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Major Update - 0.15 "Final Drill"

[p]Commanders, report back in for a long-awaited major Early Access update![/p][p][/p][p]Before we dig into the details, let's start with a personal note from our Boss Wolpertinger, Sebastian:[/p][p][/p][p][c]Dear Commanders, [/c][/p][p][c]in September 2025, I was hospitalized for over 3 months due to a sudden change for the worst with my health. This came as a shock for my fellow Wolpertingers and the whole team behind Survivor Mercs - and basically grinded the development of the game to a sudden halt.[/c][/p][p][c]While I was gone, the team did their best to continue working on the game, but unfortunately we didn't release any new major updates and were way less active in the community on Discord and the Steam forums. I am immensely grateful for what we achieved behind the scenes despite all of the troubles. I hope you didn't give up on the game and on us and at least enjoyed some of the goodies like the soundtrack and Steam community items in the meantime.[/c][/p][p][c]Now, I am slowly fighting my way back to a "regular" life and I am happy and proud to present you with this update and two major announcements:[/c][/p][p][c]Survivor Mercs v1.0 will be the next big thing after this 0.15 update; and the game will also launch on Xbox and PS5.[/c][/p][p][c]I sincerely apologize to all of you who supported us through the game's Early Access and felt like the game may end up dead before its v1.0 launch. I truly hope you can understand that we went through crazy times in the past 6 months - not knowing if we'd actually survive it.[/c][/p][p][c]Take care, Commanders, and watch out for yourselves![/c][/p][p][c]I'm looking forward to launching the game with you.[/c][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]In the past months, we received a lot of feedback and reports from you. Thanks a lot for helping us improve the gameplay and stability of the game in preparation for v1.0, we hope you'll enjoy update 0.15 - the "Final Drill".[/p][p][/p]
v1.0 COMING SOON
[p]Early Access is coming to an end and we're happy to announce that Survivor Mercs v1.0 nearly done![/p][p]We are currently preparing the simultaneous release for Steam, Xbox and PlayStation, and will announce the specific release date in these upcoming weeks.[/p][p][/p][p]Here's a little teaser for v1.0: [/p]
  • [p]face a new M.E.G.A. Corp. boss on a new map with unique enemies, mini-bosses & music[/p]
  • [p]unlock additional Achievements[/p]
  • [p]re-skin (nearly) everything in the game and share your custom skin packs via Steam Workshop[/p]
  • [p]plus more cool things like new weapons and additional fixes & improvements[/p]
[p][/p][p]If you like the game and are excited for v1.0, please leave a review on Steam - it helps us out a lot in preparation for the big launch![/p][p][/p][p]Now, let's get to 0.15 "Final Drill":[/p][p][/p][p][/p][h2]Better Commander Weapons[/h2][p]This update expands your arsenal of weapons for your Commander clones and improves most of the existing weapons. You can now upgrade your equipped weapon to level 10 (before: 5) and most weapons deal more damage, have longer-lasting effects, or enable multiple attacks similar to your dash charges.[/p][p]Your new starting weapon is the Pistol, a fast firing single-shot weapon that can mark targets and ignore their armor on critical hits.[/p][p]The SMG is now unlocked after killing Mammoth for the first time.[/p][p]Another new weapon is the Shotgun; great for keeping your enemies at a distance or deal massive burst damage at close range.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][h2]Progression Improvements[/h2][p]"Final Drill" is dialing in the difficulty curve, especially reducing the early grind and adjusting early missions to help your get familiar with the general game mechanics and different enemies, weapons, objectives, and Merc specializations.[/p][p]The new "Radar" room is providing some useful base stat boosts and guides the unlocks for additional Maps & Operations.[/p][p]The "Genome Lab" room unlocks earlier again after rescuing Chemtrail, allowing you to randomize your Commander clone's Traits and research new ones after you're familiar with the regular gameplay. [/p][p]Some missions received updates to their mission objectives. This should remove confusing goals and fix some issues with missions potentially becoming bugged and preventing progress.[/p][p][/p][p]Expanding your Bunker with new rooms used to be too slow and "grindy". With 0.15 the Encounter stages introduce new Vault objectives as stage rewards. These objectives are similar to Loot Crates, but hold some guaranteed rare components (Tools & Electronics) similar to the mini-bosses and bosses. [/p][p]Every stage in the Operations map now shows some more details about the rewards to enable you to plan your run more thoroughly.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]The refined loot distribution and reduced pressure from enemies in the earlier stages of a map should vastly improve how the progression and fairness feel, increasing your chance of successfully mastering initial runs. [/p][p]We fixed one very ugly bug in particular that was causing various issues with the enemy wave spawns. Now, enemy "Medics" should spawn as intended, and the end-of-stage enemy waves will no longer spawn way too early. The barrage at the end of a stage is now also dealing slightly less damage and leaves more space for evasive maneuvers in its early attack phase.[/p][p][/p][h2]New Synergy Upgrades & Level-up Improvements[/h2][p]Every upgrade should make a notable difference. The XP curve was adjusted to spread level-ups more evenly throughout the whole Operation. The new level cap is now at 300 (before: 150) and many upgrades grant bigger bonuses and can be picked more often than before. This should open up more opportunities again to create over-powered builds. We're aiming to collect more data to further tweak and balance the upgrades for v1.0 and are looking forward to getting your feedback on this.[/p][p][/p][p]Once you have certain Merc x Merc combinations in your squad, you will now also see specific "Synergy" upgrades in your level-ups. Not every duo will have these synergies, but we're looking into expanding these options for v1.0.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]The Merc upgrades and specialization skills were adjusted to have fewer trade-offs and more impactful consequences on your squad builds. A few skill trees were simplified, but we preserved the general variety of Merc specializations.[/p][p]You can now choose up to 4 Gear items (before: 3), and Gear can be upgraded to level 5 during regular level-ups. Weapons can be upgraded to level 10 both in combat with level-ups and between stages with Skill Points, although they are primarily relevant for the Merc skills.[/p][p][/p][h2]Other Balancing Adjustments[/h2][p]"Final Drill" is improving the generator for the map stages to create more balanced Operations where each run is interesting and challenging.[/p][p]Time Attack & Onslaught stages appear more evenly to reinforce your squad with Gear & Mercs.[/p][p]Objectives spawns for Miniboss & Encounter stages were adjusted to focus more on the important aspects of these stages and capture most or all of the objectives that spawn in them.[/p][p]Whenever Complications appear during an Operation, you can choose between 2 different ones, and they were tweaked to act as trade-offs for you to incorporate them into your squad builds in more interesting ways.[/p][p][/p][h2]Behavior Improvements[/h2][p]Long in the making, finally here: improvements to enemy and Merc behavior! [/p][p]Some enemies move in different ways to make them less annoying to fight and target, e.g. the "loot goblins" now circle the Commander, and many of the shooty foes stand their ground a little longer.[/p][p]Dashing and charging enemies & mini-bosses circle faster with more notable pauses before attacking. They cancel out of their attacks more reliably when crashing into obstacles, and some of their attack patterns have been improved alongside with various adjustments to attack indicators and animations.[/p][p]Mercs circle and follow the Commander more reliably and are better in finding a good position to play to their strengths. Many Mercs try to move ahead of you, stick to your side, or move at a more constant and predictable speed.[/p][p]Mercs also generally got faster to reposition more dynamically and trail behind less often, especially when you're darting for that extraction point.[/p][p][/p][h2]UI & Visual Improvements[/h2][p]This update adds and improves on a lot of animations and visual effects. The main goal is to make the action more "readable" and provide better indicators for attacks and important events.[/p][p]Aside from tweaked HUD & UI colors, you'll also find the Armor rating & stat in the HUD now.[/p][p]Aiming markers, attack signals, and many attack effects were tweaked to match timing, area-of-effect, and attack direction more closely. And a lot of smaller glitches and bugs were fixed, so sound playback and visual layering are more consistent and reliable.[/p][p][/p][h2]More changes, fixes, and improvements:[/h2]
  • [p]Fixed various instances of navigation breaking in menus and popups.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed various missing icons.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed multiple stats and upgrades not showing or displaying incorrect values.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed multiple missing UI texts & translations.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed an issue with Italian & French translations becoming mixed up.[/p]
  • [p]Added fog-of-war cutouts to stage reward objectives.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed an issue preventing OilRig from taking damage.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed an issue with multiple bosses not receiving damage.[/p]
  • [p]Changed spawn pattern for multiple mini-bosses to appear in a circle around the Commander.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed an issue where bosses could become "stuck" in their phase transition.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed an issue where bosses and player could receive damage already during intro animations or during dialogue sequences.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed an issue with mission objectives tracking negative progress.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed an issue with missions not completing correctly.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed various missing glyphs in Asian and Cyrillic languages.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed an issue with projectile and grenade patterns breaking when too many projectiles were spawned by one attack.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed some weapon effects not showing/spawning correctly.[/p]
  • [p]Added animations & VFX to dialogues and various other menus.[/p]
  • [p]Changed HUD & UI colors to reduce extreme contrasts.[/p]
  • [p]Removed duplicate input actions from key bindings.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed max-out upgrades still appearing in level-ups with no benefits.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed popups appearing during certain animation sequences, potentially locking up the game.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed description texts being cut-off on upgrade cards.[/p]
  • [p]Improved various UI layouts across the whole game to behave consistently across different resolutions and screen aspect ratios.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed cursor showing up when playing with controller, interrupting gameplay.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed an issue where boss & mini-boss names did not show up correctly in UI/HUD.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed an issue with enemy HP bars not showing or showing without fill.[/p]
  • [p]Adjusted Trophy Room navigation to make all items reachable with any input device.[/p]
  • [p]Added and adjusted various icons to match style and intention.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed objective loot spawn potentially blocking input for a very short time.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed an issue with default language not being correctly selected.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed an issue with some languages not picking EN as fallback correctly.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed an issue that could prevent the "quit" buttons from shutting down the game correctly.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed issues with enemy wave spawns skipping certain enemies or collapsing multiple waves into one, causing various waves to pawn too early.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed an issue with Achievements & Awards not being unlocked upon returning to the Bunker.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed map & operation navigation not working with D-pad.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed various mission names not showing correct translations.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed damage flicker VFX not showing consistently.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed acid puddles not dealing damage while lingering.[/p]
  • [p]Added linger duration for various effects as upgrade and modifiable stat.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed various physics colliders to prevent enemies from being hurled away or glitching out.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed an issue with enemy targeting behavior spawning lots of objects, potentially degrading performance over time.[/p]
  • [p]Improved visuals and performance on many particle effects, animations, and VFX.[/p]
  • [p]Changed map generator to only allow Time Attack stages for stage 1.[/p]
  • [p]Reduced time for Encounter stages to 3 mins.[/p]
[p][/p][p]Update 0.15 "Final Drill" releases for both the full game and the demo version simultaneously.[/p][p][/p][p]Apart from potential patches, the next major update will be the full v1.0 launch![/p][p]If you enjoy the game, please leave us a positive review on Steam. It would help us out a lot![/p][p][/p][p]We continue working on balancing and gameplay improvements as well as new content for the game. [/p][p]As always, join our Discord or post to the Steam forums if you encounter any issues or want to leave your feedback to help us improve the game.[/p][p][/p][p]Wandering Wizard Discord Community [/p][p][/p][p]The specific v1.0 launch date for Survivor Mercs will be announced soon - our Discord community will hear about it first! [/p][p][/p][p]Lock, load, and loot, Commanders![/p]