A Guide to What’s New in the First Update to Tom Clancy’s The Division

Aside from fixing bugs and so on, this update has added some new loot drops and scores, as well as a new game mode, and some special sets of armour! Come with us, if you will, to understand more about what this first update has added to The Division. It’s free, by the way. You can go get it right now.

Incursions

Incursions are a new game mode for high level players who have completed the game and want another new challenge. There’s no respawn during an Incursion, so if you fail you fail, and have to start the whole thing again. This may sound unfair, but keep in mind that this is how real life actually works also. The first Incursion is called Falcon Lost.

Assignments

Assignments are like mini-missions available for a limited time (24 hours for daily assignments and a week for weekly) which you can usually complete on your own, but might need a bit of help sometimes. They can be themed around the Dark Zone, crafting, or general combat.

Dark Zone drops

Every so often throughout the day the game will ‘drop’ supplies into the Dark Zone. They’re boxes full of high-level, uncontaminated loot. Let’s repeat that: the stuff in them is uncontaminated, which means you can just grab it and bolt out of there. No extraction necessary. This does also mean that loads of other mugs, players and NPCs, will be hurtling towards the drops as well.

Loot swapping

The community was clamouring for this, so it’s nice it’s been added. You can now swap loot with your mates, via the mechanic of dropping it from your inventory right on the floor in front of them. This means that if you have some weapons that are good quality but not quite right for you, you can bequeath them to a different agent, rather than having to destroy them. This is, however, only confined to a window of two hours after you first pick a bit of loot up. After that you have to keep it.

Gear Scores

A gear score is a new way to quickly compare yourself to other agents and see how tough they really are. The gear score draws on the quality and type of all your gear to generate a new score visible to other players in your squad. This, alongside player level and Dark Zone level, is another indicator of quality when sizing up potential squad mates. Some missions will carry a recommended Gear Score on them on the map menu.

Gear Sets

The other main change, aside from the Incursion stuff, is the new Gear Sets. They’re specific sets of gear (duh) which give you special bonuses when you wear two or more pieces of the same set. Pieces from Gear sets are coded as a nice minty green in your inventory, and can be found in the Dark Zone, made from special blueprints, and completing Missions and Incursions in the end game difficulties.

New Gear Sets in The Division Falcon Lost Incursion Update

Tactician’s Authority: For players that favour electronics and using their skills a lot, so good for support characters. Stacking two pieces increases your skill power by a whopping 4,000. Three speeds up your skill cooldowns by 20%, and a full set of four gives you a 1% increase to your skill power for ever 60,000 points of damage your team does, to a max of a 100% increase.

Striker’s Battlegear: The Striker set is designed more for damage-designed gunners. When stacking this you get increases to your armour damage of 20%, and your critical hit damage goes up 100% if you’re wearing three pieces.. With a full set your damage buffs for every consecutive hit, to a maximum of 100%.

Sentry’s Call: For the sniper in your life (especially if that sniper is you). This set buffs headshot damage by 30% and damage to elites by 20% at two and three pieces of the set respectively.. A full set marks an enemy when you make a successful headshot, increasing all damage on that target by 15% for 10 seconds, to a maximum of three marks per enemy.

Path of the Nomad: Ubi showing some support for the lone wolf player, here, with a gear set designed to help the single-player game. This set increases your scavenging odds by 50%, so you’re more likely to find useful stuff, and gives you 20% health back on a kill once you’re wearing three pieces of it. If you’re wearing the full set you have a chance to heal back to full health when you recieve fatal damage (although this can only happen once every 10 minutes).