The Once Human team knows you have questions about their next update. The team has a community Q&A to answer some questions they've received about the update, Lunar Oracle, and Visional Wheel.
On new servers that arrive with the update, Lunar Oracle will apply, making the Deviants you encounter much more aggressive, adding mutated bosses, and harder challenges like The Prime War and strongholds. While current, ongoing, scenarios won’t change, the hard mode tag will be temporarily replaced on new scenarios since Lunar Oracle is a big hard mode. If you are already in a scenario and you want to jump into the new mode, everyone will be getting one free scenario exit card when the update goes live in case you don't want to wait.
Lunar Oracle will increase difficulty between 9:00 p.m. and 3:00 a.m. during in-game time, so this is essentially a 15-minute window in real time. For those who are hungry for the more intense challenge, that's when you'll want to be logged in.
The update introduces three new weapon genres and three all-new guns too. We'll also have new mods introduced, without changing the existing mod system. Mod optimizations are coming sometime in March, with more info on that to be revealed.
During that 15-minute event window, Oracle crates will appear, spawning individually for everyone, so take what you need. No worries about competition for these. Survive and even have a shot at exclusive Deviations (which you can bring into regular Scenarios and impress your friends), exclusive limited-time mods, animals, and more.
When the January 16th update goes live, the Lunar Oracle tag will only apply to new servers. This means any servers that opened before the update went live won't change or get this tag. This means if you don’t want to deal with the chaotic “craziness” in the world and existing Scenarios, you won’t have to. You can avoid The Visional Wheel. The team has shared a list of servers opening January 16th to get you started.
Additionally, limited time animals, mods, and Deviations that are event exclusive will eventually be released through other means. So If you don't want to jump into the intense challenge now, if you have your eye on something, there's a chance you'll be able to get it later.
The full Q&A has more answers, including a look into the future at further updates for those who want more hardcore challenges as well as some of what they have planned for the regular content.