Hello Mercs!

This week's patch focuses on many bug fixes and the start of a long journey to balance the game. My focus is not to make very drastic changes to the harder missions yet, but improve the early game until more content is added. This may take a few patches to iron out, so please stay tuned!

BUG FIXES

• Player is able to sell an item available for upgrade and still upgrade it after, despite not having the item anymore.
  
• Skills Pump Action, Sharp Mastery and Blunt Mastery show incorrect target in details, should state Auto-Applied.
  
• Dropped supplies always amount to 5 supplies instead of a range. The fix should start rewarding players with more random supplies on missions.
  
• Auto-Equip allows weapons to be equipped on mercs below their required rank. Previously equipped items will not be unequipped when loading your save.
  
• Shovel can be upgraded to a unique. This was not intentional and the weapon was converted to Exceptional (purple). The unique variant is still offered for sale.
  
• Reported cases of mercs clipping through the ground on mission Oil Refinery.
  
• Enemies killed by explosion damage don't reward XP (grenades, propane tanks, dynamites, etc), this system has been rebalanced, see below.
  
• Drawing Apocalyptic Pet into the overflow deck does not start its cooldown. The cooldown should start when the skill is selected and the skill bar closes.
  
• Crate of Good appearing in player's inventory is still being reported by some players, this item is only used by the initial trader tutorial.
  
• Survivor Brie appears on missions where she isn't providing support. Occurs after playing a mission with Brie followed by another mission without her support.
  
• Item Bloody Meal can be played on a boss minion despite saying otherwise. AP is spent and the item should redraw if played on a boss.
  
• Player is unable to reach 100% region control with no active hordes, always returning to 98%. This usually happens after recently clearing the last horde.
  
• Typo in survivor Garrett's Virology speech bubble, skill name Flaming Strike, Ned's assistance tool tip.
  
• Some Leader skills that refund stamina on use are missing % in details, a display issue only.
  
• Spike Traps icon missing in card details for enemies affected by the status.
  

GAME CHANGES

• Improved zombie/merc card damage and hp stat text size scaling when going over 999 to avoid overlapping another card.
  
• Mouse scroll wheel is now assigned to change GEAR pages, TAB changes gear tabs. Shift-TAB goes back.
  
• Accessories and Gadgets have been split into their own GEAR tabs per player request.
  
• Changed the background of Degraded weapons to a red tint so they are easier to tell apart from the Standard variants.
  
• Each Extended Tutorial mission now states the number of remaining plays before the tutorial is lifted.
  
• Cards selected for upgrade will stay highlighted and continue to show details even when not being hovered over.
  
• Spending 3/5 skill points on an unmaxed (Expert) tree should no longer show the animation indicating more points can be spent on that skill.
  
• Achievement The One to Rule Them All has been removed and replaced with a new achievement Master Crafter.
  
• Grass has been disabled on the last (objective) encounter of mission Roadblock due to FPS dips. This mission will go through further optimization in future patches.
  
• Slightly increased the spacing between the Show Hand and Close/Skip Draw buttons that control the skill bar.
  

CARD CHANGES

• Wood Plank and Bone Club weapons can now be upgraded to the Exceptional condition (purple). If you had unique variants of these weapons, they will now appear as Exceptional with unique variants still in the drop/vendor pool.
  
• Playing a duplicate Viper skill while Viper is in play will now roll to increase his remaining turns, also stated in card details and combat log.
  
• Skills and cards dealing explosion damage have been rebalanced to scale with squad power. This includes consumables played from hand or skills such as, Dynamite, Siphoned Petrol, Propane Tank and Frag Out. Note, the damage in card details does not reflect the additional bonus from mercs's explosion mastery, that is added at the time of the explosion. This is the first pass to scale explosion damage with more changes to follow.
  
• Accessories Leather Boots and Army Boots have been rebalanced and now include a benefit of reducing additional noise on all melee attacks while equipped on a merc.
  
• Increased the chance of Lockpicks appearing in trader's stock by 50%.
  
• Dropped supplies gradually increase with the rank of player's main merc, this was actually a bug always dropping 5 supplies.
  
• Updated card details for Breach and Enemy Assessment to indicate the card is removed from hand after being played.
  
• MG weapon description now indicates ammo cannot be replenished with regular ammo cards. Other skill mechanics continue to work to restore ammo.
  
• Commando skill Frag Out has been changed to deal damage of the current equipped ranged weapon. Damage scales further with explosion mastery.
  
• Toxic Vent's description has been updated to indicate each merc has a 70% chance to get Poisoned at the start of turn.
  

GAME BALANCE

• XP gain is now consistent for all damage types (burn, traps, explosions, melee or ranged attacks). Harder enemy types grant more XP. This change is an overall boost to XP for area of effect play styles.
  
• Enemy boss Bone Horror is now immune to fire damage to match the other skeleton based minions.
  
• Survivor Ash is now providing support on all horde missions.
  
• Extended tutorial on mission Help Slade has been increased from 5 to 7 repeats.
  
• Extended tutorial on mission Lost Convoy has been increased from 3 to 4 repeats.
  
• Reduced enemy HP on all active Extended Tutorial missions by 30%. Hard Mode is not affected by this change.
  
• Reduced enemy HP on scaling on horde missions by 20%. Hard Mode is not affected by this change.
  
• Raised the Recommended Squad Power for many missions based on gathered feedback, this is only used as a guide and will need more balance.
  

Please post your issues and suggestions in Discord or the forums. Thank you!