The Episode 2 narrative content for The Division 2 is now available for all players, opening the Pentagon and DARPA Research labs missions to a larger audience. With Associate Game Director Drew Rechner in attendance, this week's State of the Game celebrated the wide release of The Division 2's biggest title update yet. A few highlights:
- The developers are happy with the community reaction to Episode 2, Title Update 6, and encourage players to submit more feedback.
- The team is tackling several technical issues that have become known since the release of TU6.
State of the Game streams every Wednesday at 8:00AM PDT 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
Episode 2 main missions are now available for all players.
- Pentagon – The Pentagon, headquarters of the US military, was abandoned shortly after the Green Poison outbreak, and has since been ravaged by floods and storms. Following its lockdown, the Black Tusk are the first outside force to enter the complex.
- DARPA Research Labs – Deep underneath the Pentagon, in secret DARPA laboratories, countless assets of immense strategic value remain. The Black Tusk have accessed the complex via the flooded tunnels, and are preparing to utilize an abandoned Cold War tunnel network to extract vital DARPA prototypes and assets. These assets must be secured by The Division.
Twitch Prime
- The availability of the Twitch Prime outfits comes to an end on October 25.
- You can currently claim all four in-game outfits.
Maintenance was performed last Friday
- Fixed a scripting crash in the Base of Operations that could block progression for some players.
- Discovery mode has been re-activated.
- The Eagle Bearer should no longer drop from Discovery mode.
- Kenly College now correctly requires all Investigation Areas to be completed before the Diamondback can be collected in the Chapel.
Maintenance this Thursday will include the following fixes:
- Fix an issue that prevents loadout swaps with Specializations in certain circumstances
- Fix an issue that prevents interaction with the levers in Kenly Metro
- Fix an issue that causes Operation Dark Hours raid keys to drop in Discovery difficulty
- Fix an issue that causes incorrect backpack trophies to drop in Tidal Basin (Heroic)
- Fix an issue that prevents the objective "Lightning Round" at stage 4 of the Technician Special Field Research to trigger
- Fix an issue causing a colored rectangle to appear when opening apparel caches
- Remove a prematurely added blueprint from the crafting bench (October Fifth - M249 B LMG)
TU6 KNOWN ISSUES
In addition to the issues mentioned last week, the development team is working to fix several known issues:
- DARPA Research Labs mission progress resets if disconnected.
- You may get stuck in a loading loop trying to enter the Dark Zones from a checkpoint.
- Players being unable to teleport to group members in the Pentagon.
- Your Agent's primary weapon may become invisible, resulting in an animation bug and hit registration issues
For a full list of known issues, visit our official forums.
TU6 CELEBRATION
The developers are happy with the reception of Episode 2, Title Update 6, and appreciate the feedback players are leaving on Reddit and the forums, and encourage players to continue submitting more.
Community Shout-Out
In taking a moment to thank community creators, the team highlighted two specific fan sites that offer useful features for The Division 2 players:
- Division Builder – A site that allows visitors to theory-craft Division 2 builds, or look at some of the top builds in the game and how they are put together.
- The Division 2: Weekly Vendor Reset - Presents all the weekly vendor reset information, valuable if you're on the lookout for a particular item.
Developer Interview with Associate Game Director Drew Rechner
Rechner, who until recently was lead AI designer on The Division 2, talked about some of the changes and tweaks in TU6, particularly to NPC behavior. Some highlights:
- Hard, Challenging and Heroic difficulties were rebalanced, in part by putting explosion and bullet damage on par with each other, reducing time to kill, and ensuring that enemies don't kill players quite so quickly.
- Some NPCs will elect to lay down covering fire while the others rush to cover as quickly as possible.
- Tank enemies react differently to status effects, ignoring flames, fighting through shock effects, and recovering more quickly. Blinded or confused tanks will attack your last known position.
- Player Turrets are now more likely to be targeted by enemy NPCs.
Episode 2, Title Update 6 is now available for The Division 2 on Xbox One, PS4, and PC. For more on The Division 2, check out our previous coverage.