Not related to Ellie's "Death Wish +" mod from ~2016.
A more challenging and unique way of playing your favorite difficulty.
This mod can be played with anyone: only host needs to have it installed.
Gameplay changes summary
Enemies can now handcuff you during interactions:
Assault waves last longer, but also have longer breaks:
Enemies are harder to intimidate, they respawn quicker, and in bigger squads:
Enemy weapon variety was enriched and some less often used units were brought back:
ECM feedback stun effect can be either reduced or disabled in DW+ mod options.
If mods had anthems, i would use this one.
Gameplay changes in more detail
Cuffing on interactions
Works exactly as presented in the GIF above. Any interaction can be interrupted by any enemy. To get rid of cuffs, you need to either wait for a minute to uncuff yourself, or one of your teammates needs to come and rescue you. Inspire does not get you uncuffed.
In-depth explanation:
Spoiler!
When you start any interaction, area around you gets scanned for the closest cop (~12m radius). If such cop exists, he will be chosen to come and arrest you, as soon as he reaches your position.
On top of that, there is a hidden aggressive cuffing mechanic that allows for any other cop to cuff you. This mechanic checks if you have a cop close enough to your location (~1.25m radius around you), and if they have a clear LOS on you. If these conditions are met, you will be cuffed automatically. This mechanic starts working 1 second after you start the interaction, BUT if your interaction is a player revive, it will be delayed, and only activate after 3 seconds(so at least basic inspire is needed to play on most DW+ difficulties).
All cuffing mechanics work on other (human) players as well, exactly the same way.
Police assaults
Assault duration is now ALWAYS the same, regardless of downs or players in custody, with the main part of the assault lasting 330-370 seconds.
During endless assaults enemies will respawn 2x faster.
"Fade" (ending) assault phase will always last it's max duration of about 1 minute, to compensate for longer assault waves (new enemies do not spawn during Fade).
The "in-between assaults" phase will no longer spawn enemies to make assault breaks a bit longer and easier.
Anticipation phase (~30 secs before assault) will never be skipped, and enemies will spawn as quickly as possible during it's duration, to fill up the map.
Harder enemy intimidations
Street cops will now give up instantly regardless of difficulty or other factors. Light swats and Heavy swat chances to surrender were reduced. Exact chances depend on chosen DW+ difficulty and certain factors that affect the enemy. Values can be found in the spoiler bellow.
Spoiler!
Vertically: chosen DW+ difficulty. Horizontally: factor that effects the enemy.
Base | <40% health | Stunned/Flanked/Caught during a reload | |
---|---|---|---|
DW+ classic | Light Swat: 35%. Heavy Swat: 20% | Light Swat: 35%. Heavy Swat: 20% | Light Swat: 20%. Heavy Swat: 15% |
DW++ | Light Swat: 25%. Heavy Swat: 15% | Light Swat: 25%. Heavy Swat: 15% | Light Swat: 20%. Heavy Swat: 15% |
Insanity | Light Swat: 20%. Heavy Swat: 15% | Light Swat: 20%. Heavy Swat: 15% | Light Swat: 10%. Heavy Swat: 0% |
Suicidal | Light Swat: 15%. Heavy Swat: 10% | Light Swat: 15%. Heavy Swat: 10% | Light Swat: 10%. Heavy Swat: 0% |
All chances are additive.
Stunning/Flanking/Catching enemies during a reload are 3 separate factors that give their bonuses separately, and can stack with each other.
Note that "Confident" skill applies it's 1.5x multiplier after all the factors above are summed up.
Enemy respawns
Delays in between each squad's spawns are reduced. In vanilla this value is ~5 seconds.
While playing Death Wish +, minimum delay is set to 4. It also changes based on the chosen difficulty pre-set in DW+ options menu, and can go as low as 0.5 seconds.
Enemy squads are also slightly bigger - this causes more enemies to spawn at the same time as part of a single squad unit.
Enemy variety
Normal units:
- Some enemies that are rarely or never used in vanilla PD2 (like hostage rescue teams) are brought back
- Units from lower difficulties, like blue SWAT's from Normal, and green FBI's from Overkill difficulties are included in the spawn pool
Specials:
- Medic bulldozer was added
- Green bulldozer can now use a VD12 shotgun that visually stuns you (same shotgun that marshal shields use after their shield is broken)
- Marshal squads spawn earlier and more often
- New "Death Squad" was added. This squad consists of 1 Cpt. Winter's Shields and 2 FIELD SNIPERS - they are not a heavy zeal sniper alternatives from crime spree, but normal rooftop snipers that can pen your armor. This squad is rare, especially on lower DW+ difficulties, but it can be a great threat at any distance. Note: Death Squad's field snipers, unlike marshal marksmen, will try to come as close to you as possible.
Enemy weapon variety
Some enemies, such as blue SWAT's from normal difficulties, by default spawn with very low damaging weapons. DW+ now replaces all enemy weapons to ensure roughly similar damage output from all units that spawn. Code for this part of the mod was taken from IareAwesome17's Mixed Weapons mod. Due to this change, any other mod that alters enemy weapons, including Mixed Weapons, is not compatible with DW+ and will most likely break it's balance.
ECM Nerfs (Optional feature)
ECM feedback stun effect can now be nerfed. By default "reduced" option is used, which lowers chances for ECM feedback stun effect to apply to enemies from 80-100% (depends on enemy type) every 1 second, to 20% every second. You can either disable this feature to use vanilla values, or make ECM feedback have 0% chance to stun enemies. This effect applies to both Hacker perk deck's PECM and standard equipment ECM jammer.
This feature was introduced mostly for the Hacker Perk Deck, because it goes from being an S+ tier perk to S+++ tier perk while playing with DW+ rules.
Hostage Control (Optional feature)
Fully intimidated cops count as a hostage for this mechanic.
Keeping/killing hostages will affect gameplay in various ways, details in the table bellow:
Hostages killed/kept | Penalty | Bonus |
---|---|---|
1 through 8 | Each hostage affects enemy respawn delay up to max total of 50% (at 8 hostage kills), special spawn chances up to max total of 25%, and max amount of cops on the map, up to max total of 30% | Same things as in penalty, but with positive values. Also with at least 1 hostage you get longer assault breaks |
6 | Cloaker starts teleporting to players prioritizing those with higher amount of hostage kills, he respawns every 50-130 seconds | - |
8 | Cloaker now respawns every 30-80 seconds | - |
9 | New enemy joins to prevent any more slaughter | - |
Additional gameplay adjustments
- SWAT turrets will no longer self-repair while playing on any DW+ difficulty
- After all players were downed, game will end in roughly 32 seconds instead of 10 (stockholm syndrome buff)
Note: This mod is balanced for 4 players in your team - if you play solo, you will get same amount of spawns as in co-op and you might be overwhelmed quickly, so i would recommend against turning bots off.
Gameplay customization
Things you can customize in DW+ mod options
Visual
- All minigun dozers can be replaced with Zeal counterparts for the american faction
- Marshal uniforms can be changed to black/green/black+green for the american faction
Gameplay
- You can change how many cops you have to kill for assault to end prematurely
- You can tweak ECM feedback stun effect power
- You can select one of four difficulty pre-sets
Difficulty pre-sets
You can adjust DW+ difficulty in mod options, here's a quick overview of all difficulties:
- "DW+ classic" is recommended for trying the mod, and for a chill experience with randoms
- "DW++" is a bumped up version of DW+, with minor changes - provides a fair and fun challenge
- "Insanity" increases overall damage output of all enemies. In terms of difficulty it can feel about as hard as Death Sentence difficulty for an unprepared player
- "Suicidal" makes enemies use hardest hitting weapons, increases their amounts to an absurd level, and spams specials non-stop. Defeating this difficulty without Hacker's ECM's is what i would consider a great showcase of your skill. Or broken DPS builds.
In-depth stats for difficulties
Difficulty | № of cops on the map* | Respawn delay | Normal to special ratio** | Light to heavy ratio*** | № of active spawn points on the map**** |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Vanilla Death Wish | 54-72 | ~5 sec. | 80/20 (roughly) | 60/40 (roughly) | 3 |
DW+ classic | 48 | 4 sec. | 55/45 | 65/35 | 3 |
DW++ | 60 | 3 sec. | 50/50 | 55/45 | 4 |
Insanity | 76 | 1.5 sec. | 40/60 | 40/60 | 5 |
Suicidal | 100 | 0.25 sec. | 30/70 | 20/80 | 6 |
* In vanilla Death Wish max amount of cops on the map scales with a hidden value that depends on how much damage your team recently took, your downs etc. With DW+ this value is always static regardless of mentioned above events. This amount can also be reached faster in DW+ due to quicker spawns.
** This value represents % chances for normal units to spawn when compared to special units. These numbers are not 100% accurately guaranteed, since enemies are picked randomly based off of these chances.
*** This value represents % chances for light swats to spawn when compared to heavy swats (heavy swats are swats with body armor and 2x health). These numbers are not 100% accurately guaranteed, since enemies are picked randomly based off of these chances.
**** This changes how many spawn points can be used by the game to spawn enemies at the same time. 'Respawn delay' is applied to every spawn point individually, so higher this number is, faster enemy respawns will be.
Special limits table - max amount of every unit on the map at the same time.
Special type | Vanilla Death Wish | DW+ classic | DW++ | Insanity | Suicidal |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Shields | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
Medics | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
Tasers | 3 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
Dozers | 2 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
Cloakers | 2 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
Additional mod information/other players interactions
Since you can host public games with this mod, a few things were added:
- Every person who joins your lobby, will get a welcome message when they join, to let them know what this mod does (only on DW difficulty)
- While hosting a game with this mod, your lobby will have "Death Wish +" (amount of +'s depends on your mod difficulty) set as it's name, if you selected a contract on Death Wish difficulty. This can be disabled, but you should only do so, if you have other mods that change your lobby name
- Chat commands can be used by players who join your lobby to get more information on this mod via a private message. If you as host use any of these commands, you will print information from them for all players in the lobby
- When player joins your lobby, you can get information in chat on their skill point amount, used perk deck, their PD2 playtime (if possible) and infamy level. You can choose which ones to enable in settings
- When a heist ends, statistics of your choice (like kill/death ratio, headshots etc.) can be printed in chat (Host only)
How these messages look in game:
Spoiler!
Welcome message for players who join your lobby: (picture is outdated, but you can still understand how it would look)
Messages bellow can be disabled
Player's stats:
Stats in chat after heist is over:
Individual Heist Adjustments
A huge portion of heists have their own unique enemy amount multipliers to compensate overall pressure you will get from enemies due to close spawn points, map design and other similar factors. This multiplier is only applied to the max amount of cops on the map, enemy ratio spawn chances are not affected.
"No Mercy" heist has a unique beginning phase to "fix" spawns for the map.
Values for affected maps:
Spoiler!
Bain
- Diamon store - 91%
- Reservoir dogs day 1 and 2 - 80%
- Alesso heist - 85%
- Transport: Crossroads - 80%
- Transport: Downtown - 84%
- Transport: Harbor - 84%
- Transport: Park - 80%
- Transport: Train Heist - 85%
- Transport: Underpass - 85%
Classics
- First World Bank - 85%
- Green bridge - 90%
- Heat Street - 90%
- No Mercy - 74%
- Panic Room - 90%
- Slaughterhouse - 85%
- Undercover - 84%
Events
- Lab Rats - 85%
Jimmy
- Boiling Point - 70%
Jiu Feng
- Ukrainian Prisoner - 90%
Locke
- Alaskan Deal - 80%
- Beneath The Mountain - 75%
- Birth of sky - 90%
- Border Crossing - 68%
- Border Crystals - 70%
- Breakfast in Tijuana - 106%
- Brooklyn Bank - 85%
- Henry's Rock - 80%
- Shacklethorne Auction - 72%
- White House - 84%
Butcher
- Scarface Mansion - 88%
- Bomb: Dockyard - 85%
Continental
- Brooklyn 10-10 - 90%
Dentist
- Golden Grin Casino - 68%
- Hotline Miami day 1 and 2 - 80%
- Hoxton Breakout day 1 - 88%
Elephant
- Big Oil day 2 - 74%
- Election day 1 and 2 - 84% (Note: if you tag WRONG truck on day 1, you will go to "day 3", which uses default values)
Vlad
- Aftershock - 84%
- Buluc's Mansion - 84%
- Goat simulator day 2 - 74%
- Meltdown - 80%
- San Martin Bank - 90%
- Santa's Workshop - 65%
Other
- Escape: Cafe - 75%
No Mercy Heist
Spawns on this map can be inconsistent, due to randomization of spawn points. Sometimes all of them can open at the start, and sometimes the opposite can happen. To avoid this issue, first 2 assault waves will be extremely short with only the most basic enemies spawning in:
- First 2 waves have shorter durations, anticipation and fade phases. They should last for ~3 minutes at most.
- First 2 waves do not allow smoke grenades to spawn in.
- Enemies will be limited to blue light swats and occasional tazers/shields/medics, with other special units never appearing
Due to these changes it is recommended to play this heist in loud from the start, otherwise it may be boring.
Custom Heists Support
Some custom heists have their own sets of enemy spawn groups, which causes DW+ to break. You will notice this issue quickly, because no enemies will spawn in, other then single cloakers and marshals, or you may just crash if a custom heist is using custom enemies. DW+ will try to fix custom heists, but it's not guaranteed to happen automatically. If you have played on a custom heist and have issues, feel free to report them in the comments with a link for that heist.
Other mods compatibility:
Spoiler!
- NGBTO (newbies go back to overkill) is not compatible with DW+ as of patch 2.5 - use TDLQ's Lobby Settings as an alternative.
- DW+ will conflict with any mod that changes enemy spawns, at least for DW difficulty. Most likely they will be ignored and DW+ will take priority.
- Any mods that add chat commands may conflict with DW+.
- DW+ should have no problems with mods that affect enemy ai and how cops think. You can try using those at your own risk.
BeardLib is used for auto-updates. After installing a new version, you should restart your game in case there are some major changes. If you want to check patch notes you can check changelog on this page.
The earliest (like 4 months before upload) version of DW+ was a heavily modified version of Rokk's IREnFIST, which after a lot of adjustments and additions came to be what DW+ is now. So please give it a try, if you enjoy certain parts of DW+ that were taken from IREnFIST, like cuffs on interactions (non-aggressive version), if you want to play with new mechanics in a more light and closer to vanilla-like experience. P.S. This mod wasn't updated in over a year, so beware - bugs are probably present.
My personal additional mod recommendations:
Spoiler!
- DayNight Changes reborn by test1 - refreshes how your game looks significantly by changing environments
- Immortal Dominated cops - may prevent frustrations when playing with randoms, but can also cause inconvenience while playing with hostage control enabled
- Gilza or any other weapon/skill rebalancing mod to keep gameplay fresh. I use Gilza because it's what i would prefer (since i made it) because it gives more weapons a figting chance, and adds some fun new skills/perks
- Full Speed Swarm by TdlQ - will make all bots react and perform actions quicker. NOTE: do not use this mod in public lobbies. As of the latest Payday 2 patch, FSS's quicker updates cause clients to crash more often due to vanilla bug in copactionhurt.
- Lobby settings by TdlQ - saves lobby settings properly and allows you to limit players who can join your lobby based on their infamy/playtime but unlike NGBTO will do all these checks while players are connecting, so they wont be kicked after joining, but rather declined on the Crime.net screen
- Hostage Escort Tweaks by EdisLeado - old but gold. Lets you get 3 hostage followers that are much faster. Really useful with new Hostage Control mechanic. Personal note: this mod has a welcome message just like DW+ which will make reading them kinda annoying for new players/randoms, so i'd recommend turning it off in HET, since connected player's can't get any benefit from this mod unless they have it installed as well. In hostageescorttweaks.lua remove line that starts like this:
Hooks:Add("NetworkManagerOnPeerAdded", "NetworkManagerOnPeerAdded_HET", function(peer, peer_id)
and everything after it.

