Love is in the air, Contestants! As we hit the heart of the season, there are some exciting events kicking off, plus a whole slew of balance changes and fixes to keep your matches fresh, fierce, and fun.

Valentine’s Event: Spin the Wheel of Love!

Cupid's not the only one shooting arrows this season! Our Valentine’s event is live, and the Wheel of Love is here to steal your heart (and maybe a few wins). Earn tickets by completing daily contracts, spin the wheel, and unlock up to 20 charming rewards. If you snag them all, you’ll also win the final prize: the Arena Amorator Outfit! Not totally in love with your daily contract? Re-roll with VRs!

This time around, when you land on a duplicate item, you’ll receive a ticket part. Collect four parts to craft a new ticket for another spin! You’ll also start off with a ticket to ensure everyone gets lucky this Valentine’s Day!

Stay tuned tomorrow for the Love Hurts World Tour event for another week of heart-pounding action, with an explosive touch!

Reddit AMA Incoming (Feb 19)!

Got burning questions about THE FINALS? Join Rob and the team for an AMA on r/thefinals, the fan-run Reddit on February 19. It’s your chance to dive deep, get insights, and maybe even drop that meme you’ve been saving. Please come and join us for a few hours of questions!

Stun Gun Rework on the Horizon

We hear you loud and clear: the Stun Gun needs some love (the other kind, not the Valentine’s kind). We’re got some plans for this gadget and will give you more insight about the road ahead in Update 5.10.0

Patch Highlights:

Alongside the fun, we're rolling out a hefty batch of balance changes, weapon tweaks, and bug fixes. From adjustments to the Lockbolt Launcher and Cashout mechanics to performance boosts and UI improvements, there's something for everyone. Dive into the full notes to see how your favorite gear and strategies might shift.

Finally, check out this week’s store update full of sweet surprises to heartfelt treasures!

So, suit up, spin that Wheel of Love, and we’ll see you in the arena!


Gadgets

Breach Charge

• Decreased the delay between throwing multiple Breach Charges from 0.9s to 0.6s

Lockbolt Launcher

• Re-enabled the ability for the Lockbolt to attach to objectives
• Increased activation grace period from 0.8s to 1s, making it slightly easier to lock on to targets
• Decreased the minimum pull distance from 8m to 6m, giving locked players slightly less room to maneuver

• Decreased the maximum pull distance from 10m to 6m, giving locked players less room to maneuver
• Increased the pull force of the Lockbolt by 50%, making it slightly harder for players to move beyond the radius of the lock’s chains
• Increased the damage the Lockbolt applies to targets from 0 to 5
• Added functionality that will disable the Lockbolt’s tethers if the Lockbolt is carried through a Gateway that is outside the maximum pull distance (6m)
  

Game Modes

Dev Note: Since our changes to deposit values in Cashout in Season 3, we’ve noticed an increasing number of teams adopting the ‘plug meta,’ where teams primarily focus on depositing Cash Boxes in World Tour and Ranked Tournaments to increase their chances of winning. While we wanted to encourage teams to focus on depositing and protecting cashouts, rather than third-partying already active cashouts, the ‘plug meta’ has become a little too common and leads to a bad teamplay experience. The changes to team wipes and deposit values, listed below, aim to nudge teams away from focusing entirely on plugging, while still reducing the incentives for third-partying.

Cashout

• Decreased the percentage of cash in a Cashbox that is awarded for depositing it at the Cashout Station from ~30% to ~20%
• Increased the percentage of cash in a Cashbox that is awarded for completing a cashout from ~70% to ~80% of the Cashbox’s value

Ranked Tournament (Cashout)

• Increased the amount of cash lost from a team’s total for a team wipe from 10% to 15%

Specializations

Charge N’ Slam

• Decreased the damage done by the initial impact on enemies from 130 to 100
• Decreased the damage done by subsequent hits on enemies from 50 to 40
• Decreased the minimum damage of the ground slam, based on fall height from 80 to 50

Dev Note: The damage applied by Charge N’ Slam has been quite high for some time and is especially punishing for Light players, especially when repeatedly hit by the charge. We feel these new values offer a fairer experience

Dematerializer

• Decreased the duration of dematerialized objects from 30s to 15s, causing objects to rematerialize sooner
• Added the ability for the Dematerializer to remove props attached to wall segments

Dev Note: This change should mean that the Dematerializer now makes clearer holes in the environment that are easier to move through

Guardian Turret

• Decreased the cooldown from 8s to 3s when manually picking up the Guardian Turret

Winch Claw

• Decreased the range of the Winch Claw from 12m to 10m

Weapons

Cerberus

• Increased damage from 9 to 10 per pellet
• Slightly decreased the size of the pellet distribution, making the weapon more accurate
• Decreased the reload time for reloading one cartridge from 2.2s to 2.1s
• Decreased the reload time for reloading two cartridges from 2.4s to 2.25s
• Decreased the reload time for reloading three cartridges from 2.6s to 2.45s

CL-40

• Decreased the radius of the weapon’s projectile from 10cm to 5cm, making it easier to avoid accidentally hitting nearby surfaces
• Decreased self-damage multiplier from 1.6 to 1.25, meaning it will now do less damage to the player using it should they accidentally hit themselves

Dev Note: While the CL-40 has been in a much better place recently than in the past, we feel these small ‘quality of life’ changes will improve the experience of using it

Dagger

• Added a slight adjustment to FoV when charging up for a secondary attack, to make it clearer when the attack is at maximum charge

FAMAS

• Decreased the fire rate from 230 RPM to 220 RPM
• Decreased damage per bullet from 24 to 23

LH1

• Decreased damage from 48 to 46
• Decreased rate of fire from 280 RPM to 270 RPM

Model 1887

• Decreased damage from 13 to 11 per pellet
• Increased min damage falloff multiplier from 0.6 to 0.7, meaning the Model 1887 retains the same damage at max range as in update 5.7

Pike-556

• Increased damage from 47 to 50

SR-84

• Decreased the bolt action animation duration from 1.25s to 1.05s, slightly increasing the SR-84’s rate of fire
• Increased damage from 115 to 118

Sword

• Increased the length of the Sword’s secondary attack hit sweep by 55cm

Dev Note: This change reverts the change made in 4.6 and should mean the primary and secondary attacks of the Sword now have a more consistent length


Animation

• Fixed a bug where player animations would stutter in the intro and celebration sequences
• Fixed clipping issues on ShAK-50 inspects
• Fixed an issue where the character's hands looked broken after throwing the Gravity Vortex
• Fixed an issue where the red dot sight for the Horizon Hammer R .357 skin wasn't aligned properly when aiming down sights

Characters & Cosmetics

• Fixed the Mirrorball Mood helmet so it would not clip with facewears
• Fixed the hologram effect for ISEUL-T Escape Pants and ISEUL-T Lifestyle Coat
• Fixed visual fidelity of the Final Toss cosmetics
  

Contracts

• Fixed "Blind 2 opponents with a Flashbang" so it would not count for teammates
• Fixed an issue where some contracts were able to progress inside Private Matches

Gadgets
Lockbolt Launcher

• It will deactivate if carried through a teleporter outside of the max pull range
• Removed the ability to tether to the same object it is attached to
• Removed the ability for objects to be attached to the Lockbolt

C4, Breach Charge, Gravity Vortex

• Fixed an issue where the light indicator on the detonators was not visible on consoles

Gameplay

• Improved stuttery movement on elevators and elevator doors
• Fixed draw bridges to prevent stuttering when moving
• Fixed an issue that allowed players to vault while being revived by Defibrillator
• Improved the visual effect during respawn invulnerability to be more prominent
• Fixed issue where grenades with certain skins would visually go through walls and floors
• Removed the ability to bypass manual action animations (such as using a bolt action or pump-action) by interrupting them
• Fixed an issue where players could get stuck between objects while falling
• Fixed issue making it so that any secondary melee ability would retrigger when held
• Fixed the Sword lunge not charging after a vault when holding the button down
• Fixed an issue where Cashout Stations could launch way beyond their intended range when interacting with Jump Pads
  

Game Modes

General

• Fixed a rare issue that could lead to locked black screen when reconnecting to a tournament match that just finished
• Fixed an issue that prevented equipment or customization changes from appearing in-game unless the user navigated away from the screen before the match started
• Fixing bug where squad respawns would ignore enemy proximity when there are no active objectives on the map

Quick Cash

• Fixed an issue where you could sometimes respawn instantly

PowerShift

• Fixed an issue where the wrong loadout icons could be displayed if revived while changing characters
  

Maps

General

• Fixed an issue with billboard text looking stretched
• Fixed several floating assets, clipping, and faulty collisions across all maps

Bernal

• Improved fog rendering

Kyoto

• Upgraded the destruction from the ground up
  • Each building will collapse more easily, with destruction happening on a more granular scale
  • Debris from collapsed structures will behave more naturally and add to the terrain

Monaco

• Fixed one of the issues that could make the Cashbox fall through the ground
• Fixed collision issues with some walls in the park area
• Upgraded terrain to improve performance

Practice Range

• Updated the trophy room to include the trophies from Season 4

Skyway Stadium

• Fixed one of the issues that could make the Cashbox fall through the ground
• Improved general traversal by fixing collision issues

SYS$Horizon

• Fixed an issue where some pieCes of the map could be left haNging in the air when deStroyed
• Fixed incorrect health value on one of the big metal apples in the Art Gallery building so it can be destructed as intended
• Added some extra cover in front of and behind the Museum building

Stability & Performance

• Optimized GPU load when there are a lot of effects onscreen
• Resizing the game window by dragging its borders now works better and doesn't constrain it to its previous aspect ratio
• Improvements to destruction performance on Monaco
• Minor GPU optimizations for Low and Medium ‘Post-Processing’ Quality
• Upgraded XeSS SDK to version 1.3.1

Settings

• Fixed an issue with preview resolution in the video settings for Borderless Fullscreen on non-primary monitors
• Fixed an issue where tooltips would not show for settings in the general options tab
• Added an option to Video settings that enables an overlay with performance metrics during gameplay. Previously this overlay was only shown in the in-game video settings menu
• Improved the list of available resolutions in Windowed mode. This included fixing a rounding error that resulted in odd resolutions and making sure standard 16:9 resolutions were added to the list

Specializations

Healing Beam

• Added a sound to indicate the target is completely healed

UI

• New loading screens!
• Fixed an issue where loading screens could appear stretched when using an ultra wide monitor
• Add a cooldown to the Play button to avoid matchmaking start/cancel spamming
• Fixed an issue that would result in player cards not rendering for some users
• Fixed an issue where players could temporarily be named PlayerName and have a partially incomplete scoreboard before the match started
• Increased the number of emotes you can equip to 8

Security and Anti-Cheat

• UI updates for a more transparent player messaging when using prohibited software
• Use of NVIDIA Profile Inspector is no longer allowed
• Improvements to anti-cheat performance and reliability
  

No twists. No tricks. Just pure, unfiltered competition.

DISSUN continues on the World Tour, and this week, they want to see raw skill on full display! No special modifiers this time. Just you, your squad, and the standard tournament rules. It’s time to prove who truly reigns supreme when the playing field is level.

The spotlight is on. The stakes are high. Are you ready to impress?

ARENAS:

• Kyoto (Winter)
• Seoul
• Monaco (Winter)
• Las Vegas