The Division Update 1.4 Goes Live Today, Here’s What’s Changing

Update: The update is now available for download on all platforms, weighing in at 4.5GB to 5.7GB.

Original Story: Later today, Ubisoft will release The Division update 1.4 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. Before that, the game will be offline for three hours of maintenance beginning at 12:30am PT/3:30am ET/9:30am CEST.

A download size for today’s update wasn’t given ahead of time, but if the long list of patch notes is any indication, it won’t be small. Here’s some of the highlights:

New Feature: World Tiers

• Upon reaching level 30, players are now able to select a World Level Tier that controls the level of enemy NPCs encountered and the quality of the loot they drop
• Activity difficulty in a same World Tier (Normal, Hard, Challenging) will provide more rewards

There are a total of 4 World Level tiers:

• Tier 1: enemy lvl30, gear score rewards 163
• Tier 2: enemy lvl31, gear score rewards 182, unlocks Challenge difficulty, unlocks Incursions
• Tier 3: enemy lvl32, gear score rewards 204
• Tier 4: enemy lvl33, gear score rewards 229

UI Improvements

• Added a player reporting interface for PC users.
• Players now have the “mark as junk” option when equipping mods.
• Players can now mark weapon and gear items as “favorites” which locks them in their inventory. Locked items cannot be sold, shared or dismantled.
• Added a buyback option to vendor’s inventory. Players can now recover items they have accidentally sold.
• Added Quick Nav option to vendors and menus allowing players to quickly select item types they want to display.
• Weapon skins no longer take inventory space.
• Equipped items are now always displayed at the top of the inventory list.
• Recalibrated items now have an icon displayed next to their recalibrated stat/talent.
• Crafting materials can now be converted in bulk at the Crafting Station.
• Players can now deconstruct items from the Stash.
• Players now have an option to find a better server if they are currently on one that is not their best option. They can do so from the Group Management menu.
• Players are no longer able to open their inventory while under status effect.
• Recalibration bench now opens instantly instead of waiting for watch tapping animation.

Gameplay Changes

• Time-to-kill enemy NPCs has been lowered.
• Many improvements were made to enemy AI.
• Player ammo capacity has been increased by 50% after level 30.
• When matchmaking the game will now attempt to refill empty slots if the group privacy allows it.
• Incendiary and Explosive Rounds will no longer apply status effects like Stagger and On Fire.
• Accuracy will now be lowered for a short duration after performing a combat roll.
• Added a delay between leaving a group and signing up for matchmaking.
• Weapon magazines are now refilled when restocking from an ammo crate.
• The crafting material drops from the Base of Operations will now reward High-End quality after level 30.
• Removed scavenging from the game. Scavenging is removed as a secondary stat on all gear pieces. New gear pieces can no longer roll scavenging.
• The Map indicator for Rogue players now increases in size the closer they are to the player.
• Player grenade damage now scales with the current World Tier to ensure consistent efficiency against NPCs across World Tiers.
• Shotgunner NPCs: their damage falloff and accuracy have been slightly reduced. This should limit their range and lower their lethality in long to mid-range combat.
• Several improvements to NPC AI.
• Player health will now progressively regenerate to full when out of combat.
• Updated the ways NPCs react to Player Threat, now allowing players to more predictably manage enemy agro

Activities, Loots & Rewards

Global Changes

• All NPCs will now have chances to drop High-End and Gear Set items, tougher enemies (veteran, elites) have higher chances to drop.
• Removed Gear Set Weighting from all activities except Incursions. Any Gear Set can now drop from any activity.
• Weekly and Daily assignment loot caches now drop items scaled with the players current gear score.
• Added new blueprints for Level 33 mods and Gear Score 229 High End.
• Added Field Proficiency: Players can now gain experience past level 30 and earn loot caches.
• Updated Vendor Stocks:
  • Items quality will adapt better to the player level during the 1 to 30 progression.
  • Vendors now sell items Gear Score 163 to 229 as soon as the players reaches level 30.
  • Added more High End items for sale in all currencies.
  • Added more Gear Set items at Phoenix Credits and Dark Zone Vendors: Phoenix Credit Vendor sells 1 random slot of each Gear Set; Dark Zone Vendor sells 1 random Gear Set for each slot
• Vendors will now sell Sealed Cache for all currencies.
• Marksman Rifles, ARs and Shotgun prices have been lowered.
• Gear Set items now cost as much as a high end gear piece, resulting in a large price reduction.
• Item prices in DZ Funds have been adjusted. Gear score 182 item prices went slightly up, as gear score 204 items got a small price decrease. These changes were made for a more normalized, fairer price increase of items with gear score.
• Items priced in Phoenix Credit gear score 182 went down in price slightly, whereas items gear score 229 went slightly up. These changes were made for a more normalized, price increase of items with gear score.
• Drop rates have been modified for all named NPCs encountered during missions and incursions outside of the actual boss. They will no longer guarantee High-End drops. Instead, they will guarantee crafting materials and have a chance to drop a High End or Gear Set item.
• The Phoenix Credit Vendor has been removed from the Tech Wing in the Base of Operations.
• Division Tech has been removed as a requirement from all High End and Gear Set blueprints.

Open World

• Roamer NPC groups and bosses are now back in the open world. They now respawn every 4 hours.

Search & Destroy High Value Targets

• Search & Destroy will now reward the player with 5 Target Intel upon completion at the mission board for normal Search and Destroy, 10 for Critical Search and Destroy (instead of 2 and 4).
• Weekly HVT vendors now sell 2 of each contract type, instead of 1.
• Added 40 new High Value Target contracts to the contract pool.
• Prices of High Value Target contracts have been adjusted and normalized to avoid overlaps. This results in an overall slight decrease of cost for many contracts.
• Daily High Value Targets now all scale with group size.
• The difficulty of some of the hardest HVT contracts have been slightly lowered.
• Enemies in Search & Destroy missions will now be Normal and Veteran instead of mostly Elites.

Underground

• Players can now gain Underground experience past level 40 and earn more Underground Caches.

Incursions

• Falcon Lost now has additional checkpoints after each C4 explosion.
• The 4 Horsemen farm cover has been modified to prevent players from avoiding RC Cars explosions.
• Abilities cooldown will now reset when the group wipes and respawns at the last checkpoint.

Changed Gear Weighting from Incursions: instead of guaranteeing specific Gear Sets, each incursion will now guarantee specific Gear slot items

• Falcon Lost: Gloves and Masks
• Clear Sky: Body armor and Holster
• Dragon’s Nest: Backpack and Kneepads

Gear Stats

• Removed Skill Bonus from all gear items. Instead, Backpack, Holster and Kneepads will now have additional slots dedicated to Performance Mods (Backpack = 2, Holster = 1, Kneepads = 1). Note that this change will not be retroactive.
• Gear items of Gear Score 182 and higher will now provide fixed base stats in each of the main attributes (this comes in addition to existing random main stat bonus)
  • 182 = 48 Firearms, Stamina and Electronics
  • 204 = 101 Firearms, Stamina and Electronics
  • 229 = 148 Firearms, Stamina and Electronics
• Reduced the range of additional bonuses such as Critical Hit chance or Headshot Damage.
• Rebalanced bonuses provided by Performance Mods.
• Removed stats overlap between Gear Scores (this does not apply to percentage based stats).
• Armor has been overhauled:
  • Your Armor value now has a different Damage Mitigation value, depending on the World Tier you are in
  • Damage Mitigation has been capped at 70%
  • Reaching Damage Mitigation cap will now require much more armor, forcing you to make a conscious decision to spec into this stat
• Toughness now takes All Damage Resiliency into account
• Reduced Health on Kill bonuses on Gear by 50%. This change also applies to existing gear. Nomad 2-piece bonus is not impacted by this change.
• Skill Haste bonus will now directly affect Skill cooldowns by the same amount. For example, 10% Skill Haste will reduce Skill cooldown by 10%.

Global Rebalance pass on Gear Talents:

• Accomplished: Rewards from Accolades are tripled (no change)
• Astute: The first 3 bullets of your clip have a 5% higher chance to do a Critical Hit (instead of 5 to 10%)
• Cunning: After reloading, your next shot with this weapon has a 10% higher critical hit chance (instead of 5 to 10%)
• Decisive: Headshots with your side arm deal 35% more damage (instead of 10 to 25%)
• Enduring: While in your last segment, your health continuously regenerates to fill up the segment (no change)
• Forceful: Your armor is increased by 15% while your Signature Skill is active (instead of 5 to 15%)
• Inventive: Your Skill Power is increased by 15% while you are at full health (instead of 5 to 15%)
• Nimble: While doing a cover to cover move in combat, you heal 2% of your max Health for every 1 meter run (no change)
• Perceptive: Your Gold find bonuses are increased by 15% (instead of 10 to 25%, no longer increases item find)
• Prosperous: Critical headshots grant you Credits (no change)
• Rapid: The cooldown of your healing skills is decreased by 15% (instead of 5 to 15%)
• Reckless: You deal 8% more damage and receive 10% more damage (instead of 5 to 15% damage dealt)
• Recovered: Damage taken while doing a cover to cover maneuver is regenerated over 5 seconds upon reaching your destination (no change)
• Refreshed: When your health is in the last segment, all your healing is improved by 30% (instead of 10 to 30%)
• Rehabilitated: When you are affected by a status effect you are healed for 2% every second (no change)
• Rejuvenated: Consuming a medkit also removes all negative status effects from you (no change)
• Relentless: 5% of the damage dealt by your skills is returned to you as healing (instead of 3%)
• Resourceful: All healing applied to you is also applied to your skill objects (no change)
• Robust: You have 10% more armor while in cover (instead of 25 to 50%)
• Savage: Your Critical hit chance is increased by 7% against targets out of cover (instead of 5 to 15%)
• Specialized: 200% of your Firearms and Stamina are added to your Skill Power (instead of 15% – note that the drastic increase is also due to a new calculation method)
• Steadfast: While in cover, health regeneration kicks in twice as fast (no change)
• Sturdy: Your armor is increased by 15% when you stay more than 4 seconds in the same cover (instead of 5 to 15% and 10 seconds)
• Technical: While your signature skill is active, your Skill Power is increased by 15% (instead of 5 to 15%)
• Tenacious: Using a Medkit increases your damage by 10% for 10 seconds (instead of 5 to 10%)
• Vigorous: All your healing skills have Over Heal enabled (no change)

Skills

Global Changes

• Skill power will not scale linearly anymore, instead it will follow a curve of diminishing returns.
• Removed hard caps on most skills.
• Expected Skill Power is now 3 times higher. Skill Power from Electronics has been multiplied by 3.
• Skill Haste has now been capped at 60% to prevent too low cooldowns.
• All skills except signature skills now have a 5 seconds minimum cooldown.

Weapons

Global Changes

• Named weapons are no longer locked to specific Gear Scores (except Damascus, which will remain available at only one Gear Score)
  • World tier determines the Gear Score of the weapon when it drops or is bought
  • All Named weapon blueprints have been removed from their sources. They will remain in your blueprints list if you already had them, but will only allow you to craft the weapon at this specific Gear Score
  • Named weapons will now have to be acquired through loot drops and vendors
• DPS calculation now values Headshot damage differenlt yfor each weapon category to more accurately guide player when modding weapons.
• Weapon recalibration: When recalibrating a weapon, the player will now be able to pick from 6 Talents additionally to the initial one (instead of 3+1). This should lower the impact of RNG and increase the chances to actually get the talent you want before you run out of tries.
• Weapon Mods have been changed: they will now have one major bonus and an amount of smaller bonuses depending on the quality of the mod.
• Some stats on Weapon Mods have been merged into one:
  • Horizontal Stability and Initial Bullet Stability are now merged with Stability
  • Hip Fire Accuracy is now merged with Accuracy
• Damage bonuses are now additive instead of multiplicative.

Weapon Talents have been rebalanced.

• Accurate: Accuracy is improved by 25% (instead of 20 to 50%)
• Adept: Using a skill increases your critical hit chance by 7.5% for 15 seconds (instead of 3 to 10% for 5 seconds)
• Balanced: The weapon reaches max accuracy faster when shouldering (no change)
• Brutal: +12% Headshot Damage with this weapon (instead of 10 to 25%)
• Capable: Using a skill improves the handling of the weapon for 15 seconds (handling is improved by 25% instead of 20 to 50%, 15 seconds instead of 5 to 15 seconds)
• Commanding: Every kill performed while your signature is active extends the duration of the signature skill by (5 to 20)% (no change)
• Competent: Whenever you use a skill, your weapon damage is increased by 10% for 15 seconds (instead of 5 to 15%, 10 seconds)
• Coolheaded: Doing a headshot reduces all your skill cooldowns by 5% (instead of 2 to 7.5%)
• Deadly: +15% Critical hit damage (instead of 5 to 30%)
• Destructive: +15% to armor destruction with this weapon (instead of 3 to 20%)
• Determined: Killing a target reduces your skill cooldowns by 7.5% (instead of 5 to 10%)
• Dominant: Every kill performed while your signature skill is active reduces the cooldown of your other skills by 10% (instead of 3 o 10%)
• Ferocious: +10% Bonus damage to Elite and Named enemies (instead of 5 to 15%)
• Fierce: +5% Critical hit chance with this weapon (instead of 5 to 10%)
• Harmful: Each hit has a 15% chance to apply the Bleed status effect to the target (instead of 3 to 15%)
• Intense: The first bullet of a magazine has a 25% chance to apply the On Fire status effect to the target (instead of 3 to 13%)
• Meticulous: Killing a target has a 25% chance to instantly refill your magazine (instead of 5 to 25%)
• Predatory: Killing a target regenerates 35% of your health over 20 seconds (instead of 5 to 15%, 5 seconds)
• Prepared: When further than 30 meters from your target, your damage is increased by 15% (instead of 40 meters, 5 to 15%)
• Proficient: The first bullet shot when out of combat has a 50% bonus chance to result in a critical hit (instead of 25 to 50%)
• Provident: The last bullet of a magazine deals 60% more damage (instead of 25 to 60%)
• Restored: This talent has been removed from the game
• Skilled: Headshot kills with this weapon increases Signature Skill resource by 5% (instead of 3 to 13%)
• Stable: Stability is improved by 35% (instead of 20 to 50%)
• Steady: This talent has been removed from the game
• Sustained: +6% Life on kill (instead of 1 to 6%)
• Swift: Reloading is 15% faster (5 to 15%)
• Talented: Killing a target with this weapon increases your Skill Power by 15% for 20 seconds (doesn’t stack, killing a new target refreshes the timer) (instead of 3 to 10%, 5 to 15 seconds)
• Toxic: Headshots with this weapon have a 15% chance to apply the Blind status effect (instead of 5 to 15%)
• Trained: Critical hits increases your Signature Skill resource by 0.1% (no change)
• Unforgiving: Damage increases based on your missing health: 1 missing segment +10%; 2 missing segments +25% (instead of 5 to 10%, 15 to 25%)
• Vicious: Your Critical Hit chance is increased by 10% while you are at least at two health segments (instead of 5 to 15%)
• Responsive: When closer than 10 meters from your target, your damage is increased by 10% (instead of 5 to 15%)
• Self-Preserved: Critical hits with this weapon heal you for 3% of damage dealt (instead of 0.5 to 3%)

Bug Fixing

Gameplay

• Fixed a bug where NPC turrets would count towards Daily and Weekly Assignments for this NPC type.
• Fixed a bug where named bosses could respawn in the Open World when going to a safe house.
• Fixed a bug where two deprecated blueprints (Iron Sight 2 and 3) could be acquired.
• Fixed a bug where NPC turrets could become invisible and indestructible if destroyed while being repaired by the NPC.
• Fixed a bug where characters could be stuck on ladders when jumping on it after sprinting.

Underground

• Fixed a bug where NPCs could shoot players through doors while they were being opened.
• Fixed a bug where the intensity of the Directive Sickness would be decided on Operation entry, allowing for Gear swap to reduce the effect. The intensity will now dynamically adapt to the current Stamina of the player.

UI

• Fixed a bug where the supply drop helicopter could be heard from the map in a safe house.
• Fixed a bug where opening the mod menu from the inventory would always open for the equipped weapon instead of the selected weapon.
• Fixed a bug where the character and background would turn dark while trying to browse the appearance tab in the inventory.
• Fixed a bug where Audio would drop out on PS4.
• Fixed a bug where Grenade range was not displayed properly and appeared smaller than it actually is.
• Fixed a bug where bonus Medkits and Ammo gathered with specific backpacks or gear items equipped would remain after swapping to other items.
• Fixed a bug where players would reach maximum capacity for vanity items and wouldn’t be able to pick up new ones.
• Fixed a bug where using Ammo Cache Support Station in the Underground with Waste Not Want Not Directive active could result in negative ammo.
• Fixed various text errors and misspells.
• Fixed a bug where the third bonus from High End weapon mods would not show when the mod is attached to a weapon.
• Fixed a bug where some settings would reset to default when the game is restarted.
• Fixed a bug where the World Level Tier tutorial would show up every time the player would enter the Terminal.
• Fixed a bug where the Valkyria blueprint would not appear at the blueprint vendor.

To see every single change with Update 1.4, head over here.

Back in August, Ubisoft delayed the release of The Division’s next expansions to improve the core gameplay experience. With 1.4 available today, they “can’t wait to start talking about the future and in particular, Survival!” Provided nothing’s changed, Survival should be out later this year.

Ubisoft’s also looking at bringing the Public Test Server to consoles, “but that’s a complicated process and we sadly can’t guarantee anything.”

[Source: The Division (1), (2), (3), (4)]