Wasteland 3 – State of the Frozen Union, July 2021

According to this developer update, inXile Entertainment is currently getting ready to reveal their second and final story DLC for Wasteland 3, but before that happens, they intend to improve the game’s co-op functionality and make accessing the DLC content a bit more player-friendly.

Here’s more on that:

Rangers, grab your flask and your Hobo Dog, and set yourselves around the irradiated campfire. So far this year we’ve covered a lot of ground, but we’ve still got a ways to go before this leg of the adventure is done. As a brief recap of 2021 to date, we opened the gates to the Patriarch’s production factories at Steeltown, leveled up the game with crafting and an animal companion kennel, shared a slew of behind-the-scenes videos, dropped the soundtrack on Spotify, launched our initial merch offering, and even set our mouths on fire with some hot wings, just for you.

But we’re not quite done yet. Before the summer is out, we’ll be announcing our second and final DLC for Wasteland 3, and we’re excited to share those details soon. First, we have some important updates to detail.

Hotfix 1.4.6 & Patch 1.5.0

With a recent update a particularly sticky dialog issue was introduced, where players are unable to select any dialog options at key points in Little Vegas and Steeltown. Thanks to some eagle-eyed redditors, a workaround involving having Kwon and/or Lucia hang back at HQ during those conversations reportedly helped in those situations. All the same, we’ve got the fix for these which will be hitting the various platforms as soon as next week.

After 1.4.6, a larger forthcoming update (Patch 1.5.0) will be taking square aim at continuing to improve and refine the co-op experience in Wasteland 3. We know that for many of you co-op is your preferred way to deal with dispensing justice and we want to deliver the experience you’re looking for. We’re aware that since launch there’s been a number of issues reported with co-op, so we’ll be doing our best here to knock as many of these out as we can with a single blow. We’re expecting 1.5.0 to be ready in a few weeks.

Improving Co-op

One of the primary challenges with co-op in our game is that we’re peer-to-peer, and that puts all the strain of communicating the game state on the players’ machines and network connection, rather than on a server. We’ve found troubleshooting firewalls, routers, and host network resolves a decent amount of these.

As we noted above, there are definitely still co-op bugs we’ll be addressing in Patch 1.5.0 to reduce interactivity and display issues (the full change list will be available in the final patch notes), but we’re also looking at adding some ways to help players better identify when their network connection could be contributing to the problems.

In cases where there’s a disconnection, we’ll be generating an autosave for both players to ensure you can jump back in right where you left off. And if one player decides to quit, we’ll have better messaging so you’ll know what happened, rather than just see a generic disconnection error. We’ll also be making the connection strength indicator in the lobby more reliable, which will show if a co-op session may be unreliable due to either player’s networks.

Co-op Quality of Life Features

Focusing our energy on fixing co-op bugs and helping players diagnose connection issues should go a long way to improving the co-op experience, but we’re also looking to add quality-of-life features. When 1.5.0 drops, you’ll be able to see what your co-op partner is hovering over/selecting in combat, in the inventory, and when perusing merchant wares. Communication is key in co-op, but this helps take some of the guesswork out of what the other player is thinking.

Additionally, while checking the inventory, you’ll be able to see the gear details of your partner’s squad members. With 1.5.0, conversations with skill checks will also automatically update the moment your friend joins the conversation, allowing them to sweet talk you out of whatever sticky situation you got yourself into when you ran off solo.

End Game DLC Rewind

Patch 1.5.0 isn’t entirely focused on co-op; we have a bunch of other fixes and quality of life improvements, not the least of which is allowing players to access the DLC even after they’ve passed the point of no return.

We were caught a bit off guard with how many of you only keep a single save file, which meant that when you went to go play Steeltown your only option was to replay the game from the start. Now, we think it’s absolutely worth a replay (or five) but we understand not everyone is looking to take on the full burden of Colorado’s problems again.

We’re fixing that in 1.5.0 by letting those of you past the endgame point of no return to go back to the world map, manage your squad (including replacing lost Rangers), and restock before attempting the DLC content.

Other Cool Stuff

The patch is a big’un, with fixes and improvements across the board. We’ll have the full details in the patch notes (when the patch goes live), of course. In the meantime, if you have co-op bugs you’ve never reported or it just seems we must not know about, please sound off on the official forums as we’d like to make sure we’re getting as much into this future update as possible.

Thanks for continuing this journey with us! We look forward to getting 1.5.0 in your hands and blowing your minds with the second and final DLC.

– Wasteland 3 Team