Patch 2.2 - Outbreaks, the Lobby and the Cartel at Your Door

Two weeks of work since Patch 2.1, all live now. The headlines:

• The Lobby. Every new character now starts inside the House's own hotel lobby, next to a trader, with a clean kit and three hours of protection.
• Outbreaks and the Community Goal. Two co-op PvE events: a town overrun at 4 PM Eastern, and one kill target the whole server shares each week.
• The Cartel heard the noise. Make a racket on a blood moon and a Cartel crew may come to see who is left standing.
• New House Contract bosses. Every floor band has its own boss, and the big fights now have a staged entrance.

New events

• Outbreak. At 4 PM Eastern, when at least two players are online, a town or cluster of buildings is overrun. It is announced in chat with its coordinates and marked on every map. The first player to arrive starts a 45-second countdown, then three waves come in, then Patient Zero. Pay is in Dukes and goes to everyone who took part, by time on site and damage dealt rather than last hits: 150 Dukes for showing up, a shared pool on top, and 100 more when Patient Zero goes down, up to 3,000 each. Late arrivals count from when they get there, and anyone who logs off before the end is paid on their next spawn. Outbreak zombies cannot damage blocks, and they hit lighter on low-level groups and new players. It stands aside for blood moons, the Pit Open, Collection Night and other events. Type /outbreak for where it is and your share so far.
• Community Goal. One target a week, Monday to Monday Eastern: zombies (and zombie dogs and vultures) killed by players. Everyone's kills count, up to a quarter of the target each, so it takes the server and not one grinder. Hit it and everyone online gets Double XP and about 10% off at the traders for 24 hours, and everyone with 25 or more kills that week gets 200 Dukes. The target adjusts each week to how much the server actually plays. Type /goal for the total, your kills and the reset time.
• The Cartel heard the noise. During a blood moon the server keeps track of how loud each base is: kills, shots and explosions. At dawn, the loudest bases with someone still there get a warning, and about two minutes later a Cartel crew of three to six arrives from more than one direction, led by a Crew Leader. They take cover, flank and throw grenades. Kill the leader and the rest of the crew pulls out. Each man drops a bag with Dukes and ammo, the leader the most. The crew cannot damage your base. Groups below gamestage 50 get a smaller, weaker crew with no grenades, and a base with a new player at it is skipped.
• Automatic events, more of them. The House now runs an automatic event up to once an hour and 12 a day when enough players are online: airdrops (the chat now gives the crate's real landing spot), boss hunts, XP hours, and the cartel Heli Crash and Convoy Ambush (up to twice a day each).
• The Drift. Once a week, on a Wednesday, Thursday or Sunday between 3 and 6 PM Eastern with 3 or more players on, a named crowd walks across the map for 90 minutes. It shows on your map and compass. Kill the roster down and the tab is closed for the week.
• The Cooler, Courier Runs and Hot Blocks. Long kill streaks bring a Cooler and his handlers after you (/streak). Courier crates fall near players when the server is quiet. Hot city blocks show on the map and pay a crate to everyone who clears one (/hot).
• Staff-run Cartel events. Staff can also start four newer cartel events: Roadblock, Radio Tower, Cartel Lieutenant and Stash House. The Cartel Events guide has the details.

New players

• The Lobby. A new character spawns on the red carpet of the House's lobby, beside Trader Rekt. It is safe ground: no zombies, no PvP, and it cannot be damaged. Inside: a welcome from Lou with your guest number, a first drink on the House at the bar, a party desk (stand on the gold mat with friends for three seconds and you are put in one party), a Hall of Fame and a board with the next Pit Open, Collection Night, blood moon and restart. Returning characters and respawns after a death work as before.
• A clean starter kit. New characters start with a club, a torch, bandages, water, food, painkillers, a splint and the House Card, which shows what to do next. The reroll books, the Yautja item, the Project Z notes and the pistol are no longer in the kit, and the reroll book and Yautja item now ask before they do anything.
• The Newbie Shield is automatic. New characters take 40% less damage for their first 3 hours of play. You no longer have to claim it on the website, and the "free newbie package" message that sent new players there is gone.
• /start. A character with under 2 hours played gets one free ride to the trader by the Lobby. /lobby and /spawn do the same.
• Guide cards. In their first 3 hours, new characters get short cards one at a time when each one is useful: the trader, food and water, nightfall, jobs, a bedroll, the first death, red PvP zones, blood moons. /guide shows the last card again, /guide list shows them all, and /guide off turns them off.
• A calmer first hour. A scheduled restart waits up to 10 minutes, once, for a player in their first 15 minutes. New characters are not pushed out of trader compounds at closing time or on a blood moon for their first 3 hours. The trader countdowns are down to one 5-minute closing warning.
• Refer a friend. A regular can type /vouch for a House card; a friend who joins types /introduce with it in their first 72 hours. Once the newcomer has played for a few days, both get a parcel of supplies.

House Contracts, raids and The Seven

• A boss for every floor. The floor bosses and raid champions used to be the same burning zombie. Each band of floors now has its own boss with its own move: the Pit Boss (floors 1-3), the Floor Manager (4-6), the Back-Room Boss (7-9), the Big Spender (10-12), the Vault Keeper (13-15), the Enforcer (16-17) and the House Champion (18).
• Boss entrances. Floors 6, 12, 15 and 18 and all three raids now open with a short scene: the set is built around you, the House says its piece, and extra hands join as the boss loses health. The set is taken down afterwards and the ground is put back.
• The Seven's bosses scale. A Made boss called by a high-level group now has more health, up to double from gamestage 300. Party and gamestage scaling together are capped at three times the base. The Half-Made's health came down from 22,000 to 10,000.
• Names. The Undercity's House Ledger items are now the House Register, Raid 2 is The Marker and floor 12 is Big Spender's Table.

More to do

• The Night Ledger. Ask any trader "Anything on the Night Ledger?" for a short House job: a fetch, a timber run, a debt to collect. One at a time; each pays XP and a useful item.
• Pocket Litter. Cop, suit, nurse, janitor and hazmat zombies can drop pocket litter. The Black Book teaches you to turn it into the Black Market Trader's goods, such as Steady Hands and the Hush Kit.
• The Counter. Traders sell House Order slips: use one and the goods (a crucible, engines, medicine, repair kits and more) are waiting at any trader an hour later, ten minutes for the medical orders. Up to 5 a week. A Fresh Deck slip restocks a trader early, once per trader per day.
• The Codex. A TLL Codex tab in your challenges holds 31 lore entries that open as you play the story. /codex shows which you have and what opens the next one. The ESC menu's MY STORY tab has a card for each story line, and /story (or /where) tells you where you are in each and what to do next.
• The House comes to you. New characters find a little extra food and water in kitchens on their first night. Build The Wire inside your claim to pick up one tip every 30 minutes, and put up a House Mailbox for a letter a day with something enclosed (/mail).

Chips, Dukes and the Black Market

• The Dukes exchange. Put Dukes in the register at the Cashier's Cage and the House changes them into banked chips: the first 40 chips a week at 500 Dukes each, the next 40 at 750, the next 40 at 1,000. That is 120 chips a week at most, reset each Monday. Leftover Dukes stay in the register.
• More mod slots on House gear. Newly built Q6 High Rollers weapons have 5 mod slots (White and Blue) or 6 (Green, Black and Gold), and the Concierge outfit has 6. Items already delivered keep the slots they came with.
• The Street. Black Market prices now move. Each turf product pays between 1 and 3 chips a unit: a product nobody has sold lately pays the most, a flood pushes the price down, and it recovers over about a day. Gold Bars stay at 10. The fence takes up to 600 chips' worth a week from each player, 1,500 from each gang and 4,000 from the whole server. A gang that sells more than half of a product over seven days corners it and gets 10% more for it. Type /bm for live prices and how much the fence will still take from you. Prices are also on the site's Season 2 page and in the ESC menu.
• The Coin Store. Store prices were rebalanced on 30 September, and a House Special bundle now rotates every Monday at midnight Eastern.
• Boss calls pay. Boss Bait from the Coin Store and VIP boss calls now drop a reward bag when the boss dies. You cannot call a boss in the Pit, near another player who is not in your party, or near someone else's claim; the item is refunded.

The Pit Open

• Your gear is safe. When you enter, your gear is held by the House for the match and comes back afterwards, and everyone drops with the same kit. If you crash or lose connection mid-match, your gear comes back when you log in.
• The sky deck. Entrants stand on a glass deck high above The Pit for 30 seconds, then the floor goes and everyone drops together.
• The premium drop. A guarded supply drop comes down when the ring first closes. Take down the Warden and guards, then claim it with /pit cache. What is inside is for the match only.
• Armour warning. At the gear check, anyone still wearing armour gets a 60-second warning and time to take it off instead of being sat out.
• Leaving heals new injuries. Injuries you pick up during the match (bleeding, breaks, infection) are cleared when you leave it. Anything you came in with stays.
• 4 PM Eastern. The Pit Open now runs on Eastern time, Saturdays at 4 PM.

Quality of life

• Traders on your map. Traders you have discovered now show on the map with their /tp number and whether they are open, for example "Rekt 1 [OPEN]".
• View distance 7. The server now allows a view distance of up to 7, up from 6. Raise it in your video options.
• Support from inside the game. Type /ticket and what happened to file a ticket on the site's ticket page without leaving the game. Staff replies come back to you in game.
• /calendar. Everything on the books for the next eight days, in Eastern time: blood moon, restart, turf windows, Collection Night, the Pit Open, the House Special and the Drift. The ESC menu has a CALENDAR tab too.
• The House cars look right. The 11 chip cars now sit on their own wheels, without the 4x4's tyres sticking out of the sides.
• Restarts are at midnight and noon Eastern only.
• 7 Days to Die 3.3. The server moved to game version 3.3 on 7 October.

Fixes

• House Contract final waves. Since 8 October, kills on a contract's last wave were not counted, so contracts stalled before the boss. Fixed. If a contract is still stuck on its final wave, abandon it and take it again, or open a ticket.
• Floor bosses vanishing. On floors 4 to 18, the floor boss could be removed by the server partway through the fight. Fixed.
• Blood moon bosses. Late-game blood moons could field dozens of Project Z bosses. Now it is at most two per blood moon horde.
• Stuck on the loading screen. After the 3.3 update, some players with older House Contract, First Light or Project Z kill quests hung on the loading screen or were teleported out. Fixed.
• Market airdrops. Project Z market airdrop quests (the 100-glue crates) could not finish after the 3.3 update. Fixed.
• Seven coupons. Red Ledger coupons threw errors in your inventory. Fixed.
• Quake Survivor progress. The Aftershock challenge bar could fall behind your real count. It now stays in step.
• Undercity markers. The markers for steps 6 to 8 of The House Below come back when you rejoin.

Found something? Type /ticket in game or open a support ticket on the site. Several of the fixes above started as one.