We have a big update this week and it has a little something for everyone! Changes to combat for the grinders/competitive players, updates to the world map for the explorers, and a brand new arcade mode for those that are looking to kick back and just have a bit of fun!

And before this serious reading of the notes commences, on behalf of the team I would like to extend wishes for the happiest of holidays to you all and your loved ones!

-SUP3R


The elves have rebelled against Santa and are battling each other to take his place. Players (aka the elves) will drop into the combat zone map dressed in their winter's best and take part in a snowball fight to end all snowball fights. Plot twist though, somewhere on the map is Santa's severed head, if an elf can locate and acquire this item they will become Santa himself. Equipped with a snowball LMG Santa is back and looking to restore order with some ice cold punishment.

Through the challenges associated with this event you will be able to earn the three skins seen below. Wearing the reindeer items in the arcade mode will help you in your quest to find Santa.




With this patch we will be introducing a new currency called Credits. This will be the currency that is obtained through your daily challenges and at the end of matches based upon how well you performed in that game.

• You will no longer be able to acquire skulls as a form of currency in game. Your current skulls will still exist and be usable for purchasing/unlocking crates. (These will eventually be phased out and remaining balances will be converted into a separate reward of some kind)
  
• Credits will also be usable to purchase and unlock crates.
  
• To kick things off, the Witch Hunt and Sleighload Crates will be purchasable through this system.
  
• Starting January 9th you will be able to use your in game currencies to unlock any locked crates that you may already own. *edit: due to a UI limitation the crates will only be able to be opened with skulls/crowns. We will be working on a fix to get credits to work at a later date*

We are splitting the Off-Season in two. What does this mean for you? Twice the rewards! As of this patch the first half of the off-season is now complete, and you will be paid out conquest crates based upon your highest rank in; solos, duos, and fives (payout is based off the region that you achieved your highest rank in).

Your stats have now been reset for the off-season and we will payout conquest crates again before we jump into Season 3!

*Please note that this crate can't be purchased through crowns or real money. It is only obtained through in game achievement.*



We have a few updates to the combat and weapons in the game. You will definitely want to read through these as there are a couple changes that have been asked about for a while.

• The Hellfire has been removed from normal play and replaced with our old friend the 1911. Your hellfire skins have been converted and moved over to the 1911 in the front end customization menu.
  
• The M9 and Sniper Rifle have been changed to their PS3 values. (Though the sniper is using the M40 model its functionality is same as the Preseason 3 Hunting Rifle)
  
• Weapons now apply bleeds when taking off armor (laminated or makeshift) and helmets. Headshot damage on helmets was returned to PS3 values for AR and AK. The AR will now bring a player to 75 health and level 2 bleed when removing a helmet. The AK will now bring a player to 70 health and level 2 bleed when hitting a helmet.
  
• Resist Modifiers for Laminated and Makeshift have been reverted to PS3 values. ARs, pistols, and fists went from 100 resist to 95 resist.
  
• Jump Shot Nerf: When jumping and firing only the first shot will be accurate. After the first shot is fired the following bullets will begin to function off a cone of fire based system. This change will effect the AR, AK, M9, and Magnum,
  
• Quality of Life Change: Hipfire will no longer take you out of sprint. This will allow for a smoother and faster feel in close quarter combat.

• Combat zone and select sections of the Z2 map have had small face lifts for the holiday season and festivities. You will see holiday decor spread throughout the two maps.
  
• For arcade events with multiple challenges, the UI will now hide the completed challenge and expose another one that has yet to be completed. This will make it much easier to keep up with your status on challenges for events.
  
• The PS3 sound files have been applied to the shotgun and AK.
  
• Arcade mode now has a mouseover that displays top 10 matches. After completing 10 matches the mouseover menu will also show total matches played, total kills, and total wins for arcade games you play during the season. Mouse over ARCADE to view.
  
• Update to shader engine to allow for weather to be changed in the environment (snow).

• Air Drop crates that have the Sniper rifle should always have Ammo for it now
  
• Resizing the game window used to cause the Arcade Event panels to shift incorrectly
  
• Marauder no longer a silent shot when firing less than 3 bullets
  
• Fixed the sub header for solo and duos leader not showing the correct text.
  
• Fixed missing Top 10 score panel when hovering over Duos and Fives in the front end play menu.
  
• Resizing the game window used to cause the Arcade Event panels to shift incorrectly. This has been corrected.
  
• Corrected an issue where the Marauder weapon (found in the Weapon Roulette Arcade Mode) was firing silent bullets for the first three shots.
  
• Hands now animate properly when holding a weapon for the following emotes: Wave Bye, Beckon, Cut Throat, Tea Bag A, Season 1 Gold Trophy, Season 1 Royalty Trophy, Gold Crown, Platinum Crown, Diamond Crown, Royalty Crown, Silver Crown, Level 100 Celebration, Chiller Dance, and The Grind.

• There is an issue with the arcade event challenge showing up as 0 out of 0 for the completion tracking in the UI. This issue fixes itself after playing a couple matches. We have a hot fix that should roll out tomorrow to fix it going forward.

Also, there seems to be an elf that has been complaining about losing his green bandana... wonder what that is all about.

We have unlocked the test server in all regions. Solos are now open for play. Hop in and test out the shotgun, m9, magnum, and sniper rifle.

Heads up!

We have a new patch coming to test later this afternoon with more weapon tunings. Similar to last week when we made our Preseason 3 tuning pass on the AR and AK we have changes coming to test for 4 weapons this afternoon. The shotgun, magnum, m9, and sniper rifle have all have had their recoils reworked. Helmet damage has been changed as well for the AR and AK. The AR will now do 25 damage on a helmet break and the AK will deal 30 damage. Keep your eyes on the @z1battleroyale twitter, we will put out an update when the server is up and ready for you all to hop in. Feedback from the community on this is greatly appreciated.

As always if you want to keep up with all our future plans you can check out z1roadmap.com!

We have just finished updating the public road map with a few new cards for changes that will be occurring in the coming weeks.

Updated items:
1. Added a card showing off the new holiday loot bag.
2. Updated the "Santa's Slay" Event card to describe the new arcade mode and show off some of the art.
3. Added a card for jump shot tuning.
4. Made small verbiage change to the hipfire movement card. (added label "Need Community Input")

You can always monitor what's going on and the changes we have coming over on our public trello board located at z1roadmap.com

At 10 am PST / 6 pm GMT Thursday the Weapon Roulette Arcade event will open. You will see all the weapons you are used to finding around the normal game world plus a few extras to make things interesting. This game mode will only be available until 10 am PST / 6 pm GMT on Monday morning, so make sure to get in while the gettins good.

We made some changes on the engineering side that has allowed us to get a true representation of the recoil values that were in preseason 3. The feedback from test server was amazing and we are excited for you all to get your hands on them in the live servers.

One thing that was not on test that you will notice on live is we made changes to the hip fire as well, and you should notice that the hip fire recoil should also feel more like PS3.

On top of all of these changes we also made minor adjustments to the placement of the reticle to make them line up with preseason 3 values. (*edit* these values were only changed on the fists, binoculars, M9, magnum, hellfire, hipfire sniper, hipfire grenades. There was no changes to the camera involving the AR or AK).

Made a change to spectating after death. The system will now default to a player on your team as long as there is one still alive. After your last team mate is eliminated the camera will move on to spectating the player that eliminated you and run through the rest of the match the same way it would in the solo environment.

• We have resurrected the World Shutdown Timer so that players will receive in game messaging when the servers are being brought down for maintenance/updates.
  
• The LeStream Hosted Game server has gone through a name change and is now called the Ensoul Arena.
  
• Added an expiration timer too the Witch Hunt crate. This crate will expire end of day (11:59 pm PST) on February 28, 2019. After this point you will no longer be able to purchase Witch Hunt Crates.
  
• We have slightly increased the fanfare time when you acquire a Legendary item.

• Spectate Killer widget should no longer get stuck if you spectate till the end of a match.
  
• Fix minor error when navigating to the My Crates section in the front end and you didn't currently own any crates.
  
• Fixed one of our most frequent crashes that was related to a bug in our asset loading system.
  
• Pandemonium sweatpants can now be skinned.

At 10 am PST / 7 pm GMT Thursday, this weeks Arcade Event "Pleasant Valley Nightmare" will unlock.

We have made the addition 7 new Hosted Game servers with at least one for each region have been added to the expanding lineup. Number of servers per region are as follows:

• 2 Europe
  
• 1 North America
  
• 2 South America
  
• 1 Asia/Pacific
  
• 1 Australia/New Zealand

• On the main menu the "Career Stats" option has now been changed to "Leaderboards".
  
• All scroll bars on the front end menu have had a color change, and are now gold.

• Loot distro issues around the PV Clock tower and some camp grounds were corrected. A few of these spots were what we considered to be "jackpot" locations that had an excessive amount of loot and have now been scaled back to be more in line with the distribution of loot across the rest of the map. We are aware of a few case instances such as some camp sites and other locations that are not generating enough loot, and we will be looking to correct these in a future patch.
  
• Breaking windows with certain weapon types will now properly play the audio file associated with glass breaking.
  
• Fixed various geo issues (floating art, visibility problems around Matthys baseball field, and one very troublesome office building in Ranchito).
  
• When spectating in team games, there was an issue with extraneous nameplates. These have been removed.

This release marks the end of Season 2 and the beginning an Off Season that will last several weeks before Season 3 begins. During this Off Season, we'll be testing and tuning the Z2 map, adjusting season scoring to work with Dynamic Matches and introducing some new arcade modes, in addition to a host of bug fixes and tweaks.

You WILL receive new rewards for reaching higher ranks during Off Season!

The rewards for Ranking up in Season 2 have been granted to all qualifying players.

• Z2 map for Solos, Duo, Fives, and Arcade modes.
  
• Z2 now supports dynamic match starts.
  
• Removed 3 large POIs from Z2 based on community feedback. Ponyvale Equestrian Estates, Coy's Car Salvage, Harris County Fairgrounds (Carnival) have all been removed.

Scoring thresholds for Royalty have been adjusted:

• SOLO 1,810,000
  
• DUOS 1,870,000
  
• FIVES 1,950,000

The new "Conquest Crate" will be awarded for Off Season Rankings as follows:

• Royalty - 5 crates
  
• Master - 3 crates
  
• Diamond - 2 crates
  
• Platinum - 1 crate
  
• Gold and below - 0 crates

You can earn these rewards for EACH mode. Reaching Diamond in Solos and Master in Fives means you'll get 5 Conquest Crates! In Season 3, Conquest Crates will be earned only through achievement and can never be purchased from the game.


Introducing the new Heavy Metal Arcade Mode! LMGs and Rocket Launchers have been added to the loot table. See how quickly you can get multiple kills for an achievement award.

• Loot bags have been swapped back to their normal model
  
• Min Spec and Recommended Spec have been updated

• Fix for our #1 crash (sometimes referred to as the "Hosted Games" crash)
  
• Crouch animation has been tweaked to avoid getting in the way of the reticle.
  
• While Spectating, the B key will once again toggle Nameplates on/off
  
• Tutorial Challenge #12 is now able to be completed
  
• Tweaked the model of the crane to look more appealing

• Loot distribution needs additional tuning on Z2.
  
• Bandages are not dropping in the Heavy Metal event.
  
• Some Trailers have more loot than normal (lots of helmets!). Expect a hotfix soon.
  
• There crane has a known art issue with a texture.

Patch Notes for version 1.6 Released on 11/7/2018

• Swagnum and new challenge set up for the upcoming weekend
  
• Added Nameplate for the player you are spectating in Solos
  
• There is now a running list of acquired items in the Crate Opening screen
  
• Tooltip explanation for the Golden Ticket system
  
• All loading screens have translated helper text

The following skins are now viewable in the customization window:

• Rainbow Swirl AR-15
  
• Rainbow Swirl Shotgun
  
• Rainbow Swirl Sniper Rifle
  
• Red Battle Royale Trucker Cap
  
• China Hoodie (#1 variant)

Bugs and Crash fixes:

• You can Prox chat again in Team Spectate
  
• Shotgun reload audio no longer gets "stuck" when switching camera perspectives on a partial reload
  
• Counter for Legendary items appears in all intended locations in the UI
  
• Fixed a crash bug related to Weapon Audio

• Witch Hunt Crate – 25 new items 6 of which are Ultra Rare along with 1 extra special LEGENDARY item. This Legendary item is in limited quantity with only 60 available
  
• Legendary Countdown System – There are only a LIMITED number of LEGENDARY items in each crate, as each person finds a legendary item the total number of legendary items available will countdown until that number reaches 0. ONCE ALL THE LEGENDARY ITEMS ARE FOUND AND THE COUNTDOWN REACHES 0 THE CRATE WILL INSTANTLY RETIRE FROM THE STORE AND WILL NO LONGER BE PURCHASABLE! Unopened crates can still be opened but no more Legendary items can be won.
  
• New preview functionality for the legendary item
  
• Crate prices and bundles have been adjusted
  
  • 2x Unlocked WH Crates 495 Crowns
    
  • 7x Unlocked WH Crates 1595 Crowns
    
  • 15x Unlocked WH Crates 3295 Crowns
    
  • 40x Unlocked WH Crates 7995 Crowns
• Brightened up the Showdown 2 AR-15 skins
  
• Removed the time granting of Locked Crates
  
• Adjusted UI Customization Menu a bit by slightly moving some parts around
  
• Added a check box, “Show Owned”, to the Customization window that will hide skins you don’t own

• Vehicle spawns and Spawn select for Z2 are now working in Hosted Games
  
• More fixes to Loot spawns in games with Dynamic Gas
  
• Fixed edge case for Spectate Killer system that previously could you leave you stranded without someone to spectate

• Sometimes when you receive the Legendary item, you don’t get a text notification for it at the top of the crate opening screen but it will still be clearly visibly obvious you received a legendary item
  
• A couple of buttons aren’t translated, “TRY ME” for the Legendary Eyepatch in the Crate preview screen and the check box for “Show Owned”
  
• Hosted Games have the wrong full screen map for Z2

Patch Notes:

• You now have the option to Spectate your Killer. The system will try to find the next nearest player if it can’t find your Killer (he dies during the transition).
  
  • There is a known issue if you die and you hit Spectate but there is no one nearby. Your UI can disappear leaving you stuck until the match ends or you close the client down.
    
  • There is a little number on the HUD that denotes how many spectators you have at the time. Don’t mess up!
• Updated the Graphics engine for better performance and stability.
  
• Swagnum Opus Arcade Event – kill 5 players with the Swagnum to complete the Event Challenge
  
• Fixed several issues with loot distribution when Dynamic Gas is used
  
• Fixed a bug where you could parachute though buildings
  
• Fixed an exploit where crouch macros could disconnect the camera from the player
  
• Fixed several other misc. bugs.
  
• Removed Skull boosts
  
• Reward grants of Showdown 2 and 2D
  
• Reward grant of Ma Boi helmet. Eligible players = “For everyone who BELIEVED and played the game between the time Jace Hall started the "soon" movement on July 5th 2018 and the announcement of the NantG joint venture on Sept. 6th.” – Jace Hall

Known Issues:

• The Spectate Killer system can fail to transition you to a valid player if there aren’t any players nearby. This can lead to your UI disappearing and causing you to remain in the match until it ends or you close the client down. We are working on fixing this and hope to get it patched out shortly.
  
• There is an issue where you land your parachute on vehicles at certain angles and get stuck.
  
• Your ping value is missing at the Region select screen. We have a fix that will go out in the next hotfix.