On Wednesday, Dec 17, Techland introduced a brand new free update for Dying Light: The Beast, adding a new difficulty level, Nightmare Experience, a smart and dangerous volatile, the Alpha, Hunger System, along with other minor additions and changes.
Nightmare Experience
The Nightmare Experience is the most challenging difficulty level in the game designed for seasoned players looking for a serious survival experience.
It makes Human and Infected enemies stronger, smarter, and more aggressive, reacting faster to players’ actions using their heightened senses.
It also brings nuances to the Dark Zone as now, on Nightmare, some of them may also include Volatiles during the day, and gameplay becomes more challenging as resources are limited and they need to be managed more carefully.
The Alpha Volatile
This update also introduces a new Alpha Volatile. Techland describes it as the most powerful infected in Castor Woods, and the most intelligent Volatile in the history of Dying Light.
It tracks the player’s scent, ignores the UV light from the flashlight, and can hunt and follow them across the map until they reach a safe zone or manage to kill it.
He’s smart and dangerous, enforcing a careful and strategic playstyle during the night.
New survival mechanics – Hunger System
The Hunger System affects stamina, health regeneration, and combat efficiency.
The longer players ignore hunger, the stronger the penalties become. Additionally the flashlight drains over time and will dim and flicker as the battery gets low, requiring players to craft or find replacements.
Completing the hardest challenges in this difficulty rewards players with exclusive items, including unique charms, and a special outfit, and a new vehicle skin.
Call of The Beast Community Challenge
The devs are continuing the Call of the Beast community initiative. The weekly challenges, where hitting shared goals, help you earn rewards while building momentum together to unlock a special Legendary Reward.
We are currently in Challenge 9, where players are racing to loot millions of items at night. The next challenge kicks off on Thursday, December 18.
More Read
Other than the above additions and updates, here’s a look at the official patch notes for the update:
Update 1.5 full patch notes
New Finishers
We now have 2 new finishers to give you even more variety of bloody execution on enemies.
- 1 for one-handed blunt weapons
- 1 for one-handed slashing weapons
Additional Fixes and Improvements
Gameplay
New Game+ & Legendary Levels:
- Adjusted the NewGame+ and Legendary Levels progression curves to reduce farming exploits and balance the experience better.
- Starting a NewGame+ will now check the Legend Level of players to adjust enemies difficulty accordingly.
- Reaching Legend Level 300 before reaching NewGame+ 10 will make enemies’ difficulty adjust accordingly.
Legend Levels:
- Fixed the possibility for players with no Legend Levels progress to pick up Legend Levels reward weapons left by coop teammates and obtain blueprints of such weapons
- Balanced mods bonus damage related to Legend Levels Rewards
- Balancing of durability of legend weapons Balanced situation where car HP scaled inconsistent with player damage for legend levels
- Fix for the buff “+15% damage (humans) of “Butcher’s Dream” failing to apply correctly
- Fix for critical hit damage does not scaling accordingly with legend levels
- Fixed cases of weapon mods and charms multiply base damage different than the one visible to the player
NewGame+:
- Balancing amount of XP granted on higher NewGame+ levels
- Suiciders, Gas Tank Bitters and Gas Tank Virals fixes of explosion strength for higher NewGame+ levels
- Fixed the case of XP loss on Story Mode NewGame+ upon player’s death
- Fixes related to AI having higher ranks than quest rank in cases where it is not intended
Performance & Stability:
- Fixed multiple COOP crash cases when peer joins the host
- Fixed a crash triggered by changing FPS limiter values
- Fixed instances of FPS drops when switching graphics settings from Ultra to High
Graphical improvements:
- Raytracing:
- Fixed laggy tree shadows when Raytracing enabled
- Applied various lighting fixes in Side Quest interiors on Raytracing mode
- Fixed COOP synchronization issues on PS5
- Fixed graphical artifacts in the Exile cave upon adjusting Upscaler settings
- Implemented various occluder fixes across the environment
- Fixed rectangular blood shapes on the Peacekeeper weapon
- Fixed of reward icons glowing irregularly depending on how players highlight or claim rewards
Environmental & navigational fixes:
- Resolved an environmental issue in the Exile Cave where players get stuck behind a tent
- Corrected several geometry gaps visible when climbing ledges in the old town
- Addressed several geometry gaps visible when climbing ledges in the swamps area
UI & Audio:
- Fixed the big message for Legend Level gained suggests using “U” key for the Skills Menu instead of the correct “L” key
- Resolved missing strings related to Legend Levels
- Applied several Steamdeck UI issues related to misaligned or overlapping text
- Fixed weapon damage display for high Legend Levels (above 10m)
- Fixed the crest of recommended Legend Levels in the NewGame+ config screen not matching the actual Legend Levels crest of players on higher NewGame+ levels
- Re-enabled Photo Mode at the beginning of NewGame+
- Adjusted the NewGame+ category title in Public Games section to prevent overlapping with other titles in certain languages
- Corrected the camouflage skill sound not playing correctly
If you haven’t played the game yet, now is the best time!
