Patch Notes - November 19 (Emergence Major Update)

A new patch for Wildgate is now available on Steam, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. 

• To share your feedback, join our official Discord server.
• To report bugs, visit our Bug Report portal.
• For technical or troubleshooting assistance, submit a help request. 

Keep reading to learn about the latest changes. For full details of all new content in Wildgate: Emergence, check out our Emergence Preview Blog!

PATCH HIGHLIGHTS

🌌 Wildgate: Emergence 

New content and ways to play, including:

• New Game Modes: Treasure Hunt and Fleet Battle
• New Prospector: Charlie
• New Ship: Outlaw
• New Weapon (Resonator) and Equipment (Medic Drone)
• New Emergence Adventure and Rewards
• New Reach Zones, Ecology and Point of Interest
• Custom Lobbies
• Balance Changes
• Matchmaking Updates
• Other Game Mode Updates
• Shop Changes - from rotating to evergreen
• Free Weekend and Free Trial Launch
• UI, UX and Performance Improvements

WILDGATE: EMERGENCE - NEW CONTENT

DEV NOTE: Welcome to Wildgate: Emergence! Previously known as Season 1, this update adds a new playable prospector and ship, new game modes and ways to play and more in our largest addition of new content since launch.

There’s a lot to cover here - as a result, we’ve split out new content at the top of these notes so you can see that first. Balance notes can be found in their own separate section.

We have done an enormous amount of work in a very short period of time on this patch with every member of the team giving it their all. It is likely that we have missed some details in these patch notes. We apologize in advance for any changes you see in the game that are not listed here.

For more background on all the new content, check out our Emergence Developer Preview video or blog!

NEW PROSPECTOR: CHARLIE

• Spirit Touched | Instantly revive allies
• Reach Rift | Teleport to an ally (alive or dead!) up to 150m away. Replaces Maghook.
• Energy Being | Healed by Cosmic Storm, Radiation, Fire, Shockfield
• Health | 100

 

NEW SHIP: THE OUTLAW

DEV NOTE: We’re excited to add our first new ship to Wildgate! In response to your feedback, the Outlaw gives smaller crews (and even solo players) different ways to play, especially in our new Treasure Hunt game mode. This is a very new ship type and a very new way to play, we are looking forward to your feedback about this new ship.

Outlaw, Solo Player

• Crew Size | 1
• Health | 60
• All Outlaw Bonuses, +2 additional Hardpoints
• Starts with 20 Fuel, 20 Ice, 1000 Ammo

 

Outlaw, 2 player

• Crew Size | 2
• Health | 50
• Max Speed: +30%, Turn Speed: +20%
• Includes Small Crew Bonuses

 

NEW GAME MODES: TREASURE HUNT AND FLEET BATTLE

Treasure Hunt:

• Players: 1 to 4 players on a ship. Any ship can be chosen for solo queuing.
• Player Crews: Maximum of 3 player ships in a match.
• Goal: Complete objectives, battle AI enemies, and collect treasures that convert into XP upon a successful escape through a Wildgate.
• Unique items - Cursed Hardpoints: Provide both risk and rewards that increase the longer time you spend in a match. Cannot be uninstalled.
• New PVE/Reach Dangers: The longer you hunt for treasure, the more dangerous the Reach becomes…
• Special Mode Rule: Players on their own ship take 50% less damage from small arms weapons.
• The Loot score bar displays total loot value earned during a run.
  • Your loot value increases when you bring items of value onboard your ship or by completing quests. 
  • Your loot score decreases when items of value are taken off of your ship.
  • When the bar is filled, you can still earn more loot. But continuing on may be risky…
• Above the bar, you can see how much of each treasure category you have on your ship.
• End of Match Summary contains a Loot Breakdown screen, which provides a summary of the loot earned and quests completed throughout a run.

 

Fleet Battle:

• Players: 2 teams of up to 12 players.
• Player Crews: 3 ships or crews per team.
• Goal: Gain points for your team by bringing artifacts to your fleet’s ships, and by blasting enemy prospectors and their ships.
• The map has been replaced with a scoreboard plus map combo screen.
• The scoreboard contains map information, and also provides the score of both fleets and personal stats for each player in the match.

 

NEW WEAPON, HARDPOINTS AND EQUIPMENT

New Weapon: Resonator

• Primary: Short range beam weapon, deal damage to increase charge.
• Secondary: Fire grenade to release charge in a 2 meter radius.

 

New Equipment: Medic Drone

• Deploy Drone | Heals allies within 10 meters, lasts 30 seconds.
• Healing | 15
• Time Between Shots | 1
• Charges | 2

 

New Hardpoints: Force Push and Fire Extinguisher

• Force Push - pushes back enemy ships and prospectors on activation.
• Fire Extinguisher - hit a button, fires on your ship go out.

 

NEW REACH ZONE: DEAD WORLDS

DEV NOTE: The Reach has many regions - some of which vary in size, shift about, or vanish (apparently) for periods of time. The Dead Worlds are a more recently discovered area. Full of smashed rocks, remnants of destroyed planets and alien ruins, they are very poorly explored. We have provided some more rules to this region as an experiment to see if these types of additional changes (how you heal and bonuses to movement) are fun additions to the game.

• Crimson Towers
  • Heals a ship when near the tower if a Vampire hardpoint is installed.
  • Vampire Devices spawn more often in this Reach zone.

• Travel Rings
  • Ships and players passing through these rings get a boost.

• Sand Storm
  • Unique storm variant.

• Reach Anomaly - No Ice
  • No Ice asteroids spawn in the Dead Worlds, making it a perilous place to explore. Savvy prospectors can still retrieve Ice from dead ships, and Sal has a chance to create some with her ongoing scrapping and re-sal-cling initiatives.

 

NEW POINT OF INTEREST: EUPHONIC SPHERES

• Euphonic Spheres
  • Massive, hollow orbs drift through the void, ancient, humming, and alive with strange resonance. 
  • Their secrets will be yours to unlock in Wildgate: Emergence.

 

NEW REACH ECOLOGY & OPPONENTS

Tar Zyglom:

• Zyglom are now infested with a sticky Tar substance found in unique areas of the Reach. They are now darker, and their gloop now sticks to your helmet and jetpack, causing temporary obfuscation and inability to fly.
  • Tar Projectiles | 3 second tar globs on player vision with a 1 second fade.
  • Tar Projectiles | Large, medium, and boss Tar Zyglom all affect players' jetpacks and prevent them from flying for 10 seconds until hit again by their tar projectiles.

 

Frost Reach Beast:

• These new frosty Reach Beasts spawn a sphere of extreme cold around them when they teleport as well as where their laser hits a target (player or environment). 
• When intersecting with those areas of cold, players will be given a “COLD” debuff which does tick damage and slows your movement until the player has left the area of cold or it has disappeared.
  • Ice Spheres | Last 30 seconds, can stack.
  • COLD Debuff | Does damage per second when standing in the cold area.
  • On death, the Reach Beast has a 20% chance of dropping a chunk of Ice resource.

 

Ghost Legion:

• The new Ghost Legion are invisible and completely cloaked to players if they’re beyond 25m, though within that range will be a bit more shimmery and visible when the player is closer to 10m.
• Ghost Legion lose their cloak temporarily when they’ve taken damage.
• Can invade ships.

 

Ghost Fleet and Bounty Hunter Ships:

• These sound pretty dangerous. Keep one eye on your sensors…

 

CUSTOM LOBBIES

• Game Modes Available: Artifact Brawl.
• Players to Start: Minimum of 4 players across 2 teams.
• Lobby chat is available to communicate with everyone in the custom lobby.
• Spectating: Up to 2 players can be designated as custom spectators.
• Invites: via invite code or from the social panel.
• Ship Choices: by assigned team captains, who pick the ship for their team.
• Lobby Options:
  • Hide lobby code (for streaming).
  • Anonymize player names during game.
  • Eliminated teams can spectate.
  • Set random game seed for proceduralism.

 

 

BALANCE UPDATES

DEV NOTE: You will notice several changes to make “camping-while-boarding” much harder to do. These balance changes are intended to allow boarding to remain powerful but to encourage players to complete a mission and then leave.

We have also removed several of the short-ranged one-shots from the game (Rock and Ion Melee) to make close range combat less bursty. The ship changes are all an attempt to deal with the new reality of our ship designs which favor speed for the smaller-crewed ships. Now, only small crew ships are fast (Scout and Outlaw).

The Hunter is no longer fast with shields down, which is offset with additional health. The small crew bonus has been significantly redone to enable players to play more completely with less crew on their ship.

General

• Respawn: Players don't get a respawn orb if they die on an enemy ship.

 

Ships

• Players cannot re-arm on enemy ship armories and can no longer revive inside an enemy ship.
• Scout is now a 3 player ship.
• Scout has 80 HP up from 70.
• Scout is now equipped with a booster hardpoint.
• Bastion +5 health (130 to 135).
• Scout and Outlaw have a Security Robot AI that defends them from enemy players.
• Hunter is no longer fast with shields down. Hunter has +10 health (90 to 100).

 

Turrets

• Only macro and bomb cannon projectiles are now shootable.
• Spec Ops scatter cannon force down from 5 to 2.

 

Prospector: Ion

• No longer has a damage buff to melee when meleeing players/AI. Damage to ship parts is unchanged.

 

Prospector: Kae

• Cannot teleport holding the artifact. (this also applies to Charlie’s teleport)

 

Equipment: Rock

• Now has 3 charges and does 80 damage.

 

Weapon: AIM-e

• Additional 50% damage buff against AI enemies only.

 

The Reach

• Health Crystals now give +2 Health (up from 1).
• Shielded Rogue Turrets now are only damaged by ship weapons.

 

Mission Updates

• Cut the following missions: Outlive Ships, Interact Artifact, Place 2nd or better, Weekly Blast Players.

 

Small Crew Bonus Updates

• Small crew bonus adjusts based on number of players.
• 3 people: Unchanged from currently.
• 2 people: Have 2 robot gunners.
• 1 person: 50% damage reduction and 50% damage increase vs AI enemies, and you get a robo security defender robot.

 

GAME MODE UPDATES

DEV NOTE: With two new game modes that offer different ways to play at a lower intensity (or ‘lower sweatometer level’) than Artifact Hunt (now Artifact Brawl), we have new options to help new players into Wildgate.

As a result, we’ve renamed some game modes to try to direct new players, and changed our VS AI experience to take advantage of the fact that Treasure Hunt is now available.

Our hope is that new players will try Training and Explore The Reach (previously VS AI), before diving into other game modes. If you want to jump into a less pressured Wildgate experience vs AI to go loot some treasure and progress your Adventures, now you can!

Artifact Hunt -> Artifact Brawl

• Artifact Hunt has been renamed to Artifact Brawl.
• You can now queue with a party size of 1, and with fill crew off.

 

VS AI -> Explore the Reach

• VS AI modes have been renamed to Explore the Reach.
• Explore the Reach (VS AI) modes are now played in Treasure Hunt game mode.
• Explore The Reach (VS AI) now has “Easy” as the default variant instead of “Hard”.

 

Fleet Battle

• Small crew bonus widget updated to say "Fleet Battle Bonus" for Fleet Battle game mode.

 

Training Mode

• Training Loot Rooms now 4 items and adjusted loot spawning.
• AI Invasions removed in this mode.

 

MATCHMAKING

• Updated several rules to how matchmaking actually works and how player teams are formed (especially with regards to the new game modes).
• Backfill enabled for empty/missing teams in Artifact Brawl and Treasure Hunt. Backfill in these modes is only possible until teams and ships leave the Lucky Docks and spawn into the Reach.
• Added the ability to start a match with fewer players (and backfill with AI ships).
• Per-ship max team size to support Scout and Outlaw.
• Fixed issue with final ship selection not matching players' preferences after queuing for an extending period.
• Fleet Battle: Backfill is enabled into set teams, smallest team first. In this mode, players can be backfilled into a game until 90% score is reached by one team.
• Fleet Battle: Games can start with a minimum of 6 players (1 player per ship in the match. There will always be 6 teams and 6 ships.

 

SHOP CHANGES

• The in-game store has updated to an “evergreen” format, introducing an organized way for all items to be available at all times.
• Moved store tabs down to the side.
• Added the ability to scroll through content.

 

FREE TRIAL LAUNCH

• Free Trial will be available directly from the main product page for Wildgate once it’s available on all platforms. For more details on dates, please see our Preview Blog.
• Players can download and add the trial to their library just like any other game.
• Trial players have full access to all game modes, and can unlock weapons, prospectors, equipment, and ships through selecting Adventure tracks and earning XP. This progression will be kept if a trial player decides to buy Wildgate.
• Trial players can chat with, become friends with, and queue with other players in the game like normal - once the Trial expires, players keep their social connections, but can no longer join a pre-made group.
• Trial players will finish the Trial and no longer be able to queue when they hit prospector level 5. Trial players will not have access to daily missions, keeping the leveling rate consistent and allowing for more matches before the trial expires.

 

DEV NOTE: Separate from the Free Trial launches, we are also running a Free Weekend for Wildgate from November 20 - November 24 on Steam/Xbox (see preview blog for more details). During Free Weekend, people will be able to play as much as they like. After this ends, Free Trial (below) is our ongoing, always-available experience for people to try Wildgate out.

 

REWARDS

• Added a login reward (Chibi Charlie) with the introduction of Charlie as a prospector.
• Added new sprays and titles as rewards (and updated unlock messaging):

• Charlie Pixel spray, Chibi Charlie spray.
• Spectral Reaper title, Wildgate Challenger title, Wildgate Champion title.

 

UI, UX AND PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS

• You can now equip up to four fireworks! Fireworks can be selected from a radial wheel similar to emotes.
• Updated spinner animation on loading screens.
• Updated clipping issues in Crew Hub.
• Made changes to prevent flickering text and fixed offset alignment issues.
• Cosmetic and customization screens now reset properly between tabs.
• Added icons for ship names and player titles in the Adventure track.
• Added and improved warning messages for small crews and solo play using non-solo ships with fill crew disabled.
• Moved probe’s energy/health bars around and fixed a bug where the probe energy HUD backing color was incorrect.
• Fixed the teleport home HUD prompt to be consistent with the turbine input prompt.
• Updated Ship Helm HUD to accommodate prospector's hand positioning, and the addition of the Smuggler’s turn.
• Made it easier to read Ship HUD text against a light background for certain languages.
• Made updates to the ping-wheel and improved the menu behavior.
• The small crew bonus widget is now constrained to 2 lines and has been shrunken down to resolve overlap issues.
• The Tutorial text widget has been moved up to also help resolve the overlap issue. Additional improvements still to be made.
• Made a variety of map performance improvements.