Update 27 - Mask Up!

Our latest quality-of-life update includes a variety of gameplay and user-experience improvements, as well as our traditional dollop of Halloween-themed items and outfits!

You can read through the full patch notes for all the details, but here are a few of the standouts:

• We added three new Halloween masks, and brought back old favorites from previous years.

• We made a major improvement to the catapulting-vehicle problem.

• Dead Plague Hearts now show up on the map and report their contents.

• You can now fit twice as much stuff into the trunk slots of your vehicles.

• Zombies now do a better job of spawning indoors before you arrive, and can no longer see through dynamic obstacles.

Mask Up for Halloween!

To celebrate the zombies' favorite holiday, we’re adding three new Halloween masks to everyone’s closet! All you need to do is load up your community between October 25th and November 1st, and you’ll automatically receive:

• Scarecrow Mask — You’ll scare off more than crows with this terrifying mask, designed by the Grim Stitch Factory!

• Jack-O-Lantern Mask — Light up the night with this frightful mask!

• Hockey Mask — Perfect for scaring horny teenagers at a slumber party!

And of course, you can also grab the Halloween costumes from previous years:

• The Swine and Bovine mask and outfit are unlocked if you play before November 1st.

• The Cannibal Mechanic mask and outfit and the Skeleton Hoodie outfit are still a part of the Fearsome Footage bounty pack, which returned on October 1st.

The Footage Got Nine Percent More Fearsome

Speaking of the Fearsome Footage pack, we’ve managed to sneak just one more movie-inspired weapon into the collection.

• The Choppah — “This razor-sharp machete is surprisingly easy to use, making it the right weapon when there's something out there waiting for you.” — Cash Beaumont

Lost Weapons Revealed

In our previous update, we slipped several new weapons into the general loot tables without any fanfare. For players who are interested, here is the list of weapons that went in last month:

• M590 Sea and Sky Shotgun — “This naval 590A1 sports anti-corrosion treatments and some nice ergonomic add-ons. Back on the island, I knew a guy who carried one of these. Swore it never let him down.” — Sgt. Kilohana Young

• Classic SKS Rifle — “It's not the prettiest weapon you'll find, but thanks to its durability and the millions churned out over the past half-century-plus, odds are you'll find one sooner or later.” — Cpl. Maya Torres

• PPQ M2 — “A modern polymer design with great ergonomics and a finely tuned trigger pull. I carried one of these back when I was in Special Forces, but that's all I'm allowed to say about those days.” — Lt. Nigel Meredeth

• USC Carbine — “The badass civilian sibling of the UMP, this rifle hits harder and louder and probably has a couple tattoos to boot. Even if you don't kill your target on the first shot, you'll likely knock it down or at least rip its arm off.” — Kelly Eldridge, Esq.

• Blackhawk .45 Revolver — “A beautiful modern replica of a classic cowboy-style revolver. Not for everyone, but if you're looking to make a statement it's nice to have this hard-hitting iron on your hip.” — Helena Cruz

• Gladius — “Dude, this sword is legendary. It's just like the one that guy used in that movie. Y'know, where he played the gladiator? What was that movie called again? Damn, that was good shit.” — Brock

• Kanabo — “This iron-studded war club may not look as deadly as a katana, but the samurai who used to carry these back in the day would beg to differ.” — Gurubani Kaur

Red Talon Experiment

In response to player requests that Red Talon hero bonuses be more predictable, we have experimentally cut the following hero bonuses from future Red Talon recruits:

• Reconnaissance (granted by the Dead Zone Runner)

• Owed Favors (granted by the Consul Officer trait)

• Utility Vests (granted by the Diehard Veteran trait)

• Sleeping in Shifts (granted by the Vigil Guard trait)

This means that without these four hero bonuses competing for space on the character sheet, your Red Talon recruits will consistently have hero bonuses associated with the traits that determine their fifth skills.

We’re hoping this will improve the experience of strategizing around these recruits and their capabilities.

NOTE: A previous version of these patch notes incorrectly stated that the traits had been cut. That is not the case. The traits (Dead Zone Runner, Consul Officer, Diehard Veteran, and Vigil Guard) are still available, as always. They just aren’t linked to those hero bonuses anymore.

Quality of Life Improvements

We’ve also continued our quest to make State of Decay 2 more fun, in all sorts of ways, with every single update. Check out the tweaks and improvements below.

Vehicles

• We identified and fixed a major cause of the problem where repairing a vehicle would cause it to float around the world or fly into the air. Definitely keep an eye out for this one, because we would love to confirm whether it is really and truly gone, or if we have more potential causes to track down.

• You can now cram twice as many of a given item into each slot of a vehicle’s inventory. That means two toolkits, six fuel bombs, eighty bullets, etc. Weapons and rucksacks don’t stack.

• The Screamer no longer breaks phantom versions of your car windows again and again, across multiple screams. The first time those windows break, they now stay broken.

• A missing passenger door will no longer cause an AI passenger to slither continuously back and forth between the front and rear seats, as fun as that was to watch.

• Entering the right-rear seat of a vehicle now results in your character slithering all the way up into the driver’s seat., instead of stopping short at the passenger seat.

User Interface

• Defeated Plague Heart husks now appear on the Map screen until they are fully looted. Hovering on the icon will give you an accounting of what remains to be scavenged.

• Freaks that are integrated into hordes now show up separately on the mini-map alongside the horde icon, so you can clock incoming bloaters and ferals.

• Community save slots now display the name of the map where the community currently lives.

• We fixed a bug that was causing facility actions to report durations that were one minute higher than their actual durations.

• The Gas Station Jackets now have accurate color swatches to help you identify them at a glance in the Closet.

• Retailer-specific radio commands that summon exclusive supply drops and vehicles now do a much better job of characterizing what is about to be delivered.

• The greedy Daybreak technician is no longer hoarding multiple in-world icons to appear above their head. One is enough.

Controls

• The Repair action at the Supply Locker is now consistent for weapons in your inventory and weapons in the locker. By default, this is Hold A on controller, and Hold C with a keyboard.

• Characters can no longer leap from ladders, as we found that this was primarily done by accident, and from very high places.

• Players using the old-school combined Dodge/Stealth combo button can now interrupt their aim by dodging again, just like they used to.

• The Sprint action no longer interrupts aiming unless you have the Toggle Aim option switched on.

• If you have rebound your Throw (while Grappling) action to the same button as your Aim action, you will no longer release a grappled zombie and aim your gun at it when you meant to throw it. This will probably only help one specific player. You’re welcome, Matt.

Zombies

• Zombies can no longer see through wooden fences, cars, or doors. This should make stealth a lot more intuitive, especially in denser environments. (Thanks to GoudaBuddha for noticing this!)

• Zombies will now spawn in buildings before you enter the building. This means that you can predict what you'll encounter before entering buildings, and you shouldn't get ambushed by sudden spawns nearly as frequently while inside. Also, sheds are no longer guaranteed to be safe. Enter at your own risk!

Outposts

• Skill training actions at upgraded outposts can now be performed either at the base or in person at the outpost.

• The Overpriced Hot Dog Stand and the Freaky Garage in Trumbull Valley no longer claim to be outpostable when they are not.

• The Army Medical Tent near Jurassic Junction can now be claimed as an outpost.

• We closed an exploit that allowed players to use the Wind Farm’s labor-intensive strategy without sufficient labor.

Bases and Facilities

• We reworked the Sturdy Bunkhouses at the Farmland Compound to fix an annoying issue with passive activation pop-ups happening too frequently. Now you have full control over whether you want to use it as a 6-bed facility, or as an 8-bed facility with -5 to morale.

• Crafting actions at the Biochem Station now correctly award the skill experience that they say they do.

• Base defenders can now successfully climb up into a Sniper Tower built at Camp Kelenqua.

• We fixed an issue that was causing community members to walk in circles at the Farmland Compound.

• We improved the way that base facility icons are displayed, especially at unusual aspect ratios.

• Parking slots now have visible icons, even when you are outside the base.

Missions

• We loosened up the spawning requirements for Trade Depot traders, so hopefully, you should find the radio commands to summon them much more reliable than they were before.

• Plague Zombies now reliably appear in the initial Medical Emergency mission when you are searching the nearby ruin for plague samples to manufacture your first cure — even if you’ve already scouted the place.

• You can now threaten the enclave from Warlord: Weapons for All, even after the mission is over, if you’re tired of their overpriced garbage.

• Alexis Carter now leaves when you ask her to, whenever she ventures out of Trumbull Valley to trade on the other maps.

• Early Builder, Sheriff, and Warlord missions no longer automatically pin themselves over your other ongoing missions.

Other Stuff

• Stacks of items are now re-merged in your inventory when you select a skill specialization that increases their limits.

• We’ve killed all remaining uses of the “slow” animation for picking items up off the ground. No more running into one particular item that seems much harder to pick up than the others.

• The benefits to ammo stacks from having the Assault skill are now being correctly applied to multiplayer clients.

• We removed the Red Talon weapons and the Timberwolf from the Rare Weapon Container loot table, as those weapons were available from other sources, and thus more disappointing to roll at random.

• We increased the cooldown on the dialogue line that explains that you cannot claim a site within plague territory. We suspect that everyone gets it now, and it was getting repetitive.

• We also fixed numerous minor issues with environment art, collision, navigation, and character outfits.