Patchnotes v.0.6.0.57 8 min read

Posted on | by Community Management

This update expands Persist Online with new content, improved visuals, and deeper combat. Every weapon type now has its own identity, from auto-reloading SMGs to rage-fueled hammers and riposting swords, making fights more tactical and distinct.

Zombie encounters are faster, deadlier, and full of surprises — some now spawn Rotworms or inflict debuffs when killed. New props, lootables, and harvestables bring more life to the world, while zones like the Ashwater Medical Center and Beckwood have been completely overhauled.

The new Safe Trade system lets players securely exchange items and cash, and the switch to the Universal Render Pipeline (URP) enhances lighting, weather, and water for a more immersive world.

1. Zombie Abuse Protection

  • To prevent players from killing melee enemies from positions those enemies can’t reach (such as car roofs), we’ve adjusted their behavior. If an enemy is unable to reach its target, or if the path to the target becomes significantly longer too often (indicating pathing abuse), the enemy will enter “Protected Mode.”
  • If the enemy is killed before having a valid path towards the player, it can still die, but it won’t drop any loot. This prevents players from exploiting unreachable positions to farm enemies risk-free.

2. R6+ hunting experience

  • We weren’t satisfied with how zombie hunts felt in the higher rings. Currently, zombies have too much HP, making fights feel slow and grindy. At the same time, these encounters aren’t particularly dangerous, since players can often pull single enemies without much threat. To bring back the tension and pace of the early rings – where fighting groups of zombies felt intense – we made the following adjustments to improve the overall experience and increase the challenge:
    • increased the number of zombies in rings 6 and higher
    • adjusted the HP of zombies by the following percentages:
      • R5: -17% HP (this change makes sure, that the transition from R5 to R6 is smoother)
      • R6: -33% HP
      • R7: -41% HP
      • R8: -41% HP
      • R9: -48% HP
  • We didn’t reduce the loot chance of the enemies accordingly yet. But might do that in the future. Additionaly we do not have enough information yet if the damage numbers are to high (because zombies have been abused or single pulled and killed before they could do any harm). We might lower the damage later.
  • Starting with R6 “Decayed Zombies” (male and female) will have a suprise for you. If they die, they trigger one of the follwing effects:
    • The player who killed the zombie gets a random mental or physical debuff.
    • Create an area on the ground in which players get the debuffs suppressed and dazed.
    • 3 Rotworms (ranged or melee) will emerge from the cadaver and attack you.
  • We added a few test hunting grounds so you can experience these changes. Please note: these hunting grounds are mostly temporary and won’t remain in the game permanently.
    • R6: Junkyard, south east of Ashwater
    • R6: new Hospital, upper floor, south-west Ashwater
    • R6: Route 13 (new content), coastline in the east behind Fort Erf
    • R7: Small city, south west of Ashwater behind the mountain
    • R8: Observatory on the north of the mountain in the east
    • R9: in the Desert City in the east of Ashwater
  • We will closely monitor these changes and make further parameter adjustments if needed. Some of these concepts – such as reducing HP and increasing spawn rates – might also be applied to the lower rings over time.
  • Additonaly we reduced the respawn time in ALL rings! (slower respawn)

3. Weapon Identities

All type of weapons got 1 or 2 specific identity passives which distinguish them from other types:

  • Assault Rifles:
    • Firing Modes: Firing Modes “Full Auto” and “Burst Fire” can be switches with ALT-MOUSEWHEEL or F1/F2 after the weapon in already selected. Burst Fire’s DPS is a bit lower but has much more accuracy for longer range. The switch is seamless and doesn’t trigger any cooldowns.
    • Skill “Burst Fire” is replaced by “Kneecapper” (Status Effect (6s), +40% damage, Hits apply Cripple (4s), Way of the unfading: Status effect to 8s, Way of the Berserker: additional +25% damage)
    • Skill Cl-Clamp Grip is changed: Bonus to Accuracy and Recoil is removed, whiel not mocing: Hits apply vulnerable (5s), existing damage bonus is increased
  • Pistols:
    • Pivoting: While moving forward: +20% damage, while moving backwards:+25% evasion rating and +25% DR rating
    • Stabilized Aim: No accuracy decrease while moving
  • Revolver:
    • Stacking Hits: each hit increases of the same magazine increases the damage of the next hit by 20% (added, which means last shoot of a 6er magazine after 5 hits is +100%), resets at miss, at reload and after 5s
    • to compensate that a bit, base damage of all revolvers is decreased
  • Shotguns:
    • Scattershot: Already implemented 
    • Knockback:  Already implemented (to make tbis special for Shotguns all Pistols and Revolvers will lose knockback)
  • Sub Machine Guns:
    • Auto-Reload: magazine reloads automatically once it’s empty, this reload takes half the time of a manual reload
  • Machine Guns: Penetration (already implemented with the skill system rework
  • Rifles: Scope, Concealed (already implemented with the skill system rework
  • Axes: 
    • Executioner: 100% crit chance for targets with HP < 20%
    • The old passive “Executioner” ist replaced by “Headman’s Edge” which increases the HP trigger for the identity Executioner up to 30%.
  • Hammer: 
    • Rage: Each hit adds rage up to 100% (depending on targets hit and attack speed). Higher rage results in more movement speed, attack speed and damage reduction.
    • The old passive “Amplify Weakness” ist replaced by “Wrath Unbound” which increases the rage gain up to +50%.
  • Knives: 
    • Backstab: +75% damage against targets out of sight
    • The old passive “Backstab” is replaced by “Cutthroat” which increased the back stabe damage up to +150%
  • Swords: 
    • Riposte: On evade melee attack: Damage as a melee attack to ALL (! that’s a huge buff !) targets in melee range: 25%
    • The old passive “Riposte” is replaced by “Opening Strike” which increased Riposte Damage up to +50%
    • 2nd identity “Momentum”: increases evasion by 10% multiplied with the percentage of the current stamina (means 4% at 40% stamina for example). This is needed to make riposte stronger in the early game while chars have less evasion. Won’t change so much for higher levels.

4. Content

  • Fully added Ashwater Medical Center zone (new hospital complex) with enemies, lights and loot, + new voice lines
  • Completely reworked Beckwood zone with new vegetation and hunting grounds
  • Adjusted lights across the game world to fit the new render pipeline better (still ongoing)
  • Fixed some quests where highlighting didn’t work properly on questables
  • All Harvestables have been technically reworked under the hood for better server performance and how they are spawned in and out
  • Added more information to loading screen hints    
  • Tweaked idle pathing of all enemies to not wander too far from their original spawn for more behavior control
  • Reworded a couple lines in the journal for clearer understanding
  • Added a few more radios to the game world
  • Added new zombie corpse models to the game and exchanged the old zombie corpses with them
  • Added several new harvestable types like dirt mounds, graves, crashed drones and many more (not all are present in the game world yet)
  • Fixed a few areas where enemies had trouble navigating
  • Added props, harvestables, lootables, and enemies to several previously empty buildings in Ashwater.
  • Added new Sword “Bushwacker”. This can be found in the game world now.

5. Safe Trade

  • Press E to offer a Safe Trade to another player in front of you. This mode allows you to securely trade items and cash with another player.

6. Balancing

  • Decreased rate of fire and increased damage on shotgun NPCs by 33% each
  • Increased character HP for level up: every 5 levels from level 24 to level 74 gives 750 HP instead of 500 HP
  • Decreased labor costs for cooking common recipes from 1 to 0
  • Decreased labor costs for crafting tools (Poor: 5 –> 4, Common: 12 –> 6, Good: 20 –> 8, Remarkable: 30 –> 12, Excellent: 40 –> 16, Superior: 60 –> 20)
  • Decreased labor costs for trading resources from 10 to 5.
  • Increased daily reduction for delivery missions by factor 1.66 (that’s a buff!)
  • Increased damage of all pistols except Desert Eagle by 17%
  • Decreased damage of all rifles by 10%
  • Increased reload of FN P90 and M1928 from 1.5s to 2s
  • Decreased damage of all revolvers by 10% (see Weapon Identities)
  • Kill Shot (Assault Rifle): from 300% – 450% (with Enhancer) down to 200% – 350%
  • Mow’em Down (Machine Gun): from +15% – +25% (with Enhancer) to +20% – +40%
  • Zeroed In (Machine Gun): from +20% – +35% (with Enhancer) to +20% – +45%
  • Suppressive Fire (Machine Gun): from +25% – +40% (with Enhancer) to +30% – +50%
  • Right On Target (Pistol): from +20% – +40% (with Enhancer) to +25% – +50%
  • Artery Shot (Pistol): from 150% – 225% (with Enhancer) to 150% – 250%
  • Primus Inter Pares (Rifle): from +30% to +150% nerfed to +10% to +50% 
  • Red Mist (Rifle): From 350% – 500% (with Enhancer) down to 150% – 250%
  • Reduced default cooldowns which apply to all weapon skills, most profession skills, most armor skills and some more:
    • Tier 1 skills:  55 /  48 /  42 /  37 / 33 / 30 to  50 /  44 /  37 / 32 / 28 / 25
    • Tier 2 skills: 110 /  96 /  84 /  74 / 66 / 60 to 100 /  86 /  74 / 64 / 56 / 50
    • Tier 3 skills: 165 / 144 / 126 / 111 / 99 / 90 to 150 / 129 / 111 / 96 / 84 / 75
    • no changes for ultimates
  • Sledgehammer: increased attack speed (0.5 -> 0.8), reduced damage (120 ->75) (DPS stays the same)
  • Pitch Puddle (Construction): Size doubled
  • All pistols and revolvers (including starter pistol) will lose knockback (see Weapon Identities)
  • Range of “medium” ranged weapons is increased by 25%
  • Decreased room upgrade costs in the Safehouse (up to 77% decrease for higher levels)
  • Increased reload time of all SMGs (was neccessary after introducing the weapon identity “Auto-Reload”, FN P90 and M1928: 2s to 3.6s, all others: 1.5s to 2.8s)

6. Further Changes

  • Changed render pipeline to URP
  • Reworked all weather situations
  • Reloading has a progress bar now and can be aborted by using consumables, skills, change a weapon etc.
  • Reworked the Radial Menu if you have more than 1 choice for E-actions
  • Smaller UI rework in the Safehouse
  • The Elite/Protected icon on Spitters is now placed correctly.
  • Skill objects (mine, turret…) can be placed while moving
  • The Node UI (formerly “Claims”) has been reworked as a preparation for future single-player nodes you’ll be able to claim. With this update, only the fishing node is available for now.
  • Fixed a bug where the “Faster Skinning” skill was not functioning correctly
  • Fixed a bug that allowed the same material as the input to be selected as the output for a trade in the safehouse

7. Bugfixes

  • Fixed Zombie clumping
  • Fixed some problems with the Safe Trade
  • Fixed Tooltip of MedPulse Unit
  • Improved water surfaces
  • Prevent indoor weather effects