Hello, agents!

The second season of Year 8 is almost here, and we want to thank everyone who took part in both PTS phases.

With the number of changes planned for talents in PvP, and a completely new way to engage with the Dark Zones, we wanted to give you as many opportunities as possible to test these ideas and share your feedback.

Thank you to everyone who took part in both PTS phases and shared their thoughts with us. We know not all of the feedback was easy to hear, but it helped us make changes before launch.

Here, you can find some of the changes planned for the Into the Dark, with more context on what we adjusted and why.

Escalation & Prototype Gear

Although Escalation and Prototype Gear are not new features for this season, we used the PTS to experiment with solutions to some of the most pressing feedback we heard from the community.

The Token economy and its distribution between group members and the leader, for example, is something we wanted to revisit, and the PTS helped us to explore other options. We made token rewards for the leader more generous and less punishing to fail a tier and climb back again, all based on feedback. We then thought it would be best to update the prototype vendor and increase the prices for the caches, to adjust to this economy.

After reviewing feedback from the PTS, it was clear that changing both at the same time was perceived as taking away from the player. Because of that, we’re reverting the change, and Escalation Requisition Vendor prices will remain the same as they are in the live game (5 and 10 tokens). At the same time, we are keeping the changes that proved to have a positive impact on the experience, including the updated token distribution and the return of crate drops.

We also heard feedback about Augment reroll costs. We understand that spending Prototype Cores while trying to get the right Augment can feel frustrating, especially when the cost keeps increasing while the chance to get what you want does not change. For this update, we are changing the cap to 6 Prototype Cores. Larger changes to the reroll system itself are not planned right now, but this should make rerolling easier.

Finally, we are also looking at the Mutator pool for Escalation. Our goal is to rotate Mutators over time to keep the experience fresh, but we saw your concerns around some of the upcoming options. For launch, we are adding one new Mutator to the pool and will continue refining the formula before adding new ones in the future.

Changes made for Y8S2 Into the Dark release:

Escalation

• Escalation Requisition Vendor prices will be kept to existing prices in the live game.
• Tier 0 rewards now 1 token per player.

Mutators

• “Anchor” has been removed from all tiers.
• “Variety Pack” has been added, starting at Tier 5.
• “Hot Foot” has changed to start applying at Tier 7.
• “Unyielding” has changed to cleanse all status effects once at a set armor/health threshold, instead of granting full immunity.
• “Harvester” has changed to be fully disabled on NPCs by damaging them with a grenade or by applying any status effect.

Prototype Gear

• Augment reroll cost has been reduced and now caps at 6 Prototype Cores, starting from the 3rd reroll.
• Augment upgrade costs have been adjusted to be cheaper on initial levels and more expensive on later ones. The total cost will be kept to the existing price of the live game, with the PTS increased values being reverted based on community feedback.

Dark Zone

We’ve been closely following your feedback around the Dark Zone changes.

One of these relates to the Toxic Dark Zone, the PvE variant. Stabilization Agent adds an extra layer of risk to help balance out the extra rewards we added to the Hunter (Exotic Components). To help with that, we are reducing DZ Landmark chest cooldowns and making chest loot available to all nearby Agents, regardless of whether they are in the group. We are also adding Stabilization Agent as a possible drop from Landmark bosses.

We also liked the reaction players had to the Hunters dropping Exotic Components in the PvE DZ. With the PvP Dark Zones being higher risk, we adjusted the Exotic Component rewards to even out the extra risk that players take by going there. We are increasing Exotic Component drop chances from Landmark chests in PvP Dark Zone variants and adding a chance for Exotic Components to drop from higher-difficulty Landmark bosses.

Changes made for Y8S2 Into the Dark release:

All Dark Zones:

• Increase Exotic Components drop chance in Landmark chests in PvP Dark Zone variants.
  • PvP Dark Zones: 40%
  • Toxic Dark Zone (PvE): 25%
• Added Exotic Components drop chance to Landmark bosses for Challenging and Heroic Landmarks in PVP Dark Zone variants.
  • Challenging: 33%
  • Heroic: 48%
• Reduced Landmark chests cooldowns across all Dark Zones to 20 minutes.
• Increased Dark Zone key drop rates from Landmark bosses and named enemies to 20% across Dark Zones.

Toxic Dark Zone (PvE):

• Chests now drop loot for all players around when opened, regardless of group affiliation.
• Stabilization Agents now can drop from Landmark bosses in addition to the Landmark chests.
• Increased Dark Zone key drop rate on Hunter enemies.
• Cannister caches are now a guaranteed drop in every Landmark chest.

PvP Talents Rebalance & New Gear

For PvP talents, this rebalance is only the first step in a longer process of improving the PvP experience. Skills, Attributes, Status Effects, and other PvP areas are also something we want to look at in future updates.

While the full list will be available alongside the patch notes next week, we’d like to highlight two changes made following Phase 2 feedback. The Heartbreaker gear set had its damage output and bonus armor gain reduced by 0.1%, keeping it in line with the rest of the Global PvP Balance. Meanwhile, the Core Strength gear set received a 5% overall buff to its talent, while its Skill Efficiency has been kept at 10%, down from 15% in PTS Phase 2.

The impact of the new gear introduced with Into the Dark looked solid overall. One of our main takeaways was around Caduceus. The PTS version had an incorrect value implemented (3% instead of 2%), but your feedback showed that the higher value was balanced enough to keep.

Caduceus

• 2% of the hit's dealt damage → 3%

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Thank you again to everyone who spent time testing and discussing the changes. Some of the updates above came directly from those conversations, and we’ll keep following the feedback once the new season is live.

/ The Division 2 Team