Greetings, Brothers and Sisters!

The time has come! Our biggest update yet, 1.0.13, is finally here! If you do not see the prompt to update, you may need to restart your Steam client.

With Patch 1.0.13, we’ve made major improvements to your Last Year experience:

NEW MAP: THE SAWMILL!
Get ready for carnage! The first in the “Afterdark” series of Forest Maps, The Sawmill is our introduction to the area of The Nightmare that The Spider calls home. The Sawmill is a completely new environment, and introduces a brand-new mechanic: Environmental Kills! Between sawblades and rushing trains, both Classmates and Fiends will have to be extra careful navigating this new haunted house style experience!

NEW WEAPON: THE CHAINSAW!
Take on the Fiends with our first devastating Heavy Weapon: The Chainsaw! Classmates will find it in a specific spawn point in the new map, but will be unable to run or carry quest items while wielding this awesomely powerful weapon. Find it and go carve out a name for yourself!

NEW FEATURE: THE SHOP!
Want a little extra currency to buy that cosmetic you like? Wish you could support the Last Year Dev Team AND flex with unique skins? Then the Shop is for you! The Shop will allow players to spend real money to buy more Stash Cards, get our new hard currency, Mystic Ore, or purchase bundles that include a skin, some cards, and ore for discounted prices! Come one, come all!

NEW COSMETICS: BLOODY VALENTINE AND MORE!
We’ve introduced brand new cosmetics for players to unlock. Grind your cards to unlock the timed exclusive Bloody Valentine event skins, complete matches to earn brand new Legendary skins, or purchase Mystic Ore to get our first Ore exclusive skins! There’s something for everyone, both new and returning players!

NEW META: COMPLETE BALANCE OVERHAUL!
Last Year is all about the tug of war between our Fearsome Fiends and Dream Teams of Classmates, and we’re doubling down on that with this update! We’ve seen frustrations on both sides of the experience, and we’ve reworked the second to second experience to maximize play time, encourage experimentation, allow players to recover from mistakes, and encourage meaningful choices at every level of play.

Here’s a list of some of the biggest changes we’ve made:

• Player outlines have been restored, and Fiend is now visible in a unique purple outline when engaged with Classmates
• Classmates now have a “restoration” mechanic, which heals them automatically when they are under 30 HP
• The base damage on Pipes and Turret Fire have been increased
• The damage on both the Bat and the Shotgun have been increased
• The scrap costs for the following items have slightly increased: The Bat, The Helmet, The Gas Bomb, Adrenaline, and The Shotgun
• Medics now heal faster, regenerate charges faster, heal stamina as well as health, but heal less HP per charge
• The Scout tracker now fires quicker, blinds for slightly longer, but recharges a little slower
• Technicians are locked in place longer when destroying their turrets
• Successful melee weapon attacks now drain stamina, and Classmates cannot melee attack at low stamina
• Helmet HP has been reduced
• Taser now stops firing much faster when the target is missed
• Base health when getting up from being incapacitated is now 25 HP
• Stamina drain and recharge has been reviewed to prioritize escaping
• Fiends now have a “Nightmare Shield” that recharges when spawned out
• Fiends’ health has been increased
• Fiends’ basic attack damage has been curbed
• Fiends’ special attack damage and cooldown times have been increased
• Fiends now have unlimited stamina
• Fiends are now resistant and/or vulnerable to certain elemental damage types
• Fiends no longer have “blood feedback” when damaged
• The Slasher has been given a brand-new ability, The Cleave, which damages multiple Classmates in front him
• The Strangler’s Chain Grab is now slower, but can only be interrupted with a Scout Tracker’s flash or a Taser
• The Strangler’s Chain Grab also does not automatically remove The Helmet, it simply deals damage until the Helmet is destroyed, and the grab continues
• Shock damage now deals extra damage to the “Nightmare Shield,” and Fiends will take extra damage to their Nightmare Shields while being shocked by the Taser
• The following Spells have been adjusted:
o Human Tank slows Classmates down more, but shields more damage
o Resilient now grants more health
o Last Man Standing gives more health
o Leech restores less health to Classmates
o Lone Wolf now activates within a shorter distance
o Take That does extra damage on its last hit
o Acid Damage has been reduced
o Fire Damage has been reduced
o Shock now deals extra damage to Nightmare Shield
o Carpet Bomb clusters do less damage
o Huddle Up’s health boost has been lowered
o All cooldowns for Spells are now longer

As always, we’ve also done another pass of optimization to help improve performance and reduce drops in FPS, specifically when experiencing the game on lower quality settings. We’ll be continuing to see what other improvements can be made without sacrificing quality of experience. Finally…

NEW BUG FIXES!

We’re continuing to address certain bugs, prioritizing those that have an effect on gameplay and balance. Here is a list of issues we’ve resolved:

• Giant no longer loses functionality after dropping a classmate due to explosion
• "Just A Tip" text no longer moves depending on the size of the tip
• Player's Map Vote Selection is no longer Reset if another player leaves the Lobby
• Classmates can no longer move at walking speed while crouching
• The unlootable loot box on the floor of the laundry room of the Gym has been moved and fixed
• Proximity Mines no longer fail to arm in certain situations
• Giant can no longer throw players out of world in the basement hallway on the Library map
• The Spider can now spawn out while inside a porta potty with a Classmate nearby
• Classmates no longer earn “Kill” rewards for killing other Classmates
• Nick's "Earl Grey, Hot" Skin model now reflects the image on the card
• Using huddle up with the gear now has the proper VFX
• Huddle Up health effect no longer remains after completing a disk objective
• Giant no longer plays the Flash blinded animation when flashed while holding a Classmate

KNOWN ISSUES:
• The comeback mechanic sometimes does not work in the new map
• Creating an unranked party and spamming clicks on "Kill" to bring you to the Lobby might kick users from your party and leave them on the main menu. If the host clicks on the "Back" button thereafter, they might crash. Workaround: Don't spam click "Kill" in Unranked parties! Just click it once.
• Switching items while discarding a broken item could result in the player not being able to do anything except walk. Workaround: keep spamming the switching items button until the discard animation comes back and let it complete.

The new package size is approx. 11 GB in total, which means a download of approx. 3.3 GB for a user who already has Last Year installed on their computer. This size increase is directly related to all of the new content described above.

This is the biggest update we’ve done for Last Year since its launch, but it is definitely not its last! Just like after launch, we’ll be monitoring and playing with the community to see if there are any major pain points that need fixing, and we will react as quickly as possible to those.

We’re also planning a patch for this update which should include not only additional bug fixes, but potentially new features and content as well! We’re hoping to drop this in the following weeks, before the “Bloody Valentine” event comes to a close and the timed exclusive skins disappear for now!

Lastly, we’re going to be hosting a Live Dev Steam at twitch.tv/lastyeargame on Friday, February 14th at 2 PM EST to show off the new content, answer all your questions about the Bloody Valentine event, and get into some Devs vs Fearsome Fiend action with our special guest star, Dee! We hope to see you all there, at our new date and time.

As always, we want thank you all for your continued support and patience. This is just the beginning of the support we’d like to give Last Year throughout 2020 and beyond! We’re already beginning to plan out our future milestones to ensure we’re creating the best possible Last Year experience, and we hope you’ll be with us for this amazing journey!

Speak to you soon, Brothers and Sisters!

Unitas,
Brother Justin