It had been teased by Arc Raiders developers Embark over the holidays, and now it has come to pass: the much demanded nerfing of both the Kettle gun and the Trigger ‘Nade grenade are here, along with removing another misused exploit.
The January Update, numbered 1.11.0, adds a new cosmetic set called Abyss, and is also accompanied by the news that Arc Raiders has sold over 12 million copies. Apparently the game was preparing a 10 million player giveaway, a Gilded Pickaxe Raider Tool, when the game sold an extra two million over the holidays. Hoo boy, I bet Embark are glad it picked a $40 price point instead of the original plan to be free-to-play.
Update 1.11.0’s Changes
The Kettle assault rifle wasn’t ordinarily overpowered for the regular user, but rather the sorts who just ought to have their gaming machines taken away from them: the likes who use third-party software. According to Embark’s patch notes, the maximum fire rate for the Kettle has been reduced from 600 to 450, which sounds like a big drop until you learn that 600 was only possible using macros by cheating scumbags.
The Trigger ‘Nade’s nerfage is a bit more significant. The throwable device, designed to be used as a sticky grenade when fighting drones and stompy bots in the game’s PvE, became a favorite of PvP players who realized it could be used for mid-air detonation. So Embark has rejigged it such that “damage falloff has been rebalanced to concentrate the damage closer to the center of the explosion, and deal less damage further away.” In other words, to ensure it still remains useful as a sticky explosive, but less effective for “trigger-in-air” attacks. There’s also been a huge increase in the delay before it explodes, going from 0.7 seconds to 1.5 seconds, “giving players more time to react and making it harder to time the detonation in the air.”
An exploit which Embark doesn’t detail, which was allowing players to keep key cards after they’d been used to unlock a special location, has been fixed. That’s not a great loss unless someone was ludicrously farming the high-level loot for peculiar reasons, and keeps those moments a bit more of a rare treat. The studio has also lowered the frequency of lightning in Stella Montis night raids, with the intention of “making flashlights and listening more relevant.” I’m still far too scared to do night raids.
There’s still no separate section for grenades and throwable weapons in the inventory, though. They’re still mixed in with bandages, door blockers and, um, musical recorders, despite there being so much empty space for sections on the left of the inventory screen. Surely I’m not the only person who finds this an intolerable act of grotesque awfulness?
Arc Raiders also rolled out a quick hotfix this past weekend that removed access to the in-game console that was never supposed to be there. This means PC players can no longer remove all the game’s fogging for ridiculous sight advantages, as Embark begins the tricky path to trying to crack down on a recent swell of cheating within the game.