Knights and mercs, a new update is trickling down from the gleaming corporate towards the neon-baked streets of New Boston. Update #220 updates the Death Save rules for lower difficulties (allowing mercs to be knocked out of the mission but not die and for missions to fail correctly), added new hotkeys for Timeline manipulation in the Safehouse, improved balance of Matrix Hosts by Faction type, fixed the 1-frame T-Pose at the start of mission deploy, made all higher level Wounds a bit worse and fixed a big pile of F10s.

We are hard at work mixing bug fixes, polish, and final rule changes with more big content hits. Last update added a new proc-gen mission object and next update is going to blast a major story - so stay glued to this page. If you are enjoying the relentless pace of additions, please take a moment to leave a review. Remember, you can always edit it later.

This change has been coming for a long time - the review thread about it on Discord is old.

Tldr; the new Death Save % rules work like you would probably expect unlike the old rules that just made you kind of immortal.

(Old Rules) As we like to explain our changes and reasoning in full, I will quickly explain the old system. Every Difficulty had a Death Save % from 100% to 0%. Whenever you take Damage that would reduce you to 0 HP (dead!) and you were already Bleeding Out, your character rolls their Death Save %. If this roll passes, in the old rules, you simply stayed Bleeding Out and gained back some HP, basically "bouncing" back to life.

Notably, Difficulties like Brutal and Chrome had 30% or 20% Death Save, meaning you might take a fatal hit and just walk out the other side with more HP than you went in with ... ?

(New Rules) Death Save % is rolled whenever you take Damage that would reduce you to 0 HP (dead!) and you were already Bleeding Out to see if you survive the hit. Regardless of the result of your Death Save, you flop on the ground and are knocked out of the mission. The Combat Log shows whether you died permanently or survived by Death Save %.

Permanently Dead or Survived Dying, you are knocked out of the mission. This allows missions to fail, even on lower difficulties, without achieving game over or permanent loss of characters.

And Death Saves values have been rebuilt for high Difficulties - Normal is now 50%, Hard is 25% and Brutal and Chrome are ... well, sorry to say it, 0%. Of course, you can customize your Difficulty to your heart's content and play any way you like, these are just the starting defaults.

So, this does make the game harder. In the case that you are losing a mission or taking deadly hits, you will lose faster and harder than before. But this was always the design and the "everliving zombie" Death Save was a mistake that took too long to correct.

Three new bindable hotkeys have been added to make controlling the Safehouse timeline easier. There is Start (V), Stop (B) and Toggle (N) by default. You can rebind them as you please, depending on which ones you want to use. This helps reduce any complicated movement you might have been doing between pause and play, if you like having rapid-fire control over the timeline.

In addition, we've improved how the ESC (or B on controller) works in the Safehouse. If the Timeline is running, hitting ESC will stop the timeline where it used to stop the Timeline and open the pause menu. If the Timeline is not running, now it will just open the pause menu. So, ESC functions as a nice Stop Timeline hotkey if it is running.

In previous updates, we adjusted the Matrix Host color grading by faction so that Street and Syndicate Factions were prevented from rolling the top colors like Orange, Red or Ultra (this is cyberpunk, ultra is a color!!!!)

With Update #220, we've improved this system as well to include the Matrix Q-Sec AI. In the same way that it makes sense that a street gang can't field a Red host, it makes sense that they can't get access to Pit Viper Q-Sec AI. Street Gangs will have access to lower Q-Sec like Boas and Sidewinders, while Syndicates can reach higher, even sometimes (if rarely) fielding a Pit Viper.

In fixing a bug where Brainburnt 1 and Brainburnt 2 were found to be the same level, we completed an analysis of the Wounds that might have matching stats. With this analysis completed, we've ramped up the bad parts of higher level Wounds a bit more and fixed all the duplicates. You're going to have extra incentive to get your Wounds treated early now and "carrying" a Level 4 Wound is just going to hurt more.

For oh-so-long there was a 1-frame T-Pose that you could spot your mercs holding when you first entered the mission deployment screen. It would only happen once per visit to the safehouse and it was fast enough you might think, "Did that really happen?"

We are so glad it is fixed!

Quality and polishing are a big part of what we are working on daily as we head toward launch. This update includes another big wave of F10 fixes, including resolving issues with controllers in Victory/Defeat screen, fixing the duplicated Rarity filter in Cold Storage, resolving the T-Pose in mission deploy and fixing a bug that could cause the game to lock up if your current character was gunned down by enemy Overwatch.

Thanks for all your F10s! We are fixing daily.

- Fixed rules for Death Save - when reaching 0 HP and Bleeding, you go down and roll a Death Save % instead of staying immortal
- Survived/Dead is revealed at end of mission for those mercs who went down
- Allows Easy/Normal difficulty games to fail missions by mercs being eliminated (dead or survived)
- 3 new hotkeys can be bound - Start, Stop and Toggle Safehouse Timeline
- Pressing ESC or (B) in the Safehouse will first pause the Timeline if it is running before opening game pause menu
- Improved balance of Street/Syndicate/Milsec hosts to ensure they have fair Response Levels as well, Street Gangs cannot field Diamond Cobra RL
- Worsened the effect for all higher level Wounds, more reason to get them healed, harder to ignore
- Fixed bug where the current character being killed by enemy Overwatch could lock up the game
- Fixed issue where Brainburnt Wound Level 1 and 2 were the same
- Fixed 1 frame T-Pose appearing first time you load mission deploy screen
- Fixed issue with Rarity filter appearing twice in Cold Storage tabs
- Fixed controller input issue in Victory/Defeat when a mission is multi-stage the selection could get stuck
- Fixed issue with mission deploy and long character lists that could cause the character UI to become misaligned

Mercs and Knights - another big update is coming to New Boston! With Update #219, we have added an all new new proc-gen objective, +15 new proc-gen combos tied to it, 7 new boss-level enemies to support it, reduced Light Armor protection by ~5%, split Hacking Drugs out from Combat Drugs officially, further improved the new game experience for controllers, and fixed a heaping pile of your F10s!

If you are enjoying the relentless pace of updates, content additions and bug smashing - please take a minute to leave a review. The 3 team members on gamedev are working hard to make all this happen, and we work for your reviews!

Recently, we've switched from trying to release a new map every week to adding new proc-gen objectives instead. New maps will still be coming, but we're less worried about the weekly drop schedule versus dropping a rapid fire set of new proc-gen objectives to completely blow out the variety of proc-gen combat.

With Update #219, we've released a new proc-gen objective - the Kill Hardened Target objective, in which you need infiltrate a location and hunt down a single powerful boss enemy. Unlike other Assassinate VIP missions, this Hardened Target is not going to run away - they are going to turn and fight along with their bodyguards. These missions bring a totally new type of challenge to the game whcih really shakes up the assassination formula in lots of ways.

The new Hardened Target objective is supported by 7 new types of powerful boss enemies spread across the factions: the corporate Sentinel Exec, the UltraTek 2X Raptor, the Warner-Braun Rook, the Brave Star Phalanx, the FSC Havoc Jackal, the Syndicate Bloodright and the Gang Street Kings. These enemies are boss-level power, with high HP, wide variety of powerful armor, carrying deadly weapons (including E-Rifles for some of the corp options), and a bevy of deadly Talents, depending on the faction in question - grenades, healing grenades, Full Auto, Overwatch, punishing debuffs and even Vita Shields (which block attacks like Aegis) for some of the corporate options.

We're excited in the new few weeks to expand the Hardened Target options to make more specific bosses for every faction, which will continue to punch up and vary the challenge across the mission set.

This new objective is now linked to 15 maps, which adds a total of +15 new proc-gen combos, bringing the game's total of combos (map X objective) to 189 - vastly exceeding the original goal of 80!

This is a straight nerf - no glossy words will hide it. All Light Armor took a -5% Ballistic Protection hit and in many cases a larger hit to Kinetic Protection %. For Kinetic Protection, the new Light Armor progression sees Kinetic Protection fall behind Ballistic as the armors climb in Power Level, where they used to be in lock step (65% and 65% always).

This is a bit painful but is an important move to continue to push the correct balance between Light, Heavy and Stealth Armors and their different advantages and disadvantages. We'll be working on improving the Stealth Armor balance in the coming weeks as well to be sure they have a good place within the trio.

Going along with this, we've adjusted some of the armor that enemies have been wearing. There were certain series of enemies who stopped upgrading their armor very early, especially Snipers and the guards who start as patrollers on your maps making them too weak in the mid to late game.

For a long time, all the hacker-focused drugs were lumped under the Combat Drugs listing. As each category has grown, it has become more important to separate them both visually, in text and in the filter. With Update #219, we've split out a separate filter for Combat and Hacking Drugs in the market and all inventory screens.

We're continuing to gather feedback from controller players and work down the list of items to improve the flow and speed of play on Steam Deck and standalone controllers. With the last update, we rebuilt the New Game Knight screen to be far easier to use with a controller (removing the messy big scroll to replace it with tabbed sections) and now we've enabled LB and RB to move through those sections smoothly without having to use the D-Pad to go back to the tab list.

We've addressed a big issue with the really large tables - like Cold Storage - where sometimes when you scrolled a lot, the icons could start to get mixed up. You might think you're looking at a Scope Blueprint from the picture but when clicked you'd find an Armor Blueprint. This had to do with some of the grid caching we used to make these really long lists perform well but was pretty confusing for players. Now fixed! Thanks for all the F10s about this!

- Added new proc-gen objective: Assassinate Hardened Target - find and kill boss protected by bodyguards
- 15 new maps available for Hardened Target, +15 total proc-gen combos
- 7 new powerful enemy boss types: Sentinel Exec, Braun Rook, UltraTek 2X Raptor, Syndicate Bloodright, Gang Street King, FSC Havoc Jackal, Star Phalanx
- Light Armor loses 5% Protection across the board, Kinetic Armor gain across Power Levels slows as well
- Improved armor values for some patrol and melee enemies who stopped scaling too early, street sniper armors values
- Fixed issue with Contacts not buying files that they should that started in #218
- Split Combat Drugs and Hacking Drugs filter in the inventory system so they are easier to see/shop
- Can now use LB/RB to move through tabs in New Game Knight screen - easier for controller/keyboard play
- Fixed issue where icons could get out of date (showing an armor but it was a scope) in large inventory tables
- Fixed case where character's character Hacking Drugs could not see their full details mid-mission in the character status hover
- Fixed missing text for killing enemy secondary objective