Second Extinction™ News

After Pre-Season 6 was released, we quickly noticed that some issues had come with the update preventing you from experiencing and enjoying it to the fullest. With this patch, we hope you'll get to enjoy Horde Mode and the rest of the content in all of its gory glory.

We have not forgotten about Leaderboards for Horde Mode, but we had to prioritize getting Pre-season 6 into a good state before biting into getting new content ready and pushed. Therefore it's slightly delayed, but on the way.

If you run into any issues, let our support team know by contacting us here, and as always, we're happy to hear your thoughts and read your feedback on the update and our game in general on our discord server, so share away and enjoy the update!

[h3]Characters[/h3]

• Rosy's tactical ability Static Barricade now applies shock effect on enemies as intended
  

[h3]Contracts[/h3]

• Fixed issue when character skins were not rewarded after completing a seasonal contract
  

[h3]Controls & Settings[/h3]

• An issue where the user could not navigate the video tab after resetting the settings have been fixed
  
• The 'Fullscreen' option should now work as intended ⭐
  

[h3]Enemies[/h3]

• [Horde Mode] Fixed issue when the wave could not be finished until Flatbacks despawned after being killed
  
• [Horde Mode] Dinosaurs should now always continue to spawn after wave 9 to 11
  
• [Horde Mode] Sometimes killed Flatbacks and Bulls were still marked as alive during the wave, this should no longer happen
  
• [Horde Mode] Fixed issues when raptors were not reacting to the player
  
• [Horde Mode] Bulls and Flatbacks now attack players normally when standing on a particular dropship debris
  
• [Horde Mode] Dinosaurs should no longer spawn at inaccessible parts of the map
  

[h3]Gameworld[/h3]

• Players should no longer get stuck in the T-Rex cave ⭐
  

[h3]Menu, HUD, UI, etc.[/h3]

• [Horde Mode] Fixed issue when UI counter in Horde showed incorrect values
  
• [Horde Mode] The shop has been renovated, so its overlay should now work as intended ⭐
  
• 5 and 4-star crates are now awarded to players who have earned them ⭐
  
• Players should no longer be able to get to an unresponsive state when they move back to the Title Screen with opened Friend List
  
• The 'Track Materials' feature should now track materials correctly ⭐
  
• 'Add/Remove Token' Button's (X) Label no longer disappears after using it in Armory
  
• Fixed issue when Armory Equipment items were locked in the Armory
  
• Localization issues in the Armory have been fixed
  
• The UI layout in the lobby has been slightly changed
  
• Checkboxes in matchmaking filters are now visibly ticked when the player is starting the matchmaking
  

[h3]Missions[/h3]

• [Horde Mode] Picking and buying the main weapon should now always be possible
  
• [Horde Mode] Overmutated Raptors are now counted towards progression ⭐
  
• [Horde Mode] You should no longer get stuck on a wave after the host leaves ⭐
  
• [Horde Mode] Fixed issue when sometimes character was switched to previously played character after respawn
  
• [Horde Mode] Fixed issue when rejoining match could give the player a full loadout from a different mode
  
• Horde Mode waves should no longer be able to appear in Expedition Mode randomly ⭐
  
• The rewards for Basic Training have been increased 🔺
  
• Increased rewards for Expedition Mode: Expedition's regional assignment rewards are increased, and the extraction during Expedition will now give a reward
  
• The experience required to progress from Lvl 1 to Lvl 3 has been decreased 🔺
  

[h3]Multiplayer[/h3]

• [Horde Mode] Fixed several rejoin and host transferring issues
  
• The active matchmaking should no longer only be displayed for the host
  
• Fixed issue when the player got Mission Failed in the lobby when the host leaves party during extraction
  

[h3]Performance[/h3]

• The new minimum required graphic drivers are 472.12 for NVIDIA graphic cards and 2.0.198 for AMD graphic cards. This should address the "No graphics adapter" error that occurred 🔺
  
• A crash that occurred during the Overrun Contract has been taken care of ⭐
  
• A crash that could occur when finishing a mission should no longer happen
  
• Crashes that could happen during Crossplay sessions should no longer be an issue
  
• A crash that occurred after repairing an extraction point in Expedition Mode has been fixed
  
• Fixed a crash that could occur during a multiplayer session when the host disconnected
  
• A crash that occurred when the player is in the respawn menu should no longer happen
  
• Players should now have an easier time connecting to Avalanche Apex Connect
  
• Situations when the game froze randomly on Xbox console and caused a black screen have been fixed
  

[h3]Weapons[/h3]

• [Horde Mode] Fixed an issue when explosives and Supply Pods were not functional after wave 10
  
• [Horde Mode] SMG with 'Shock rounds' perk activated will no longer cause turrets to shoot electric bullets
  

⭐ = Changes made from community feedback and reports.
🔺 = Changes that worth special highlighting

Hello, Extinction Elites!

Welcome to the Pre-season 6 State of the Game Letter. Pre-season 6 has been a whole year in the making: many of the improvements and features resulted from early feedback we received right as we launched Second Extinction into Early Access. In-game communication was a big request, as was the desire for some sort of Horde-type gameplay. It took this long to bring it in because we knew we had Xbox and its ecosystem joining the family, and we wanted to make sure we could enact crossplay at the same time - a Systemic Reaction first, in all honesty.

The inclusion of the Wardrobe function (being able to preview your cosmetics AND know what was out there) and improved matchmaking experience was also a direct result of what you were saying. We’re very happy to be able to deliver such a whammy! But, there is still more to do…

We also want to note that we’re aware that new issues emerged for some of you with the release of Pre-Season 6: crashes, freezing, spawning, and audio issues being among the most common ones. We are investigating and working on fixes that will be pushed as soon as they’re ready. If you encounter any issues, please reach out to support here. The more information we have on when it’s happening, the easier it will be for us to figure out the why and find the best solution.

[h2]What We Have Learned[/h2]

[h3]Solo Play[/h3]
Pre-season 5 in-game survey asked very specifically about people’s playstyles, especially as it relates to solo vs. co-op play.



The orange bars represent those players playing the game in a different way from what they prefer. Over 2/3rds of those playing solo prefer to play in a team.

This isn’t unusual; we’ve been aware of players expressing dissatisfaction with being unable to play multiplayer for several reasons, and we have some theories as to why. We’re hoping that the inclusion of crossplay and the better matchmaking system introduced in Pre-season 6 will help those players play the game in the way they want to. We’re going to ask the same question in the Pre-season 6 survey, compare that with the game data we have and see if anything has changed in terms of players being able to play to their satisfaction.

However, that doesn’t mean we’re ignoring the solo-by-choice folks. We still have a couple of theories to test out in future updates that we hope will address some of the complaints about solo play in general. What will they be? Well…. You’ll have to find out :)

[h3]Difficulty[/h3]

We introduced difficulty levels way back in Supply Drop 1, our first update once we launched into Early Access. Just in time for the anniversary, we had a look at how many missions were being run per difficulty level:



An interesting finding; we were expecting a bit more Hard and Insane runs. Maybe it’s skewed? But even the mission with the lowest percentage of Normal runs still was rather high - this is Black Site:



What does this mean? Not sure yet, but it is certainly interesting.

[h2]What We Are Doing[/h2]

Our two biggest milestones we wanted for the year are now past - our launch on Xbox and Pre-season 6. A lot is riding on this latest update, and how well it goes will determine if we start looking towards a 1.0 (or as we call it, “launch launch”) experience.
Early Access was always designed to be focused on features and rounding out the game experience. In terms of content, we now have a full roster of characters, three modes of play (Expedition, Missions, Horde), three difficulties (Normal, Hard, Insane), a pretty nice pool of Emergence Events, and two ways to customize your play via weapon upgrades and armor augments. There is certainly room for more, but we wanted to ensure we have a lot of the core experiences expected for a co-op game developed and launched.

Based on much of the feedback from you throughout this year, we hope we’ve gotten to a good place in YOUR minds to start seriously thinking about what our launch launch will look like. Expect launch launch to include more content than what we have, don’t worry; but other than that, we want to hear from you whether you think we’re in a good spot to consider exiting Early Access. Not that exiting Early Access will affect our development roadmap post-launch; we’ll still make sure to have the same level of engagement with the community for the game’s development and evolution.

And as always, technical stability is never far from our minds. Over the next couple of months, we will be digging deep and hard to find the cause of problems across all platforms.

[h2]One Final Note[/h2]

Leaderboards were a core component of Horde Mode as we know that the competitive element of it is part of what makes it fun. Unfortunately, that feature wasn’t ready for the update, but we will introduce it in late October. If you like it, and want to see more, we’re definitely open to suggestions on what other aspects of Second Extinction could be better with a Leaderboard. Perhaps a list of all the people who successfully completed Black Site on Insane difficulty? Let us know in our Discord!

Cheers,
The Second Extinction Team

Pre-Season 6 has landed, and this one should set off some shock waves because it’s a big one! Filled with plenty of new features and improvements ready for you to dig your teeth into. We hope you enjoy the update, and if you find any bugs, please report them directly to support here, and if you have any questions or feedback to share, join our Discord server - the best place to get in touch with the team and become part of the community!

[h2]Big features:[/h2]

• A new hero joins the Operative class - the scientist Sunetra.
  
• Horde Mode - Start with nothing but a pistol and conquer wave after wave of increasingly challenging dinos. Get your practice in now because Horde Mode leaderboards are on their way soon with their own special rewards.
  
• Auto-Turret with multiple ammo options is available in Horde Mode.
  
• Richard - we have a new handler and mission giver whose voice you’ll get met with in Horde Mode.
  
• Full crossplay added between Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC via Steam, the Microsoft Store, and the Epic Games Store.
  
• Augments - unique drops from enemies that give your character special new abilities. You can only equip a limited number of augments, forcing you to choose how to customize your build.
  
• New Seasonal Contract chain with exclusive Seasonal rewards.
  
• Wardrobe - now you can preview everything in the game and get more information on how to unlock it!
  
• In-game voice chat on all platforms to make communication on the battlefield a breeze.
  
• Matchmaking lobbies, Apex Friends, and Session ID for matchmaking UI.
     - A mission lobby widget that allows players to advertise their specific runs and enables players to select any mission runs that are interesting to them.
  
• Brazilian-Portuguese language support added!
  

[h3]Characters[/h3]

• Character adjustments/tweaks 🔺
     - All character ability recharge rates have been rebalanced, making some less ‘spamable’ during intense combat. Rosy’s Positive Reinforcement now also restores health at a more suitable rate.
  
• Changed self-revive mechanics for downed players, making it more likely to get up when fewer and weaker enemies are attacking you 🔺
  
• We gave our heroes some hand sanitizer so items should no longer get stuck in the player's hand ⭐
  
• Jack's special ability will now trigger in Basic Training 
  
• An issue where users were invulnerable to damage after leaving the session and rejoining has been fixed
  

[h3]Contracts[/h3]

• Fixed issue where a player wasn’t able to complete the Contact mission when playing in a three-player session
  
• The ‘Lightning Rod' contract now count electric raptors correctly
  
• The ‘Resourceful’ contract completion flow now works as intended
  
• Fixed issues when players didn’t get shared contract rewards for killing dinos
  
• The ‘Blood Bin’ Contract now works as intended
  
• The 'Beast Tamer' contract has been fixed to display objectives correctly
  
• The "Expanded Arsenal" contract is now working as intended when using the Rocket Launcher ⭐
  

[h3]Controls & Settings[/h3]

• You now have the option to toggle Aim Assist On/Off for controllers ⭐
  
• Special Ability key binding is now displayed in the settings menu after being changed from the default ⭐
  
• The Pause menu should no longer reopen when using the Escape button ⭐
  
• Fixed issue when revive key remained as "F" even if the player changed the keybinding ⭐
  

[h3]Enemies[/h3]

• Enemies inside the Dropship now attack normally when the player is standing by the door of the Dropship
  
• Rex: New attack and improvements in traversal mechanics
     - Rex now has some of the raptor's traversal mechanics to handle more combat areas and Horde mode. She will now jump up or down onto another height rather than walking around it.
     - Rex has a new attack to increase its challenge to 3 players - A frenzy attack where it does multiple stomps and tail shock waves around itself in very short succession. It requires 2 or 3 players to be near it at the same time to trigger initially. It'll always aim the final tail shock wave straight at one of the players.
     - We have also balanced Rex’s stagger values so it can't be stun-locked. Noticeable on all weapons, but most noticeable with the Rocket Launcher and Minigun. This should make it harder to trigger the heavy hit reaction in short succession.
  
• Players should no longer be able to get stuck in the Rex Cave ⭐
  
• Fixed multiple issues when enemies could not attack players in specific places
  
• You should no longer encounter difficulties with finding a Rex when you really, really want to ⭐
  
• Fixed issues when Bulls infrequently dealt damage before reaching the player character, they are tough, but that’s just silly
  

[h3]Gameworld[/h3]

• Daytime/Nighttime is back to normal, so go get that ‘They mostly come at night..’ achievement now when the long days of summer are finally over
  
• Multiple visual improvements were made to terrain, lighting, textures, and structures
  
• Fixed multiple object collision issues
  
• Several issues when the player could get stuck in level geometry have been fixed
  
• Players should no longer fall through the terrain... As much as before
  

[h3]Graphics[/h3]

• Fixed an issue when weapon models could become low poly ⭐
  
• Graphics issues that appeared in various situations in the Dropship have been fixed ⭐  
  
• The Dropship interior lighting preset is now working properly
  

[h3]Menu, HUD, UI, etc.[/h3]

• Camps should now show on the map even in subsequent sessions ⭐
  
• Material tracking UI reports should now work as intended ⭐
  
• HP indicator and indicator tweaks
     - Added a health bar when you call out enemies
     - Callouts referring to an enemy will remain for an hour, until the enemy is killed or until the player removes it
     - Added functionality to remove callouts by aiming at them and pressing the callout button again
     - Fixed a bug that caused contextual callouts to be offset
     - Added drop shadow to callout icons
  
• Lost items system has been improved
  
• Matchmaking filters menu updated (Horde Mode added, individual mission filters are back)
  
• Objective progression is now updated at the same time in the Game menu and Map menu (Expedition mode)
  
• The tracking materials counter is now working as intended ⭐
  
• War Effort event timer is now changing its value correctly
  
• Players will no longer get the death screen without dying, seems fair ⭐
  
• Fixed several issues when redundant button labels were displayed in the menu
  
• Fixes issues when Language settings didn’t save after restart
  

[h3]Missions[/h3]

• Regional assignment ‘Kill Alpha Raptor: 0/5’ is now possible to be finished in 'ALTUM VALLEY' region ⭐
  
• We’ve oiled the wheels of the Cart in the Charged Extraction mission, and it should no longer get stuck ⭐
  
• The explosion should now always be triggered in the Charged Extraction mission, more BOOMS to the people ⭐
  
• An issue has been fixed where if the player was leaving and rejoining the game, side activities could get blocked ⭐
  
• Issues that made the Contact mission incompletable have been slain ⭐
  
• The Necrosis event can no longer be completed without the player being on the event site
  
• Multiplayer
  
• Fixed issues when the 'Rejoin last session' feature didn’t work mid-game
  
• Party Healthbar is now properly synchronized after respawning while in a multiplayer session
  
• Fixed situations when players got an Error message "Network Connection Error Failed to host a multiplayer session" ⭐
  
• Fixed issue when the player’s game would not respond when lobby creator lost network connection
  

[h3]Performance [/h3]

• Xbox platform optimizations 🔺
     - Modified visual effects that previously created too many particles causing frame drops
     - Optimized melee system: this can have a positive impact on performance in situations when a player uses melee attack while surrounded by multiple enemies
     - Dead dinosaurs are despawned quicker now
     - Texture optimization to improve performance
     - Terrain physics optimization to improve performance
  
• General performance optimizations 🔺
     - Optimizations aimed to address memory issues. We always have a large amount of data that is being collected and processed, and we improved the approach to processing that
     - Cleaned up some unused systems that were doing unnecessary calculations
     - Improvements to GPU performance when outside of combat
  
• Players should no longer get stuck on a loading screen before the mission ⭐
  
• Fixed a crash that occurred when a player attempts to launch the game while signed out ⭐
  
• An issue when players could get stuck on Apex Connect Splash Screen has been fixed ⭐
  
• A crash happening during extraction in the Blacksite mission has been fixed
  

[h3]Weapons[/h3]

• The Dragon's Breath Perk is no longer killing other players with fire 
  
• Animation issues with the Artillery Cannon have been fixed
  
• An exploit where players could deploy multiple ammo kits have been solved
  
• The Assault Rifles Fire Rate is no longer higher than designed
  
• Fixed issues when grenade detonation didn’t trigger, when we say more BOOMS for the people, we mean it ⭐
  
• Fixed issue when the perk 'Steadfast' remained active indefinitely after activation ⭐
  
• No more extra bullets for Jack. He is now deployed with the normal amount of bullets in the Minigun 
  
• Fixed an issue with the Carbine’s Explosive Round perk damage radius
  
• The 'Boon' perk for Artillery Cannon now works as designed
  
• Fixed issue when critical hits on Electric Raptor didn’t activate the 'Performance Incentive' perk
  

⭐ = Changes made from community feedback and reports
🔺 = Changes that are worth special highlighting

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

We said last year that Second Extinction's "janky co-op dino shooting shows potential," but that it could probably stand a little more time in Early Access. Almost a year down the road, it's come a long way, and today developer Systemic Reaction unveiled the details of its biggest update yet...
Read more.

Our biggest content drop to date, Pre-Season 6: Research and Destroy, will be available on September 30th. Crossplay is introduced, which means you can finally join forces and play Second Extinction with friends on Steam, Windows 10, and Xbox.

So when the day is here, team up and fight waves of Dinosaurs in Horde Mode and try our brand new hero joining the Operative class, bringing her expertise in science to the table. Do you want to catch a sneak peek of that? Tune in to our stream next Thursday at 16.00 CEST on Twitch and Youtube to get a first look at our new hero, and your questions about Horde Mode will be answered by one of the developers behind it - our Mission Designer Carl.

We’re also adding Augments that will let you optimize your hero to fit your preferred playstyle. Brazilian-Portuguese is added as a supported language, and if you’ve ever wondered what goodies you can get in loot boxes, the addition of the wardrobe feature is for you! Finally, you can get a preview of the rewards you’re grinding for. This and more are arriving on the last day of September.

Until then - join our Discord, watch the stream next Thursday and get ready!