The Division: Update 1.6 - Patch notes are known, launch trailer released

Patch notes for the update 1.6 of The Division have been released. The launch trailer is also available.

One day before the release of 1.6 and “Last Stand”, Massive announced the patch notes for the upcoming content delivery. Most of the new features were already known in advance, as they could be extensively tested on the PTS.

While the “Last Stand” DLC introduces the 8v8 game mode and a new raid, update 1.6 comes with a Dark Zone expansion, exotic items, the legendary difficulty level, microtransactions, and numerous adjustments and bug fixes. You can find the 5 most important changes of 1.6 at the provided link.

The Division 1.6 and Last Stand – Launch Trailer

Ubisoft has just released the launch trailer for Last Stand and 1.6. It showcases the new features mentioned above with moving images:

Patch Notes for Update 1.6

We will embed the full patch notes from the Ubisoft website here. Over 3000 words await you:

Game mode “Last Stand”

SHD tech data relays with operational information have been left in the Dark Zone after the JTF had to withdraw. Rogues are after this data relay and are trying to gain access to them. Engage in PvP battles with 8 against 8 players and secure the data before they fall into rogue hands.
Fight for three tactical key positions on one of the 4 Dark Zone maps.
To gain a tactical position, the group must control three objectives at the operation site. Once the tactical position is secured, the group earns points.
The first group to achieve the required results wins.
To lead your group to victory, you can activate powerful fortifications and use tactical boosters.

New Raid – Signal Lost

Signal Lost takes place in a civilian television studio that has been taken over by the Rikers.
Here, you will venture into three different wings and face unique combat scenarios. Each encounter is designed to encourage the group to play tactically and make the best use of character builds.
Each wing features its own challenges and rewards. Completing all of them will unlock the boss fight where you can prepare for the strongest resistance.

Update 1.6

The following content, changes, and bug fixes are available for free. Update 1.6 will be released on February 28 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

Gameplay Adjustments

Dark Zone Map Expansion

Explore three new areas in the north of the Dark Zone. Face powerful enemies and explore the dangers that lurk around every corner.

Dark Zone Leaderboard

Earn rewards in the Dark Zone by participating in weekly and monthly activities that are tracked for the Dark Zone leaderboard.
See how you rank compared to other players in the Dark Zone based on your performance in leaderboard activities. They change every week and month and are reset thereafter. All tracked weekly and monthly activities count towards your total score. The higher your score, the better the rewards when the leaderboard resets.

Dark Zone Contamination Events

Virus contamination in the subway under the Dark Zone is rising, making the areas even deadlier. The Cleaners have been attracted by the rising contamination. Players must keep an eye on their health as the virus ravages them in the battle against the powerful Cleaners. Clear each subway station in the Dark Zone of the Cleaners to receive additional rewards.

Legendary Difficulty

Face the elite LMB operatives armed with superior gear and advanced tactics.
The legendary operations remove all narrative options and focus only on the combat interaction.
Each legendary operation features a single checkpoint approximately halfway through.
The legendary difficulty is only available in world rank 5.
Available Operations: Napalm Production Site, WarrenGate Power Plant, Times Square Power Relay.

Additional options for character customization (microtransactions)

Discover more ways to customize your agent with new weapon skins, backpack skins, new clothing, and new emotes.
Visit the premium vendor in the terminal to unlock premium prestige items. The inventory is restocked weekly.

Combat

The time to revive a teammate has been extended from 3s to 5s.
Bleeding no longer prevents sprinting. Instead, movement speed is reduced by 20%. Further effects will restart the timer.
First Aid Kits can now be used while at full health, clearing the character of all status effects.
Stability when hip-firing has been drastically reduced while moving.
Increased penalties for hip-firing: weapon spread is increased. Stability and recoil are also affected.
The player camera is now influenced by hip-firing, reducing the field of view the longer you shoot.
There is now a short cooldown between combat roles.
Damage for body shots has been slightly increased in PvP (the change does not affect PvE. Headshot damage remains unchanged).
Visual feedback was added when the player uses a First Aid Kit.
The PvP damage multiplier is 0.42. This applies to Last Stand and the Dark Zone.

Last Stand: Gear Normalization

Upon entering a match in Last Stand, the values of the characters are modified to ensure better balance in player versus player combat.

Gear items:
- Automatic upgrade to gear score 256.
- The main attributes (firearms, stamina, electronics) are upgraded to the maximum value of the equipped items’ existing attributes.
- All bonuses from gear and performance mods are raised to their maximum.

Weapons:
- Automatic upgrade to gear score 256.
- The talents are unlocked based on the normalized main attributes.
- All bonuses (including mods), damage, and attributes are increased to maximum values.
All players are set to an armor reduction of 35%. This armor reduction is influenced by talents and skills.
Player talents, gear bonuses, and weapon set bonuses work as usual.

Dark Zone

Players can now fast travel between the roadblocks in the Dark Zone.
Players no longer lose Dark Zone experience and currency when they are killed in the Dark Zone unless they are rogue.
Supply drops now reward Dark Zone experience as well.
Koreatown is no longer a landmark.

Armor and Resistances

Armor is no longer a major bonus to gear and has been replaced by health.
A base health has been added. Depending on the world rank, you will automatically receive a certain base health.
A new bonus “Resistance to All” has been added, granting the character resistance to all status effects.
Older items (pre-1.6) with health bonuses will be replaced with a resistance to all.
Resistance to all caps at 60%.
Resistance to status effects now reduces the effect instead of granting a chance to resist the effect. This means that 10% bleed resistance reduces the damage from bleeding and the duration by 10% instead of granting a 10% chance to negate the effect.
If the status effect is applied repeatedly at short intervals, the character builds a natural resistance to that status effect. In other words, status effects now have diminishing returns when applied to a player more frequently.
If a player manages to achieve 100% resistance to a status effect, they are fully immune to it.

Gear Talents

Renewal now grants 40% resistance to all status effects for 10 seconds when a First Aid Kit is used.

Gear Stats

The gear bonuses have now been shifted on various gear items.
- – Bonus has been removed
- + Bonus has been added
- = Bonus remains

Chest

- – Damage to elite
- – Damage from elite
- + Skill haste
- + Enemy armor damage
- = Health
- = Health on kill
- = Exotic damage mitigation
- = Total resistance

Backpack

- – Skill haste
- – Resource gain from individual skills
- + Weapon stability
- = Health
- = Critical hit damage
- = Skill power

Mask

- – Damage to elite
- + Enemy armor damage
- = Critical hit chance
- = Health on kill
- = Exotic damage mitigation
- = Skill power
- = Total resistance

Gloves

- – Damage to elite
- + Enemy armor damage
- + Skill haste
- = Critical hit chance
- = Critical hit damage
- = Health on kill
- = Assault rifle damage
- = LMG damage
- = Marksman rifle damage
- = Shotgun damage
- = SMG damage
- = Pistol damage

Kneepads

- – Damage to elite
- – Damage from elite
- + Enemy armor damage
- + Skill power
- = Health
- = Critical hit damage
- = Exotic damage mitigation
- = Total resistance

Holster

- – Damage from elite
- = Pistol damage
- + Critical hit chance
- + Reload speed
- = Health
- = Skill haste

Further changes to stats:

- Enemy armor damage is now a major bonus rather than a minor one.
- Damage to elite is now a minor bonus rather than a major one.
- The damage from elite units has been halved.
- Pistol damage on gloves has been doubled.

Improvement

Due to all these changes to gear stats, here are the details on how existing gear will change following this update.

If you had a (non-improved) armor bonus, it will be converted to health.
If you had an improved armor bonus, the improvement will be reset and you will receive the bonus that the item had when you equipped it.
If you had a (non-improved) health bonus, it will be converted to resistance to all.
If you had an improved health bonus on knee pads, the health will remain.
If you had an improved health bonus on a chest piece and did not have an armor roll on that piece, you can re-roll the health.
If you had an improved health bonus on the chest piece and an armor roll on that piece, the improvement will be reset to avoid having 2 health bonuses.
If you had an improved health bonus on another gear piece, the improvement will be reset.
If you had an improved skill haste bonus on your backpack, the improvement will be reset.
If you had an improved pistol damage bonus on your holster and the holster was acquired after update 1.5, the improvement will be reset.
If you have an improved enemy armor damage or damage to elite enemies and the item was obtained after update 1.5, the improvement will be reset.
Improvements to exotic weapons will be reset.
Unique talents on exotic weapons cannot be improved.
Free talents on exotic weapons that do not have a unique talent (Liberator, Centurion, Eir, and Hildr) can be improved.
Note that if an improvement is reset, the money spent on it will be refunded based on the costs in update 1.6. Since the improvement now has a cost cap, you may receive less money back than the original cost of the improvement.

Character Talents

In motion has been reduced to 15%.
Combat buddy has been reduced to 30%.
Rescue Med has been reduced to 20%.
Adrenaline no longer causes overhealing. Instead, the immediate healing from First Aid Kits is replaced with a healing over time effect that continues to work when damage is taken.

Skills

Changes to skill power:
- The skill power curve has been altered, resulting in less efficient skills at low skill power, but more efficient skills at high skill power.
- Skills now scale with the world rank you are currently playing in, as we have implemented an “expected skill power”.
- A reduction in returns does not occur until skill power reaches 450,000.
- All skills have been adjusted to this new scaling.
The gear bonuses from skill haste have been increased by 100%.
Skill haste now has a maximum of 50%.
Sticky Grenade
- The mod Flashbang has been changed to create only a flash effect.
- The mod Proximity Fuse has been replaced with Disruptor, which has an EMP effect. The explosion radius has been increased to 9 meters.
- A delay and warning have been added for the application of the sticky grenade. This means that sticky grenades, aside from the Disruptor, no longer explode immediately but after a short delay.
First Aid
- The defibrillator now heals in 2 stages. First, a strong heal occurs, followed by a healing over time effect.
- Doping Syringe: The damage reduction bonus has been reduced from 50% to 15%.
Turrret
- The Taser Turret will no longer deal damage and will only stun the enemy.
- Basic Skill and Active Sensor: Range has been reduced from 35m to 25m.
- All mods except Taser: Base health has been reduced by 25%.
- All mods: The influence of skill power on health has been reduced.
Mobile Cover
- All mods: Base cooldown has been increased by 33%.
Impulse Device
- The influence of skill power on critical hit chance and critical hit damage has been reduced.
- Tactical Scanner
  - Critical hit chance increased by 20%.
  - Critical hit damage reduced by -11%.
Fortification
- Damage reduction increased by 33%.
- Reduced impact of skill power on damage reduction.
- All mods: Base cooldown has been increased by 9%.
Seeker Mine
- All mods: A damage modifier has been added in PvP that weakens the effectiveness of all PvP activities. The multiplier is set to 40%.
- The base cooldown is at 17%.
- Multi-Mine
  - The wobble effect has been removed. Explosion damage has been reduced, but bleed damage has increased.
Supply Station
- All mods: The radius has been reduced from 8m to 7.5m.
- Life Saver: Revive time has been extended from 3 to 5 seconds.
- The healing triggers of the Supply Station have a cooldown of 1 second.
Individual skills:
- The exhaustion effect that sets in after using an individual skill has been extended from 30 to 60 seconds.
- Players can no longer activate an individual skill while still under the effect of the previous application.
- The cooldown of individual skills is now influenced by skill haste.
- Tactic Link
  - The damage bonus is reduced to 10% in Last Stand. (This change is not effective outside of Last Stand where the bonus remains at 30%).
  - Weapon stability will now be influenced by the fire rate bonus.

Gear Sets

D3-FNC
- 4-piece bonus: When used, the ballistic shield no longer has an active skill mod. The weapon is no longer deprived of critical hit chance.
- The character automatically switches to the sidearm when the SMG runs out of ammunition.
Reclaimer
- 2-piece bonus: +30% more range for the Supply Station.
- 3-piece bonus: +50% longer duration of the Supply Station.
- 4-piece bonus: All mods of the Supply Station activate simultaneously.
AlphaBridge
- 4-piece bonus: Now grants only the third (free) talent of the unequipped weapon instead of all three. All talents ignore the unlocking bonuses.
Tactician’s Authority
- 2-piece bonus: +15% skill power
- 4-piece bonus: Now uses the skill power buff when using the skill instead of after 10 seconds.
Banshee
4-piece bonus:
- As a rogue, ammunition is fully replenished every 30 seconds. Damage from non-rogue players is reduced by 10%. (no change)
- If not rogue, damage to rogue players is increased by 10%. The bonus increases by 20% for 10 minutes after a kill by a rogue agent.
Deadeye
- 4-piece bonus: Now only works with scoped view.

Loot

Named high-end items are now exotic:
- The quality now comes with a new color.
- Exotic weapons have been removed from the vendor’s high-end weapon inventory.
- Updated sources for exotic items: Some sources have been moved. We have also added more sources for the acquisition of exotic items.
- Exotic containers have been added to the game. They guarantee an exotic item when opened.
The maximum for Phoenix Credits has been increased from 2,000 to 5,000.
The rag collector’s crate in the operations base now scales with your world rank.
The weekly assignment containers now guarantee an exotic item.
The exotic items available at vendors have become slightly more expensive.
Parts of gear sets have become slightly cheaper to align with high-end item prices.

Crafting

Improvements are now no longer limited. This means that a stat for improvement can now be improved as many times as the player is willing to spend money on it. The costs will initially increase until they reach the maximum.

Weapons

The base damage of all weapons has been reduced to accommodate the reduced damage mitigation resulting from the armor changes. (Note that the health and damage of NPCs have also been adjusted to maintain the time to kill and the time to be killed before 1.6)
SMGs now have a critical hit chance with a maximum of about 22%.
Cool Head has a short cooldown to prevent it from being triggered repeatedly by automatic weapons.
L86
- The base damage has been increased by 4%.
- The damage drop-off at longer ranges has been reduced by 40%.
Talent Thrifty: The last bullet of a magazine deals 10% more damage. (instead of 60%)

Named Weapons

All named weapons are now of exotic quality.
Exotic weapons now feature a unique talent in the 3rd free slot. The other two talents are randomly chosen from the talent pool for that weapon type.
Exotic weapons obtained before update 1.6 will now receive the unique talent, and the remaining talents will be randomly rolled.
Exotic weapon talents will not transfer over with AlphaBridge to the other weapon.
Exotic talents cannot be improved. Please refer to this information if you need more information on improving older items.
Exotic weapons have received a unique item description.
Some exotic weapons now function as gear sets: the unique talent unlocks when two specific weapons are equipped.
FAMAS is now an exotic weapon and Uncomplicated is now the unique talent. It has been renamed from Bullfrog.
- The base damage has increased by 11.7%.
Tommy Gun
- Carefree: Damage while shooting from the hip is increased by 11%.
Medved
- Focus: Fires heavy rounds instead of shotgun shells.
Hungry Hog
- Greedy: Killing a target increases damage by 10% until fire is ceased. Multiple kills can increase the bonus up to 5 times.
Tenebrae
- Lights Out: Destroying a weak point on an enemy resets the cooldown of skills for you and your group members. The talent has a cooldown of 10 seconds.
Pakhan
- Pakhan: Each kill increases the next reload by 20% more bullets available.
Liberator & Centurion (Weapon Set)
- Free Republic: Each shot with the Liberator grants +5% headshot damage with the Centurion. The maximum is 200%. Kills with the Centurion grant +10% more fire rate for all weapons for 10 seconds.
Valkyria becomes Hildr & Eir (Weapon Set)
- Valkyria: Each hit with Hildr increases critical hit damage by 1% up to a maximum of 30%. The bonus decreases by 1% every second. This bonus applies only to Eir.
- Hildr cannot land critical hits.
Cassidy
- Dual Barrel: The double trigger fires both barrels in quick succession.
Urban-MDR
- Base damage has been increased by 65%.
- Distracted: Damage is increased against targets affected by status effects by 18%.
Warlord
- Hard Bandages: Damage taken while shooting is reduced by 20%. Damage is applied after fire is ceased.
Thompson M1928
- Carefree: Damage while shooting from the hip is increased by 11%.
Damascus
- Quick Draw: When the weapon is drawn, weapon damage is increased by 20% for 2 seconds. Then, weapon damage is reduced by 20%.
Golden Rhino
Golden Rhino: Increases wobble by 200%.
Historian
History repeats itself: Each bullet burns into the target and detonates 2 seconds later for 700% of the weapon’s damage.
Caduceus
- Caduceus: Every critical hit heals you and your group for 1% of the user’s skill power. This talent has a cooldown of 2 seconds. A player can only be healed by one Caduceus at a time.
Midas
- Midas: Each bullet you hit reduces your damage by 1% and the damage of your target by 1% up to a maximum of 20%. The effect reduces by 5% each second.
Showstopper
- The base damage has been increased by 11%.

Open World

Civilians now always offer reconnaissance data when you help them.
Collectibles now reward players with more XP when picked up from level 30 onwards.

Survival

Crafting high-end pistols no longer costs Division Tech.
Contents of the Survival container updated: It no longer contains an item weighted towards weapons from Survival, but a more general reward. Exotic items can now also be included as a bonus with low probability.
Reviving fallen players now costs a First Aid Kit.
When searching for players in PvP Survival, players are now guaranteed to land in a solo instance if grouping is not possible.
Players can no longer “loot and kill” other fallen players in PvE Survival.
Supply near various hideouts has been rebalanced.

Underground

Killing NPCs now grants Underground XP instead of normal XP. This means players no longer earn normal XP while playing underground.
Underground containers now guarantee two items instead of one. Exotic items can also be included as a bonus with low probability.

Raids

The weekly reward for all challenging and heroic raids has been increased.

Gameplay

[PC Only] Some improvements and bug fixes have been made on PC for gamepad support.

Fixed Bugs

A bug where consumables were not consumed in Survival mode or in normal gameplay has been fixed.
A bug where the game displayed the error outside of the playable area in DZ06 has been fixed.
A bug where the BO did not properly display the protection bonus of the Hunter’s Loyalty set when two or more players activated the 4-piece bonus in close proximity has been fixed.
A bug where players accidentally consumed consumables while scrolling through the emote wheel has been fixed.
A bug where the Impulse Master skill did not always trigger an alert for enemy opponents has been fixed.
Some situations where the ballistic shield became unusable have been corrected.
A bug where the Recovery Link did not trigger correctly has been fixed.
A bug where players were unable to do anything for several seconds after using a skill has been fixed.
A bug where UI QuickNav function did not work properly has been fixed.
A bug where the quality of crafting materials did not properly scale with the world rank has been fixed.
A bug where players got stuck in an endless loading screen on PlayStation®4 has been fixed.
A bug where weapon talents did not activate when the character’s attribute values were equal but not higher than the requirements has been fixed.
Some lag issues when using First Aid have been fixed.
A bug where the talent Energetic did not function properly has been fixed.
A bug where players were able to take consumables endlessly has been fixed.
A bug where the weapon talent Competent did not function with some skills has been fixed.
A bug where the weapon talent “Cool Head” shortened the duration of consumables has been fixed.
A bug where NPC audio no longer worked after a Survival match was completed has been fixed.
A bug where a favored item was mistakenly marked as junk has been fixed.
A bug where NPCs often aimed perfectly has been fixed.
A bug where mods were randomly removed when logging back into the game has been fixed.
A bug with Mobile Cover where the talents Specialist, Competent, and Able remained active even when the cover was destroyed or the player switched covers has been fixed.
A bug where the player lost input function when closing the inventory has been fixed.
A bug where the cooldown of individual skills did not update in the UI of group members when outside range has been fixed.
A bug in the Chroma Shift setting has been fixed.
A bug where the crafted enhanced magazines of level 34 had lower values than intended has been fixed.
A bug where the talent Agile could not revive a fallen player has been fixed.
A bug where enemies were stuck behind a door in a mission in the Garment District has been fixed.
A bug where Brycce Thompson randomly repeated one of his lines even when the player had completed the respective mission has been fixed.
Some occurrences of FPS drops and freezes have been resolved.