Greetings Defenders,

Welcome to the new forums! There's quite a bit of changes that had to happen in order to facilitate this move so please read everything to hopefully answer any questions you may have.

• Logging In
  • Email/Password Login: Your password did not carry over from the old forums and must be reset by going here: https://forums.dungeondefenders.com/lostpassword/ . Make sure to check your email junk/spam folders in case the reset email goes there.
  • Steam Login: You must login with email first and re-link your Steam account to your forum account.
• Post Counts
  • Since the new forum had to re-index everything during the migration, post count numbers will be to what posts you do have and not include any deleted posts, non-copied over old forum posts, or forum restore numbers.
• Messages
  • Messages between members on the old forums were not moved to the new one. Sorry 😞
• Threads with pages that show "There are no posts to show"
  • Older threads that had deleted/bad spam bot posts in them were cleaned up which may cause the error message above. Once new posts are added or you go to an earlier page instead of last post should work fine. New forum posts started on the new forums will not have this issue.
• Reporting forum issues
  • You can report new forum issues here: Forum Bug Reports.
• Titles/Ranks
  • We're working on bringing back some custom groups and post count promotion fully. Right now after you make a post you should see yourself get the correct rank updated on your account.

Thank you!

Greetings Defenders,

We’ve been hard at work since our latest update and we’re ready to share some of what you can expect to see in our next update! We wanted to take a step back and focus on some more player-centric changes, and we’ve got a pretty hefty list of things we’re accomplishing. There’s still a lot of work for us to do, and while we’re not ready to show anything off yet, it’s the perfect time to talk about some of the things you can expect to see coming to Dungeon Defenders II!

Shard Acquisition

Shards are such an integral part to Dungeon Defenders II when it comes to empowering your towers with great strength to take out the waves of enemies constantly thrown at you. Currently there is a lot of RNG regarding which shards you get, and to help cut down the randomness, farming lower tiered content is the easiest way to go.

We don’t want that. We want you playing content you find engaging, while being able to acquire the Shards you want. The exact details cannot be spilled out here, but we’re working on concrete ways to get the specific Shards you want.

Chaos VIII Shards

They’ve been gone for a while, and the game has changed quite a bit since they were removed. We have taken a pass at them so that they fit into the current game and are something you want to get. You’ll be able to get them after a certain point in Onslaught, similar to when you start receiving Chaos VIII Ampoules.

New Weapons

There’s a lot of epic weapons that we’re going to be making available, some that have been available previously, and some you've never seen before. Players love to make their characters look unique, and while costumes, flairs, and accessories help accomplish this, weapons also play a big part in making your heroes look awesome!

Elemental Addition

We know a lot of you really enjoyed harnessing the powers of the elements, and we promised to add to this system. In the next update, Poison Mods will be added. While we’re not talking interactions yet, we wanted to let you know that we’re expanding on the list of powers you can combo to break apart your enemies!

Other Greatness

There’s still a decent amount to talk about, and we promise to get word out on things as soon as we can. This next month is going to be a crazy ride for all of our Defenders and we cannot wait to share with you what our 2019 is going to look like! We'll be doing at least one other update over the next month, and then go through our usual release of dev streams and previews. We’re wanting to really take our time with everything we're conjuring up and give attention to a lot of things that we believe you’ll enjoy.

Social Defenders

To get reliable updates on what’s to come, be sure to check out our social platforms for the latest juiciest beans to be spilled:

• Twitter

• Facebook

• Discord

• Twitch

The entire team has had a blast making this content, we cannot wait for all of you to get your hands on our next update. Stay tuned for more info soon!

For Etheria!

The Dungeon Defenders II Team

Greetings Defenders and Happy Holidays!

I hope everyone has been enjoying our most recent update, Drakenfrost! It was definitely a new experiment into how we deliver content, and I can’t wait to see all the feedback about it. How did you feel about our recent release of the Drakenlord? Let us know your thoughts in this thread!

I didn’t come here entirely for feedback… I may have an ulterior motive… to deliver some tremendous news!

I have recently been promoted to Creative Director on the Dungeon Defenders team!

I’ll be leading the direction of Dungeon Defenders into the future with the help of our amazing team!

We’re going to make the changes that you, our Defenders, want to see. We’ll also be able to make even more exciting new content and features for Dungeon Defenders II than we ever have before.

But what does this mean for the players?

Well let’s recap a little bit. I started as a community member, Caster’s Guild streamer, and Dungeon Defenders player. My tenure at Trendy started off with an internship that grew into an Associate Producer position, where I was eventually able to mold and shape some of our most recent updates - for example Protean Shift, Isle of Dread, and the Drakenfrost update.  

Josh comes into all of this with deep knowledge of the original Dungeon Defenders title, the aspects of it that players enjoyed, and is a master of the technical arts.  

Our primary goal and focus is to build upon recent successes through continuing to evolve DD2 into the game we all know it can and should be.

So what are some of the things we’re thinking about?

We’re looking at our pain points:

We’ve been improving Ancient Power since its release and we know that everyone is still not as stoked about it as we were hoping.  In 2019 we will continue to iterate and expand upon this feature until it hits the mark we’re all hoping for.

We also know there are some Inventory pain points that players have with stacking Shards, amount of free space, and clunky navigation. We’ve already made significant improvements to finding Mods and sorting your inventory, but we’re always looking at doing more to make it easier and easier.

In the near future:

We’re looking at expanding our elemental combo system. The goals for this are to add intuitive and interesting combinations between damage types, setting you up for some mad alchemy with new and beefier elemental interactions (what if poison exploded when hit with fire damage?).  Elemental interactions entered Dungeon Defenders II before our Free-to-Play launch and while our old plans to expand upon them have grown dusty on the shelf, I have never forgotten how excited they made me about the potential for DD2. We want to rekindle that excitement and realize this feature’s potential.

We’re also looking at acquisition methods for all of your loot and rewards in the game. We know people are looking for specific Shards, 10/10 Qualibean™ MODS, crafting materials, re-roll items...basically all the things. Our new Lead Designer (Mark Telfer) has made appeasing you his primary goal in life and loot acquisition is where he’s decided to start. Much like with recent changes to MOD roll and drop rates, your feedback will be essential to this process — so keep reaching out and letting us know your thoughts.

In the slightly farther future:

We’re looking at creating a better “purpose for play.” Some people call this a “chase” in a game. We know some people enjoy getting to high floors of Onslaught, and some enjoy getting fully kitted out with Chaos VIII gear, Gilded Shards, all Ancient Powers, etc. but we also know that we can do even better than that.

We want our players to have a more meaningful reason for getting all the new loot and levels in our progression systems. One avenue we’ve been playing with is an “ultimate boss” style encounter. The Lost Eternia Shard DLC packs proved the concept for the franchise, and we are currently exploring ways we can hit that emotional high-point in the contemporary DD2 format.  Modern MMO’s and RPG’s have taken big strides when it comes to designing boss fights and we’re looking to mirror their modern, elegant style.

There’s also an ongoing conversation about adding additional ways to acquire heroes and premium currency via gameplay. We really want to make sure that all our players are feeling adequately rewarded for playing our game. We’re going take a look at what our Gem purchases and pricings are like, and evaluate ways that we can make these more “player-first.”

We’re here to make a dope experience for you, and we’re going to double-down on that as our direction moving forward.  (My first act as Creative Director was to declare “we’re going to make dope s***” as the new modus operandi.)

Real Talk:

We have a small, but dedicated team working on delivering Dungeon Defenders to everyone in the best way that we know how. We’re people (just like you!) making a free to play game, so there will always be monetization and occasionally we’ll make some mistakes with features.  Additionally, change does not always occur at the speed at which you wish it would. We have processes for improving, but they remain what they are — a process. That being said, our ultimate goal is always to make a game that you guys want to play, and to continue to experiment with finding new and interesting content and release methods.

Do not forget that each and every one of you are an essential part of DD2 now and the shape of what it becomes in the future. Continue to give us all your feedback, opinions, and ideas using the appropriate methods.

We’ll do our best to fix bugs, add content, and provide new features to the game as we keep developing in 2019.

Join me, and the entire team, in making Dungeon Defenders II, and all our future Dungeon Defenders games, into the best games they can possibly be.

Sincerely,

Colin “Elandrian” Fisher and the entire Dungeon Defenders II Team.

The Heroes of Etheria have arrived at Drakenfrost Keep and explored its grounds. Throughout their exploration they unlocked a hidden chamber shrouded in runes around a mage who made the ultimate sacrifice to keep an ancient evil at bay. The seal has been broken, and the Drakenlord lives again! Held at bay for many years, kept alive only by fables, this menacing evil seeks to take back his keep, raise a dragon army, and set out to conquer the lands of Etheria. It is up to you, Defender, to send this juggernaut back to the underworld.

Greeting Defenders,

We unleashed a beast in Patch 4.3, which is now out on ALL platforms! The Drakenlord has come to terrorize the citizens of Etheria, we took a pass at some additional Mod Reroll quality of life, bug fixes, and more. Let’s get into it!

The Drakenlord

Soaring through the skies of Etheria, the Drakenlord is trying to take back his domain, Drakenfrost Keep. He’s a new boss type that will require you to create unique strategies to take him down, unlike any other boss you’ve fought so far! With his arrival, he may appear in other maps as well. He is now ready to fight you in Expeditions!

Drakenfrost Keep is also now a map that appears in Onslaught. Starting at Floor 39, Drakenfrost Keep appears every 10 floors as a capstone floor (similar to The Lost Temple). This means at Floors 34, 44, 54, 64, etc., you have to defend the Lost Temple, and on Floors 39, 49, 59, 69, etc., you conquer Drakenfrost Keep.

The Drakenlord provides new rewards every week! There are a slew of new weapons AND Mods for you to obtain by slaying him and protecting Etheria.

A costume for the Squire is now available on the Emporium, where you can BECOME the Drakenlord. We’re excited to see how you handle what he has in store for you, and the great rewards that await you.

Mod Reroll

We’ve been all about adding Mod quality of life changes, and here’s another one. Previously we doubled 10/10 drop chances, then last week we ensured that you run into a 10/10 after actively playing for ~10 hours, AND we added a new Mod Reroll material (that can be stored in the Material Vault).

A lot of people have enjoyed these adds, but we thought we’d take it a step further. Mod Rerolls allow you to target specific Mods into becoming 10/10. Some players target farm lower tiers to try and get better luck on a 10/10 dropping for a specific lower Mod (*cough* Tenacity *cough*). We want you all playing content you find engaging, so now Mod Rerolls after a while will guarantee a 10/10 roll. The amount of time is greatly impacted by the ability to buy this material from other players. This change means you can keep climbing or playing content you want, and are guaranteed to eventually get a 10/10 of the Mod you want.

Diminishing Returns

There were a few issues with Diminishing Returns upon release. Most of these problems were related to towers/abilities that could apply a stun more than once a second (i.e. Weapon Manufacturer and Protons). These towers were causing a large spike in diminishing returns that was not intended. On top of that, because of the fast attack rate the drop off of diminishing returns was halted.

Three major issues caused this, Stuns reapplying themselves and adjusting their initial duration each time. This caused initial stuns to a lot last less than intended, which was fixed in today’s update. Second, all Crowd Controls (CC) were adding to the same tenacity pool instead of separated by type (for instance, stuns and slows). This was causing a much higher overall tenacity than expected, which was also fixed in today’s update. The final issue, which we are still working on, is related to how the tenacity fall off is calculated. This is causing some enemies that start at a higher base tenacity when playing with four players to have enemies be nearly immune to CC after their first stun. This is not intended and we are actively looking into a fix to allow players to use theirs stuns as intended.

Communities

This is a feature that we are testing on PC/Steam. There’s a lot of information that we’re going to be gathering with this specific feature, so we want to communicate that there may be times where it’s not working correctly, and it may require game restarts to get it functioning correctly, but will not affect your gameplay specifically.

Communities provide a way for you to gather with up to 30 like-minded Defenders and talk across games and lobbies, invite to party, and more! You can be in up to 5 communities at any time, and are able to create communities whenever you want. Here are some of the functionalities that Communities offer:

• Give them a unique name (don’t worry, the name filter is working)

• Give them a three or four letter acronym of your choice.

• By using “/c1”, “/c2”, “/c3”, “/c4”, and “/c5” you can quickly chat in each of your communities. (You can also use /<insert acronym here> to chat with them as well).

• Invite players to join your parties in the Town or Private Tavern.

• Use different ranks (Owner, Officer, and then regular members).

• Invite and recommend users to join a Community.

There’s a lot more functionality and we’re looking at ways to add more and improve the current setups. We’re looking forward to your constructive feedback and will be doing everything we can to make these Communities great.

Hero Changes

Abyss Lord

• Towers

  • Skeletal Orc

    • The DU cost is now 30, was previously 35.

Dryad

• Towers

  • World Tree

    • The DU cost is now 20, was previously 25.

Lavamancer

• Towers

  • Fissure of Embermount

    • The overlap is now 35% of the max range, was previously 50% (for reference, flame aura overlap is 50%).

Squire

• Towers

  • Training Dummy

    • The DU cost is now 20, was previously 25.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where a small group of player’s pets had invalid stats tied to them.

• Fixed an issue where Boom chips were functioning incorrectly.

• Fixed an issue for PS4 users getting kicked to the main menu, and having to restart the game to continue.

• Fixed an issue with inspecting items on the ground while playing splitscreen for PS4 and Xbox.

• Fixed an issue when inspecting defenses, it showed the stats of other defenses.

• Adjusted billboard focus size to make them easier to read.

• Destructive Pylon and Destruction interaction match the Destructive Pylon tooltip and no longer stack.

• Fixed an issue when going through incursions and getting put against Malthius.

• Updated drenching strikes to be affected by electrocute for the correct duration

• Fixed an issue with pathing in lanes that had translucent objects.

• Fixed an issue where water chip was sometimes not drenching enemies.

• Adjusted Vampiric Empowerment to show the correct stat boost on the individual tower inspect screen in the inventory.

• Fixed an issue where restarting Drakenfrost Keep produced one less core alive.

• The Haunting Shard now shoots ghosts on secondary attacks.

• Fixed an issue with Ogres teleporting on the far east lane of The Lost Temple.

• Fixed an issue with non-leader members of a party get a bad error message when matchmaking.

• Changed the schedules on Drakenfrost Keep on Chaos VI and VII in Expeditions.

• Boom mods should now work on everything they’re equipped to.

• Fixed a framerate drop on Xbox when interacting with enemy schedule billboard.

• Fixed an issue on PS4 where the menu level music played during the video intro.

• Fixed an issue on comparing/inspecting items in the inventory if they are not equippable for the current selected hero.

• Removed an Auto Sort checkbox on the Tinkering UI.

• Tweaked the VFX for the Accumulator Servo to show the AoE effect.

• Fixed an issue on Sacrificial Warden adventure when using a controller/gamepad.

• Fixed an issue for a very small subset of users that caused an issue when coming back from a long break that had them temporarily stuck on Greystone Plaza.

• Adjusted how Diminishing Return buffs were calculated with different types of debuffs.

• Adjusted the difficulty of Forest Crossroads, Liferoot Forest, and Betsy during the campaign to be easier.

• Added elemental effects to weapons dropped during the New User Experience.

• Adjusted the pickup radius for Primary Reroll and Mod Reroll materials.

• Fixed an issue on gamepads/controllers with focus while rerolling Mods/Primary stats.

Known Issues

• Some sources of fire damage from Shards/Mods are not lighting torches correctly on Drakenfrost Keep.

• If you are not able to use Communities, restart the game to get back into them.

• Consecutive Win Bonus and Replay From Wave can fail, currently getting a fix ready.

• Replaying from Wave on Drakenfrost Keep and winning can result in not receiving the special Frost weapons.

Social Defenders

To get reliable updates on what’s to come, be sure to check out our social platforms for the latest juiciest beans to be spilled:

• Twitter

• Facebook

• Discord

• Twitch

The entire team has had a blast making this content, we cannot wait for all of you to get your hands on our next update. Stay tuned for more info soon!

For Etheria!

The Dungeon Defenders II Team

Greetings Defenders,

The cold winds from the west are here, bringing Dungeon Defenders II:  Drakenfrost with them to Steam and PlayStation 4, with Xbox coming later today! We put out a Dev Log showcasing some of the work that’s gone into the update, as well as a Dev Stream debuting some of the goodness coming. In this patch preview, we’ll be talking about those systems a little more in-depth to hold you over until the Update Notes are released. Let’s get to it!

Drakenfrost Keep

Drakenfrost Keep has recently been re-discovered by members of the intrepid Etherian Explorer’s Guild. The Explorers were guided to its location by a tattered scroll discovered in the Mages Council Library. The scroll alluded to an ancient sealing ritual used by the early Council to seal away the powerful Generals, commanders of the armies of the Old Ones. The scroll detailed the Keep’s location with cryptic hints about “requiring the ultimate sacrifice” to seal away evil’s essence into “a vessel unlike the Eternia Crystals”.

This is the newest map to Dungeon Defenders II. Some old school Dungeon Defenders fans will notice a lot of similarities to the Royal Gardens map, but don’t get comfortable, as there is a lot more danger to this map to take on. We’ll touch on this map more overtime, we’re excited to see the different builds that arise to take on the challenges that wait.

Drakenfrost Keep is available in a new Adventure that includes Drakenfrost Resort (previously known as the Hotspring Map) AND in Expeditions.

Winterfest is Here

Head to Town or your Private Tavern to take part in Winterfest! Visiting everyday gives the opportunity to take a present from the giant festive tree located next to the Scavenger in Town, and next to your vault in the Private Tavern. This tree contains one of three gifts:

• Epic Gift

  • Contains one of four holiday themed weapons for the Squire, Apprentice, Monk, and Huntress.

• Mythical Gift

  • Contains one of four holiday themed weapons for the Squire, Apprentice, Monk, and Huntress.

  • One regular Defender Pack

  • One random Shard container (1 Shard)

• Legendary Gift

  • Contains one of four holiday themed weapons for the Squire, Apprentice, Monk, and Huntress.

  • One Mythical Defender Pack

  • One random Shard Pack (5 Shards)
    
    

In order to obtain the items, approach the tree and hit the appropriate button that appears to receive your wonderful gift! The weapons that come from these gifts ARE tradeable, and follow the same rules as any other tradeable item (they cannot be traded if they are upgraded in anyway). These items also scale to your champion score up until the Chaos VII 6/10 upgrade level.

For the season of Winterfest there’s also a pretty amazing sale going on. Inventory bags are going to be 50% off and the Material Vault is ~33% off. The Material Vault now holds 9,999 instead of 999 for each slot, and it also includes both new reroll materials, these changes are applied to currently owned Material Vaults as well. Supplies aren’t limited, but this sale isn’t going to last forever!

Winterfest is going to be on for quite a while, lasting past December. This gives you plenty of chances to get all four weapons and some nice Shards and Defender packs along the way! Oh, and of course, don’t eat the yellow snow.

Elemental Combos

Elemental Combos received a lot of attention in the Drakenfrost Update. We spent a lot of time making all the debuffs in the game more uniform so that they all applied the same effect. For instance, all oils now work the same, previously some slowed certain mobs, some didn’t. Oh also, ALL water damage now drenches, including water mods (both chips and servos)! This is our first phase on improving this system, something a lot of Defenders have asked for a very long time. We’re only able to add this system because of our Diminishing Returns system.

Diminishing Returns

This is a new system that we’re adding to the game, something that is a staple in a lot of different types of RPGs. A lot of players really LOVED the Weapon Manufacturer’s Mod “Shocking Revelation”, it brought a really awesome stun and a good chunk of damage with it, and a lot of Defenders immediately set off to get it. Eventually we had to nerf it a little bit to bring it in line with other Mods, but we loved the allure it provided for players.

If we wanted to do anything further with Mods like this, we needed to implement a system that didn’t make stun crowd controls negate all future content and negate any future Mods/features that weren't a stun with a different color (because anything less would not be as good). Enter Diminishing Returns. This system allows you to crowd control enemies, but after using it back to back the effect loses its strength. After a short while of not being affected by crowd control effects, enemies are able to be crowd controlled again at 100% efficacy. We’re able to buff up blockades during this update as well, and potentially give them even further functionality in additional updates!

We’re going to be very responsive to feedback on this, but it allows us to do a lot of cool stuff in the future. That means new Mods, any new heroes, and MUCH more we can’t talk about just quite yet can now have a lot of epic moments and crazy amounts of power without worrying about it not being as cool as strong as a 100% stun up time or so strong that it disables every enemy that has existed, currently exists, or will ever exists. This opens up the doors for some amazing things!

Mod Improvements

Previously we talked about Mods receiving changes in phases. In Phase I we more than doubled the drop rate of 10/10 Mods, as well as buffing all 6/10, 7/10, 8/10, and 9/10 drop rates. This means that 1/10, 2/10, 3/10, 4/10, and 5/10 Mod drop rates were lowered.

We promised a Phase II with this update, and we are delivering! Perfect 10/10 Mod drops before the update on average appeared within about 4 hours of active gameplay. We’ve received a lot of great feedback from players enjoying this change. However, it really stinks to be an outlier and it take a very long time to get a 10/10. The first change of Phase II is that it now on average takes about 10 hours of average play to get a GUARANTEED 10/10 Mod. If you play with more players, because you’re seeing more Mods, the amount of time this take drops significantly,  taking almost half of the listed times.

Mod Rerolls are available in the following areas:

• Expeditions

  • Drakenfrost Maps drop 2 Reroll Materials

• Onslaught

  • Drakenfrost Maps drop in the following amounts

    • Floors 28-35 drop 1 Reroll Material on Drakenfrost Resort

    • Floors 35-59 drop 1 Reroll Material on ALL maps, and 2 Reroll Materials on Drakenfrost Resort

    • Floors 60+  drop 2 Reroll Materials on ALL maps, and 3 Reroll Materials on Drakenfrost Resort

We provided ways to farm them outright for the Defender who may want to take it easy in Chaos VII, or while progressing so even as you’re climbing Onslaught you’re able to take part in this new material and are even rewarded for taking on harder challenges.

Inventory Improvements

These are things we’ve had in the works for a long time. This portion of the update has A LOT of quality of life improvements that get you out of your inventory faster and into the action. The changes include:

• Auto Sort

  • Auto sorting now sorts your bags by actually moving all the items, previously provided a visual update only.

  • The sorting goes by item type and Gear Score, but is a big update to the previous system 

• Shard Sorting

  • Shard sorting logic has been updated. It now prioritizes the following.

    • Sorts by Defense Shards first, and then by Hero shards

    • After sorting between the two types, Shards are sorted alphabetically.

• Mod Sorting

  • On the “Filter By” tab, the right most tab in the inventory, there is a new icon for Mods. This filters your best Mods first. This makes long play sessions easy and quick to check if there are any of those GLORIOUS 10/10’s just sitting in your bags.

  • Numbers on the bottom right correspond to what the highest Mod quality is on the item.

  • Numbers are white intentionally to make it easier for colorblind players to see what the number is.
    

• Mod Inspect

  • By holding down Shift, you can now see the highest Mod quality of an item in the bottom right.

General Changes

Vicinity Targeting

This is a new way to interact with players. This allows you to target other players, keep them targeted, and choose to do a variety of things:  invite them to party, inspect their shop, and more interactions when Communities are implemented.

Material Vault Changes

We received a bunch of feedback regarding the Material Vault. Previously it allowed you to store 999 of specific materials in each slot. Now you are able to store 9,999 IN EACH SLOT! That’s not all, the Material Vault now also has spots for the Primary Reroll Material and the Mod Reroll Material. So much space for activities!

Social Menus

There's been a social menu added next to your abilities and towers on the main HUD. This brings a bunch of quick functionality when interacting with others!

Enemy Spawning

We took additional passes at enemies getting stuck in spawn, but also fixed a big issue where enemies were going underground for a while and coming out of the ground later on in their path, bypassing blockades. We’re going to be keeping a vigilant eye on this, so please provide feedback on this if you see anything!

Console Voice Chat

We have now provided an option that allows you to disable voice chat in social hubs, Console player rejoice! You can now opt in to hear all the great music choices of your fellow Defenders. And by great, we mean potentially terrible. It’s usually terrible.

Victory Chests

Tired of waiting for your legendary loot to come out of that chest as you’re playing with other Defenders and getting so much more? Well that wait has been significantly reduced. When you open the Victory Chest, all your loot comes shooting out all at once. When playing with three other Defenders it looks like a legendary shotgun explosion.

Oh, and before we forget, if you don’t open your Victory Chest before moving on, all the items inside are sent to your inventory. If your inventory is full, then it goes to the Scavenger. Never miss out on Victory Chest loot again!

Communities

This is a feature that we’re also wanting a lot of feedback on. We’re releasing it initially on Steam, almost as a beta test of the feature. It’s a system that allows up to 30 people to be in a structured group, and you can be in 5 Communities at a time. These groups can talk to each other regardless of where you are using the chat system, invite one another to groups, and more. We’re wanting to build even more off this system, but it’s something you’ll have to get your hands on and see.

Communities are coming later in this patch after we've given it a little more polish.

Balance Changes

Abyss Lord

• Towers

  • Colossus

    • Health scaling increased to 600, was previously 430.

  • Skeletal Orc

    • DU cost lowered to 35, was previously 40.

Apprentice

• Towers

  • Arcane Barrier

    • No longer allows enemies to pass through it while exploding.

• Shards

  • Frost Power

    • Defense Power scaling changed to (9 + 1 per level) from (10 + 2 per level). Max gilded is now 33%, previously was 58%

Dryad

• Towers

  • World Tree

    • DU Cost lowered to 25, was previously 30.

Lavamancer

• Towers

  • Maw of the Earthdrake

    • Defense Unit costs reduced to 50 DU, previously was 60 DU.

    • Defense Health Scaling increased to 300, previously was 200.

• • Fissure of Embermount

    • Adjusted overlap to match that of similar towers (Flame Aura, Weapon Manufacturer, etc.)

Mystic

• Towers

  • Viper’s Fang

    • Upgrading the Viper’s Fang now allows you to bubble up to 5 enemies.

Squire

• Towers

  • Training Dummy

    • DU Cost lowered to 25, was previously 30.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where the first bag in an inventory would visually not load.

• Fixed an issue when selling items that other items would be put in their place.

• Fixed an issue with Dryad’s Angry Nimbus that caused it to target enemies within the spawner.

• Fixed an issue with Dryad’s Hornet’s Nest not dealing elemental damage when using an elemental mod.

• Fixed a VFX issue when killing Betsy while she was breathing fire.

• Fixed a variety of DPS tooltip calculations

• Fixed an issue where Floor 40 Onslaught flairs were labeled with the wrong floor to attain them.

• Fixed an issue where Replay From Wave refunded Level 1 Tower mana if they were upgraded.

• Fixed an issue with gamepad focus moving when buying the last item from a shop.

• Fixed focus issues with Pet Stat reroll UI for gamepad.

• Fixed an issue with the Initiate, Gunwitch, and Huntress’s stat changes via various Ascension talents.

• Fixed an issue with Favorable Winds mod proccing off any kills, not just primary attack kills.

• Fixed an issue with the amount of XP given from Drakenfrost Resort in Expeditions.

• Fixed an issue with the Dark Arts Arcane Barrier not displaying properly.

• Adjusted tool tips for items on the ground when using 4K settings.

• Fixed an issue on Xbox where Defenders would get stuck on the main menu.

• Adjusted the Vanguard’s collision so that it better matches his shield.

• Fixed an issue in Assault on the Throne Room where destroyed subcores would not spawn enemies.

• Fixed an issue with Ancient Life Steal only healing for 5% when at 5+ points.

• Adjusted the difficulty of Forest Crossroads and Wyvern Den.

• Fixed an issue with UI layering issues when purchasing or creating a hero.

• Forest Ambush now has less amount of kobolds blowing up your lanes.’

• Fixed an issue with the My Deck button going gray after deleting a hero.

• Betsy’s overall damage reduced.

• All Adventures difficulty lowered across the board.

• Fixed a visual issue with the Harpy’s blinking animation

• Fixed an issue where EV2’s Buffer Chip worked on other heroes.

Known Issues

• If chat is gray, deleting your ini will fix it and give you colors.

• Keybindings were reset with this update because of Communities being added.

• On PlayStation 4, when in-game and quitting to the main menu, you may run into issues logging back in. Just restart the game and you should get back in.

• The following Elemental Effects' durations are not working the correct length: Onsen Bath, Maelstrom, Water Chip/Servo, Freezing Rain, and Drenching Strikes.

• DPS Tooltip for Hornet's Nest is showing debug stats (get it, because they're bugs).

What’s Next?

There’s a lot we’re experimenting with in this update to make the future of Dungeon Defenders II as great as possible. We’re welcoming all the feedback that you can provide on it, but of course make sure it’s constructive, it’s the best way to ensure we can make the best changes as fast as possible.

Social Defenders

To get reliable updates on what’s to come, be sure to check out our social platforms for the latest juiciest beans to be spilled:

• Twitter

• Facebook

• Discord

• Twitch

The entire team has had a blast making this content, we cannot wait for all of you to get your hands on our next update. Stay tuned for more info soon!

For Etheria!

The Dungeon Defenders II Team

Greetings Defenders,

The cold winds from the west are upon us, bringing Dungeon Defenders II:  Drakenfrost with them! We put out a Dev Log showcasing some of the work that’s gone into the update, as well as a Dev Stream debuting some of the goodness coming. In this patch preview, we’ll be talking about those systems a little more in-depth to hold you over until the Update Notes are released. Let’s get to it!

Drakenfrost Keep

This is the newest map to Dungeon Defenders II. Some old school Dungeon Defenders fans will notice a lot of similarities to the Royal Gardens map, but don’t get comfortable, as there is a lot more danger to this map to take on. We’ll touch on this map more overtime, we’re excited to see the different builds that arise to take on the challenges that wait.

Elemental Combos

Speaking of different builds, Elemental Combos received a lot of attention in the Drakenfrost Update. We spent a lot of time making all the debuffs in the game more uniform so that they all applied the same effect. For instance, all oils now work the same, previously some slowed certain mobs, some didn’t. Oh also, ALL water damage now drenches, including water mods (both chips and servos). This is our first phase on improving this system, something a lot of Defenders have asked for a very long time. We’re only able to add this system because of our Diminishing Returns system.

Diminishing Returns

This is a new system that we’re adding to the game, something that is a staple in a lot of different types of RPGs. A lot of players really LOVED the Weapon Manufacturer’s Mod “Shocking Revelation”, it brought a really awesome stun and a good chunk of damage with it, and a lot of Defenders immediately set off to get it. Eventually we had to nerf it a little bit to bring it in line with other Mods, but we loved the allure it provided for players.

If we wanted to do anything further with Mods like this, we needed to implement a system that didn’t make stun crowd controls negate all future content and negate any future Mods/features that weren't a stun with a different color (because anything less would not be as good). Enter Diminishing Returns. This system allows you to crowd control enemies, but after using it back to back the effect loses its strength. After a short while of not being affected by crowd control effects, enemies are able to be crowd controlled again at 100% efficacy. We’re able to buff up blockades during this update as well, and potentially give them even further functionality in additional updates!

We’re going to be very responsive to feedback on this, but it allows us to do a lot of cool stuff in the future. That means new Mods, any new heroes, and MUCH more we can’t talk about just quite yet can now have a lot of epic moments and crazy amounts of power without worrying about it not being as cool as strong as a 100% stun up time or so strong that it disables every enemy that has existed, currently exists, or will ever exists. This opens up the doors for some amazing things!

Communities

This is a feature that we’re also wanting a lot of feedback on. We’re releasing it initially on Steam, almost as a beta test of the feature. It’s a system that allows up to 30 people to be in a structured group, and you can be in 5 Communities at a time. These groups can talk to each other regardless of where you are using the chat system, invite one another to groups, and more. We’re wanting to build even more off this system, but it’s something you’ll have to get your hands on and see.

Communities are coming later in this patch after we've given it a little more polish.

Inventory Improvements

These are things we’ve had in the works for a long time. This portion of the update has A LOT of quality of life improvements that get you out of your inventory faster and into the action. Sorting improvements, identifying perfect mods, and more are coming. There’s more information coming with tomorrow’s update!

What’s Next?

There’s a lot we’re experimenting with in this update to make the future of Dungeon Defenders II as great as possible. We’re welcoming all the feedback that you can provide on it, but of course make sure it’s constructive, it’s the best way to ensure we can make the best changes as fast as possible. The update is live tomorrow, so start a fire, things are about to get cold!

Social Defenders

To get reliable updates on what’s to come, be sure to check out our social platforms for the latest juiciest beans to be spilled:

• Twitter

• Facebook

• Discord

• Twitch

The entire team has had a blast making this content, we cannot wait for all of you to get your hands on our next update. Stay tuned for more info soon!

For Etheria!

The Dungeon Defenders II Team

Greetings Defenders,

There’s a ton of new features and content on the horizon, so it’s time to give a little inside peek as to what’s coming in the next update for Dungeon Defenders II! Mod improvements, elemental combos, blockade buffs, and even more (somethings we aren't even talking about just quite yet) await in this update. Let’s get into it!

Alec “Lawlta” Saare — Community Expedition Leader

What’s up everyone, you know what it do!

We’ve been working incredibly hard on getting this update out to you before the new year and really put in some serious time. While there is new content coming (the new map looks amazing, there’s some image down below), we did a really big push to make a lot of systems feel a ton better. A little while ago we improved Mod drops and promised that there was a Phase II for this system, and Mark will cover the changes coming down below. Players want Elemental Combos to be awesome, so we went through and did our Phase I pass on them, with more coming in future updates. There’s been a lot of feedback on Blockades being viable, and boy did we bring the heat with them.

There’s additional features that are coming, you’ll see most of them laid out in the patch notes that come with the update. We’re excited for you to get your hand on this update, we’re just polishing things up a little bit before we release it. There’s a Dev Stream tomorrow (December 7th) 3PM EST where we are going to show some of them off. Don’t miss it!

Smooches,
Lawlta

Mark “Telflon” Telfer — Technical Designelf

Hey Defenders!

It’s been a while since we’ve last spoken! I’ve been doing a ton of MOD-related work over the interim, but alas, I was threatened by Lawlta to keep it all under wraps. Luckily, tis finally the season of giving, and I’ve been given the okay to give you some major bean spillage on what I (and the other Trendy elves) have been up to in our workshop.

Recently, the Trendy elves had started seeing a huge amount of holiday wishes come our direction and all said the same thing. They said, “Santa Lawlta, all I want for Christmas is a perfect MOD.” Many of you felt that it took way too long to find those perfect Qualibean™ MODs and that waiting forever was just no fun! I knew I had to do something about it fast, lest I find myself on the naughty list in perpetuity. I grabbed a bottle of spiked eggnog, locked myself into a room, and set out to right this issue once and for all. Thanks to the copious amounts of eggnog I drank, my memory gets a bit fuzzy after that, but a few days later I woke up and Lawlta told me that the rates for higher quality MODs had significantly increased with our last hotfix.  Apparently, I had more than doubled the rate of perfect MODs and had substantially increased the drop rates for MODs of quality 6 and above! Presents for everyone! On average, you should see a perfect MOD about every four hours of active gameplay. Gone are the days where the ground is cluttered with nothing but MODs as red as Rudolph's nose. You should now be seeing far more green MODs in the mix (a Christmas Miracle)!

Now I know what you’re thinking, “Mark! The increase to drop rates sounds fine and dandy, but you see, I have a problem. That problem is bad luck. It’s a condition that I’ve had since birth and RNG has picked on me for it my entire life. Even though you’ve increased the drop rates, Mark, I still don’t think I’ll ever see anything good. I’m just too darn unlucky!” Well, dear player, I have a revelation to make. I too am afflicted with this most heinous condition, and I feel your pain. Playing 50 hours and still not seeing a perfect MOD feels worse than getting a lump of coal in your stocking! I knew that if I truly wanted this update to bring good tidings to all (especially myself), I would have to be sensitive to those in the community who share this affliction. Well, fear not! This new update brings with it a solution for even the unluckiest players. We have built a system that GUARANTEES that you will get a perfect MOD if you go an extended period of time without seeing one. If you haven’t seen a perfect MOD in about ten hours of active gameplay, then we will guarantee that a perfect will drop for you! That’s right! At worst, you’ll see one perfect MOD in less than 10 hours (as long as you are actively playing). And do you wanna know a secret? If you play in multiplayer and get the legendary loot bonus, the amount of time it takes to guarantee this perfect MOD gets drastically reduced. Don’t tell Lawlta I told you, or back onto the naughty list I go.

So now we’ve increased the perfect MOD drop rate, and guaranteed that even the unluckiest defenders will see them. But this still doesn’t fulfill the other biggie on people’s holiday wish list. Sure, seeing A perfect MOD is great, but ultimately what you are looking for is THE perfect MOD. There’s always something specific you have in mind that you KNOW will make your build perfect, and that’s the thing you really want a chance at getting (I’m looking at you, perfect tenacity). It is with great excitement that I announce the introduction of a brand new material, MOD rerolling! MOD rerolling lets you improve your chances of getting the specific quality MODs you want in more of a targeted way. Playing maps in our new region will guarantee you a drop of these awesome little guys, and the potential that they possess is amazing. You’ll be able to invest in your favorite MODs and guarantee yourself a risk-free chance at making it better each time you complete a map. This is a game-changer, guys. This reroll material makes the time it takes to get THE perfect MOD you are looking for in a fraction of the time that it takes right now. This is big.

So to recap:

• Perfect MODs drop rates were more than doubled in our last hotfix.  Six to Nine MOD drop rates were increased too.

• This update brings with it a new system that guarantees unlucky players a perfect MOD drop in less than 10 hours of active gameplay.

• MOD Rerolling is being introduced and this gives you a targeted way to invest in your favorite MODs.  It lets you get a favorite MOD to perfect in a FRACTION of the time it would take to see it dropped.

Now all of that is super exciting, but I still have more in my bag of gifts, Defenders.  We’ve heard you when you’ve said that you want to spend less time in menus and more time whacking gobus in their very punchable faces. It is with great excitement that I can announce MOD quality filtering in the inventory. In our new update, the “Filter By” tab (the last tab in your Inventory) now includes an option to filter by MOD quality. Selecting this option groups equipment by the highest quality MOD on it, highest to lowest, and then displays that number on the icon of the equipment itself. That means that you can visually scan your equipment with ease and find high quality MODs in a jiffy. Tune into the Dev Stream tomorrow at 3pm EST to see for yourself.

We’ve also adjusted the way Shard sorting works too. In the new update, Shards are sorted together by type and then alphabetically. For example: all defense (green) Shards are grouped together when sorted, and will be listed in alphabetical order. This makes it way easier to find the Shard you are looking for and should cut down the amount of time spent in menus substantially. We’re open to any feedback after this goes live, but we’re excited to get these changes to you!

The elves at Trendy are looking forward to the release of this update and can’t wait to see you play it. We’re far from finished when it comes to improving MODs in the game, so your continued feedback is always appreciated. Happy Defending and Happy Holidays!

Love,
Mark

Eric “Petire” Petrie — QA Designer

Hey all, I’m just going to get right into it! The focus for me this update was allowing players to have more choice and agency in what they use while feeling powerful based on their setups. I’m going to go over our first step in expanding two different systems that happened to work very well together. The first one is the Elemental Combo system. We think it’s a great way for players to expand on making builds they truly feel are their own. The problem with the elemental combo systems in the past were either they were the ONLY way to build, or they were completely useless. The reason for this was not the Elemental Combo system itself but more the ability for players to stack Crowd Controls over and over again to increase damage output beyond expected values, completely stunlocking enemies.

Allowing players to pick what kind of towers they enjoy using and use those in nearly every circumstance (as long as they put the time and effort in to get the mods/shards for those towers) is a cool and interesting aspect a RPG Tower Defense can have. For instance, having your Cannonball towers oil enemies so your flame aura begins an ignite, or allowing your Skyguard to stun enemies knocked up from geyser. Those are cool and interesting interactions that we want players to feel good finding and discovering for their first time, but not have them make all content trivial.

This is not the final stage of our combo system, but rather a first step. We’re hard at work on back end systems that need to be altered in order to future proof additions we create, and of course give our amazing artists enough time to go forward and make awesome visual effects (so awesome you may shed a tear) to show off new and amazing combos.

Another quick thing I want to talk about is Blockades. Blockades have decreased in use ever since we added shards, and even more so with Mods, because Crowd Control effects are too powerful on our enemies. The reason for this is the many instances of Crowd Control available at any point and time without any kind of cooldown on using them. Enter Diminishing Returns. Diminishing Returns allow certain passives and shards to increase their base values everytime any Crowd Control is applied to an enemy future CC’s will have less effect. There’s more to talk about on Diminishing Returns being added, but by adding them in we’re able to make Elemental Combos a lot more interesting, create even MORE Elemental Combos in our future patches/updates, AND buff Blockades so that they are part of your builds. All of these changes are because of feedback we received from so many of you, and we’ve done a lot to make them feel good.

Activating my trap card,
Petire

Daniel Diaz — World Builder

Hey everyone! I’m Daniel Diaz, and I want to share with you some of the work we’ve put into the next map coming to you all very soon.

Our main inspiration for this level came from Game of thrones (specifically Night's Watch, Castle Black) and some awesome concepts by artists at Trendy.

We had lot of fun working on it. I remember I started working on the front of the castle, if you wonder about the workflow just take a look at the pic below.

Finally, one of the biggest challenges for this level on the world building side was to create the ice cavern and backgrounds for the level (we had no concepts for them) so we had to explore and use our imagination.

We can’t wait to see you all conquer this frozen castle and reap the rewards for doing so!

Thanks everyone,
Daniel

What’s Next?

Our Dev Stream is December 7th, @3 PM EST. Be sure to come join us, check out all the epic snow covered goodness, system changes, and hard work poured into this update. Oh, also, you know, maybe win some prizes coming with this update!

To get reliable updates on what’s to come, be sure to check out our social platforms for the latest juiciest beans to be spilled:

• Twitter

• Facebook

• Discord

• Twitch

The entire team has had a blast making this content, we cannot wait for all of you to get your hands on our next update. Stay tuned for more info soon!

For Etheria!

The Dungeon Defenders II Team

Ahoy Defenders!

Patch 4.1 has docked in Etherian ports and is now live on all platforms. This patch is focused on providing some nice change to perfect Mod drop rates, improving the visibility of Mod quality, polishing Mob pathing, and more. Get your eye patch and parrot ready, let’s set sail into some notes!

Perfect Mod Drops

This is something that we received a lot of feedback on and are working on in multiple phases. The first phase is in this patch allowed us to do calculations on changing the drop rates specifically. Previously we expected players to see a perfect Mod of any kind within less than nine hours of active gameplay (active gameplay being time spent efficiently and quickly completing maps, not just with the game open). After hearing feedback, we sent out a survey that gave a lot of good information. Our testing and simulations validated the feedback and our feeling was that there was more to add to this system. This first phase looks to increase the drop rate so on average you see a perfect Mod in less than four hours of active gameplay on average (which matches up with 31% of people surveyed asking for 1-5 hours, and 40% asking for 5-10 hours). This average is based around solo play, so multiplayer sessions may much shorter averages. When talking about averages there are going to be outliers, but for the short term this is the best fix we felt comfortable putting out.

The second phase of this is a lot more complex and requires a lot of work and discovery on our end, and it should be coming with our next update. We are working diligently to get rid of any outliers that cause players to feel as if they haven’t seen one in over 50 hours of active gameplay. Alongside that we also hear the desire to target farm Mods, and while it’s not something we’re going to provide outright, we are looking into way(s) to ease this quite a bit. We’re going to touch more on this as we get closer to our next big update (which isn’t too far away)!

Mod Quality Visuals

Players have requested that we make it easier to understand where your Mod quality ranges on a scale of 1 to 10, especially if you’re colorblind. Now there will be a number that reflects the quality nestled gently on top of the “Qualibean™.”

We’ve heard additional feedback on Mods regarding sorting and distinguishing perfect quality and are currently looking into ways to make this better.

Mob Pathing

We’re continuously finding ways to make our game experience as smooth as possible. Stuck enemies and those that go off their intended path are no fun to deal with, and they certainly are a challenge for us to ensure they work correctly. We changed A LOT of their behaviors and fixed a lot of stuck/pathing issues in this patch with some new logic. We’re going to keep a close eye on these changes to make sure they work correctly, and if there’s more work to be done we promise we’ll be hammering away it.

Replay From Wave

This was a feature added in with Isle of Dread that a lot of players have enjoyed. We ran into an initial technical challenge that did not allow this feature to work well on Lost Temple. Replay From Wave was released and since we set to work on getting it to work on Lost Temple. After testing it, we’re now able to get Replay From Wave to work on this map — including Omega Waves.

Prestigious Weapons

When Isle of Dread was released, players had the opportunity to earn a Prestigious weapon every 10 floor of Onslaught before floor 100, and every 20 floors after floor 100. With how the update was applied, it required people to overcome previous highest floors to receive these rewards. It didn’t feel great to have players reclimb to take part in this new system.

With this patch, we were able to get this working. As a bonus, all players as of this patch are able to go complete every floor a Prestigious Weapon drops and receive one. For example, if yesterday you completed Floor 60 and received a Prestigious Weapon, you are now able to not only complete Floor 60 to receive another one, floor 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50 can be completed again and you’ll receive another Prestigious Weapon for each!

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue with the Abyss Lord’s Colossus not consistently attacking enemies in lane.

• Fixed an issue with Earthshatter Tower not attacking Vanguard Gorbstock, Vanguards (shield goblins), Ranged Ogres, and Cannon Ogres.

• Fixed an issue with Anti-melee Servo not working with Angry Nimbus.

• Fixed an issue with the Harpy Tower functioning without a World Tree.

• Fixed an issue with some towers where their Inspect DPS was not calculating Crit Damage and Crit Chance.

• Fixed an issue with Angry Nimbus shocking enemies without the Dryad in Corrupt Form.

• Fixed an issue with parties being disbanded upon transitioning.

• Fixed an issue with towers affected by Boost Aura losing their yellow VFX when upgraded.

• Multiplayer bonuses now work properly in Incursions and Onslaught.

• Fixed an issue with EV2 getting stuck in the Proton Charge firing animation while moving.

• Pet eggs can no longer rot in player shops.

• Fixed an issue with Power Transfer showing a negative value.

• A hard gold cap has been set at ~2,300,000,000 gold.

• Made adjustments to the Mastery tab on the World Map to improve Mastery

• Ranged Ogres no longer shoot into the sky when hit by Starfall. As a result the Ranged Ogre Space Association has been disbanded.

• Chaos VI Jacked Sparrow and Plunderer’s Paradise now correctly drop C6 shards.

• Now able to quick match for any region in the Expeditions tab of the World Map.

• Lavamancer’s submerge travel SFX now play correctly.

• Adjusted how jumps are handled slightly for smoother gameplay.

• Fixed an issue on Xbox where players attempted to join maps that no longer existed.

• Fixed an issue where Defender Pack pets and redeem code pets were starting with 5/10 affection. You gotta earn their love!

• Adjusted the Game Browser UI elements on controller that appeared out of place.

• Fixed an issue with Replay From Wave where Dryad Defenses would still work without the World Tree.

• Fixed an issue where the Rain of Oil shard stopped functioning if you swapped to another hero then back to the Abyss Lord.

• Fixed Vanguard Gorbstock’s minimap icon. It was too tiny.

• Fixed an issue with Replay From Wave where Weapon manufacture weapons could not be set.

• The Shackled Mod no longer applies to Lady Orcs, only triggers on Dark Assassins now.

• Fixed a Gem Well timing issue.

• Fixed an issue where players were unable to back out of the War Table if they expanded regions on the World Map.

• Adjusted the Floor 30 and 38 Onslaught Flair rewards listing.

• Fixed some War Table issues showing Chaos 4 and 5 enemies incorrectly.

• Updated the Lightning Grenade Pet Ability description.

• Made it so Player 2 in splitscreen is not able to be kicked while in a party where the leader isn’t Player 1 or 2 of the splitscreen group.

• Fixed an issue where loading into hard versions of the campaign was causing 5001 errors.

• The Forbidden Worshipper’s Mask was too small. We made it bigger. What’s the Forbidden Worshipper’s Mask? Secrets.

• Changed the title screen to have “Play Now” only for new, returning, and freshly installed players to reduce confusion.

• Fixed an issue with consecutive win bonuses were not carrying over correctly between games.

• Fixed a couple issues with splitscreen players not able to be invited to parties.

• Have adjusted Dryad Towers targeting AI slightly. Continuing to investigate this.

• Fixed an issue with Tenacity not preventing EMP Kobold tower stuns on certain towers.

• Added a potential fix for Green Mana not being properly distributed if the Warm Up phase is skipped before all players load in.

• Added a lock icon for locked War Table regions.

• Fixed an issue with hitting “Yes” on Replay From Wave breaking if done while a Core destruction cutscene played.

• Fixed an issue with towers refreshing properly when a play who disconnects rejoins.

• Fixed an issue for players who play at 4k resolution with the Option Menu going off-screen.

• Fixed a visual issue when rerolling Defender Packs without enough medals.

• The Favorable Wind Mod now correctly shows the stacks icon.

• Added Mastery Star info to the Region and Difficulty drop downs.

• Fixed an issue where the Player Shop UI wasn’t closing automatically when build phase starts.

• Mastery stars were removed from filtering in the Advanced View.

• Fixed an issue with items updating properly for returning players.

• Changed a the Tinkering load screen to correctly show the Gobsplosion Mod info.

• Fixed an issue with SFX not playing properly for buyback.

A lot of you submit bug reports constantly, and we make sure to squash as many of them as we can. As with any expansion, there are a lot of fixes coming your way. Please continue to submit them to our bug site, your help is invaluable to knocking out some of the pesky issues that appear.

Known Issues

• Tabbing when matchmaking on world map before the UI updates can matchmake into an unintended game mode.

• On splitscreen some NPC shops some UI elements come through the window. The shop is still the focus and works correctly, just visually not perfect.

• Replay from Wave on Lost Temple sometimes keeps a broken core model.

• Replay from Wave on Lost Temple is not maintaining the correct lanes/mutators.

Social Defenders

There’s a lot of people playing Dungeon Defenders II, and a lot of them gather on our social hubs. When it comes to finding other players, figuring out how to conquer a specific challenge, or just wanting to get to know others in the community, or getting the latest DD2 news, you can’t go wrong with our social platforms:

• Twitter

• Facebook

• Discord

• Twitch

We’re getting the finishing touches on this patch and cannot wait to share it with you all.

For Etheria!

The Dungeon Defenders II Team

Ahoy Defenders!

Around the docks of Etheria there is talk of Patch 4.1 arriving later this week. Among these whispers are some predictions of what’s to come. Join us as we peer slightly into the future, it’s time to dive into Patch 4.1 preview!

Perfect Mod Drops

This is something that we received a lot of feedback on and are working on in multiple phases. The first phase is coming in this patch, it allowed us to do calculations on changing the drop rates specifically. We are going to be increasing the drop rate of perfect Mods by MORE than double, while lowering the drop chance of lower quality Mods.

The second phase of this is a lot more complex, and we’re not ready to discuss it just quite yet. We know the current drop rate has an average time that players should see perfect mods, and for a lot of players they are at or below that average. However, there are players that are outliers on this system, taking a long time to see any perfect Mod and that doesn’t feel great. We are currently developing ways to try and curb this entirely.

Mod Quality Visuals

Players have requested that we make it easier to understand where your Mod quality ranges on a scale of 1 to 10. Now there will be a number that reflects the quality nestled gently on top of the “Qualibean™.”

Mob Pathing

We’re continuously finding ways to make our game experience as smooth as possible. Stuck enemies and those that go off their intended path are no fun to deal with, and they certainly are a challenge for us to ensure they work correctly. There are changes coming with this patch aimed at drastically decreasing these types of behaviors. We’re going to keep a close eye on these changes to make sure they work correctly, and if there’s more work to be done we promise we’ll be hammering away it.

Replay From Wave

This was a feature added in with Isle of Dread that a lot of players have enjoyed. We ran into an initial technical challenge that did not allow this feature to work well on Lost Temple. Replay From Wave was released and since we set to work on getting it to work on Lost Temple. After testing it, we’re now able to get Replay From Wave to work on this map — including Omega Waves.

And That’s Not All!

There’s of course a slew of bug fixes coming, expanded explanations to the above, and a couple other unannounced changes that will be in the patch notes.

Social Defenders

There’s a lot of people playing Dungeon Defenders II, and a lot of them gather on our social hubs. When it comes to finding other players, figuring out how to conquer a specific challenge, or just wanting to get to know others in the community, or getting the latest DD2 news, you can’t go wrong with our social platforms:

• Twitter

• Facebook

• Discord

• Twitch

We’re getting the finishing touches on this patch and cannot wait to share it with you all.

For Etheria!

The Dungeon Defenders II Team

Ahoy Defenders!

Dungeon Defenders II:  The Isle of Dread Expansion is out now on ALL platforms! This expansion contains a treasure trove of features, changes, and improvements. Set sail for adventure on two new maps, strike down your foes to gain new weapons and Mods, take on new enemies, and so much more. Put on your best eye patch and get your parrot, let’s dive into some expansion notes!

New Maps

We’re excited to be introducing not one, but two maps with this expansion. These maps are available as their own Adventure set, can be selected when playing Expeditions, can come up as you progress through Onslaught, and one is even a Chaos VII Incursion!

The Jacked Sparrow

The first map is set on The Jacked Sparrow, previously known as The Sparrow before the heroes of Etheria hijacked it in order to reach their destination. As you traverse this map, enemies attack from above and below the levels of the ship, requiring all hands on deck to keep the masts safe from destruction! There’s a ton of fun to be had aboard this ship, as you use cannons to blast your enemies away, catapults to fly across the map, and vantage points to take out enemies when they least expect it!

After braving the rough seas, the heroes land on an island besieged by an army of the Old One trying to break into the island’s mountain. Among these enemies are new foes that have not been seen before, helping beef up the horde that is coming your way! Protect the island to prevent havoc breaking loose, but also explore to find secrets hidden throughout the map. Conquer the Incursion version of this map by striking down Captain Dreadbones to unlock a new Barbarian weapon to add to your arsenal!

New Enemies

There’s a slew of enemies that are now donning pirate attire, an absolute necessity when conquering on such vicious tides! Here are a few of the enemies you encounter on your journey:

These goblins upped their pirate fashion game, but they also recruited additional allies to take down heroes from afar.

Cannon Ogres have joined the ranks of foes you must face! They are a fearsome terror that can ruin your defenses and range, but are also deadly when you’re up close and personal.  

A cursed orc pirate, Captain Dreadbones, is a new boss that you encounter in this expansion. You can fight him and his mighty crew in Plunderer’s Paradise on all game modes the map is available! Be careful, his cursed strength is nothing to underestimate.

The World Map

The War Table is improved with this expansion, adding some wonderful visuals to the world of Etheria, and also providing some quality of life changes as requested by our glorious community! The World Map shows all the different places Defenders may explore through different game modes:

• Campaign: A new World Map that outlines where you’ve been, and where you’ll be going!

• Expeditions:  Choose the region, map, and difficulty you want!

• Adventures:  Four zones full of different Adventure story arcs are available to choose from!

• Onslaught:  Hop right into your floor and get to climbing!

• Mastery:  With a similar look to Expeditions, you can see your Mastery Star progression!

• Incursions:  You can change difficulties to see each available Incursion!

Each game mode contains different formats for ease of use, but also provide an “Advanced View” session browser in each. The Session Browser allows quick visibility of all the games going on, allowing players to filter down to specific maps within specific difficulties of specific game modes. Very specific!

When navigating through the various world maps, there is also a new indicator that shows which maps are included in Daily and Weekly quests!

Social Improvements

Interacting with players is getting some good attention with this expansion, with much more coming even after the expansion! Player Lists are now easier to navigate, selecting another Defender and choosing to inspect their shop or invite them to party among other options provided via a drop down menu.

The Player List menu has also received additional features. You can now see who’s in your party, who’s the party leader, any friends in the hub, and skip time inspecting every player by seeing who has items listed in their shop!

Receiving invites is also streamlined to not take over your screen and there’s a timer to avoid invite spam. Parties received attention as well, for instance, the leader is now consistent and gives control to choose when and where your crew go! We’re continuing to develop social interactions between players, and this is a giant first step towards making it an easier and more enjoyable experience.

Replay From Wave

This is something we are introducing to help Defenders overcome the challenges they are presented with and promoting experimentation as you progress. Sometimes you can get up to a certain point and you want to try a different strategy. That’s where Replay From Wave comes in!

Now when you fail a wave, the Performance Optimization System outlines what defenses fell or which ones may have been underperforming. You are able to evaluate what changes you need, make adjustments, and get back to overcoming the challenge before you.

This system is available in Adventures, Expeditions, Onslaught, AND Mastery (without losing stars). The only caveat to this is that Replay From Wave is not available on Lost Temple, as it’s meant to stand as a final gauntlet to overcome every five floors. We can’t wait to see how far this system let’s Defenders go!

Onslaught

It’s finally here — one map floors are now the standard in Onslaught! This change was due to a lot of great feedback many of you provided. There are a few things that needed to change when going towards the one map format:

• Difficulty Scaling:  We shifted the focus of investing time into each floor to overcoming greater difficulties sooner. As a result the rewards previously earned in Onslaught at various floors (Floor 114 for instance) are scaled down to the same difficulty; Ancient Power reset minimum reset floor is lowered; and Omega Waves were added in as an extra challenge to provide a greater feeling of progression.
  

• Rewards:  Since players are facing a greater challenge faster, we wanted rewards that reflected overcoming said challenges. Now every 10 floors, players receive an Prestigious Weapon, with a guarantee on their unique Mods to roll a five or higher!
  

• More Maps:  You are now going to be exposed to every map (except boss maps) as you climb Onslaught. Every five maps runs a format of easy, medium, and hard maps, with the fifth map being The Lost Temple!
  

• More Schedules:  There are even more enemy schedules that you'll encounter now!

• Omega Waves:  This is a new sixth wave added to the end of The Lost Temple. It’s a small victory lap as you continue to climb, where you will be provided with Mini-Boss only waves and unique schedules!

Onslaught is something we want to continue to build upon. With the feedback you provide, we’re able to make sure that we keep putting out content you enjoy, and these Onslaught changes are a result of that. We can’t wait to see how high you climb, maybe even a Memes For Marcos 2.0 is in our future!

Ancient Power

Onslaught and Ancient Power go together like pirates and the ocean, so of course we added more to this system! Ancient Powers themselves are more powerful than before and require less of a point investment to utilize their maximum potential. Now two players are able to reach the maximum strength provided by Ancient Power, previously something only four players were able to do.

There are also FOUR new powers to help bolster your battle against the horde of enemies coming your way. Protean Shift brought some order to the Critical Chance/Damage system, and as a result we are able to add the following Ancient Powers:

• Hero Critical Chance

• Hero Critical Damage

• Defense Critical Chance

• Defense Critical Damage

Ancient Power is also more accessible early on now. You are able to gain Ancient Power after completing Floor 30! You do not have to acquire Ancient Power here and can keep climbing gaining higher Minimum Ascension as you progress through floors. Previously you gained 3 Minimum Ascension for every floor you completed (with three map floors), but now you gain 12 Minimum Ascension for every floor with the one map system, and also gain 4 Talent Cap increases per floor as well!

As you gain more Ancient Power, your Minimum Ancient Power Floor increases as well. This system continues to climb until your Minimum Ancient Power Floor reaches Floor 50, requiring you to reach Floor 80 to acquire additional Ancient Power. You then have access to Floor 50 right away after acquiring Ancient Power, granted you’re equipped to take on those challenges!

One final change when acquiring Ancient Power:  your pets no longer reset! This change may not be permanent as we’re investigating ways to improve pets, but for now, your pets are untouched by the Ancient Power System!

New Items

There’s one thing that pirates are always on the hunt for — TREASURE! There are multiple ways to acquire the new items coming.

Professor Proteus’s Seaworthy Weapons

Professor Proteus now has a new cache of weapons available for Defenders taking on the high seas. Using these weapons provide unique death animations that are fitting for the battles that await you! Turn your enemies into a boat, and watch them sink into a whirlpool, or drop your enemies and make them flop like a fish.

There are multiple animations these weapons provide, and they are available on all weapons! The variety of animations are on a rotation daily, so be sure to check back regularly to see if the one you want is available.

Pirate Map Seaworthy Weapons

We’re trying something new by allowing Defenders to get these new weapons by completing the new maps! These weapons do not have the unique death animations, but instead come with all new Mods. These Mods are not weapon or hero specific, though some of them are bound to being melee or ranged only. They aren’t like Mods that are currently in the game, some take your movement speed into account; another has a chance to poison, drench, or oil your enemies; and another can even prevent Dark Assassins from stunning you!

There are ten to discover, and they can only be acquired through completing The Jacked Sparrow, Plunderer’s Paradise, or through Player Shops

Depending on where you acquire these weapons, you are also met with new pirate themed Mods that pack quite a punch that can be transferred to any weapon; or unique death animations that can sink your enemies (literally, one can turn them into a boat and sink into the ground)!

New Features

What good expansion doesn’t contain some new features? We’re introducing new features to help Defenders as they keep Dragonfall and Etheria safe.

Primary Stat Reroll

Primary Stat reroll system that we’re experimenting with. This system allows you to acquire reroll materials from completing the Jacked Sparrow and Plunderer’s Paradise, and reroll your primary stat into a potentially higher number. This change is not enforced if the roll is lower, you are always given a choice to accept it or decline! The new reroll materials are also able to be traded.We’re looking for feedback on this system and if you all enjoy it, we’ll investigate greatly expanding it.

Player Shop Changes

There are a some changes coming with Player Shops to make them more enticing to a larger amount of Defenders:

• Use any piece of gear you purchase! Previously players were limited to buying a piece of gear that was only available to their level. This meant players having gold to purchase cool Mods, but not having the gear score to do so. Now when you purchase a piece of gear, the gear is scaled down to your Champion Score. After purchasing an item, and it scaling, you are still able to sell it on your shop. Even more Defenders can now participate in buying and selling!

Gem Mine

We’ve introduced a new way for Defenders to get a sweet deal on gems. The Gem Mine can be purchased from the platform stores, providing 100 gems everyday that you login for 30 consecutive days. That’s a total of 3000 gems for a lot less!

Balance Changes

Protean Shift brought a lot of new ways to play and a ton of power to Defenders, which we really love! As a result, there are a slew of things that are either not as strong as we’d like or too strong, removing any challenge while playing. We’ve discussed a couple of these, let’s get into it:

Abyss Lord

• Towers

  • Colossus

    • Range increased to 800 from 600 (33% increase!)

  • Skeletal Archers

    • Damage scaling increased to 15 from 11.5 (30+% increase!)

  • Ramsters

    • Direct Command range increased to 5000 from 4000 (25% increase!)

Dryad

• Towers

  • Harpy’s Perch

    • Damage scaling increased to 5.175 from 4.5 (15% increase!)

  • Hornet’s Nest

    • Hornets from any nest can attack any enemy. Previously only one hornet per nest could attack the same enemy.

    • Up to three hornets can attack the same enemy, regardless of where the hornet spawns.

EV2

• Towers

  • Weapon Manufacturer

    • Minimum range added to node placement similar to Auras. This change bring this tower in-line to similar towers, while still keeping it unique.

Huntress

• Towers

  • Explosive Trap

    • Damage scaling increased to 6.6 from 5.5 (20% increase!)

    • Range scaling increased to 0.0575 from 0.05 (15% increase!)

    • Range Max increased to 1150 from 1000 (15% increase!)

    • Base Range increased to 6900 from 6000 (15% increase!)

    • Trigger Radius increase to 400 from 200 (100% increase!)

Lavamancer

• Towers

  • Volcano

    • Damage scaling increased to 9.31 from 7 (33% increase!)

Mystic

• Towers

  • Sand Viper

    • Damage scaling increased to 6.875 from 5.5 (25% increase!)

Squire

• Towers

  • Ballista

    • Damage scaling increased to 21.27 from 18 (18+% increase!)

Mod Changes

• Tower Mods

  • Unique Defense Crit Chance Servo

    • Increased max Crit Chance to 30% from 25% (5% increase!)

  • Unique Defense Crit Damage Servo

    • Increased max Crit Damage to 40% from 35% (5% increase!)

  • Boom Mods

    • We’ve changed how boom mods work. Previously they were a flat percentage that allowed them to scale infinitely, making them a must for climbing later floors.
      
      They’ve been retooled to do damage based on the enemies they explode up to a cap. The number shown is an average of what that damage is based on the different kinds of enemies within that group. For example, a melee-splosion does less damage when exploding a small goblin than it does when exploding a berserker orc.

General Changes

• Chaos VIII Amps and High Onslaught Mods

  • Modified Mark’s Thoughts:

These now start dropping at floor 35. Their drop chance increases every two floors you complete up to a cap on Floor 83 for Amps and Floor 92 for Mods.

Bug Fixes

• All C8 shards have been disabled. We may revisit them sometime in the future, but to provide an equal battlefield for all Defenders, we’ve disabled C8 shards for now.

• We made some pathing adjustments, fixes to spawners, and adjustment to enemies that should improve their pathing across several maps. Looking at you Northwest flier lane in Lost Temple!

• Fixed a bug where the Betsy Staff could cause enemies to, more or less, one shot anything in their path.

• Fixed an issue with Betsy’s Curse shard allowing enemies to one shot anything in their path.

• Fixed spelling errors on Unique Crit Chance Servo, Unique Crit Damage Servo, Defense Crit Chance Servo, and Defense Crit Damage Servo.

• Removed some tutorial text that was hanging out in Gates of Dragonfall - Hard.

• Fixed a rare issue where when an item is upgraded to 10/10 Chaos 7 the ipwr could go to 0.

• Fixed an issue where Consecutive Win Bonus XP was being multiplied by Ancient Power an additional time.

• EV-2 no longer infinitely lazers the Bastille Master in her incursion.

• Fixed several cases where the Bastille Master could get stuck.

• Fixed an issue where players could get into a state where they were unable to evolve pets.

• Fixed a case where split-screen users could have the Player Shops overlapping the Ancient Power UI.

• Player Shops - "Your inventory is full" notification now shows on other players shops when your inventory is full

• Piercing Towers now pierce Vanguards.

• Protective Downgrade Servo and Last Stand Chip now have a vfx to show when the effect triggers

A lot of you submit bug reports constantly, and we make sure to squash as many of them as we can. As with any expansion, there are a lot of fixes coming your way. Please continue to submit them to our bug site, your help is invaluable to knocking out some of the pesky issues that appear.

Known Issues

• If beyond the first three tutorial maps, hitting Play Now on the main menu sends you to town.

• Traps are not respawning correctly when using Replay From Wave.

• Temporary fix in for rare instances where upgrading gear to 10/10 would greatly lower it’s stats. For these rare instances, instead of greatly lowering, stats are now slightly raised. This is a catch for if this error occurs, not a change applied to all gear.

• Tower-like abilities (Talisman of Empowerment, Abyss Stone, etc.) are running into a few issues that we’re aware of.

• The Champion Score filter is currently not functioning correctly.

• Player 2 in splitscreen is able to be kicked from party when in a party with a leader that isn't part of the splitscreen

• When the first player in split screen mode spends or receives currency the pop up appears on both screens.

• When placing defenses on the bottom floor of The Jacked Sparrow there is a chance to have it go to the top layer

Social Defenders

There’s a lot of people playing Dungeon Defenders II, and a lot of them gather on our social hubs. When it comes to finding other players, figuring out how to conquer a specific challenge, or just wanting to get to know others in the community, or getting the latest DD2 news, you can’t go wrong with our social platforms:

• Twitter

• Facebook

• Discord

• Twitch

The entire team has had a blast making this content, we cannot wait for all of you to get your hands on this expansion. Get to setting sail!

For Etheria!

The Dungeon Defenders II Team

Ahoy Defenders!

We’re only day(s) away from finally pulling up the anchor and setting sail for adventure in Dungeon Defenders II:  The Isle of Dread Expansion! This is a preview of all the things that were shown in the past months, but not everything coming. Everyone has been working to make sure this expansion is ready for the high seas, landlubbers beware! If you’ve been keeping up with our Dev Logs and Dev Streams you’ll recognize a lot of what’s coming. Let’s dive in!

New Maps

We’re excited to be introducing not one, but two maps with this expansion. These maps are available as their own Adventure set, can be selected when playing Expeditions, can come up as you progress through Onslaught, and one is even a Chaos VII Incursion!

The Jacked Sparrow

The first map is set on The Jacked Sparrow, previous known as The Sparrow before the heroes of Etheria hijacked it in order to reach their destination. As you traverse this map, enemies attack from above and below the levels of the ship, requiring all hands on deck to keep the masts safe from destruction! There’s a ton of fun to be had on this map, as you use cannons to blast your enemies away, catapults to fly across the map, and vantage points to take out enemies when they least expect it!

Plunderer’s Paradise

After braving the rough seas, the heroes land on an island besieged by an army of the Old One trying to break into the island’s mountain. Among these enemies are new foes that have not been seen before, helping beef up the horde that is coming your way! Protect the island to prevent havoc breaking loose, but also explore to find secrets hidden throughout the map. Conquer the Incursion version of this map by striking down Captain Dreadbones to unlock a new Barbarian weapon to add to your arsenal!

New Enemies

There’s a slew of enemies that are now donning pirate attire, an absolute necessity when conquering on such vicious tides! Here are a few of the enemies you encounter on your journey:

These goblins upped their pirate fashion game, but they also recruited additional allies to take down heroes from afar. With the aid of Captain Dreadbones, some ogres can now carry and utilize Cannon Ogres are now a fearsome terror that can ruin your defenses!

War Table

The War Table is improved with this expansion, adding some life to the world of Etheria, and also providing some quality of life changes as requested by our glorious community! The World Map shows all the different places Defenders may explore through different game modes. Each game mode contains different formats for ease of use, but also provide an “Advanced” session browser in each. You can now see all open available games to you easily, with a variety of filter options that give the choice of seeing every session, or a specific map!

Social Improvements

Interacting with players is getting some good attention with this expansion, with much more coming even after the expansion! Player Lists are now easier to navigate, selecting another Defender and choosing to inspect their shop or invite them to party among other options provided via a drop down menu. Receiving invites is also streamlined to not take over your screen and there’s a timer to avoid invite spam. Parties received attention as well, for instance, the leader is now consistent and gives control to choose when and where your crew go!

Onslaught

There’s a ton of changes coming to Onslaught, a lot of them due to the great feedback a lot of you provided since its appearance in Etheria! The biggest change is the progression in Onslaught, changing from three maps played per floor, to one map per floor. With this change comes an increased scaling in difficulty to make progression about difficulty instead of time. There are also more ways to earn Prestigious Weapons, more maps to play as you progress, more enemies you encounter, new schedules of enemies, and a new wave during Lost Temple known as the Omega Wave!

Ancient Power

Onslaught and Ancient Power go together like pirates and the ocean, so of course we added more to this system! Ancient Powers themselves are now more powerful than before and require less of a point investment to utilize their maximum potential. There are also FOUR new powers to help bolster your battle against the horde of enemies coming your way. We also implemented a scaling minimum starting floor system to make getting into gaining early Ancient Powers easy, with a consistent difficulty as you acquire more and more (also, your pets are no longer reset when you gain Ancient Power)!

New Items

There’s one thing that pirates are always on the hunt for — TREASURE! There are new weapons you can acquire for every hero, either through Professor Proteus, or through completing The Jacked Sparrow and Plunderer’s Paradise. Depending on where you acquire these weapons, you are also met with new pirate themed Mods that pack quite a punch that can be transferred to any weapon; or unique death animations that can sink your enemies (literally, one can turn them into a boat and sink into the ground)!

New Features

What good expansion doesn’t contain some new features? We’re introducing two new features to help Defenders as they keep Dragonfall and Etheria safe. The first is a replay from wave system available in Adventures, Expeditions, Onslaught, AND Mastery! This system restores your defenses, shows which ones may have underperformed or were destroyed, and gives you another go at taking down your enemies.

The next is a Primary Stat reroll system that we’re experimenting with. This system allows you to acquire reroll materials from completing the Jacked Sparrow and Plunderer’s Paradise, and reroll your primary stat into a potentially higher number. This change is not enforced if the roll is lower, you are always given a choice to accept it or decline! We’re looking for feedback on this system and if you all enjoy it, we’ll investigate greatly expanding it.

Balance Changes

Protean Shift brought a lot of new ways to play and a ton of power to Defenders, which we really love! As a result, there are a slew of things that are either not as strong as we’d like or too strong, removing any challenge while playing. We’ve discussed a couple of these, but there is more coming!

Bug Fixes

A lot of you submit bug reports constantly, and we make sure to squash as many of them as we can. As with any expansion, there are a lot of fixes coming your way. Please continue to submit them to our bug site, your help is invaluable to knocking out some of the pesky issues that appear.

Social Defenders

There’s a lot of people playing Dungeon Defenders II, and a lot of them gather on our social hubs. When it comes to finding other players, figuring out how to conquer a specific challenge, or just wanting to get to know others in the community, or getting the latest DD2 news, you can’t go wrong with our social platforms:

• Twitter

• Facebook

• Discord

• Twitch

The entire team has had a blast making this content, we cannot wait for all of you to get your hands on this expansion. Stay tuned for more info soon!

For Etheria!

The Dungeon Defenders II Team

Greetings Defenders,

We're excited to finally be announcing the release date for Dungeon Defenders II:  The Isle of Dread Expansion! Originally it was going to be announced during our Dev Stream, but when have pirates ever followed the rules?! The release dates are:

• Sept 25th on PlayStation 4
• Sept 26th on Steam and Xbox One

Dev Stream 85 is happening tomorrow, September 21st at 3PM EDT, is going to show off more of what's to come. We cannot wait for you to get this update into your hands and hooks!

For Etheria!

The Dungeon Defenders II Team

Greetings Defenders,

This be the second Dev Log for the next update in Dungeon Defenders II! As we promised ye scallywags last Dev Log we’ll be talking about even more treasure and booty coming. Ancient Power changes, War Table improvements, and a lot more await ye in Dev Log 101!

Alec “Lawlta” Saare — Community Captain

This Dev Log is still just the tip of the iceberg for what’s coming. You all have been anticipating Ancient Power changes, and we’ve got them! A lot of feedback that we’ve received on this system (just like with Onslaught) was used to help mold it into what’s coming your way. On top of this, the War Table changes (session browser anyone?), and maps are a lot to cover. This update is ARRRRRRRRRbsolutely insane, to quote a certain Jose, “hype levels are through the roof, unsustainable!”

I’ll let others dive into what’s coming. I will say that we are going to have our FIRST Dev Stream for this update next week, September 14th, at 3 PM EDT. We’ll be showing off some stuff from Dev Log 99, 100, and 101! Who knows, we might even be giving away one of our new flairs during our Dev Streams. ;)

Jose “Scaredycat Scarecrow” Villegas — Technical Designer

Hey-o everyone!

What’s promised is owed, so here are some of the new changes to Ancient Power available to you in our next update. We have heard your feedback, and hopefully these changes will make you more excited to engage with this system.

Ancient Powers
Here's a list of the changes regarding Ancient Powers specifically:

1. 1. We have doubled the strength of each Ancient Power. To note, since you can add each AP level together when in a party to make the buffs stronger, now we will only add up to 10 levels per Power. This means you get twice the strength when playing solo, and up to the same amount when playing with others, but this limit is reached much easier now.

   2. We have introduced four new Powers: Defense Crit Damage, Defense Crit Chance, Hero Crit Chance, and Hero Crit Damage.

   3. The amount of power you gain per level has been redistributed so the first levels of each power will award you with a greater gain than the last ones.

Greetings Defenders,

Ahoy there, DefendARRRRs! In this Dev Log, we be talking about some changes to Onslaught and Party Controls that ye’ve been requestin, and we’re here to deliver. These changes are meant to improve the game mode, allowing many of you to set sail on adventure without having to sink a ton of time into each play session if ye’re not able to. Also greater control over who’s in ye’r ranks and leadin’ ye’r crew, alongside making it easier to interact between one another. Let’s dive in!

Alec “Lawlta” Saare — Community Overlord

First off, Dev Log 100, wuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut! There’s a lot still to talk about, but being our 100th Dev Log, I thought it would be best that we talk about and confirm changes to a system many of you have requested. Onslaught is getting a round of polish with extra elbow grease to become more accessible for players and also bring some additional difficulty. The party improvements are also something that many of you gave a ton of great feedback on, so these changes should make being in a party not only feel a lot better, but also be easier to get into.

There’s a ton more coming that we cannot wait to share with you! We’ve been hard at work creating new maps for you to defend, new enemies to take on, new weapons to strengthen your arsenal, and so much more. To quote a Jose you may or may not know, it’s “coming sooner than you think”. Unless you think it’s tomorrow and a little bit of time after tomorrow, then that quote doesn’t apply here.

X Marks The Heart,

Lawlta

Mark “Telflon” Telfer — Technical Designer

Ahoy Defenders!

I’m here to talk improvements to the party system and a few things that are to come.  

1. Seamless Invite System - Party invites in the live game are jarring. When you receive one, it stops you dead, it removes all movement control from your character, and the popup covers the majority of your screen. The only way to make the popup go away is to accept or decline the invitation to the party. With the new party system, these gameplay intrusions will be eliminated.  Receiving an invite to a party will no longer stop you dead. Instead, you will receive an unobtrusive notification at the bottom of your screen informing you who invited you to the party with the option to accept or decline the offer. You will fully retain control of movement while this invite is pending, and your view of Etheria will not be occluded.

2. Vicinity Targeting - The way you initiate any social interaction in DD2 is by opening the player list, selecting the name of the person you wish to interact with, and then selecting how you’d like to interact with them. This is a good system if you already know the name of the person you wish to interact with, but it is not the best facilitator of organic interactions with people you serendipitously meet. For instance, let’s say you see someone run by with a sweet sweet costume, and decide that you want to make that person a part of your stylish crew.  You’re standing right next to this player, but you can’t invite them to a party directly; you’ll to figure out their name, open the player list menu, find them, and then send them an invite. To make it easier and more organic to interact with others, we will be introducing vicinity targeting. What does it mean? It means that you can walk right up to someone and interact with them directly. You won’t have to open full-screen menus to invite people a party, kick people from a party, promote them to party leader (more on that), or view their shops.  You will remain fully engrossed in the world of Etheria while you perform these interactions via vicinity targeting; you will retain full degree of movement control.

3. Player List User Experience - If you prefer the classic way of interacting with others then you’re still in luck!  The player list has been refined to give a far smoother experience when interacting with others.

4. A Party Structure That Makes Sense -  As I’m sure you all have noticed, some funkiness can happen with parties in the live game which really upsets expectations.  One of my biggest annoyances with the current system is having the party leader change randomly when you load into a new map.  Frustrating! It's time to bring some order to the party chaos that can happen in the live game, and we plan to do this by implementing the following:

• The person who sends the first invitation to party up becomes the party leader.

• The party leader REMAINS the leader until they either leave the party or they choose to promote someone.

• The party leader will be able to promote other members to their position if they no longer wish to lead.

• All party members can invite someone to join a party, but only the party leader can kick from a party.

• Only the party leader can choose where players matchmake to.

There are more changes coming too.  Stay tuned!

Thinking of you,

Mark

Jose Villegas — Technical Designer

Hey everyone,

We have heard your voice loud and clear, and we are making several improvements to Onslaught. Sit tight and get ready.

1. Floors will have only 1 map each. This was by far the largest concern that you had with the game mode. It took too long to complete a map, and a single failure led to having to play the entire floor again. Worry no longer, in the update a single victory is required to move forward.

2. Moar maps. Currently, the selection of maps in late game Onslaught is quite large, but not complete. With the newest changes we are introducing, all the maps will be available at all points in the Onslaught progression, late and early ;).

3. Faster progression. The difficulty increases were happening only little by little in each floor, which made the process of playing through Onslaught much slower than in Expeditions. Not anymore; now the jumps in difficulty (and rewards) happen much faster, and the number of floors that will take you to Chaos 7 strength have been reduced. This increased in difficulty per floor has also been carried to beyond the Chaos 7 floors, so reaching floor 999 will be an greater challenge than before.

4. More and better Prestigious weapons. Lawlta told me I can’t talk about AP yet, but I will try to spill this small bean here, as it’s related to the Onslaught climb. In addition to receiving a Prestigious Weapon when you trigger Ancient Power, now you will receive one every 10 floors when playing Onslaught (every 20 after floor 100). In addition, all new Prestigious Weapons will come at least at quality 5/10, and will have an increased chance of spawning at higher quality as well. These awards will also reset when you go through Ancient Power, giving you a chance of more weapons.

5. New post C7 difficulty schedules. Starting around the end of the chaos 7 floors, we will now start introducing new schedules of enemies at increased difficulty. To note, these schedules will not contain new enemies, but the same ones you are familiar at an increased difficulty and numbers.

6. Omega Waves. Last stream I promised Omega Waves in Onslaught, and people did not believe my words. Now, I can actually confirm Omega Waves may or may not, in fact, be coming to Onslaught.

You are probably wondering: what’s going to happen with my progression? Well the answer is very simple. When making the transition between the old to the new, we will check what floor you were playing previously, and set you at a floor with the closest difficulty to it under the new system.

For example, if Gobu was playing at Floor 80, now they will be placed around floor 35, since both are comparable in difficulty. This will also be true to the rewards tied to specific floor numbers, like 114, so while the climb to get there will be shortened, the difficulty of those maps will remain consistent.

One final feature that I’m happy to introduce is a new Replay system. Currently, when failing a map you have to start all over again, regardless of game mode or difficulty. Now, if you fail a map the game will allow you to go back to the wave where you failed, and retry from there with the defenses you had already placed in the map.

Having to build the whole map again after failing was something we always wanted to address, and now you can just simply adjust whatever defense cause you to lose and keep moving forward =).

That’s not all! The Replay feature will also be supported by a new Performance Optimization System. When loading the map again after trigger the replay, we will place several indicators on the towers that caused you to lose. All towers destroyed will have a handy Danger Indicator (!) to show that they fell. For towers that didn’t do much in combat, a Warning Indicator (?)will get your attention to reevaluate their placement, or equip better relics on them.

That’s it for now. Next time I will tell you more details about the changes to AP, which there are many. But let me tell you about these new Pirate MODS, they are great, they are awesome, and they are also great. The first one, currently named Set Sail, which turns you into a █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ , and then you can █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ , which allows you to █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ . The second one █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ .

Oof… I'm excited for these new Mods. Be sure to tune in for next Friday’s stream, where I may or may not answer your questions in the most ambiguous fashion possible.

Love you,

Jose

Ice "Ice" Ice, Ice Lead

Hi.

Cordially Yours,

Ice

Dani Moore, Remote QA Lead

We're also looking to expand our tester pool once again. Our testers get the chance to try out our still-in development work, in exchange for some cool stuff as a thanks. They help us with balance, feedback and bugs and their contributions to our releases are very valuable.

We have two teams, RQA - our daily bug hunters (for folks with lots of free time each day), and RPG - our larger team for balance and feedback (for folks with limited free time).

If you are interested, drop me an email at dani.moore trendyent (dot) com and ask. I'm happy to provide more information on both teams to see what best suits. A big thanks to everyone involved in the Update and the heaps of work and sweat that went into it all.

What’s Next?

Nothing, that’s it, no more news. No need to keep reading. Except wait, there’s a ton more coming that we’ll be talking about in our next Dev Log! This update is crazy big, bringing in some salty content for you landlubbers. Here’s what you can expect to see:

• AP improvements

• New Maps

• New Enemies

• New Weapons

• New Mods

• New Incursion

• New Flair

• More New Stuff!

We’re always listening to your feedback, and a lot of you do a great job of making sure it’s constructive and provide plenty of great ideas. Keep it up, we love reading it and it helps us mold Dungeon Defenders II into a better game.

To get reliable updates on what’s to come, be sure to check out our social platforms for the latest juiciest beans to be spilled:

• Twitter

• Facebook

• Discord

• Twitch

The entire team has had a blast making this content, we cannot wait for all of you to get your hands on our next update. Stay tuned for more info soon! 

For Etheria!

The Dungeon Defenders II Team

Greetings Defenders,

The next large update for Dungeon Defenders II is right around the corner. We’ve been hard at work trying to make this update something that everyone will enjoy. One thing players have requested for a while are new maps, new enemies, and new visuals in general. This Dev Log is focused on giving you all a sneak peek into what our team has been working on. Get your sea legs ready, let’s set sail!

Alec “Lawlta” Saare, Community Manager

Our next update has so much to show off, so we’re going to dive into some of the visuals you’ll be seeing. The artists have really outdone themselves on both the models, the maps, and the animations involved in both. We’ve been teasing some of our maps recently, and want to shake it up, showing off one of our new pets, only a couple (there’s so many more) of our enemies, and… well, keep reading, you’ll see. 

There is a lot more coming, both visually and technically. It’s been an ARRRRduous amount of work, with the whole team really grinding away. We can’t wait to share the fruits of our labor, both for your enjoyment, and to prevent scurvy. Pirates.

Colin “Elandrian” Fisher, Associate Producer

August has been quite a month.  Some of my favorite go-to games are releasing titles this month, so it’s been inspiring to see what advancements have been made in the industry.

Speaking of advancements, there’s quite a few changes coming to Dungeon Defenders II soon. We’re processing a lot of feedback from all types of players recently to make changes to many of our end-game systems and flows. There’s a number of changes coming to Onslaught and Ancient Power, and our goal is to make them both feel easier to progress in and more rewarding.

There’s a bit of new map content coming soon too, we’ll probably be talking more about that in the very near future, but for now I’ll just leave you with hints.

Ship just got real.

John Muscarella, Lead Animator

You know that feeling when you have, like, A TON of cool animations to show off, but the marketing department wants to “control the messaging and reveals”...?

No? Just me? Oh ok…

Well we do have a ton of cool stuff that we can’t show you all just yet. The last several weeks have been crazy, and I’m stupid excited for you to see.  That’s right! I’m so excited it’s made me stupid…

In the meantime, here’s a few things to tide you over. Or, at least tide ME over…

We made him into a pet! Now you can blast enemies with the power of the Tinkerer’s greatest technological achievement; a barely competent bumbling mini-bot…

Yaaarrrr! We’ve reskinned a whole bunch of our devious little friends. Blast and pummel them to the tune of a catchy pirate chantey!

Like I said, there is sooo much more to come. Stay tuned, Defenders.

Keith “Keithimator” Walheim, Animator

Hey all, it’s been awhile since we last spoke. I’ve got some awesome animations that I’ve been working on, but we’re not able to show all of them yet. I’ve been able to sneak in some new ones, hopefully Lawlta doesn’t see this (Lawlta spoiler:  I did). Here’s what I’ve been up to:

Professor Proteus’s new assistant is quite a show off. Most of all, he enjoys showing off his (finger) guns and will have a lot of fun following you around to help you out in game. It was a ton of fun putting personality into this little guy, and I hope that he really shines on the battlefields of Etheria.

“One fish, two fish, red fish, gobu fish.”

I got to work on some super floppy fish among many other wonderful things this update that I can’t wait to see these in the live game. This animation in particular is something you’ll use to put your enemies in their place. I really cannot wait for you all to see what’s coming!

Dan Driussi, 3D Character Artist

. . .- - - . . .To get myself into the pirate mindset I went and got myself shipwrecked while under the influence of scurvy. I currently only have the company of a chatty parrot who thinks he is funny and the ever present rum cache. I created a working computer from coconuts, bamboo, and spare life jackets and was able to make some cool stuff for the next patch. One of my favorites is the island war boar, just shove an apple into its mouth and you have mobile kalua pork just walking towards your defenses ready to be eaten! Just remember to use fire to seal in that BBQ war boar flavor! If you receive this message please send help, the parrot only knows dad jokes and puns . . .- - - . . .!

What’s Coming?

There’s so much more coming, and we’ll be having additional Dev Logs in the coming weeks leading to the update itself. Here’s an idea of what you can expect to see:

• Onslaught floors are always one map floors, and how that changes progression.

• Extra rewards as you climb through Onslaught.

• Improvements and changes to Ancient Power.

• Increased party control and functionality.

• NEW ENEMIES, WEAPONS, MAPS, AND MORE!

To get reliable updates on what’s to come, be sure to check out our social platforms for the latest juiciest beans to be spilled:

• Twitter

• Facebook

• Discord

• Twitch

The entire team has had a blast making this content, we cannot wait for all of you to get your hands on our next update. Stay tuned for more info soon!

For Etheria,

The Dungeon Defenders II Team

Greetings Defenders,

Protean Shift Patch 3.2 is now live on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One! We’ve been hard at work ever since Professor Proteus made his glorious arrival in Etheria! The feedback from all of you has been tremendous and we greatly appreciate it. We’re addressing requests that players have wanted both for a while now and recently with the Protean Shift expansion. Let’s get into it!

Multiplayer Bonuses

Defenders love playing together, there is strength in numbers after all. Previously, when playing in multiplayer settings, enemies became stronger, but did not offer any additional rewards for the harder challenge. This is a pain point that you as a community have voiced to us for a long time, and with gear in a much better spot, we now have a way to reward the increased difficulty!

Previously, when playing in multiplayer sessions, enemies gained additional health without offering any increased rewards. Now when teaming up with fellow Defenders, you now gain additional Gear from Victory Chests. You may be asking, “how much?”, and the answer is A LOT. Here’s the breakdown you can expect to see when playing with multiple Defenders:

• One Defender:  Remains the same.

• Two Defenders:  +125% additional Gear drops!

• Three Defenders:  +275% additional Gear drops!

• Four Defenders:  +425% additional Gear drops!

When playing solo, the Escape/Options menu shows:

When in a group of two:

This pattern increases the more Defenders in your session. To have our bases covered, Gear is specifically armor, weapons, and relics. These additional pieces of gear offer players multiple opportunities on finding perfect stats and Mods while taking on stronger enemies. This means you have more gear to use or sell, boosting Defender strength and our player economy substantially. As a result, we’ve slightly tweaked sell prices to vendors. With the increased loot drops, you’ll be making on average the same amount of gold when selling to vendors. However, we maintained previous minimum Player Shop sell value of items to offset this. You’re now provided more opportunities to sell more gear between one another to obtain greater mountains of wealth than ever before!

We were able to get these changes out now to provide a feature the community highly requested thanks to the feedback we received via a survey many of you participated in. One concern that several Defenders brought up was in regard to party control and functionality. These will be coming in our next Update among a slew of new features not too far from now. We’ll touch on some additional changes later on in these notes!

Material Vault

In Protean Shift, we introduced a good chunk of crafting materials for Defenders to have more control over their gear. There’s a ton of new materials and one bit of feedback that we’ve received quite often, is about storing these spoils of combat.

Enter the Material Vault! It’s a new vault that will be available to players that want to be able to store extra crafting materials. This special vault allows you to hold 999 of every crafting material and access to materials saved in your Material Vault regardless of where you are. Want to pump up the strength of your gear, or move some Mods around, but you put the materials in your Material Vault? You can now do it on the fly without pulling the materials out! When doing anything that requires crafting materials, Inventory Materials are used first before using crafting materials in your Materials Vault.

What’s Coming?

In our last Check-In post, we outlined some short, medium, and long term goals. In our next update, here’s a sneak peek as to what you can expect to see:

• Onslaught floors are always one map floors.

• Extra rewards as you climb through Onslaught.

• Improvements to Ancient Power

• Increased party control and functionality

• And…. A NEW BOSS, WEAPONS, MAPS, AND MUCH MUCH MORE!

As development continues, we’re going to be providing opportunities to test this content and earn “Tester Only” rewards, such as Betsy White, a true friend and confidant to any Defender.

Bug Fixes

• Improved enemy spawn and pathing logic so enemies getting stuck in spawns will now have a better chance of finding their way out of the spawner.

• Fixed additional cases where Berserker Orcs would get around blockades and walls.

• Fixed an issue in Player Shops that caused a visual duplication while moving items.

• Fixed an issue with Abyss Stone and Abyss Fountain giving an incorrect error message when there’s not enough mana available to use them.

• Updated Shard Dust description to explain how it’s acquired.

• Fixed a bug where the Jackpot shard increases gold reward upon wave completion.

• Fixed an issue with comparison tooltips remaining when closing the Vault UI.

• Fixed the text size of “LIST IT!” on 4k resolutions.

• Fixed an issue with Gilded Colossal Fissure Shards receiving a negative increase.

• Fixed an issue with Campaign Boot tinkering requiring an Iron Hammer.

• Fixed an issue with Chaos V Boot upgrades requiring weapon crafting materials.

• Fixed an issue with buy back items going to the wrong location in the inventory.

• Fixed an issue where items claimed at the Scavenger while the inventory is full would look like it had been claimed but was still in the Scavenger.

Remember, if you run into any bugs, please let us know at our bug site. Also, check us out on social media for additional updates and game discussions with our awesome community:

• Twitter

• Facebook

• Discord

• Twitch

We have much more on the way and will be spilling some beans in the coming weeks!

For Etheria,

The Dungeon Defenders II Team

Greetings Defenders,

We’ve been hard at work ever since Professor Proteus made his glorious arrival in Etheria! The feedback from all of you has been tremendous and we greatly appreciate it. There’s more coming in our next update, but there’s also more coming next week with Protean Shift Patch 3.2!

There are some nice quality of life features that are coming with next week’s patch, let’s get into it!

Multiplayer Incentives

Defenders love playing together, there is strength in numbers after all. When playing together, enemies get stronger, but there’s not any increased reward for that increased risk. Well not anymore! We have been testing and looking for ways to reward players without trivializing content. With this patch, when grouping with other Defenders, you will receive additional gear from the victory chest. This scales per player added to the session, meaning the more Defenders you play with, the more gear you receive. The more gear you receive, the higher the chance at getting perfect mods!

Material Vault

In Protean Shift, we introduced a good chunk of crafting materials for Defenders to have more control over their gear. There’s a ton of new materials and one bit of feedback that we’ve received quite often, is about storing these spoils of combat.

Enter the Material Vault! The Material Vault is a new vault that will be available to players that want to be able to store extra crafting materials. This special vault allows you to hold 999 of every crafting material, and you will be able to automatically use them when interacting with items. Want to pump up the strength of your gear, but you put the materials in your Material Vault? You can now do it on the fly!

On the Horizon

There’s a giant “wave” of stuff coming to Etheria in our next update that is sure to knock your socks off. Related to multiplayer incentives, we’re going to be providing Defenders greater control over the parties they start, something many of you have asked for is on it’s way. We can’t get into a ton of the stuff coming just yet, but give Elandrian’s Check-In a visit to get an idea for what’s coming!

Bug Fixes and Optimizations

As always, we’re going to be squishing a lot of bugs, increasing performance, and increasing stability. Remember, if you run into any bugs, please let us know at our bug site. Also, check us out on social media for additional updates and game discussions with our awesome community:

• Twitter

• Facebook

• Discord

• Twitch

We have much more on the way and will be spilling some beans in the coming weeks!

For Etheria,

The Dungeon Defenders II Team

Greetings Defenders,

Patch 3.1 is now live! This is our first Protean Shift patch that brings some nice quality of life changes, balance changes, and a slew of bug fixes. Let’s get into it!

MODS

• Shocking Revelation Mod

  • Stun duration reduced from 5 seconds to 1 second.

    • Stun was lasting way longer than the intended power of this Mod.

Quality of Life

• Buyback has been added! It is shown as the last tab in your inventory and items are removed from buyback if you leave the session you're in.
  

• Added the option to not show a warning when selling a Mythical quality of better item.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where Ancient lifesteal was not healing players.

• Fixed an issue where Tenacity was not reducing by the amount listed.

• Fixed an issue where listing an item did not warn the player they will need to pay a tax to remove the item.

• Fixed it so all anti-orc Mods now apply to Berserker Orcs.

• Fixed an issue with the Quake Shard and Shielding Guard Shard showing as Campaign Shards and awarding Campaign Dust.

• Fixed an issue where the Withering Bubble Shard was not dropping in Campaign.

• Fixed an issue so the Initiate can use the Drain Aura Mod now.

• Fixed an issue where Shatterquake was showing fire VFX.

• Fixed a typo on the Lifeburn Armor Mod.

• Fixed an issue where Seismic Flame was lasting longer than intended and updated its description for clarity.

• Updated the Buried bastille description.

• Fixed an issue where the Seismic Launch Chip allowed the Squire to complete the Smack Up Monk challenge.

• Adjusted the Terrablade weapons to have full descriptions.

• Fixed an issue where Hard Mode Campaign items could not transfer Mods to Normal Mode Campaign items.

• Fixed an issue where some pets had way higher Crit Damage than intended.

• Fixed an issue that occasionally when gaining Ancient Power players would not receive an Ancient Power weapon.

• Fixed an issue with item stacking in inventories and not being able to re-stack them.

• Fixed an issue with Chaos V glove Tinkering using a shiny chest material instead of a shiny glove material.

• Fixed an issue with Private Tavern and Town vendors not updating their stock correctly.

• Fixed an issue where the Lash Out Ascension talent was not functioning for the poison damage.

• Fixed an issue with consecutive win bonuses applying to special Play Shop purchases.

• Fixed an issue with Flame Aura hitting players when the owner leaves town.

• Fixed an issue with X-splosion Mods killing players.

• Fixed an issue with Drain Aura damaging players.

• Fixed an issue with Incursion Weapon Mods being replacable via Tinkering.

• Fixed an issue with Lunar Portal and Ghastly Halberds spawning more than intended.

• Fixed an issue with Onslaught and Ancient Power challenges not unlocking correctly.

• Fixed an issue where Autumeow’s tail would change colors incorrectly.

• Fixed an issue with tooltips overlapping in splitscreen shops.

• Updated the attack speed icon on Axes.

• Removed the Death Override icon on the Protean Shield.

• Items with zero Mods are hidden in the Reforging Quick Picker window when selecting an item to pull Mods from.

• Fixed an issue when creating a hero that offered “select hero” instead of the option to “back”.

• Fixed an issue with dropped equipment showing gamepad context that doesn’t work on PC.

• Fixed an issue with the cursor going behind Mods on Wayfarer weapons.

• Changed the description of Vial of Dragon Sweat to not say “Open to Unlock”.

• Fixed an issue with the Abyss Lord’s Skeletal Ramsters and Skeletal Archer towers not showing their base when an elemental Mod was equipped.

• Fixed an issue where oil traps on Ramparts slowed Berserker Orcs.

• Fixed an issue with overlapping UIs when splitscreen players join while a fullscreen window is open.

• Fixed an issue with protective Downgrade Servo not updating its stats when inspecting it after it gets downgraded.

• Fixed an issue where Feed x10 was consuming 10 pieces of food even if 10 was not needed to cap the pet.

• Fixed an issue with Flamethrower tower VFX not getting bigger with Defense Range.

• Fixed an issue with “Create Hero” appearing unlocked if you tried to purchase a hero and did not have enough currency.

• Fixed an issue with tower abilities not stopping when the tower is stunned.

• Fixed an issue with Defender Packs where rerolling would leave the previous contents on the ground.

• Fixed an issue with The Defender of Etheria achievements not unlocking on Xbox.

• Fixed an issue where the inventory would lose navigation input on controllers.

• Fixed an issue with the Quake Shard’s VFX appearing in the middle of players instead of at their feet.

• Fixed an issue with Automation Shard not working on Snaking Sands, Slime Pits, Geyser Traps, and Angry Nimbus towers.

• Fixed an issue with the falling leaf VFX on Forest Biome not triggering correctly.

• Changed two shards to now be named “Betsy’s Zapper” and “Betsy’s Beam” to better fit the UI.

• Implemented a sound for un-equipping gear.

• Implemented a sound for equipping shards via Right Mouse Button.

• Fixed an issue with placing Mods into the third slot of a Legendary/Epic that was advanced, that caused them to not function properly.

• Adjusted Abyss Stones hit SFX location to emit from the correct position.

• Fixed an issue with the Abyss Lord’s book landing correctly when he dies.

• Updated the bag icons with Blue Gem Icons.

• Fixed an issue connecting to an event server that could result in a crash.

• Fixed the VFX for EV2 canisters.

Remember, if you run into any bugs, please let us know at our bug site. Also, check us out on social media for additional updates and game discussions with our awesome community:

• Twitter

• Facebook

• Discord

• Twitch

We have much more on the way and will be spilling some beans in the coming weeks!

For Etheria,

The Dungeon Defenders II Team

A Protean Check-In With Elandrian

Defenders Assemble! Sound the horns of Dragonfall! I come bearing beans!

Well, I have some beans, but I also wanted to talk about the recent launch of Protean Shift. It’s been a busy past two weeks for us here at Trendy and it’s great to finally get the expansion into everyone's hands. We’ve been scouring the forums and our various social platforms for comments and feedback, and it’s tremendously valuable for helping us shape what’s coming soon in upcoming patches. I also want to give you guys a glimpse at the future of the game as well, so read everything for all the juicy details.

In response to feedback (and just our planning in general), we have a bundle of changes, new content, and bug fixes coming soon. I’m not going to give any real time-frames… our goal is to get new changes and content out as quick as possible for everyone, but we’re a tiny team and we’re working as fast as we can! Here’s a quick list of some of our targets:

Short Term

• Bug Fixes (duh.)

• Buyback Functionality

  • This is currently in testing/iteration and we want to get it out soon. We really want to make sure there’s a way to get back items you’ve sold by accident. It will most likely just save some of the items you’ve been selling until you leave the Town or Tavern.

• Better Sorting/Filtering of the Inventory

  • One thing we want to improve is your ability to find your good items in an easier way. This will take a little more work, but we’re going to try to give you better sorting of item types, as well as possible sorting by your strong MOD rolls… or should I say “those big 5/5 Qualibeans.”

  • This also might include some changes to help find Shards and manage them better, but that might require additional time as well.

• Materials Vault Tabs?

  • This is something we’re investigating too.  We saw some players talking about this so we’re looking at making a section of the vault be able to support bigger stacks of materials and connect to all the places you want to spend them. We’re aiming for this to be a “short term” add… but it might end up taking a little longer.

Medium Term

• Onslaught Changes

  • I’m not going to go into TOO many details, as it’s still being discussed among the Design team… but I will say we have some goals for these changes.  

  • We want to make it easier for players to play and progress together.

  • We want to make the floors more significant to progress between.

  • We want to make it easier to make meaningful progression and less punishing.  (Aka. Three map floors might go the way of Skill Spheres.)

• Ancient Power Changes

  • These are going to be some changes to make it fit more in line with the Onslaught changes.

  • We’re also looking at making the resets more forgiving as you gain Ancient Power too. Again, not going to go into specifics as this is still an active discussion… but we ARE reading/discussing all the various opinions from the community and our testing teams.

Longer Term (But maybe shorter than you expect?)

• Better party functionality.

  • We’re trying to add more social functionality here… Things like better party leader knowledge in matchmaking, inviting/kicking from parties, a friends list?  There’s a lot on the schedule to add here, we’re going to get to as much as possible.

• Increased Multiplayer Incentive

  • We want people to be enjoying Dungeon Defenders together, but we know there’s not a lot of reasons to do so at the moment. We’re aiming at changing this, while still keeping solo-play viable.

• Better Matchmaking.

  • This is another laundry list of changes, but we want it to be easier for people to play together and stay together.  We also want to make the flow to get into gameplay much easier and with less interruptions and disconnects.

• Guilds

  • Secrets...

Now all these updates and changes are well and good, but we’ve also seen a certain desire from one or two community members. It’s been spoken of only occasionally… and by so few that we weren’t sure if it was important or not to everyone...

/endsarcasm

Our heroes will be receiving some calls to action to various regions of Etheria very soon. The first region our heroes will be heading to will be a somewhat familiar location. The distress call will come from a certain coastal region...

Just for some extra beanage at the end here:  There will be a new region to go to, new things to get, and possibly some new threats to face…

We appreciate all our players sticking with us as we continue to evolve and release our vision for Year Two of Dungeon Defenders II. We couldn’t have done any of this without all of your help.  

Thank you from all of us here at Trendy Entertainment.

Sincerely,

Colin “Elandrian” Fisher



Defenders, it’s finally time.  Protean Shift is launching and we could not have done it without you.

We set out with some lofty goals, but with your help we were able to make some significant changes to Dungeon Defenders II. We wanted to give you greater attachment to your items, but also more options to share those items with your friends. We wanted to give you map choice while progressing through Trials, but also give you more ways to progress your gear while advancing through the tiers. We also wanted to give you some better options with your existing items so we added Shard Dusting and Gilding.  We also hear your concern about Gilding and we’ll keep an eye on it for iteration.

We’re constantly tweaking and improving our game that we share with all of you, and we hope you will enjoy our enhanced direction for year two of this wonderful game.

From everyone here at Trendy Entertainment, thank you for supporting Dungeon Defenders II and helping us continue to move the game forward.  We’re a small team in Gainesville, Florida and we appreciate every bit of excitement and support that you give us.

We hope you enjoy this “Shift” in our game, and we can’t wait to focus on what we’re working on next.

We know you want more maps, Onslaught changes and Ancient Power enhancements.

We’re on it.

Greetings Defenders,

It’s finally here, Dungeon Defenders II:  Protean Shift is live on all platforms! Professor Proteus is now in Dragonfall and started a technomagical evolution throughout all of Etheria. Now the Defenders of Etheria can obtain new ways to fight off enemy forces, choose where they fight, and what equipment they want to use in order to ensure victory!

The Protean Shift brings a slew of new features that Defenders can use to empower their defenses and Heroes, as well as choose the way they want to play. M.O.D.S. allow for custom builds to take on any foe that comes your way, Expeditions give Defenders the choice to play any map they want in any Chaos difficulty, and Player Shops let you buy and sell items with other Defenders. There’s so much more, let’s get into it!

Statistic Changes

This is our most foundational change in the expansion. Now your gear’s stats looks much different than before. The first change is making the damage from critical strikes scale off of the base damage for both your heroes and your towers. Critical Damage is no longer a secondary stat, but is a percentage that starts at +30% damage and increases through Gear, Shards, and Ascension Levels. Because of the change to Critical Damage, the Critical Chance cap of 33% has been removed — the sky’s the limit now!

One of the goals of the Critical Damage change is to make damage more reliable. Critical Damage builds are still fun, but other playstyles should feel just as rewarding. Every hero and tower’s base damage has been increased to account for the changes made, making damage more consistent and allowing for even more unique builds!

Since we changed how Critical Damage is understood, we decided to tackle another confusing area for players:  Defense Speed. The stat is now a percentage instead of being numbers that go into the thousands with no clear meaning. This change allows players to understand exactly how much faster their defenses attack rate will increase.

Gear

Defenders now possess the opportunity to build however they want to fight off their foes. Gear is meant to feel more unique, instead of receiving a legendary that gives every stat. Your gear now provides choice and lets you decide how you play!

Gear now has a primary and secondary stat. Your heroes maintain similar power as they had before the expansion, both offensively and defensively. This balance is a result of increasing base stats and the scaling of those stats. Here’s what you now find on gear:

• Helmets, Gloves, Chest, and Boots

  • Primary Stat:  Armor

  • Secondary:  Health, Ability Power, or Hero Damage

• Weapons

  • Primary Stat:  Hero Damage

  • Secondary Stat:  Armor, Health, or Ability Power

• Medallions, Marks, and Orbs (if you have them still, you pack rat!)

  • Primary Stat:  Defense Power

  • Secondary Stat:  Defense Health

• Totems

  • Primary Stat:  Defense Health

  • Secondary Stat:  Defense Power

These changes allow players to customize their builds even more than before. If you want to maintain a similar amount of balance with damage output and health on your heroes, you can do that easily. However, if you want to make an unstoppable tank that requires an army to take down, or want a glass cannon that can obliterate every enemy on the map, that option is now yours as well!

For relics, we wanted to make sure that defenses were reliable and also strong. These changes now make it so building auras and traps early do not feel punishing because they now have guaranteed Defense Health to keep them up much longer. Having Defense Power as a guaranteed stat also make damage more consistent and less frustrating when you don’t critically strike. This is just the baseline, with M.O.D.S., Shards, and Ascension Levels, you can radically change the type of damage you deal. All these changes are a shift to make Defenders stronger through the power of customization!

M.O.D.S.

Professor Proteus sent a shockwave out across all of Etheria upon his arrival, using his inventive intellect to alter every piece of gear! Magically Offense/Defensive Subroutines (M.O.D.S., or even simpler — Mods) provide the pathway of making gear your own! Mods come in a variety of power! Some are pure stat increases, from the stats you get on gear, to newly changed stats such as Critical Damage, Critical Chance, and Defense Speed. Some add elemental damage to physical damage towers, and have unique VFX depending on the element! Others offer the chance to change how your Defenses overcome specific Chaos enemies. Want to:

• Have towers immune to Hex Thrower curses? You can do that.

• Pierce a Shield Geodes shield? You can do that.

• Make your Traps, Auras, and Nodes, immune to Cyborks?! You can do that!

Mods bring a lot of additional power and customization that many Defenders have wanted for a long time. There are over 100 Mods to discover, with more coming down the road.

Now that you have an idea of what Mods do, it’s time to discuss specifically where you have them. Mods are an extension of your gear, and are a brand new addition to various tiers of your equipment. They are an additional property to gear similar to Shards, and unlock in a similar fashion:

• Uncommon

  • One open Mod slot

• Epic:

  • One rolled Mod slot

  • One open Mod slot (two mod slots total)

• Mythical

  • One rolled Mod slot

  • Two open Mod slots (three mod slots total)

• Legendary:

  • Two rolled Mod slots

  • One open Mod slot (three Mod slots total)

These changes make Legendary items contain two stats, three Mod slots, and three Shard Slots, and increased stats, making them truly legendary. These Mods are just the first of what’s to come. In future updates, we are releasing additional Mods. Have an idea for more, let us know by posting on our forums, we’d love to hear your ideas!

Also, as a side note, Mods make things easier in Mastery, though they are scaled down to the appropriate Chaos tier.

Tinkering

Professor Proteus, in his astounding intellect, wanted to really provide customization and options to not only the power of gear, but also to keeping the gear and/or Mods that you’ve obtained. That’s where Tinkering enters into the mix! Tinkering is the ability to move up to three Mods at a time from one piece of gear to another piece of gear at the same time. In order to take advantage of Tinkering, certain criteria needs to be met:

• Must be the same type of gear.

  • Moving Mods from a weapon, to another weapon.

• Gear that the Mods are being moved to must be the same Chaos tier or higher than where the Mod is coming from.

  • Moving a Mod from a Chaos III weapon has to be moved into a Chaos III or higher weapon.

• Cannot add Mods of the same type, but can override Mods of the same type.

  • A +6% Anti-Goblin Servo on one relic, can override a +5% Anti-Goblin Servo on another tier-equivalent relic.

• Have the materials and currency to complete the transfer of Mods.

  • Materials are now found in Expeditions and Onslaught. They can also be bought and sold in Player Shops.

Tinkering allows you to continuously mix and match your Mods to create the build you enjoy the most. The amount of customization that Tinkering offers truly lets you play how you want. It doesn’t stop there. When combined with our new Upgrading and Evolving features, even more choices await you, even potentially choosing the look of the weapon you want!

Upgrading

Upgrading gear is something that’s been a standard feature of Dungeon Defenders II to get additional power out of the gear you find. But this is Protean Shift, so we’re UPRADING THE UPGRADE! Most gear now has the ability to be upgraded 10 times. The cost for upgrading is greatly reduced from what it previously was, but now requires you to use materials that you find throughout your journeys in Etheria or that you bought from other Defenders through Player Shops. If you have a non-legendary piece of gear, through the genius of Professor Proteus, you can Advance that gear to the next quality!

Advancing

Remember that low quality flower staff we mentioned earlier? If you upgraded it to its highest level, you can now advance it to the next quality. All gear can now be upgraded from one quality to another, taking items from the lowly Worn quality all the way to Legendary status. This isn’t the only form of improving gear, Evolving allows even more power!

Evolving
-

Evolving is icing on the gear permanence cake. Independent of an items quality tier, if it is upgraded to it’s maximum Upgrade level, it can be pushed to the next Chaos tier. This allows you to take even the first items you find in the campaign to be Evolved all the way to Chaos VIII strength! It’s all about choosing the gear that you want to keep with you.

Upgrading, Advancing, and Evolving applies to every piece of gear that drops — weapons, armor, and relics!

Materials

New materials are added to customize your gear. With the introduction of these materials, we lowered the currency cost of upgrading gear. In your inventory, these materials are included under the current “Materials” inventory sorting option. There are some mats that drop on every map, but then there are also map-type specific materials that drop too. Here’s where you can find the materials you need:

• Weapon Materials:  Sewer Maps

• Helmet Materials:  Castle Maps

• Chest Materials:  Forest Maps

• Glove Materials:  Town Maps

• Boot Materials:  Ruins Maps

• Relic Materials:  Dungeon Maps

Materials are shown on both the map listing and under the open sessions for specific maps. Don’t want to farm a specific map-type for a material you need? You can visit our Markets to find Player Shops selling the materials you need!

New Game Modes

We’ve added additional ways for both new and veteran Defenders to fight off the evil forces that encroach on Etheria’s safety! Adventures are new ways for up and coming Defenders to fight their way through the Campaign, while Expeditions are replacing Trials and providing map choice where previously there wasn’t!

Adventures

Adventures are aimed in giving new Defenders the choice of playing different stories after defeating Betsy. You can choose to take on the Bling King, or go knock down the Harbinger down a peg or two! Maybe you feel strong enough after beating Betsy, if you’re up for the challenge, you can go straight into Onslaught or Expeditions.

Expeditions

Map choice, map choice, MAP CHOICE!! Something many of you have wanted is finally here! The Chaos Trials are finished, and Defenders can now go on Expeditions through various Chaos difficulties, choosing to play whatever map you want. The choice is yours!

The Champion Score gating for various Expedition levels is different as well, they are now:

• Chaos II: 580

• Chaos III: 1050

• Chaos IV: 1740

• Chaos V: 2750

• Chaos VI: 3800

• Chaos VII: 5300

Expeditions also provide the ability to acquire different materials needed Upgrading, Advancing, Evolving, and Tinkering. As noted above, different specific materials drop depending on the map-type your playing. These materials are earned both as you play a map and as you achieve victory!

Player Shops and Markets

Gear is no longer magically locked to each Hero Deck. Professor Proteus slightly alleviated the restrictions that existed previously on gear. As a result, Player Shops and Markets are here!

All Defenders are now able to list their items for sale on their own personal Player Shops. Each Defender starts off with two slots to sell gear and can expand the amount of slots they have if they want to. Most items that have not been altered in some way (Upgraded, Advanced, Evolved, or Tinkered) are able to be added to your shop! You are not able to buy gear for a Chaos tier that you are not currently on (i.e. being Chaos III, you are not able to purchase Chaos V gear from other players). To make browsing easier, you can view player shops through the Player List in the Pause Menu, or by walking up to players in the Markets.

Markets are a new area for players to gather in order to browse Player Shops. Head on over to the War Table and browse the list of active Markets! Markets are themed for various types of items that can be sold, but you can freely sell any item of choice regardless of the Market you’re in. If you don’t see a Market of the item type you’re looking for, you can always just Quickmatch and it automatically creates one for you!

Shards Features

Our new Shard systems were primarily focused on giving players more choices with their Shards.  For Shards that you don’t want to keep anymore, you can now Dust them to get a chance at more Shards of that type.  For Shards that you feel have more value, we wanted to provide a system to Gild and upgrade them a little bit further and protect them from Ancient Power resets.

Shard Dusting
Shards are a great way to really increase the power of the Heroes you play! Some players enjoy playing on a few select Heroes, and you can get Shards you aren’t interested in using. Instead of selling Shards for a little gold, you now Dust them instead. This creates one Shard dust of it’s equivalent Chaos Tier. You can take 10 Shard Dust of the same tier, and visit the War Recruiter to purchase an additional Shard container similar to what you receive at the end of winning a map. This process is to offer an additional chance to get the Shards you want, while giving an additional function to the ones you do not.

Gilded Shards
With gear getting pushed past its limits and receiving some nice improvements, it’s only fitting that Shards receive similar treatment! Gilded Shards provide additional upgrade levels to squeeze out more power, but most of all they are immune to being reset when you Ancient Power. In order to gild a Shard, you need to upgrade one Shard to its maximum upgrade level. You then have the option to Gild it by selecting 10 Shards of the same type, regardless of upgrade level, to fuse into your fully upgraded Shard. This is a focus for end-game players to grab additional power in order to take on the challenges in Onslaught, and also protect Shards from being reset when attaining Ancient Power!

New Weapons

Professor Proteus is a man of intellect, sophistication, and style. In Protean Shift every hero is receiving their own special weapons, with their own special appearances! Some of these weapons not only look legendary, but contain legendary power in the form of unique Mods. These Mods are found on the Prestigious weapons gained from attaining Ancient Power!

Protean Weapons

We’re now also selling Proteus weapons that have unique models and affects. When killing an enemy with any of these weapons, they are shrunk into oblivion! These new Death Animation VFX are indicated by a skull and crossbones icon on the weapon tooltip. These items start at Campaign tier and are Legendary quality, allowing you to put three mods into them. They do require Upgrading, Advancing, and Evolving in order to reach higher tiers. These unique weapon models can also be bought and sold on the Player Shops as long as they haven’t been altered (Upgrading, Advancing, Evolving, or Tinkering).

New Areas and Target Dummies

With a lot of customization here, and a gigantic wave of changes to stats, there are some improvements to our Target Dummies. In the Town hub we expanded the size of our Target Dummy area by quite a lot. There are also a new type of Target Dummy:  Aerial Target Dummies! These can be hit by any anti-air towers, so you can test the damage done by towers that you previously weren’t able to.

Aerial Target Dummies are also in your Private Taverns!  You may also notice that there are some new Dummy names in the mix.

Transferring into Protean Shift

There’s a ton going on with the Protean Shift, and you’re going to notice a bunch of changes to your Heroes. We made sure that you are more or less as strong after Protean Shift as you were before it. As we mentioned earlier, base stats were raised and adjusted to compensate the removal of certain secondary stats. Here’s how things will transition as you load in with this expansion.

For the gear you are wearing before Protean Shift, the Primary and Secondary stats follow the conventions mentioned above after the release. Your gear should look like this:

• Weapons

  • Primary Stat: Hero Damage.

  • Secondary Stat: Whatever your highest secondary stat was previously between Ability Power, Armor, and Hero Health.

• Helmets, Chest, Gloves, Boots

  • Primary Stat: Armor

  • Secondary Stat: Whatever your highest secondary stat was previously between Ability Power, Hero Damage, and Hero Health.

Relics are all going to be uniform across the board as outlined above (Defense Power and Defense Health only, the primary and secondary versions dependent on if it’s a totem or not).

Your current gear receives Mods depending on its quality, as an additional compensation for removing secondary stats. You receive one Mod for Epic and Mythical gear, and two Mods for Legendary gear. The Mods that are put onto this gear cannot roll the highest roll possible, but are going to make you stronger regardless of the roll. Transferring also provides some diversity with the Mods provided to your current gear, as the ones you receive pull from 60%+ of the total Mods added in Protean Shift.

Hero Changes

Every tower and Hero were affected by the changes brought in Protean Shift. As a result, base damage, speed, range, etc. were increased to compensate for the lack of additional secondary stats. Scaling was also greatly affected, meaning not only were the base stats increased, but also how much benefit a stat provides was also increased.

Writing the notes for all of these would have resulted in an encyclopedia, and it may have broke the forums. TL;DR things are stronger and you have the potential to be much, much stronger.

Shard Changes

Shards follow the same idea as the Hero changes. While most shards remain the same, the amount of changes that Gilding offers affects every Shard. However, there are few notable Shards that have additional stats or were change to fit our new system (that we teased for a while):

• Earth Toss

  • Added increased Defense Range [100 - 280 (320 Gilded)]

• Corruption’s bargain

  • Added Ability Power [0 - 300 (420 Gilded)]

• Power Transfer

  • Now increases the Defense Critical Chance by [18% - 30% (38% Gilded)] and reduces Defense Power by -10%.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue with Gorbstock not able to hit walls.

• Fixed an issue where the Abyss Lord's Direct Command was not dealing critical damage.

• Fixed an issue where one Deadly Strikes shard could be equipped to multiple defenses.

• Fixed an issue where mobs with the Frosty mutator were not dropping green mana.

• Fixed a bug where Hero Health was not maintaining the same ratio when changing equipment.

• Fixed an issue with Beacon of Storms proccing when the Squire blocks melee or physical damage.

• Fixed an issue with UI overlaps when splitscreen users joined a session.

• Fixed an issue with additional pop-ups in the Emporium.

• Adjusted the orc miniboss name in Wave 2 of Greystone Plaza of the New User Experience.

• Fixed an issue with a huntress drap being destroyed in Greystone Plaza during New User Experience.

• Updated old consumables to award +20% critical damage and critical chance instead of previous values.

• Fixed an issue where tooltips occasionally stuck together.

• Fixed an issue with new players not being sent into New User Experience maps.

• Fixed an issue when trying to delete a hero that is assigned to your Hero Deck.

• Fixed an issue where Broomnado was slowing enemies that were immune to slows.

• Fixed a bug where EV2’s Cosmetic Manager lighting was darker than intended.

• Added a warning when Defenders are matchmaking into a tutorial level.

• Improved messaging on errors when not able to join a game mode that hasn’t been unlocked.

• Fixed an issue with long enemy spawn times on the first tutorial map.

• Clarified wording on the Serpent God’s Protection Shard.

• Fixed an issue with Lavamancer’s Maw Petrify Duration talent not working.

• Fixed an issue with the Hotsprings map on Floor 3 dropping a lot of sturdy or worn quality loot.

Known Issues

• Weapon Mods of the same type on weapons are currently stacking for the Barbarian. This will be changed down the road, so that only elemental damage mods stack.

Want More Info on Dungeon Defenders II?

Check us out on social media for additional updates and game discussions with our awesome community:

• Twitter

• Facebook

• Discord

• Twitch

Protean Shift is a giant endeavor that the entire team hope you enjoy. Thank you for defending Etheria with us, there’s only more to come. Stay tuned!

For Etheria!

The Dungeon Defenders II Team

Greetings Defenders,

It is time to finally announce the next expansion coming to Etheria — Dungeon Defenders II:  Protean Shift! We’ve released information regarding this expansion and are ready to give a preview as to almost everything you can expect. The entire team has and still is working very hard to make sure this is a great experience for Defenders new and old. We’re going to cover some information posted in our DevLogs, as well as some new information, and how it all ties together. Let’s get to it!

Statistic Changes

This is our most foundational change in the update. When Protean Shift launches, you’ll notice that your gear’s stats looks much different than before. Our first change is making the damage from critical strikes scale off of the base damage for both your heroes and your towers. Critical Damage is no longer going to be a secondary stat, but is going to be a percentage increase that you can gain through Gear, Shards, and Ascension Levels. Because of the change to Critical Damage, the Critical Chance cap of 33% has been removed — the sky’s the limit now!

One of the goals of the Critical Damage change is to make damage more reliable. Critical Damage builds are still fun, but other playstyles should feel just as rewarding. Every hero and tower’s base damage has been increased to account for the changes made, making damage more consistent and allowing for even more unique builds!

Since we are changing how Critical Damage is understood, we decided to tackle another confusing area for players:  Defense Speed. This stat is now a percentage instead of being numbers that go into the thousands. The change here allows players to understand exactly how much faster their defenses attack rate will increase.

Gear

This expansion really provides the opportunity to build how you want to, and gear is a huge reason. We wanted gear to feel more unique, instead of just giving you every stat whenever you received a legendary tier of gear. Now your gear and choices can reflect the kind of Defender you want to be.

Gear now has a primary stat and a secondary stat. For heroes, the stats vary depending on the piece of gear. On helmets, gloves, chest, and boots, the primary stat is Armor, and the secondary stat pulls from Health, Ability Power, or Hero Damage. On weapons, the primary stat is Hero Damage and the secondary stat can be Armor, Health, or Ability Power. As a reminder, base hero damage for their attacks and abilities was buffed to make sure your heroes feel comparably as powerful after Protean Shift releases compared to how powerful they currently are.

For towers, it varies as well. On totems, Defense Health is the primary stat and Defense Power is the secondary stat. Inversely on Medallions, Marks, and Orbs (if you still have any), Defense Power is the primary stat and Defense Health is the secondary stat. An additional reminder, we increased defenses base stats to try and retain the power your defenses currently possess. This leads us to M.O.D.S.

M.O.D.S.

Professor Proteus applied his inventive intellect to all of the gear in Etheria! Magically Offense/Defensive Subroutines (M.O.D.S. or even simpler — Mods) are what allow you to make your gear your own! Mods can do everything from normal stat increases (Defense Speed, Critical Damage, Critical Chance) to less normal bonuses like stun immunity on Defenses. They even offer new ways to combat your foes! Want to:

• Have towers immune to Hex Thrower curses? You can do that.

• Pierce a Shield Geodes shield? You can do that.

• Make your traps, auras, and nodes, immune to Cyborks?! You can do that!

Mods are an additional property on gear, similar to Shards. Mods compliment Shards and also unlock in a similar fashion, based on the quality of gear, and start appearing on Uncommon quality gear:

• Uncommon:  1 Mod slot

• Epic:                2 Mod slots

• Mythical:        2 Mod slots

• Legendary:    3 Mod slots

This means that a Legendary piece of gear now has two stats, three Mods, and empowers three Shard slots, making them truly Legendary. This is just the tip of the iceberg! Over 120 Mods are here to give you the chance to defend Etheria the way you want to. Some of these Mods are the result of community feedback as a unique and engaging way of tackling challenges set before you, the Defenders of Etheria.

TINKERING

Mods are something Professor Proteus added to gear, and what good would Mods be if you couldn’t modify them? That’s where Tinkering comes into the mix! Tinkering is the ability to move up to three Mods at a time from one piece of gear to another piece of the same type and Chaos tier or higher. This means that Mods on Chaos VII weapons can only be moved to another Chaos VII weapon, from one Chaos III helmet to another Chaos III (or higher) helmet, and so on. Once you transfer Mods from one piece of gear to another, the original piece is destroyed in the process.

Tinkering allows you to continuously mix and match your Mods to create the build you enjoy the most. The amount of customization that Tinkering offers truly lets you play how you want. It doesn’t stop there. When combined with our new Upgrading and Evolving features, even more choices await you, even potentially choosing the look of the weapon you want!

UPGRADING, ADVANCING, AND EVOLVING

Upgrading
Upgrading is a feature that many of you are well acquainted with, it’s the best way to squeeze extra power out of your gear. But this is Protean Shift, so it’s time to UPGRADE THE UPGRADE! You no longer max upgrade a piece of gear and wait for another piece of gear that’s a higher quality and/or Chaos tier to replace it. You can take that gear, and through the genius of Prof. Proteus, Advance that gear to the next tier!

Advancing
Have an Uncommon piece of gear with the stats you want early on? You can now upgrade that piece to its max level and once it’s maxed, you can Advance that piece of gear into Epic quality. The same can be done to go from Epic to Mythical, and from Mythical to Legendary. This isn’t the only form of improving your gear, which is where Evolving comes in!

Evolving
Evolving is icing on the gear permanence cake. Regardless of a piece of gear’s quality tier, you can choose to Evolve it to bring it through the various Chaos levels. With Evolving you can now choose to push a sword that you found in Chaos II all the way up to Chaos VII, and beyond!

Upgrading, Advancing, and Evolving applies to every piece of gear that drops — weapons, armor, and relics!

ADVENTURES AND EXPEDITIONS

Adventures

We’re adding in additional ways for both new and veteran Defenders to play! The Campaign is now different than many of you experienced in the past. After completing the Campaign, Defenders can now take on Adventures! These let you choose specific side stories to progress and prepare for the challenges that await you in Expeditions, Onslaught, Mastery, and Incursions provide.

Expeditions

Map choice, map choice, MAP CHOICE! Something many have wanted is now here. The Chaos Trials are finished, and Defenders can now go on Expeditions throughout various Chaos difficulties. Do you have one favorite map to play, and just want to play that one as you progress through different Chaos difficulties? Now you can!

Expeditions also provide the ability to acquire different materials needed for new systems being added, such as Evolving and Tinkering. Different types of maps drop different specific materials as you play through a map and as you complete them. You can choose to farm for a specific material on a specific map, or play random maps that offer more materials. These materials are earned as you play a map and when victory is yours!

SHARDS

Shard Dusting

Shards are a great way to really increase the power of the heroes you play. Some players enjoy playing only a few select hero, so it can be a real bummer if you get Shards for heroes that don’t fit your play style. Now you can take any unwanted shards and break them down into dust through Shard Dusting. You can take the Shard Dust from unwanted shards and trade them in for Chaos equivalent Shard Packs to have another try at getting the shard you want. You can use this process to help work towards getting the shards.

Gilded Shards

All our gear is getting the ability to be pushed past its limits, so it’s only fitting that Shards get the ability to as well. When you Gild Shards, you combine Shards of the same kind to unlock additional upgrade levels. This is a focus for end-game players to grab additional power in order to take on the challenges that Onslaught, and also protect their shards from being reset when attaining Ancient Power!

New Weapons!

Professor Proteus is a man of intellect, sophistication, and style. In Protean Shift every hero is receiving their own special weapons, with their own special appearances! Some of these weapons not only look legendary, but contain legendary power in the form of unique Mods. These Mods are found on the Prestigious weapons gained from attaining Ancient Power, though that’s not the only way to get them!

Player Shops and Markets

In Protean Shift, gear is no longer magically locked to each Hero Deck.  Professor Proteus has slightly alleviated the restrictions that existed previously.

All Defenders will be able to list their items for sale on their own personal Player Shops.  Most items that have not been altered in some way (think Upgraded/Evolved/etc.) will be available to post on your shop!  You will be able to browse all the Player Shops from the Player List on the Pause Menu. Feel free to shop to your heart's content!

In addition to creating your own Shop, you’ll be able to enter the new Markets.  From the War Table, you can browse lists of open Markets and choose which to join.  Markets are themed for the various types of items that can be sold, but you can still freely sell any item of your choice while you’re there.  If you don’t see a Market of the item type that you’re looking for, you can always just Quickmatch and it will automatically create one for you!

The Final Bean

We’ve been spilling the beans for a while now, and there’s one last bean that we have to spill — the release date. Dungeon Defenders II:  Protean Shift is releasing on June 19th on PlayStation 4, Steam, and Xbox One! This release is very close to one year since we’ve released, and there’s more to come.

Want More Info On Dungeon Defenders II?

Check us out on social media for additional updates and game discussions with our awesome community:

• Twitter

• Facebook

• Discord

• Twitch

We’ve got one more Devstream to show off more stuff coming with Dungeon Defenders II:  Protean Shift. Thank you for defending Etheria with us, there’s only more to come. Stay tuned!

For Etheria!

The Dungeon Defenders II Team

Greetings Defenders,

The update is coming along smoothly and lots of work is being done as we speak. We released two DevLogs over the past two weeks, and there’s one more coming, but we didn’t want to leave a week without any beans spilling, so we’re going to spill a couple today. Just as an extra note, some of the terms discussed here and any content is still subject to change. Let’s go!

Shards

Gear and stat changes affect the entire game, meaning Shards are also affected. With the upcoming update, just about every Shard is going to change as a result (get ready for probably our longest patch notes ever). They should more or less retain their same power, but because of the stat changes and base damage increase on towers, you may find some Shards way more useful than before! There’s also an additional feature being added that affects Shards, what we’re currently calling Shard Dusting.

Shard Dusting

While a lot of Shards are gaining additional strength or coming into the spotlight because of tower/gear changes, there are many different Shards in the game. Very few people utilize all the Shards that drop. Some people like playing with the base four heroes and focus on Shards for them, and some like using just the Mystic and the Lavamancer. Getting Shards for the heroes you don’t use can sometimes feel like you aren’t working towards improving your own unique build. With Shard Dusting, you can now find a utility for unwanted Shards instead of just selling them for little gold.

Taking the Shards you do not want, and deconstructing them into dust, it now allows you to acquire another chance at getting a Shard you want. For a set amount of dust, you are able to go to our Shard vendor and trade your dust for another Shard container that contains a random Shard from the appropriate Chaos tier. This a feature the community asked for, and we’re here to deliver! Getting multiples of the same Shards also has an advantage as well. We know that many of you have been hording Shards in anticipation of something new to do with them, and now you can! We're introducing Gilded Shards!

Gilded Shards

Gear is getting a major overhaul and additional features to increase its power, we wanted to give Shards some attention as well. With this next update, the Shards (both wanted and unwanted) you find are going to possess more utility than they currently do. Gilded Shards are Shards whose power pushes past the current limits. When gilding a Shard, they gain increased upgrade levels, increasing their power. That’s not the only bonus — Gilded Shards do not get reset when you attain Ancient Power, alleviating some of the currency costs that come with resetting!

Now you might be thinking, “Lawlta, how do I gild my Shards?”, and that’s a great question. Gilded Shards come from combining a specific number of the same Shard. We’re not announcing any specific numbers yet, but we want to make sure this feature feels good to use, and are getting great feedback from our RPG and RQA testers. The goal for this is to allow players who are pushing in end game Onslaught to increase the power of their favorite and/or most used shards. This is our first step towards adding more goals for end game players that have long lasting impact on their power.

New Weapon Models

Professor Proteus is a man of intellect and sophistication, but also a man of style. There are more weapon models coming for every weapon type this update, and they may be attained in a special way. Here’s a sneak peek of what our artists created:

2D Concept Art by Zack Smith


3D Models by Zack Smith

There are more weapons coming, this is just a sneak peek of the awesome ones we are introducing into this update!

An Even Further Look to the Horizon!

The beans continue to flow! The systems discussed here build upon all of the things we discussed in the previous DevLogs. Believe it or not (actually just believe it), there’s even MORE coming!

The next DevLog is going to be a summation of everything we put out so far, as well as a feature that brings together a lot of the features revealed in recent weeks. There may also be a release date in there that’s sooner than you (don’t) think. It’s going to be our last DevLog before we release the Patch Novel™ (calling them notes doesn’t capture just how gigantic that post is going to be).

A lot of the changes that are coming give us a lot to create additional future content. Many of the changes within this huge update, including Shard Dusting, are a result of community feedback on what Defenders want. The feedback all of you provide is incredibly important. Game development is a very arduous process, and at times can feel like we aren’t listening if the changes you want are not released very quickly. These changes (and ones coming in future updates) have a heavy community influence to them. You all are great at providing constructive feedback and it helps us make sure the additions we make are something you enjoy! :)

If you want an early look (as well as helping us polish things before release), our testing groups are just for you! There’s so much coming, and every bit helps to make this expansive update great.

Want More Info On What’s Coming?

Check us out on social media for additional updates and game discussions with our awesome community:

• Twitter

• Facebook

• Discord

• Twitch

There’s even more information coming next week. We’re really excited to share the last beans of this update, and hope you enjoy what’s coming. Stay tuned!

For Etheria!

The Dungeon Defenders II Team

Greetings Defenders,

Our second DevLog has arrived as promised! These DevLogs are going to build upon one another, making the order of their reveals very important. If you have not had the pleasure of reading our previous one, click here. It makes a lot more sense if you understand what’s going on and why these additions and changes are important.

In the previous DevLog we talked about giant changes to stats and gear in Dungeon Defenders II. Every piece of gear is going to be affected by these changes. Critical chance, critical damage, and speed are revamped; base damage is boosted to compensate for these changes; and gear is gaining magical properties. These features and changes are to allow players to build how they want to and have the tools needed to take on challenges they encounter with the heroes they enjoy.

This isn’t going to be our last DevLog for this update, but there is a ton to cover here. The things we are covering in this DevLog continue to increase what we are able to do as we release future content. Enjoy!

A Quick Note From Elandrian

Colin Fisher (Elandrian) — Associate Producer

Hey, Everyone!
Just a quick check-in from me to make sure expectations are clear!  All the features mentioned in this post are still work in progress/in development and shifting based on feedback and theming with our expansion. The names of the features may change, but the overall goal and core functionality will most likely remain the same.

I hope everyone appreciates the additional beans that Mark and Jose provide today.  Beans are weird. Did you know the first game I worked on was as a designer for a certain popular baked beans brand’s website? True story.  Anyways, back to spilling.

Sincerely,
Elandrian

REFORGING AND UPGRADING!

Mark Telfer — Technical Designer

Hey, Defenders!

In the last dev blog, we left you with some juicy tidbits about how we are revamping the gear system and adding new magical properties. If you haven’t read that one, go check it out now! At the end of the previous Devlog, I promised more bean spillage, and it’s time to deliver (TE-liver™)!

Magical Property Reforging

I’ve had the pleasure of playing a ton of the new content coming to DD2, and I’m having too much fun finding and utilizing the new magical properties on gear. I even found one awesome property that let my defenses counter those pesky Cyborks I was fighting! Truly some great stuff! I fell in love with the relic that the property was on and knew I wanted to perpetually bask in its intrinsic majesty. That is, I thought I did, until I found another relic with an equally amazing property a few minutes later. So there I was, staring down the barrel of a gut-wrenching choice. In a moment of passion, should I spurn my beloved Cybork-countering property for the new relic, or do I thwart this temptation and preserve the ardent bond I have with my current relic. I don’t know about you, Defenders, but my delicate little heart just can’t handle decisions like these. I knew that for the sake of Etheria, I had to protect all heroes from such agonizing choices. And besides, I’ve always been the type that wants to have his cake and eat it too.

So with that, I have one simple question for you, Defenders. Do you also like to have your cake and eat it too? Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could discover two incredible properties on separate pieces of gear, and bring them together in a glorious union? With great pleasure, I can announce Magical Property Reforging, which lets you do just that. Cake for everyone!

Property Reforging empowers you to transfer properties from one piece of gear to another. Prepare to get crazy, creative, and experimentative! The only barrier between you and a perfect combinations of properties is your imagination! Fear not, for you don’t have to pray for an item drop that naturally possesses perfect combinations of properties. You, yes you, can mix and match them to your heart’s content. You don’t like a property on your favorite weapon?  Overwrite that sucker with a better one. Want to give that weapon a boost! Throw a new property into a slot that rolled blank! Did you find a more powerful version of a property you are already using? Purge it for the better one!

So how exactly does this bad boy work, you ask? Well first, you must defend Etheria and reap the sweet, sweet gear rewards for doing so. Once you find two (or more) magical properties you want that reside on separate pieces of gear, head over to the town or tavern. Find a brand new character populating the town who loves to tinker with things, and initiate a Reforge.  From the reforge screen, you select gear that you want to transfer properties from and gear that you want to transfer properties onto. You can then transfer any number of properties from one gear to another so long as there are available property slots. Once you’ve concocted a marauding masterpiece, confirm the transfer and get back to showing the enemies of Etheria who’s boss! Be careful though, the gear you transfer properties from gets destroyed by the reforging process and only the gear that you transferred properties onto survives.

You can transfer properties between two pieces of gear so long as certain guidelines are followed:

• Properties must be transferred between two pieces of gear of the same type (both are weapons, or relics, or helmets, etc).

• The gear you are transferring properties from must be earned in a Chaos difficulty that is at or below the Chaos difficulty of the gear you are transferring properties onto (i.e. you can transfer properties from Chaos V to Chaos VII gear, but not the other way around).

• All properties on a piece of gear must be unique.

• Only one elemental attunement is present.

Other than that, the sky's the limit!

Now I know what you’re thinking.  You’re thinking, “Mark! I’ve seen you on the devstream before!  You’re a smart, good-looking, cool, weird-looking, strong, Mark-looking guy, but pray tell, you’ve overlooked something here!  All of the new gear properties and reforging sound great, but what good is all of this if I’m currently progressing through DD2?  I get a lot of gear upgrades each map. Doesn’t this mean all my gear and the effort I make reforging will quickly become obsolete?”  Well, dear reader, you are correct. I am indeed weird-looking. You are also correct in that this does pose a challenge to this new gear system. The challenge here is what I like to call gear permanence, or in the case of the current live game, the lack thereof.  

Gear Permanence and You!

One of the reasons I love working on (and more importantly playing) Dungeon Defenders II is because of how unique of a game it is. One of these unique aspects is how we handle hero progression after you reach level 50. As you test your might in Chaos Trials, gear is progression. Cumulative and incremental progress to your heroes comes in the form of a consistent flow of new item drops that possess increasingly higher gear scores. Equipping those items on a frequent basis raises your champion score, and building champion score unlocks new challenges for you to take head-on.

This system is pretty cool, but it’s not conducive to long-term attachment to a specific piece of gear. Since the Barbarian’s Wrath update, the loot system assures that the plethora of gear you earn continuously rolls higher gear scores so long as you’re playing at the appropriate difficulty. Throughout the course of even one map, you’re likely to see higher gear scores for a given slot many times over. This meant that swapping gear several times in one map would be a formidable progression strategy. The current system encourages, and in fact rewards you, for constantly swapping to new gear with a higher gear score.  This system results in gear being ephemeral during progression and furthermore, relegates all of the new gear we are creating to nothing more than a short-term decision.

That’s not what gear in Dungeon Defenders II should be. Equipping behavior should be a result of careful and meaningful deliberation which rewards the opportunity to carve out a creative and unique playstyle. Having to constantly swap gear makes this deliberation fruitless and frivolous. We knew that if we are truly going to make the gear revamp meaningful, we must allow players to keep their favorite gear long-term and ensure the gear remained viable in the process. Essentially, we had to ensure that players had the freedom to make gear permanent if they desired.

Equipment Upgrading and Evolution

At the heart of creative and diverse gameplay is freedom. Freedom means emancipating players from constraints that would otherwise impede their goals as heroes of Etheria. Based on this sentiment, we’ve totally revamped the equipment upgrading system, and it is with great pleasure that I can announce the brand new system that will take its place: Upgrading and Evolution!

Now what do I mean when I say freedom?  Buckle up! Our new system literally lets you take the first piece of gear you ever earn in Campaign and power it up to a strength that is greater than the current Chaos VII gear cap in the game. That’s right, Defenders. If you find any awesome piece of equipment that you like, you can keep it viable for as long as you want. Do you love the Harbinger’s shield that you get for completing campaign? You can power that bad boy up beyond the Chaos VII cap.  Do you love a property the way I love the Cybork-countering property? Upgrade the gear that it’s on and power it up beside you as you progress.

So how does all of this work? Like I said earlier, the current upgrading system will be replaced. Gone are the days where you have a small amount of upgrade levels that max out.  Instead, you will be able to take your chosen piece of gear through a two-step process called (new) upgrading, and evolution.

(New) Upgrading!

Every piece of gear will track the chaos level that it was dropped in. As you know, each Chaos has a gear score range that can drop, a min and a max if you will. That range will be abstracted to a meter on our new upgrading screen. Filling this meter will power your gear from the min to the max of the corresponding Chaos range. If you get a gear drop whose gear score falls somewhere between the min and the max, meter levels will automatically be awarded retroactively. Filling that meter substantially beefs you up and makes your enemies cower before your fortitude. Once that meter has been filled and you’re at the max of that Chaos level’s range, you’re not done —you’re ready to Evolve!

Evolution!

Okay! So your gear is beefed up, and you’re at the maximum gear score possible from the Chaos level the gear was dropped in. It’s time to evolve! Evolution allows you to break that gear past its current Chaos level and bring that gear up to the minimum of the next Chaos level. Magical properties see a massive strength increase when you perform an evolution to ready you for the next challenge that you undertake. The upgrade meter then is set back down to 0.  You can keep repeating this process for as long as you wish to keep using a piece of gear. You can even use this process to evolve gear past Chaos VII! MIGHTY POWER AWAITS!

Upgrading and Evolution Costs

Currency cost, especially gold costs, will be substantially different than our current upgrade costs. You can spend currency for each upgrade/evolution you preform. Currency isn’t all you’re going to need to do this though…

New and powerful materials have been discovered across Etheria that make power boosts like this possible. With this update, these materials drop in specific maps and at specific difficulties as you defend Etheria from the goblin legion. Gather these materials up because they empower you to perform these brand new upgrades and evolutions.  

The Road to Freedom!

So at this point you might be saying to yourself, “I want to gather as many of these awesome materials up as possible, but Mark just said that they only drop on specific maps.  Right now, I can’t just choose a specific map I want to play, especially in Chaos Trials. Isn’t that a problem?” Defenders, I wasn’t kidding when I said that we are striving to give you the freedom to play the way you want. I’m going to let Jose take it from here and make our next big announcement. That said, I’ll leave you with this:  Jose, the rest of the team, and I STILL aren’t done revealing all of the big things that are coming in this next update. We seriously have even bigger features to announce in the future. I can’t wait for more bean spillage to occur.

Love,
Mark

EXPEDITIONS!

Jose Villegas — Technical Designer

Hey everyone! Last week’s Dev Log was all about the changes to the core systems of Dungeon Defenders II. Now, let me tell you about the new stuff we are making, and things to get you even more excited for the future of the game.

One of the long standing pain points for the community has been the lack of map choice in Chaos Trials. With this in mind, I’m excited to tell you we have taken a look at this and the Trials are finally over. You now have Expeditions.

Expeditions take the same encounters that you have grown to love (and hate) from Trials, but adds the ability to choose any map you want to play. Actually, we have taken one step further and allow you to select any map that was previously unavailable to that Chaos level!

This new game mode also ties into our improved Upgrade system that we are unveiling today. In order for you to upgrade your items, and reforge your properties around, you must gather all sort of materials across Etheria. Each type of map (Town, Spooky, Castle, Forest, Ruins, and Dungeon) award you with different materials, so make sure to play all of them.

There are still a few secrets we are keeping before the release of the update, so make sure to keep coming back in the following weeks for more info!

Essentially,
Jose

A Further Look to the Horizon!

Alec Saare (Lawlta), Community Manager and Bean Overlord

Hey All,

As promised, the beans continue to floweth! The systems discussed here build upon all of the things we discussed in the previous DevLog (found here). There’s still more information coming (wuuuuuut), and as you can expect, it builds upon everything covered here! Crazy, right?

We talked about some major systems in the game here today. One of the common issues presented talking with all of you is that gear doesn’t feel special and that it doesn’t really matter until you’re maxed out. These changes are to help address that, and we are confident you’ll enjoy what we’re cooking up. Also Expeditions providing map choice, where have I seen that requested before? :)  Your feedback is invaluable to the things we create. Though it takes time, we are always listening and trying to get everything possible into the game. Keeping your feedback constructive and objective makes it easier to find the things that matter most, and ways to implement it so that you not only enjoy it, but utilize potential new or additional systems. Now you may be thinking, what else could they possibly talk about next time with these changes. Here’s a small hint:  there’s an aspect of gear you all use currently that we haven’t talked about yet. Is that vague enough? I think that’s vague enough. You’ll have to wait for the next DevLog to find out!

If you want a sneak peak (as well as helping us polish things before release), our testing groups are just for you! There’s so much coming, and every bit helps to make this expansive update great.

Smooches,
Lawlta

Want More Info On What’s Coming?

Check us out on social media for additional updates and game discussions with our awesome community:

• Twitter

• Facebook

• Discord

• Twitch

We’re going to give even more details very soon! Our designers are excited to continue sharing what they are working on and explain what changes are coming and why. Stay tuned!

For Etheria!

The Dungeon Defenders II Team

Greetings Defenders

Our pledge with this gigantic update is to increase and improve communication. This is our first DevLog in a series of DevLogs coming your way! We recently teased big changes to two very important stats:  Critical Chance and Critical Damage. There is so much coming with Professor Sebastian Proteus, here’s what he’s bringing in this DevLog:

Stats: Critical Chance, Critical Damage, Speed, and more are getting their impact cranked up!
Gear:  Stats aren’t the only thing changing. Gear now has a primary and secondary stat, as well as unique magical properties to really amp up your playstyle!
Properties:  Now a part of gear and relics, properties lend a much needed helping hand into bringing interesting builds to the Defenders of Etheria!

There’s a ton of information to cover here. These are the foundational changes that affect everything else you are going to see in future DevLogs. These changes open the door for a lot of features we are wanting to add. It’s a lot to take in, so let’s begin!

Stat Improvements!

Jose Villegas, Technical Designer

Hey Everyone!

I’m excited to tell you that big changes are coming soon to DD2. We have been paying close attention to the balance of the game for a while, so we took it upon ourselves to tackle  several of the core systems of DD2, and how to improve them.

Similar to the recent changes to Shards and Gear Progression, the goal of these changes is to enhance your DD2 experience by making things as clear and simple as possible. To this extent, we modified and improved how stats work:

• Hero and Defense Critical Damage: This was my biggest source of concern by far. Previously, Critical Damage was a separate stat that increased damage from critical strikes independently from your regular non-critical damage, which meant that one had no relation with the other. We felt that this directly conflicts with what most players would expect from a normal critical damage system, where your critical damage was a multiplier that affected your regular damage. So, we made precisely that change. With this update, your critical damage is a percentage that affects any source of damage. Whenever you trigger a critical strike, your regular damage is multiplied by your critical damage stat. Revolutionary!

• Hero Damage, Defense Damage, and Ability Power: Since the overwhelming majority of your damage in DD2 came from critical damage sources, we are increasing how much damage your regular attacks, abilities, and towers deal. So whenever you login  after the update, your base damage is now stronger than ever!

• Hero and Defense Critical Chance: Now that your normal and critical damage pulls from the same source, we decided to also remove the 33% Critical Chance cap previously used. In order to encourage people to make whatever builds they find the most fun, we opened the floodgates and removed the crit cap!! Our goal is to make crit builds an option for players, and an actual choice rather than the only way to play the game.

• Defense Speed: This is an obscure stat in the game. Each Defense currently has a Defense Speed stat that affects how fast it attacks, however, it was not very clear how much you gained whenever you increased it. Due to the fact that it was a numerical stat instead of a percentage, making the conversion between that number and the attacks per second is very difficult, since each tower worked differently. For example, the Defense Rate Shard increased your Defense Speed by 33%, but that percentage changed the stat, and not the actual attack rate, so it affected different towers in different ways. In this update, Defense Speed is also a percentage, and is directly tied to the actual attack rate of the Defense. Whenever you raise the Defense Speed you will know exactly by how much you are increasing that tower’s attack frequency.

Now, you may be asking, if Defense Speed and Critical Damage are changed this much, how does that affect gear? Well, we are improving the gear in the entire game! We know that right now gear is a little bit stale and lacking in variety, so we are introducing our new “Magical Property” (work-in-progress name) system on gear that is going to shake things up quite a bit. These new properties are all about gaining power in new ways, including Defense Speed and Critical Damage. We are going to update you with more info about the changes to gear sooner than you expect =).

Anyway, that’s all from me for now. We are listening to your feedback, and all of the changes we are doing are with the goal of making DD2 a better game for you. Thanks for enjoying our game, and please let us know how can keep doing better!

Essentially,

Jose

Magical Properties!

Mark Telfer, Technical Designer

Hey Defenders!

It’s been a while since I last checked in with you all, and boy, do I have a ton to share!  We’ve been hard at work making some gargantuan additions to Dungeon Defenders II over the past few months, and I am excited to say that I can finally spill the beans on some of what the team has been working on. Hang on to your CatHatters, because gear in DD2 is in for a wild ride.

The Current State of Gear

As we were wrapping up the Barbarian’s Wrath update, I sat down with the team and we all took a hard look at gear.  There were many things we saw as opportunities to improve upon. At its heart, Dungeon Defenders II is a loot-centric game. Conquering enemies and beating down precocious little gobus gives you a bonanza of gear drops on each map. Getting a piece of gear should be an exhilarating experience! That dropped piece of gear should represent potential untapped, possibility incarnate, and the spoils of victory well earned. It should inspire creativity in builds and a diversity of outcomes. In essence, gear equipping should be a meaningful and gratifying choice that lets you define your identity as a hero of Etheria.

Unfortunately, the current gear of DD2 falls a bit short of this goal. As most of you know, gear currently has a primary stat, a varying number of secondary stats, and a differing amount of shard slots (depending on its tier). There is a very limited number of secondary stats in the game, and this hampered the amount of unique stat combinations we could drop for you to play with. For example, a legendary medallion has every single defensive secondary stat on it.  That means there is only one type of legendary medallion in the game! That’s the antithesis of giving players meaningful choices. 

Exacerbating this issue, there was one particular stat that was of supreme significance - Critical Damage. If you’re not building for maximum Critical Damage right now, then what are you doing!? Critical Damage accounts for the vast majority of damage output a player can potentially do. This meant everyone was essentially building in a singular way. Boooooring! Needless to say, the design team knew we could do better.

Jose worked hard to bring order to the Critical Damage system (outlined above), and brought sanity to critical damage output; it will no longer disproportionately affect DPS. Because of this adjustment, we now had a ton of wiggle room within the game balance to introduce new ways for you slay enemies. That’s when things got crazy. The design team made a pot of coffee, locked themselves into a room, and started imagining unique, fun, and crazy ways that we could let the heroes of Etheria dispatch the goblin legion. The time has come where I can (finally) let you in on where we landed.

Magical Properties Everywhere!

With great excitement, I can announce that all gear in the coming update will have the chance to roll new, unique, game-changing properties that allows you to creatively concoct entirely new strategies in DD2. These properties are affixed to gear that drops and defines playstyles, empower creativity, and engender build diversity to the likes that Etheria has never seen. These aren’t your Grandma’s old gear passives!  What are some of the insane things properties can do, you ask? Well, my friend…

Have you ever wanted to make goblins explode upon death and have that explosion ripple out onto the luckless enemies in near proximity? You can do that! Oh, did I mention that if you’re smart then you create a chain of explosions?

Have you ever wanted to make your cannonball tower deal elemental water damage?  You can do that! Would you prefer a different element? Pandora’s Box has opened when it comes to elementally attuning non-elemental towers.

But despite how awesome both of those are, I must confess that I have a favorite. I’ve always had trouble with those pesky Shield Geodes. I love building Cannonball Towers and Poison Dart Towers, but those knuckleheads always reflect my projectiles. Well, they used to... until I found a property that makes projectiles penetrate shields. Just don’t tell Lawlta that I told you*. ;) (*Lawlta note: I see everything!)

These awesome properties, and many many many more, have a chance of dropping on the gear you earn while playing. The better the gear (mythical, legendary, etc.), the more properties there are. There will be properties for both your towers and your heroes, and they can be combined to glorious effect. And did I mention properties get crazier and more powerful the further you push in DD2?

These new properties will come to replace many of the secondary stats currently on gear. Don’t get me wrong, secondary stats such as Hero Health are still on gear, but there are less of them. Gear will soon only have one primary and one secondary stat.

Properties fill in the gap that the removed secondary stats left, and gear is vastly more interesting because of this. Instead of being forced to see and use the same four secondary stats, you now have a myriad of choices in which properties you want to play with. With all these changes to gear and items, one thing we did not change was shard equipping. Prepare to make some serious decisions on property combinations and how confluences of different properties that best compliment your playstyle!

I’d love to tell you more, but Lawlta is breathing heavily over my shoulder and I fear for my safety. However, I can tell you that this isn’t even half of what we are working on for this upcoming update. Seriously! This isn’t hyperbole! There is way more coming your way, and I can’t wait to share it with you. Until next time, Defenders!

Love,

Mark

A Quick Note From Elan!

Colin Fisher (Elandrian), Associate Producer

Hey everyone,

I hope that gives a little more information about some of the systems that are coming up in this expansion. I hope people get excited about our new Magical Properties (the name is a work in progress) and the other statistical changes on gear. In our playtests, we’ve seen that it’s provided some new defensive options that were otherwise unviable.

We’ll be releasing more information in the coming weeks to let everyone know about the plethora of system, balance, and content changes that are part of this expansion.

If you’re interested in checking out the changes early, you can join our playtester groups, the Remote Playtesting Group (RPG) and the Remote Quality Assurance (RQA).  These groups have access to a test build of the upcoming changes and have been instrumental in providing feedback while we flip our balance on its head. If you’re interested, make sure you’re 18 or older, can test on PC (rewards are available to every platform though!), and contact our RQA Manager, Dani Moore!  

(It’s dani dot moore at trendyent dot com. Why don’t links work well? I don’t know. We’ll fix it one day… Game systems are more important.  Right? RIGHT!? PLEASE CONFIRM FOR ME.)

Lovingly,
Elandrian

A Look To The Horizon!

Alec Saare (Lawlta), Community Manager and Bean Spiller Extraordinaire

Hey All,

We discussed quite a bit of information here, but this is only the tip of the controlled burn and frosty mutated gobu-berg. There is so much more coming on top of this that we are going to get EVEN MORE information out soon. The bean spillage that occurred here will continue to flow!

The systems we are going to talk about continue to build off what’s discussed here, they're real game changes. All stats are being changed and rebalanced, new magical properties (work-in-progress name) are being added to really empower your gear. Seriously, some of them are crazy, and we took good care in making sure they also address some of the great feedback many of you have provided (thank you for all your efforts on that front). These changes really offer us a lot of opportunities to continue creating awesome and rewarding systems and features! As we release information, you’ll see how everything builds upon the previous post. There might even be some information about how game modes are affected or even more information about your gear coming! ;)

If you want a sneak peak (as well as helping us polish things before release), as Elandrian outlined above, our testing groups are just for you! There’s so much coming, and every bit helps to make this expansive update great.

XOXO,
Lawlta

Want More Info On What’s Coming?

Check us out on social media for additional updates and game discussions with our awesome community:

• Twitter

• Facebook

• Discord

• Twitch

We’re going to give even more details very soon! Our designers are excited to continue sharing what they are working on and explain what changes are coming and why. Stay tuned!

Greetings Defenders!

I thought everyone could benefit from one of my more recent discoveries that I’ve made in my research, my new Shrink-o-matizing technology!  It really was just a simple matter of combining a crystal core with the matter quantizing array. This allows all sorts of items and materials to be stored at a much smaller size than before! This is only one of the many new item transmorphications that I plan on making.

I do hope that Protobot is in good health and did not damage anything upon his arrival. He’s had some slight malfunctions in his navigational subroutines recently, but his Shrink-o-matizer is in perfect condition! You can trust your items to be protected and stored properly upon the Vault Ship.

I can’t wait to arrive in Dragonfall to share all of my latest research with all of you. I simply was held up making some last minute adjustments to my latest creation, the Robo-witch Prime!  Or was it Mecha-witch? Gunda-witch? Don’t worry, I’ll figure out what I’m calling it and head right over! I can’t wait to share all my latest findings with everyone! The Old Ones won’t know what hit them!

Sincerely,

Professor Sebastian Proteus

Patch 2.4 crash landed into the Dragonfall Marketplace today and is now live! This patch brings a highly requested feature in the form of a shiny spaceship — The Sky City Bank! With the bank’s arrival come some tremendous improvements to load times, optimizations, and bug fixes. Let’s get into it!

Sky City Bank

The Sky City Bank is now available! This futuristic bank is located directly behind the Emporium in Town, or next to the training dummies in your Private Tavern. The bank is used to store items that you want to hold onto, but don’t necessarily need on your journeys throughout Etheria.

For starters, every player gets at least one Bank Vault for free right when they login. This means if you only have the default inventory space, you now have that same default inventory space AND a Bank Vault upon logging in!

For people that purchased the old Inventory Packs or the Bag Booster Pack are going to notice a shift in their inventory. Bags obtained through those packs that go over eight Inventory Bags become Bank Vaults with this patch. Previously it confused players when they saw other players with ten or eleven bags, when they could only have eight. Because of this, we are standardizing inventory bags.

The change looks like this:

Pre-Patch 2.4

8-11 Possible Maximum Inventory Bags

0 Bank Vaults

Post-Patch 2.4

8 Possible Maximum Inventory Bags
12 Bank Vaults

FREE Sky City Bundle

To celebrate the Sky City Bank’s arrival, we are offering a FREE bundle that you can redeem from the in-game shop for 0 Gems. This bundle awards:

• One additional Bank Vault!

• Shutter Shades Flair!

By redeeming the free bundle, you are able to start off Patch 2.4 with at least two free Bank Vaults! This bundle is available for two weeks, so grab it while it’s here!

Stack Splitting

This patch brings the ability to split stackable items into different stacks and amounts. For instance, if there’s a stack of 99 pet food in your inventory, you can now break it down into two or more stacks of whatever size you choose. Want to keep some items on you, but store the rest of the stack in the bank? Now you can do that! Stacks on stacks on stacks.

Transfer All

Now that the Sky City Bank is open for business, moving items quickly to the bank is a must. You can now move an entire bag full of items with one button press. The “Transfer All” button moves all non-locked items in the bag you currently have selected into the Bank Vault that you have selected. You can move Locked Items as well, they are just done individually. “Transfer All” also automatically stacks any stackable items so you don’t have to!

Load Time Improvements

Patch 2.4 contains an emphasis on inventories. Our Lead Programmer looked into ways our inventories could be better to really add some “oomph” to this patch. After investigating how profiles saved, loaded, and handled inventories, we made a lot of improvements when loading into any part of the game! Some players are going to notice drastic load time decreases, while others may notice slightly quicker loads.

General Changes

Pets

• When at the Hatchery, eggs can be hatched directly. No more drag and dropping or incubating!
  
  

Visuals

• Tower Inspect UI updated for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One (PC already has this).

• Zapper Kobold Flier now has a red outline.

• Made Lavamancer Weapon drops larger, something hot now looks cooler.

• Mana Node received some visual improvements.

• Slight tweaks to some of the Barbarian’s Accessories.

• Minor adjustments to the Barbarian’s whirlwind.

• Blacksmith’s shop no longer has a confirmation pop-up for purchases.

• War Table Cybork info now includes that they disable nodes.

• Bug reporting page received updated buttons.

Audio

• New audio cue for Wave Complete!

• Betsy fight sequence in Dragonfall Bazaar received updated sound cues.

• Added and improved on Berserker Orcs during the Glitterhelm matinee.

Hero Changes

Dryad

• Corrupt Form

  • When building a tower in Corrupt Form, towers now gain the Corrupt benefits when placed.

• Slime Pit Tower

  • No longer slow enemies that are immune to slow. Berserker orcs aren’t afraid of slimes!

Huntress

• Shards

  • Explosive Poison

    • The shard is now working correctly, spreading poison if a poisoned enemy dies.

Shards

• Inspiration

  • Can no longer be equipped to the Abyss Lord or EV2

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where EV2’s Proton Charge could produce higher than intended damage while gaining zero heat.

• Fixed an issue with the Barbarian’s Leap preventing resource decay.

• Fixed an issue where the Flamethrower Tower’s VFX did not get larger when defense range was increased.

• Fixed an issue where Auto-Equip Relics did not work on the first press.

• Fixed an issue where Chaos 3 Shard Packs were not on the Emporium.

• Fixed an issue when comparing equipment on the Squire.

• Fixed an issue where the Barbarian could get out of bounds in The Throne Room.

• Fixed an issue where the Sub-Cores are on the incorrect sides in The Throne Room.

• Adjusted the Dryad Starfall resource cost so it no longer overlaps.

• Fixed an issue that allowed parties to play the tutorial maps (we are looking into letting parties into these maps down the road).

• Fixed an issue that caused an infinite loading screen. Please let us know if you experience them after this update.

• Removed the ability to auto-equip when in the Portal.

• Fixed a bug where multiple towers could be placed simultaneously. May look into adding a stable version of this down the road.

• Fixed an issue where several weapons were not consistently dropping in the world without their vfx visible.

• Fixed an issue where the Lavamancer VFX would appear on some maps when using the Barbarian Leap.

• Fixed an issue where the champion crowns were not properly rotated on hero cards.

• Updated an issue where golden eggs would show up as a regular egg in several places.

• Fixed an issue where purchasing the last item in the list from the Blacksmith or Relic Hunter shop using a controller causes the list to lose focus.

• Fixed an issue where several items in the blacksmith shop were displaying improperly.

• Fixed an issue where item comparison was not working for equipped items.

• Removed references to the shards being equipped on the sell all message.

• Equippable is now spelled correctly in the shard folder when you have no shards available for the gear slot. Stay in school kids.

• Removed a reference to the old pet bag when trying to hatch an egg with a full inventory.

• Fixed a visual issue where a large number of shards displayed the current upgrade level is in the wrong location on the tooltip.

• Quest Complete pop-up will now say Daily Mission completed when completing a Daily Mission.

• Attempting to equip a shard to an invalid tower slot throws either unknown error, or no error. Now has a valid error string.

• Fixed an issue on XB1 where sub-core icons were not being removed after losing a sub-core.

The Sky City Bank is the first arrival for something much larger coming to Etheria. Over the next couple months we are going to be actively discussing the new features coming with our next expansive update. For more information sources as we post updates, be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter (doing so also gets you the Pirate Monk and Academy Apprentice skins for free):

• Twitter

• Facebook

• Discord

We’re still tinkering away to get some gigantic changes to Dungeon Defenders II that we think you’re really going to enjoy. More information coming soon!

For Etheria!

The Dungeon Defenders II Team