Wasteland 3 – new update to the game brings a more mortal mode

Originally published on August 2020, released for Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Wasteland 3 is a turn-based roleplaying game taking place in the hellscape of a post-apocalyptic Colorado. The game has earned mostly positive reviews and was nominated at the Game Awards 2020 for Best Roleplaying (although it lost to FFVII Remake).

The most recent patch to the popular post-apocalyptic game Wasteland 3, called “Death and Taxes”, had brought to the players a wide range of new upgrades and items, alongside new character customization options like tattoos and scars. The update will also include the ability to respec your character at the Ranger HQ for free at first but gradually increasing in cost, allowing you to correct a small mistake you made picking an ability you didn’t like, or to change your build entirely.

Additionally, there is a new Difficult Skills Checks mode with permanent increases in skill checks by +2, up to a max of 10. This means that everything from unlocking doors, and hacking, to using weapons and armor will be increasingly more difficult. When enabled, your party will need to rely more on members highly specialized in a limited number of skills, while ‘jack-of-all-trades’ characters with low specialization in a large number of skills will be mostly useless.

By far more interesting, however, is a new mode of gameplay in which your characters have only one health bar that when depleted to zero will completely remove that party member from your current game, adding an exciting and challenging aspect to play. You will not lose their items as the dead party member’s inventory will be dropped. This ‘Permadeath’ option however is only enabled for the single-player mode, and not currently available for multiplayer gameplay. As explained by the inXile development team:

“As much fun as is to watch your friends subjected to painful and horrific video game deaths, co-op splits the team down the middle, and one player losing everyone and then watching for (potentially) hours until the other can make it back to Ranger HQ just isn’t a good time.”

Do keep in mind that when you select this option at the game start you will not be able to change to the default mode at any time, it is permanent. (This is similar to the Hardcore mode found in the Diablo series). No doubt this far more difficult play setting was in part a response to criticism from players that the earlier added Story mode (intended to remove challenges so that players could focus on the story of the game) was insultingly easy.

Regardless, we’re very excited by this latest patch and can’t wait to start a new game!