The Dead State Beta is finally here! If you've activated your Steam key, your copy of Dead State should automatically update. If you never received your key or lost it, please message us on Kickstarter and we'll try to get back to you with your key as soon as we can.
 
Since I don’t want to keep you in suspense, I’ll kick off this announcement with our impressive changelog:
 
- 75+ new locations
- 30+ new allies  
- 500+ new dialogues  
- Crisis events  
- New enemy types & factions  
- Vehicle travel  
- Skill perks  
 - Ally traits  
- Thrown weapons  
- Data system (basic)  
- Dog allies and enemies  
- Special weapons  
 - Neutral encounters  
- Tutorial elements  
- Pause menu  
- New save & load screens  
- New goals  
- Allies tracker on Goals screen  
- Fence attacks  
- New jobs  
- Shelter upgrades
 
 … And a whole lot more cool stuff!  
 
 Don’t skip off gleefully to launch the game just yet, though - read on to learn more about what you should expect when you fire up the Beta.  
 
 About the Beta
 First, we want to remind everyone that the Beta is not the full game. While the Beta includes tons of new content and features, there are also content and features still missing, and most of those that are in the Beta still need balancing and optimization. There are also still going to be a host of bugs and technical issues that we’re still actively fixing behind the scenes. Similar to other prominent recent betas on Steam (Wasteland 2, Pillars of Eternity, Divinity), Dead State’s Beta doesn’t include all the final story, dialogues, or levels, but it’s sure got enough to keep you busy for quite some time! The idea behind the open beta is to expose as much content to you as we possibly can and get your feedback on both design and technical issues before we move on to the final release.  
 
 Speaking of your feedback - we need it! The community is full of passionate, motivated, and clever people and we humbly ask you to use your powers to help us improve Dead State. On the design side, we especially need feedback about combat, supplies, loot, and dialogue. On the technical side, we especially need to know about crashes, soft locks, exploits, and any progress-blocking bugs. Of course, all other game feedback is welcome too  
 
 To provide bug reports and feedback, please use the subforum located here: Early Access Beta. Don’t mind the old posts - we had a very small number of people helping us do internal testing of the beta, and we’ve converted the forum we used to communicate with them into the full Beta bug-reporting/feedback forum. (And most of those reported issues from that time are fixed in the Beta you're playing!)
 
You can also use our "Bug Reporting and Feedback” board on Steam to report issues if you’d prefer.  
 
 Please make sure to read the “Known Issues” thread first and review other people’s posts before reporting your issue; that makes it easier for the devs and mods to keep track of everything!  
 
 Better Community = Better Game  
We can’t wait to hear your thoughts on the Beta, both positive and negative - just please keep your feedback polite, constructive, and on-topic. Providing constructive criticism and behaving respectfully towards others is awesome and appreciated. On the other hand, attacks and arguments detract from the effectiveness of the beta feedback process and ultimately harm the whole Dead State community. If we all keep in mind that the goal of the beta is to make Dead State the best game it can possibly be, then that’s exactly what will happen!  
 
 Known Issues and Missing Features & Content  
Remember how I said there were a few bits missing and some kinks still being worked out? Right here, I’ll tell you about some of the big’uns we’re aware of.  
 
For the longer version of the Known Issues list, go here.  
 AI:  
AI is still pretty basic right now. We’re already working on vast improvements to the AI system that you’ll see in the first patch. Eventually, enemies will exhibit more advanced tactics and behaviors that vary among different enemy types.  
 
 Dialogue and Scripting: Dialogue and scripting are one of our highest priorities and are constantly being added to and improved.
 - There are still a few missing dialogues for specific characters, and more dialogue may very well be added in polish stage.
 - A number of world events are not scripted yet so if it seems like something more should be happening in a scene, chances are you’re right  
 - Scripting is also missing or minimal in numerous ally encounters, so sometimes dialogue may not match up with what actually happens when you meet a new ally out in the world.  
 - There are a few neutral encounters already in the game, but more are planned for the future.  
 
 
 Pathfinding:  
 - There are still a few weird behaviors being exhibited during pathfinding, such as jittering, sliding, occupying the same space, and meandering. There’s also some lag that comes up occasionally while pathfinding. Pathfinding optimization will happen closer to final release.
 - There’s currently an issue where allies do not follow the active character up or down stairs. This is a very high priority issue for us to fix in an upcoming patch.
 
 Combat:  
Weapons, armor, medical items, combat skills, special attacks, and combat encounters are still being balanced and tweaked. Roof behavior is still not ideal and we have plans to make sure the roof stays invisible when any ally is inside of it, among other things.  
 
Crashes and Locks:Crashes and locks are one of our absolute highest priorities, so rest assured that we’re working on solutions for these even as you read these words. Right now, these are the known crashes that occur in the game:  
- There is a rare crash that occurs when players begin to load into a location from the area map and then click somewhere else on the map before the location loads up.  
 - Rarely, the game soft locks after an ally panics  
- the player character’s turn starts and s/he has zero AP and the game is stuck on the player’s turn.  
- A crash occurs when a character with no weapons equipped attempts to stand up from knockdown.  
 - A crash occurs when player wakes up their PC after it’s entered sleep mode with the game open.  
 
 Save/Load: The biggest issue with saves right now is that some save files are getting corrupted after players explore a large quantity of locations. This is a critical priority for us, so hang in there! Again, please save your game in multiple files to lower the risk of losing your game progress until we get this fixed.  
 
 Levels:  
While many levels are fully playable, there are also a few levels at various stages of completion. Some levels may be missing loot, enemies, or even props, and there are certainly plenty that still require additional scripting too.  
 
Perks:- Leadership Commands are not fully implemented in the beta yet.  Only "Go!" and "Aim for the Head" are working right now.
- A few other perks are also not functioning as designed in the beta; they will be fixed in a future update.
 
 Again, the full list of Known Issues is available here (http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,4437.msg119560.html#msg119560%5D%5Dhere%5B/url).
 
Thank You!  
All of us at DoubleBear are really excited to share this beta with you and show off everything we’ve been working on over the past year. Your ongoing support and enthusiasm for Dead State kept us going and reminded us that there are a lot of people out there just as passionate about Dead State as we are. So thank you for keeping us company on this journey - we couldn't have done this without you.