What's in this release

Droploop 0.4.0 is a rebuild of the game. The loop, the economy, combat and the world are all new. Instead of choosing a map and wandering a huge area, you now pick a target from the drop menu, land on a small site with a countdown running, and try to get out with what you found. Gear is rebuilt around shields, five tiers and a new crafting chain, and there are ten new sites to fight over.

A fresh start

With 0.4.0, accounts, stashes, progress and friend lists reset. You register again, and everyone, new or returning, starts through the new first drop. Nothing is converted from the old game.

The new loop

  • The drop menu. Aboard the ship, a menu lists six targets. Each card shows the site, a hazard level from 1 to 5, who holds it, a short description and up to two modifiers. Everyone sees the same menu, and it turns over every 20 minutes.
  • Small sites and a countdown. Raids happen on small sites, 100 to 167 tiles a side, instead of one huge map. A countdown starts when you land and lasts roughly six to twelve minutes, depending on the site and the hazard level. If it runs out before you extract, it counts as dying.
  • Extraction. Walk to an extraction pad and hold it for ten seconds. Damage, or walking away, interrupts it.
  • Death costs everything you carry. Die, run out of time or disconnect mid-raid and you lose what you were carrying and wearing. Nothing is paid back.
  • A first drop with no tutorial. New players go from login straight into a shared raid at Grassland Camp, hazard level 1, with one mission: get back to the ship.
  • Drop together. Parties of up to four drop together and land in the same area. Players who aren't in your party are hostile and take full damage from you.
  • Shared raids. Players who pick the same target land in the same raid, up to four, until its countdown is about halfway through.
  • Workshops in the raid. Every site has a workshop: one on small sites, two on medium. You can craft any recipe you know there and recycle at half the rate of your ship.
  • A new layout every raid. Every site is generated fresh each time you drop.

Hazard levels

Every target has a hazard level from 1 to 5. Higher levels shorten the countdown, bring higher-tier enemies that hit harder, aim tighter and react faster, pay out better loot and add modifiers. At level 1 every enemy is tier 1. At level 5 you can meet tier 5, and named unique enemies, Iron Gut, Twitch and The Commandant, show up more often. The numbers are still being tuned.

Gear and crafting

  • Five tiers. Weapons and shields come in tiers 1 to 5. There are eight weapon lines (Light SMG, Heavy SMG, PDW, Medium Assault Rifle, Medium DMR, Heavy Shotgun, Heavy Battle Rifle and Heavy Bolt Rifle) and three shield lines (Light, Medium and Heavy), plus five unique weapons and three unique shields that can't be crafted. They replace the old named guns and their Mk2 versions. There are no sidearms.
  • Salvage and the recycler. Loot includes junk salvage in six material families, five tiers each. Break it down at the recycler, which handles batches, to get the materials you craft with. Better gear recycles for half its recipe.
  • The fabrication bench. Crafting has three tabs: Fabricate, Scan and Modify. Gear is built through a chain of parts, and each tier needs an advanced component of its own tier, dropped by enemies. If you're missing an input, the bench names the recipe you need, and it can craft the intermediate parts for you. There are 146 recipes, up from 31.
  • Blueprints. Scan at your bench to unlock recipes: 29 are known from the start and 117 need a blueprint. Eleven come only from missions.
  • Mods. There are 72 mods in three marks across five slots: muzzle, optic, magazine, underbarrel and stock. Each has one upside and one fixed downside. Some show on the weapon in the world, and laser sights draw a beam that enemies can see. Unique weapons carry a built-in mod that can't be removed.
  • Repair kits. One repair kit fixes weapons, shields and exoskeletons. Bench repair is gone. Gear has one condition bar, and a worn shield loses charge.
  • Disposable gear. If you drop with an empty weapon, shield or exoskeleton slot, the ship fills it with basic disposable gear: a Light SMG, a Light Shield, a Basic Exoskeleton, 5 magazines, 2 bandages, a smoke grenade and a repair kit. It disintegrates when you return and can't be stashed or salvaged. There is no free loadout to choose.
  • Carry space. The carry grid is 5 columns by 6 rows. A worn bag adds 4 more rows. The exoskeleton adds carry weight and an extra quick slot.
  • Medical items. Bandages heal over time, MediKits and Trauma Packs heal more, and a Stim Pack restores 80 health in one second.
  • Grenades and mines. Six throwables: frag, smoke, flare, incendiary, proximity mine and hunter seeker.
  • Missions. Missions in five lines unlock blueprints and gear. The first one sends you back to the ship after your first raid.

Combat

  • Shields replace armor. Armor is gone. You now have three slots: shield, exoskeleton and bag. A shield takes every bullet until its charge is gone, then the hit that breaks it carries its leftover damage to your health. Rounds with higher penetration drain it faster, and it recharges after a pause. Light, medium and heavy shields trade charge against speed, and a shield glows behind you in a colour that matches its class.
  • Range matters. Every gun does full damage inside its effective range, less beyond it and none past its maximum range. The crosshair colour shows which band you're in, and scopes reach farther than iron sights.
  • Faster movement. Base speed is 25 percent higher and sprinting is faster. Strafing and backing up are slower, shallow water slows you down, and climbing is slower than dropping down.
  • Downed is rewritten. You go down once per raid and bleed out in 30 seconds. A stim revives you in one second at any time, a teammate revives you in six, and you can hold to give up. The locals wait a five-second beat before they finish a downed player.
  • Two factions hold the sites. There are 18 kinds of enemy across the scavengers and the civic defenders, in tiers 1 to 5, with their own gear that drops when they die. Civic squads fight around a leader whose aura makes the squad aim steadier. Kill the leader and they fall back.
  • Named enemies. Iron Gut, Twitch and The Commandant replace the old bosses. Each carries unique gear, and at higher hazard levels holds the key to the locked room in their home landmark.
  • How the locals fight. They take a moment to notice you before they fire, have to face you to shoot, fire in bursts, use cover, and hear shots and footsteps. A limit on how many can aim at you at once means you can survive turning a corner into a group. Their guns jam like yours do.
  • Snipers. Snipers hold position, aim down sights and carry laser sights: always at tiers 4 and 5, less often at lower tiers.
  • No suppression. The suppression mechanic is gone.

The world

  • Ten sites. Four small and six medium, six held by scavengers and four by civic defenders: Encampment, Grassland Camp, Overgrown Ruins, Relay Yard, Crater, Factory Strip, Suburb, Crossroads, Warehouse and Research Campus. They replace the old maps.
  • Landmarks. Five sites have a landmark built by hand: the factory, the warehouse, the research campus, the civic compound and the relay yard. Four of them have a locked room that a key opens. Grassland Camp has a lake with a dock, and Suburb has rivers and bridges.
  • Different ground. Sites have plateaus, terraced hills, canyons, ravines, a crater with a walkable stepped rim, lakes and rivers. Some are ruined, with broken walls and decayed loot, and some are polluted, with toxic pools. Streets are dirt roads.
  • Height matters. One level up is a step. Two or more is a wall that blocks movement. Looking out over a drop, you can only see so far below you unless you stand near the edge, which rewards holding high ground.
  • Cover. Low, medium and high cover block 45, 65 and 90 percent of shots.
  • Redrawn art. Almost every sprite is redrawn: ground, walls, props, characters, weapons and icons, in a three-quarter view.
  • New lighting. Light is smooth across floors, and walls block it. Props, doors, bodies, enemies and players are lit by it too. Shields glow.
  • Your ship. The hideout is now a ship in orbit with the planet beside it: a bridge with the missions and drop terminals, engineering with the fabrication bench and recycler, a clone bay and your stash.
  • The camera stays inside the map. It no longer shows past the edge.

Interface and social

  • Every menu rebuilt. Menus share one look, with consistent footers and tooltips, and many silent failures now say why.
  • Party and friends in one drawer. Open it with O. It has two tabs, Party and Friends, with add-friend search by name, prompts for invites and friend requests, and a ready check for party drops.
  • Drop prep on one screen. Solo and host prep sit on one screen with a ship line that shows what the ship will fill. A party drop that can't start now says why and who.
  • Item cards. One item card shows up everywhere, with hero numbers and meters, a compare-with-equipped line, and the shield's class, charge and recharge.
  • Inventory. A dragged item lands exactly where you drop it. Right-click takes from loot, and right-click on a medical item uses it.
  • HUD. A shield bar, a plain countdown clock, arrows that point at whoever is shooting you, and a downed bar with revive and give up buttons.
  • Hints. The first time you find a container, take a shield hit, run low on ammo or health, or get near an extraction pad, a short hint appears.
  • Help screen. It's generated from the real key bindings.

What's gone

  • Free roaming on the big maps: the old Abandoned Settlement, the other old maps and the tutorial maps.
  • Regions, region discovery and unlocking drops by exploring. You pick from the drop menu instead.
  • The tutorial and its choice screen, and expedition maps.
  • Armor, and the roughly twenty named guns with Mk2 versions. Tiers replace them. No sidearms.
  • Boss fights. Three named enemies replace them.
  • Bench repair, Thermal Memory and the primed fabricator discount.
  • The free starter loadout and the consolation materials paid on death. Disposable gear replaces the first.
  • Suppression.
  • The player list overlay (L). The drawer replaces it.