Greetings Mercs!

I hope you're enjoying update 6. Now that the major technical upgrades are out of the way, I can finally dive into my long list of improvements. There’s a lot of exciting stuff ahead, so let’s take a look at what’s coming next!

The flamethrower mechanic has been on my todo list for years and it's finally ready to roast the undead on your command. Flamethrower damage even penetrates those pesky fire resistant zombies!

• A new item tier (color) has been added to the game to allow upgrades beyond purple.
  
• This was a popular request and I also enjoy collecting these upgrades myself.
  
• Pristine items come with better accuracy, damage, durability, the full 9 yards.
  
• Pristine items can be upgraded in the Armory, but unique items are still excluded.
  
• The quality upgrade path is as follows:
  DEGRADED -> STANDARD -> IMPROVED -> FINE-TUNED -> EXCEPTIONAL -> PRISTINE
  

• I've been aware of sniper rifles dealing sub-optimal base damage for a while, but needed to experiment with ideas on improving the damage while factoring in the Aimed Shot mechanic as well. The new scaling across the different tiers (colors) and item levels should significantly raise the damage of sniper rifles, bows and crossbows to make them comparable to the other firearms, while also factoring in the single shot and scope mechanics. As the result of this change, Aimed Shot damage had to be reduced.
  
• All crossbows now come with a scope.
  
• A new scope like mechanic has been added to all bows, called Overdraw.
  
• Aimed Shot was added to the game in CU03 before distracted and the Armory mechanics were introduced. The game now has a lot of distract mechanics allowing you crit very often.
  

• Commando skill Viper is now a random event. Viper was simply too inconsistent with how it scaled in damage and hit points, making him not a reliable source of fun. I've decided to lean more on the support aspect of this Commando tree and added a new skill, Grenadier.
  
• Tacticians are getting a ton of love in this update with a slew of new skills and improvements.
  
• A bunch of other skills got slight balance changes, more info in full patch notes.
  
• Deployed Jennies come in a 3 varieties - because why not?
  

• New UI step for selecting how you prefer to progress you lab when starting a new game.
  
• Shared lab continues to work the way it did before this update.
  
• Fresh lab allows you to start collecting lab points from 0, which includes Survival, Armory and Mortuary labs. Your fresh lab effort is not lost as all collected points carry over to the shared lab and can used by your other saves or another playthrough later.
  

• Gear sorting is now restored when returning from a mission.
  
• Trader no longer auto-resets to the BUY list when switching between Gear tabs.
  
• Trader now has a "Sell All Ammo" button.
  
• Quick access to accelerate those upgrade animations.
  
• Added keyword tooltips to help new players understand the various skill mechanics. These can be disabled in game settings by experienced players.
  

• Completely reworked the shield damage reflect mechanic.
  
• Spiked shields now have a chance to reflect all melee damage back to the attacker, on every hit.
  
• The chance goes up with item quality (color) upgrades.
  
• Crit damage is now also reflected.
  
• WARNING: The warehouse boss, Chunk also benefits from this change, so watch those melee strikes. Slamming Chunk with a shield will reflect the damage back to your shield's durability.

There's more work to be done on items covered by this preview post. The update will need to go through the usual QA and I'm currently aiming to release it around late February.
After update 7, my focus will shift entirely on wrapping up the campaign and improving all the survivor assignments.

Thanks for your support, reviews, suggestions and bug reports!

-- Paul