Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 Winter update adds custom difficulty
by Aran Suddi · tsaThe Chinese Room and Paradox Interactive have released the Winter Update for Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, with one of the main features being custom difficulty. With this, players can change things like starting health, the amount of damage Phyre can inflict, and allows passive ability recharging. However, this is not a setting that is accessible for new players but those who have the An Elder Unchained achievement or trophy. Custom difficulty cannot be changed after a playthrough has started either.
In addition to the custom difficulty option, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is getting some suitably festive and Christmassy items including a Santa hat and beard, with The Chinese Room also confirming beards will be added in a later update. An FOV Slider and a Motion Blur Toggle have also been added, and you can read the full patch notes below.
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 Winter Update patch notes
Cosmetics Update
- 8 hairs
- 8 faces
- 4 Accessories (rename of piercings)
- 8 eyes.
Custom Difficulty
- Player customization of various aspects of the game has been added to enable players to have a bespoke experience that suits their player preferences.
- Reactive Crosshair
- Character Reaction UI
- Elixir Capacity
- Phyre Starting Health
- Phyre’s Damage
- Masquerade Sensitivity
- Ability Recharging
- Targeting Time Dilation
- Enemy Damage
- Enemy Awareness
- Quests (playing as single or both protagonists)
- Iron Vamp
Accessibility Improvements
Improvements to the accessibility options within the game.
- Field of View
- Combat FOV boost
- Lensing
- Motion Blur
- Gamepad Aim Assist – Auto Tracking
- Gamepad Aim Assist – Aim Slowdown
Gameplay Improvements
- Padlocks will no longer stay locked if enemies have fallen through the floor or walls.
- Padlocks will state the number of enemies nearby and have been balanced to detect enemies over a smaller distance.
- Fixed several abilities incorrectly cancelling ongoing abilities, such as split second and enter oblivion.
- Fixed Taunt working incorrectly on unaware opponents.
Fixed an issue with Enemies not hunting the player after losing track of them.
- IAO are now more effective at warning allies of danger.
- Adjusted the player’s climbing behaviour to make it easier to climb onto thin platforms without falling off.
- Fixed an issue where the achievement “Catch!” would not be triggered.
- Fixed an issue where enemies staggered by an attack were still able to evade.
- Fixed certain enemies being able to use recall while incapacitated by player abilities.
- Fixed some player attacks not buffering inputs for a follow-up attack.
- You are no longer able to use blurred momentum to “dodge” your own boiling blood.
- Players can no longer repeatedly complete the “Executive Delivery” side quest to farm unlimited ability points.
- The interruptible casting period of blood curse has been made resistant to light damage.
Bug fixes
- Various optimisations to improve performance and memory usage.
- Fixes to various lines overlapping.
- The DLC Jukebox briefly disappeared once after interacting with it during the quest “In Chains of Lead and Gold”.
- For some quests after Hub Break1 the ‘Auto Repair Shop’ is inaccessible during hub traversal.
- The Unbirthed fails to spawn if the player navigates along the edges of the room during the Unbirthed intro sequence in the ‘As Above, So Below’ quest.
- Progression blocker occurs when player recalls to ward location after placing it before pulling wooden planks in ‘As Above, So Below’ quest.
- Player can teleport to previous quest stage location by using Recall ability after killing the Gardener, blocking progression.
- Incorrect quest name displayed on the map after completing “The Coursing of the Rats” quest.
- If you complete Onda’s mission (or Mrs Thorn where it ends outside) then die in any way, you can exploit the experience system to give you 1000 exp every time you reload after death.
- Player can kill Izzy again and again to farm ability points.
- NPCs are not holding the items they are meant to be using e.g. cigarettes, phones etc.
- Melancholic NPCs react incorrectly to the aggressive dialog “I can destroy you” during Blood Resonance conversations.
- Steamdeck – NPC heart effects appears to be misaligned while viewed in Heightened Senses during open-world gameplay.
- Back face culling is visible for the white fur of “The General” outfit during conversation with Safia and Lou in Tome Alone quest.
Achievement
- Achievement Unoriginal Sin does not unlock after feeding on five Sanguine NPCs while wearing Priest outfit as Lasombra “A Full-Blooded Elder” achievement fails to unlock despite unlocking 77/78 achievements.
- “What Sup?” achievement count does not update after feeding on Choleric NPC.
- ‘Breach Contained’ achievement fails to unlock after recovering from a Masquerade breach on Casual difficulty.
- The crosshair remains visible during the Safia boss fight intro cutscene in the ‘The Streets Incarnadine’ quest.
Save and Load
- Death Letter conversation auto-skips with no dialogue prompts after autosave reload in Fabien’s office.
- Marla’s conversation auto-skips with no dialogue prompts after autosave reload in 1920s Makom Bar sequence.
- Spirit Touch conversation with Filing Cabinet fails to display dialogue prompt when reloading from autosave.
- Fabien is unable to interact with Mr.Lemon upon checkpoint reload after enquiring about Memory loss.
Source: Steam