The Evolve Stage 2 "Shear Madness" event is now underway

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Turtle Rock and 2K have announced the beginning of a month-long Evolve Stage 2 event called Shear Madness, which will bring five new updates to the game over the next five weeks. The new content will include three Character Adaptations, three Map Variants, a new game mode, and “a veritable 3-meat feast of community requested features and quality of life improvements.” That's right, three meats.

The first update will include a new Medic character named Caira Diaz, AKA Quantum Caira, who may or may not have been killed by an energy surge at an EbonStar black site holding a captive “Wraith” known as The Phantom. Whatever happened, her apparent demise was quickly followed by the appearance of someone who looks an awful lot like her, but with the ability to wield regeneration fields as a healing tool. She can also use “amplified Proton energy” to set up zones that damage enemies over time, and deploy a “Neutron Barrier” that applies a short damage resistance buff to any fellow Hunters nearby. Turtle Rock said Quantum Caira is “one of our most daring Medic designs yet.”

The update also fixes a few bugs and makes some balance changes, introduces a new Advanced Hunter Tutorial “designed to help players understand more than just the basic mechanics of being a Hunter,” and—this is nice—unlocks all in-game content in Solo Mode. “We’ve heard from all over our Community that players wanted some way to try out content before investing the time and Silver Keys towards an unlock, so we introduced the 'Try before you buy' feature,” Turtle Rock wrote. “With Update 2.04, all content is unlocked in Solo mode so anyone can give anything a test run before unlocking it.”

In other happy news, Turtle Rock said the Evolve Stage 2 “experiment” is going well. “From fewer than 200 PC players just days before the re-launch on July 7, Evolve Stage 2 now has more than 2-million players worldwide in less than one month. In that time, we’ve released weekly patches and hot fixes and we will continue to tune the Stage 2 experience every week,” the studio wrote. “It’s been an absolutely incredible journey so far—one that has surpassed our wildest expectations—but we’re not done yet. We plan to continue adding new and exciting content to the game, and intend to continue to work on addressing issues with the game that are important to you.”

What it didn't explain, at least as far as I can see, is why the update is called “Shear Madness.” It sounds a bit like a faux-edgy hairdressing shop, doesn't it? I'm sure all will be revealed at some point over the course of the next month, which you can stay on top of at evolveupdates.com.

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Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.