Massive Highguard update arrives tomorrow with new character, map, and a ton of improvements to the base game

Highguard continues its journey of rehabilitating its unfortunate launch tomorrow with an all-new Episode, coming earlier than expected, and it’s chock full of goodies.

A new playable Warden named Ekon, a new Wolf mount type (free for all players), and a ton of changes to the existing game formula for quality-of-life purposes are coming, including a lot of tweaks to the controversial “gearing up” phase of every match.

Read on below for what’s new and different in Highguard’s Episode 2 when it launches tomorrow, Feb. 6.

Highguard Episode 2 patch notes

New Warden: Ekon

• Dread (Passive)

  • Reveal the heartbeat of wounded enemies. Once an enemy Warden is low health, they are highlighted in pulsing beats until they are dead, or their health regenerates.

• Wolf Spirit (Tactical)

  • Unleash a spirit wolf to hunt the nearest enemy and apply Dread. This Wolf Spirit travels long distances, moving straight through rocks and structures to find its prey. If seen in time, it can be shot down. This ability can be cast in human form, or in Wolf form.

• Fearsome Howl (Ultimate)

  • Apply Dread to all enemies across the map and increase your movement speed. This ability can be cast in human form, or in Wolf form.

• Wolf Form

  • Ekon doesn’t ride an animal into battle, he becomes one—transforming into a powerful direwolf that tracks, hunts, and runs down mounted enemies. While in this form, Ekon’s speed is unmatched by other mounts. Through a full third-person point of view, the direwolf can see around cover. When moving in for an attack, weapons are laid down in favor of Ekon’s deadly bite attack, which will dash forward and bite a prey before immediately transforming back to human form to finish off the job. Attacking without a target will allow Ekon to perform a small air dash to traverse maps more athletically. In addition, while in Wolf Form, Ekon can track an enemy’s scent that they leave in their path. Ekon can use all of his other powers while in Wolf Form.

New map: Skydrift

“Far west of Headwall, beyond the vast, uncharted lands of Highguard where the maps go blank and expeditions go missing lies the fabled lost city of Skydrift recently awakened,” its description reads.

“Wardens can navigate through hollowed out caverns once home to great winged-beasts, spar off against one another in an ancient ring of stone, and ride across colossal chain bridges and through remarkable Sky Jumpers to reach Skydrifts highest point – a palace above the clouds.”

Gear Up phase updates

• Better POI Loot

  • Red Weapon Chests in POIs now contain Masterwork weapons.

    • Masterwork weapons have improved stats within their rarity. Blue Masterworks are better than Blues, but still less quality than Purple. Players can still loot upgraded weapons outside of POIs, but the Masterwork versions of weapons each round are only found in POIs.

• Ultimate Chargers

  • These items are found in white barrels in POIs, but we’ve seen that players are having a hard time identifying that. In order to make that clear, white barrels that contain Ultimate Chargers now have an obvious gold glow.

• Waypoint Markers

  • When you leave your base in the gear phase, waypoint icons will guide players towards the Points of Interest. They’re also pingable so players can communicate intent without voice comms.

    • The map will also communicate that POIs contain Masterwork Weapons and Ultimate Chargers.

• Speed Gates

  • Speed Gates are always on when a player is near them, instead of only when a Shieldbreaker is present.
  • This should allow players to get back to fights after respawning

Ranked mode

Highguard’s Ranked mode is three-vs-three, and has several skill divisions to grind through:

• Bronze (Hare)
• Silver (Goat)
• Gold (Ape)
• Platinum (Dire Wolf)
• Diamond (Gryphon)
• Master (Manticore)
• Grandmaster (Leviathan)

Rank points are decided on by winning games, and how big you win:

• Overwhelming Victory: 25 RP

  • This is winning with 100 percent base health remaining

• Victory: 20 RP

  • This is standard victory where each team was more evenly matched

• Close Victory: 15 RP

  • This is winning where your base had 35 percent base health or less remaining

Points are also given for winning streaks, kills, and for queuing solo.

Stats

Player statistics are added, retroactive from Episode 1. Raid and Defense stats are new for Episode 2, but the feature will be expanded upon in future updates.

General gameplay updates

• The Defensive Phase at the start of the game has been reduced to 30 seconds from 60.
• Anchor Stones fuse timers have been increased to 80 seconds from 60.
• We’ve added your Kills and Assists to the HUD above the minimap.
• Many zipline usability improvements, including smoother attaching and riding, and making it harder to accidentally attach.
• Players can now have a maximum of 4 ziplines. When casting the 5th, their first one will automatically destroy.
• Improvements to mantle feel.
• You will be prompted to drop the BigRig when it gets to low or zero ammo.
• Upon being revived, you now get a hint to tap the emote button to say “Thank You”. As a byproduct your character will no longer automatically say thank you.
• Pinged orange weapons will now show the perk when you hover on them.
• You can now ping ziplines.
• You can now ping Mara darkspawn when it’s highlighted through walls (at the end of a raid).
• You can now ping Kai’s ice wall.
• Pinging a Shieldbreaker or Domesplitter plant point now has more specific ping VO based on the scenario.
• The end game podium will now highlight people who had the highest stats on their team.
• Smugglers Den minimap has been updated to be more accurate.
• Adjusted the final Shieldbreaker plant animation to take exactly as long as a normal one.
• The Trader menu will darken and update if his stock changes while you have the menu open.
• Dead players no longer show up on the minimap.
• Adjusted Mara’s Soul Armor power description to include that it also works on enemy players (so be careful where you throw it)
• Added key bindings on PC for Map Screen, Character Info and Loadout.
• AFK timer in a match has been reduced from 5 minutes to 4.
• Firing Range targets have been replaced with new versions that stay open so you can test sustained fire.
• Firing Range can now accommodate parties of up to 5 players.

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The full list of patch notes can be found on X/Twitter, including a lot more changes to the base game experience based on feedback from players.

Update on Feb. 5 at 2:50pm CT: Highguard has also just posted a four minute-long cinematic, Episode 1: Wardens, showcasing the game’s characters and world. It definitely feels like this should have come out with the launch of the game, or before it, but it’s here now and it’s pretty awesome. Not only that, but a part two is coming tomorrow alongside the game’s update.

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Nioh 3 is a truly visual masterpiece that’s better played in high graphics, but the performance in the early hours hasn’t been smooth. If you’re on a PC, you can easily tweak certain settings to get more out of your hardware.

We already got an early taste of PC gameplay, all thanks to the demo that’s available for free. While a massive benefit is continuing the main story on the full version, it also gave us an idea about what the best set of visual settings might look like.

Best Nioh 3 graphics settings

Before I dive deeper into the settings, here’s how my setup looks.

• AMD Ryzen 5600G
• NVIDIA RTX 3060 12 GB
• 16 GB of DDR5 RAM

Here are the settings I rolled with on my PC.

• Display Mode: Borderless
• VSync: Off
• Resolution: 1920×1080 (depends on your setup)
• Frame Rate Cap: 60 FPS
• Graphics Presets: Custom
• Upscaling: DLSS
• Sharpening: 1.0
• Rendering Resolution: 65%
• Dynamic Resolution: 60
• Minimum Rendering Resolution: 50%
• Maximum Rendering Resolution: 65%
• Frame Generation: Off
• FPS Dynamic Adjustment: On
• HDR: Off
• Post-Effects Resolution: Standard
• Motion Blur: Off
• Chromatic Aberration: Off
• Len Vignette: Off
• Noise Filter: Off
• Mach Band Noise: Off
• Color Precision: Standard
• Depth of Field: Off
• Lens Flare: Off
• Bloom: Off
• Subsurface Scattering: Off
• Shadow Quality: Standard
• Ambient Occlusion: Very Low
• Model Quality: Standard
• Model Texture Quality: Standard
• Number of Models Displayed: Few
• Wind Sway: Off
• Anisotropic Filtering: Off
• Effects: Standard
• Motion Quality: Low
• Screen Space Reflection: Very Low
• Background Mesh Quality: Standard
• Terrain: Low
• Grass Density: Low
• Volumetric Cloud Quality: Low
• FPS (Cutscenes): 30
• Cutscene Quality: Standard
• Global Illumination: Standard

There are two pointers to note.

• I kept Vsync off because you reduce the load on your system but sacrifices very little in return. Hence, it’s best to keep it off.
• Keeping the FPS capped to 60 gave me the best results. There were no lags, no stutters, and the performance held steady at 60 FPS. However, you can choose to go for uncapped if you have a better system.

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