Betas 64–65: A Server Closer to Home

The company has opened a regional office in Singapore. Same paperwork, same undead, a much shorter commute for anybody playing from Southeast Asia.

Beta 65 adds a second multiplayer server in Singapore and lets you choose your region before you play. It also eases the zombie scaling. Beta 64, which went out without a post of its own, rebalanced every sound in the game against a single mix. Both are covered below.

Servers in Southeast Asia

Until now every co-op match ran through one server in Frankfurt, around 10,000 km from Singapore. Each update between teammates in Southeast Asia made that trip and back, so their players spent every match a little behind the action. The new server sits in Singapore, much closer to the players there.

Multiplayer now opens on a region choice: Europe (Frankfurt) or Asia (Singapore). Pick whichever is nearer. The game remembers your choice and has it highlighted next time, and Back from the multiplayer page returns you to the regions if you want to switch.

• Everyone in a party picks the same region. Each server has its own lobbies, so a lobby name like RUSTY-STAPLER only works for friends who chose the same server. Quick Match looks for teammates within your region.
• Your account works on both. Your access key, your survivor name and the leaderboards are the same whichever server you play on.
• Older builds still connect to Europe. Beta 64 and earlier know only the Frankfurt server, so update to Beta 65 to play on the Asia server.

Zombie scaling: halfway back

Beta 60 made ordinary rounds grow 30% more gently than the game originally shipped. Beta 65 meets it halfway: ordinary scaling is now 15% gentler than the original curve. Ordinary zombie health is multiplied by 1 + 0.085 × (round − 1). Round sizes grow by 5.1 budget points a round instead of 4.2, and every ordinary zombie runs by round 20 instead of round 24.

Health figures are before the late-round boost, which still adds up to 14% more health and damage and 7% more speed between rounds 16 and 24. A full squad of four still faces about two-thirds of a solo crowd each. Special rounds 7, 15 and 23, the zombies they summon and elite bodies keep their original scaling, unchanged. The first three rounds still shamble, and starting stats are the same as before.

Beta 64: one mix for every sound

Sound levels had drifted. The Lost and Found crate lid played 15 dB louder than the pistol. Phones, spoken pickups and the special-round sting were louder than gunfire, reloads were louder than the shot itself, and the weather sat 20 to 40 dB under everything else. Beta 64 measures every sound in the game and levels each one against a single mix sheet, relative to your own gunshot.

• Guns sit 3 dB above the rest of the mix, and drop pickups are 7 dB louder than before, level with a gunshot, so they are harder to miss in a fight.
• A teammate's weapon is never louder than your own.
• Machinery, such as the crane on the depot roof, now follows the Ambience volume slider.
• On a fresh install, the Weapons, Zombies and Ambience sliders start at full, with the master volume at half.

Download Beta 65 for Windows, Linux or macOS, pick your region and find out how far the new curve lets you get.