Greetings, Survivors!

The day has almost come – the Showdown is just 24 hours away.
In this update, you will collect new Experimental weapons, perfect your item crafting, and face off against FNIX one last time.
We’re extremely proud of what we’ve achieved with our small team within a comparatively short amount of time and we can’t wait to hear what you think about it!
Let’s get right into what you can expect from tomorrow’s update:

Team up with old friends and even a new one as you look into mysterious signals coming from the island of Aspholmen west of Klinte.
To unlock these new missions, your character has to be level 25 and you have to have played through the main story (the last mission is called Behind the Curtain).
If you’ve done all of that, simply start a level 3 Base Assault and enter the secret hatch used to find the locations of Tyrants and you’ll run into a familiar face.

While we didn’t have as many resources designing the new area as we had when we made Alpine Unrest, we still put in a lot of work to make it feel fresh and engaging. You’ll find bits of environmental storytelling, interesting locations, and one or the other easter egg on Aspholmen. Happy exploring!

We’ve overhauled the way Base Defense works to make it a more interesting and variable endgame activity.
First off, you will now be able to repair your base for free after each Base Defense. We made this change to reduce frustration due to losing hard earned resources in difficult defense missions.
Secondly, Base Defenses will no longer be about defending the central truck – they are evolving!
Each Control Point location will now allow you to build one new type of building each. According to which type of building you can build, you can earn new special materials used for high end crafting. The three building types are:

Produces Phosphorus. Phosphorus is used for Fire Resistance Clothing, Adrenaline, Flares, Grenades, some Augmentation Blueprints, and some base buildings. Drills are special in that instead of just one, you can build three of them in tahe same base – just make sure to place them far from each other.

Slowly outputs Ethanol, which is used for Jump Boost and Visibility Reduction clothes, the new Stealth Companion Armor, some Augmentations, and some healing items. Watch out, the Lab periodically explodes when turned on! Try to stay away and keep your buildings at a safe distance.

The Furnace is activated by placing low level crafting materials like Metal inside and selecting a desired output material. It can produce Refined Aluminium, Refined Tungsten, and Refined Uranium.
During the Base Defense, the Furnace will slowly start producing materials, but it will also heat up. You need to regularly exhaust the excess heat or it won't output the material you want! Listen for the audio cues when it’s time to vent.

After the last time we released new Experimentals, you kept asking “What about the AI-76?” and we heard that. In Showdown, you can earn three new EXPs from Rivals and Tyrants:

Okay, “any” ammo is a lie, but “almost any ammo” just didn’t sound quite as good. While you won’t be able to put buckshot, rockets, or arrows into this thing, you can certainly load it with .50cal explosive ammo. The same goes for .44, .270, 5.56, 9mm, and of course 7.62. Depending on which ammo you load into the weapon, its fire rate, recoil, damage, and magazine size will change. This allows for some crazy combinations and maximum adaptability to each combat situation. Also, our sound guy Peter did an amazing job making each ammo type sound different and punchy!

Any ammo you use with this weapon (we’ve limited it to buckshot and birdshot, since slugs don’t make a lot of sense for this use case) will be augmented with a magnesium payload, setting everything the pellets hit on fire. This includes machines and the ground, but not foliage, so don’t worry about starting any forest fires. Fire in the hole!

By aiming down sights with this weapon, you can lock onto a specific part on a machine. Any rounds you fire while the lockon is active will automatically adjust their trajectory to fly towards the targeted component. This enables you to maintain maximum destruction even in the most tense situations.

Over the years, we’ve heard time and time again that our players would like to unlock the full skill tree. Well, now you can! If you reach level 87, you will have earned enough skill points to get every skill. While you’ll still only be able to have one specialization skill active at the same time, you’ll be even more of a threat to the machines.
Don’t worry if you’ve already leveled up past level 31; the earned skill points will be granted retroactively.

With the Showdown update, being overencumbered no longer prevents you from fast traveling. Also, carrying way more than your maximum encumbrance no longer prevents you from moving, instead moving normally now uses stamina.
This is to make inventory management easier and allow for more time spent fighting machines.

Two new Companion Armors have been added:
Threat Armor draws enemy attention away from you and towards your Companion. Just be sure to take some Repair Kits with you so it doesn’t go down!
Stealth Armor makes enemy machines less likely to attack your Companion, appointing you the role of Tank and protecting your friend from harm. Well, some harm.

To go along with the new Armors, we have also added 14 new Companion Skins. Five of them can be found around the new and revamped locations, two drop from normal machines and toolboxes, and the rest are limited to Rival loot pools. Whether you want your metallic friend to blend in in a desert environment (for whatever reason), look like a bucket of rust, or assume the look of a dangerous feline predator, these skins are for you.
Rivals also now drop two new Companion Voice Packs: Small Cat and Big Cat.

• Equipment and Clothes crafting as well as Weapon Augmentation have undergone some major cost changes to accommodate for the new materials and make crafting more intuitive. The amount of materials you get from recycling has also been adjusted.
  
• Machines now drop ammo based on the weapons the player is using instead of the machine’s tier and class. Based on the region the looted Machine spawned in, there is also a multiplier that applies to the amount of Ammo that drops.
  
• Note that to incentivise crafting, Machines will only drop basic ammo types like FMJ and Hollow Point. Other types have to be crafted.
  
• To provide you with more space to store the new crafting materials, you can now upgrade your Recycling Station to level 10, which increases the storage capacity to 1600. This has been a highly requested change and you may now hoard resources once more, until you hit the new limit and ask us for another increase. We’ll be waiting.

Old Model
New Model

After listening to your feedback around the model of the N16, we realised that it wasn’t quite up to our standards. The Showdown Update contains a completely overhauled model for all five tiers of the N16. Enjoy!

We’ve hidden nine new dance emotes as collectable VHS tapes around the new locations. Find them all and start a dance party like Östertörn has never seen before.

If there is one thing we’ve always wanted to add, it’s purple and pink vehicle skins. Well, now they’re here! Get yours at your local Rival or Tyrant and thank us later.

• The firing sounds for the AG5, Möller PP, Klaucke, and silenced COM10 weapons has been improved to a snappier version. Pew pew!
  
• The Minigun now has a brief windup sound before it starts to fire. Yes, we know it doesn’t have that in real life, but it just sounds so cool. This is audio only, so it doesn't change the performance of the weapon.
  
• The 5 crown version of the AI-76 has been visually updated to look more in line with the progression of the fist four tiers.
  
• Remote Hacking now plays a nice little sound to indicate whether it was successful or not.
  
• Text chat has been visually improved. The reason for this is that we wanted it to be prettier.
  
• Players can now respawn at Field Radios.

• Fixed a bug that caused Hunters to disappear randomly
  
• Fixed the Vulture freezing and becoming inactive during combat
  
• Fixed the Vulture not correctly entering the next combat stage by deploying reinforcements and becoming invulnerable
  
• Fixed the Vulture prioritizing swedish machines over the player
  
• Fixed Apoc Tanks and Wolves’ Cluster Mines not deploying correctly

• Fixed scripted Runners not spawning during “The Hellmouth”
  
• Fixed the Tylöveden Base Assault not appearing
  
• Prevented turrets from continuing to shoot at players after being destroyed during the “Outpost Sabotage” Procedural Mission

• Fixed an issue where the Companion would take too long to spawn after being placed down

• Fixed the “Off the Grid” challenge not counting properly
  
• Fixed the achievement “Go-Getter” not counting properly
  
• Fixed the “Skilled Spotter” Augmentation challenge not counting properly

• Fixed item icons not displaying when scrolling through the storage box fast
  
• Fixed a bug where multiple worlds would have the same map progression
  
• Fixed a “no title provided” message that sometimes popped up when hovering over another player on the map
  
• Fixed the player icon disappearing from the map when zooming in
  
• Fixed the challenge screen not correctly showing progress made
  
• Fixed the character preview becoming invisible in the “Profile” and “Team” tabs
  
• Fixed an issue that caused pickup notifications to appear multiple times in the loot feed

• Fixed a bug that allowed players to place a field radio on themselves in tight spaces
  
• Prevented Base Assault turrets from shooting through walls

• Fixed sound effects playing multiple times when a Base Assault levels up
  
• Fixed a missing sound when recycling

• Fixed multiple crashes during fights
  
• Many minor and edge case crash fixes
  
• Fixed an instance of players loading infinitely in multiplayer

• Introduced various rendering optimizations
  
• Reduced FPS drops during combat
  
• Fixed FPS drops in multiple locations

Ever since we released Generation Zero almost six years ago, we’ve been working tirelessly to refine its successes and improve upon its shortcomings.
We added new Machines, Bosses, repeatable missions, vehicles, and weapons. To make the world more detailed and even more engaging, we revamped hundreds of locations and reworked the mission flow. On top of all of this, we kept improving the performance and stability, leading to both of them being at an all time high now (due in no small part to your help!).

As a show of appreciation for the thousands of hours of work, an unending well of passion, and a laser-eyed focus on the vision of what’s ahead that went into the game, we’d like to ask you to nominate Generation Zero for the “Labor of Love” Steam Award.♥️
It would mean the world to us as a Development Team to see the game we love so much up for a Steam Award and we think that as a community, we can come together and get it there.
That would be a hell of a way to lead up the last content this game will see, don’t you think?

Regardless, we are incredibly thankful for your support and we’re excited to have you play the Showdown Update soon.

With love,
The Generation Zero Dev Team