Update and Expansion DLC for The Division (PTS)

After two last updates of The Division, there are still many things that need to be addressed in order to bring the rest of the game to the same level of fun, and this is where Update 1.6 comes in.

This update present an overview of what to expect, which expands the new Dark Zone with new areas, events, and leaderboards. It looks as if the Dark Zone is changing in other meaningful ways as well, as the notes state you'll no longer lose DZ experience or money when you're killed, It'll also be possible to fast travel from one DZ checkpoint to another, and update the adjusts Gear Sets and a number of item's stats.

The Public Test Server will open its doors this Tuesday, Jan 24th only to PC players, and unfortunately it will not be possible available to console players, just yet.

The full list of global PTS patch notes (DLC/Update):

Expansion 3: Last Stand

Last Stand game mode

• SHD tech data relays that are loaded with operational information where left behind in the DZ with the JTF was forced to withdrawal. Rogues have targeted these data relays and are attempting to access what’s inside. Engage in 8 versus 8 PvP combat and secure the data before the Rogues can.
• Fight to control three key tactical locations on one of 4 Dark Zone maps.
• In order to capture a tactical location, the team will need to control three objectives inside the location. Once the tactical location is secured, the team will begin scoring points.
• First team to reach the max score, wins.
• To help propel their team to victory, players can activate powerful fortifications and SHD tech tactical boosts.

New Incursion – Lost Signal

• Lost Signal takes place in a civilian TV Broadcast center taken over by the infamous Rikers gang.
• Players will venture into three different wings and face unique combat scenarios. Each encounter is meant to push players to play tactically and make the best use of their builds.
• All wings bring their own challenges and rewards; completing all of them will unlock the final boss fight and the strongest opposition yet.

Update 1.6

Game Changes
Dark Zone map expansion

• Explore three new areas to the North of the Dark Zone. Engage powerful enemies and discover the dangers hiding around every corner.

Dark Zone Leaderboards

• Earn rewards in the Dark Zone by participating in weekly and monthly activities that are tracked via the new Dark Zone leaderboards.
• See how you stack up against all the players in the Dark Zone on leaderboard activities that reset and change every week and month. All the tracked weekly and monthly activities count towards your total score. The higher your score, the better rewards you will earn when the leaderboards reset!

Dark Zone Contamination Events

• The pockets of virus contamination in the subways below the Dark Zone are festering and becoming even more deadly. Cleaners have been attracted to the rising contamination. Players must manage their health as the virus eats away at their filter while battling against powerful Cleaners. Clear each Dark Zone subway of Cleaners to earn extra rewards.

Legendary difficulty

• Pit yourself against an elite LMB force equipped with superior gear and advanced tactics
• Legendary difficulty strips missions of all narrative, all checkpoints and focuses purely on combat scenarios
• Legendary difficulty is only available in World Tier 5
• Available missions: Napalm Production Site, WarrenGate Power Plant, Times Square Power Relay.

More options for character customization

• Explore all new ways of customizing your agent, with weapon skins, backpack skins, new clothing sets and emotes!
• Visit the Premium Vendor in The Terminal to unlock premium vanity content; stocks update weekly so check back regularly!

Combat

• Increased the time to revive a downed teammate from 3s to 5s.
• Bleed no longer blocks sprint. Instead it reduces movement speed by 20%. Additional applications refresh the timer.
• Medkits can now be used at full health and cleanse the character of all applied status effects.
• Medkits cooldown has been increased from 12 seconds to 15 seconds.
• Players will no longer be able to reload their weapon and sprint in the same time. When sprinting, pressing Reload will drop you out of Sprint. When Reloading, pressing Sprint will interrupt the Reload.
• Hipfire stability has been significantly reduced when moving.
• Player camera will now be impacted by hipfire, reducing his field of view the longer he keeps firing.
• There is now a short cooldown between each combat roll.
• Body shot damage has been slightly increased in PvP (this change does not apply to PvE, headshot damage is unchanged).
• Implemented visual feedback when an enemy player uses a Medkit.

Dark Zone

• Players can now fast travel between Dark Zone checkpoints.
• Players will no longer loose Dark Zone experience and funds when killed in the Dark Zone if they are not Rogue.
• Supply drops will now reward Dark Zone experience as well.

Armor & Resistances

• Armor has been removed as a Major bonus from items and is replaced with Health.
• Added a new bonus called “Resist All” which adds resistance to all types of status effects.
• Older items (pre 1.6) with Health bonus will see this bonus replaced with a Resist All one.
• Resistances to status effects will now reduce the effect instead of having a chance to resist it. This means that a 10% bleed resist will lower the bleed damage and duration by 10% instead of having a 10% chance to ignore it.
• When applied repeatedly in a short time, the player will naturally build up resistance to this status effect. In other words, status effects will now have diminishing returns when applied repeatedly to a player.
• If the player manages to build up to 100% resistance to a status effect, he will then resist it entirely.

Gear Talents

• Rejuvenated now gives 40% resistance to all status effects for 10 seconds, when using a Medkit.

Character talents

• On the move reduced to 15%.
• Battle Buddy reduced to 30%.
• Critical Save reduced to 20%.
• Adrenaline will no longer apply Overheal. Instead it replaces the instant heal of Medkits with a heal over time that can also apply while taking damage.

Skills

• Changes to skillpower:
  
  • The skillpower curve has been modified, resulting in less efficient skills at low skillpower, and more efficient skills at high skillpower.
  • Skills will now scale to the World Tier you are currently in as an “expected skillpower” has now been implemented.
  • Diminishing return on Skillpower will not kick in before 450.000 skillpower.
  • All skills have been adapted to this new scaling.
• Sticky Bomb
  
  • Changed Flashbang mod to only have a flashbang effect.
  • Changed Proximity mod to be an EMP effect instead.
  • Added warning and delay to Sticky Bomb. This means that all Sticky Bombs will no longer detonate immediately, but after some time.
• First Aid
  
  • Defibrillator will now heal in 2 steps, one instant burst of healing following by a heal over time.
• Turret
  
  • Shock Turret will no longer deal any damage and only shock the enemy.
• Signature Skills:
  
  • The exhaust that applies after a player received a Signature Skill effect is extended to 60 seconds (from 30 seconds).
  • Players will no longer be able to trigger a Signature Skill if they are under the exhaust effect from a previous application.
  • Signature Skills cooldown will now be affected by Skill Haste.
  • Tactical Link
    
    • Damage bonus is decreased to 10% in Last Stand. (this change doesn’t apply outside of Last Stand, where the bonus remains at 30%).
    • Weapon Stability will be more hindered by the rate of fire bonus.
• Skill Haste gear bonuses have been increased by 100%.

Gear Sets

• D3-FNC
  
  • 4 pieces: When used, your Ballistic Shield has no skill mod active. It will no longer remove Critical Chance from your weapon.
  • Characters will now automatically switch to their sidearm if the SMG runs out of ammo.
• Reclaimer
  
  • 2 pieces: Increased Support Station range.
  • 4 pieces: All Support Station mods are active at the same time.
• AlphaBridge
  
  • 4 pieces: Now only provides the 3rd (free) talent of the unused weapon instead of all three. All talents ignore unlock requirements.
• Tactician’s Authority
  
  • 4 pieces: Now consumes the skill power buff on skill use instead of after 10 seconds.
• New gear set: SEEKR (This Gear Set is still Work in Progress)
  
  • 2 pieces: 10% Body shot damage.
  • 3 pieces: 30% Critical Hit damage.
  • 4 pieces: After 2 consecutive shots to the body, the next shot is a guaranteed Critical Hit.

Loot

• High-End Named items become Exotic (name might change):
  
  • This quality comes with a new item color.
  • Exotic weapons have been removed from the Advanced Weaponry Vendor.
  • Updates sources for Exotics: Some sources have been moved around. We also added more sources with change to drop any Exotic.
  • Exotics Caches have been added to the game. These guarantee an Exotic item when opened.
• The scavenger box in the Base of Operations will now properly scale with world tier.
• Weekly Assignment Caches will now guarantee an Exotic item.

Crafting

• Recalibrations are now unlimited. This means that once a stat is picked for recalibration, it can be recalibrated as many times at the player has currency to pay for it. The cost will increase at first but eventually cap and no longer increase.

Weapons

• Base damage on all weapons has been reduced to balance correctly with the reduced damage mitigation from the change to Armor (note that NPC health and damage has also been adapted to preserve the Time to Kill and Time to be Killed values pre 1.6).
• Coolheaded will now have a small cooldown to not trigger repeatedly with automatic weapons.
• All Named Weapons are now of Exotic Quality.
• Exotic weapons now each have a unique talent in the 3rd free slot. The other 2 talents are rolled randomly from the list of talents available to this weapon type.
• Exotic weapon talents are not transferred to the other weapon when using AlphaBridge.
• Exotic talents cannot be recalibrated.
• Exotic weapons each received a unique descriptive lore text in their UI.
• Some Exotic Weapons now function as Gear Sets: The unique talent unlocks when two specific Exotic weapons are equipped.
• FAMAS is now an Exotic weapon and Uncomplicated its unique talent.
• Medved
  
  • Center Mass: Shoots heavy slugs instead of buckshot.
• Hungry Hog
  
  • Glutton: Killing a target increases your damage dealt by 20% until you stop firing. Multiple kills stack this bonus.
• Tenebrae
  
  • Lights out: Destroying an enemy weak point resets skill cooldowns for you and your nearby groupmembers.
• Pakhan
  
  • Pakhan: Each kill makes the next reload have 20% extra bullets compared to its base.
• Liberator & Centurion (Weapon Gear Set)
  
  • Free Republic: Each shot with the Liberator grabts +5% to you next headshot damage with the Centurion. Max is 200%. Kills with the Centurion grant +10% RPM to all weapons for 10 seconds.
• Valkyrie becomes Hildr & Eir (Weapon Gear Set)
  
  • Valkyria: Each hit with Hildr increases critical hit damage by 1% to a max of 100/ The bonus decreases by 1 every second.
  • Hildr cannot crit.
• Cassidy
  
  • Boomstick: Double trigger fires off both barrels in short succession.
• Urban MDR
  
  • Distracted: Your damage is increased by 10% against targets with status effects.
• Warlord
  
  • Play rough: Damage taken is reduced by 20% while firing. The taken damage is applied when you stop firing.
• Damascus
  
  • Quickdraw: When drawn weapon damage is increased by 20% for 2 seconds. After that weapon damage is decreased by 20%.
• Golden Rhino
  
  • Golden Rhino: Increase stagger by 200%.
• Historian
  
  • History repeats: Each bullet embers itself in the target and detonates 2 seconds later for 20% Skillpower.
• Caduceus
  
  • Caduceus: Each Critical Hit heals you and your group for 1%.

Open World

• Civilians will now always drop Target Intel when helped.
• Collectibles will now reward players with more XP when picked up at level 30.

Survival

• Crafting High End pistols will no longer cost Division Tech
• Updated Survival Cache content: it no longer has a specific drop that weights towards weapons introduced in Survival and has a more generic drop instead. Exotic items can now drop as a bonus with a small chance.
• Reviving players from downed state will now cost a Medkit.
• When matchmaking in Solo PvP Survival, players will end up in a guaranteed Solo instance where grouping is not possible.
• Players can no longer “loot and kill” other downed players in PvE Survival.
• Supplies available around the different spawn hideouts have been rebalanced.

Underground

• Killing NPCs will now grant Underground XP instead of normal XP. This means that players will no longer earn normal XP when playing underground.
• Underground Caches now guarantee two items instead of one. Exotic items can now drop as a bonus with a small chance.

Incursions

• Increased the Weekly Rewards on all Challenging and Heroic Incursions.

Gameplay

• [PC Only] Several improvements and bug fixes made to gamepad support on PC.

Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug where sometimes consumables would not be actually consumed when used in Survival mode or normal gameplay.
• Fixed a bug where the game would return an incorrect out of playable map area error in DZ06.
• Fixed a bug where the UI would incorrectly reflect the protection bonus from Hunter’s Faith gear set talent when two or more players had the 4-piece bonus active while in close proximity.
• Fixed a bug where players could accidentally use consumables while browsing the emote wheel.
• Fixed a bug where the Pulse Master skill would not always trigger the early warning for hostile characters.
• Fixed several instances of Ballistic Shield becoming unusable.
• Fixed a bug where Recovery Link would not trigger correctly.
• Fixed a bug where players would be unable to do anything for a few seconds after using a skill.
• Fixed a bug where the UI QuickNav function would not work properly.
• Fixed a bug where crafting material quality would not scale properly with world tier.
• Fixed a bug on PlayStation 4 where players would be stuck in infinite loading.
• Fixed a bug where weapon talents would not activate if the character attribute values were equal, but not higher than the requirements.
• Fixed several instances of delay when using First Aid.
• Fixed a bug where Vigorous talent would not work properly.
• Fixed a bug where players would be able to use consumables infinitely.
• Fixed a bug where the Competent weapon talent would not work for certain skills.
• Fixed a bug where the Coolheaded weapon talent would reduce consumable duration.
• Fixed a bug where the NPC audio would not work after ending a Survival game mode session.

Tags:  the division     the division dlc     the division update 1.6     buy the division     PTS     dark zone     the division dark zone     public test server     expansion 3 last stand     DLC     update 1.6     pts patch notes     patch notes     

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