What to Know About 'The Division''s First DLC, Underground

Ever since The Division first launched, the game has been fighting to keep players – with various patches, game updates, and additional activities. But despite Ubisoft’s best efforts, issues including player characters being deleted and hackers being present on all platforms, have remained fairly consistent. Many problems like these have caused The Division to lose a significant chunk of its player base, but thanks to a series of modifications, things may be turning around.

By focusing on releasing quality content patches and banning hackers with extreme prejudice, The Division has set up a great opportunity for its first major expansion to swing in and invigorate the game with a sizable chunk of content. Releasing today on Xbox One and PC, Underground is promising a load of updates along with endless re-playability.

What Is Underground?

The new expansion is focused on a secret war taking place in the depths of Manhattan, where the game’s various factions are fighting for control of territory. Throughout the expansion you’ll be working alone or with a group of friends to seize control of these various territories while navigating a series of randomly generated levels filled with enemies, hazards, and traps.

The main gameplay mechanic behind Underground is the addition of Operations, which are randomly generated levels accessible via a new area within your personal base of operations. These new missions take place completely underground in a new subset of environments focused on metro and municipal tunnels which can be modified with Directives in a way similar to Halo’s campaign skulls. These various directives modify the difficulty of the mission by modifying player loadouts, damage and defensive capabilities.

Each of these randomized missions can be played on normal, hard, challenging or heroic difficulty; which will obviously grant you access to increased rewards and longer operations – but all play into the new ranking system available to players. By completing operations and increasing your underground rank, you’ll gain access to new types of operations, more directives to modify your operations with and exclusive vanity items such as coats, shirts and hats.

The expansion also brings a new Incursion along with it, Dragon’s Nest, where you’ll be traveling to Hell’s Kitchen in order to investigate a new cleaner weapon posing a threat to Manhattan. As with the previous Incursions, Dragon’s Nest will require you to be level 30 and appropriately geared in order to access it.

New Equipment

In Underground you’ll also gain access to four new gear sets that focus on character specializations like those released in previous patches:

B.L.I.N.D. – Control the battlefield with an improved Pulse skill and flashbangs with this hybrid gear set.

DeadEYE – Dictate long-range engagements with powerful critical strikes or accurate headshots.

FireCrest – Set your enemies ablaze with this offensive gear set.

Reclaimer – Boost your entire group with the ultimate support set.

Ubisoft is also releasing a new weapon, the B.L.I.N.D. System MDR Rifle, but it won’t be available to players until a future update. According to the patch notes, it looks like these sets will be locked to those who own the expansion this time around. I’ll admit, the descriptions are a little lighter than I would have liked – but odds are they’ll be focused on maximizing one of the three major stats available to players in-game to help them define their role.

Patch 1.3

The latest patch for The Division will also be released alongside Underground on Xbox One and PC, with the PlayStation 4 patch delayed. This new patch will be available to all players and includes a series of gameplay updates, weapon balancing and bug fixes. You’ll also get access to nine new weapon types throughout the game once you’ve updated to Patch 1.3, including the G36C, G36K, SVD and PP-19.

Underground launches on June 28 for Xbox One and PC and August 2 for PS4.