We’ve taken another step in our ongoing quest to keep listening to community feedback and improving the game. This time, the big-ticket items are:

• Over a dozen new weapons from the World War II era.
• The ability to demote a leader without exiling or killing them.
• New icons to help you find characters you’re trying to exile or demote.
• The ability to transfer items into the base from every inventory slot at a parked vehicle.
• The ability to unload ammunition from weapons in your inventory.

Check out the detailed patch notes below.

World War II Weapons

• Community Request: We’ve added a new set of classic weapons from the World War II era:
  • M1918 BAR
  • M1A1 Thompson
  • M3 Grease Gun
  • Surplus M1911
  • M1917 Revolver
  • M1903A4 Sniper Rifle
  • M1 Carbine
  • M1 Para Carbine
  • M97 Trench Gun
• There are several ways to get these new weapons:
  • There is a new antique weapons trader who shows up occasionally to sell them (appearing at the same rate as the other traders).
  • These new weapons can also be looted from the same containers as other standard guns in the game. Gun stores are a great place to look.
  • Characters with an interest in historical weapons can also spawn with them. (Look for traits like Rifle Collector, War Reenactor, and the new World War II Buff.)
• Community Request: We also added four special variants that can only be found in the rare weapon containers hidden across the maps:
  • Barrow Style BAR (a cut-down M1918 BAR)
  • Gangland Strad (an M1A1 Thompson with a drum magazine)
  • Graveyard Shift (an integrally-suppressed M3 Grease Gun)
  • T4/M2 Carbine (a fully-automatic variant of the M1 Carbine)

Demoting Leaders

• Community Request: You can now demote your leader from the Community Screen without having to exile them or get them killed.
  • The process is the same as for exiling a character. First you mark them for demotion, then you speak to them in person.
  • The demoted character’s standing drops to Citizen level, and they suffer a temporary Morale penalty.
• Community Request: When you exile or demote someone, they are now given a distinctive marker in the world and on the map, so you can easily find them to complete the process.

Characters

• Community Request: Nonplayer characters are now a lot less aggressive towards nearby enemies while talking to you.
  • They will still defend themselves if attacked, but they won’t break out of a conversation to chase a zombie that is across the building from them.
• Community Request: When you switch characters at an outpost, your old character now teleports home, rather than heading out on foot and probably dying (at least in the harder zones).
• Community Request: When you switch characters with your flashlight on, your new character starts out with their flashlight already on.
• Abandoned followers no longer teleport directly over your head like drop bears.
• We fixed a bug that was preventing characters from getting nicknames based on their last name.
  • This fix unlocks a huge list of nicknames that were not available before.
  • This fix also unlocks more nickname options for cops, soldiers, and other characters who go by really long or uncapitalized last names that historically haven’t fit well into the UI or the mission text.

Facilities

• The Sort Ammo action at the Storage facility has been rebalanced to make some of the rarer ammo types more common. Now you should generate:
  • About twice as many .357 rounds as before.
  • About 50% more .44 and 7.62mm rounds.
  • About 15% more 5.56mm rounds.
  • About 25% fewer 9mm rounds (to make up for it).
• Upgrading an Infirmary or Clinic no longer ejects its Blood Plague patients, which was causing their death timers to quietly resume. Survivors now remain checked-in after upgrades.
• The Scrum Certification skill now grants a speed bonus to the building of facilities, in addition to its original speed bonus to other facility actions.

Items

• Community Request: Quick-Repair Toolkits have been rebranded as Advanced Toolkits, and they now repair twice as much damage as standard Toolkits.
  • Their crafting cost and rarity are unchanged. They’re just better now.
• Community Request: Deployable Pyro Minefields now spawn with the correct rocket pods. They can set zombies on fire again.
• Community Request: In response to players finding certain crossbows overpowered against Plague Hearts, we’ve reduced crossbow damage across the board (though headshots against zombies are still always deadly).
• Crossbow bolt impacts no longer play inappropriate audio.
• Characters with appropriate traits now have a chance of initially spawning with a crossbow.
  • This includes the new Crossbow Hunter trait.
• Unbreakable items no longer drop from Plague Hearts in a damaged condition

User Experience

• Community Request: You can now hold Y (controller) or R (keyboard) to unload the ammunition from the magazine of a weapon in your inventory, so you can store it or use it elsewhere.
• Now when you’re transferring items from a vehicle inventory to your base, you can do it from any slot in your inventory, not just the vehicle slots.
• When playing with a mouse, you can now click the empty leader slot on the Community Screen to initiate leader selection, rather than having to press the spacebar.
• Community Request: We fixed a bug that was preventing freaks from appearing on the mini-map in Daybreak.
• Map icons for optional mission objectives have been recolored to stand out more against the background.
• Entering a site while in a vehicle no longer prevents room-clearing pips from appearing on the mini-map.
• If you interrupt a subtitle by conversing with an NPC, and then exit the conversation while the original line is still playing, the subtitle comes back, too.

Multiplayer

• Incoming clients now land in the host’s vehicle, if the host happens to be driving at the time.
• Bonuses to influence gains now apply to multiplayer rewards, in addition to standard in-game earnings.
• Nonplayer characters no longer fall through the world or spawn in the sky when exiting vehicles.
• Getting tethered with the map open no longer traps you on a black screen.
• We fixed a bug so that clients can now interact with built-in facilities after the host settles a new base.
• Community Request: Players can no longer throw Bloater Gas Grenades at other players and then disconnect, causing the damage from the grenade to suddenly kick in. Explosives of all kinds now disappear when the character that triggered them goes away.

Dread and Nightmare Zones

• Community Request: Hostile humans in Nightmare Zones are now a bit less deadly with firearms.
  • Now when you suffer a headshot, you are protected from additional headshots for a short time afterwards.
  • The remaining sliver of health has doubled in size, leaving a bit more room for you to escape with your life.
• The True Grit achievement is no longer triggered simply by rolling over to Day 100 while in a Dread or Nightmare zone, even if most of those days were spent in a Standard Zone. Now you must spend all 100 days in a more challenging zone.
  • Communities that are already in Dread and Nightmare zones when the update is installed will still be credited according the old rules.
• Difficulty descriptions no longer continue to display unnecessary warning text after you change difficulty.
• We fixed a crash that would occur if you managed to switch difficulties when your last survivor was dying.

Other Stuff

• • Windows with multiple panes now break as you would expect, rather than quietly violating the laws of physics.
  • We fixed a bug that was causing the game to begin without the characters or the world fully spawned in.
  • We fixed a crash that occurred when a character was killed after being exiled.