Patch Notes - December 18 (Winter Festival and Proximity Chat)

A new patch for Wildgate is now available on Steam, PlayStation®5, 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's Winter Festival, check out our Winter Preview Blog!

PATCH HIGHLIGHTS

• ❄ Winter Festival - Seasonal event from December 18 to January 15
• 🎁 Winter Scrap Crates and Daily Login Rewards - Includes 24 new items
• 🗣 Proximity Chat - Give the gift of your voice
• 🔫 Loadout Presets - There are many like them, but these ones are yours
• 🛡 New Hardpoints - Coolant Button and Ship Flash Shield
• 🛠 Custom Lobbies - Treasure Hunt and Fleet Battle added
• 💬 Discord Integration - Game invites and status
• 💻 UI improvements - Better pings, chat scrolling, reticle customization, and more

 

WINTER FESTIVAL - NEW SEASONAL EVENT

• An Icy Reach - Dive into a chilling area of the Reach, with freezing storms that slow your ship and Ice galore!
• Winter Crates - Dropping into a loot room near you, with 16 new items to collect. 
• Snowball Fights - Grab a pile of snowballs, wage war! Watch out for rocks in the ice…
• Login Rewards - Earn up to 8 extra festive treats, one per daily login!
• Festive Furnishings - Enjoy all the trimmings in the Lucky Docks and out in POIs in the Reach.

 

NEW FEATURE - PROXIMITY CHAT

You can read a full break down of Proxy Chat in our Preview Blog.

• Proximity Chat is now available in all Wildgate game modes.
  • Enable Proximity chat in Options > Audio > Voice Chat settings
• PC: Push to talk and open mic settings are available
  • Open mic proxy chat transmits to proximity, team and party channels - everyone will hear you!
  • Push to talk when bound for proxy chat will transit to proximity chat only - your teammates won’t hear you when pressing this bind
• Console: Has open mic settings only (DEV NOTE - due to a drastic lack of buttons - sorry!)

 

NEW FEATURE - LOADOUT PRESETS

• Loadout presets are now available in the Loadout tab of the main menu.
• You can now save up to three predetermined loadouts.
• These will be accessible anywhere that loadout can be accessed currently.

 

REACH DROPS - NEW HARDPOINTS

Coolant Button

• Activates ship’s coolant
• 60 second cooldown

 

Ship Flash Shield

• Activate to make your ship invulnerable to all damage
• Lasts for 5 seconds

 

CUSTOM LOBBIES

• Fleet Battle and Treasure Hunt are now available to run in custom lobbies.

 

DISCORD INTEGRATION:

• Display if a user is online, idle, or offline.
• Show detailed game stats (e.g. what level they're playing and time played).
• Allow players to send game invites through Discord and in-game.

 

QUEUE ROTATION AND GAME MODES UPDATE:

DEV NOTE: We’re making Treasure Hunt unavailable as a separate queue for now. This is to try to support queues and games starting more quickly for the next couple of weeks. 

The game mode rotation that we’re implementing with this patch (and removing Treasure Hunt from queues) are both planned to be a temporary test over the holiday season for two weeks until January 1. 

As things stand, we intend to launch a new patch that reverts these changes, along with an initiative that we hope will bring some new players into Wildgate over the first week of January.

• Treasure Hunt is now disabled as a separate queue.
• Artifact Brawl and Fleet Battle will now be available to queue alternating on a 2 hour rotating timer.
• All game modes are now available to play in Custom Lobbies, including Treasure Hunt.

 

NEW FREE COMMUNITY FIREWORKS PACK:

DEV NOTE: Thanks to all who took part in our Build-A-Boom Community Contest! The winning “Game Over” and Comms Pack Fireworks (plus two bonus cooperation fireworks to round out y’all’s bloodlust) are ready for you to use in-game. We hope you now have enough ways to motivate and inspire friendly and enemy crews alike.

New Community Fireworks Packs added:

• "Game Over"
• "Point!" 🫵
• "RIP"
• "GGWP"
• "Raised Hand" ✋
• "Ghost Muster"

Community Fireworks already in-game:

• "Eyes 👀"
• "Peace Sign (Comet)" ( "Flock of Ravi" firework will now be unlocked instead in the Scrap Crate reward track)

 

 UI AND OTHER IMPROVEMENTS:

• Fleet Battle: Artifact hold state added (changing the ping based on whether an ally vs enemy holding it)
• Ping Wheel: Various improvements made
• Custom reticle settings: 
  • Choices of reticles added (default, crosshair, circle, circle with crosshair), color, size, and opacity
• Text Chat Improvements:
  • Chat keeps track of more messages and you can scroll for longer
  • Added additional chat settings (chat length, opacity, fade-out time)
  • Visual style updates
  • Fixes to whisper functionality