Bug Found in The Division That Lets Players do Unlimited Damage

Tom Clancy’s The Division has enjoyed enormous popularity since its release, despite the almost constant existence of issues that have plagued players. Now, a new exploit has been found in the shooter that effectively breaks the game by allowing players to do potentially unlimited damage, making PvE trivial and destroying the PvP ‘Dark Zone’ areas.

The bug is based around the use of the “competent” talent, which boosts damage output after another ability is triggered. This can be found on a number of weapons, but can most easily be gotten from a high-end AK-74 purchasable at a special gear vendor at the Base of Operations. With this (or another qualifying weapon) all you have to do is switch back and forth between the gun and any other weapon for some time causing competent’s DPS boost to stack on each switch. After switching the weapons for a number of minutes, the damage boost becomes enormous, capable of temporarily boosting damage by as much as 10 times over, with Youtuber Simplified showing his weapon going from 10,000 damage per shot to 100,000 with the talent active.

This bug has enormous potential for abuse in both PvE and PvP, with players able to kill difficult bosses with relative ease and effortlessly kill any player who crosses them with a single shot. While PvE uses of the exploit have relatively low impact on other players, this bug may drive many out of the PvP Dark Zone areas for fear they will be killed with ease by users of the exploit. It isn’t just the competent talent with the issue either, with players reporting a number of other pieces of equipment are able to stack their talent activations by swapping it on and off making players able to earn millions of credits for a single headshot, amongst other things.

It is reasonable to assume that Ubisoft will be giving abusers of this exploit the same treatment as in the past, with many people likely to face a ban should they have been found to be using the glitch. How long it will remain unpatched though still remains to be seen, but there may be a distinct drop off in players in the PvP zones until a hotfix is released.