APB Reloaded News

The Epidemic Returns: Can You Survive San Paro’s Deadliest Infection?

Hey everyone! After a long break, Epidemic has returned, bringing chaos back to San Paro! Though it hasn’t been seen since 2018, the dangerous objective remains unchanged: three rival corporations are competing to unleash their deadly pathogens and infect the city’s population, turning citizens into mindless zombies. It’s a fight for domination, but only one virus will prevail. The question is: which corporation will reign supreme?

Meet the Epidemic Teams: The battle lines are drawn, and three corporations are trying to unleash their deadly toxins across San Paro:



Epidemic Teams
Who do you think will come out on top?

How Epidemic Works:

Epidemic Daily Activities: Daily side tasks and rewards will be randomly assigned when you enter the event. Completing these challenges will help you level your Epidemic 2024 role as well as awarding some extra Joker Tickets for your efforts and spicy new Titles!

Additionally, you may sometimes encounter rare daily activities which are a little harder to complete but award you with the Blue Glow in the Dark Weapon skin or coveted Witches Hat!

Game Goals:
1 Transportation of Toxin Barrels: In the Epidemic District, your team starts in one of three territories—top, bottom left, or bottom right. Your job is to collect toxin barrels from your starting zone and carry them to neutral territories to spread your infection. But beware—these barrels degrade over time and will eventually explode if you don’t act quickly.



Barrels are also vulnerable to enemy attacks, so you’ll need to protect them while transporting. Once you capture a territory, new barrels will spawn there, allowing you to infect even more areas and strengthen your control.

2 Conquer Neutral Territories:

At the beginning of the match, six neutral territories will appear on your map, marked as task checkpoints. Your goal is to capture these zones by placing your team’s toxin barrel within the boundaries. The more areas your team captures, the faster your infection spreads. Reach 100% infection to trigger the final showdown!



3 Protect or Destroy Captured Territories:

Once a toxin barrel is placed in a territory, the borders turn your team’s color, and a large barrel bundle spawns to maintain control of the area. Defend it well, because enemy teams can destroy the bundle to neutralize the territory. The barrels are tough but not invulnerable, and they’re surrounded by toxic gas that harms enemy players, making them tricky to destroy.



End Game: The Battle for Havalynd Central Memorial Park

1 The fight to control Havalynd Central Memorial Park:

The first team to hit 100% infection triggers the final phase of the game—the battle for Havalynd Central Memorial Park. To win, your team must capture and hold this territory.

If the park is neutral, all you need to do is place a small toxin barrel and let the infection take hold. But if an enemy team has already claimed it, you’ll need to neutralize their hold before placing your own barrel. Even if your team hasn’t hit 100% infection yet, you can still try to take control of the park, forcing your rivals to recapture it.



Defend your barrel within the Park’s boundaries from enemy attacks for 90 seconds and secure your team's victory.

Epidemic 2024 Rewards:
With this years run of Epidemic players can earn a bunch of new Titles as well as some of Epidemics old rewards such as two out of the three weapon skins as well as the Epidemic symbols! Additionally, every level of the Epidemic role award you with 150 Joker Tickets!

• Rank 1: Bullet Boo Title
  
• Rank 2: Spooktacular Title
  
• Rank 3: Dead Aim Title
  
• Rank 4: Haunted Title, Epidemic Skin Selector
  
• Rank 5: Epidemic Symbol Pack
  
• Rank 6: Mummy Issues Title, Halloween Backpack Selector
  
• Rank 7: Zombicine, Necrocite, and Undedox Symbols
  
• Rank 8: Silent Killer Title, Epidemic Skin Selector
  

Halloween 2024 Sale: Spooky Deals Await!
To celebrate the return of Epidemic, we're launching the Halloween 2024 Sale with an array of killer deals. Stock up on Joker Tickets, character slots, and some of your favorite weapons like the OCA Nano ‘Butcher,’ Colby .45 AP, and the VAS C2 ‘Troublemaker.’ All SWARM, ISSR-A, FR0G, and ATAC 424 variants are also discounted, along with exclusive kits and vehicles like the Criminal and Enforcer Firehawk sets and the Han Coywolf Bundle.

This Halloween brings a set of Biohazard-themed weapon skins for Undedox, Zombicine, and Necrocite, alongside classic spooky skins like Halloween Ghost and Glow in the Dark Blue. Returning favorites include the Halloween Classics and 2018 bundles, as well as costume and animal symbol sheets to let your creativity shine.

Don't miss out on these hauntingly good deals while dominating San Paro!

Celebrating the launch of “New Horizon” with exciting events, promotions and new offers.

APB: Reloaded Version 1.31 “New Horizon” launches today — We’re excited to finally get some new content into the game and hope that you all enjoy New Horizon as much as we enjoyed making it.

You can read our CEO’s introduction of the new patch here.

You can also read more about our two new contacts and their free rewards here.

This update is one of the largest updates that we have ever shipped, so we are expecting to run into some issues that we are going to have to address. We will keep you all in the loop about any ongoing issues in our dedicated “New Horizon Launch Updates” thread on the forums and Little Orbit discord.

[h2]New Horizon launch events![/h2]
[h3]Title Login Reward[/h3]
Starting today, players will be awarded with the “Horizon Hero” title for logging into the game. This promotion is going to last until August 27th.

[h2]Legendary Gun Games[/h2]
Join us on Saturday, August 17th, Sunday, August 18th, Saturday, August 24th, and Sunday, August 25th on both Citadel and Jericho as we spin up some fun little Minigames that award Joker Tickets. These Minigames will include an updated version of our Joker Box Gun Game with all the recent Legendary guns, including the new ISSR-C ‘Kingdom’. These events will be a great opportunity to get your hands on them and try them out.

We will announce when and where you can find us through in-game broadcasts, so keep an eye out!

[h2]G1C Sale and new additions to ARMAS and the Joker Ticket store![/h2]
With the release of Version 1.31 “New Horizon” we’re introducing the ISSR-C ‘Kingdom’ Legendary Burst rifle, but that’s not all we’re also bringing you 14 New Male clothing items as well as 13 New Female Clothing items to both ARMAS and the Joker Ticket store in two convenient bundles.

[h2]ISSR-C ‘Kingdom’[/h2]
The Kingdom is the first new Weapon we brought to APB Reloaded in quite a while so we are excited to finally get it in your hands. The ISSR-C ‘Kingdom’ Legendary is available for purchase on Anne inside the Joker Ticket store.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Redhill Technology Bundle:[/h3]
Character wide: 2000 Joker Tickets
Account wide: 599 G1c

All items are available for both body types.

1. Tech Top
   
2. Tech Top Rubber
   
3. Tech Trousers
   
4. Tech Trousers Rubber
   
5. Night Vision Goggles
   

[h3]New Horizon Street Wear Bundle:[/h3]
Character wide: 4000 Joker Tickets
Account wide: 1299 G1c

The following items are available for both body types:

• Tattoo Sleeve L/R
  
• Latex Gloves L/R
  
• Fishnet Gloves L/R
  
• Longsleeve Fishnet Top
  
• VNeck Tee
  

The following items are available exclusively for female characters:

• One Piece Swimsuit
  
• Short Qipao Dress
  
• Trench Coat
  

The following items are available exclusively for male characters:

• Longsleeve Changshan Top
  
• Gauntlets L/R
  
• Fingerless Gauntlets L/R
  

[h2]AMA with Matt[/h2]
Following the launch of 'New Horizon,' Matt will be hosting an AMA to discuss all things post-launch. Stay tuned for the exact date, which we’ll be announcing soon!

Excited to learn more about everything coming in Version 1.31 “New Horizon”? Then check out a series of blog posts and patch notes here:

• APB 1.31 New Horizon Announcement
• Meet Lucas and Lynette
• Patch notes / https://www.gamersfirst.com/apb/known-issues
  

Meet Lucas and Lynette

Introducing Lucas Van Rooyen and Lynette Casey, two fearsome higher-ups in their factions that are looking for new recruits to do their bidding in return for rewards that will help you stay on top of the ever-changing street wars of San Paro.

[h2]Unlocking Lucas and Lynette[/h2]
Unlike previous contacts, Lucas and Lynette are not of the specialist tier, instead, these contacts are positioned a little more in APB Reloaded’s mid-game progression and have 15 levels each which means that these contacts can be unlocked as early as Rank 88 if you focus your efforts on maxing just Blood Rose or Prentiss Tiger contacts!



Unlocking Lucas Van Rooyen requires you to reach level 10 with the following Blood Rose contacts:

• Tyron Sennet
  
• Jeung Bloodrose
  

Unlocking Lynette Casey requires you to reach level 10 with the following Prentiss Tigers contacts:

• Chiza
  
• Byeong Lee
  

If you have already maxed out the contacts named above you will be referred to Lucas or Lynette when logging in with your character on Version 1.31 “New Horizon”.

When reaching the maximum level with Lucas Van Rooyen, he will refer you to Michael Simeone. Similarly, reaching the maximum level with Lynette Casey will result in her referring you to Orlenz' Moretti.

[h3]Rewards[/h3]
New contacts bring new rewards, so here’s a quick overview of what Lucas and Lynette have in store for you!

[h3]Weapons[/h3]
The following weapons are available as part of the standard contact progression with Lucas and Lynette:

• Showstopper Pistol
  
• OCA ‘Nano’ Pistol
  
• Obeya CAP40-C NFCP 2
  
• N-SSW 74 Adeen
  
• VBR ‘Temptress’
  
• VAS C2 NFCP 1
  
• N-TEC 7 Adeen
  
• N-HVR 243 ‘Scout’ Nol
  

If you have maxed out Lucas or Lynette you may also be eligible for a rare daily activity awarding you with the following weapon:

• N-ISSR-B ‘Recon’
  

Additionally the following Weapon skins are awarded for reaching the maximum level of Lucas or Lynette:

• Short Circuit - Blue
  
• Short Circuit - Red
  
• Short Circuit - Green
  

[h3]Modifications[/h3]
New contacts are a perfect opportunity to add new modifications and spice up the gameplay, here are three new modifications as well as one returning modification available in v1.31 New Horizon:

• Display Banner
  

Orange character mod allows you to place down a large Display Banner with your personal symbol on it! This feature was originally a refer-a-friend reward, and we are bringing it back for those who missed the chance to unlock it previously.

• Long-Range Rifling
  

The red weapon modification increases your weapon's effective range by 25% at the cost of reducing the weapon's rate of fire by 10%. Additionally, burst weapons suffer a 20% burst rate penalty for using this mod.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

• Muzzle Brake (Vertical)
  

Muzzle Brake (Vertical) is a red weapon modification that will reduce the vertical recoil of your weapon by 30% at a minor drawback of increasing horizontal recoil by 7%.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

• Suspension Tuning
  

Lastly Suspension Tuning, our very first “Tuning” vehicle modification uses a red vehicle modification slot. This modification will decrease the Suspension Stiffness and Damping of your vehicle by 50% with no additional downside. We’re excited to see which cars can use this modification to greatly empower their maneuverability.

These modifications are going to be available for purchase after unlocking them and players will not receive a free version as part of unlocking them as we felt like this behavior should be kept exclusively for Specialist contacts.

Vehicles
The following vehicles are unlocked as part of leveling Lucas and Lynette:

• Growl S3
  
• Sungnyemun Mirage S-22
  

[h3]Clothing[/h3]
Maxing our Lucas or Lynette will award you with their respective outfit as well as Blood Rose/Prentiss Tiger inspired presets using some of our new clothing items such as the Trench Coat. Here’s a sneak peek:



Inventory Expansions
More items require you to have more inventory capacity, fortunately, Lucas and Lynette have you covered! Players will be able to earn the following inventory expansions as part of Lucas and Lynette’s contact progression:

• +5 Vehicle Inventory Space
  
• +10 Clothing Inventory Space
  
• +5 Symbol Inventory Space
  
• +5 Weapon Inventory Space
  

Hi everyone.

It's been quite a while since we have had a new version of APB this large.

So I thought I would take some time to break everything down that is coming over a series of blog posts. But before I do, I want to acknowledge a couple of things about version 1.31.

First, and most importantly, we focused a lot on new free content. It's something I have wanted to do in the past, but for various reasons we haven't been able to. It's a bit of an experiment, as we're now giving away more free items than ever in the regular progression of the game. We took time to identify and fill in gaps for weapons and vehicles that otherwise weren't available.

Second, this patch brings together content and features that have been in the development for a while. Honestly, it sort of snowballed. As the weeks and months have passed, more and more items have been pushed into this new version. As the name implies, we're hoping New Horizon sets a new bar for APB and offers a "jumping on point" for many players who have felt there was nothing new in the game.

Third, there was a lot of R&D required for this patch. Little Orbit has never added contacts to the game or modified any of the district geometry. In some cases, we had to write entirely new plugins to build compatibility between APB and newer modeling systems. We've also had layoffs, so there was some retraining required to even do some of the things we've already done in the past. Regardless, I feel like our progress will enable updates like to happen a bit more quickly going forward.

Lastly, we are in final testing on many of the components in this patch, but it is our goal to launch Version 1.31 New Horizon in the next couple of weeks.

With that out of the way, let's jump into what is coming.

Major Additions

• (2) New Contacts - Lucas 'Van' Rooyen and Lynette Casey
  

These two fearsome higher-ups in their factions are looking for new recruits to do their bidding in return for rewards that will help you stay on top of the ever-changing street wars of San Paro. Both of these characters have been in the APB lore for quite a while, and it was important to me that their rewards and storylines feel on par with other contacts that were already in the game. I will be posting a separate News blog with a full run-down of Lucas and Lynette's rewards soon.

• SARD Anti-Cheat
  

APB has had many different integrations in the past, but I felt it was important to take the proper time to evaluate both old and new solutions. This time around, I had two major criteria: (1) client and server side support and (2) custom integration where Little Orbit collects the penalty information, but we apply our own rules on how to handle cheaters. The team at SARD has been fantastic to work with, and after months of development, we are finally ready to launch.

• Re-distribution of contact rewards and lowered all mod Rank requirements
  

We feel this is a significant quality of life improvement. We decided to lower the Rank requirements for R195l mods to level the playing field between older and newer characters. With that same goal in mind, we also identified gaps in the vehicle progression and redistributed vehicles to unlock more cars sooner. And finally, we added missing weapons like the Showstopper, the NTEC 7c, and the N-HVR '243' 'Scout' to the player progression.

• Changes to the Waterfront
  

We knew we couldn't launch two new Waterfront contacts without addressing some of the player complaints about that district. We've added more cover around common spawn areas and objective locations as well as more access routes to spots that were previously very hard to attack. These edits are still be completed, so I will be posting a separate News blog with the new changes to Waterfront soon.

• The ISSR-C 'Kingdom' Legendary
  

We decided to have a little fun and also add a new legendary. The ISSR-C 'Kingdom' is RedHill Homeland Defense's new cutting-edge, fast, short-ranged burst rifle made up from parts of Nekrova's infamous ISSR weapon series with an integrated RedHill burst module. Its quick four-round bursts make it suitable for close to medium-range fights whilst retaining Nekrova's trademark of deadly accuracy.

Full Patch Notes:

• Added two new Tier 4 Contacts to the Waterfront district.
  
• Added three new modifications.
  
• Added many new clothing items for both body types.
  
• Added SARD Anti-Cheat.
  
• Reworked many areas of the Waterfront district to improve gameplay.
  
• Added the ISSR-C 'Kingdom' burst rifle as a new Legendary gun available for purchase at Anne inside the Joker Store through Joker Tickets.
  
• Changed the Rank requirement of all mods that previously required a Character Rating of 195 or above. These mods will now have a Rank Requirement of R40, 60, or 80 and cost 20.000, 40.000, and 60.000 APB$ respectively.
  
• Increased the range in which Mobile Spawn Points become invalid from 35m to 55m.
  
• Decreased the Health and Stamina damage to the DMR-AV Sniper Rifle to decrease the range in which it can Kill in two shots from 88-100m to 95-100m. The ability to stun in two shots has been removed entirely. The DMR-SD is unaffected by these changes.
  
• Decreased the range of the OBIR by 5 meters. We are going to revisit this change once we are closer to making larger balance adjustments but we feel like the gun is currently too dominant and would like to address that for the time being.
  
• Added 3-Point Sling 3 to the ARMAS and Joker Store versions of the non-legendary Showstopper Pistol and renamed it to Showstopper 'Quickdraw'.
  
• The following vehicles unlock their 0 to 4-slot versions one entire Contact Tier sooner.
  
  • Balkan Varzuga
    
  • Balkan Ravan
    
  • Macchina Calabria
    
  • Macchina Cosenza
    
  • Packer Ceresco
• Retroactively added the following vehicles to late-game contact progression:
  
  • Growl S4
    
  • [Dolton Fresno D400
    
  • Charge Sentinel CS904
    
  • Dolton Montane D230
    
  • Dolton Montane D430
    
  • Balkan Varzuga Rally 353 XS
• The Sungnyemun Mirage now supports primary and secondary police lights.
  
• Fixed various LOD issues of the Sungnyemun Mirage.
  
• Fixed multiple minor issues of the Sungnyemun Mirage.
  
• Added the Mirage 'Sundown' and 'Horizon' presets to the Joker Ticket Store. These were designed by an awesome community member that goes by the name of ElinSylwiaVT.
  

More to come.

Thanks, Matt

Hello everyone!

Get ready to join us on OTW this Monday, 05/27/2024, at 6 PM UTC for an hour-long matchmaking test. We need your help to put our new matchmaking code through its paces and iron out any kinks. The more of you who join, the better we can fine-tune our system. Your input is invaluable, so please log in and lend us a hand during this crucial phase.

Remember to create a character on the "NA Test" World of OTW for this test! Your involvement truly counts! Let's work together to make this test a resounding success!

Check out the notes for Matchmaking Improvement below:

• With this build, we have deployed new code based on the existing matchmaking functionality on Live.
  
• Matchmaking has been moved from the World server to operate on its own dedicated Matchmaking server.
  
• Matchmaking will only function in the same district - at least for now.
  
• Backup is once again offered in cases in which the Matchmaker has to create an uneven Match and will add one player to each team trying to increase the overall Match quality to make it more even.
  
• In evenly matched missions both Team Leaders are now offered the option to “Escalate” the mission. If both Team leaders put in a request to escalate players will be added to both teams up to a maximum of 20 players per side. Team leaders will need to agree to Escalate the mission further each time new players are added to the mission.
  
• Fixed an issue related to Backup/Escalation calls that caused the matchmaker to be bottlenecked during the playtest on Sun. May 19.
  
• Fixed the crash issue related to playtest that happened on Thur. May 23.
  

If you haven't yet! Make sure to grab the OTW client and download it ahead of time so that you can participate.