Wasteland 3 - Patch 1.3.3: New Features

Patch 1.3.3 for Wasteland 3 brings new features, including respecing and perma-death mode.

Do you remember that time we offered a new difficulty mode that was easier than easy, and it caused everyone in the community to think we'd lost our minds? We remember. We remember it so hard that we've been tossing and turning in our beds thinking of a way to show you we hadn't lost our minds. Because we haven't lost our minds. We haven't, so stop saying we have, Mother! Early March we're targeting the release of Patch 1.3.3, lovingly titled "Death & Taxes." You can tell that we're not messing around here. This is exactly the sort of update that those among you who chided the idea of a story mode are going to love. And we get it, because pain is fun. In this update we're adding a few new features, including Permanent Death (aka "Permadeath"), an optional Difficult Skill Checks Mode, and Respeccing. Read on for the gory details.

"Permadeath" Mode

No matter how many bullets fly past you or how many enemies you're assaulting at one time, you're never really going to feel the threat of despair until you're able to lose a character. And by lose, we don't mean misplace, we mean lose to death. With permadeath, you're going to get exactly that because it works exactly how you think it should. When activated at a game's start, it turns your nearly immortal-ish digital characters into something more or less mortal (for a video game), and means they'll croak when their health reaches zero.



One other important note here is that we've made the decision to keep Permadeath as a single player-only feature which cannot be enabled in multiplayer. As much fun as is to watch your friends subjected to painful and horrific video gae deaths, co-op splits the team down the middle, and one player losing everyone and then watching for (potentially) hs until the other can make it back to Ranger HQ just isn't a good time.

The Permanent Death feature also cannot be disabled once you have opted in at the start of your game. So choose, and choose wisely.

• When life runs out a Ranger will go into a Downed state, and you'll have X rounds to bring them back into the battle. If you fail to do so you'd normally be able to bring them back with a Nitro Spike or visit to a Doc, but with Permadeath turned on party members permanently DIE. This is really going to bum someone out who didn't read the fine print.
• Once a party member shuffles off their mortal coil, their Party Portrait is removed from the HUD and other game interfaces, and they can no longer be selected or used. This is because they are dead.
• Lest you thought that you would be able to commune with the dead via the Party Screen back at HQ, you cannot. Much as necromancers would have you believe otherwise, you cannot add the dead back into your party.
• God forbid, if all Rangers in your party are killed permanently at any one time, you will earn a non-negotiable, do-not-pass-go, Game Over death screen. This is because the light of life has been extinguished from the party and the forces of evil have triumphed. Unless you were the forces of evil, in which case perhaps the forces of light and good prevailed when they killed you.

As an additional note, permanent death enabled games will be noted as such in the save game directory menu - that way you'll have a good idea at a glance at which of your sessions are more prone to give you indigestion and make your heart palpitate wildly from time to time.

Difficult Skill Checks

Perhaps the idea of permanently dead Rangers isn't your speed? Or maybe you're looking for the ultimate challenge with Supreme Jerk, Permadeath, AND something that'll put your point-spending prowess to the test. Introducing Difficult Skill Checks Mode.

This option is toggleable when starting a new game on the Select Difficulty Window, within the Customize Difficulty sub-menu. When turned on, this will increase all skill checks in the game by +2, up to a maximum of 10.

• World interactions (Ex: locked doors)
• Conversation interactions (Ex: kiss-ass checks in conversations)
• Hacking and Taming checks on animals and robots
• Item skill requirements on gear (ex: weapons have skill requirements)
• Attribute requirements on gear (ex: heavy armor requires strength)

(Look. We know. We know it's not just skills. But we wanted to go the extra mile for you. Yes, you, reading this, right now. You're worth it.)



This optional mode was designed to force your Ranger team to hyper-specialize to be successful, making your jack-of-all-trades 'master-of-all' party no longer possible. This is great for a 2nd run-through if you want to be forced into some hard character build decisions.



Respec Feature

Also coming in 1.3.3, you're going to be able to re-specialize your characters, with a caveat or two. Firstly, this can only happen back at Ranger HQ, within the Manage Squad screen. HQ is a relatively warm and comfortable place, so naturally it makes sense that we'd offer such a posh option there. Secondly, there will be a cost for respeccing or recruiting Rangers beyond the first two at HQ. No one teaches for free (except maybe those folks on YouTube) so expect to eventually shell out some in-game coin to be able to do so.



If you are loading a pre-1.3.3 save beyond the initial recruitment point at Ranger HQ, we're still going to offer you two more free recruit customizations. Beyond that, the cost for respeccing increases by 1.75x (rounded to the nearest $50), up to a maximum of $3000, each time you use it. Additionally, Hiring and Retraining fees increase across the entire squad, not per-character.



Character Customization Additions

When you're digging into that new Permadeath run you're going to be able to do so in style. It's not like a cool helmet design is necessarily going to save the day, but it might just make you feel badass enough to do the thing that makes the thing happen that blows up the thing. In Patch 1.3.3 we're baking in 23 new character customization options (tattoos, scars, and helmets) that were born of another partnership with renown post-apoc costume designers. We'll share more specific details about those in an upcoming article. Stay tuned.



Colorado's just getting warmed up.

Well heck! We're not even into the meat of the year and Colorado is already looking 100% finer than it did at the close of 2020. Did we mention 1.3.3 is getting a heck-ton* of improvements and fixes as well? Well it is! Full patch notes will be delivered when the patch goes live next month.

More information.

All the bugs in WL3 are still major enough to not let you complete major quests. I've gone through 3 play-throughs, one bug won't let me finish the game when I have Cordite with me. Another time I recruited one of the Patriarchs kids and he just vanished with all my equipment. I get the "gist" of WL3, explore, your team varies and you get different dialog based on your crew, but the map is Horrible, moving in the map is Horrible. The only thing I liked was the second combat started, the game doesn't suck as much. The polish is really really missing, dialog is for an 8th grader, someone said the graphics are good-really-this is what you like about a game?! I won't be loading up the latest patch.

Hmm now would surely be the time to release DLC that actually adds content not cosmetics. I'm not kidding finished this game on release and never replayed it again.

On a side note it's been almost eight months since it was released with no DLC.

Sounds like I didn't miss anything by waiting with this one.

Strange how different people experience games differently. I played the game when it came out and only hit 1 quest bug. I completed the game without any issues.

Originally Posted by Pladio
Strange how different people experience games differently. I played the game when it came out and only hit 1 quest bug. I completed the game without any issues.

Me too

I have a 3 yr old mid spec PC and the game ran fine and I had a blast despite never having played Wasteland games previously ….so much so I went and bought Wasteland 2 afterwards as a " prequel" .

I'll keep the bench warm on the "waiting for the definitive edition" section!

I loved WL3 but don't I remember it being especially friendly to a Permadeath playstyle.

WL2 is not horrible. WL1 was so popular because it introduced so many new features in games (RPG's), it was like after years of playing games like "Escape from Castle Wolfenstein" and then playing the release of Doom; a real quantum leap for WL1/RPG play, and why it can't be forgotten.

Originally Posted by Maximous
All the bugs in WL3 are still major enough to not let you complete major quests. I've gone through 3 play-throughs, one bug won't let me finish the game when I have Cordite with me. Another time I recruited one of the Patriarchs kids and he just vanished with all my equipment. I get the "gist" of WL3, explore, your team varies and you get different dialog based on your crew, but the map is Horrible, moving in the map is Horrible. The only thing I liked was the second combat started, the game doesn't suck as much. The polish is really really missing, dialog is for an 8th grader, someone said the graphics are good-really-this is what you like about a game?! I won't be loading up the latest patch.

You complain about pretty much the whole game but you still played it 3 times? Odd.

For me, I loved the game - and I guess call me lucky, but I don't recall running into any bugs (and I played it at launch). Anyway, for those who haven't played it yet, I think it is a really good RPG - especially if you liked turn-based combat.

Originally Posted by Pladio
Strange how different people experience games differently. I played the game when it came out and only hit 1 quest bug. I completed the game without any issues.

I had some annoyances like the party order changing but no major bugs as far as I remember.

Permadeath is hardly a problem unless you play Ironman. And since you can recruit new Rangers at your current level it's not a big deal even then, just an annoyance.

Keep it coming! I expect to play W3 on version 2.0 by Christmas? x

Well, i don't see any release date for this patch .. unless i'm blind

None of these features interest me. But it's probably sufficiently patched up with this release to give it a shot.