Responders, get ready for a big one.

REANIMATION (Update 0.4.0) is now just a few short weeks away, an update that compares in size and scope with NMRiH2 Early Access launch back in October.

Reanimation includes the new Pottsville map, a new radial inventory, a revamped combat system, a character roster, a big surprise, and a host of other big items as well as impactful bug fixes across the entire game.

Our team has looked forward to this update as our opportunity to finally release a huge pile of features and content, a great deal of which has been in the works for months (and in some cases years), but wasn’t able to make it for last year’s initial Early Access launch.

Reanimation to us is more than just another one of our monthly game updates - it’s quite special, and we see it as a big moment for the game to show itself off as a far more playable content and feature-packed version of No More Room in Hell 2 in Early Access.

Early Access development will continue beyond April, with more updates to come as we work towards its 1.0 version.

If you’re just joining the community, we invite you to look back at the release roadmap up to now:

Now, let’s look onward to what’s coming in April…

We’re still holding a big card in our decks so that we can truly blow players away once we get closer to the release of REANIMATION.

A few hints as to what April’s surprise content may be:

1. It's something we've been working on for a long time (and we haven’t been shy about it either!)
   
2. It's going to give players a lot more to do in the game.
   
3. We think it's the main thing the game needs more of right now!

We’re confident that players are going to be happy with the surprise major content coming in April (alongside everything else in the update) - but there’s a lot more to talk about besides it…

The first new map since October 2024’s Early Access launch is nearly here!

Pottsville, a brooding suburban small town full of claustrophobic encounters with the undead at dawn, is a new urban-set map for No More Room in Hell 2.

Inspired by classic zombie movie settings and scenes, Pottsville is smaller and far more dense than the big rural open map, Power Plant. It'll play very differently, with more claustrophobic encounters against the undead, as players creep down foggy alleyways and roam through neighbourhood houses and downtown buildings, as they explore a blend of suburbia and city environments.

Pottsville will see players more rapidly group up (compared to Power Plant) as they explore a neighborhood teeming with the undead, before descending deeper into the map's city streets and urban centre.

"With Pottsville our main goal was to create a suburban horror experience mixed with a new flow and intensity. Players will still spawn alone but we hope to surprise you with how the match plays out from there. Power Plant was a rural setting and more open, whereas Pottsville is a suburban small town and feels more dense. With this density we’re able to create new moments where the zombie pressure is more immediate.”

“One of the big changes we’ve made is to develop some new zombie spawning tech so we can more reliably put pressure on the player when we want to. We then designed our layouts to try and support this new tech and it's really cool to see it come to life!"
- Luke Shelswell, Level Design Director

This new map is just one of the many new chunks of major content coming in REANIMATION, one of our studio’s largest single game updates ever.

New to REANIMATION will be a character roster that allows you to manage multiple permadeath characters at once. Prefer to leave your level 50 veteran back at base while you venture forth with a lower level responder? Now that’s an option.

On the character tab, players will now have three character slots.

Clicking a filled slot will make that character active. Clicking an empty slot will bring up a character selection pop-up. Once a player starts matchmaking, character selection is locked.

We’ll plan to continue to iterate on the Character Roster feature beyond April.

The new radial inventory harkens back to the first No More Room in Hell, allowing you to move your mouse into quadrants of your screen to quickly select between inventory items.

New to No More Room in Hell 2’s inventory will be a weight system for items you pick up. Weights are reflected in the size of each "slice" of the quadrant of the radial inventory. So, a 2 handed sledgehammer or wooden planks will take up a great deal of more "weight space” than a kitchen knife does. The earlier inventory in NMRIH2 was not weight-based but simply had a limited number of slots, regardless of the weight of things you were carrying.

The radial inventory will also allow players to assign keyboard hotkeys (1-9) by pressing the desired hotkey while hovering over an item.

We expect that the new system will create a more fast-paced inventory experience while also forcing players to make more strategic decisions about what items they collect and use. Players will have to make smarter choices about what to take with them, give to other players, or leave behind.

April’s new Combat 2.0 system aims to bring the game’s melee experience much more in line with feedback we’ve heard from the community, which means closer to the core of a No More Room in Hell game. Combat should feel more like desperate and gritty survival, and with more uniqueness between weapons than before.

We last spoke about the new melee system in our recent blogpost:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/292000/view/534342772300186602?l=english

As combat designer Nicolas Lince described in our livestream earlier this month, Combat 2.0 is focused on allowing players to stack melee actions together for more creativity and better interplay with your co-op allies during fights. It’s now much more important to measure your strike distance, decide on the direction of your attacks, keep an eye on your stamina - and juggle all of this with allies at your side. One player may take a more “crowd control” role, knocking back multiple zombies with heavy attacks and kicks, while another player more carefully disperses enemies with precision, as zombies make it through the crowd.

New melee weapons are also on their way to complement the revised melee system - but stay tuned for those details.

What we’ve described here is just part of what’s coming in April’s major REANIMATION Update which includes a host of other features as well as that huge surprise chunk of content.

A sampling of more to expect in the April update:

• Riot police zombies
  
• Zombie spawning improvements (essentially, a new spawning system entirely) to bring core improvements to enemy density and scarcity across all maps
  
• Modified loot spawning to create a more rewarding experience as you search for gear and supplies
  
• Performance improvements
  
• Hundreds of bug fixes

Stay tuned through the rest of the month for more info about the April update, coming in just a few weeks.



Waldoboro is another urban setting map that we also have deep in development, that longtime followers of NMRIH2 would remember as a map being worked on by the Lever team before they joined Torn Banner.

As one update on the narrative side - we’ve now changed the name of Waldoboro to Lewiston to better reflect its real-world setting within the state of Maine. In this upcoming map, Responders find themselves further afield from Pennsylvania as they work to secure the safety of survivors across a ravaged city at golden sunset.

We’re excited for NMRIH2 to continue to tell the story of an active and evolving apocalypse as more maps come to the game on the road to 1.0.

Stay tuned for more details about Lewiston, which we also dived into in our recent livestream for an in-engine walkthrough of the map courtesy of longtime NMRIH dev Jon Wiley (aka Cenelder).

If you want to join in on the discussion, please join our Discord[//]. You can also leave feedback in-game, or at http%3A%2F%2FNMRIH2.com%2Fsupport.%0A.

Hello Responders!

We have some big improvements coming to the game in Update 0.3.1!
Responders will have a higher chance to be infected; will be able to customize what they enter a match with through Loadouts, and those in private lobbies will be able to choose the difficulty of their match!

We are excited to continue to bring improvements and new features to our playerbase, and look forward to hearing your feedback!

Items in the loadouts become available to unlock through either account level, character level, or Nightmare Prestige levels. Once an item is unlocked, it is unlocked for good even if the character it was equipped on dies, unless the item had a character level requirement. If so, it will return to a locked state until the character requirement is met again.

Using Credits, Responders will be able to equip a selection of loadout items that they will start their matches with as long as that character is alive. If your Responder with that item equipped in their loadout dies, the item would need to be repurchased for a new Loadout. If your Responder survives, they will start their new match with the same loadout and gear unless new gear is purchased to be equipped instead.

Loadouts will launch with the ability to purchase the following items:

• Ranged Weapons
  
  • Model 13 Handgun
    
  • DT11 Shotgun
• Melee Weapons
  
  • Wrench
    
  • Kitchen Knife
    
  • Rebar
    
  • Small Pipe
    
  • Large Wrench
    
  • Tire Iron
    
  • Long Pipe
• Explosives
  
  • Proximity IED
    
  • Pipe Bomb
    
  • M67 Frag Grenade
• Medical
  
  • Bandages
    
  • Medkit
    
  • Phalanx Pills
    
  • Mass Casualty Kit
    
  • Revive Syringe
    
  • Gene Therapy
• Utility
  
  • Flashlight Batteries
    
  • Deployable Worklight
    
  • Deployable Radio
    
  • .357 MAGNUM
    
  • .45 ACP
    
  • 12GA SHOTGUN SHELLS
    
  • .308 WIN
    
  • 9MM
    
  • 5.56 NATO
    
  • 6.8X51MM
    
  • Ammo Crate
    
  • Nailer
    
  • Ranger Boots
    
  • Body Armor
    
  • Satchel

Along with Loadouts, Credits will become available for earning and spending. Credits are account-wide currency that Responders will earn by completing objectives - the same objectives that grant account XP.

These Credits can be spent on Loadouts, and will be the main in-game currency for customization. They can only be earned in-game.

We’re introducing more options to Private Lobbies!

The following options will be modifiable:

• Difficulty
  
• Dynamic Grouping
  
  • Dynamic Grouping is the ability to either choose to group-up, or automatically group-up when meeting other Responders.

We have more features coming in to allow for modifying in future updates, such as which Start or End scenario on the Power Plant map, or which map to play on!

Character Medals will track how many times Responders extracted, how many supplies you extracted with, how many objectives you’ve completed, and how many times you helped a teammate. These stats cannot be seen by other players, only yourself, and give no other rewards at this time. They are tracked independently - you could have a gold medal in how many times you’ve extracted, but remain a bronze in how many supplies you have extracted with.

Share your stats with other Responders in our Discord[discord.gg]!


Infection is getting an update!
Responders now have a chance of getting infected from every Zombie attack - not just when you’re grabbed and lose the “bite” minigame. Chances of being infected by regular zombie attacks will depend on your health and your stamina - once you are below 50% of your HP, you have a chance to get infected. This chance goes up the less HP you have, so stay healthy!

As a reminder for Responders on how Infection works for zombie grabs - the less stamina you have, the shorter the minigame and the closer to defeat you are. Should you reach critical stamina (below 15%), the grab will instead become an instant bite, which will infect you regardless of your HP status. Use your energy wisely, and keep your pills (or better yet, a gene therapy cure) handy!

• MP5 Submachine Gun
  
  • Our first SMG in No More Room in Hell 2
    
  • Built-in Flashlight - does not use in-game batteries
    
  • Will use 9mm ammo
    
  • A gun from the original No More Room in Hell
  
• Rochester 1873
  
  • Lever-action rifle
    
  • Will use .357 Magnum ammo
    
  • A gun from the original No More Room in Hell
  
• Roje Voice
  
  • The Roje voice is based on a character from No More Room in Hell of the same name
    
  • Random chance - joins the overall pool
• Satchel
  
  • New Item that can be picked up to increase your inventory size
• Scope Attachments - Holographic
  
  • Gives more customization options for Responder weapons
    
  • Allows a player to better aim at further away targets
• New Power Plant extractions
  
  • 3 new extraction spots located outside of the power plant, so Responders will need to be alert to which extraction spot they are to be met at

• Power Plant Balancing
  
  • The End Scenarios that involve the Control Centre no longer require completing Power Plant POIs
    
  • All 3 Power Plant End Scenarios have an equal chance of occurring
• Zombie Combat Improvements
  
  • Hit reaction improvements - more tactile and reactive animations
    
  • Combat balance improvements - zombies will not slide or teleport to the player as they attack
  • Loot Container Improvements
    
    • Loot will better correlate to the container it is found in
      
      • Example: Military Crates will have padlocks and better loot
  Bug Fixes
  Animations
  • Emerge encounters sometimes appear in a default pose briefly when spawning
    
  • Phalanx Pills will no longer clip into player's hand when being taken
    
  • M7A1’s hold position is no longer offset when primed for self sacrifice
  Audio
  • Firefighter tank hiss and explosion SFX are attached to the correct SFX audio volume
    
  • Fuse Panels will trigger their correct audio
    
  • Vehicle Trunks or Doors will trigger their correct audio
    
  • CVO now triggers after completing first and second repairs in the Power Plant repair end scenario
  Environment
  • The oil puddles behind Sawmill location ignite properly now when Responders arrive
    
  • Barricades have been trimmed to fit the window width at checkpoint stash room
    
  • Invisible fire volume at Farmhouse has been put out
    
  • Invisible fire at hospital has been put out
  Localization
  • Skilled Medic description is translated more accurately
    
  • “Minimal UI“ text in the boot flow visibility setting will not overflow in Russian localization
  Server/Client
  • Fixed various crashes
    
  • Power-up benefits will stop once the item is dropped
    
  • Integrated fixes for nanite streaming GPU hang
  UI
  • Unload Weapon prompt will not be visible on a ground weapon if it has no ammo
    
  • Main objectives will appear even if multiple Main Quests are triggered at once
    
  • Objectives & Markers hint prompt will be seen even when not sprinting inside a POI
    
  • Pending Invites tab of the Social Panel will now be visible even with no invites pending
    
  • Input device changes can now be saved
    
  • MC15 Inventory icon is no longer missing its foregrip
    
  • All weapons will use the correct Ping UI icon
    
  • VOIP indicators will now be present when in a squad at the main menu
    
  • Online friends who are not in game will not have the online CRC logo next to their nameplates in the offline friends section - they will instead appear as fully offline
    
  • Skilled Medic skill description has been updated
  UX
  • Gas Station - Loot/Radio can no longer be reached when outside the Stash room
  Weapons
  • Silencer offset for 1911 has been adjusted
    
  • M9A3 Pistol during reload and unload actions will not show have the visible floating clip
  Zombies
  • Crawlers will approach the responder properly
    
  • Spawn zones have been set to more reasonable triggering of zombie encounters
    
  • Player Zombies will not trigger pain VO events
    
  • Firefighter zombie will now react when the player shoots the helmet with a firearm
    
  • Runners attacks will more reliably inflict damage
    
  • Shamblers will no longer pop to downed when shoved while attacking
  
  We thank our playerbase for continuing to report issues and encourage further reporting through https://tornbannerstudios.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new, in-game, or in our Discord[discord.gg]!