audience to staff up much faster than normal.
• Community Request: We re-rebalanced the Red Talon Contractors and Soldiers as follows:
  • They are no longer irritated at everyone all the time.
  • We reduced the downsides associated with the Combat Medic, Pioneer, Squad Cook, Demolitionist, and Facilities Engineer backgrounds.
• Killing zombies with explosives grants a small amount of XP towards the Chemistry, Munitions, Outlaw Chemistry, and Bomb-Making skills.
• Survivors with the last name "Castellano" no longer show up with a blank nickname.

Missions

• Builder: Elbow Room is now better at finding applicable bases, and has safeguards against getting stuck when it fails.
• Warlord: Weapons for All now allows you to spare the last enclave member without getting stuck.
• We fixed a bug that sometimes prevented Warlord: Personal Dead Zone from completing.
• Builder Legacy missions now automatically pin to the HUD.

Heartland

• Heartland-specific specializations for core skills now gain experience as intended. This fixes Butchery, Field Testing, Gymnastics, Obsession, Scavenging, and Vigilance.
• We fixed some voodoo that was causing Reba, Diana, and Chavez to reset their timelines when they died, starting over from scratch. Now the only way they can rise from the dead is as zombies.
• We fixed a blocking issue in the first mission if Quincy or Larisse died, and then the game was restarted.
• Aunt Fi and Helena should no longer run to you from Jurassic Junction if Wilkerson Family Ties or Seeking Santos starts while the player is away.
• Aunt Fi should no longer teleport away at the beginning of A Real Fixer Upper.
• Scenes in Wilkerson Family Ties should now still play, even if Aunt Fi is dead.
• Malik no longer jumps in and speaks Larisse's lines in Wilkerson Family Ties.
• We made sure Brock and Keesha were killable when they should be killable in the Santos and Wilkerson enclave arcs.
• We fixed another place where Malik could become immortal while playable.
• We fixed an issue where the Overrun mission would still make you clear out the plague heart if you canceled it.
• Xander's enclave should now have appropriate enclave descriptions on the map screen.

Achievements

• We fixed several Achievements that the game was failing to award progress for, including:
  • Legacy Achievements
    • Be Still My Dog of War
    • I Am the Law
    • Speedy Delivery
    • If You Build It, They Will Come
  • Plague Heart Achievements
    • Heart of Darkness
    • Total Eclipse
    • What We Do in the Shadows
    • These Dreams
  • Other Achievements
    • Barley and Spoiled Blueberries
    • Sayonara

Miscellaneous

• Eight months after delivering the Holiday 2018 celebratory Wizard Van, we realized we should probably remove it.
• If you die of blood plague while exiting a vehicle, you will now stand up and die instead of soft-locking the game.
• We fixed an issue with AI pathing that was causing mission characters to dodge around you repeatedly while trying to stand where you were.
• We fixed an issue where clients in multiplayer games would hear muffled audio forever after they died.
• We fixed a few graphical issues with shadowing, especially with halo-like artifacts around characters.
• We fixed many minor issues with lighting and world geometry.