Greetings, Survivors!
We are so happy to celebrate the release of the Skyfire Update together with you.
For this update, we wanted to do something many players were asking for. We took our time making the right decisions, refining, and polishing to make it worth the wait. Now it’s time to get into what you can expect!
Features
New Tyrant: The Vulture
A new enemy has risen among the ranks of the Soviet machines. The Vulture, an improved version of the Firebird, has been added to the pool of Tyrants you can fight for loot and glory. For those confused about the terminology: “Tyrants” is the name for boss-level machines, which currently consists of the Reaper and the Vulture.
We don’t want to spoil the mechanics of the Vulture too much yet, but it will feature some terrifying new combat abilities, a refined visual and sound design, and a new Experimental that’s exclusive to its loot pool.
We’ve been wanting to add a new boss enemy to GZ for a long time and are so excited we finally got around to it! The Vulture is a major threat and will take even veteran players a while to defeat. Its loot pool will reflect this, but more on that later.
All we can say for the fight is… Good luck.
Tyrant Spawning Update
The release of the Vulture was the perfect opportunity for us to overhaul the way spawning Tyrants works. We’ve heard a lot of feedback saying that spawning the Reaper felt frustrating because players would have to avoid rivals, which meant missing out on a lot of interesting fights along the way. Well, no more! From now on, you will be required to defeat your rivals in order to unlock a boss fight.
All rivals will now drop data chips called “Geologistics Cache”. The higher tier and level the rival, the more caches you’ll receive after killing it. Depending on whether the rival was a swedish or a soviet machine, you’ll receive FNIX or soviet caches respectively.
In order to use these keys to triangulate the location of a tyrant, you then have to find a special hatch during a level 3 base assault. After all shield generators have been disabled, the hatch will open. Enter it to reach the tyrant terminal and choose which enemy to seek out!
But watch out, the hatch takes damage like every other building during the base assault. You’ll have to exercise some caution when wielding explosives.
New Experimental Weapon: Meusser Hunting Rifle
This weapon fires a special new ammo type which produces a biochemical laser beam. The longer you charge each shot, the more damage it deals, but don’t let it charge too long, or it’ll overload and set you on fire!
If you hit that sweet spot, though, the rifle will deal massive damage and punch right through armor.
The experimental Meusser will only drop from the Vulture tyrant. Its ammo uses a new crafting material called “Ultracapacitor”, which is acquired by recycling batteries. To support this, the returns from recycling said batteries have been rebalanced and now requires a minimum batch of only 1.
Machine perception fixes
We’ve had many reports from players feeling like machines detect them when they’re not supposed to.
To reduce confusion and irritation during gameplay, machines have had their sensors adjusted and they can no longer spot players through hedges. If the player is already in combat and hides behind hedges, the machines will reposition themselves instead of shooting through the thicket. This way, you experience combat more intuitively AND we protect a lot of greenery from unnecessary damage.
Companion Armor Kits
Many players expressed a desire to repair companion armor on-the-go to give it more survivability while out on the field.
We’ve now changed the companion armor to craftable armor kits. These are still crafted at the Companion Station, but you can decide whether you want to install them immediately or take them with you into battle.
You can equip these armor kits to your weapon wheel and simply throw them at your companion to get it back to full health and armor.
Note: If you throw an armor kit at a companion that already has armor installed, the new armor will replace the old one.
With this change, you’ll be able to stay out longer and your companion will survive longer - provided that you look out for it, as a good dog parent does.
Updated Loot Feed
We’ve made significant visual improvements to the way collected loot is displayed in your HUD.
- The list on the right side of your screen now not only displays the name and amount of items, but also a small preview and, if applicable, a rarity indicator. This will make it much easier to see what you just looted off that rival without spending a lot of time scrolling through its inventory.
- On top of this, weapon pickups will now be displayed with a popup and a sound effect, so you’ll never miss the moment you finally get that weapon you’ve wanted!
- The look that was previously only applied to the Companion’s inventory has been applied to Plundra and recycling storage as well. This makes navigation and item transfer easier.
- Inventory UI now displays information about individual item stack weights and total weights to make it more apparent what’s weighing you down at any time.
New Augmentations
To reward you even more for defeating tyrants, we’ve added two new Augmentation Designs that are upgraded by doing just that.
Final Round increases the damage done by the last round in each magazine for Pistols.
Rapid Reload increases your reload speed temporarily after destroying a machine. We’ll consider adding this to melee weapons if you show us a video of someone reloading a melee weapon, but until then they will be excluded from using this design.
Heavy Weapons Pack
This DLC features four highly-requested weapons straight out of your favorite 80’s action movies. Their high damage outputs come with some tradeoffs, but once you channel your inner action hero, you’ll be dispatching machines almost as fast as FNIX can replace them.
The Heavy Weapons Pack DLC is available now at $4.99 or applying regional price.
N144 Minigun
Usually employed as a stationary weapon on vehicles, the Minigun is a lead-spewing monster that excels at shredding machines at the cost of reduced movement speed and high ammo spend. If you have the reserves, the Minigun will be an indispensable tool of destruction.
While it is not compatible with an extended magazine (belt?) or shock ammo, Augmentation works perfectly fine and will make the Minigun even more effective.
MGR-6 Grenade Launcher
A rotary barrel grenade launcher that will make the machines question their decisions to oppose you. If the first grenade does not take out a machine, the next 5 fired in rapid succession probably will. Enjoy the “flomp” sounds as you rain down explosive hell upon the machines.
Iron Condor Pistol
This heavy pistol packs a punch. Chambered in .44 ammo, it is great at stripping away armor and dealing high damage. Control its high recoil to make it a highly efficient machine killer.
RACS-12 Shotgun
The RACS-12 makes the best out of each shotgun shell, peppering machines with high-damage pellets at a high rate of fire. Get up close and personal with the machines and show them you mean business.
Thank you!
Before we get to the design changes and bug fixes, we’d like to take a moment to thank you once more. We’re so incredibly proud of how far Generation Zero has come and we’ll keep working to make it even better, taking your feedback into consideration with every update.
Next, we’ll focus on another big round of performance improvements and introducing new elements to make the endgame experience more engaging.
Stay tuned on our social media and our Discord Server for fun giveaways, contests, and information about upcoming updates!
Looking forward to talking to you,
The Generation Zero Dev Team
Design changes:
- Inventory screen UI update
- Improved the Tank railgun sound and visual effects as well as the impact sound where the projectile lands
- Reduced the volume of shock ammo sound effects to cut down on earplug expenditure in the Resistance.
- FNIX base shield generator damage effects are now less bright
- Large caliber weapons have a new "large caliber" bullet impact effect set. This applies to the Iron Condor, the Magnus revolver, and the PVG90.
- The 40 mm grenade (N79, MGR launcher) explosion areas have been reduced to better balance the amount of damage they do.
- Acidic, Scorching, Uranium Infused and Adhesive weapon augment bullet hits now have custom bullet hit effects
Bug Fixes
Multiplayer
- Fixed an instance of clients not seeing the effects of throwables used by the host
- Fixed several instances of clients not seeing machines and base assault buildings in multiplayer. Some instances may still remain, so please keep reporting them if they happen!
Inventory - Fixed an issue where players would lose items when quitting immediately after picking them up from storage
Vehicles - Fixed a bug where deployables jitter or become misaligned while on a flakmoped flatbed
- Prevented Companions spawning in front of moving vehicles
Crashes - Fixed a crash occurring just after fast traveling
Missions - Fixed an issue where barcodes were not dropping for the Sorken bunker
- Fixed a bug where a certain NPC was still present in the barn after completing “An Invitation”
- Fixed a mission blocker during “The Farm” that could occur if the player had already completed the mission in multiplayer
- Fixed a bug where the Procedural Mission “Resistance Radio Maintenance” would count too many repair kits being used
Machines - Fixed an instance of harvester missiles being extremely slow. Slow motion mode deactivated!
- Fixed all Firebirds having a 90% hacking chance
- Fixed the Tank’s Tick Pods clipping through it when shot off
UI - Fixed a display issue that would cause item previews to be too big or misaligned in the looting window
Audio - Fixed augmentation sounds looping after augmenting a weapon
- Re-added a missing sound to the Storage box upgrade action
Gameplay - Resolved a bug where playing a 3rd person emote while overencumbered would get the player stuck
Known Issues
- NPCs can sometimes be invisible. This is circumvented by restarting the game and we are looking into fixing it with the next update.
- [Community Reported] Safehouses might get lost when logging in. This is most commonly encountered on PlayStation.
- Clients can crash when riding a motorbike in a densely populated area