Division Update 1.6.1 Goes Live on PTS, Patch Notes Released

Ubisoft have released a new patch for The Division, but only on the PTS for now. Update 1.6.1 is mostly about bugfixes and quality of life improvements, but there are also some hefty changes and new features. It’s all subject to change, of course, and there’s no word on when it’s going to be implemented on the regular servers. Read on if you’re interested in the changelog.

As far as we can see, the biggest change is the addition of the loadouts feature:

• Loadouts offer players the chance to save their equipped Weapons, Gear, Skills and Talents to Loadout slots, allowing for quick swapping of builds to be used for different activities.
• Players will be able to create and save up to 6 Loadouts per character.
• Each Loadout can be directly equipped when out of combat.

Then there are the balancing changes, number tweaks and other small fixes that make the items, skills and weapons more fun and more fair:

• Level 34 extended magazines will now roll between 109% and 121% extra magazine size (instead of 109 to 111%). This change is not retroactive.
• Existing old level 33 extended magazines that had a magazine size bonus above 108% will be reduced to 108%.
• Nimble will now apply healing over time in 4 ticks over 4 seconds as long as the player stays in the destination cover. Leaving cover will interrupt this effect. The total amount of heal is unchanged.
• Burst fire weapons will now have a maximum RPM, making it impossible to reach non-burst rate of fire with specific control modifications. This includes Burst Fire MP5, FAL and 93R.
• Base Flinch has been significantly reduced on all weapons. This change affects both PvP and PvE (NPCs weapons will cause less Flinch).
• Seeker Mine Airburst – 20% of the initial explosion damage have been moved to the fire effect damage over time instead. The total amount of damage is unchanged if the fire effect is not cleansed. Stagger effect has been completely removed from this mod.

Finally, there are 300 pages of bugfixes. If you’re interested in seeing which NPC will finally spawn at the correct location, or which loading screens are no longer more dangerous than missions they lead to, check out the full changelog.