The Division 2 State of the Game | Tidal Basin release, WT5 next week

The Division 2 already has a lot of content in it for players to challenge, but eventually players need new content to get their teeth into. Now we’re finally getting some details on the new content, thanks to the latest The Division 2 State of the Game update from Ubisoft. The latest episode arrived today in the form of a 40 minute-long livestream, so there’s lots of new details to unpack.

We’ve got all the details from the State of the Game stream below, including and especially the latest news on all the free content coming to the game. We’ve got The Division 2 Tidal Basin release date, when players can expect to start World Tier 5 / WT5, the introduction of Invasions, new Gearsets coming in the new update, and the most important question: Is any of this paid content? We’ve got the answers.

What is The Division 2 State of the Game?

If you’re not aware, The Division 2 State of the Game is a regularly weekly livestream hosted by Ubisoft, where members of the game’s development team at Massive lay out their plans for the game moving forward, any news, and community content updates. You can check out the latest one below, if you’re interested, otherwise we’ve got all the details from it.

What is The Division 2 Tidal Basin release date?

Tidal Basin is a new Invaded Mission coming to The Division 2, which we were made aware of last week. It’s a high-tech military base full of enemy troops, and you’ll need to have reached the endgame content of The Division 2 to make the most of this mission, with your character at level 30+ at least. Tidal Basin is already known as the stronghold mission that kicks off World Tier 5, but until now Ubisoft could not confirm when the release date for this mission would be.

The good news is, The State of the Game stream has now confirmed the The Division 2 Tidal Basin release date, and there’s not too long to wait for it at all. Tidal Basin will unlock next week in fact, on April 5. There will, however, be some maintenance time before Tidal Basin goes live, so you’ll have to be a little patient beforehand.

When is The Division 2 WT5 coming out?

World Tier 5 of The Division 2 is the next and final tier of gameplay for players who had hit the endgame content and are looking for a new set of challenges. It was previously promised that WT5 would be accessed by completing Tidal Basin, so you need that mission to unlock it, but does it happen immediately? Does WT5 become available at the same time as the Tidal Basin mission? According to the State of the Game stream team, yes it does. Therefore the The Division 2 WT5 release date is the same as Tidal Basin: April 5. All Division 2 players have to do is beat the mission first, and then players will get access to the new tier.

What are Invasions?

As part of The Division 2 Year 1 Pass, the first big update for the game post-release is titled Invasion: Battle for D.C., and both Tidal Basin and World Tier 5 are part of it, since the Invasion content launches on April 5 too. The Invasion takes the form of an attack by the Black Tusk faction, who are entirely focused in the endgame of The Division 2. The Black Tusks take over a portion of the map, and new activities pop up, including Invaded Missions where Black Tusk makes a regular mission hard.

Tidal Basin will be one of the toughest new Invasion Missions, and new Invaded Missions will be added after the update, although at the moment we don’t know exactly how many. However, certain regular missions and strongholds already in the game will be invaded each week, although you’ll be able to choose between normal and invaded versions when that happens. Massive promises some of “the nastiest boss fights” in the game will occur in these new Invaded Missions. Sounds lovely.

Are there any new gear sets?

All of this is nice, but as a loot shooter players will want rewards for all their hard work too. To that end, there will be three new gear sets added to the game in the April 5 update. These sets are named True Patriot, Hardwired, and Ongoing Directive, which all sound great, although unfortunately we don’t have any details as of yet about what they look like or what they can do. We do know, however, that you can only get these new gear sets by completing Invaded Missions and Strongholds, so they’re bound to be really high level.

Is this free or paid content?

Perhaps the biggest question of them all, then: is all this content free or paid DLC? There will be paid DLC coming to The Division 2, but you’ll be relieved to hear that Tidal Basin, World Tier 5, and the Invasion: Battle for D.C. update are confirmed as not being DLC, so are absolutely free. There will also be a new Heroic difficulty mode added as part of World Tier 5, which has the major difference of not having any checkpoints in missions. Presumably the rewards will be higher to compensate.

All the content we’ve just mentioned will drop on April 5 for everyone at the same time, which is pretty generous if you ask us. There will also be a big patch with a load of fixes, including performance updates, audio issues, and fixing that weird staircase that players were getting stuck on. Phew.