The recent Euro Truck Simulator 2 1.49 update has brought in some nifty little additions in both the graphics and gameplay department.
While SCS Software has added back the moon, and that in itself elevates the nighttime trucking experience, it’s the HDR skybox that puts the cherry on top.
As for the gameplay changes, players have now access to used trucks. So, as compared to earlier when you either had to borrow someone else’s truck for delivery jobs before you amassed enough money to buy your first brand-new truck, there’s a middle road now.
“Used Trucks will be now available immediately in the main menu taking you to a selection of trucks that are more budget-friendly compared to brand new vehicles.”
This leads to one of the more core changes in the ETS2 1.49 update: the enhanced damage and repair system. Departing from the more simplistic system where “individual parts would accumulate damage, represented as a percentage, and you could repair them, resetting the percentage to zero,” you now have control over more granular elements.
As shared in the blog, parts will accumulate three types of damage:
- Damage: This type of damage can be fixed by standard repairs, just as before.
- Parts Wear: When components accumulate significant wear and tear, you’ll want to replace them.
- Permanent Wear: This represents systemic aging and wear across the whole vehicle. It can only be nullified by Total Restoration of the entire vehicle. This is a more expensive procedure, but it’s the only way to bring your truck and trailer back to pristine condition.
So, you can buy used trucks at a worse-off condition cheaper, but they will require investment down the road to keep them in shape. This opens up a whole new aspect of gameplay.
The Euro Truck Simulator 2 1.49 update has also added automatic headlights and automatic high beams. However, if you are a hardcore sim enthusiast, you can just toggle off these features and control them manually.
Another quality-of-life addition is the introduction of control modifiers. This lets you bind two keys in conjunction to execute an action. For example, you can now assign Shift + L to turn your lights.
Coupled with this, ETS2 after the 1.49 update will let you bind short and long keypresses separately. So, you can have a short hotkey press associated with one thing, and the same hotkey can be used for another action through a long press.
These two changes make control schemes incredibly convenient. Although you’ll need some time to adapt to your new controls, it can really alleviate the clunkiness of using the whole keyboard for Euro Truck Simulator 2.
