World of the Living Dead

Hunger and thirst deaths are back, but the two of us have done extensive testing to make sure there won’t be a repeat of the widespread carnage that resulted last time. We’ve also made some other small tweaks and changes to other areas based on our tests - including missions, the tutorial and visibility - and tried to deal with the main bugs that have been interfering with play.

To cushion the hardship of survivors again facing death from starvation and dehydration, we’re resetting all health (injury points) to max and also resetting Hunger and Thirst levels to zero. This gives everyone a chance to find supplies and assess the situation.

• Survivors will suffer an injury point loss after 24 hours at max Thirst, or 96 hours at max Hunger.
• Hunger and Thirst will no longer penalize injury recovery rate, but being at max Hunger or max Thirst will completely prevent injury recovery. The error which was making Fatigue and Fear not recover due to max Hunger or Thirst has already been removed.
• Only a single notification will display when one or more of your characters is at max Hunger and/or Thirst and you click to check recovery status.
• Test subject delivery missions are now only specific as to the Blood Type required by NECRA researchers.
• Scavenge location visibility has been increased to 750 meters for all users.
• Only one scavenge location - the Red Cross Tent - is created for the tutorial. This now has its own map marker and the yellow exclamation marks are no longer used.
• A bug which was generating NECRA missions at excessive distances has been fixed - however, some missions are still being generated with errors and we’ll try to deal with these soon.
• New player squad icons are hidden from the map until they are level 5 (at which time they can be attacked). Lower level players can see squads belonging to players over level 5.
• An existing route on map load was showing incorrect end marker - a standard Google maps marker. This should be fixed.
• Armor filter should now work on the manage inventory pages.
• PvP attacks should now generate a notification as well as incrementing the attacks count and adding the yellow border if no existing attacks.
• All membership options removed and replaced with “SCUGS Upgrade”.

After listening to your feedback, we took the decision to remove the three membership options. We agreed that the SP boost and other features of the membership packages were too powerful so have replaced them with a single SCUGS Upgrade option which lasts 30 days. 

The SCUGS Upgrade can be bought with NC. This makes it possible for players who complete offers to get the most important aspects of the interface upgrades. Thanks to everyone who supports development of WotLD by buying NECRA Credits - we really couldn’t have made it this far without you!

You can comment on the changes over at 

This release is primarily aimed at improving the tutorial, to help new players get into the game.

• Removed step zero (welcome to WotLD) of the tutoral
• Fixed problem with skull toggling getting stuck
• “Next” button pulsates when step is completed and tutorial pane reappears
• “GO” pulsates when first route is planned
• “Plan route to here” pulsates and is highlighted by an arrow when first step is completed (to indicate the first emergency cache)
• “Manage inventory” pulsates and is highlighted when squad reaches emergency cache
• Video added to explain drag and drop inventory management - shows until first inventory mission is completed
• “Manage team” pulsates and is highlighted when squad reaches first survivor mission
• Video added to explain drag and drop survivor management - shows until first inventory mission is completed
• Tutorial pops up after each step is completed, along with completion text

Expansion

We’re making a change to how registration works today. We’ve consistently seen problems with new players supplying invalid email addresses, adding spaces to the end of the beta key or just losing interest when it takes time to receive the key. 

WotLD is still in closed beta but we’re removing the beta key requirement so that, at the moment, anyone can sign up and start playing immediately. We need more players to test the world and this seems like the best way to do it. As most of you will confirm, the zombocalypse is currently a lonely place.

Getting more players will help us troubleshoot and improve areas which aren’t getting much attention at the moment, such as PvP and faction features.

The beta key invitation system has been changed to a straightforward invite a friend system, and I’m archiving the beta key invitation thread on the forum. Feel free to get your friends involved.

You can now log in by clicking the green login button on the top right.

Item deterioration

Thanks for all your help with testing items over the last few weeks. We finally tracked down a rounding error which was having a massive effect on how rapidly items would get damaged. It was a tough one to find. In itself it was a tiny thing but when applied to thousands of steps, you would have seen a noticeable effect.

Firearms, weapons and armor should now correctly see damage based on the surrounding z-density. The condition of the item also has a significant effect, so be careful when relying on fair or poor items. Armor will continue to be damaged if an injury gets through to your survivor, which means that you still need to consider fear and fatigue, along with all other factors, when pushing squads beyond their limits.

Includes a number of bug fixes and new map markers for SCUGS missions. Details on the forum: http://bit.ly/mE7iJY

Exploration achievements, free NC giveaway, silenced weapons.

Some bugfixes and a few new features today.

• Three new achievements added for travelling to landmarks around the Los Angeles County region. Just write on the wall to check in!
• The game now includes suppressed and silent weapons.
• Archer skill added for use with bows.
• The Neptune and Quartermaster achievements have been permanently removed. They’ve been too difficult to reliably track.
• Grave Robber achievement added for extensive looting of Lost Property
• Safehouse achievements now require the safehouse to be constructed and then all defense slots filled.
• The infocard found dialog box now opens again on the map page.
• Fix for the stuck squads problem.
• 10 free NC for liking WotLD on Facebook or tweeting about WotLD!

Today’s World of the Living Dead update includes lots of bug fixes, introduces in-game chat and SCUGS Elite!

Bug fixes

• Missions problems, mostly to do with completing item missions
• Stuck squads problem should no longer happen. Please let us know if you have any stuck squads.
• Fix for squad shown as ‘moving’ when coming out of safehouse
• Cannot move items to collect mission locations. Items can only be moved to mission locations if they are a delivery location
• Fix for route planning outside visible z-density blocks
• Can enter broken safehouses regardless of original capacity
• Can’t write on the wall in private safehouse until it is either shared with faction or destroyed
• Fix for ration break bugs, although please tell us if your timers go above 24 hours! Because of the recent problems, we’ll be resetting hunger and thirst to zero for all survivors.

NECRA Operative Comms (aka chat)

There is now a small red radio to the right of the top menu. You can enable global chat with any other operatives online at the time. Be nice to each other (or don’t, that’s your choice as NECRA operatives).

SCUGS Elite

We’re introducing a new package for anyone who wants to support the game and get some bonus features. SCUGS Elite won’t give you a material advantage over other operatives, but it has some useful and fun elements - all accessible from the command page - and we’ll keep adding to it as we develop. SCUGS Elite currently gives you the following for 30 days, and we’re keeping it half price during closed beta!

• Custom larger squad icons (choose from an initial selection of over 100 icons, including flags of Europe and the Americas, and alphanumeric icons for the minimalist)
• Remove advertising (removes the top ad for the duration)
• Rename squads (rename at any time)
• Rename characters (change the full name or just add info)
• Strategic downloadable map (in KML format, for use in Google Earth)
• Downloadable spreadsheets (in csv format, can be opened in Excel or Open Office)

Find out more details about SCUGS Elite: http://worldofthelivingdead.com/account/subscriptions

New achievements

There are dozens of new achievements now available for you to unlock! Some of you will already meet the criteria for these, and you should see those unlocked already.