The mysterious Tidal Basin, which The Division 2 players have so studiously glitched into over the past week, will be blown wide open in the game's next major update. As Massive announced on a live stream earlier today, the Tidal Basin is part of the Invasion - Battle for DC update coming on Friday, April 5. Among other things, the update will introduce World Tier 5 and 500 Gear Score, a new difficulty called Heroic, more Invaded missions and Strongholds, and three new gear sets.
"If you are in World Tier 4, when you come into the update, you will see a new mission in which plot happens," senior game designer Trick Dempsey explained. "This new mission will say 'here is your reason for being able to finally go and strike the Tidal Basin,' which is a Stronghold. Once you've defeated that Tidal Basin mission, you will be promoted to World Tier 5. Now the Gear Score bracket is 450 to 500, and a small slew of new build opportunities become available to you because, when you defeat the boss there, you're going to encounter your first gear set items."
The Tidal Basin update will add three new gear sets: True Patriot, Ongoing Directive, and Hard Wired. These will drop from Black Tusk enemies and Invaded missions and Strongholds. Dempsey described them as having "very long description text, because we are crazy people," so they're sure to have some interesting set bonuses. Dempsey also confirmed that more Invaded missions and a new Invaded Stronghold are on the way.
"When more plot happens in World Tier 5, suddenly Invaded missions can happen again," he said. "Another Stronghold can become Invaded along with other missions, and those missions can include missions that are not part of the current endgame campaign. I don't know if this'll be true for the first week, but like, Jefferson Plaza for example, or the Lincoln Memorial. All of those can become Invaded, and some of them genuinely contain the nastiest boss fights we can think of."
New and existing Invaded missions will also have a new difficulty level exclusive to World Tier 5: Heroic. Dempsey called Heroic difficulty "an act of cruelty", but assured players completing Heroic missions will yield a proper loot shower.
"Invaded missions will have new difficulties in World Tier 5 including Heroic, which… imagine you didn't have checkpoints anymore. And they're very good for rewards, they're extremely generous missions. We didn't lock anything behind Heroic difficulty - that you can't get anywhere else in the game - because we recognize Heroic is a very hardcore mode."
Invasion - Battle for DC is the first major step in The Division 2's content roadmap. Massive shared an updated version of the roadmap on stream, and it shows three chunky "Episodes" of content coming in Summer, Fall, and Winter 2019.
Ahead of the release of World Tier 5, here's everything you need to know about The Division 2 endgame.
