‘The Division’ Gets Hot Fix Patch, But It Doesn’t Fix Missing Characters

The Division 1.1 update delivered Incursions, Gear Sets, and other new content to the online shooter on Tuesday. Some issues came along with it, however, which Ubisoft is addressing with a hotfix patch to be delivered the same night. Unfortunately, a larger issue with characters will need further investigation.

The hotfix for The Division was delivered at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT and took the game’s servers offline for approximately 15 minutes. The main thrust of this patch is to fix issues with the new Incursion boss encounter plus the amount of loot received from named enemies in Challenge mode. Community Manager Yannick Banchereau shared the following patch notes via the Ubisoft forums.

• Named enemies in Challenge mode will now only guarantee one High-End item like all the other named enemies
• Incursion: Falcon Lost
  • The APC will no longer take damage from players’ weapons
  • The APC’s Mortar weapon will now fire correctly
• Several fixes to improve server stability

The downside is many players are reporting their characters from The Division are being deleted. There are many mentions in the patch notes forum thread as well as a Reddit post that has already grown to nearly 900 comments at the time of this article. Oddly, most or all of the reports of characters being deleted come from Xbox One owners.

The character deletion occurs after logging out of the game and receiving a “Delta” or “Mike” error. The character is then unavailable when logging back into The Division.

Banchereau did acknowledge that Ubisoft is aware of the issue in the patch notes post. They don’t have a fix for it at the moment, though.

“Please note that we are aware of the issue where some players find their characters missing after playing update 1.1. This issue will require further investigation and will not be fixed with this hotfix.”

Ubisoft Massive posted in the Reddit thread concerning wiped characters to ask for usernames and the platform they are playing on. The last update from Dijit about the issue stated, “I’ve received enough player names and we’re looking into each character individually, We’ll get back to you with more information as soon as we can.”

It’s unknown what percentage of The Division‘s player population has been affected by this glitch. Hopefully, the missing characters can be restored to the affected players and their progress will not be lost. Otherwise, Ubisoft will then have a PR issue on their hands to deal with as well a technical one.

The Division 1.1 update includes the new “Falcon Lost” Incursion covered in a previously published Inquisitr article. The additional details from the patch notes include the names of the new High-End named weapons. The “Warlord” is the new assault rifle, and the “Valkyria” is the new submachine gun. Meanwhile, there is a “Historian” marksman rifle added with this update, but it won’t be acquirable until the 1.2 update.

The most controversial change listed in the new patch notes involves changes to crafting. Ubisoft Massive explained it wants players to gain High-End items more often via loot drops from killing enemies versus crafting them. Named NPCs will gain their own loot tables that grant specific types of High-End items as a result. Meanwhile, converting crafting materials haves been changed to make it much more expensive to convert Standard (Green) and Specialized (Blue) materials to High-End (Gold) items.

Another alternative way to get better gear will be through changes to the Dark Zone vendors. The initial requirement to purchase Superior (Purple) items is being dropped to rank 15 from rank 30. High-End (Gold) level 30 items will drop down to Dark Zone rank 25 from 50. Finally, High-End level 31 items can be purchased at rank 40 instead of rank 50.

Loot trading is also implemented with this update for The Division. Players will be able to drop loot for others in their group to pick up. Note that this only works between group members who were grouped together when the loot was dropped. Additionally, it is only available for two hours from the time it was dropped.

Some of the new desirable loot with this update includes the introduction of four Gear Sets. Players will receive additional bonuses as they equip more pieces from each set. Equipping the four pieces from a set will unlock a bonus talent. Full details of all the perks can be found here.

The new Gear Sets will drop from Challenge-level activities with a handful of crafting blueprints available. The exception is Path of the Nomad, which will only drop from the Dark Zone.

[Image via Ubisoft]