Gray Zone Warfare from MADFINGER Games has Patch 0.3.5.0 testing #2 live on the public-test branch for continued evaluation, targeting performance after an Unreal Engine 5.5 upgrade. The build focuses on improved AI aiming, first-person animation changes, weapon sway and recoil tweaks, and a long list of community-reported bug fixes and crash remedies.
The public test aims to tackle performance and client crashes introduced by the UE 5.5 move and to refine first-person animations, death sequences, weapon sway, recoil, and various animation blending issues across multiple scenarios. AI aiming was rebalanced to behave more like a human opponent across difficulty levels and environmental modifiers. Crashes were a clear focus. The update also brings technical updates to Oodle and DLSS and an updated Epic Online Services SDK.
Available servers for the test are listed as EU West, US East, and US West, and the test runs both Warfare (PvEvP) and Joint Ops (PvE) modes. The official announcement on Steam outlines the public-test steps and details for participants, and a feedback form and Discord invite are provided for testers to send reports and impressions. Live for a few days.
Patch Notes – 0.3.5.0
Public Testing Changelog [Not Final]
Key Enhancements and Changes
- Focus on optimizing the movement animations in the 1st person perspective in various ways:
- Reduced several animations affecting the 1st person perspective, reducing excessive character movement and animation blending. For example, the top half of the character’s body was decoupled from the 1st perspective animations, and the breath animation was disabled in the 1st person perspective.
- The weapon sway was adjusted, making it more responsive when the player moves
- Pistol recoil has been tweaked to make it more realistic
- New and improved death sequence from the 1st person perspective. The player’s vision turns to the approximate direction from which the player was shot.
- AI aiming rebalancing: The new system simulates human-like aiming behavior that varies based on AI difficulty level, combat situation, injuries, suppression, weather conditions, distance to the target, and weapon type.
- Updated Unreal Engine to version 5.5
Most important changes and fixes reported by and requested by the community
- Fixed an issue where lasers were not working correctly in specific locations, such as YBL-1 and parts of Midnight Sapphire
- Fixed a bug that caused the key drop frequency in Fort Narith to be incorrectly low
- Fixed the gunshot sounds where the sonic crack can be heard before the gunshot
- Fixed missing Twitch drops rewards for players who were unable to claim them until now
- Fixed an issue causing very dark nights with the global illumination set to medium or higher
- Fixed an issue where players would get stuck under the ground or would fall through the map after getting revived
- Fixed the disabled FSR frame generation on RX580 graphics cards
Gameplay
- Fixed an issue where players always died if they got into a coma while in a helicopter
- Fixed an issue where using the splint didn’t prioritize the most damaged bone
- Adjusted the extraction range for the squad strike Fragile Goods from 2,5m to 25m to allow for easier completion of the task
- Fixed a rare issue where blood stops regenerating after healing all wounds
- Fixed an issue where the player’s weapon can become invisible after examining another player with a grenade in hand
- Fixed the RIS II 12 Handguard compatibility with shorter barrels
- Added the missing FDE AK Handguard to the military firearms box loot table
- Added the missing HP Bunker key to the Hunter’s Paradise Boss loot table
World
- Adjusted the ground assets in the Spielberk COP to prevent climbing on top of the roof
- Fixed the area on top of the Crusader COP, which was previously not recognized as a part of the COP area
- Fixed a missing collision on a wall near the Tiger Bay Central South East entrance
- Fixed an issue where the clouds were sometimes moving too fast
- Fixed the incorrect collision around fountains in the Midnight Sapphire that caused grenades to bounce off
- Fixed several locations where players could get stuck:
- Tiger Bay Wrecking Yard at 195, 130
- Fanny Paradise – between a house and some pallets at 189, 121
- In rocks near Sabai Lake Restaurant at 204, 152
- In rocks near Inthavong Farm at 159, 133
- Near Sawmill, between logs and a container at 138, 143
- Outside of the Nomad COP at 189, 157
- Disabled lights that were unintentionally on during the daytime
- Fixed an obsolete interaction option on a light switch in YBL-1
UI
- Fixed an incorrect “joined squad” notification when a player was promoted to the squad leader
- Fixed an issue where a messenger channel would get stuck in the pinned section after unpinning
- Fixed an issue where the messenger window would fail to display when sending a message through the player interaction panel
- Removed the option to invite to a squad from offline friends in the friend list
- Faction kill is now pre-selected as the reason in the reporting window when reporting a player for a faction kill
- Fixed the incorrect text wrapping in the feedback form text window
- Fixed the incorrect DLC message wrapping in Czech
- Fixed the conflict zone details in the Spanish localization
- Fixed the conflict zone detail text not updating when changing the game language
- Fixed the incorrect size of the maintenance notification widget in the main menu
- Unified the position of the maintenance window on various resolutions/screen sizes
- Fixed an issue where the character level was displayed as zero instead of 1 after a wipe
- Fixed an empty icon in the hair section of the character creation screen
- Fixed an issue causing the weather forecast in the main menu to be out of sync with the in-game one
Custom Servers
- Fixed an issue where the player count was not greyed out when a custom server was running
- Fixed wrong wording on the player list on custom servers
- Implemented support for gamepad control for the free cam on custom servers
- Fixed an issue where players who join a custom server for the first time have “Nickname” displayed instead of their username
- Fixed an issue where the player’s rank was not set correctly on custom servers despite using the Everything Unlocked preset
Technical and performance fixes
- Various performance, RAM, and VRAM optimizations
- Numerous crash fixes
- Improved the suggested default settings based on the player’s hardware
- Fixed an issue where closing the game by pressing ALT+F4 might lead to the game freezing
- Fixed an issue that caused the Load Friends Failed error if a player accumulated over 100 friends
- Fixed an issue where Steam friends data was not loaded after 60 minutes in the main menu
- Fixed an issue where players were unable to join the server as a squad leader under specific circumstances
Technical Updates
- Updated Oodle to 2.9.14 to workaround crashes related to specific Intel CPUs
- Updated DLSS to 8.1.0
Updated Epic Online Services SDK to version 1.17.1.3
Compared to Patch 0.3.5.0 Testing #1, we improved the analytics data we’re gathering on performance and crashes and applied a few additional fixes.
Additional Changelog compared to Patch 0.3.5.0 Testing #1:
- [Fixed] Incomplete weapon shadow on the ground
- [Fixed] Black artifacts sometimes appearing when using NVGs with the XeSS upscaling method
- [Fixed] Choppy sprinting animation transition when repeatedly pressing the Shift key
- [Fixed] Splints not healing damaged bones under certain circumstances
- [Fixed] Noticeable bump after stopping in the dynamic crouch animation
- [Fixed] Weapon becoming invisible in 1PV after being revived from a coma while holding a grenade
We will continue working on fixes based on your feedback.
Instructions & Feedback Form
The team asks testers to complete the feedback form after playtests; a direct feedback form is available at https://forms.gle/PXfF32Xpak6xHrg56. Discussion and live chat for the public test are hosted in the community Discord at https://discord.gg/grayzonewarfare.
To join the public-experimental branch, the Steam announcement linked above lists the Betas tab method; progression in this test is adjusted and will not affect live progression.
Tell us what stood out in the comments and share quick reactions on X and Bluesky for a follow-up conversation with the team.
