Following the Beta of Halo Wars 2, developers 343 Industries and Creative Assembly have been fine-tuning the real-time strategy title. With Halo Wars 2 coming right around the corner, players shouldn't expect hefty changes -- instead, incremental quality of life improvements will be the features to ring out.

According to a recent Halo Waypoint blog post, this includes the following:

  •          Reduced the Locust and Bloodfuel Locust DPS, health, and shields
  •          Scarab can now attack units at closer range
  •          Improved the responsiveness of Blitz card hand inputs
  •          Improved game performance
  •          Improved UI responsiveness
  •          Tightened skill matching to improve match quality of multiplayer games
  •          Improved initial loading times
  •          Bug fixes for card hand and units not responding
  •          Improved voice chat functionality on PC
  •          Improved PC performance, hardware detection, and compatibility
  •          Improved multiplayer and network reliability
  •          Lots and lots of additional fixes

On top of those changes, 343 revealed that players can already start accumulating their Blitz card packs. Blitz, a card-based game mode found in Halo Wars 2, will let people acquire packs by completing the following tasks:

  • Having launched the Blitz Beta once (one pack)
  • Finishing one match in the Blitz Beta (one pack)
  • Completing the "Playin' the Field" achievement in Halo Wars 1 (one pack)
  • Completing "Adjudicate the Arbiter" achievement in Halo Wars 1 (three packs)
  • Completing the "Playin' the Field" achievement in Halo Wars DE (one pack)
  • Completing "Adjudicate the Arbiter" achievement in Halo Wars DE (three packs)

As mentioned above, Halo Wars 2 comes exclusively to PC and Xbox One on February 21, 2017.