Patch 1.027 - DLC #1 - Castithan Charge Pack - 8/20/13

FEATURES

The Castithan Charge Pack has arrived!

Purchased Content

Purchasing the Pack will grant you the following:

ACCESS TO CASTITHAN PLAYER RACE

Make a new Castithan character or change your character's race!

1 FREE CHARACTER RECUSTOMIZATION

If you want to play a Castithan but don't want to make a new character, your account will have one free character recustomization where you'll be able to change your species and appearance.

ACCESS TO NEW BATTLE ARENA MODE

An instanced, single player “horde mode” that opens up new missions to complete.

It also provides access to the Thorn Liro vendor which sells Castithan charge blades and more.

NEW TRUCK: THE RAPTOR

A truck to ride in for you and three of your closest friends, claimable in the Bits store.

UNIQUE OUTFIT

Deck your character out in a Castithan styled outfit, claimable in the Bits Store.

1 CHARGE WEAPON STARTER PACK

Charge up these weapons to gain a secondary ability. Includes a Charge Shotgun, Charge Pistol, and Charge Sniper.

Everyones Content

The following content will be available to all players:

DARK MATTER ARKFALLS

Battle Dark Matter forces, including the Monolith, to take control of arkfalls Sausalito, San Francisco, Marin and Madera!

CASTITHAN CHARGE BLADES

Wield a newly added weapon type that can be acquired through Battle Arena mission rewards, the Thorn Liro vendor, or as rare drops from Tier 4 lock boxes.

CHARGE WEAPONS

The Bay Area now has a new type of weapon that can be charged for a special effect, acquired through random loot drops or from the Thorn Liro vendor.

VOLGE SIEGES

They're back by popular demand! Capture points around the Bay Area and defend them from the Volge threat.

NEW PVP MAP: MILITARY ACADEMY

Fight head-to-head in this all new 16 on 16 capture and hold map!

DUELING

You can now challenge anyone to a one on one duel anywhere in the world.

 Patch Notes

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MISSIONS

• Adjusted nearby Emergencies so UIs do not overlap while in Trolley Graveyard, Parraba Farm and Mine 99.
• An issue that would sometimes cause Old Swords to not complete should be fixed.
• Slight encounter balance tuning at Verdant Ridge.
• Adjusted the position of some spawns to fix floating/stacked objects at the San Francisco Overpass.
• Fixed some pathing issues near where the S.ave O.ur S.ouls side mission takes place.
• Fixed an object that was floating for the side mission Waist Deep.
• Fixed an issue that caused the starting location for the side mission Network for Net Gain to be displayed in two locations.
• Fixed an object that was slightly floating for the side mission Excavation Expedition.
• Raised up the interact in the Tracking a Package side mission making it easier for the player to access.
• Rebalanced the mission “We’re on the Air” to make the difficulty more appropriate.
• KTAM mission We’re on the Air now supports four players at once. Also adjusted the difficulty.
• Medical canisters at Fisherman’s Wharf will now always update the Series of Problems mission.
• Skitterling spawn times have been adjusted at Big Stone Reach to prevent weapon XP exploits.
• Adjusted placement of the Fine Tuning EGO mission offer.
• Removed the Tower West objective from the “Fine Tuning” mission.
• Fixed floating ammo cache at Verdant Ridge.
• The phasing boundary for Danger at Diablo has been nudged so that it no longer interferes with an arkfall socket.
• Fixed an issue where the download terminal at Port Stinson would occasionally become non-interactive.
• The side mission Taking the Wind Out of Sales in Marin should now be more conducive to multiple players trying to complete the mission.
• Updated how the hellbug eggs work in Skittering About, Have to Crack a Few Eggs, To Make an Omelet... and Bugs Will Be Bugs side missions.
• Fixed an issue in which the encounters would not advance promptly on the Distress Call mission.

CHALLENGES

• Hopefully fixed the random issue where the challenge offer object isn’t visible when you exit a challenge.
• Increased Scrip rewards on all Hotshots and Rampages to make them better sources of Scrip.

EMERGENCIES

• Volge themed emergencies will now appear throughout the world.
• Removed timer displays during Dark Matter Camp.
• Added reward loot and fixed some UI and timing issues in Scrapper Repair Station.
• Fixed end of event messaging in Blood of Heroes.
• Updated hostage interaction text to say “Free Hostage” in Helter Smelter.
• Increased Scrip rewards on all Emergencies to make them better sources of Scrip.
• Repositioned an Emergency that was too close to Mine 98 and was disappearing as you approached it.
• Increased Scrip rewards on all Emergencies to make them better sources of Scrip.

ARKFALLS

• Dark Matter arkfalls added. Take down the Monolith with the help of about 100 of your closest friends! These can be found in Sausalito, San Francisco, Marin, and Madera!
• Major arkfalls were rewarding more shields and grenades than was desired. This has been adjusted so that you should see a higher percentage of weapons when you complete a major arkfall.
• Fixed loot waves for Mutant and Elemental Hellbug Destroy Arkfalls.
• 99er drills spawn properly in arkfalls.
• Starting arkfalls before the progenitor arkfall are more challenging.
• Fixed a bug that caused hellbug arkfalls to spawn incorrectly.
• Fixed some graphical glitches that occur during the Mother of all Hellbugs arkfall.

SIEGES

• Volge Seiges are here!
• Fixed respawn points at Ridgecrest.
• Fixed disappearing ammo crates in the barn in the Kenn Farm Plague Siege.
• Fixed a bug that could potentially cause the siege at Bolinas to not progress.

PLAYER CHARACTER

• Castithan playable race added!
• New player voices have been added and can be customized when creating a character or through character customization redo.

ENEMIES AND NPCs

• Fixed Dark Matter Bulwarks in the Alamo Park area that where not giving credit on Bulwark pursuits and contracts.
• Some of the Pows that pop up around the world have been given a leash to prevent them from running rampant.
• Fixed Goldrusher not being able to attack players standing on crates or other objects.
• Fixed player vehicles not able to damage Hellbug Blast Pod.

COMPETITIVE MULTIPLAYER

• The all new Military Academy multiplayer map has been added!
• Shortened queue times for Shadow War.
• Moved the spawns outside the building in Freight Yard so people can’t be trapped inside any more.
• Improved server stability in competitive maps.

CO-OP AND SOLO MAPS

• Raised vehicle placement in Explosions 101 to prevent clipping with the ground.
• Fixed an exploit in Scrapworks Salvage that allowed players to skip past a majority of the Co-op Map and start the Boss Encounter.
• Added Elemental Hellbug variants to Island of Lost Soldiers.
• Smoothed out the spawning of the additional enemies that accompany Jackleg Joe for a cleaner, more manageable experience.
• Fixed bug where players were getting into co-op instances that groups have left.

WEAPONS

• Added all new charge weapons, which includes three shotguns, three pistols and three sniper rifles.
• Castithan charge blades have also been added with customizable blade color mods. Blade mods can be found in the Defiance Store.
• Added new Volge LMGs.
• Adjusted time and cost for weapon remastery.
• VOT LMGs, Bolt Action Pistols and FRC Slug Shotguns have new appearances.
• Shotguns are being tuned to bring them in line with the other weapons and personalities we want to obtain with each type of shotgun.
• Mag Size Changes: We have made changes to the mag size of all bonus size mods and rarity bonuses. This was largely due to shotguns getting more shots per clip then intended.
• Rarity Bonuses that increased Mag Size have been decreased.
• Clip Mods that increased Mag Size have been decreased.
• Elemental Proc Chance Change: We discovered that the shotguns were proc-ing per pellet at the full proc chance. This caused the shotguns to have a much higher chance to proc the elemental effect than other weapons.
• Changed the proc chance per pellet of shotguns (excluding Slug based shotguns).
• These two types of Shotguns are being tuned to bring them in line with the other shotguns.
• Rate of Fire change for the VOT Auto Fragger: We have made this change due to speed at which a player could kill its intended target. This weapon now has slightly lower rate of fire to bring it in line with the other combat shotguns.
• Recoil Increase in the TACC Auto-Shotgun: This change was to add a bit more variance in the recoil with the amount of shells it could shoot from its high mag capacity.
• Faction merchant weapons now have a slight increase in damage.
• Adjusted the requirements for different skill levels with weapons to promote faster weapon skill leveling at lower levels. This should not change your current weapon skill level. If you were close to leveling up already, you might go up by one skill level because your current experience might be above the threshold for the new level. You should not drop in skill level. The overall time to max out a weapon skill should not have changed. Lower levels should be earned faster and later levels will take a little bit longer.
• Added some new mods for Infectors, BMGs, and Detonators. These will allow players to complete more synergies and fill all available slots.
• The SAW LMG’s were performing significantly higher than other LMG’s, so we have reduced the damage that they do to bring them more in line with other categories of weapons
• The Immunizer was tuned down to fit more of the anti-sniper role that it was intended to fill. That role is to flush out the longer range weapon users effectively by allowing for easier targeting and a punishment for standing still for too long.
• We changed how long it takes to spawn infector bugs while using the Immunizer.
• We decreased the rate of fire
• We also increased the reload time.
• Fixed an issue that was causing nano-effects to trigger on melee and melee nano-effects to trigger when shooting enemies. This was not intended behavior.

GRENADES

• Fixed an issue with the Frag Std-22W stats showing up as all zeros.
• Cluster grenades now properly update kill counts within pursuits.

WEAPON MODS

• Mod Hoards are now available from lock box vendors. These can be purchase with Bits or resources and contain four mods of any rarity for each mod slot for random weapon types.
• The Synergy Mod Caches have been pulled from Lockbox vendors. Synergy mods can now be purchased directly from mod vendors. Each mod vendor
• Fixed a bug that caused the Incendiary Shot Converter mod to not work on the VOT Nano Fragger.
• Mods can now be broken down to Ark Salvage.

LOOT AND AMMO

• Tier 4 chests will now drop improved loot.
• Replaced some ammo caches in Marin that were using an old model.
• Fixed a floating ammo cache at Verdant Ridge.
• Mod specials will now be of higher quality. Challenge reward mods will also give more mods of higher tier.
• Elemental shields and other special shields will drop earlier.

VEHICLES

• New Raptor four player vehicle added!
• Additional Challenger variants added.
• Vehicle Shields will now begin recharging faster (5 seconds, down from 20) and upped recharge rate from 10% to 20% per second.
• Fixed a bug that caused players to spawn incorrectly into the Cerberus when moving at high speed.

VENDORS

• Vendors are available during the Dodge Challenger Race events to sell special Challengers. Find them scattered around the world and by the start of the races.
• Added weapon type specific mod vendors around the game world.
• Adjusting specials on vendors to offer more rare weapons.
• Rare mods that appear as vendor specials are now priced appropriately.

OUTFITS

• Factory and Workshop engineer helmets now display the players head correctly.

ACHIEVEMENTS, PURSUITS AND CONTRACTS

• The Devil’s Armor Contract should now update for the farm area behind Happy Pow in Madera and the farms scattered around Sausalito.
• Fixed mutant kills at the South Radio Tower not counting for the Atlas Attrition contract.
• Fixed an issue that was causing the Pursuit EGO Evolution V task that required you to unlock all 4 powers to not complete properly. If you have already unlocked Cloak, Blur, Overcharge and Decoy, you will need to re-spec and unlock them again to complete it. If you have not, as soon as you unlock them all, this task will complete.
• The Scavenger Hunt contract should update appropriately at more docks. If you find a spot that doesn’t work, please let us know!
• Fixed an issue with the Jewels of the Bay contract in which blasters and rioters at Bon Air and Pitfall mines were not contributing towards completion.

AUDIO

• New character creation options have been added to customize voice.
• Reworked audio for pistols, shotguns and sniper rifles to give them a wider variety of sounds that are more appropriate to their damage type.
• Combat music timing has been updated.

USER INTERFACE

• New and much improved chat window!
• Fast travel points on the map now have hexagonal icons around them to make them easier to select and to see what’s near them.
• New tips now show on loading screens.
• To provide better help information, gameplay loading screen tips will now display approximately 4 times as often as lore-based tips.
• A massive overhaul of the help menu now clarifies functionality.
• Fixed a bug that prevented the competitive outfits tab from being selected in the Loadouts EGO menu.

MISCELLANEOUS

• Quick travel points have been added to Last Chance, Diablo Lighthouse, and the E-rep Commando Camp in Frisco.
• Echelon mercenaries have been added throughout the world and are now recruiting for Shadow War, Competitive Maps and Co-op Maps!
• Fixed a bug where Guild Invites from someone on a different game server could cause you to join the guild even if you declined the invitation.
• A number of server stability improvements and crash fixes.

PC

• Fixed client startup crash when steam is in offline mode

XBOX 360

• Improved Kinect integration! While this mostly affects German and French, some small improvements were made to the map commands.
• Fixed incorrect Kinect description text for the “leave group” command.
• Fixed the “EGO gameplay” command so that it brings up the gameplay settings menu.
• Fixed Xbox 360 patching issue where the patch contents would be unrecoverable and corrupted after a patch download/apply error occurred.
• Fixed client loading screen crash that would occur before character select when the stored client settings were malformatted.
• Added ability to choose which regional server (North America/Europe) you connect to. (Note: Your characters remain associated with your original server; they do not switch servers.)

PLAYSTATION 3

• Fixed some issues with PS3 voice chat.