Tripwire Interactive has released Hotfix 3 for Killing Floor 3, focusing on core gameplay balance, stability, and optimization. The Husk’s ranged attack has been adjusted to give players more counterplay opportunities, while armor has been reworked to provide consistent protection and reduce frustrating one-shot deaths. Proficiency rewards for higher difficulties have also been increased, and Biosteel drop rates have been boosted across all levels, ensuring better progression and rewards.
On the technical side, Hotfix 3 addresses multiple memory leaks, performance bottlenecks, and matchmaking bugs that previously allowed lobbies to exceed six players. Several visual effects have been optimized to reduce CPU strain, frame rate limitations have been reconfigured, and a number of gameplay-related bugs have been resolved. The patch also improves UI performance, stability, and general combat flow, laying the groundwork for the upcoming Rearmament Update later this fall.
Full Patch Notes
- Balance Tunes
- Husk’s ranged attack rebalanced:
- Slower charge-up allows players to shoot and destroy the cannon before firing.
- Reduced homing on fireball makes it easier to dodge.
- Armor reworked to absorb damage more consistently, preventing one-shots while at full armor.
- Increased Proficiency rewards:
- Hard: 10 → 12
- Hell on Earth: 12 → 16
- Biosteel drop rate increases:
- Normal: 2.5% → 4%
- Hard: 2.5% → 4.5%
- Hell on Earth: 2.5% → 5%
- Husk’s ranged attack rebalanced:
- Bug Fixes
- Stability
- Fixed memory leaks on Military Base map.
- Potential fix for skill video player crash causing soft lock.
- Performance Optimization
- Trimmed VFX emitters to reduce CPU load.
- Default Frame Rate Cap set to Unlimited (previous cap caused performance overhead).
- Optimized Clot Zed death behavior to reduce spikes.
- Reduced overhead from moving cars in City Streets.
- Adjusted Husk attacks to lessen performance impact.
- Disabled unnecessary masked materials on weapons and mods.
- General improvements to UI rendering performance.
- “Exterminated” roaches on maps that caused performance drops.
- Matchmaking
- Fixed bug allowing more than 6 players to join a match.
- Resolved party rejoin issue incorrectly showing “party full.”
- Gameplay & UI
- Added save points at the start of each wave.
- Fixed bug where “Complete All Daily Challenges” would not track properly.
- Corrected multiplayer bug where Explosive Rounds did not damage Clots and Cysts.
- Fixed Kunai speed attacks not adapting to Zed Time.
- Fixed rare Scrake animation loop when hook was broken.
- Resolved audio event issues and corrected “damage taken” SFX.
- Fixed sprint bug after ADS + shooting.
- Stability
- Future Update Preview
- Rearmament Update coming later in Fall 2025:
- Perk and Character Decoupling.
- New Weapons & Mods:
- M14 EBR Mod 0 (Sharpshooter)
- MKR-350 Assault Rifle (Commando)
- Streik Dual Defender Shotgun (Engineer)
- Ongoing stability and performance improvements.
- Additional balance and quality-of-life updates.
- Rearmament Update coming later in Fall 2025:
Killing Floor 3 is a 2025 first-person shooter game developed and published by Tripwire Interactive. A successor to Killing Floor 2 (2016), the game was released for PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S on July 24, 2025.
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