Highguard gets a new playable character, skill trees and more ahead of next week's closure

Highguard goes offline on March 12—that's in eight days—but it's nevertheless just received a massive content update adding a new playable Warden, account progression, and a skill tree.

"This is our final update and it's big," Highguard creative director Jason McCord wrote on X. "Props to the skeleton crew at Wildlight for wanting to finish it and ship it to our remaining players, even if it only gets played by a few thousand people. They weren't asked to. They asked if they could finish it up and get it out there."

The headline feature is probably Koldo, a new healer Warden who can deploy a "Soul Shield" to protect their squad, and whose "Battle Cry" ultimate creates a moveable dome that regenerates health. There's also a new gun in the form of the Switchback, which doubles as a shotgun and a marksman rifle: shoot from the hip and it's a shotty, but if you aim down sights it's a precision-focused affair.

The other features, while probably welcome for Highguard enthusiasts, are probably more bittersweet given the game's imminent closure. Highguard now has skill trees and player progression: the former branches off into four specialties including Raider, Harvester, Treasure Hunter, and Protector. Points for the skill tree are earned by playing; the level cap is 100 while the total amount of earnable skill points is 44.

When asked by an X user why this content wasn't available at launch, McCord had the following to say. "None of this was done at launch," he wrote, "especially the Skill Trees. The team crunched the last few weeks to get it done. Some stuff (Koldo, Switchback) was partially done, scheduled for future seasons. The team picked the stuff that was closest to completion and finished it up."

The full update notes are available on X.

Wildlight Entertainment confirmed yesterday that Highguard will be taken off life support on March 12. Studio boss Chad Grenier has said that over two million people tried Highguard, and that the average games played per session was 3.48. The majority of Highguard players were on PS5.