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Welcome all new Knights flooding into the New Boston zone. It's a hot Summer Sale kind of day with steamy jungle temperatures, nano-haze rating Orange-3 coming from the northwest, and a new hot update hitting the street.

With Update #14, we've revamped the New Game system to help new players get into the game faster with a great mercenary group by adding the Quick Start options. For those players who pick Advanced Start, we've opened up the 5th and 6th slots - your Specialists - to allow you to freely pick from the widest possible set of characters in those slots (over 300 possible team combinations). We've also improved and polished across the game - improving the visuals of outlines when they overlap, fixing Rhino having too high HP, fixing issues in Eleventh Hour where the Red Key was not dropping from dead captains, fixing some issues with the camera losing focus on moving enemies, and more fixes form community F10s! Check the full release notes below for everything.

If you are enjoying the game, please take a moment to thank our team by clicking "Review" steamhappy

Love our deep systems & extreme replayability? The Best of Trese Brothers Bundle has more!

If you're new to our games, our studio has a long history of making deep, highly-replayable RPGs. All of our previous titles are discounted right now for the Steam Summer Sale, with a bonus discount if you buy them through the Best of Trese Brothers bundle.

[dynamiclink href="https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/37813/Best_of_Trese_Brothers/"][/dynamiclink]

You pay only for the games you don't already own, which might include:

• Templar Battleforce, our previous squad-based tactics title. This game offers a sizable campaign with 55+ unique scenarios, building your squad of armored battle mechs, set in our original sci-fi universe.,

• Star Traders: Frontiers, our sci-fi captain RPG players have called "Firefly meets Dune." Play as any kind of Captain and make your own story as you trade, recruit, hunt, spy, or more across the galaxy. Like Cyber Knights, there are discoverable storylines throughout the universe, including nearly 7 years of free content updates that have added entire new eras to the game. Build your crew from 30+ roles, choose from hundreds of components to build your ship to suit your playstyle, and master both ship and crew combat.,

• Heroes of Steel, our party-based fantasy RPG. This old-school RPG contains the most extensive narrative we've put into a video game, in a time of warring gods and dark powers, set in the immense post-apocalyptic world of Steel. Each potential party member has a wide set of powers that combine with hundreds of weapons, armor, and magical accessories to support clever tactics against a huge variety of enemies.,

Looking back you'll see that with every game we make, we're able to bring higher production-value while staying centered around fun, replayable, in-depth systems and player-driven stories. Your support helps us make more of the games you love, and continue to make them better and better. Hope you'll take advantage of the deep discounts to check our older titles out!

Our Saved Games Promise: Updates Never Invalidate Existing Saves

With lots of new players seeing our rapid update pace, we want to repeat our saved game policy so everyone understands our commitment to your games: no saved game will ever be invalidated by an update. You never have to restart if you don't want to; all new content (with the reasonable exception of New Game options) and features simply become available within your saved games. This is a studio commitment that we have made and kept for many years and games. We stand by it.

We like to keep expanding our games beyond their original scope and keep improving them based on your suggestions, because that's what good devs should do! So heist on my good heisters; no need to stress about your saves.

New Game: Quick Start Squads

[img src="https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images/36740530/0fea5e1455f64db161b6b7d94b9962bb9a9cd1a1.png"][/img]For all new playthroughs, we are excited to offer the Quick Start option where you can select between two nicely put together squads - the Quiet Killers or the Run and Gun squad. These squads have specific starting characters selected along with a preset Knight to lean into either of these distinct playstyles.

Overall, using Quick Start can help you jump into the game faster without needing to make so many numbers-heavy choices about stats you may not understand yet. Especially for players familiar with the genre, touching down on that rooftop and starting to run and gun your way to the exit is hopefully more inviting than trying to weigh Attribute choices.

You'll still be able to rename and visually customize your Knight before starting the game, and as soon as you reach the safehouse you can do the same for any of your squad members (or take advantage of the first-10-days free respec to make build alterations to a starting team's talents).

Once you have some heists under your belt with a better understanding of the game and how the different Talents, abilities and weapons all function, you can always start a new playthrough with the Advanced Start option to dive into all of the starting character selection & custom Knight creation options.

Free Pick Squad Slots for Advanced Start

[img src="https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images/36740530/6aa0f52b380be08e404ee5cc49f79527d7aba4c1.png"][/img]All of the previous options - full custom Cyber Knight creation (attributes, traits, backstory, starting equipment) and being able to hand pick, name and customize your entire team from the beginning - are still available through the Advanced Start option.

Even better, we've unlocked the 5th and 6th slots - your "Specialists" - so that you can now pick any combination of characters who qualify for those positions - currently Aaron, Aitana, August, Liat, Sid and Zasha. Advanced players can now create all sorts of exciting new setups that were never possible before like dual soldiers (Aaron and Aitana) or in-your-face Zasha and August. Not counting your Knight, this brings the number of distinct starting character combinations from 108 to almost twice that at 180, and it will only grow as new classes and starting characters are added. Looking forward to seeing what clever combinations and starting strategies you all come up with!

Default to Advanced Start

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If you are an advanced player who wants to skip the Quick Start screen altogether, you can do that by picking the option from the Quick Start or changing it from the Gameplay Options menu (Options > Gameplay > New Game Options).

Barracks Size Increase

With Update #14, we've bumped the size of the barracks. it's capacity to house mercenaries has been increased by +1 at every level. Also, we've added a new level at the top which now raises the cap for mercenaries on your teams to 18!

Improved Outline Overlap

[img src="https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images/36740530/83db53b1f259c2510c2a0abf7f84b903f5eb2bf6.png"][/img]We've completed some work here with the special outline feature in the game (available if you hit "H" by default) to ensure that overlapping objects look great. Previously, the bottom object sometimes took precedence and made the entire thing look strange. This could also lead to some enemies or characters disappearing into larger floor objects like Pressure Plates.

Story Improvements & Tweaks

With Update #14, we've widened the net of characters who can work with the ex-Los Zagales recruits - the Soldier and the Vanguard to help ensure everyone has a chance to pick these two up if you're looking to expand your squad.

We've also re-adjusted the starting Team Power Level target for the Daedalus Bloc Retirement story arc, moving it down to 6 Team Power Level. Our original analysis after 2 weeks of launch indicated it should be moved up to 7, but we've heard enough feedback from players now to shift it back to TPL 6.

In another story fix, we've also resolved the issue where Rhino could start with extremely large HP totals. If you have already recruited her, you will find her back to regular HP when loading the game as well.

And we also fixed an issue with max level characters who went on Legwork who could be docked a large amount of negative XP in a terrible surprise reward! steamfacepalm

Missing Red Key Eleventh Hour

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In the Eleventh Hour mission, some players were finding that due to the method of kill (usually Grenade or Bio-Poison) the captains there could fail to drop the Red Key you need to advance (unless you have a Hacker along). We have fixed the underlying issue - which was a nasty timing bug - so that the keys always drop.

Camera Follow and Enemy Tilt

While rare, we've cleaned up a few more bugs in the mission map. Sometimes enemies would tilt unexpectedly toward the sky. Other times during an enemy's movement the camera might give up following them. Both of these have been put to rest.

Appreciate all help spreading the word!

Cyber Knights is 20%-off for the Steam Summer Sale! If you're loving the game and all the dedication we continue to put into it, hope you'll help spread the word! Every social media post, reddit comment, suggestion to a streamer or YouTuber, and especially your Steam reviews help a ton! Thanks all for the support!

v2.0.39 - #14: Quick Starts and Free Picks - 6/26/2025

- Added Quick Start option for new game - pick a pre-built team, customize your Knight's look and get heisting faster

- New Game Advanced Start offers the existing experience to customize everything, use option to default to Advanced Start

- Advanced Start allows "free pick" in the specialists columns - many new team combinations now available

- Increased barracks capacity to house mercs by +1 at all levels, new barracks level for 18 mercs

- Fixed visual issue with overlapping outlines not looking great - now always on top & distinct from each other

- Fixed issue where camera might stop following enemy while they are moving

- Fixed issue where enemy or player might tilt upwards oddly at the end of a movement or being shot

- Fixed issue where Talent HUD bar could be re-ordered after opening character status

- Face gets a chance to receive some Hype for every mission completed with Knight on it

- Expanded options for Casting Director to work with more characters to hire ex-Los Zagales Soldier/Vanguard

- Adjusted Retirement storyline requirement back to Power Level 6

- Improved Loadout UI handling if a weapon/armor is lost or sold

- Fixed issues with enemy captains not dropping keys on Wreckspire if killed by Grenade or DOT

- Improved flying routine for medical stretcher

- Fixed bug with Rhino having extremely high HP for new and old games

- Fixed bug where you could get negative XP for completing Legwork at max level

- Fixed bug where you could not hover over weapons in new game for all their details

- Fixed bug where you could not open the Leverages screen from inside the Matrix after a retry turn or reload

- Fixed rare cases that could cause the Safehouse to lock on load