Planetside 2 update adds activatable knives and spitfire auto-turrets for engineers

Planetside 2 Spitfire Auto-Turret

A new update to the never-ending war game that is Planetside 2, has seen numerous new additions, as well as a winter holiday event. Each soldier in their respective factions can now equip their knife permanently, unlike their quick action counterpart, which allows much faster slashes in close combat. There’s also a new type of knife, that when activated empowers the knife to do increased damage, and also granting unique visual effects.

Engineers have also finally got access to spitfire auto-turrets. This nift war machine will auto-target enemy infantry in a respectable area, firing on the nearest thing that moves. While they’re super easy to kill, they’ll ensure your enemy thinks twice about running blind into those shield gen rooms.

Finally, being that time and year, Auraxis has seen a small incursion of snowmen. Players can select a new directive to go and hunt these meddlesome festive creatures.

Lets break down the two big additions with the help of Youtuber ZoranTheBear:

The spitfire auto-turret has been accessible in the public test server for some time now, naturally warranting some very heavy balancing before being ready for the live server. They do enough damage that prevents players from just ignoring them, but it’ll take a good while to kill another player solo. They can also be avoided and dealt with in a myriad of ways: half a clip of bullets, two grenades, decoy grenades, EMP grenade, a single rocket, and a cloaked infiltrator will easily topple one.

I would say these turrets should be used to augment a defensive objective, and not relied on to handle threats on its own. The biggest advantage the turret will give you is extra intel as to where the enemy is coming from, denoted by its audible noise.

The knives on the otherhand are probably a more impacting addition. Before, you could only ever slash in a single, quick instance using the quick slash key; two hits would be enough to kill an enemy player. Now, you can physically equip the knives permanently in your hands, which gives you a much faster slashing speed at the cost of inducing an equip delay between switching to your main weapon.

You can also pick up knives from the store which have an activatable function, which empowers the knife to do more damage and show off a neat visual effect. The latter though will probably give you away at night however.

The last notable addition is a new directive, for players to go hunting for various snowmen around Auraxis. After you merciless slay these harmless bundles of frozen water, they’ll award squad members within 300 metres with some juicy experience. Rumor has it, that there’s also super rare “Golden” snowmen hidden around every continent.

Check out the the entire patch notes in their lengthy glory, right here.