On Monday, Massive opened the doors for the 1.5 - Survival Public Test Server (PTS). It is available from Uplay or Steam and is completely open to the public for everything except the new game mode, Survival. If you want to access Survival, you need to be a season pass holder.
Patch notes
Massive has learned from the community and released much more thorough patch notes early on for their 2nd official PTS process. You can read the full patch notes from within the PTS game client or on the Official Ubisoft forums.
Guaranteed Weapon Talents
Weapons like the PP-19 were the first to have guaranteed weapon talents except for certain
PTS quickstart
I am a little disappointed that for new characters this time around, they provided them with very low GS sealed caches (163, 182, and 229) which deviates from their previous PTS where they were the max GS at the time (229). We all want to dive right into testing the new content for the Division, so here is a quickstart guide to getting geared quickly in the PTS. This should net you approximately 15 - 20 new items and maybe up to 300 Phoenix Credits.
- Create a new character
- Sell gear / weapon mods
- Open all sealed caches
- Sell gear from sealed caches
- Set skills
- Flame turret
- Cluster seeker mines
- Recovery Link
- Set talents
- Shrapnel
- Demolition Expert
- Wildfire
- Chain Reaction
- Change World Tier to Tier 5
- Capture season pass holder supply drop
- Travel to safehouse
- Strip mods from weapons / gear
- Sell mods
- Buy 256GS Basic Sealed caches till out of money (15 or so)
- Open caches
- Complete as many HVTs as you can
Survival
The survival game mode is a new game mode where you can enter Manhattan solo or with a team. You are transported to Manhattan with the goal of retrieving antiviral samples but things go poorly and you are left stranded, injured, cold and without your protective mask. Your objective is to scour Manhattan for supplies and gear, craft a new mask to enter the darkzone, find the antivirals and extract them out. It is a very different gameplay than previous game modes for The Division but it is quite enjoyable.
PVP or PVE
You can enter Survival in PVP mode or PVE mode. The key difference being that other players can kill you just like in the DZ and you get a 20% score boost for your extra challenges.
Loot
Your loot starts off low, level 30 greens with GS of 38. You have to build your way backup through scavenging and fighting mobs. The closer you get to the DZ, the higher quality loot you will receive. All loot in the game is global, so if you kill a mob but don’t pickup the item before another player who is not in your party picks it up, its gone, you lose out. If another player dies, their loot is dropped globally for anyone to pickup.
Crafting
All safehouses have crafting tables for you to upgrade the quality of crafting mats, craft a new mask, extraction flares, new gear and weapons. This is a required task to complete the mission as you will not be able to get all of the items you need in time from other methods in order to make it out alive.
Injury
You fall out of a crashing helicopter, injuring your arm and damaging your supplies. You need to keep taking a steady supply of painkillers and medicine to slow down the progression of your injury becoming a fatal infection.
Elements
You are left alone in subzero temperatures that vary acrossed Manhattan. You need to find or craft new outer garments to be able to withstand the elements and keep hypothermia at bay.
Extraction
The extraction locations are the same as they are in the normal DZ. You need to craft flares in order to call an extraction to get home. Any sealed caches you collect will be extracted with you. You get bonus points if you can acquire the antivirals before you extract but you can extract without them.
Death
Don’t do it, if you die all of your time and loot is gone. You have to requeue and start over.
