The time has come to announce the next major content update for Dead Grid.
First, I’d like to apologize for the lack of updates in 2024. I run a small studio, just me and my cat. The cat handles most of the programming—as long as I keep the treats coming, of course. This year, I had to take on additional work to help finance the development of the game, which has put a significant strain on my time.
Now, let’s get to the main topics of Content Update 6!
This update is likely the most significant in terms of reworking existing skills since the release of the Revenant class. I’ve watched a lot of gameplay videos of Dead Grid—if you’ve posted a video on YouTube, there’s a good chance I’ve seen it. These videos are incredibly insightful, as they allow me to observe players’ choices and strategies. This helps me step outside my design bubble and come up with new ideas to improve underutilized skills.
NEW PROGRESSION SYSTEM
Before diving into all the new skills, I’m excited to introduce a new system called Elite Perks.
Elite Perks are a powerful set of 40 class-wide passive abilities that you get to randomly discover.
Unlike earning and spending skill points, these are unlocked through a mechanic that blends the excitement of finding a rare item with the satisfaction of achieving a milestone. Engage in various combat actions, such as attacking, parrying, taking damage, and more, to start uncovering the requirements for unlocking a perk. The initial chance to unlock each perk can be low but gradually increases over time, boosting the likelihood with continued effort.
Perks can also be discovered in any order and are tied to each playthrough. You might get lucky and unlock a powerful perk early, turning the tide of zombie slaying in your favor. Keep in mind, none of the perks are required to finish any content in the game.
There are 40 Elite Perks in total, 8 per class!
CLASS TRAITS
The Leader's passive trait has been completely reworked to provide a more noticeable and impactful presence on the battlefield. While the Commando and Enforcer mercs have undergone a slight adjustment to affect only adjacent mercs, rather than all mercs in play.
Remember, you can always reposition mercs using the arrow keys during your turn to take advantage of their traits.
SKILL CHANGES
LEADER
Many Leader skills have been phased out and replaced with new ones, please take a look.
COMMANDO
Commando received a significant buff to the middle tree for abilities focusing on firearms.
Full auto now fires a lot more rounds and focuses on the same target, but overflow damage would still spread on other targets when your primary target is eliminated.
The skill Flaming Blade has been reworked to include a new mechanic that mirrors the functionality of Frag Grenade, while still focusing on fire damage.
ENFORCER
I feel that Enforcer sits in a decent place at moment, but noticed almost no one used the middle tree, so it got a new skill as well.
TACTICIAN
Some skills were renamed and updated with new art.
GAME BALANCE
Extinction - New Game Difficulty
This is more punishing than Apocalypse for those of you looking for a bigger challenge. See the upcoming patch notes for full details on this difficulty mode.
Bosses
Eliminated bosses no longer drop skill point cards as it caused a lot of confusion why returning from a mission granted 1 point instead of 5. Bosses continue to drop unique weapons with a chance based on the difficulty of the game.
Shield Damage Re-balance
With the introduction of the Lab - Armory, I overlooked the scaling of shield damage. Currently, shields can be upgraded to a point where they deal damage comparable to, or even greater than, many blunt weapons of the same item level, while still providing protection. This made many non-shield weapons less advantageous, so shield damage has been significantly reduced—roughly to half of their sharp or blunt counterparts. However, shields remain viable in combat, particularly due to their high chance to stun.
Card Draw and Turn Pacing
Drawing non-minion cards from the enemy threat, such as loot bags, triggers an additional draw. This should reduce many turns with nothing to attack without using Initiative.
Mission Balance
- Re-balanced the difficulty of most mid to late game missions, generally made them a bit harder. - Extended tutorial (covering mission repeats) for the first 4 region locations has been shortened for all difficulty levels by a couple of repeats. This means enemies will start to enrage sooner.
Squad Power
- Re-balanced the recommended squad power of many missions on the region map. - Re-balanced player's squad power to better reflect the health attributes with invested skill points. - Player's squad power now also adjusts right away when spending skill points in health boosting attributes. - Player's squad power adjusts right away when upgrading equipped weapons in Lab's Armory. - Re-balanced equipped shields scaling player's squad power.
Armory Upgrade Restriction
One of the primary purposes of the Armory is not only to upgrade the level of items but also to increase the item level of new drops within the same category, which includes new unique items that could be useful for your squad. The ability to upgrade unique weapons had made finding and upgrading non-unique items less appealing. The goal of this change is to make discovering new uniques with a higher item level than your current best weapon more exciting. Keep in mind that many exceptional-quality (purple) weapons are nearly as powerful as uniques, so upgrading them remains a viable and effective option.
QUALITY OF LIFE CHANGES
New Create Character Interface
Completely reworked the New Game interface to be more streamlined for first time players.
Improved Gear Management UI
New Card Details in Combat
Other
Many small UI changes to increase various font sizes, new tool tips, improved icons, etc
Horde Enemies
Enemies on missions that are affected by nearby hordes will now have their special abilities indicated in the card details. I noticed this caused significant confusion for many players while observing their gameplay. Combat log also reflects this triggered status.
Silenced Firearms
Silenced firearms now correctly display their noise reduction in the card details.
NEW CHALLENGE
ADDITIONAL CONTENT
- 2 very difficult roaming hordes - new consumables and weapons - new achievements (fame) - 5 new music tracks
RELEASE AND FUTURE PLANS
I'm currently working on finishing everything up as this update includes a lot of changes. I will be posting more news of the release date on the forums and in Discord. Stay tuned.
There are two major content updates planned for the game (including this one) before the 1.0 release. The final update will introduce a victory condition, but you’ll still be able to continue playing after reaching the victory screen. A significant portion of the work for the final update has already been completed and just needs additional polish, so I’ll be delaying that content to ensure it meets the desired quality.
Thanks for your support, reviews, suggestions and bug reports! I can't wait to see you play with all the new toys.
-- Paul
Quick Update
Hello mercs,
It's been some time since my last content update for Dead Grid, so I wanted to share some news. Rest assured, development is still ongoing, and I'm aiming to post a preview as soon as possible. Over the past six months, I've had to take on some extra work to fund future updates to game, but things are getting back on track now. Thank you for your patience and please stay tuned!
--Paul
PATCH - EA 0.5.18
Hello mercs,
Work on the next update has already started and here is another small patch for CU05.
HOLIDAY EVENT
The annual Dead Grid holiday event is currently active until January 15. Pine Valley zombies eagerly await you to start the festivities, so BYWB - bring your warm brains.
This small update includes some new consumables to deliver the gifts yourself, plus you get to keep them after the party is over!
WEAPON BALANCE
Based on your feedback, the new silenced sniper rifles added in CU05 have been buffed to be more in line with some of the other competitive unique bows.
CONTROLLER WELCOME SCREEN
If you have a gamepad connected, you may see this screen after launching the game. The greeting can be disabled by turning off the controller in Game Settings.
FULL PATCH NOTES
NEW CONTENT
Added 2 new powerful consumables, frequently available from Slade during the seasonal event. Up to 15 of each can be owned at a time, after which Slade will no longer offer them. Note: These consumables are FREE and cannot be sold back to Slade, so use them in combat to discard.
Added 5 new achievements for tracking even more kills, 2,500, 10,000, 15,000, 20,000, 30,0000.
The Festive Bow accessory returns from last year's seasonal event, found on mission Gas Up.
MISC CHANGES
Rebalanced the damage of the new unique sniper rifles Bubble Boy and Silent Fury to make them comparable to some of the high end bows.
Changed the mission lore of region location Army Truck.
New welcome dialog to help with controller configuration, shown on the main menu when using a gamepad.
New launch option '--hdd' to slow down the loading sequence, specifically on slower non SSD drives. A message is displayed on the intro screen indicating when this option is enabled.
BUG FIXES
Armory progression information is not reset when loading different saves, this is visual bug only.
Refreshing assignment details changes the item level of weapon rewards.
Refreshing assignment details changes the number of supplies granted by the 3rd reward.
Fixed typo in skill Viper.
Fixed typo in achievement Beginner's Luck.
Fixed typo in tooltip for unaware enemy cards.
Adjusted grammar of region modifier Palms of Death.
Adjusted grammar of achievements No Newbs Left Behind, Bootcamp for Winners, Merc University.
Please post your issues in Discord or the Steam forums.
Thank you! --Paul
PATCH - EA 0.5.15
This patch addresses some immediate issues found in yesterday's release of Content Update 05.
I've also been getting feedback on the unlimited horde spawn mechanic that I personally experienced during my testing and decided to release a balance change asap.
BALANCE
Reduced the chance of enemies affeded by the Horde status to add more cards into threat from 10-50% to 5-30%.
Enemies affected by the Horde status can now spawn a limited number of additional cards into threat for every encounter (map tile). The total starts with 8, increased by the number of mission repeats x 2. So, a 2nd repeat can spawn 12 new enemies from the horde. Previously, there was no limit and the missions could drag on with endless spawns, eventually overwhelming the player.
The remaining number of enemies added by the Horde is now indicated in card details and once that number is reached, the Horde status is removed.
Example: 5 more enemies can be alerted from the horde.
TWEAKS
Power Surge and Perfect Vision now indicate they can stack the duration with consecutive uses.
Rephrased the description of all armory drop cards to no longer mention research, which was confusing.
BUG FIXES
First mission, Help Slade indicates reduction of difficulty on Tutorial in mission details.
Typo in event Crow's Nest (distractd).
Typo in achievement Whackmaster (lunt), should be blunt.
New unique sniper rifle Bubble Boy is missing the silenced mod and still makes noise.
Completing a mission with Marco's support causes future missions without Marco to still deploy Landmines.
New consumables granted by Loaf wrongly indicate the buffs persist until area clear.
Power Surge and Perfect Vision buffs should not state bonuses from Lab's Field Medic.
Please post your issues in Discord or the Steam forums.
Thank you! --Paul
Content Update 05 - Out Now!
Hello mercs!
I'm thrilled to announce the latest content update for Dead Grid today. This marks the game's fifth significant update, and it's entirely dedicated to addressing player requests for enhanced character and item progression, something that many players have been eagerly anticipating.
Let's begin with the quick overview of the major changes with full patch notes at the end of this post.
SKILL ATTRIBUTES
Each skill now presents a passive attribute node, allowing players to allocate surplus points to boost the hit points of all mers within the same class. A maximum of 90 additional points can be invested per class, totaling 450 across all classes. Furthermore, the cap on the maximum points attainable per class has been raised to 120.
ARMORY
A new Lab component has been added, called The Armory. To access this system, players can unlock it by completing the Military Truck mission location, where the survivor character Ray is discovered.
After unlocking it, you'll begin to occasionally receive armory upgrade points each time you deliver a killing blow using a specific weapon type.
These points can then be spent to upgrade the item level of your weapons, including unique (orange) weapons. In addition, you'll be raising the item level of future weapon drops of the same category.
At times, you may come across skill selection choices that allow you to accumulate additional points for a randomly chosen weapon group at the beginning of each turn.
Your Armory progression is persistent to future replays to the game, offering a significant advantage of early upgrades.
MERC DISCOVERY
New mercs are now automatically discovered (in a random order) after completing mission locations for the first time. They will show up in your Gear - Recruit tab. Survivor character Ramon has been reworked to offer a discount of reputation needed to recruit each merc. You can spend Intel points on Ramon to offer a deeper discount and these points can be refunded when you no longer need them.
NEW SURVIVORS
2 new survivor characters can now be unlocked granting assistance at different mission locations.
Loaf gives 2 powerful combat consumable which can be used or kept as loot at the end of your mission. These consumables can be combined into a bottle to offer even better variants. Loaf is unlocked by completing mission location Forest Outpost.
Marco deploys landmines which can affect all enemies in combat during their turn, causing them to explode on movement. The explosion damage scales with you merc's training in explosives, similar to grenades. Marco is unlocked by completing mission location Pine Valley PD.
NEW CARDS
As usual, the update brings a range of new weapons, consumables, junk cards, etc.
And yes, there is a sniper rifle with a silencer!
The backgrounds of many cards have been revamped to showcase a better theme.
NEW MISSION LOCATION
A new mission location has been added, called Forest Outpost. This mission is not covered under the extended tutorial and will start scaling in difficulty early on, while still somewhat on the easy side in terms of the enemy types you'll face.
ACHIEVEMENTS - FAME
45 new Steam achievements for a total of 290.
WHAT'S NEXT?
I've been focused on finalizing the remaining region missions to introduce a completion phase to the game. Even after reaching the victory screen, players can choose to revisit and replay locations. This next phase also involves refining enemy mechanics and overhauling existing missions to enhance the overall gaming experience. Your feedback has been awesome!
Happy Thanksgiving for those of you celebrating in the US. Please stay tuned and consider leaving a brief review of the game, as it greatly helps in its discovery.
FULL PATCH NOTES - EA 0.5.12
NEW SKILL HP ATTRIBUTE SYSTEM
The passive HP attributes on the skill tree have been reworked into manually assigned slots.
You can now invest skill points to grant passive HP to all the mercs of the same class.
This system allows for 90 more skills to be spent per class.
Total class earned skill points have been raised from 60 to 120.
LAB - ARMORY
The Efficiency Lab station has been phased out and replaced by a completely new system called Armory.
Armory allows you to upgrade the item level of all weapon types with points gathered during combat.
Armory is unlocked by discovering survivor Ray, after completing mission Army Truck on any difficulty.
Once unlocked, armory points will have a chance to drop on any kill for the weapon used to make the kill.
Upgrading any weapon increases the max item level of future drops in the same weapon category.
Earned armory points are carried to all future replays of the same, similar to the other Lab upgrades.
Weapons of any item level can now be equipped on lower ranked mercs, which was not possible before.
The weapon proficiency (training) requirement to equip higher item level weapons has also been phased out due causing a lot of confusion with many players.
REWORKED MERC RECRUITMENT
Survivor character Ramon has been completely reworked and is no longer used to discover new mercs.
New mercs are now found by completing mission locations for the first time. They will still appear in the gear recruit tab as before.
Spending intel points on Ramon can be used to reduce the reputation cost of recruiting new mercs, which goes up with each each new merc.
Ramon's reputation discount comes from multiple mission locations where he is available and these points can now be refunded.
This allows the player to have the option to push for a higher discount early on, but still recover the invested intel points down the road.
NEW MISSION
A new misssion has been added, called Forest Outpost, unlocked by completing the Gas Station.
This mission is meant to be about the same difficulty as Dear Estelle and is not covered by the tutorial scaling.
NEW SURVIVOR CHARACTER: Loaf
Discovered by completing the new mission Forest Outpost.
Loaf offers 4 powerful consumables to aid in melee and ranged combat. They cannot be found or purchased from the trader.
Consumables granted by Loaf can be saved for use in other missions, or sold to the trader.
NEW SURVIVOR CHARACTER: Marco
Discovered by completing mission Pine Valley PD.
Marco deploys landmines on random enemies in combat with a chance to explode on movement during the enemy's attack turn.
This mechanic is similar to Ned's barbed wire, but instead of low consistent damage, explosion scales with trained mastery by each merc.
NEW CARDS
10+ new female zombies, medical workers, bag looters dropping loot on kill.
10+ new unique weapons, randomly found as loot.
10+ new food and drink consumables.
10 area opportunity cards to collect armory points, can appear in skill selection on every turn.
1 new boss enemy on the new mission.
4 new consumables granted by Loaf.
NEW REGION MODIFIERS
3 silent modifiers to increase the drop chance of armory upgrade points for melee weapons
7 loud modifiers to increase the drop chance of armory upgrade points for ranged weapons
ACHIEVEMENTS (FAME)
45 new achievements for a total of 290.
Ramon's previous achievement has been refactored for his new mechanic.
BALANCE
Slightly rebalanced early game scaling on the first few missions.
The damage scaling of all weapons has been adjusted to coincide with the armory upgrades of item levels.
All weapon trade values have been rebalanced due the much higher scaling of item levels.
Weapon rewards from completed assignments will now mostly grant higher item levels than before to compete with drops.
Rebalanced and increased the bonus damage of explosion proficiency by 50%. This is trained by indvidual mercs.
Added more female zombie variants to different mission locations and hordes.
Reduced trader's stock refresh reputation cost from 5 to 1 as reputation is now also used by the Armory.
MISC
Replaced the company logo video a static loader for a smoother transition to the main menu.
Slightly reworked the graphics on the Main Menu.
Revamped the art of the region map with more icons representing key missions locations.
Improved the theme of the board Initiative button along with its's tooltip.
Reworked the 2D death animations of enemy cards with a new effect and sound effect.
Reworked the background art of many consumable cards for a more consistent look.
Reduced the frequency of survivor emotes when spending intel points in mission details.
Added hotkey 'x' to trigger Initiative in combat.
All undiscovered mission locations now appear on the region map.
BUG FIXES
Game error when adding/removing mercs from the squad in a rapid sequence.
Game error when selecting some merc characters for recruit due to missing emotes.
Players are able to earn more than intended skill points in a class.
Revenant skill Viscous Bite is not increasing the default 5% bite chance.
Multiple achievements added in CU04 reported with missing icons.
Explosive scaling from points spent in training was not being calculated correctly, resulting in lower damage.
Missing image for the Gas Station Vest (uncommon) accessory.
Prerequisite requirements to unlock some mission location are not correct.
Remaining uses of survivor character Brie is reported as a negative number.
Many minor issues not reported by players, found during the development of this update.
Please post your issues and suggestions in Discord or the forums. Thank you!
Greetings, fellow mercs and Happy Halloween to you all!
It has been a while since my last update to the game, so I'm thrilled to share some news of the new content. As I approach the completion of the final missions in the game, I've had to allocate time to refine and revamp certain troublesome features. This preview doesn't include everything coming in CU05, but it does incorporate some essential elements. Let's dive right in.
SKILL TREE CHANGES
Based on a common request from numerous players, a solution was needed for the surplus skill points without introducing more skills into their active set. To address this, I've overhauled the passive nodes that previously awarded HP based on skill usage frequency. This system had proven confusing for new players and lacked the desired flexibility.
Under the new system, each class's skill tree now includes 15 manually adjustable HP nodes, each with 6 tiers. Consequently, this change introduces an additional 90 skill points per class, culminating in a total of 450 skill points across all classes.
Moreover, the total number of skill points obtainable per class has been increased from 60 to 120.
LAB - ARMORY
Another common request was to allow a way to upgrade the item level of unique weapons. Rather than focusing on unique weapons alone, I've implemented a new Lab station named the Armory.
This new Armory supersedes the previously existing Ammo Scavenger, Field Tech, and Demolitionist Lab components. Notably, it is unlocked at an earlier stage, right after the completion of the 5th mission, Military Truck. Following this, new Lab upgrade cards will start to drop, focusing on the weapons that were used to secure killing blows, similar to the drops from other Lab stations.
Armory upgrade cards will drop on all missions and come in 5 rarity variants for a total of 50 new potential cards covering all weapon types.
Using these points, players can elevate any weapon within the same category to a higher item level, resulting better stats. Furthermore, this process raises the item level cap for future weapon drops of the same category, including those sold by the camp trader.
In tandem with these adjustments, the item gear equip level requirement has been removed, as well as a full rebalance of weapon scaling and their trade values. Players will now have the capability to equip weapons with item levels far surpassing those of their mercs.
it's worth noting that the earned Armory points carry over to new saves, ensuring that subsequent playthroughs offer a substantial advantage with stronger weapons available earlier on.
REWORKED RECRUITMENT MECHANIC
After acknowledging the less-than-intuitive nature of the previous mercenary recruitment process, it became imperative to revamp it, especially following a review of many let's play videos. Completing new mission locations for the first time will now automatically grant a randomly selected new recruit. Recruit are still purchased using your reputation points. Ramon has undergone an overhaul as well, enabling him to offer a discount on the reputation points needed to recruit new mercs, up to 90% off. His points are now refundable and can be utilized for other survivors.
NEW SURVIVORS
Two New survivors can now be found, offering a range of unique powerful consumables, only granted by these characters.
OTHER
New missions (region locations), to be revealed in a future post.
New weapon cards.
New gadgets and accessories.
New consumable cards.
New achievements.
Many balance tweaks.
As usual, the update will contain a number of critical bug fixes.
ETA
I'm looking to release this update around the later part of November, hopefully before Thanksgiving,
Please stay tuned and consider leaving a brief review of the game, as it greatly helps in its discovery.
Thank you for playing Dead Grid!
--Paul
PATCH - EA 0.4.62
CHANGES
Added a warning dialog to the character create screen about the AUTOSAVE slot being overwritten.
Added a hotkey 's' to allow stashing cards in hand without dragging them down.
Updated the apocalypse mode achievement to indicate it can be unlocked by playing on easy, normal, or hard.
Discarding consumables or skills from hand no longer costs any AP, but the card must be draggable to do so.
BUG FIXES
Zoomed in card details for custom named mercs show the default name instead.
Skills UI is not properly displaying left/right borders on 21:9 aspect ratio.
Many minor spelling fixes in multiple cards, reported in Discord.
Bow, crossbow and sniper rifle Aimed Shot crit achievements are not tracking.
Fixed multiple achievements with a typo referencing the Revenant class.
Fixed multiple achievements with a typo in Initiative.
Achievement 'Tons of Ammo' can now be triggered by drawing picked ammo from the ammo stash. Also changed the Fame description to reflect this.
Fixed missing controller glyphs on the new game dialog.
Please post your issues in Discord or the Steam forums. Thank you!
HOTFIX PATCH - EA 0.4.50
BALANCE CHANGES
Increased starter supplies from 500 to 1000 for all challenges.
Event 'Carnage Crusader' now grants 2 stacks of 'Killing Spree' in addition to the bonus +1 XP from each stack of 'Killing Spree'.
BUG FIXES
Challenge 'Shield Operator' is missing new recruits.
Challenge 'Aim for the Head' is missing new recruits.
Fixes to challenge modes only affect newly started challenges.
Region log is not tracking total kills after every mission. This should be showing the total accumulated kills to date. The number will start updating with newly completed missions.
When loading a saved game played on the EASY or NORMAL game difficulties, game settings show the HARD difficulty selected.
Final message of the Skills tutorial overlaps skill details.
Combat log is showing incorrect (default) names for custom named mercs.
Combat log is showing incorrect scaling after changing card size option in game settings.
Combat log is not truncating at the correct line when using a larger text option.
Default (in combat) card details size was unintentionally showing the larger details size. This can still be changed in Game Settings - Combat - Card Details Size. Players with a custom details size should not be affected by this fix.
Please post your issues in Discord or the Steam forums. Thank you!
Content Update 04 - Out Now!
Hello mercs!
The latest content update to Dead Grid is now live!
The main focus of this update was to add controller, Steam Deck and new resolutions support. Exciting new gameplay features have also been added to spice things up for the returning players.
Just in case you've missed the preview post, let's cover the main changes. Full patch notes are listed at the bottom.
SUPPORT FOR MORE RESOLUTIONS
Since the last major update to the game, I've been receiving a lot of feedback to offer support for additional resolutions, especially covering the 16:10 aspect ratio. Changing to these new resolutions in Game Settings should now properly scale the game.
CONTROLLER AND STEAM DECK SUPPORT
The game can now be played using an XBOX style controller or on the Steam Deck. Launching the game on Steam Deck should automatically detect and configure recommended settings which you could manually adjust later.
A number of new Game Setting options have been added to configure and tune your controller.
Please keep in mind, I'm still fixing a few controller and Steam Deck related bugs and will be monitoring bug reports you may post.
There are also a few elements, such as tool tips, renaming mercs and creating custom undead which still require the mouse and keyboard. I'll be looking into these in future patches.
ACCESSIBILITY AND LARGER UI
Another common feedback request was to allow larger text options, so I'm happy to offer additional accessibility options in Game Settings.
A new Large UI option to increase the size of many tool tips, skill details and various game dialogs. This is useful when playing on a small screen or when simply increasing the size of important text.
This also covers skill details which were reported as hard to read by some players.
An option to view a larger version of card details in Gear Management, toggled by a key.
Card details shown in combat can now be configured to display on the side of the screen or floating next to a card, as it was originally. In addition, the details panel can be resized to display much bigger fonts useful on smaller screens. Since the card details can now go out of bounded vertically, you're able to use the mouse wheel or gamepad to scroll the panel up or down. The placement and size of in-combat card details can be toggled in Game Settings - Combat.
NEW FEATURE: CHALLENGE MODES
A new game feature has been added to the main menu of the game, called Challenges. Challenge modes are a way to replay the existing content in the regular game with modified rules and a much greater difficulty. All challenge modes can be finished by completing a specified mission.
Complete a challenge to unlock a higher rank of the same challenge with an increased bonus to your next score and more difficult rules.
Score is earned while playing any challenge which is submitted to a leaderboard on Steam. Your leaderboard ranking can be viewed directly from the game. Each challenge has its own associated leaderboard.
You can opt out from submitting your score in Game Settings.
NEW FEATURE: KILLING SPREE
<*> Performing consecutive kills from a single or multiple attacks in a row starts a Killing Spree. <*> Active Killing Spree is shown at the bottom left corner of the play board. <*> Further consecutive kills add more stacks to the Killing Spree for a maximum of 5 stacks (skulls). <*> Failing to land a killing blow decreases the current stack of Killing Spree by 1. <*> The maximum number of stacks can be increased through newly added events or region modifiers. <*> Each kill from a melee or ranged attack grants an additional +1 XP per stack. <*> The bonus stack XP can also be increased from newly added events or region modifiers. <*> For example, 8 stacks of Killing Spree with an increased XP bonus of 2XP per stack would grant each merc a +16 XP bonus to all their consecutive kills. <*> Unlock new achievements from landing killing blows while on a Killing Spree.
NEW TACTICIAN CHARACTER
<*> A new Tactician merc, voiced by our regular contributor Immortal George. <*> This merc is selected on the bonus character selection screen. <*> There are now 3 playable Tactician mercs in the game. <*> Immortal George's YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@ImmortalGeorgeGaming
NEW WEAPONS
New unique weapons for you to find.
NEW REVENANT ACCESSORY TYPE
Road sign shields can now be converted to an new Revenant accessory through the regular card upgrade interface.
The new accessories are visible while equipped on Revenant mercs. A total of 25 new road sign shield accessories were added.
NEW GADGET - RESTING MERCS GAIN XP!
A very frequent request in 2022 was to allow resting mercs (not in mission squad) to continue gaining XP. A new gadget has been added to use on mercs you decide to leave in camp.
50 SAVE SLOTS
The manual save slot limit has been increased from 10 to 50 slots, now displayed on 5 pages.
SYSTEM INDEPENDENT SETTINGS
Game settings are now tied to individual computers and should no longer overwrite from Steam Cloud. This does not affect your saved games which are still backed up to Steam Cloud. This is useful if you play Dead Grid on multiple computers with different resolutions and audio settings.
FULL PATCH NOTES - EA 0.4.47
GAME SETTINGS - HARDWARE SUPPORT
<*> Additional support for new resolutions including 16:10 and 21:9 aspect ratios. <*> Added controller support. <*> Added support for Steam Deck. <*> Added a 40 FPS option, recommended for slower GPUs, try this before dropping to 30fps.
GAME SETTINGS - QUALITY OF LIFE OPTIONS
<*> Increased UI size, useful when running the game on smaller screens. <*> In-combat card details can be positioned next to the hovered over card or statically on the side of the screen. <*> In-combat card details can now be vertically re-positioned using the mouse wheel or controller. <*> In-combat card details can now be configured to display in different sizes. <*> In-combat card details no longer show 2 different views of stats, a single page lists everything. <*> Mouse button 4 (side button) can be disabled from ending turn. <*> Mouse wheel button can be used to toggle in-combat card details. <*> Mouse double-left click can be used to toggle weapons, useful for touch devices with no right click. <*> Mouse double-left click can be used to auto-attack the the lowest HP enemy or remove a random corpse. <*> Mouse single click on enemy, followed by a click on target can be used to attack without dragging. <*> Keyboard hotkey 'w' to attack a lowest hp enemy or remove body without dragging to attack. <*> Improved keyboard hotkey reference, displayed in Game Settings.
GAME SETTINGS - SAVE OPTIONS
<*> Game settings are now tied to individual computers and should not be overwritten by Steam Cloud. <*> Expanded the number custom save slots from 10 to 50, appearing across 5 pages.
CAMP - GENERAL
<*> Added a new way to select available missions, displayed on a list while using a controller. <*> Improved the region title screen (hover over at the top of the region map).
CAMP - GEAR MANAGEMENT
<*> Added a sort by 'Item Level' option. <*> Added a sort by 'Damage' option. <*> Removed sort by 'Type' which displayed incorrect results. <*> Added a larger view of card details, toggled by keyboard key 'C' or controller butting 'Y'. <*> Added a minor visual effect when changing focus between cards and gear slots.
GAME BALANCE AND SKILL CHANGES
<*> Rebalanced Tactician's skill Pyrology to deal +15% burn damage (from +10%) and increase chance to explode from 20% to 30% HP. <*> Greatly increased the HP of boss minions on the Apocalypse difficulty, by about 2x. This decision was based on frequently gathered feedback from Apocalypse mode players. There are still many ways to deal with these enemies and I'll be closely monitoring the feedback. <*> Reduced the cost of stashing any card in hand to 1 AP. <*> The first tutorial mission now teaches the player how to draw picked up ammo into hand.
NEW CARDS
<*> New gadget 'Target Practice' to allow non-Revenant mercs to gain XP while resting in camp. This gadget drops from mission rewards or sold by the trader and contains up grades. <*> Road side shields can be upgraded into a Revenant specific accessory through the Gear Upgrade interface. <*> 25 new shield accessories for the Revenant class, crafted from the roadsign shields. <*> 16 new assault rifles <*> 5 new sniper rifles
NEW FEATURE - CHALLENGES
<*> Challenges are accessed from the main menu of the game. <*> Challenges require you to start a new game, bypassing the first tutorial mission. <*> Each challenge comes with different rules and can be repeated with higher difficulty. <*> Content update 04 launches with 3 challenge modes with more to be added in a later patch.
NEW FEATURE - LEADERBOARDS
<*> Each completed challenge submits a score to a challenge associated leaderboard. <*> Leaderboard ranking and scores can be viewed from any challenge. <*> Submitting score to the leaderboard can be disabled in Game Settings <*> Game
NEW FEATURE - KILLING SPREE
<*> Performing consecutive kills from a single or multiple attacks in a row starts a Killing Spree. <*> Active Killing Spree is shown at the bottom left corner of the play board. <*> Further consecutive kills add more stacks to the Killing Spree for a maximum of 5 stacks (skulls). <*> Failing to land a killing blow decreases the current stack of Killing Spree by 1. <*> The maximum number of stacks can be increased through newly added events or region modifiers. <*> Each kill from a melee or ranged attack grants an additional +1 XP per stack. <*> The bonus stack XP can also be increased from newly added events or region modifiers. <*> For example, 8 stacks of Killing Spree with an increased XP bonus of 2XP per stack would grant each merc a +16 XP bonus to all their consecutive kills. <*> Unlock new achievements from landing killing blows while on a Killing Spree.
NEW TACTICIAN MERC
<*> Added a new bonus Tactician merc, voiced by a regular contributor Immortal George.
FAME
<*> Added 30 new Steam achievements.
BUG FIXES
<*> Accessory Swat Helmet can be upgraded from Exceptional to Unique. This was not intentional, so the upgrade option is removed. Previously upgraded due to this bug items have been converted to Exceptional. <*> Completing missions sometimes did not reduce the difficulty of its indicated near-by location. <*> Revenant Left/Right hand training options were reversed. <*> Accessory Walkie Talkie equipped on a Revenant merc is not reducing card AP to 0 when drawn in hand. Note: This only affected Revenant mercs. <*> Fixed INVALID CARD MOD error on area object Sad Ending, found at location PVS Express. <*> Fixed camp trader buy and sell greeting messages being reversed. <*> Fixed long merc names overlapping when shown in Skills interface. <*> Fixed incorrect merc emote when getting a food item buff while already full on HP. <*> Fixed various achievement (Fame) typos, reported by players. <*> Minion hp occasionally goes over their max HP. <*> Fixed sound of targeting cards in combat, should be different from regular hover over sound. <*> Enemy minions occasionally spawn after the area is cleared, usually triggered by the Rise Again status. <*> Renamed unique heavy pipe Tremor due to a name conflict. <*> Fine-tuned MG upgrades to a unique should be exceptional (purple). <*> All upgraded accessory Wrist Watch cards show incorrect XP bonus.
Please post your issues and suggestions in Discord or the forums. Thank you!
I'm excited to announce that I've been hard at work the past few months on the next content update to Dead Grid. The main focus of the update is adding controller and Steam Deck support as well new game play features and the usual bug fixes. Let's get to it.
STEAM DECK SUPPORT
A big part of my development time of this patch was spent on adding Steam Deck support. This includes running the game at the native Deck resolution 1280x800. Due to Steam Deck’s smaller screen size, a number of UI features had to be added to to support bigger fonts and of course playing the game with a controller. While the game is playable using the Steam Deck's controller, you can also use the touch pad or screen to hover over various UI elements for tool tips, just as you would with a mouse.
Launching the game on Steam Deck should automatically detect and configure recommended settings which you could manually adjust later.
SUPPORT FOR MORE RESOLUTIONS
- Support for more screen resolutions, specifically focusing on 16:10 aspect ratios. - Support for ultra-wide resolutions, this may require a bit more tuning.
CONTROLLER SUPPORT
Launching the game with an XBOX style controller plugged in allows the game to be played entirely with a controller or mouse at the same time.
New controller related options are available in Game Settings.
Some UI features are adjusted while using a controller, such as selecting region missions from a list rather than an icon. Please keep in mind, there are still many improvements to be made when playing the game with a controller and I will be monitoring your feedback closely.
ADDITIONAL SAVE SLOTS
The manual save slot limit has been increased from 10 to 50 slots, now displayed on 5 pages.
ACCESSIBILITY AND LARGER UI
A new Large UI option to increase the size of many tooltips, skill details and various game dialogs. This is useful when playing on a small screen or when simply increasing the size of important text.
This also covers skill details which were reported as hard to read by some players.
An option to view a larger version of card details in Gear Management, toggled by a key.
Card details shown in combat can now be configured to display on the side of the screen or floating next to a card, as it was originally. In addition, the details panel can be resized to display much bigger fonts useful on smaller screens. Since the card details can now go out of bounded vertically, you're able to use the mouse wheel or gamepad to scroll the panel up or down. The placement and size of in-combat card details can be toggled in Game Settings - Combat.
NEW FEATURE: CHALLENGE MODES
A new game feature has been added to the main menu of the game, called Challenges. Challenge modes are a way to replay the existing content in the regular game with modified rules and a much greater difficulty. All challenge modes can be finished by completing a specified mission.
Complete a challenge to unlock a higher rank of the same challenge with an increased bonus to your next score and more difficult rules.
Score is earned while playing any challenge which is submitted to a leaderboard on Steam. Your leaderboard ranking can be viewed directly from the game. Each challenge has its own associated leaderboard.
You can opt out from submitting your score in Game Settings.
NEW FEATURE: KILLING SPREE
- Performing consecutive kills from a single or multiple attacks in a row starts a Killing Spree. - Active Killing Spree is shown at the bottom left corner of the play board. - Further consecutive kills add more stacks to the Killing Spree for a maximum of 5 stacks (skulls). - Failing to land a killing blow decreases the current stack of Killing Spree by 1. - The maximum number of stacks can be increased through newly added events or region modifiers. - Each kill from a melee or ranged attack grants an additional +1 XP per stack. - The bonus stack XP can also be increased from newly added events or region modifiers. - For example, 8 stacks of Killing Spree with an increased XP bonus of 2XP per stack would grant each merc a +16 XP bonus to all their consecutive kills. - Unlock new achievements from landing killing blows while on a Killing Spree.
NEW TACTICIAN
- A new Tactician merc, voiced by our regular contributor Immortal George. - This merc is selected on the bonus character selection screen. - There are now 3 playable Tactician mercs in the game. - Immortal George's YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@ImmortalGeorgeGaming
NEW WEAPONS
New unique weapons for you to find.
NEW REVENANT ACCESSORY TYPE
Road sign shields can now be converted to an new Revenant accessory through the regular card upgrade interface.
The new accessories are visible while equipped on Revenant mercs. A total of 25 new road sign shield accessories were added.
SYSTEM INDEPENDENT SETTINGS
Game settings are now tied to individual computers and should no longer overwrite from Steam Cloud. This does not affect your saved games which are still backed up to Steam Cloud.
OTHER
- 20 new achievements tied to new and existing features. - Added new Gear sorting options, by Item Level, by Damage (based on your feedback). - Bug fixes and tuning of game performance.
ETA
This update is now going through QA which usually takes a couple of weeks depending on the severity of bugs and balance issues. Preview builds are usually posted on Discord as they become available for public testing.
Please stay tuned for more news and thanks for playing Dead Grid!
