Another “State of the Game” with many announcements for the time after the cursed “Year 1”. The Division 2 revamps almost everything related to gear. Here are the new features for the recalibration and skill strength system.
The Division 2 has been really stepping up in the past few weeks. The developers seem to have made some New Year’s resolutions, and we hope to benefit from them soon.
What was discussed? In the 144th edition of the “State of the Game” stream from January 22, the developers talked about two big topics:
- Recalibration – The current system forces players to hoard a lot of items
- Skill strength – Currently, the system doesn’t make much sense and is opaque
The announcements were exceptional, just like last week with Gear 2.0. The two systems will receive a complete overhaul and will be revamped from the ground up.
However, keep in mind that all announcements are to be seen as “Work in Progress”. Everything presented could come in a future update, but it doesn’t have to. When that will happen and whether it will be as presented remains unclear for now.
Recalibration will become more expensive, but will receive a “Pokédex”
What does a Pokédex have to do with it? In the stream, the developers used this Pokémon storage to explain their new system. It is essentially an “attributes library”.
How does it work? Instead of hoarding items with strong attributes or talents and cluttering your inventory, you can then store the abilities in the library. Although the item with the strong value/talent will still be destroyed, you will have the ability forever in your library and can use it as often as you want.
This should significantly ease inventory management and create a lot of space in the agents’ boxes. This change sounds great and allows players to collect and repeatedly use God-Rolls.
These are the details of the new recalibration:
- A new recalibration library.
- Attributes and talents can be extracted and stored.
- This applies to all equipment parts – mods, weapons, armor.
- Values in the library can be reused.
- Whether the library applies only to one character or the whole account is still unclear.
- Recalibration may become more expensive.
- Only one value per item can still be recalibrated.
Skill strength out – Skill Tier and Overcharged in
How do the skill tiers work then? The new skill tiers come as core attributes on the armors and replace the current system with skill strength.
You get a maximum of 1 skill tier per armor piece, with a maximum of 6 skill tiers. So, you need the core attribute “Skill Tier” on all 6 armor pieces to get the best skills.
With each level, the skill actually improves, and you can see before building how strong the respective skills will become and what bonuses the different “tiers” will bring.
These are the details of the new skill tier system:
- There are 6 levels of these skill tiers – the higher, the stronger the skills.
- All armor pieces with this core attribute bring a maximum of 1 skill tier.
- The enhancements are visible beforehand, making them more predictable.
- Tier levels are visually recognizable by the activated skills.
- Skill mods will still exist, but without requirements and with only minor impacts.
- Talents or Exotics can activate an Overcharged mode for the skills.
State of the Game announces new skill mechanics
What does the Overcharged mode bring? This new mechanic can overload your skills and provides a strengthened version of the selected skills for a short time.
As an example, the developers showed in the stream the flamethrower turret, which with Overcharge covers a much larger area and thus becomes even more effective. The other values of the skill are also enhanced.
There will likely be several ways to overload the skills:
- A talent is activated, giving you an extra skill tier for a specific time. If you are already at Tier level 6, the skill goes into Overcharge.
- There will be talents that directly bring your skills into Overcharge.
- Exotic items and armor sets are supposed to come with Overcharge talents.
Footnote announces loot quality depending on difficulty
What else is important? In addition to the two main topics of the stream, the developers also casually mentioned a few interesting little things.
- Loot will depend on difficulty. The harder the tasks, the better the loot.
- There are apparently 40 talents available after the overhaul – 20 for vests and 20 for backpacks.
- Utility batteries will be the only mods that become useless after the overhaul.
This fulfills another wish of the agents, as missions that are particularly difficult tend to provide more loot rather than better loot.
How the changes will ultimately come into play remains to be seen. But the announcements again sound very promising and will push the game forward. Despite some easing in the gear game, Division 2 aims to remain an online game where you can spend hours pondering over builds.
In February, first Episode 3 with a new Exotic is coming, and with “Year 2,” hopefully a better time for all Division fans will begin.
What do you think about the changes? Can the announcements from the last weeks bring you back to Division 2?
