The Division 2 – State of the Game Recap: Title Update 6.1, Snowball Guns, and Hardcore Mode

The Division 2 State of the Game livestream is closing out 2019 by jumping into Title Update 6.1 and what it brings to the (holiday) party. With Associate Game Director Drew Rechner, this week’s stream takes a close look at Hardcore Mode, as well as the Situation: Snowball holiday event and its snowball-slinging Sleigher tommy gun. Some highlights:

• This week’s maintenance had to be extended twice. To compensate for the downtime, players who log in between now and December 31 will receive three additional Apparel Cache keys.
• The Situation: Snowball event is now live, and players who successfully hunt Hoarder enemies can get The Sleigher snowball gun.
• Hardcore Mode, with permadeath enabled, is also live now.
• State of the Game will go on break until January 8.
• Preview screenshots of upcoming UI improvements were shown (see below).

State of the Game streams on Twitch, Mixer, and YouTube. (To find out what was covered in the last episode, make sure to check out the previous State of the Game Recap.)

PRIORITY ALERTS

Title Update 6.1 was deployed during maintenance yesterday.

• Maintenance had to be extended twice to fix a critical issue that was found during testing the live server build.
• To compensate for the long outage, all players who log in between now and December 31 will receive an additional three keys for the Silent Night Apparel Event.
• Full patch notes are on the forum.

TITLE UPDATE 6.1 HOT TOPICS

The developers are actively investigating the following issues reported by players:

• Invisible walls.
• Targeted loot behaving differently, or not dropping as frequently as before.
• Delayed delivery of Apparel Event keys for Year 1 Pass owners. (This seems to fix itself after playing for a while, but the team will investigate further.)
• Crosshairs disappearing
• Clan Caches are item Level 350 (This seems to be a visual bug only, and the items inside have the correct item level.)
• Cassie Mendoza and other vendors not having any items in the inventory for some players.

Hardcore Mode

• Hardcore Mode challenges players to play through The Division 2 with permadeath enabled.
• It’s an evolving side project by the developers, and is currently in beta.
• It’s intended as a little holiday gift to players.
• To begin Hardcore Mode, players begin by creating a new character, and then selecting the Hardcore option.
• The Revive Hive works in Hardcore Mode from the downed state, although Tank enemies will try to kick it. Players can use this to draw the Tanks into vulnerable positions.
• Any vanity items players unlock in Hardcore Mode can be kept.

Situation: Snowball Holiday Event

• Kill the “Hoarder” NPCs to get The Sleigher tommy gun. It’s a snowball gun!
• The Sleigher can be earned, but not used, before level 30.
• Log in to claim a free Santa hat and Apparel Caches.

Apparel Event: Silent Nights

• The event is live now and adds 35 new apparel items for players to find.

Holiday greetings!

• The State of the Game livestream is going on break for the holidays.
• The stream will return on January 8.
• Happy Holidays!

UI Teaser

• The team showed a small preview of the improvements they are making to UI. This rework is for an unannounced update following Episode 3.

Developer Q&A videos

The stream also featured three brief Q&A videos with UI Technical Artist Braden League and Gameplay Programmer Fabian Åhlund that addressed the following questions:

• Can players use Revive Hive in Hardcore mode? (Yes, but only when your Agent is downed.)
• What are the rewards of Hardcore Mode? (The YOLO cap cosmetic item at Level 2, and other commendations for players to discover further in.)
• Can a fifth character slot be added for Hardcore Mode characters? (No. In order to give Hardcore characters the same abilities and access as other characters, a fifth slot can’t be added right now.)

The Division 2 is available now on PC, Xbox One, and PS4, and is included in a UPLAY+ subscription. For more The Division 2, check out our previous coverage.