The Division update 1.6 patch notes revealed - here are all the changes and fixes

News by Sherif Saed Contributing Editor

Published on Feb. 27, 2017

All the details about The Division's biggest update are finally here.

The Division's going to have a busy few days this week. First, the long-awaited patch 1.6, will be released tomorrow.

That's not all, the game's final expansion, Last Stand, will also go live at the same time. A free trial was also announced earlier.

Although Ubisoft previously outlined the high-level details for both Last Stand and 1.6, it's only now we've gotten access to the full patch notes.

Without further ado, find the full thing below:

Last Stand game mode

SHD tech data relays loaded with operational information were left behind in the Dark Zone when the JTF was forced to withdraw. Rogues have targeted these data relays and are attempting to access what is inside. Engage in 8 versus 8 PvP combat and secure the data before the Rogues can.
Fight to control three key tactical locations on one of 4 Dark Zone maps.
In order to capture a tactical location, the team will need to control three objectives inside the location. Once the tactical location is secured, the team will begin scoring points.
First team to reach the max score wins.
To help propel their team to victory, players can activate powerful fortifications and SHD tech tactical boosts.

New Incursion – Lost Signal

Lost Signal takes place in a civilian TV Broadcast center taken over by the infamous Rikers gang.
Players will venture into three different wings and face unique combat scenarios. Each encounter is meant to push players to play tactically and make the best use of their builds.
All wings bring their own challenges and rewards; completing all of them will unlock the final boss fight and the strongest opposition yet.

-Update 1.6

Game changes

Dark Zone map expansion

Explore three new areas to the north of the Dark Zone. Engage powerful enemies and discover the dangers hiding around every corner.

Dark Zone Leaderboards

Earn rewards in the Dark Zone by participating in weekly and monthly activities tracked via the new Dark Zone leaderboards.
See how you stack up against other players in the Dark Zone on leaderboard activities that reset and change every week and month. All the tracked weekly and monthly activities count towards your total score. The higher your score, the better rewards you will earn when the leaderboards reset!

Dark Zone Contamination Events

The pockets of virus contamination in the subways below the Dark Zone are festering and becoming even more deadly. Cleaners have been attracted to the rising contamination. Players must manage their health as the virus eats away at their filter while battling against powerful Cleaners. Clear each Dark Zone subway of Cleaners to earn extra rewards.

Legendary difficulty

Pit yourself against elite LMB forces equipped with superior gear and advanced tactics.
Legendary difficulty strips missions of all narrative and focuses purely on combat scenarios.
Each Legendary mission has a single checkpoint, about halfway through.
Legendary difficulty is only available in World Tier 5.
Available missions: Napalm Production Site, WarrenGate Power Plant, Times Square Power Relay.

More options for character customisation

Explore all new ways of customising your agent, with weapon skins, backpack skins, new clothing sets and emotes!
Visit the Premium Vendor in The Terminal to unlock premium vanity content; stocks update weekly so check back regularly!

Combat

Increased the time to revive a downed teammate from 3s to 5s.
Bleed no longer blocks sprint. Instead it reduces movement speed by 20%. Additional applications refresh the timer.
Medkits can now be used at full health and cleanse the character of all applied status effects.
Hipfire stability has been significantly reduced when moving.
Increased Hip-fire penalties: Weapon spread is now wider while stability and recoil are also more impacted.
Player camera will now be impacted by hipfire, reducing their field of view the longer they keep firing.
There is now a short cooldown between each combat roll.
Body shot damage has been slightly increased in PvP (this change does not apply to PvE, headshot damage is unchanged).
Implemented visual feedback when an enemy player uses a Medkit.
The PvP damage multiplier has been set at 0.42. This applies to both Last Stand and the Dark Zone.

Last Stand Gear Normalisation

Gear pieces

Automatically increase to Gear Score 256.
Main attributes (Firearms, Stamina, Electronics) will be increased to the maximum roll of the existing stat on each equipped piece.
All bonuses, included from gear and performance mods, will be increased to their maximum roll.

Weapons

Automatically increase to Gear Score 256.
Talents unlock based on the normalized main attributes.
All bonuses (including from mods), damage and attributes will be increased to their maximum roll.

All players will be set to 35% armor mitigation value. This armor mitigation is affected by Talents and Skill buffs.
Player talents, Gear Set bonuses and Weapon Set bonuses function as normal.

Dark Zone

Players can now fast travel between Dark Zone checkpoints.
Players will no longer lose Dark Zone experience and funds when killed in the Dark Zone if they are not Rogue.
Supply drops will now reward Dark Zone experience as well.
Koreatown is no longer classified as a Landmark.

Armor and Resistances

Armor has been removed as a Major bonus from items and is replaced with Health.
Base Health has been added to the game. Depending on the World Tier you are in, you will automatically receive a given amount of Base Health for free.
Added a new bonus called “Resist All” which adds resistance to all types of status effects.
Older items (pre 1.6) with Health bonus will see this bonus replaced with a Resist All one.
Resist All is capped at 60%.
Resistances to status effects will now reduce the effect instead of having a chance to resist it. This means that a 10% bleed resist will lower the bleed damage and duration by 10% instead of having a 10% chance to ignore it.
When applied repeatedly in a short time, the player will naturally build up resistance to this status effect. In other words, status effects will now have diminishing returns when applied repeatedly to a player.
If the player manages to build up 100% resistance to a status effect, they will resist it entirely.

Gear Talents

Rejuvenated now gives 40% resistance to all status effects for 10 seconds, when using a Medkit.

For gear stats, (-) means a bonus is removed, (+) indicates a bonus has been added, and (=) means the bonus remains.

Gear stats

Chest

-Damage to Elite
-Damage from Elite
+Skill Haste
+Enemy Armor Damage
=Health
=Health on Kill
=Exotic Damage Resilience
=All Resistance

Backpack

-Skill Haste
-Signature Skill Resource Gain
+Weapon Stability
=Health
=Critical Hit Damage
=Skill Power

Mask

-Damage to Elite
+Enemy Armor Damage
=Critical Hit Chance
=Health on Kill
=Exotic Damage Resilience
=Skill Power
=All Resistance

Gloves

-Damage to Elite
+Enemy Armor Damage
+Skill Haste
=Critical Hit Chance
=Critical Hit Damage
=Health on Kill
=Assault rifle Damage
=LMG Damage
=Marksman rifle Damage
=Shotgun Damage
=SMG Damage
=Pistol Damage

Knees

-Damage to Elite
-Damage from Elite
+Enemy Armor Damage
+Skill Power
=Health
=Critical Hit Damage
=Exotic Damage Resilience
=All Resistance

Holster

-Damage from Elite
-Pistol Damage
+Critical Hit Chance
+Reload Speed
=Health
=Skill Haste

Other changes to stats

Enemy Armor Damage is now a Major bonus and no longer a Minor.
Damage to Elites is now a Minor bonus and no longer a Major.
Damage from Elite values have been halved.
Pistol Damage is doubled on gloves.

Recalibration

If you had a native Armor bonus (not recalibrated), it will be turned into health.
If you had a recalibrated Armor bonus, the recalibration will reset and you will be back to the initial bonus the item had when it was acquired.
If you had a native Health bonus (not recalibrated), it will be turned into All Resistance.
If you had a recalibrated Health bonus on any other Gear Piece, the recalibration will reset.
If you had a recalibrated Health bonus in Chestpiece and no native armor roll on this piece, the Health roll will remain.
If you had a recalibrated Health bonus in Chestpiece and a native armor roll on this piece, the recalibration will reset as you would otherwise end up with 2 Health bonuses.
If you had a recalibrated Health bonus in any other Gear Piece, the recalibration will reset.
If you had a recalibrated Skill Haste bonus on your backpack, the recalibration will reset.
If you had a recalibrated Pistol Damage bonus on your holster, and the holster was acquired after update 1.5, the recalibration will reset.
If you had a recalibrated Enemy Armor Damage or Damage to Elite and the item was acquired after update 1.5, the recalibration will reset.
All recalibrations on Exotic weapons will reset.
Unique talents on Exotic weapons cannot be recalibrated.
Free talents on Exotic weapons that don’t have a Unique talent (Liberator, Centurion, Eir and Hildr) can be recalibrated.
Note that when a recalibration resets, the money spent will be reimbursed, based on the recalibration costs of Update 1.6. Since recalibration now has a cost cap, if the initial recalibration costed more, you will only be reimbursed according to this cap.

Character talents

On the move reduced to 15%.
Battle Buddy reduced to 30%.
Critical Save reduced to 20%.
Adrenaline will no longer apply Overheal. Instead it replaces the instant heal of Medkits with a heal over time that can also apply while taking damage.

Skills

Changes to skill power

The Skill Power curve has been modified, resulting in less efficient skills at low Skill Power, and more efficient skills at high Skill Power.
Skills will now scale to the World Tier you are currently in as an “expected Skill Power” has been implemented.
Diminishing return on Skill Power will not kick in before 450 000 Skill Power.
All skills have been adapted to this new scaling.
Skill Haste gear bonuses have been increased by 100%.
Skill Haste has a cap of 50%.

Sticky Bomb

Changed Flashbang mod to have only a flashbang effect.
Replaced the Proximity Fuse mod with Disruptor, which has an EMP effect. Its explosion radius has been increased to 9 meters.
Added warning and delay to Sticky Bomb. This means that Sticky Bombs, except for Disruptor, will no longer detonate immediately, but after some time.

First Aid

Defibrillator will now heal in 2 steps, one instant burst of healing following by a heal over time.
Booster Shot: Damage Mitigation bonus decreased by 50% from 15% to 7.5%.

Turret

Shock Turret will no longer deal any damage and only shock the enemy.
Base skill and Active Sensor: Range decreased from 35 meters to 25 meters.
All mods except Shock: Base health reduced by 25%.
All mods: Skill Power impact on health reduced.

Mobile Cover

All mods: Base cooldown increased by 33%.

Pulse

Reduced impact of Skill Power on Critical Hit Chance and Critical Hit Damage.
Tactical Scanner
Critical Hit Chance increased by +20%.
Critical Hit Damage reduced by -11%.

Smart Cover

Damage Resilience decreased by 33%.
Reduced impact of Skill Power on Damage Resilience.
All mods: Base cooldown increased by 9%.

Seeker Mine

All mods: Added a PvP damage modifier that applies to all PvP activities, to reduce its potency. The multiplier is set to 40%.
Base cooldown increased by 17%.
Cluster
The stagger effect has been removed. Explosion damage has been decreased, bleed damage has been increased.

Support Station

All mods: Radius decreased from 8 meters to 7,5 meters.
Life Support: Revive time increased from 3 seconds to 5 seconds.
Support Station heal procs have a 1 second cooldown.

Signature Skills

The exhaust that applies after a player received a Signature Skill effect is extended to 60 seconds (from 30 seconds).
Players will no longer be able to trigger a Signature Skill if they are under the exhaust effect from a previous application.
Signature Skills cooldown will now be affected by Skill Haste.
Tactical Link
Damage bonus is decreased to 10% in Last Stand. (this change doesn’t apply outside of Last Stand, where the bonus remains at 30%).
Weapon Stability will be more hindered by the rate of fire bonus.

Gear sets

D3-FNC

4 pieces: When used, your Ballistic Shield has no skill mod active. It will no longer remove Critical Chance from your weapon.
Characters will now automatically switch to their sidearm if the SMG runs out of ammo.

Reclaimer

2 pieces: +30% Support Station range.
3 pieces: +50% Support Station duration.
4 pieces: All Support Station mods are active at the same time.

AlphaBridge

4 pieces: Now only provides the 3rd (free) talent of the unused weapon instead of all three. All talents ignore unlock requirements.

Tactician’s Authority

2 pieces: +15% Skill Haste.
4 pieces: Now consumes the skill power buff on skill use instead of after 10 seconds.

Banshee’s Shadow

4 pieces:
While Rogue, all ammo is completely refilled every 30 seconds. Damage taken from non-rogue players reduced by 10%. (no change)
While not Rogue, Damage to Rogue players is increased by 10%. This bonus is increased to 20% for 10 minutes after being killed by a rogue.

Deadeye

4 pieces: Now only works with zoomed scopes.

Loot

High-End Named items become Exotic:
This quality comes with a new item color.
Exotic weapons have been removed from the Advanced Weaponry Vendor.
Updates sources for Exotics: Some sources have been moved around. We also added more sources with chances to drop any Exotic.
Exotics Caches have been added to the game. These guarantee an Exotic item when opened.
Phoenix Credits cap has been increased from 2000 to 5000.
The scavenger box in the Base of Operations will now properly scale with world tier.
Weekly Assignment Caches will now guarantee an Exotic item.
Exotic items sold at Vendors have had their prices slightly increased.
Gear Set items have been lowered to be equivalent to High End prices.

Crafting

Recalibrations are now unlimited. This means that once a stat is picked for recalibration, it can be recalibrated as many times at the player has currency to pay for it. The cost will increase at first but eventually cap and no longer increase.

Weapons

Base damage on all weapons has been reduced to balance correctly with the reduced damage mitigation from the change to Armor (note that NPC health and damage has also been adapted to preserve the Time to Kill and Time to be Killed values pre 1.6).
SMGs have been given back their Critical Hit Chance, with a maximum roll of around 22%.
Coolheaded will now have a small cooldown to not trigger repeatedly with automatic weapons.
L86
Base Damage increased by 4%.
Damage falloff at range reduced by 40%.
Provident talent: The last bullet of a magazine deals 10% more damage. (Instead of 60%)

Named weapons

General

All Named Weapons are now of Exotic Quality.
Exotic weapons now each have a unique talent in the 3rd free slot. The other 2 talents are rolled randomly from the list of talents available to this weapon type.
Exotic weapons owned pre-Update 1.6 will have the new unique talent added and their remaining talents randomly rerolled.
Exotic weapon talents are not transferred to the other weapon when using AlphaBridge.
Exotic talents cannot be recalibrated. See above for more information about how recalibration works for legacy items.
Exotic weapons each received a unique descriptive lore text in their UI.
Some Exotic Weapons now function as Gear Sets: The unique talent unlocks when two specific Exotic weapons are equipped.
FAMAS is now an Exotic weapon and Uncomplicated its unique talent. It has been renamed Bullfrog.
Base damage increased by 11.7%.

Tommy Gun

Carefree: Hipfire damage is increased by 11%.

Medved

Center Mass: Shoots heavy slugs instead of buckshot.

Hungry Hog

Glutton: Killing a target increases your damage dealt by 10% until you stop firing. Multiple kills stack this bonus up to 5 times.

Tenebrae

Lights out: Destroying an enemy weak point resets skill cooldowns for you and your nearby group members. This talent has a 10 second cooldown.

Pakhan

Pakhan: Each kill makes the next reload have 20% extra bullets compared to its base.

Liberator & Centurion (Weapon Gear Set)

Free Republic: Each shot with the Liberator grabts +5% to you next headshot damage with the Centurion. Max is 200%. Kills with the Centurion grant +10% RPM to all weapons for 10 seconds.

Valkyria becomes Hildr & Eir (Weapon Gear Set)

Valkyria: Each hit with Hildr increases critical hit damage by 1% to a max of 30. The bonus decreases by 1 every second. This bonus only applies to Eir.
Hildr cannot crit.

Cassidy

Boomstick: Double trigger fires off both barrels in short succession.

Urban MDR

Base damage increased by 65%.
Distracted: Your damage is increased by 18% against targets with status effects.

Warlord

Play rough: Damage taken is reduced by 20% while firing. The taken damage is applied when you stop firing.

Thompson M1928

Carefree: Hipfire damage is increased by 11%.

Damascus

Quickdraw: When drawn weapon damage is increased by 20% for 2 seconds. After that weapon damage is decreased by 20%.

Golden Rhino

Golden Rhino: Increase stagger by 200%.

Historian

History repeats: Each bullet embers itself in the target and detonates 2 seconds later for 700% of the user’s Firearms.

Caduceus

Caduceus: Each Critical Hit heals you and your group for 1% of the user’s Skill Power. This talent has a 0.2 seconds cooldown. A player can only be healed by one Caduceus at a time.

Midas

Midas: Each bullet you hit with reduces your damage by 1% and your target's damage by 1% to a max of 20%. The effect is reduced by 5% per second.

Showstopper

Base damage increased by 11%.

Open world

Civilians will now always drop Target Intel when helped.
Collectibles will now reward players with more XP when picked up at level 30.

Survival

Crafting High End pistols will no longer cost Division Tech
Updated Survival Cache content: it no longer has a specific drop that weights towards weapons introduced in Survival and has a more generic drop instead. Exotic items have a small chance to drop as a bonus.
Reviving players from downed state will now cost a Medkit.
When matchmaking in Solo PvP Survival, players will end up in a guaranteed Solo instance where grouping is not possible.
Players can no longer “loot and kill” other downed players in PvE Survival.
Supplies available around the different spawn hideouts have been rebalanced.

Underground

Killing NPCs will now grant Underground XP instead of normal XP. This means that players will no longer earn normal XP when playing Underground.
Underground Caches now guarantee two items instead of one. Exotic items have a small chance to drop as a bonus.

Incursions

Increased the Weekly Rewards on all Challenging and Heroic Incursions.

Gameplay

[PC Only] Several improvements and bug fixes made to gamepad support on PC.

Bug fixes

Fixed a bug where sometimes consumables would not be consumed when used in Survival mode or normal gameplay.
Fixed a bug where the game would return an incorrect out of playable map area error in DZ06.
Fixed a bug where the UI would incorrectly reflect the protection bonus from Hunter’s Faith. gear set talent when two or more players had the 4-piece bonus active while in close proximity.
Fixed a bug where players could accidentally use consumables while browsing the emote wheel.
Fixed a bug where the Pulse Master skill would not always trigger the early warning for hostile characters.
Fixed several instances of Ballistic Shield becoming unusable.
Fixed a bug where Recovery Link would not trigger correctly.
Fixed a bug where players would be unable to do anything for a few seconds after using a skill.
Fixed a bug where the UI QuickNav function would not work properly.
Fixed a bug where crafting material quality would not scale properly with world tier.
Fixed a bug on PlayStation 4 where players would be stuck in infinite loading.
Fixed a bug where weapon talents would not activate if the character attribute values were equal, but not higher than the requirements.
Fixed several instances of delay when using First Aid.
Fixed a bug where Vigorous talent would not work properly.
Fixed a bug where players would be able to use consumables infinitely.
Fixed a bug where the Competent weapon talent would not work for certain skills.
Fixed a bug where the Coolheaded weapon talent would reduce consumable duration.
Fixed a bug where the NPC audio would not work after ending a Survival game mode session.
Fixed a bug where a Favorited item could be accidentally marked as junk.
Fixed a bug where NPCs would often get perfect aim.
Fixed a bug where mods could be unequipped randomly when relogging into the game.
Fixed a bug with Mobile Cover where talents Adept, Competent and Capable would stay active until either the cover was destroyed or the player changed cover.
Fixed a bug where sometimes the player would lose input functionality after closing the stash.
Fixed a bug where the Signature skill cooldown would not update on the party’s UI if used outside of party range.
Fixed a bug with the Chromatic aberration graphical setting.
Fixed a bug where crafted level 34 extended magazines would roll with lower stats than intended.
Fixed a bug where the Nimble talent could revive the player from a downed/dead state.
Fixed a bug where enemies would be stuck behind a door during a mission in the Garment District.
Fixed a bug where Brycce Thompson would randomly repeat some of his lines even after the player completes the related mission.
Fixed several instances of FPS drops and freezes.