Meet the Ice Age Season

We have already revealed some of the new items of the upcoming season, including new challenges, new items and ways to customize your champion, but that definitely isn’t all! In the new season, you’ll learn to be afraid of the cold, meet new Spirit Guardians, be able to shoot more effectively, and reveal new benefits of the Battle Pass!

Improved Battle Pass

The Ice Age season begins with some hot news. Now, you can not only receive a bunch of cool rewards from the challenges tree, but also Golden Crowns! 

At the start of the season, you will immediately receive 30 Crowns. You will be able to earn a further 200 Crowns by doing regular free challenges, and by purchasing a Battle Pass, you can earn up to 1,100 Crowns! This means that you can earn back more than the Battle Pass costs!

Blizzard Ritual

A snowstorm covers the horizon, and the cold makes you slow and shivering, edging you closer to death’s door. Learn to survive the frost, or die trying! Blizzard is the longest and most complex of all the rituals now in the game. For 2 minutes, you’ll feel the warmth being sucked out from your body, and you’ll see the previously well known landscape being covered with snow and ice. 

If you get cold, you not only start to shiver, but also lose your health. All your movements start to become slow and clumsy, and it becomes difficult to use items, aim, or reload with frozen hands.

But there are ways to survive, such as eating food and warming up against bonfires, even the fire of a molotov cocktail, flamethrower or jetpack. Well, even hot lava from a volcano can help you get warm. Running fast and hiding in houses can also slow down the cold’s embrace.

A piece of advice. During the Blizzard ritual, enemies will also seek ways to get warm, meaning there are cool options to set up an ambush near bonfires or other lucrative warm spots.

New Traps

Flash Grenade — we have already spoken about it as a weapon. Now, imagine it as a trap: a self-righteous enemy enters your hideout, and bang!  He’ll be trying not to run into the walls while blind as a newborn kitty! 

Spirit Guardians

Sun Vampire — unbearable heat will become a nice spring warmth with this spirit guardian. Enjoy the Killing Sun ritual and be healed while your opponents lose their health. 

Water Creature — with this spirit guardian, you will have no fear of the depths! It will increase the speed of your swimming and the amount of time you can stay under water, increasing its efficiency during the Global Flood ritual. 

Brown Invader — we don’t know how this spirit appeared, but do not underestimate his ability to highlight all the nearest outhouses! 

Lean Guns Against Surfaces

You can now use machine gun bipods, or lean other weapons against different suitable surfaces, in order to increase your shooting control and reduce recoil!

Use window sills, trench walls, fences and many other stable surfaces. You will see a hint prompting you to mount your weapon near a suitable place or while prone. 

Full changelog

Rituals

• Added the new Blizzard ritual and a scroll for it. Calls a blizzard to the map that reduces visibility and deals damage if you are outdoor for an extended time. You freeze slower in buildings or vehicles. You can get warm with any heat source or by eating food.
• Rituals of Ghost Jet Flight and Killing Sun have been added to χaos Games.
• The duration of post effect for the Sun Eclipse ritual is now dependent on the ritual duration itself. If the ritual is interrupted earlier by painting over it, daylight returns faster.
• New Spirit Guardians of levels 1-3:
  • Spirit of brown invader: reveals all toilets on the map.  
  • Spirit of sun vampire: turns the Killing sun ritual in your favour: it will restore your health instead of killing you.
  • Spirit of water creature: allows you to stay underwater longer and swim faster during the Global flood ritual.

New Masks, Outfits, Sprays and Underwear

• Underwear suit for Viper.
• Underwear outfit for Huli.
• Harlequin suit for Viper.
• Cosplay suit for Huli.
• Masks
  • Kitsune fox - ghost fox is hunting! 
  • Oni - Eastern daemon face.
  • Hockey - for goalkeepers and maniacs.
  • Gas Mask - cool for both production plant and metro trips.

• Added new sprays: Brown Transition, Burning Wheel, Firefly, Thunder tune, Keep it Twisted, Kumiho, Lucky Cat, Mjolnir, Octopus, Ritual Jump, Tea bag, Voodoo doll, Rise from the dead

• 5 new underwear designs.

Champions and Abilities

• Added a sound when Yeo-Bi fireflies discover an enemy. 
• Added a sound when Valentine finishes any jump in Flickering step mode to help understand where she is now and if she has got behind you.
• Now zombies summoned by Louis need some time to start shooting.
• Louise’s zombies now do not shoot through smoke grenades and burning vehicle smoke.
• Added visual effects when Louise’s zombies teleport.
• The cooldown for abilities of fast run and jump was increased to 90 seconds. Both abilities have 3 grades with 1, 2 and 3 uses respectively. 

Weapons, Traps, Items

• Added defibrillator to the general loot.
• Added stun grenade M84 to general loot.
• Added stun grenade trap.
• You can now win StG 44, AK-47, M4A1, stun and smoke grenades in a slot machine.
• Added different cartridge models for pistol, rifle, intermediate and high caliber ammo.

• Reduced reloading time for the Mauser 98k from 3.4 to 3.1 seconds.
• Now you can increase stability and control when firing a weapon by resting it against a suitable object or bipod. You can activate this mode by pressing the special button when prompted.
• You can now make two separate shots with the M30 Luftwaffe Drilling: one per barrel.

Gameplay and other changes

• Added the Rally challenge where you need to drive through checkpoints in a given time.
• Added the Snatch loot challenge where you need to steal loot from a guarded chest.
• Added the Duel challenge where you need to kill a specific enemy that is also hunting you. 
• Hex Bags now hit targets better. 
• Challenges progress is moved to the upper part of the screen for better visibility..
• Returned algorithm of automatic food selection. Now after pressing the healing button the champion will consume food most appropriately restoring their health.
• Fixed surfaces getting wet underwater effect.
• Cannon shots can now concuss nearby champions. 
• Burning vehicles can now set champions on fire instead of just damaging them.
• Burning fire will get its life spawn increased if hit by a Molotov cocktail or the flamethrower. 
• Added sounds of a grenade hitting surfaces. 
• Added shaking of a mounted machine gun while shooting. 
• Now if you play in squads or duo, loot useful for other team members will be automatically highlighted. 
• Changed the formula for a speed increase from rituals, signs and artefacts. Now each subsequent boost added works with a decrease modifier.
• The teleportation animation is now not played on non-active teleports. 
• Improved running animation depending on the actual running speed. 
• Now you can set marks when using a mortar. 
• Now when using a mortar, the player will see the distance on the team mates’ marks. 
• Boats were added to the Mexico map. 
• There is a shovel over buried treasure now to make it easier to spot. 
• A new visual effect for Hex Bags has been added. 
• A hint to set up a second portal is now displayed only to the trap owner. 
• Tombstones and other destructible objects now break on the teleportation spot. 
• Elephant Skin ritual will affect Jetpack behavior, lowering its acceleration.

Graphic

• Added new High Global Illumination Quality option that updates faster than Medium.
• Re-ordered graphics options so thematically related graphical options are more close to each-other.
• FPS Limit has been added to the graphic settings.
• Removed 'Rendering Resolution Scale' option from graphic settings. Now 'Temporal Resolution Scale' is the supported resolution scaling technique.
• Changed the 'JPEG Screenshots' option to 'Uncompressed Screenshots', and flipped usage of its value. The ingame screenshot capturing tool will now save uncompressed TGA screenshots when the 'Uncompressed Screenshots' feature is enabled, Otherwise they will be JPEG.
• Changed the default value of some graphic options, we believe these are a better fit for the majority of our players:
  • Global Illumination Quality is now 'Low' by default.
  • 'High Resolution Visual Effects' is now disabled by default.
  • 'Raindrops On Screen' effect is now enabled by default.
• Renamed several graphic settings for better clarity:
  • Temporal Upsampling Ratio -> Temporal Resolution Scale.
  • Antialiasing Quality -> Temporal Antialiasing Quality.
  • Sky rendering quality -> Atmospheric Scattering Quality.
  • Ground Displacement -> Terrain Tessellation Quality.
  • Dynamic Ground Deformation -> Dynamic Terrain Deformations.
  • High resolution for visual effects -> High Resolution Visual Effects.
  • Rain on screen effects -> Raindrops On Screen.

Fixes

Graphic

• Fixed flickering fog on volcano smoke.
• Fixed flickering on water reflections.
• Fixed ghosting on smoke while using high resolution visual effects.
• Fixed blocky water reflections of distant objects.
• PC: Fixed an issue that caused 'Medium' quality Global Illumination to be used even when other quality options have been selected.
• Additionally fixed some mismatching lowercase/uppercase letters in the names of graphic options.
• Fix for checkered dynamic lighting in scope when Variable Rate Shading enabled.
• Optimized dynamic objects rendering in shadows. 

Other fixes

• Zombies summoned by a Hex Bag will now no longer appear behind a wall or in obstacles. 
• Fixed conflict of control buttons assigned to changing seats in a vehicle and other commands. 
• Mortar trajectory is now displayed correctly. 
• Removed automatic opening of windows when running near a wall. 
• Fixed step sounds when operating a stationary machine gun. 
• Fixed sounds for the interface buttons.
• The sound of a shot will no longer lag behind. 
• The Hex Bag will always display an effect now. 
• Fixed artifacts in depth of field effect. 
• The mouse sensitivity setting will now work correctly for the camera in the vehicle and spectator mode. 
• Improved backstab check when hitting an enemy in melee to calculate damage correctly. Increased damage will not be used if the hit did not come from behind or the target was wearing a helmet.