News

The Isomicon reveals its first secrets! While you’ve been defending against the evil that threatens Etheria, Gran Ma’ster found a way to imbue certain shards with incredible power. These hyper shards contain a very unstable power so she is only providing them to defenders that prove their mastery of the defensive arts. At the Gran Ma’ster’s behest, the Defense Council devised a set of challenges for the heroes to overcome.

With the aid of the Abyss Lord, Gran Ma’ster continues to delve deeper into the forbidden knowledge contained within the Isomicon. There’s still much more to decrypt, but there is a growing concern from what’s been revealed — dark forces are coming, and we are NOT ready. Go forth, Defenders! Prepare yourselves, and PROTECT ETHERIA!

Greetings Defenders,

It’s time to prove your strength, Ancient's Prelude (Update 1.2) is live! This is a monster of an update, introducing some amazing features that will push your limits. This patch has some awesome new content, a new additional cosmetic system, quality of life changes, balance, bug fixes, and kicks off the beginning of our seven week progression event. Let’s dive in!

New Game Mode: MASTERY

The new game mode, Mastery, provides access to all Chaos maps, allowing you to choose where and how you progress. Gran Ma’ster requires you to complete up to five challenges per map, each indicated with a star on the Mastery progress bar. She’s not going to be making it easy either. In order to earn the full five stars on each map, you’ll need to complete all of the challenges together. All stars are earned one time, so once you’ve five starred a map, you have mastered the challenges presented and will have earned all the rewards it has to offer. The power contained within the Hyper Shards is unstable, so only Defenders that prove their might may equip them.

When conquering the Mastery game mode you’ll receive great rewards as you progress. Here’s what you can expect to earn as you decimate challenges:

• Hyper Shards

• Exclusive Flair

• Golden Pets

• Ascension levels

• Defender Medals

• Gold on gold on gold

With the Mastery game mode, we’ll be releasing a new tier every week, for the next seven weeks at on Wednesday at 9 AM EDT! It’s a lot of content to conquer, here’s a look at the schedule:

• Mastery 1:  October 11th (TODAY!)

• Mastery 2:  October 18th

• Mastery 3:  October 25th

• Mastery 4:  November 1st

• Mastery 5:  November 8th

• Mastery 6:  November 15th

• Mastery 7:  November 22nd

The cap of earn-able stars will start at 105 with Mastery 1. Every additional tier will add an extra 105 stars to be earned, with the last week providing a total of 735 stars to be earned.

To achieve absolute mastery, experimentation with new builds is required to overcome the tasks set before you, pushing your limits as a Defender. Over the coming weeks, the Defense Council will work diligently with the Gran Ma’ster and Abyss Lord to continue deciphering additional levels of challenges and rewards for heroes capable of proving their mastery. The amount of time needed to decipher and develop each new Hyper Shard is about a week. To fill that time, we’ll be providing a little competition to celebrate this new discovery!

Special Event:  PROVE YOUR MASTERY

We’re running a special event:  PROVE YOUR MASTERY over the next SEVEN weeks! This provides time for Gran and company to conjure the Hyper Shards that each tier rewards. The event showcases players on special weekly Mastery leaderboards. It lists the first 10 players to reach 105 stars per Mastery tier, per platform (PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4). If there aren’t 10 people to reach 105 stars at the end of the event, it ranks the furthest progressed players.

The Mastery leaderboards will update every 15 minutes, and require defenders to reach at least 10 stars before appearing on the leaderboard. Click here to check out the Mastery leaderboard.

The event starts at 9 AM EDT, and lasts until 9 AM EDT the following Wednesday. As the previous week-long event ends, the next event starts immediately after. Special prizes will be revealed soon after the event launches! These prizes do not give any powerful benefits, but provide visual bragging rights that spotlight defenders conquering the content the fastest. Teaming up is a huge benefit to dominating these challenges. If a team of two to four players claims the first spot, they’ll all be listed as first place. This means that second, third, and fourth place are still up for grabs. We’ll be sharing more information on the rewards soon!

New Shards:  HYPER SHARDS

Exclusive to the Mastery game mode are Hyper Shards, unique shards that you’ll only be able to claim if you are able to conquer the challenges Gran Ma’ster has provided for you. Hyper shards will be reminiscent of some of your favorite shards, except cranked way up in power. Each type of these shards will only be earned one time, and don’t worry — you can’t sell them.

There are seven different shards that can be earned. Here is a look at the shards and where you can earn them:

• 50 Stars:    Mass Destruction

• 155 Stars:  Vicious Strikes

• 260 Stars:  Radiant Critical Power

• 365 Stars:  Explosive Shielding Guard

• 470 Stars:  Thunderstruck

• 575 Stars:  Destructive Pylon

• 680 Stars:  Super Fortification

These shards pack an extra punch, and can all be earned once. There is no limit to how many can be equipped at the same time. They are needed to bolster your strength to take on Gran’s challenges!

New Cosmetic System:  FLAIR

A new cosmetic system, Flair, allows your heroes to look even more legendary than before! Flair can be equipped over any existing costumes or looks on a hero and there’s currently four categories of flair:

• Head (Halos, masks, and auras)

• Back (Wings)

• Waist (floating objects and auras)

• Feet (auras, fire, and other effects)

There’s more than one way to acquire this new cosmetic so you can look even more heroic on the battlefield. Flair is available through:

• Collecting stars through Mastery

• Future game content

• In-game Shop

• Platform Storefronts (Steam, Xbox Live, and PlayStation Network)

Flair will unlock as you collect more stars through Mastery, future game content, and available through our various store fronts. One of the packs will be available outside of the game for a particularly demonic look, but we’ll discuss later in the blog. With such a wide variety of customizable ways to mix and match flair, you’ll be sure to stick out in the Heroes Marketplace!

New pets: GOLDEN PETS

Golden pets are BACK!  Well… some of them. Golden pets are pets that you will receive while playing through the Mastery game mode. It’s another way to show off just how great of a defender you are to those around you.

You’ll be able to earn a single golden pet type multiple times, for a total of seven pets:

• 90 Stars:    Golden Gato Egg

• 195 Stars:  Golden Creeper Egg

• 300 Stars:  Golden Dragon Egg

• 405 Stars:  Golden Gato Egg

• 510 Stars:  Golden Creeper Egg

• 615 Stars:  Golden Dragon Egg

• 720 Stars:  Golden Gato Egg

With golden pets and the new flair system, you’ll be the envy of all that see you!

Halloween in Etheria

You’ll notice that your Private Tavern and the Heroes Marketplace have been decorated to celebrate Halloween. To add to the celebration, the Halloween-themed seasonal flair is now available! This flair is our first iteration of seasonal-themed flair, but it most definitely will not be our last — you have to look amazing year-round, right? With the Halloween set in particular, you’ll not only terrify your enemies on the battlefield, you’ll also be their worst nightmares!

Our Halloween pack, The Bundle of the Beast, will become available closer to Halloween on Steam, Xbox Live, and PlayStation Network.

Quality of Life

Selling Equipment With Shards

Implementing new shards that are acquired only once required some special attention. With this patch, if you sell a piece of loot that has shards inserted, the shards will be put into your inventory instead of being sold as well.

If your inventory is full when you sell a piece of loot, the shards will go to the scavenger for 30 minute. If you close the game, go between the Town, Private Tavern, or a map, the Scavenger will still have it for 30 minutes. Once 30 minutes has past, you won’t be able to reclaim them from him.

Orbs

Orbs have been relics that we’ve received a ton of community feedback on. To keep things balanced and functioning, defense speed has a cap. Orbs specifically were avoided by defenders due to them not being effective in providing optimal stats throughout the entirety of progression. Every relic type should be useful in most levels of play, and Orbs were not able to do this to a level we were content with.

Based off community feedback, we’ve removed Orbs from loot tables. This means that you won’t see orbs dropping, but instead another piece of gear will be dropping in its place. Current orbs will not be removed from your inventory or equipment. With orbs removed, you’ll be receiving more loot that will help you progress!

Hero Changes

Mystic

• Call To Madness

  • Cooldown increased 10 seconds to 20 seconds.

    • Previously players were able to infinitely confuse a lane when using the inspiration shard.

Series EV-2

• Weapons Manufacturer

  • Adjusted range scaling with the introduction of Vicious Strikes Hyper Shard.

General

Weapons

• Shadowflame Dagger

  • Projectile life-time reduced to 2 seconds.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where comparing items on the ground was not properly appearing.

• Fixed a homing issue with Shadowflame Dagger.

• Fixed an issue where Dryad could build a third permanent hornet nest.
  

• Fixed an issue with Deadly/Vicious Strikes being removed from a world tree, that allowed defenses to remain outside the reduced range.

• Fixed an issue where pressing Esc to leave the Emporium or Inventory caused lag spikes.

• Fixed an issue where clicking To Hub would freeze players and return them to the title screen.

• Fixed an issue where Power of Storms shard was restoring 56 mana instead of 60.

• Fixed an issue with the Limit Break challenge not properly awarding score bonuses.

• Fixed an issue with the Heroic Power shard not performing correctly.

• Fixed an issue where failing the Kobold Bling King map allowed you to continue playing the map.

• Removed Consecutive Win row on scoreboard when it would appropriately show “0”.

• Fixed an issue that disconnected players loading into Forest Biome on Xbox One.

• Fixed an issue with various shards using incorrect values.

• Fixed an issue where Join Game and Create Game were placed incorrectly.

Even More On The Way...

Mastery is just the tip of the iceberg for you, Defenders. While you conquer Gran’s difficult challenges and tests, you’ll attain the strength needed to protect Etheria and the citizens of Dragonfall from the darkness that lies ahead. We’ll learn more as Gran, the Defense Council, and the Abyss Lord decipher the Isomicon in the weeks to come!

We are eternally grateful for your support, Defenders, and will be providing more information on the upcoming power of the Ancients over time.

For Etheria!

The Dungeon Defenders II Team

The Isomicon reveals its first secrets! While you’ve been defending against the evil that threatens Etheria, Gran Ma’ster found a way to imbue certain shards with incredible power. These hyper shards contain a very unstable power so she is only providing them to defenders that prove their mastery of the defensive arts. At the Gran Ma’ster’s behest, the Defense Council devised a set of challenges for the heroes to overcome.

With the aid of the Abyss Lord, Gran Ma’ster continues to delve deeper into the forbidden knowledge contained within the Isomicon. There’s still much more to decrypt, but there is a growing concern from what’s been revealed — dark forces are coming, and we are NOT ready. Go forth, Defenders! Prepare yourselves, and PROTECT ETHERIA!

Greetings Defenders,

It's time to take a look at the future of Dungeon Defenders II by talking about our upcoming 1.2 Update, Ancient's Prelude. This is a monster of an update, introducing some amazing features that will push your limits. Not only are you getting some awesome new content, but you’re also getting numerous bug fixes, balance changes, quality-of-life fixes and more! Thanks for giving us feedback as we continue to evolve the game into its final form!

In Ancient’s Prelude, we are introducing Mastery, a game mode that challenges your ability as a defender and rewards you with great power. In addition to a new game mode, we’re introducing Flair! Flair is another cosmetic system that will take the look of your heroes to the next level. Shards and Flair aren’t the only rewards though.  We’ll be handing out rewards such as golden pets, Ascension levels, gold, and more!

This is only the beginning of some serious changes in the world of Etheria and we can’t wait until the Isomicon reveals more information about what’s to come. There have been whispers of an endless level of challenge on the horizon.

New Game Mode: MASTERY

The new game mode, Mastery, provides access to all Chaos maps, allowing you to choose where and how you progress. Gran Ma’ster requires you to complete up to five challenges per map, each indicated with a star on the Mastery progress bar. She’s not going to be making it easy either. In order to earn the full five stars on each map, you’ll need to complete all of the challenges together. All stars are earned one time, so once you’ve five starred a map, you have mastered the challenges presented and will have earned all the rewards it has to offer. The power contained within the Hyper Shards is unstable, so only Defenders that prove their might may equip them.

The discovery of a secret tome could lead to new power! During a recon mission, Etherian Army scouts discovered a glowing sarcophagus within an ancient catacomb. The container exploded revealing the source of the light -- the Isomicon, the fabled tome of an ancient race of warriors. According to the Gran Ma’ster, the Isomicon reveals long-lost secrets to battle the Old Ones.

Producing the power within these secrets is incredibly difficult, and only the Gran Ma’ster has the expertise to create such power. With such demanding requirements, she’s creating challenges to find Defenders who are worthy to wield it. She says more information will come next week!



Greetings Defenders,

Patch 1.1.1 is out now! This patch is focused on addressing a couple balance issues that you as a community have helped raise awareness to, as well as taking care of some nasty bugs. We will have some pretty big announcements in the coming weeks, so while these patches may not be very heavy, consider them the calm before the storm. You've been warned. Now let's get into some patch notes!

General Balance

• Cybork

  • EMP stun duration reduced to 12 seconds from 15 seconds.

• Thorc

  • EMP stun duration reduced to 18 seconds from 60 seconds.

• EMP Kobold Flier

  • EMP stun duration reduced to 20 seconds from 30 seconds.

• Zapper

  • Stun duration reduced to 30 seconds from 45 seconds..

Hero Changes

Huntress

Towers

• Blaze Balloon

  • Defense Power ratio increased to 4.25 from 3.5.

  • Critical damage ratio increased accordingly.

Shards

• Blazing Phoenix

  • Max damage increased to 5000% Defense Power from 850% Defense Power.

  • Phoenix projectile increased in size.

  • Phoenix projectile speed slowed slightly.

Monk

Abilities

• Pole Smash

  • No longer causes the Monk to get stuck on top of enemies if used mid-air above enemies.

  • Can now turn/target during the animation.

Series EV2

General

• Sword Container

  • Fire rate increased to 1 per second from 1 per 2 seconds.

  • Reduced firing width.

  • Reduced pellet number to 20 from 30.

  • Increased pellet lifespan.

  • Increased secondary lifespan.

  • Heat reduction reduced to 15 from 22.

• Various EV2 weapons have had their firing rates tuned.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue with inventory tooltips going off the bottom of the screen when comparing items.

• Fixed an issues where certain regions were unable to be selected.

• Fixed an issue with sorting weapons, armor, and relics when using a controller.

• Fixed an issue where the end game “Press G” message was not appearing.

• Monk Skyguard Tower properly tracks damage for ‘Clear Skies’ challenge.

• Fixed typos in Hailstorm Tower description.

• Removed outdated attention/aggro text from several towers.

• Fixed an issue where players weren’t getting sent back to hubs after Incursions/Campaign sessions.

• Chlorophyte Arrows no longer changes color when upgrading.

• Fixed an issue causing players to get the “Press G to Ready Up” notification stuck.

• Fixed a bug where boost aura was causing Hailstorm Tower to increase enemy health instead of dealing damage.

Greetings Defenders,

Update 1.1, the Wizards and Blizzards Update, has arrived! Our focus for this update is the arrival of the Adept (our new gender-swap hero), bringing Revenge of the Yetis Incursion to all platforms, updating many important systems, and paving the way for the addition of larger modes and variety to Etheria in our coming updates. Let’s dive into some chilling patch notes!

New Hero:  The Adept!

“A dedicated bookworm and talented mage, the Adept pursued the arcane arts from a young age. Unrivaled in her valley homeland, the Adept has come to Dragonfall to prove herself among the finest arcane masters and to take the fight to the Old Ones on the fields of battle.”

The Adept is our new gender-swap hero, and with her comes two new abilities and one new defense:

New Ability:  Arcane Bubble

The Adept creates a pulsing shield that reflects all enemy projectiles and periodically stuns all enemies within. It’s particularly useful against enemies that apply crowd control effects (*cough* Dark Assassins *cough*).

New Ability:  Arc Lightning

The Adept sends piercing bolts of devastating lightning that damage marked targets and enemies caught in-between her and her mark.

New Defense:  Hailstorm Tower

The Adept’s new defense is a powerful anti-air tower! The Hailstorm Tower fires a barrage of single-target damaging ice shards at flying enemies, which also weakens them to follow-up attacks.

Try the Adept for Free!

Perhaps best of all, with the update out now, you’ll be able to try the Adept for free by visiting the Portal in the Heroes Marketplace! Once you enter the Portal, you’ll be given access to a normalized version of the Adept decked out in gear. If you like being able to try out a premium hero for free, please let us know.  

Check the Adept’s section of our Hero section for more information on abilities, towers, and shards!

Revenge of the Yeti’s Incursion on PS4 & PC

This frosty Incursion is available on PS4 and PC in this update! Prepare to face the mighty Yeti and his abominable new minions on the Hot Springs map. Revenge of the Yetis is available in Chaos VII, prepare to overcome the cold or get frozen in your tracks.  Succeed in doing so, and gain the power that the Withering Blast Shard has to offer! 

Double EXP Weekend!

To help beat back this frozen behemoth and his horde of frozen allies, level up twice as fast this weekend!  The event runs from:

• Start:  Friday 4:00 PM EDT
• End:  Monday 4:00 PM EDT
  
  

User Interface

• Added a rotating preview model to hero customization.

• Last hero focused in customization will now be the focus when returning to your inventory.

• When going to hero details window, gamepad focus is set to the weapon slot.

Matchmaking

This update implements some major backend matchmaking updates, which we’ll be able to grow and improve the matchmaking experience upon. With this particular update, we’ve been able to address the following:

• Ascension minimum level requirement will be enforced when transitioning to the next map.

• Joining nearly completed matches is now less likely.

• Sticking with party members between maps has been improved.

• Custom session name will now preserve between maps.

• Default session name will change and update between maps.

• NOTE: Periodically the ‘Next Map’ option will instead send you back to the Tavern / Town. This is a temporary server-relief measure that we hope to remove in a future patch.
  

There’s plenty more we want to do with this new backend system in the future (like improving the Party System), so stay tuned for more updates!

Gamepad Improvements

• Swapping Heroes, in both gameplay and at the Inventory screens, now uses D-Pad directions without the L1 (PS4) or LB (Xbox) combination.

• Selecting an item automatically focuses a valid equipment spot.

  • Selecting a helmet highlights the helmet slot on the current selected hero.

  • Selecting a relic chooses the first relic slot.

• Quest UI, Ping, etc. have been moved to L1 (PS4) and LB (Xbox) + D-Pad directions.

• Controller key bindings have been updated in the Options menu.
  

Leaderboards

We've introduced a new leaderboard feature on our site!  

• Compare the top scores on individual maps.
• Compare scores for both single and multiplayer sessions.

Click here to check it out and see where you rank!

General Balance and Features

• Multiplayer Enemy Health Scaling

  • Enemies now only gain 20% health per additional player (was 25%).

• Wisps are back on all game modes!

Hero Updates

Abyss Lord

Ascension Powers

• Abyss Knight Talent increases damage dealt and scales with ability power.
  

Adept

Abilities

• Arcane Bubble: The Adept creates a pulsing shield that reflects all enemy projectiles and periodically stuns all enemies within.

• • Mana Cost: 80

  • Cooldown: 25 seconds

• Tesla Coil: The Adept sends piercing bolts of devastating lightning that damage marked targets and enemies caught in-between.

  • Mana Cost: 35

  • No Cooldown

Towers

• Hailstorm Tower: An anti-air tower that fires a barrage of damaging ice shards at flying enemies, which also weakens them to follow-up attacks.

  • Defense Cost: 40 DU

Shards

• Wither Shield:  Arcane Bubble withers enemies inside it increasing the damage they take by X%.

  • Found in the Chaos 1 Shard Pack.

• Sanctuary: Heroes inside the Arcane Bubble shield heal X% of their health per second during the duration of the bubble.

  • Found in the Chaos 2 Shard Pack.

• Icefall:  Hailstorm Tower attacks have a X% chance on hit to freeze enemies for 2 seconds.

  • Found in the Chaos 2 Shard Pack.

• Thunderwave:  Arc Lightning deals X% Ability Power as damage to all enemies around you.

  • Found in the Chaos 3 Shard Pack.

• Arc Shielding: Arc Lightning places a shield on you that lasts 20 seconds that absorbs X% of your Ability Power. Enemies that hit the shield are damaged for a total of Y% of your Ability Power over 3 seconds.

  • Found in the Chaos 4 Shard Pack.

• Marking Bubble: Arcane Bubble will place a Mark on all enemies in the initial spawn area and increases Mark count X.

  • Found in the Chaos 4 Shard Pack.

• Thunderbolts and Lightning:  Increases the damage of Arc Lightning by X%.

  • Found in the Chaos 5 Shard Pack.

• Explosive Finale:  Upon completion, the Arcane Bubble explodes dealing X% Ability Power damage to all enemies in and around the bubble.

  • Found in the Chaos 6 Shard Pack.

• Glacier: Every 10 attacks, Hailstorm Tower fires an icy boulder that explodes on impact dealing X% Defense Power as damage in a small area.
  

  • Found in the Chaos 7 Shard Pack.
    

• Withering Blast: Enemies damaged by Arcane Barrier take 20% increased damage for 3 seconds. 
  

  • Found in the Revenge of the Yeti Incursion.

Apprentice

General

• Secondary Attack projectiles no longer magnetize to targets, ensuring they always travel in a straight line. This increases their accuracy when trying to pierce and Mark multiple targets. Adept’s secondary attacks have been updated to use this new targeting as well!

Abilities

• Arcane Volley

  • Due to an improvement in trajectory and visibility, projectiles reach their Marked targets sooner.

Shard

• Added - Withering Blast: Enemies damaged by Arcane Barrier take 20% increased damage for 3 seconds. 
  

  • Found in the Revenge of the Yeti Incursion.

• Magic Missile

  • Updated the description.

Huntress

Abilities

• Oil Flask

  • Animation speed greatly increased.

Monk

Towers

• Skyguard Tower: Skyguard Tower has been bugged for a while, firing 4 projectiles from a single barrel instead of 1 from each of its 3 barrels. It now fires correctly, and we had to rebalance the damage-per shot to balance out kill times on packs of enemies.

  • Defense Power ratio increased 5.5 -> 6.5 (+18%)

  • Projectiles per attack decreased from 4 to 3 (-25%)

Mystic

Towers

• Serpent's Coil:  Now affected by Defense Speed.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue partially with mobs walking over blockades by increasing blockade height.  Please watch where you step.

• Fixed multiple split-screen crashing issues.

• Fixed multiple split-screen party invite issues.

• Fixed multiple split-screen party continuity issues.

• Fixed an issue where scrolling without a gamepad was not responding correctly.

• Fixed an issue when trying to turn off gamepad control without having a gamepad connected.

• Fixed an issue in sewers where North East sub-objective destruction was causing incorrect spawns the following waves.

• Fixed an issue where tower skins for the Apprentice, Huntress, and Squire were not purchasable.

• Fixed an issue where shop tooltips were appearing offscreen in 1920x1080.

• Fixed a description issue with Dragon Stance; changed to “Each enemy hit with a primary attack.”

• Fixed an issue where the Dryad controlled worse in the air than other heroes.

• Fixed an issue where the 8-bit skin for Dryad was not purchasable.

• Fixed an issue with the Weapon Manufacturer Damage talent display.

• Fixed Scourge Dragon Pet ability tooltip to include it happens “for the first 5 hits.”

• Fixed an issue where Initiate’s hand customization was not saving when exiting the shop.

• Added description to Betsy shards to warn users that only one of the shards will be active at any given time. (Equipping a Betsy shard to a Betsy weapon does not duplicate the effect).

• Fixed an issue where the Prince’s cannons were not dealing damage.

• Fixed an issue where EV2’s Buff Beam would flash red on the minimap without being low health.

• Fixed an issue where Drenching Broomnado shard’s drench was not working with storm damage correctly.

• Fixed an issue where upgrading an item could increase its required level.

• Removed unneeded tooltips for Hero Customization top row.

• Fixed default Shinobi Monk Head’s eyes.

• Fixed an issue where accessories descriptions weren’t displaying correctly.

• Fixed an issue with PS4 shader cache.

• Fixed an issue where the Xbox store was referencing the PlayStation store when attempting to purchase with insufficient gems.

• Fixed an issue where Hero Levels and Ascension Levels were not displaying correctly on the HUD hero name-plate.

• Concussive Chi shard now only affects one target at a time, has the same behavior as Overwhelm.

• Fixed accessory tab segment bug.

• Fixed several audio special effects that played louder out of the left channel, and all music playing louder out of the right channel.

• Fixed several spelling errors with shards.

• Added default skin names for towers.

• Fixed a bug where Demon Scythe’s secondary fire was dealing incredibly high critical damage.

• Demon Scythe’s secondary attacks should now fire in a straight line, using the same improvements as Magic Staves for the Apprentice / Adept.

• Fixed an issue where the gamepad on Xbox incorrectly displayed the R and L button bindings.

• Fixed several spelling errors with equipment.

• Removed option for Gunwitch to select tower skins.

• Lowered volume level of rivers.

• Fixed an issue where a number of shards were using negative numbers in their tooltips.

• Fixed an issue where loading screen pro-tip referenced practice maps.

• Fixed a volume issue with critical hit and headshot sounds.

• Fixed an issue with shop data and scrolling with gamepads.

• Fixed a sound issue when choosing a location for a tower.

• Removed an effect that was a remnant from Huntress’s Explosive Trap.

• Fixed a material issue for forest maps.

• Fixed a focus issue with the Petrinarian UI.

• Fixed default skins to not have tooltips.

• Added death volume in sections of Demon’s Lair/Molten Citadel map.

• Fixed an issue with gamepad performance on the Hero Customization window.

• Fixed an issue when opening the wartable when not in a party.

• Demon’s Lair Incursion steps for completion typo corrected (previous Demon Slayer Incursion)

There’s a storm coming, Defenders! 

Wizards & Blizzards (Update 1.1) arrives August 23rd on Xbox One, PC & PS4! Our focus for this update is on delivering a new gender swap hero, creating important system updates, fixing numerous bugs, bringing the Revenge of the Yetis Incursion to all platforms, and setting the stage for adding larger modes and variety to the world of Dungeon Defenders II in our next updates.

Read the blog below to learn about the update, and then be sure to tune into our Wizards & Blizzards Devstream this Friday at 3PM EDT. We’re going to showcase the update and giveaway free hero codes!

New Hero:  The Adept!

“A dedicated bookworm and talented mage, the Adept pursued the arcane arts from a young age. Unrivaled in her valley homeland, the Adept has come to Dragonfall to prove herself among the finest arcane masters and take the fight to the Old Ones on the fields of battle.”

The Adept is our next gender-swap hero! She sports two new abilities and one new defense while retaining most of the Apprentice’s kit:

New Ability:  Arcane Bubble

The Adept creates a pulsing shield that reflects all enemy projectiles and periodically stuns all enemies within. It’s particularly useful against certain enemies (*cough* Dark Assassins *cough*).

New Ability:  Arc Lightning

The Adept sends piercing bolts of devastating lightning that damage marked targets and enemies caught in-between.

New Defense:  Hailstorm Tower

The Adept’s new defense is a powerful anti-air tower! The Hailstorm Tower fires a barrage of damaging ice shards at flying enemies, which also weakens them to follow-up attacks. This defense also draws reduced aggro from enemies.

New Shards for the Adept

The Adept has her own unique Shards to discover! (Note:  These details are subject to change between now and release. Check out the patch notes next week for final information!)

• Wither Shield:  Arcane Bubble withers enemies inside it increasing the damage they take by X%.

  • Found in the Campaign Shard Pack

• Sanctuary: Heroes inside the Arcane Bubble shield heal X% of their health per second during the duration of the bubble.

  • Found in the Chaos 2 Shard Pack

• Glacier:  Hailstorm Tower fires a large rock dealing X% Defense Power damage once every 5 volleys.

  • Found in the Chaos 2 Shard Pack

• Thunderwave:  Arc Lightning deals X% Ability Power as damage to all enemies around you.

  • Found in the Chaos 3 Shard Pack

• Arc Shielding: Arc Lightning places a shield on you that lasts 20 seconds that absorbs X% of your Ability Power. Enemies that hit the shield are damaged for a total of Y% of your Ability Power over 3 seconds.

  • Found in the Chaos 4 Shard Pack

• Marking Bubble:  Arcane Bubble adds X marks to enemies inside it.

  • Found in the Chaos 4 Shard Pack

• Thunderbolts and Lightning:  Increases the damage of Arc Lightning by X%.

  • Found in the Chaos 5 Shard Pack

• Explosive Finale:  Upon completion, the Arcane Bubble explodes dealing X% Ability Power damage to all enemies in and around the bubble.

  • Found in the Chaos 6 Shard Pack

• Icefall:  Hailstorm Tower attacks have a X% chance on hit to freeze enemies for 7 seconds.

  • Found in the Chaos 7 Shard Pack

Try the Adept for Free!

Perhaps best of all, when the update comes out, you’ll be able to try the Adept for free by visiting the Portal in the Heroes Marketplace! Once you enter the Portal, you’ll be given access to a normalized version of the Adept decked out in gear. If you like being able to try out a premium hero for free, please let us know!

Revenge of the Yeti’s Incursion on PS4 & PC

This frosty Incursion will be available on PS4 and PC in this update! Prepare to face the mighty Yeti and his abominable new minions on the Hot Springs map. Revenge of the Yetis will be available in Chaos VII, so prepare your heroes now!

Matchmaking System Updates

This update implements some major backend matchmaking updates, which we’ll be able to grow and improve the matchmaking experience upon. With this particular update, we’ve been able to improve the map-to-map flow, which makes it easier for you to stay together with a party of friends or with a group of randoms. We’ve also been able to fix the minimum Ascension Level Requirement filter, which will now stay active when you continue on to the next Trials match, and your custom game names will remain on transition. We’re also able to hide matches after they reach a certain threshold of play, so it’s less likely to join a nearly complete match. (Thanks for the feedback on that!)

There’s plenty more we want to do with this new backend system in the future (like improving the Party System), so stay tuned for more updates!

Gamepad Improvements

Continuing from our work in Patch 1.0.3, we’ve added a whole slew of new gamepad improvements! Among other changes, this includes Inventory UI quality-of-life changes, easier hero swapping, easier tower upgrading/repairing/selling and more! Check out the patch notes next week for a full list of details.

New Cosmetics Manager

This update introduces a brand-new Cosmetics UI to view and equip Cosmetics! Currently, equipping costumes and accessories is a pain. Not only do you have to go to a specific vendor to make your heroes look badass, but the current UI is a pain to navigate -- especially on gamepad.

This new UI is available directly from the “Cosmetics” tab in your Inventory, so now you can change your look on the fly! You’re also able to see all of the currently available Costumes, Accessories and Tower Skins in one location, and best of all, you can view all of them (including Tower Skins) before you make a purchase!

Bug Fixes

And finally, this update includes numerous bug fixes! Keep an eye on the patch notes for the full details.

We’ll see you in Etheria, Defenders!

Love,
The Trendy Team

Double XP Weekend!

The Double XP Weekend has begun on Xbox One, PC & PS4! From now until Monday at 4PM EDT, get 2x the experience from winning!

Get Your FREE Beat the Heat Bundle Before It's Gone!

• A free 4,000 Defender Medal gift!
• An exclusive Purrville the Helicatter pet!
• An exclusive Squilbur the Squid hat for the Squire!
• An exclusive PAWS the Corgi shoulder pal for the Squire!
• An exclusive shirtless beach Squire accessory!
• An exclusive Squire beach shorts accessory!

Greetings Defenders,

Patch 1.0.3 is available now on all platforms! Login now to get your FREE Beat the Heat Bundle, which is available from the in-game shop. The free bundle will disappear on August 10th, so don’t miss out!

FREE Beat the Heat Bundle & Double Gold Weekend Events

Login for the next two weeks and get free, exclusive items! You’ll find your free bundle at the in-game Shop (accessible through the Shop menu on the Pause screen). These items are only available until August 10th!

• A free 4,000 Defender Medal gift!

• An exclusive Purrville the Helicatter pet!

• An exclusive Squilbur the Squid hat for the Squire!

• An exclusive PAWS the Corgi shoulder pal for the Squire!

• An exclusive shirtless beach Squire accessory!

• An exclusive Squire beach shorts accessory!

Plus we’re doing TWO Double Gold Weekend events! The first event begins this weekend!

• July 28th to July 31st:  Double Gold Weekend Event

• August 4th to August 7th:  Double Gold Weekend Event

Once you redeem the bundle, you'll find your medals in your Inventory as an item. WARNING:  Make sure you have fewer than 8,000 Medals before redeeming or you will not get the full 4,000 Medal gift!

To find your accessories after redeeming the bundle, go to the Costume Shop, go to the Wardrobe, select the Squire, choose his Default costume, and you'll find his new accessories in the appropriate slots!

Loot Drop Updates

After reviewing player feedback and diving into the data, we agree that item progress, especially in Chaos 4-7, was too slow. There were too many items spawning that only gave very small increases in power. This was making it take far too long to beef up all your characters, and the problem grew worse as you played in the later Chaos difficulties.

So with this patch, in all Chaos difficulties (but especially in Chaos 4-7), items now drop with larger power increases than before, and we’ve increased the chances of finding items with larger power increases. Not only that, but we’ve added in the occasional chance for a ‘super drop,’ which gives you a chance at items that are substantially more powerful. There’s still a good bit of randomness in the system, so don’t expect to get loads of high-powered legendaries dumped on you in your first game. But there are now far more opportunities for ‘big wins’ than there were before, and we hope players really feel it!

While we don’t consider this a blanket ‘fix’ to all the known item issues the community has highlighted, we do consider it a great step in the right direction. More changes coming soon!

Four More Chaos VII Trials Maps

We’ve added four maps to the Chaos VII Trials rotation! These maps are:

• Little-Horn Valley

• Assault on Throne Room

• Buried Bastille

• The Dead Road

You’ll encounter 8 total maps when you tackle the C7 Trials. More Trials improvements to come!

Wall Collision & Range Indicator Updates

We’ve increased the collision size on our blockades!

• The Spike Blockade collision volume is 37% larger on the X axis and 20% larger on the Y axis.

• The Volcano's square collision volume is 37% larger.

• The Training Dummy's square collision volume is 18% larger.

• The Arcane Barrier's collision volume is 66% larger on the X axis.

• The Maw of the Earth Drake's collision volume is 25% larger on the X axis.

• The Viper's Fangs collision volume is 11% larger on both the X and Y Axis.

• The Colossus' collision volume is 33% larger on its Y Axis.

In addition to this, we’ve added new range indicators on blockades to help you seal your lanes.

Trap Range Indicator Updates

All traps now display two ground decals during placement and inspection modes:  one decal displaying the trigger radius, and another decal displaying the damage range! 

Minimap Improvements

The minimap now displays damage states for defenses. On top of the flashing when they get hit, towers will change colors from green, to yellow, to flashing red when below predefined health thresholds. Defenses that have been destroyed will also show up on the minimap with a blinking icon for 3 seconds for a better at-a-glance view of your moment-to-moment action.

Optimization Improvements

This patch includes several optimization improvements to the game, which should improve framerate on the Xbox One, PS4 and PC versions. We’re exploring more optimization changes to improve framerate, particularly on the console versions. Stay tuned for more information!

Xbox One Crash Fixes

This patch includes more Xbox One crash fixes!

Inventory Improvements

We’ve added a number of Inventory improvements in Patch 1.0.3:

• Items can now be moved into bags with Auto Sort active.

• Added a Hero Level/Ascension experience bar to the Inventory.

• More Shards have unique icons now! This will help you find the Shard you’re looking for.

• The Inventory now highlights any new item that the player didn't previously own until the player focuses on the new item. This includes auto-equipped items, items that have been manually picked up by the player, and bundled items like Shards.

• Items selected in your Inventory will now highlight any valid slots on the left side Hero Manager screen, making it easier to determine which items can be equipped where.

• The number of weapons a hero can equip is now accurate, which means only the Squire has two weapon slots now!

Disable Controller Vibration Option

For those who don’t like to play with your controller shaking like an earthquake, we’ve added the option to disable controller vibration!

Game Browser Gamepad UI Changes

We’ve made several usability changes to the Game Browser UI to make it easier to join and create games on gamepads!

• When using a gamepad, the Join Game, Create Game and Refresh List options are now permanent keybinds on the Game Browser rather than physical UI buttons you have to navigate to. This should make joining and creating games MUCH easier.

• On gamepad, individual game information will now update on highlight rather than on interact.

Xbox One Vsync Option

We’ve added a Vsync option for the Xbox One version in this patch!

Controller Deadzone Updates

Thanks to a wonderful Reddit post, we’ve updated our controller joystick deadzones. In case you don’t know, deadzones relate to how far you have to move the joystick from its central resting place before the game registers movement. A large deadzone means you have to push the joystick really far to the edge before movement begins; a small deadzone means very little joystick movement is needed. The result of these changes should improve overall joystick movement and give you more useful deadzone options.

• Added Deadzone option to PC

• Deadzones are now circles instead of squares

• Updated the Deadzone slider to provide more useful deadzone options

Defense Balance Updates

Explosive Trap

While this trap has always had high damage potential, both its trigger and effect ranges limited its practical usage. We've made some quality-of-life improvements to the defense along with a slight power increase.

• Trigger Range increase 150 -> 225 (+50%)

• Base Effect Range increased 200 -> 300 (+50%)

• Defense Power ratio increase 4.5 -> 5.5 (+22%)

• Critical Damage ratio updated to match relative Defense Power change

Cannonball Tower

Our stalwart Cannonball Tower now has slightly more reach, slightly faster firing, and slightly more punch.

• Range increased 2000 -> 2,500 (+25%)

• Base Attack Rate improved 3.0s -> 2.5s (17% Faster)

• Defense Power ratio increased 9.5 -> 11.5 (+21%)

• Critical Damage ratio updated to match relative Defense Power change

Harpy's Perch

While the Harpy has good range and attack speeds, it needs a lot more punch to be competitive.

• Defense Power ratio increased 1.9 -> 4.5 (+136%)

• Critical Damage ratio updated to match relative Defense Power changes

Angry Nimbus

Angry Nimbus is now a much longer-range defense, more akin to an Earthshatter, with a wide radius. We've made it cheaper to be easier to deploy. It doesn't have as much raw DPS as other single-target defenses, but its immense range / radius should give it placement options that higher-DPS defenses can't use.

• Range increased 2,500 -> 4,000 (+60%)

• DU Cost decreased 80 -> 60 (25% Cheaper)

• Defense Power ratio decreased 47.5 -> 40 (-16%)

Obelisk

Oby's one of our most-fun defenses, but with an extremely high cost coupled with a primary attack that only deals damage to 1 target very slowly, it was pigeonholed into a very narrow role. We've radically rebalanced the Obelisk by making it cheaper, faster, and at upgraded tiers, apply its cool effects more frequently.

• Cost decreased 100 -> 40 (60% Cheaper)

• Base Attack Rate improved 4.0s -> 3.0s (33% Faster)

• Attack Rate maximum improved from 2.0s max -> 0.75s max

• Duration of CC effects slightly reduced (to counterbalance the defense having a much faster rate of fire)

• Defense Power ratio decreased 50 -> 27.5 (-45%)

• Critical Damage ratio updated (uses custom critical damage scaling equal to Defense Power ratio)

Ballista

Range has been increased for the Ballista, along with a slight rate-of-fire increase.

• Range 2500 -> 3000 (+20%)

• Base Attack Rate improved 5.0s -> 4.0s (20% Faster)

Earthshatter Tower

Earthy's undergone a major facelift, drastically reducing its cost and improving its rate-of-fire. Its per-hit damage has come down slightly, but given that it was overkilling many smaller enemies by large values, these net changes should help reduce its massive overkilling problem.

• Cost decreased 80 -> 60 (25% Cheaper)

• Base Attack Rate improved 4.0s -> 3.0s (25% Faster)

• Defense Power ratio decreased 31 -> 25 (-20%)

• Critical Damage ratio updated to match relative Defense Power change

Sand Viper

Sand Viper was pretty flexible, but it lacked enough punch to be worth it (Split Vipers aside). We've improved it to keep it competitive in its base form with other defenses.

• Defense Power ratio increased 4.0 -> 5.5 (37.5%)

• Critical Damage ratio updated to match relative Defense Power change

Lightning Strikes Aura

The Lightning Strikes Aura received a bit more of a serious redesign. We have a lot of high-cost, high single-target damage defenses already. We're changing the LSA to have much lower cost, giving it more flexibility of placement, rather than focusing on massive damage per hit.

• Cost decreased 40 -> 20 (50% Cheaper)

• Base Attack Rate improved 5.0s -> 4.0s (20% Faster)

• Attack Rate maximum improved 2.0s max -> 1.0s max

• Defense Power ratio decreased 21 -> 13 (-39%)

• Critical Damage ratio updated to match relative Defense Power change

Hornet's Nest

• Now properly scales with Defense Speed!

• Defense Power increased from 1.6 -> 2.8

• Attack Rate decreased from 0.6 base to 1.2 base

• Maximum Attack Rate updated to 0.3

Blaze Balloon

The Blaze Balloon has a strong overall damage output, but a high cost that makes it difficult to slot. We've pulled down the cost significantly to make it easier to work into existing builds.

• Cost decreased 80 -> 60 (25% Cheaper)

• Defense Power ratio decreased 22.5 -> 17.5 (-22%)

• Critical Damage ratio updated to match relative Defense Power change

Poison Dart Tower

When we updated the PDT's targeting, it went from being a 'mostly' single-target tower to a multi-target death machine, and our balance did not really sync well with that functional change. We've revised its balance to bring it down closer to other multi-target defenses like the Flame Aura, while still giving it some punch against single enemies.

• Dart Defense Power ratio increased 1 -> 1.25 (+25%)

• Poison Defense Power ratio decreased 4 -> 2 (-50%)

• Critical Damage ratio updated (uses custom critical damage scaling of 3.0)

Serpent's Coil

While the impact of Serpent's Coil is small, we want Mystic players to leverage it and have boosted its power to make it a relatively safe choice.

• Defense Power ratio increased 3.0 -> 4.5 (+50%)

• Critical Damage ratio updated to match relative Defense Power change

Skeletal Archers

Archers were decent, but they weren’t quite strong enough to compete with some of our stronger defenses. We've given the twins some more 'muscle' behind their bows, as much as skeletons can use muscle...

• Defense Power ratio increased 9.0 -> 11.5 (+27%)

• Critical Damage ratio updated to match relative Defense Power change

Weapon Manufacturer

Well, apparently the weapon manufacture was mostly manufacturing auras, but very few weapons. We've reduced the overall damage output of its auras in the hopes that it still sees some use, but leans more heavily on the weapon aspect and a little less on the aura aspect.

• Defense Power ratio decreased 4 -> 3.25 (-19%)

• Fixed a bug where the node increase Shard effect would remain on built WMs after removing the Shard from the relic

• Critical Damage ratio updated to match relative Defense Power change

Other Balance Changes

Tiny Ogres (Campaign)

• Tiny Ogres (Campaign) now have the same rough health/dps as a T3 Drakin

Abyss Stone

Abyss Stone has been refactored. We've enabled proper Criticals and drastically increased the damage-per-hit but reduced its duration. The net result is roughly the same total damage, but with much higher damage-per-second. Additionally, Abyss Stones no longer interfere with the placement of future Abyss Stones.

• Ability Power ratio increased 6.0 -> 11.0

• Criticals properly enabled (uses default 15x ratio and proper Hero Crit Chance)

• Duration decreased 8s -> 6s

• Attack Rate slowed 0.5s -> 1.0s

Knight of the Abyss

KoA has been almost exclusively the go-to ability for the Abyss Lord, even after our last round of changes, and we're trying to breakup his combat gameplay a bit more by reducing his reliance purely on KoA for both damage and stuns by making this change alongside the Abyss Stone refactor.

• Ability Power ratio slightly decreased 21.5 -> 20.0

Shatter Combo/Frosty Proton Node

We’ve also finally made some updates to the Shatter combo effect. While we’re super happy to see players using Frosty Proton Node to setup this combo, we felt that the potential damage output of the Shatter effect was a bit too strong. We really didn’t want to nerf Frosty Proton Node, and there was certainly no call to nerf the Cannonball Tower, Earthshatter Tower, etc., so we went with a reduction to the Shatter effect itself. Shatter will still obliterate weaker enemies like Goblins, but after this patch, it will no longer be a guaranteed kill on tougher enemies like Drakin and Berserkers. We’ve also fixed it so it can now damage minibosses / special enemies, instead of just consuming the Freeze and having no effect.

Geode Prime Special Enemy

Geode Prime now has been updated to be a correct special miniboss.

• Health and Tenacity increased substantially

• Size and Collision increased as well

• Loot fixed to have the same loot drops/chances as other specials/minibosses

Other Changes

• Betsy weapons have been added to the Wayfarer shop.

• Monk’s Pole Smash can be activated in mid-air.

• When the Inventory is full and auto-collect is set to pick up items, those items are now sent to the Scavenger.

• A text announcement will now display when opening an individual Shard Pack letting you know what Shard you received.

• Updated the Xbox One and PS4 Options menu UI.

• Increased the placement range of EV2’s nodes.

• Volume will now update in real-time when adjusting the sliders in the Options menu.

• Ground lane wisps will now only appear in Campaign Normal.

• Updated Explosive Trap VFX and scaled them up a bit.

• Updated melee impact VFX for Squire and Monk.

• Buff Beam description updated to mention Defense Crit Damage effect.

• Increased Summary Screen timer to 90 seconds.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an item duping bug. All duped gear has been removed. Thanks for reporting this, Defenders! You da real MVPs.

• Made multiple changes to reduce the likelihood of seeing an infinite loading screen.

• Added a possible solution for inventory data getting wiped.

• Fixed a memory leak related to defenses.

• Relics will now properly drop while playing as the Gunwitch.

• The Zapper special enemy will appear in Chaos VII Trials once again! Mwahahaha!

• Fixed a stuck Siege Roller spawning issue in the Ramparts.

• Fixed a bug where the Invert Y Axis option wasn’t working properly.

• Fixed a bug where the Apprentice, Gunwitch and Lavamancer auto-collect options weren’t working properly.

• Fixed a bug where loot could drop without stats if it dropped while loading into a map.

• Fixed a bug where Abyss Stones couldn’t be placed in the same spot as a previous Stone.

• Fixed a bug where Slime Pits and Hornet's Nests would occasionally ignore enemies within range.

• Fixed multiple bugs where Shards weren’t dealing the correct damage type (Ability Power vs. Hero Damage, etc.)

• Slime Pit Slimes no longer try to attack flying enemies.

• Fixed a bug where the mouse cursor set itself to the upper-left corner instead of centered on screen when entering into menus.

• Fixed a bug where interacting with an item before the tooltip of the item loaded caused the tooltip to never unload.

• The Use Key context icon no longer appears enabled and usable on the open Lockbox UI when you don't have a key.

• Fixed a bug where the victory hero waving animations didn’t always play.

• Fixed a bug where the reticle didn’t correctly change colors for players, NPCs and objectives.

• Fixed a camera issue with the Seamstress.

• Fixed animation flickering issues with the Initiate’s Chi Stomp.

• The Monthly Mission pets from the DM shop are now display their proper meshes when viewed in the Petrinarian UI.

• Incursion weapons that drop in maps now have the correct level requirements.

• Fixed a bug where the Gunwitch's weapon wasn’t now properly displaying to other players.

• Fixed an issue where some cutscenes weren’t rendering properly.

• Fixed a bug where the Apprentice’s right-click animation wouldn’t play in mid-air.

• Fixed the name of the Glaive of Storms in the Wayfarer shop.

• Fixed a bug where purchasing a premium egg and then incubating it right afterward would cause a temp/placeholder icon to appear in Hatchery UI.

• Fixed a bug where Inventory Tooltips for Weapons, Gear and Pets in the top Inventory rows would get cut off in the comparison view.

• Fixed a bug where attempting to bind ` or Tab would break all functionality on the controls screen.

• Fixed several visual bugs and collision issues on the Hot Springs map.

• Fixed a bug where the controller users couldn’t scroll the Summary Screen on 4:3 resolutions.

• Fixed a bug where the Haunting Shard VFX was off center of weapon. Now spawns from center of player.

• Fixed a bug where the Siege Roller would get stuck when killing a blockade with a node nearby.

• Fixed a bug where the Call of the Kobold Shard VFX was not deactivating properly.

• Fixed a bug on PC where changing the Graphics Quality Preset option using a gamepad caused it to stick there.

• Removed some non-obscene phrases from the profanity filter.

• Fixed a visual bug with the Lockbox UI.

• Fixed a visual bug with the Initiate’s Defense Boost aura where the VFX would remain after the ability was finished.

• Fixed a visual bug with the Empowered Beam projectile.

• Fixed a bug where Hero Crit DMG and Elemental DMG sorting wasn’t accessible by gamepad.

• Fixed a bug where the hatchery UI would become unusable if a player incubated a Defender Medal egg but closed the UI without actually hatching it.

• Fixed a VFX bug with EV2’s Proton Charge ability.

• Bag Inventory warning no longer overlaps Quest UI.

• The Level Up popup no longer overlaps with the Build Phase/Combat Phase/Wave Complete popups.

• Fixed a bug where the Dryad World Tree’s “Damage Taken” stat wasn’t accurately displaying.

• PS4 - The Reset to Defaults popup in the Options menu no longer gets cut off with split-screen active.

• Fixed a bug where the Lavamancer’s right-click could move players into spawn points.

• Fixed a bug where a Weapon Manufacturer node could be placed inside a Flame Aura by inspecting the aura.

• Fixed a typo in the Sandstorm Warrior tooltip to accurately reflect its damage.

• Fixed a VFX issue with the Blaze Balloon while using the Corrupted Tower Skin set.

• Fixed a bug where hotswapping heroes would cause the hero to die.

• Automeow & G4-T0 are now able to roll their unique pet abilities again.

• Fixed a bug where the Inspiring Strikes Shard could trigger from defense attacks.

• Fixed a bug where certain special enemies weren’t spawning on the Forest Poachers Incursion.

• Fixed a bug where the Overwhelming Buster weapon Shard could be equipped to non-weapons.

• Fixed a bug where the Charged Shot weapon Shard could be equipped to non-weapons and incompatible weapons.

• Fixed a bug where sometimes keybindings couldn’t be rebound.

• Fixed a bug where the top bar UI currency element would disappear.

• Fixed a bug where the Apprentice marks wouldn’t clear properly if the Apprentice is hotswapped to another hero,

• Fixed a bug where the Fiery Brimstone Shard would appear to be equippable for non-Tomes.

• Fixed a bug where Harbinger Shards were dealing more damage to Siege Rollers than intended.

• Fixed a bug where Inspect Defense could not be used on EV2 defenses in certain situations.

• Fixed a bug where volume options when opening certain menus.

• Fixed a bug where the Skeletal Ramster would not hit targets close to it while under the effects of Direct Command.

• Fixed a bug where Shards in the World Tree would not get reapplied if the Tree was rebuilt after being destroyed.

• Fixed a bug where using Pole Smash on larger enemies that can’t get knocked up would still let the Skyguard attack them.

• Fixed an inventory icon VFX issue.

• Fixed a bug with flying enemy icons on the minimap.

• Fixed a bug with shop item tooltips not displaying correctly.

• Fixed a bug where the Ascension button would sometimes not be active when opening the Inventory.

• Fixed a bug where the Dryad was able to use abilities during transformation.

• Fixed a bug where using the Dryad’s Starfall immediately after transforming would cause the ability to malfunction.

• Fixed a bug where enemies would occasionally spawn under the map on Greystone Plaza.

• Fixed a bug where the Skeletal Orc blockade would incorrectly accept Direct Command before fully spawning in.

• Fixed a projectile firing issue with single-shot Polearms where the projectiles weren’t going towards enemies properly.

• Fixed a VFX problem with Legendary weapons on the Shard Equip screen.

• Fixed a VFX problem with the Flamethrower tower.

• Fixed a bug where enemies were able to walk up walls and around light posts on Little-Horn Valley.

• Fixed a bug where the Harbinger’s ranged attack wasn’t properly damaging certain defenses.

• Fixed a bug where the Dryad could get visually stuck in corrupt form when hotswapping.

• Fixed a VFX issue at the Costume Shop.

• Fixed a bug where the Split Vipers Shard could also grant the Constrictor Shard bonus without having the Constrictor Shard equipped.

• Fixed a VFX issue with the “New” icon on maps after unlocking them.

• Fixed a bug where the Fissure defense would remain “busy” if the wave ends while recharging.

• Fixed an issue with enemies getting stuck in spawners on Nimbus Reach.

• Fixed a text issue with the Fissure of Embermount.

• Fixed various text issues with the Heroes Marketplace.

• Fixed various text issues with the Emporium.

• Fixed a bug where one of the Buried Bastille cores did not have the correct health value.

• Fixed a bug where the Campaign boss timers were appearing in Chaos Trials.

• Fixed a bug where the gamepad controls would sometimes appear on the Game Browser while using mouse/keyboard.

• Fixed a bug where the full size of the buttons on the Summary Screen were not fully interactable.

• Fixed a bug where players using gamepads would be unable to join Public Games on the War Table if the auto-collect message would appear.

• Fixed a bug where players could get trapped inside the falling ships on the Betsy map.

• Fixed an issue where the flying lane icons would not appear on the Dawn of the Blood Moon Incursion.

• Fixed a VFX issue with the Ghastly Halberd.

• Fixed an issue with the taunt VFX from Shards.

• Fixed a VFX issue on the Create Hero screen.

Known Issues

• The Minimum Ascension Filter does not work when using the Continue function. This is something we’re going to fix in our upcoming patches.

• (PC) The controller will not work if you turn on the controller while on the Main Menu after a fresh boot of the game. Rebooting the game or waiting until you reach the Tavern or Town to turn on the controller will get around this issue.

Greetings Defenders,

It’s been a busy few weeks! We were absolutely blown away by the launch reception. As more players dove into the game, we scrambled to put out the server fires. You may have noticed several patches and maintenance updates since launch, which we’re pleased to report have greatly improved our server stability. On the Xbox One side, these server issues also caused several crashing issues -- most of which were fixed in last week’s patch! There’s still work to do, but things are looking brighter by the day.

Alongside Xbox One and server fixes, our team is working on Patch 1.0.3! This patch contains loot tweaks, balance changes, optimization updates, quality-of-life improvements and bug fixes based on the feedback we’ve seen since launch. It also includes a little something special for sticking with us through the launch madness! We’re still finalizing and testing the patch, so we don’t have a release date for Patch 1.0.3 yet. We’ll have a release date for you soon!

Here’s what’s coming in the patch:

FREE Beat the Heat Bundle & Weekend Events

In Patch 1.0.3, we’re giving away some exclusive gifts for hanging with us through our launch kinks. These items will only be available for a limited time once the patch comes out:

• A free 4,000 Defender Medal gift

• A free, exclusive Purrville the Helicatter pet!

• A free, exclusive Squilbur the Squid hat for the Squire!

• A free, exclusive PAWS the Corgi shoulder pal for the Squire!

• A free, exclusive shirtless beach Squire accessory!

• A free, exclusive Squire beach shorts accessory!

• And our eternal gratitude, which is the most priceless gift of all. Literally. It has absolutely no real-world value. Damn you, society!

Plus we’re doing TWO Double Gold Weekend events when the patch comes out! Keep your eyes peeled for more details on these free items!

Xbox One Crash Fixes

This patch will include more Xbox One crash fixes. It’s also our goal to release another hotfix before this patch releases with even more crash fixes!

Loot Drop Updates

After reviewing player feedback and diving into the data, we agree that item progress, especially in Chaos 4-7, is too slow. There are too many items spawning that only give very small increases in power. This is making it take far too long to beef up all your characters, and the problem gets worse as you play in the later Chaos difficulties.

So with this patch, in all Chaos difficulties (but especially in Chaos 4-7), items will drop with larger power increases than before, and we’re increasing the chance of finding items with larger power increases. Not only that, but we’re adding in the occasional chance for a ‘super drop,’ which gives you a chance at items that are substantially more powerful. There’s still a good bit of randomness in the system, so don’t expect to get loads of high-powered legendaries dumped on you in your first game. But there are now far more opportunities for ‘big wins’ than there were before, and we hope players really feel it!

While we don’t consider this a blanket ‘fix’ to all the known item issues the community has highlighted, we do consider it a great step in the right direction. More changes coming soon!

Four More Chaos VII Trials Maps

We’re adding four maps to the Chaos VII Trials rotation! These maps are:

• Little-Horn Valley

• Assault on Throne Room

• Buried Bastille

• The Dead Road

You’ll encounter 8 total maps when you tackle the C7 Trials. More Trials improvements to come!

Wall Collision & Range Indicator Updates

We’re increasing the collision size on our blockades!

• The Spike Blockade collision volume is 37% larger on the X axis and 20% larger on the Y axis.

• The Volcano's square collision volume is 37% larger.

• The Training Dummy's square collision volume is 18% larger.

• The Arcane Barrier's collision volume is 66% larger on the X axis.

• The Maw of the Earth Drake's collision volume is 25% larger on the X axis.

• The Viper's Fangs collision volume is 11% larger on both the X and Y Axis.

• The Colossus' collision volume is 33% larger on its Y Axis.

In addition to this, we’ve added new range indicators on blockades to help you seal your lanes.

Trap Range Indicator Updates

All traps now display two ground decals during placement and inspection modes:  one decal displaying the trigger radius, and another decal displaying the damage range!

Minimap Improvements

The minimap now displays damage states for defenses. On top of the flashing when they get hit, towers will change colors from green, to yellow, to flashing red when below predefined health thresholds. Defenses that have been destroyed will also show up on the minimap with a blinking icon for 3 seconds for a better at-a-glance view of your moment-to-moment action.

Balance Updates

We’re making numerous balance updates to specific defenses with this patch, with a special focus on a few of our less frequently used defenses.

Most of our fixed-target towers (Cannonball Tower, Harpy’s Perch, Earthshatter Tower, etc.) will see a substantial increase in their overall DPS. This is a straight stat boost to these towers, trying to make them competitive with defense that can hit many targets. We want to see these towers leveraged more, especially in Chaos difficulties where projectile towers are expected to shine.

Defenses with extremely slow ATK Rates (Earthshatter, Lightning Strikes Aura, etc.) will see some improvements in their ATK Rate. While we’re not expecting every defense to hit as fast as the Flame Aura, the slow ATK Rates on these defenses has lead to a lot of ‘overkill’ damage and general targeting failures. These defenses will fire faster by roughly a second or so than they are currently, with corresponding adjustments to Defense Power and Crit Damage ratios.

Next up, many of our defenses with very high DU/Mana costs will see their base costs come down. Defenses like the Blaze Balloon have proven hard to use, despite their relatively high DPS outputs, and we want to get them back into regular usage. This change is intended to be more of a usability improvement and not a straight stat buff, so we’re accompanying these changes with corresponding reductions to their Defense Power and Crit Damage ratios when appropriate.

There’s a few bug fixes going in that will affect balance as well. Swapping shards to temporarily increase the max nodes on some of EV2’s defenses has been eliminated; you must leave the shard on the defense or the extra nodes are removed. We’ve also fixed a terrible bug with Hornet’s Nest that was crippling its DPS, and it should result in it being quite a powerful defense again!

We’ve also finally made some updates to the Shatter combo effect. While we’re super happy to see players using Frosty Proton Node to setup this combo, we felt that the potential damage output of the Shatter effect was a bit too strong. We really didn’t want to nerf Frosty Proton Node, and, there was certainly no call to nerf the Cannonball Tower, Earthshatter Tower, etc., so we went with a reduction to the Shatter effect itself. Shatter will still obliterate weaker enemies like Goblins, but after this patch it will no longer be a guaranteed kill on tougher enemies like Drakin and Berserkers. We’ve also fixed it so it can now damage minibosses / special enemies, instead of just consuming the Freeze and having no effect.

And while the reign of the Weapon Manufacturer (and to a lesser extent, the Poison Dart Tower) has been interesting, it’s proven to be too much of a ‘one stop shop’ solution to many Chaos difficulties. As such, we’re making some adjustments to reduce its dominance, with the hopes of seeing diversity increase with these changes plus our numerous defense buffs.

We hope these changes will improve diversity and flexibility amongst builders in all Chaos difficulties! Fans of the Mystic and the Obelisk will want to take special note, as it’s undergoing some pretty radical balance updates with this patch. (It’s basically hit by every one of our core changes listed above!)

Optimization Improvements

This patch includes several optimization improvements to the game, which should improve framerate across all three platforms but particularly on the PS4 and Xbox One versions. We’re exploring more optimization changes to improve framerate on the console versions. Stay tuned for more information!

Inventory UI & Shard Icon Tweaks

We’re adding a number of Inventory UI improvements in Patch 1.0.3:

• More Shards have unique icons now! This will help you find the Shard you’re looking for.

• The Experience/Ascension bar is now permanently located on the Inventory screen

• The Inventory now highlights any new item that the player didn't previously own until the player focuses on the new item. This includes auto-equipped items, items that have been manually picked up by the player, and bundled items like Shards.

• Items selected in your Inventory will now highlight any valid slots on the left side Hero Manager screen, making it easier to determine which items can be equipped where.

• The number of weapons a hero can equip is now accurate, which means only the Squire has two weapon slots now!

Disable Controller Vibration Option

For those who don’t like to play with your controller shaking like an earthquake, we’re adding the option to disable controller vibration!

Game Browser UI Changes

We’re making several usability changes to the Game Browser UI to make it easier to join and create games on controllers!

Xbox One Vsync Option

We’re adding a Vsync option for the Xbox One version in this patch!

Controller Deadzone Updates

Thanks to a wonderful Reddit post, we’re exploring updates to our controller joystick deadzones. In case you don’t know, deadzones relate to how far you have to move the joystick from its central resting place before the game registers movement. A large deadzone means you have to push the joystick really far to the edge before movement begins; a small deadzone means very little joystick movement is needed. The result of these changes should improve overall joystick movement and give you more useful deadzone options. This is a stretch goal for the patch, so if it doesn’t come out in this patch, it’ll come out in the patches following.

Bug Fixes

Finally, this patch will contain a number of bug fixes, including a fix for the auto-collect options not working properly.

Thanks for your support, Defenders, and stay tuned for more information on Patch 1.0.3 and the FREE Beat the Heat bundle!

Love,
The Trendy Team

Greetings Defenders,

Our first Xbox One patch is here! This patch fixes the biggest Xbox One crashes and bugs you’ve reported to us:

Bug Fixes

• Fixed the loading screen crashes.

• Fixed the Town crashes.

• Fixed the Series EV2 proton beam crash.

• Fixed a number of crashes that would happen when placing certain Dryad defenses, Lavamancer defenses and auras.

• Fixed a bug where players were unable to properly equip costumes.

In addition to these fixes, this patch includes a number of features and improvements from the 1.0 Update that were not available at launch, including tutorial improvements, new Campaign gameplay updates and more. With this patch, Xbox One is now fully up-to-date with the PC & PS4 versions! You can find the full 1.0 patch notes here.

Thanks for your overwhelming support! We’re continuing to work on server stability and improvements, and we’re also cooking up our first big post-launch update. Stay tuned for more information!

Love,
The Trendy Team

Dungeon Defenders II is officially out of Early Access and free-to-play on Xbox One, PC & PS4! With this major milestone in our game’s history, we’re releasing Update 1.0.

Update 1.0 focuses on our New Player Experience. This update fixes a ton of bugs, adds a lot of polish, introduces more quality-of-life changes, improves our early-game experience, and gets new players through Campaign and deep into Chaos. After today, we’re spinning up on features and changes you’ve been asking for (Endless Mode says hi).

We’ve been in Early Access for more than two years. With more than 60+ updates, Dungeon Defenders II has grown up before our very eyes. It’s been exciting and, quite frankly, a little unnerving to develop a game with you watching every step of the way. Our growth and improvement is because of your support, your feedback and the dedicated members of our team who went above and beyond to drive our game forward. We’re proud of where Dungeon Defenders II is today, but launch is just the beginning. With your support, Dungeon Defenders II is only going to get bigger and better!

Here are the notes for Update 1.0:

Xbox One Version Available Now!

Brewed in secrecy, the Xbox One version is finally here! Download the game for free here.

The Xbox One version includes:

• All of the content & features from the other versions of the game

• A limited-time exclusive map & Incursion:  Yeti’s Revenge

  • This map and Incursion will be available on PC & PS4 in our next major update!

• An exclusive pet

• An exclusive weapon

Features

The Initiate

Come on and SLAM!

The Initiate is our first gender-swap hero. This powerful Chi-wielding warrior is the gender swap of our bald friend, the Monk. She uses the same defenses as the Monk, but she comes with a suite of new abilities:

• Chi Stomp:  A powerful slam that can be activated in mid-air!

• Crippling Chi Wave:  The Initiate builds up a glowing ball of Chi and launches it at her enemies, which damages and debuffs any enemies hit!

• Talisman of Empowerment:  The Initiate places a talisman on the ground that temporarily boosts the power of nearby defenses!

The Initiate is available at a lower Gem and Defender Medal price than other heroes. And don’t worry:  The Barbarian will have his time to shine soon.

Updated Tutorials

Play our all new Tutorial map and check out our new Tutorial videos with the new How To Play Menu! The new videos and map cover a variety of helpful hints, tips, and tricks that will aid in your defense of Etheria!

Updated Story and Campaign

Etheria has never felt so alive! Play through the updated story in our revamped Campaign experience and stave off the Old Ones advance. Prepare for new threats and twists that will appear. Make sure to keep an eye out during Build Phase!

New Summary Screen & Score System

At the end of each map, whether you win or lose, there’s a new summary screen that will score you based on your performance. Our new scoring system includes many different modifiers and bonuses to help you tweak your builds and get higher and higher on your personal mental leaderboard. Shortly after the release of score, we’ll add some form of score tracking for players to see!

Updated HUD & Health Bars

We’ve updated a number of our Heads-Up Display elements to make the UI cleaner while providing more information. The biggest change is the addition of hero deck hotkeys above the Health Bar. Now you can easily see which hero is in which hero deck slot hotkey, which is especially handy if you’re the kind of player who constantly rotates heroes in and out of your Hero Deck!

New Tower Skins

Check out the all new Bit Crush Dryad, Woodland Apprentice, and Hypno Abyss Lord Tower Skins! (Time for an Abyss Lord/Monk defensive DANCE PARTY! Unce unce unce #hype)

New Shard Icons

We’ve added new iconography for some of the most popular Shards in the game. We’ll continue to improve on our Shard icons after launch!

• Channel - Icon Type Change

• Inspiration - Icon Type Change

• Hero Critical Strike - Minor Border Change

• Life Leech - Icon Type Change

• Speed Boost - Icon Type Change

• Superconductor - Icon Type Change

• Construction - Icon Type Change

• Explosive Guard - Icon Type Change

• Defensive Critical Damage - Minor Border Change

• Destruction - Minor Border Change

• Fortification - Minor Border Change

• Deadly Strikes - Icon Type Change

• Panic Fire - Icon Type Change

• Press Your Luck - Icon Type Change

Incursions & Legendary Weapons

As part of our New Player Experience, we’ve introduced Incursions into Chaos! The goal of our Incursions is to provide variety and progression milestones as players progress through Chaos.

Each Chaos tier will now have its own unique Incursions. After completing an Incursion, you’ll unlock unique Legendary weapons at the Wayfarer! The Wayfarer will forge these unique weapons based on your highest powered hero. The Wayfarer will sell these weapons for Defender Medals, so be sure to sell those Souls4Gold when the update comes out!

As for long-term gameplay variety in our endgame, we have a number of interesting changes and features we’re going to add post-launch. Stay tuned!

New Weapons

In addition to the Wayfarer weapons, we’ve added many new weapon models to the game across many of our different heroes. Go forth and get that sweet new loot!

PS4 Optimization

This update improves PS4 framerate, especially when a lot of enemies are on-screen at once. This is just the first of our optimization updates for the PS4 -- shortly after launch, we have a litany of other changes that should improve framerate even more!

Quality of Life

• Added a new Minimum Ascension Level host option.

• Added the ability to rename your heroes for free in the Inventory.

• Added controller sensitivity option on PC.

• Revamped range indicator decals for visibility.

• Now you can play and access everything on PC with a controller, including the Options Menu!

• Added the names of defenses under relic slots.

• Added Server Region display to the Main Menu.

• Improved the Flamethrower Tower’s visual effects.

• Added a minimap and NPC blips to the Heroes Marketplace.

• Improved player name display with proper capitalization!

• Added a “Hold <blank> to rotate tower” for PC controller users.

• Improved and unified the look of many different UIs.

• Updated the first quest in the game to have smarter text and a better UI.

• Victory chests show up on all minimaps.

• The War Table in the Private Tavern should now default to Private Games. Such private. Many seekrits.

• Updated the game icon to the Squire’s Head. This was the most important change of all.

Balance

Core Health

• Increased the core health in Chaos to protect against enemies one-shotting the core

Shards

• Ballista - Black Arrow damage increased from 50% to 60%.

• Cannonball - Stun Fire proc increased to 25% and stun duration from 2.4 to 3.0 seconds.

• Cannonball - Heavy Cannonball damage increased from 950% to 1250%.

• Earthshatter - Earth Toss proc chance increased from 35% to 100%. Knockup duration increased slightly.

• Fire for Effect chance increased from 25% to 45%

• Flame Aura - Encroaching Flames proc chance increased from 25% to 30% and damage increased from 40% to 60%.

• Skeletal Archer - Explosive Arrows proc chance increased from 15% to 30% and damage increased from 110% to 450%.

• Snakes on a Plane - Proc chance increased from every 5 seconds to every 3 seconds and damage increased from 525% to 3000%.

• Enduring Bubble - Levels increased from 8 to 10. Buff duration decreased from +5 seconds to +2 seconds.

• Lateral Blast - Damage increased from 725% to 2250%.

• Mega Rock - Proc chance increased from every 10 volleys to every 5 volleys. Damage increased from 1150% to 4000%.

• Frosty Proton Node - Proc chance increased from 5% to 25%, duration decreased from 5 to 2 seconds.

• Gunwitch’s Hunting Blind Tower damage unchanged from 0% to 0%.

Betsy Weapons

• Betsy weapons now have their shards locked in a shard slot to mimic their old, pre-shard passive effects.

• Apprentice and Huntress Betsy Weapons have had updated firing rates and damage to better match our new balanced solutions.

• Updated Betsy’s Empowered Lightning Shard description to make more sense.

Bug Fixesss

• Fixed another magical Proton beam crash. Huzzah!

• Fixed an issue with an endless black screen after multiple loading screens.

• Hero Information and Currency indicators should no longer overlap.

• Improved fullscreen and windowed game display modes.

• Fixed another Siege Roller stuck issue.

• Power Transfer Shard functions when equipped to Boost Aura now.

• “Speeds” are “Orbs” again.

• “Skulls” are “Marks” again. We have no idea how that happened.

• This also means the Orb and Mark filters work again!

• Abyss Lord’s Abyss Stones are now able to crit.

• This update fixes a bug where multiplayer enemy health scaling was scaling higher than intended. Per-player enemy health scaling is now +25% rather than +50%. Go forth and defend with friends!

• Fixed an issue where you could not drop a Shard onto a bag icon.

• Shard Packs and Shards should go through the proper auto-collect flow now.

• Fixed a text pop up at a really high Ascension level.

• Jumping and using the right click dash on the Lavamancer should work properly now while dashing around the map. No more randomly hitting invisible walls! HOORAY!

• The Ogres on the Forest Ambush Incursion thought it’d be really cool to just T-pose for fun. We set them straight.

• The crosshair reticle should now turn the correct colors when targeting allies and other things in game. It will be colors other than red now! ADDITIONAL HOORAYS.

• Updated several error message text to make more sense.

• The resolution selector in the Options Menu is now scrollable with scroll wheels.

• The World Tree now properly gets destroyed during the Victory animation if it’s too close to the Victory Chests.

• Updated the description on the Shadowflame Dagger.

• Updated the consumable tooltip to use the new UI.

• Combined Power - Serpent’s Coil beams will now attack training dummies.

• Updated the error text if there are no marked targets for Arcane Volley.

• Gunwitch’s Snipe Critical Damage Shard no longer applies to all elemental damage.

• Fixed the Level 50 Level Up Pop Up to show Level 50 instead of “Level 0”.

• Renamed the default hero names to their classes.  Squire is now “Squire.”  Monk is now “Monk.”  Barbarian is now “Pete.”

• Fixed a challenge display issue where it would render completed challenges twice in the UI.

• Flame Aura properly calculates crit damage and chance into its inspected DPS number.

• Fixed a matchmaking issue where if Player 2 declines, then Player 1 gets an “Unknown Error.”

• Fiery Brimstone Shard now only works for the Abyss Lord as originally designed and fixed the critical damage scaling on the procs from 100% to 12% where it should be.

• Unequipping items will go through the auto-collect flow and go to the bags that they should be.

• Fixed an issue where swapping to EV2 Mark III was causing a rogue torso to display.

• Fixed Drakken’s eyes and mouths to be glowing properly.

• Added a notification that a party request has been sent to another player.

• The “Could not authenticate with Steam… try again?” pop up was missing some buttons.  We gave them back.

• Fixed a crash if you had selected Exit on a menu screen while an immediate message was being displayed.

• Mystic’s Dark Torment damage over time critical effect is no longer scaling inversely with hero damage.

• Fixed a billboard issue on Siege of the Throne Room.

• Fixed an area where Kobolds could get stuck in the Ruins.

• G4T0’s facial animations have been restored! Beep boop. Bloop.

• Fixed a boost aura description typo.  “Precentage” is right… right?

• Fixed small lighting issues on the Dryad Hornet’s Nest and Slime Pit.

• Monk’s alternate attack is no longer blocked by towers.

• Fixed the wyvern death animation.

• The Weapon Filter on the Filter By… bag no longer has defense stat options.

• Fixed a spot on Dragonfall Plaza where the Dryad could exit the map.

• Fixed several small issues with tower damage challenges.

• Fixed a massive performance issue with Shield Geodes.  Should be most noticeable on PS4.

• PS4 - Dark Torment’s visual effects now display properly.

Known Issues

• No “Press G to End Match” message is displayed after beating wave 4 on Airship Battle. This is only a visual problem and G still functions correctly.

• Glaive of Storms isn’t currently purchasable in the wayfarer shop. It still unlocks and drops from the Power Surge Incursion.

• Glaive of Storms’ unique shard is missing its icon.

Three more days. Just three more days until Dungeon Defenders II launches on Xbox One, PC & PS4. Three more days until the game is officially out of Early Access and free-to-play on all platforms. Excuse us while we hyperventilate. OH GOD. *grabs knees*

On June 20th, along with this major milestone in our game’s history, we’re releasing Update 1.0, which is focused on our New Player Experience. In our Devstream above and blog below, we’ll walk you through the major beats of the patch. After June 20th, we’re spinning up on lots of features and changes you’ve been asking for (Endless Mode says hi).

Launch is just the beginning. With your support, Dungeon Defenders II is only going to get bigger and better!

Gender Swap:  The Initiate

Come on and SLAM. The Initiate is joining us on June 20th!

 The Initiate is our first gender-swap hero. This powerful Chi-wielding warrior is the gender swap of our bald friend, the Monk. She uses the same defenses as the Monk, but she comes with a suite of new abilities.

• Chi Stomp:  A powerful slam that can be activated in mid-air!

• Crippling Chi Wave:  The Initiate builds up a glowing ball of Chi and launches it at her enemies, which damages and debuffs any enemies hit!

• Talisman of Empowerment:  The Initiate places a talisman on the ground that temporarily boosts the power of nearby defenses!

The Initiate is available at a lower Gem and Defender Medal price than other heroes. And don’t worry:  The Barbarian will have his time to shine soon.

New Tutorial Mission + Tutorial Videos

We’ve completely revamped our tutorial mission! Our new tutorial teaches players how to place different types of defenses, how to hotswap between different heroes and more. We’ve also added a new How To Play section with additional videos to teach players about advanced tactics, loot, Inventory and more.

Updated Campaign & Story

We’ve given our early-game experience some additional love! On several maps, we’ve added new mutators to keep the gameplay experience fresh through the Campaign. We’ve also fleshed out the existing story with new cutscenes and new in-game dialogue. If you’ve already played the Campaign, be sure to grab a new hero and check out the changes! There might be a few hints of things to come...

Incursions + Legendary Weapons

As part of our New Player Experience, we’ve introduced Incursions into Chaos! The goal of our Incursions is to provide variety and progression milestones as players progress through Chaos.

Each Chaos tier will now have its own unique Incursions. After completing an Incursion, you’ll unlock unique Legendary weapons at the Wayfarer! The Wayfarer will forge these unique weapons based on your highest powered hero. The Wayfarer will sell these weapons for Defender Medals, so be sure to sell those Souls4Gold when the update comes out!

As for long-term gameplay variety in our endgame, we have a number of interesting changes and features we’re going to add post-launch. Stay tuned!

Updated HUD + Health Bars

We’ve updated a number of our HUD elements to make the UI cleaner while providing more information. You can check out the Devstream video to see it in action, but the biggest change is the addition of hero deck hotkeys above the Health Bar. Now you can easily see which hero is in which hero deck slot hotkey, which is especially handy if you’re the kind of player who constantly rotates heroes in and out of your Hero Deck!

New Summary Screen & Score System

It’s finally here! We’ve implemented a new summary screen at the end of the match, and the biggest new change here is our score system! Each match, you and your team will be given a score based on how well you played and built. We’ve included a number of multipliers in this first iteration of the score system. Optimize your builds to get the best score! In the future, we plan on adding leaderboards, rewards and more based on our score system!

PS4 Optimization

This update improves PS4 framerate, especially when a lot of enemies are on-screen at once. This is just the first of our optimization updates for the PS4 -- shortly after launch, we have a litany of other changes that should improve framerate even more!

Shard Buffs

We’re continuing our Shard Buffs! These buffs are focused on hero-specific Shards, especially on Defense Shards. More Shard Buffs (and Defense Buffs) will come post-launch!

First Shard Icon Updates

We’ve updated the icons of some of the more popular Shards to help you find them easier in your Inventory. We’ll continue to update our Shard system, you guessed it, post-launch.

Host Option:  Minimum Ascension Level

In the update, you’ll be able to set a minimum Ascension Level for your matches! You can use this feature to reduce the number of new players jumping into Chaos VII matches -- of course, if you want to help the newbies out, you can keep this set to 0. More host tools are on the way!

Hero Renaming

Hero renaming! For free! From the Inventory, you can rename all of your heroes as often as you want.

Multiplayer Scaling Bug Fix

This update fixes a bug where multiplayer enemy health scaling was scaling higher than intended. Per-player enemy health scaling will now be +25% rather than +50%. Go forth and defend with friends!

New Tower Skins

We’ve added several new sets of Tower Skins so you can betterfy your towerz.

Full Controller Support on PC

Now you can play and access everything on PC with a controller, including the Options Menu!

Bug Fixes

Tons of them.

We can’t wait for Tuesday. We’ll see you there, Defenders!

Love,
The Trendy Team

Dungeon Defenders II is launching on Xbox One, PC & PS4 on June 20th!

For more than two years, we’ve delivered 60+ updates during Early Access. We’re finally ready to tell the world that Dungeon Defenders II is officially here. And we’re excited to tell people that, yes, we’re bringing our game to the Xbox One!

On June 20th, Dungeon Defenders II will be free-to-play on ALL platforms. If you’ve been waiting for F2P to jump into the PS4 version, or if you’ve been waiting for the Steam version to leave Early Access, that day is your day.

When the Xbox One version launches, it'll come with an exclusive pet, an exclusive weapon and a limited-time exclusive map. The new map will make its way to the other versions shortly after the release of the Xbox One version! What is that new map? Perhaps the trailer above offers some clues.

We know you have plenty of questions. We’ve tried to anticipate and answer the more popular ones below, but if you have another question, ask us in the comments!

Your Anticipated Questions

First of all, how hard was it to keep the Xbox One version a secret?

SO DAMN HARD. You have no idea how many times we wanted to tell people. Yes, we love our Xbox fans, and we can’t wait for you to experience Dungeon Defenders II three weeks from now!

Is Xbox One free-to-play?

Yes! From the very first day, the Xbox One version is free-to-play.

Is the Xbox One version up-to-date with the PC & PS4 versions?

We’re working right now to get the Xbox One version as close to the PC & PS4 versions as possible. If it’s not at parity with the other versions on launch day, we’ll get the Xbox One version on parity shortly thereafter.

Will the Xbox One version always be up-to-date with the PC & PS4 versions?

On the Xbox One, we need to put our updates through a more stringent certification process than we do on PC or PS4. It’s our goal to release Xbox One updates as close to day-and-date as possible, but the cert process could mean that Xbox One updates could come out a little later.

Is this the end of development?

NO. With your support, we’re going to bring new content, new features, quality-of-life changes, optimization improvements, continued bug fixes and so much more to Dungeon Defenders II.

What are you working on between now and launch?

Greetings, Defenders! We hope you’ve been enjoying The Loot Update! These two patches on PC & PS4 fix the issues we’ve seen since the update came out:

Patch 21.2 (May 30th, 2017)

Patch 21.1 (May 26th, 2017)

Max Loot Stat Range Fix

• Loot wasn't rolling up to the intended Chaos stat ranges. This is now fixed. You should now find loot with higher stats in every Chaos tier!

  • In all Chaos tiers, loot will now roll up to a higher maximum stat number than before The Loot Update.

  • If you had max Chaos 7 loot from before The Loot Update that was boosted with the update, you should now find loot that’s equal or slightly higher than that. Everyone else is able to find this same loot when they reach the top end of Chaos 7.

Love,

The Trendy Team

The Loot Update is out now on PC & PS4! Read on to learn all about the update.

Loot Updates

We’ve been working on a series of changes that takes the new loot system from the Trials update and tweaks it to make loot more interesting and more intuitive. It applies the feedback we’ve received since the Trials update and instills more of the spirit of the loot system from the original Dungeon Defenders. These changes will apply to all new drops; your current gear will be unaffected with the exception of the upgrade scaling change. We hope you’ll enjoy the following changes:

New Stat Rolling System

Before this update, rarity affected the stats on loot -- the higher the rarity, the higher the stat roll. This was intended to make higher rarities desirable, but this was actually making progression slower than intended and caused roadblocks in progression. Equipped Legendaries (and even Mythicals) would increase the time until your next stat upgrade, and in some cases, it stopped intended stat upgrades from appearing at the end of a Chaos tier. We’ve removed this, and in its place, we’ve made some exciting changes to rarities to make them worthwhile to find. You’ll discover these changes later in the patch notes.

Something else that’s plagued loot in DD2 is its lack of multi-dimensionality. When you look back at the first Dungeon Defenders, the loot system begged you to give every loot drop a chance. There wasn’t always a simple “yes” or “no” of whether an item was better for you. Stats on loot rolled individually, so there were vastly more implications when deciding if a drop was better or worse for you. Say an item rolled with Defense Power and Defense Health. Perhaps Defense Power rolled higher than your current gear, but Defense Health rolled lower. Is that a tradeoff you’re willing to make? Is power worth more than health for your particular build? Worth more at this point in your progression? Is it bad for one hero but better for another? This kind of decision making was a driving force in DD1 in both the main progression and in the endgame.

With that spirit in mind, loot stats will now roll independently from each other! This should instill more of those interesting decisions into loot, and at the same time, it’ll introduce sidegrade opportunities to improve your speed of progression!

4 Stats on Legendaries!

Legendaries are going to roll with an additional stat! If Legendaries are going to be rare, then you should mess yourself a little when you see that golden beam rising toward the heavens. Throughout our Early Access period, we’ve learned (and you’ve learned) that you don’t need that extra stat in order to succeed. But there was a certain joy in DD1’s loot when all of those beautiful stats rolled on a single item. It was that little extra push to keep playing and keep hunting. This change should make Legendaries feel just that much more special. Along with this change...

New Fixed Upgrades Per Tier & Upgrade Scaling

Rarities have new upgrades! As of this update, each rarity has a specific upgrade number that the rarity will always drop with.

• Legendary:  Will always drop with 60 upgrades

• Mythical, Epic and Powerful:  Will always drop with 30 upgrades

There was an upgrade bug with late C6/C7 loot where max stats gained by upgrading was way higher than intended. The issue wasn't the amount of stats you could get; it was the growth per upgrade. This would have caused major stat issues in future Chaos tiers, so we've changed the growth rate.

We didn't want to leave you guys being unable to reach the same amount of stats as before, so we also increased the stat roll range for all Chaos tiers. This means you can reach the same stat values (if not higher) as before, but you're relying a little less on upgrades in higher Chaos tiers and more on the actual loot drops.

Increased Armor & Weapon Shard Slots to 3

We’ve also increased the Armor and Weapon Shard Slots from 2 to 3! Even better, these 3 Shard Slots will appear on both Legendary AND Mythical loot! We can’t wait to see what new builds you’ll create with these changes.

Increased Loot Drops

We’ve increased the amount of loot that drops in Trials!

Loot Rolls Based on the Most Powerful Hero in Your Deck

One of the most common confusion points of our new loot system was how loot generated. Before this update, loot generated based on the average stat power of every hero in your deck, so if you had heroes with worse stats than others, the generated loot would be worse. In this update, loot will generate based on the most powerful hero in your deck. You won’t have to remove your other 3 heroes before Combat Phase just to get the best loot. Based on our playtesting, this change alone removes a lot of the WTF moments from our new loot system.

Increased Stat Roll Ranges

Speaking of loot generation, loot is generated in a +/- range around your equipped gear. Currently, that +/- range is fairly small. There aren’t enough of those “wow” moments of finding a loot drop with big stat upgrades -- not enough of those “power spike” moments. We’re increasing this range so that power spikes happen more frequently. Another thing to note is that with the new individual stat rolling, items that would previously be an across-the-board “-” roll (since both stats rolled in identical numbers) could now become possible upgrades!

Higher Loot Cap Per Chaos to Help Bridge the Gaps

For some players, moving between Chaos tiers was easy enough. For others, the gaps felt like an impenetrable wall. That’s what we’ve heard over and over since the Trials update.

In the loot system introduced in Trials, each Chaos tier drops better and better loot up to a certain point. Once you hit that point, you’ll need to move on to the next Chaos tier in order to keep finding better loot. With this update, we’re increasing the maximum loot cap per Chaos tier. If you can’t survive the leap to the next Chaos tier, you can now progress higher in your current tier. This additional power potential should decrease the gaps and increase your upward mobility.

Increased Gold Rewards

Players weren’t earning enough gold in earlier Chaos tiers. For rough comparison, Chaos 1 only awarded around 13,000 gold per victory, while Chaos 7 awards around 56,000 gold.

So in this update, we’ve increased the gold rewards in all Chaos tiers below Chaos 7, with significant increases in the early Chaos tiers that taper off into the higher tiers. For example, Chaos 1 should now award closer to 21,000 gold, which is around a 60% increase in gold per victory! This should greatly help with the gold squeeze in earlier difficulties. It’s also worth noting that our increased loot drops will leave players with more gold than before. We’ll continue to monitor the gold-per-hour and gold-per-difficulty players achieve at these new values and make more adjustments if needed.

As a result, players will see an increase in gold earnings with this new patch, and that’s not even including the following change:

Consecutive Win Bonus XP & Gold

In this update, we’re rounding out our Consecutive Win feature by introducing Gold and XP bonuses! You’ll begin to earn these bonuses on your 1st overall win, and these bonuses will grow up to a cap. The more you play, the more you’ll earn! (Also, we’re actively working on Matchmaking fixes. Several fixes will come out in this update, which includes possible solutions for being unable to continue after the end of a match, and more fixes are on the way soon. We’ll continue to make the Consecutive Win bonus and Matchmaking feel better and better!)

Experience and Ascension Updates

We’re happy with how fast players are earning Ascension levels when they’re playing at a challenging difficulty. But some players are farming much, much lower difficulties to earn Ascension levels at very fast rates, and it’s thrown off our estimate on how fast players would earn Ascension levels.

When we released Chaos 6 and Chaos 7, some players had steamrolled way ahead of our Ascension estimates by farming earlier Chaos difficulties. In essence, we had two audiences -- one that was at or near the target Ascension level for Chaos 6, and another group that had pulled way, way ahead. Balancing new difficulties for these two different audiences became quite challenging, and we realized we needed to close the gap between them a bit if we wanted to keep releasing new difficulties.

So to help hit that goal, we’ve made the following changes:

New Difficulty XP Bonuses and New XP Curve

Each higher Chaos difficulty gives much more experience. Chaos 5, by comparison, now awards several times more experience than it used to. This means that playing at higher difficulties gives much more experience than playing at lower difficulties.

But we’re also increasing the amount of experience required to earn each level. These changes combined mean that if you’re currently playing Chaos 5, it’s more efficient to farm Chaos 4 or Chaos 5 for experience rather than going all the way back down to Chaos 1. This change won’t alter your existing Ascension level, but it will update the amount of experience you need to reach the next level.

The time-to-level should not increase if you’re playing at a challenging difficulty, but it will increase if you’re playing at a difficulty way below where you should be. In practical terms, this means Chaos 1 will no longer be the most efficient difficulty for every player to earn Ascension levels, especially if you’re well over Ascension 200.

New Ascension Power Caps

While our first change is targeted at smoothing out the rate of progression and encouraging players to play harder difficulties, this next change is intended to limit the overall power of players who are many times over the target Ascension level for our hardest difficulty.

With Chaos 7 being our current hardest difficulty, we have lowered the cap on powers from 999 to somewhere in the mid-100s (roughly 140). Powers that were capped at 10, 15, or 20 are unchanged; only the powers that had 999 caps are affected. As we release harder difficulties, the cap will go up.

If you’re under Ascension level 400, this won’t affect you at all as you wouldn’t have enough points to hit any cap. But if you’re over Ascension 420 (roughly), you may notice you’re starting to hit caps that will require you to diversify your points rather than stacking them into a single power.

Accompanying this change is a free reset of all Ascension points, allowing all players to freely update their Ascension Powers. Our intent is to shrink the power gap a bit between our most dedicated fans (some of whom are over Ascension 1,000!) and the vast majority of our playerbase (most of whom are less than Ascension 300), so we can continue to release content that challenges both audiences in a timely fashion.

New Ascension Level Rewards

We didn’t want this update to be all redos and system updates, so we’ve included some new rewards for reaching higher Ascension levels!

Starting with Ascension level 100 (and continuing up to 1,000), players will earn rewards for hitting Ascension milestones. One of the rewards will be new titles, available to our more dedicated players who push the upper ends of Ascension.

New Multiplayer Enemy Scaling

Thanks to your feedback, enemy damage in multiplayer will no longer scale with each additional player added to the game. Now, only enemy health will scale! Play around with this and let us know how it feels now!

Our First PS4 Trophies

Our first PS4 Trophies are available in this update! This is just a first small batch of trophies; more trophies are on the way!

Quality of Life Changes

• Max upgrade stat values are now visible on the Item Tooltip. With this change, you can see if maxing out that new loot drop is an upgrade over your current gear!

• Shards not valid for the current hero will no longer appear on the Shard Equip screen.

• Shards that are not valid for the current hero will say so on their Item Tooltips in the Inventory

• When a Relic is equipped to a defense slot, its Item Tooltip will now display stats that are not valid for that defense.

• Reduced the tower placement barrier for several defenses to make them easier to place next to each other.

• Added a three-second timer to the Sell All popup to reduce the likelihood of accidental sell-alls.

• Increased the size of the Siege Roller’s weakpoint by 25%

Balance

Blazing Phoenix Shard

• Blazing Phoenix's Defense Power scalar increased from 550% to 850%

• Updated tooltip text to be slightly more clear/correct

Explosive Surprise Shard

• Explosive Surprise Defense Power scalar increased from 650% to 1,200% at max level

• Proc chance reduced from 65% to 50%

• Net change is around a 50% DPS increase for this shard

Enhanced Poison Shard

• Increased Enhanced Poison's maximum rate bonus from 25% to 40%

Dryad Ability Cooldowns/Costs

• Removed the cooldown reduction of Dryad's starfall off of primary attacks

• Cooldown of Starfall reduced from 15 seconds to 5 seconds.

• Reduced Dryad's mana cost for several abilities

  • Normal Form

    • Ability 2:  20 to 10

  • Corrupt Form

    • Ability 2:  20 to 10

    • Ability 3:  30 to 15

Bug Fixes

• Fixed several issues that would stop players from being able to Continue to the next map. If this is still happening, please report it on our Bug Reporting Site.

• Series EV2’s Weapon Manufacturer will now crit properly without needing to hero swap to get it to work.

• Fixed the Zapper boss getting stuck in the Echoing Tunnel spawn point on Dragonfall Sewers.

• Fixed the Zapper boss getting stuck in the River Low Patch spawn point on Nimbus Reach.

• The Annoyance Shard will now properly update when hotswapping heroes (it was staying present in the last location of the hero with the equipped Shard).

• Crane Stance Shard no longer procs for all heroes that have a ranged attack when an elemental weapon is equipped.

• Fixed a bug with the Abyss Lord’s right-click attack where the less Hero Damage you had, the more Crit damage it would do. This now scales correctly from Crit Damage.

• Opening the Inventory while dead will no longer cause Inventory UI issues.

• Removed the debug text from the Ability Mana Ascension Power information.

• All individual Lockbox Master Keys purchased from the shop with gems can now properly open lockboxes.

• All Lockbox Master Keys properly stack now.

• Fixed level geometry issues on Greystone Plaza.

• Fixed a bug that stopped players from being unable to purchase the Five Pack of Hero Cards with Defender Medals.

• L2 context icon in the Shop now properly displays on all resolutions.

• Fixed collision issues on NPC shops.

• Context icons for switching between the left/right sides of the Scavenger UI are now displayed with the controller active.

• PS4 - An error message will display now when attempting to redeem a non-valid redeem code at the Mailbox.

Known Issues

• In multiplayer, the bonus xp and gold totals shown on the summary screen will show the xp/gold default values for the map instead of the xp/gold correct bonus totals for some players. It’s just a text issue as the correct amount are given to the players. It just shows the incorrect total on the reward screen. Happens about half the time on certain maps.

Greetings Defenders,

The Loot Update is delayed until next Tuesday, May 23rd. As we were going through our final playtests, we felt we needed an extra week to get it right. This is an important update, and we want to deliver something we’re confident in. We know how eager you are for the update -- trust us, we are, too! -- but this extra time will truly make it shine.

With this additional week, we can also:

• Add in more quality-of-life changes! (For example, showing an item’s max upgrade stat values on the Item Comparison tooltip. With this change, you can see if maxing out that new loot drop is an upgrade over your current gear!)

• Add in our first PS4 trophies! We need to go through Sony’s certification process for trophies, so while we’re aiming for day & date with the PC update, it might come out a few days later depending on what happens with cert. This is just the first batch of trophies; more will come in the future!

• Add in more bug fixes! Sweet, sweet bug fixes.

The feast is coming.

As you read on, you’ll learn about The Loot Update coming next Tuesday. [Update:  The Loot Update is now coming May 23rd. As we were going through our final playtests, we felt we needed an extra week to get it right. More information is available here.]

This update delivers the loot and progression improvements we’ve been cryptically teasing. We’re eager to share these succulent details, as we’re sure you’re eager to gobble them up. But soon, the feast will arrive. You’ll be treated to a five-course meal stuffed with details of our release plans. You’ll discover when we’re releasing and what we have planned between now and that fateful day. There are surprises in store for you, too, but we won’t spoil those now. Not yet.

As you saw with The Spring Forward update, and as you’re going to see in next week’s Loot Update, we’re working on more system improvements. More quality-of-life changes. More bug fixes. More polish. We’ve made a lot of changes to our game during our 2+ years in Early Access. After your feast, the guests will arrive -- the hungry masses of new and returning players -- and we’re going to make sure Dungeon Defenders II is ready for them.

Loot Updates

We’ve been working on a series of changes that takes the new loot system from the Trials update and tweaks it to make loot more interesting and more intuitive. It applies the feedback we’ve received since the Trials update and instills more of the spirit of the loot system from the original Dungeon Defenders. These changes will apply to all new drops once the update comes out; your current gear will be unaffected. We hope you’ll enjoy the following changes when they come out next Tuesday:

New Stat Rolling System

Before this update, rarity affected the stats on loot -- the higher the rarity, the higher the stat roll. This was intended to make higher rarities desirable, but this was actually making progression slower than intended and caused roadblocks in progression. Equipped Legendaries (and even Mythicals) would increase the time until your next stat upgrade, and in some cases, it stopped intended stat upgrades from appearing at the end of a Chaos tier. We’ve removed this, and in its place, we’ve made some exciting changes to rarities to make them worthwhile to find. You’ll discover these changes later in this blog.

Something else that’s plagued loot in DD2 is its lack of multi-dimensionality. When you look back at the first Dungeon Defenders, the loot system begged you to give every loot drop a chance. There wasn’t always a simple “yes” or “no” of whether an item was better for you. Stats on loot rolled individually, so there were vastly more implications when deciding if a drop was better or worse for you. Say an item rolled with Defense Power and Defense Health. Perhaps Defense Power rolled higher than your current gear, but Defense Health rolled lower. Is that a tradeoff you’re willing to make? Is power worth more than health for your particular build? Worth more at this point in your progression? Is it bad for one hero but better for another? This kind of decision making was a driving force in DD1 in both the main progression and in the endgame.

With that spirit in mind, loot stats will now roll independently from each other! This should instill more of those interesting decisions into loot, and at the same time, it’ll introduce sidegrade opportunities to improve your speed of progression!

Legendaries are going to roll with an additional stat! If Legendaries are going to be rare, then you should mess yourself a little when you see that golden beam rising toward the heavens. Throughout our Early Access period, we’ve learned (and you’ve learned) that you don’t need that extra stat in order to succeed. But there was a certain joy in DD1’s loot when all of those beautiful stats rolled on a single item. It was that little extra push to keep playing and keep hunting. This change should make Legendaries feel just that much more special. Along with this change...

New Upgrade Ranges

Rarities have new upgrade ranges! Each rarity has its own unique range, which means a Legendary loot drop will always have more upgrades than a Mythical, which will always have more upgrades than an Epic, and so on. The final upgrade ranges are still being tweaked and will be available in the patch notes next week.

Along with this, upgrades will now roll in all numbers across their range. Something we’ve heard from our min/max players is that it was just a little too easy to find perfect gear, which really is the driving factor to keep playing DD2 as it was in DD1. These upgrade changes should ensure that higher rarities retain their usefulness and power while providing just a little bit more to look for.

Increased Armor & Weapon Shard Slots to 3 

We’ve also increased the Armor and Weapon Shard Slots from 2 to 3! Even better, these 3 Shard Slots will appear on both Legendary AND Mythical loot! We can’t wait to see what new builds you’ll create with these changes.

Increased Loot Drops

We’ve increased the amount of loot that drops in Trials by about 50%!

Loot Rolls Based on the Most Powerful Hero in Your Deck

One of the most common confusion points of our new loot system was how loot generated. Before this update, loot generated based on the average stat power of every hero in your deck, so if you had heroes with worse stats than others, the generated loot would be worse. In this update, loot will generate based on the most powerful hero in your deck. You won’t have to remove your other 3 heroes before Combat Phase just to get the best loot. Based on our playtesting, this change alone removes a lot of the WTF moments from our new loot system.

Increased Stat Roll Ranges

Speaking of loot generation, loot is generated in a +/- range around your equipped gear. Currently, that +/- range is fairly small. There aren’t enough of those “wow” moments of finding a loot drop with big stat upgrades -- not enough of those “power spike” moments. We’re increasing this range so that power spikes happen more frequently. Another thing to note is that with the new individual stat rolling, items that would previously be an across-the-board “-” roll (since both stats rolled in identical numbers) could now become possible upgrades!

Higher Loot Cap Per Chaos to Help Bridge the Gaps

For some players, moving between Chaos tiers was easy enough. For others, the gaps felt like an impenetrable wall. That’s what we’ve heard over and over since the Trials update.

In the loot system introduced in Trials, each Chaos tier drops better and better loot up to a certain point. Once you hit that point, you’ll need to move on to the next Chaos tier in order to keep finding better loot. With this update, we’re increasing the maximum loot cap per Chaos tier. If you can’t survive the leap to the next Chaos tier, you can now progress higher in your current tier. This additional power potential should decrease the gaps and increase your upward mobility.

Coming Up:  Better In-Game Instructions

The above changes should make the system more intuitive, but we recognize that some elements need to be more explicitly stated. In the future, we’re going to include better in-game information to players about how loot works.

Coming Up:  The Return of Unique Legendary Weapons

In the coming updates, our unique legendary weapons will return! Keep an eye on our blog for more details.

Increased Gold Rewards

Players weren’t earning enough gold in earlier Chaos tiers. For rough comparison, Chaos 1 only awarded around 13,000 gold per victory, while Chaos 7 awards around 56,000 gold.

So in this update, we’ve increased the gold rewards in all Chaos tiers below Chaos 7, with significant increases in the early Chaos tiers that taper off into the higher tiers. For example, Chaos 1 should now award closer to 21,000 gold, which is around a 60% increase in gold per victory! This should greatly help with the gold squeeze in earlier difficulties. It’s also worth noting that our increased loot drops will leave players with more gold than before. We’ll continue to monitor the gold-per-hour and gold-per-difficulty players achieve at these new values and make more adjustments if needed.

As a result, players will see an increase in gold earnings with this new patch, and that’s not even including the following change:

Consecutive Win Gold and XP Bonuses

In this update, we’re rounding out our Consecutive Win feature by introducing Gold and XP bonuses! You’ll begin to earn these bonuses on your 1st consecutive win (so on your 2nd overall victory), and these bonuses will grow up to a cap. The more you play, the more you’ll earn! (Also, we’re actively working on Matchmaking fixes. Several fixes will come out in this update, which includes possible solutions for being unable to continue after the end of a match, and more fixes are on the way soon. We’ll continue to make the Consecutive Win bonus and Matchmaking feel better and better!)

Experience and Ascension Updates

We’re happy with how fast players are earning Ascension levels when they’re playing at a challenging difficulty. But some players are farming much, much lower difficulties to earn Ascension levels at very fast rates, and it’s thrown off our estimate on how fast players would earn Ascension levels.

When we released Chaos 6 and Chaos 7, some players had steamrolled way ahead of our Ascension estimates by farming earlier Chaos difficulties. In essence, we had two audiences -- one that was at or near the target Ascension level for Chaos 6, and another group that had pulled way, way ahead. Balancing new difficulties for these two different audiences became quite challenging, and we realized we needed to close the gap between them a bit if we wanted to keep releasing new difficulties.

So, to help hit that goal, we’re making the following changes:

New Difficulty XP Bonuses and New XP Curve

Each higher Chaos difficulty gives much more experience. Chaos 5, by comparison, now awards several times more experience than it used to. This means that playing at higher difficulties gives much more experience than playing at lower difficulties.

But we’re also increasing the amount of experience required to earn each level. These changes combined mean that if you’re currently playing Chaos 5, it’s more efficient to farm Chaos 4 or Chaos 5 for experience rather than going all the way back down to Chaos 1. This change won’t alter your existing Ascension level, but it will update the amount of experience you need to reach the next level.

The time-to-level should not increase if you’re playing at a challenging difficulty, but it will increase if you’re playing at a difficulty way below where you should be. In practical terms, this means Chaos 1 will no longer be the most efficient difficulty for every player to earn Ascension levels, especially if you’re well over Ascension 200.

New Ascension Power Caps

While our first change is targeted at smoothing out the rate of progression and encouraging players to play harder difficulties, this next change is intended to limit the overall power of players who are many times over the target Ascension level for our hardest difficulty.

With Chaos 7 being our current hardest difficulty, we are lowering the cap on powers from 999 to somewhere in the mid-100s (roughly 140). Powers that were capped at 10, 15, or 20 are unchanged; only the powers that had 999 caps are affected. As we release harder difficulties, the cap will go up.

If you’re under Ascension level 400, this won’t affect you at all as you wouldn’t have enough points to hit any cap. But if you’re over Ascension 420 (roughly), you may notice you’re starting to hit caps that will require you to diversify your points rather than stacking them into a single power.

Accompanying this change will be a reset of all Ascension points, allowing all players to freely update their Ascension Powers. Our intent is to shrink the power gap a bit between our most dedicated fans (some of whom are over Ascension 1,000!) and the vast majority of our playerbase (most of whom are less than Ascension 300), so we can continue to release content that challenges both audiences in a timely fashion.

New Ascension Level Rewards

We didn’t want this update to be all redos and system updates, so we’ve included some new rewards for reaching higher Ascension levels!

Starting with Ascension level 100 (and continuing up to 1,000), players will earn rewards for hitting Ascension milestones. One of the rewards will be new titles, available to our more dedicated players who push the upper ends of Ascension.

We’d like to close by thanking all of our players who are helping to make DD2 a great game. You guys have totally amazed us with your dedication, and we hope you continue to support DD2 as we approach our official release!

Love,
The Trendy Team

Server Improvements

• We’ve made multiple improvements to our servers that should help reduce the overall number of disconnects.

Zapper Boss Changes

The goal of the Zapper boss is to disable a large amount of defenses at once; however, its damage was causing defenses to instantly die -- and in some cases, the core, too. With the below changes, the Zapper should be more in line with how we want it to affect the battlefield.

• Damage radically decreased to very, very low values.

• Health slightly decreased.

• Has a very large radius that stuns all Defenses hit for 45s.

• Size slightly reduced, and AI updated to make kamikaze mechanics target more correctly and be less easy to trick into kamikazing into a Hero.

Split Viper Shard

The Split Viper Shard was turning Sand Viper into a bit of a runaway monster. With this change, we wanted to keep the net DPS of hitting 3 targets pretty high, but a slight Defense Power penalty allows us to keep it closer to the intended benefits (it's still really, really good though).

• Split Viper Shard at max level now applies a small Defense Power penalty, ending at -20% at maximum level.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where the Defense Speed stat wasn’t accurately applying unless players unequipped/re-equipped their Shards/Relics. Everyone should see accurate Defense Speed stats now.

• Fixed an issue where the Earthshatter Tower was unable to hit smaller enemies. We gave it some new glasses, and it now hits them properly.

• You can now pick up the golden ingot from the Forest Biome map in all game modes.

• The Mystic has regained the Snake God’s favor. Appeasement buffs are working again.

• Kobold Fliers and EMP Kobold Fliers have death animations once again. Now they should crash into the ground and dissolve out when killed, rather than instantly disappearing. Good for you; bad for them.

• If a player has more than 8 inventory bags, the price of the "max out bags" bundle will no longer appear negative.

• Added some collision to the scroll cauldrons behind the Gran Ma’ster in the tavern.

• PS4/Controller - Fixed an issue where unequipping all shards was not working while using a controller. Players no longer have to go into the upgrade UI to unequip shards individually.

• PS4 - Dark Assassins will no longer become invisible after using their demon kiss ability for the 3rd time.

Known Issues

• There’s an issue with the End-of-Match screen where it sometimes won’t let players Continue. We’re looking into it now and hope to have a fix very soon.

To celebrate the release of The Spring Forward Update, we're removing the cost of Ascension Point Resets this weekend! Tweak, test and get turnt* to your heart’s content while you hone your new builds. This event will run from now to Monday morning EDT. Enjoy!

*Trendy Entertainment is not responsible for any turnt-related injuries.

Thanks for the feedback on the Spring Forward Update! Today's hotfix addresses some of the bugs you've reported since yesterday. More fixes are on the way!

Changes

• Apprentice Tornado and Monk Pole Smash no longer have hidden cooldowns on re-applying their Knockup buffs.

  • Note that the enemies must still start falling before a knockup buff can apply! This simply eliminates a hidden delay between when they hit the ground and when they could be knocked-up again.

Bug Fixes

• Chaos II and Chaos III have the correct enemy spawns again.

• The Flamethrower Tower no longer fires while stunned.

• Fixed the Power Dart Tower Damage Ascension Power tooltip text.

• The cores in the normalized version of Forest Biome take damage again.

• Fixed some issues with closing and opening the Costume Shop.

The Spring Forward Update is available now on PC & PS4!

We’re getting ready to leave Early Access (which we’ll talk about in more detail in the near future). We’re tying up loose ends, fixing the biggest issues, squashing the biggest bugs, and polishing the most visible areas. The Spring Forward Update is the beginning of this process, and you’ll see more improvements in our regular patches after the update lands.

Here’s what’s in the update!

Features & Changes

Two New Chaos Tiers
This update adds Chaos VI and VII, and with it comes two new enemies, better loot, new Shards and the return of many Shards that were unavailable since Patch 19.5!

New Enemy:  Hex Throwers

With their mighty javelins, Hex Throwers curse your defenses from long range! You’ll first encounter these Olympic rejects in Chaos VI.

New Enemy:  Kobolts

Keep your eyes on the skies! These flying EMP Kobolds disable your defenses when they explode! You’ll first encounter what is sure to be everyone’s new favorite enemy in Chaos VII.

Weekend Event:  Free Ascension Resets!
To celebrate the release of the new Chaos difficulties, we are removing the cost of Ascension Point Resets this weekend!  Tweak, test and get turnt* to your heart’s content while you hone your new builds. This event will run from Friday afternoon to Monday morning EDT.

*Trendy Entertainment is not responsible for any turnt-related injuries.

Tower Skins

Finally! This was by far the biggest system we needed before our Early Access exit since many of you purchased a certain Collector’s Pack a long time ago and have been patiently waiting on certain Tower Skins. This update includes 8 sets of Tower Skins available for purchase and the Collector’s Pack Tower Skins given to owners of the pack and to our Defense Council members.

• Tower Skins come in Sets, and each Set includes 4 Tower Skins -- one for every defense in a hero’s kit! The first sets are for the Squire, Monk, Huntress and Apprentice, and you can find these Tower Skins available for purchase in the new Emporium shop (available in the Heroes Marketplace or via the Pause Menu). Tower Skins for the other heroes are coming soon!

• We've added a new Cosmetics tab in the Inventory, and this is where you'll equip Tower Skins (and eventually Costumes). In this tab, you can individually select which skin you want on which defense -- so if you want the Corrupted Poison Dart Tower Skin and the Defense Council Blaze Balloon on the same Huntress, go for it!

Defense Council/Collector’s Pack Tower Skins

On the Store Page, we said we were going to make 4 Tower Skins for the Collector’s Pack -- one tower skin apiece for the four original heroes. Well, we’re giving you 16 Tower Skins -- that’s a skin for every Squire, Monk, Huntress and Apprentice defense! If you own the Collector’s Pack or if you’re a Defense Council member, you’ll find these Tower Skins when you login. Thanks for the support!

PC Controller Support

We’ve added near-total PC controller support! Controllers will natively work for every command and every in-game menu except for the Options menu, which we’re hoping to get setup very soon!

Bag Auto Sorting

In this update, we’ve added an Auto Sort option to bags! When you select Auto Sort, items in the bag will re-organize by type (Weapons, Armor, Consumables, etc.), and within that type sorting, items will organize by rarity (for example:  Legendary Weapons, Mythical Weapons, Legendary Armor, Mythical Armor, Consumables, etc.) While this option is on, items will automatically sort based on these rules. If you wish to move items around in the bag, you’ll need to turn off the Auto Sort function.

Defense Against the Dark Assassins

We’ve added a 5-second protection between Assassin attacks while playing and a 10-second protection from Assassins after respawning. No more permanent chain-silencing!

Open Trials Matches on the Game Browser

Now you can view every open public Trials match on the Game Browser! This is perfect for finding the map to begin your win streak.

New Town Marketplace

Our world artists really went to town on the marketplace! *badumtish* But seriously, it’s amazing. New out-of-bounds scenery. New buildings. New skybox. It’s just one of those polish areas our world artists wanted to get in before we left Early Access!

The Emporium

Another feature we’ve been putting off is a unified shop, and as we’re approaching our exit from Early Access, now is the time to add it in! From this one single shop, you can find almost all of our in-game purchases. The Emporium is also available anywhere via the Pause Menu.

Other Changes

• Added a kill timer for Ogres and Siege Rollers that get stuck in the spawners.

• Removed the Victory Chest cutscene at the end of a match.

• Removed teleporting to Victory Chest at the end of a match.

• Added a new Victory splash and new victory hero animations at the end of a match.

• Selecting “To Tavern” at the end of a private match will take you back to the Tavern rather than the Town.

• Items picked up manually will now follow your auto-collect filtering rules.

• Added Forest Biome as a Forest map for Daily Missions.

• Changed Item Interact keybind on PC to Ctrl + Left-Click.

• We have removed Practice maps for the time being to reduce confusion while we work towards improving the overall endgame experience.

• Removed the Forge now that all of the Forge UI is accessible via the Pause Menu.

• Changed anything that said “Slow X%” to “Slow to X%.”

• Added the War Recruiter (DM Shard Shop) to the Tavern. (He was previously only in the Heroes Marketplace.)

• Betterfied the left side of the inspect tooltip. All numbers should now truncate properly and shortened numbers now show an additional decimal place.

• Accessory upgrades can now be purchased and equipped from the Costume Shop.

• Betsy Cluster Nades Shard is now a Weapon-slot Shard.

• Updated various UIs to the new UI format.

Balance

Buried Bastille Map

• Increased Buried Bastille’s starting mana to 2400 and DU limit to 2000.

  • Buried Bastille was consistently coming in as one of the hardest maps to complete in Chaos Trials. As a result, we’ve increased the starting mana and DU to allow for more defenses and to minimize the amount of hero intervention needed in distant lanes.

Skyguard Tower

• Fixed the Skyguard’s rotation time to always exceed its firing time. This allows the Skyguard to fire as quickly as intended by its Attack Rate.

Defense Crit Damage

• Adjusted the Defense Crit Damage Ascension Power per-point value to +20, matching the value used by the Hero Crit Damage Ascension Power.    

  • This update should have rolled out with Patch 19.5, but we missed it. Previously, this power had inflated per-point values to make it more useful. With the rebalance to Defense Crit Damage scalars in every defense, this power should have been updated to provide the same benefits as the Hero version.

Poison Dart Tower

• Poison Dart Tower Damage Ascension Power now correctly increases Defense Power, rather than raw damage, making this power useful.

Slime Pit

• Slime Pits now scale with Defense Speed, which means faster-attacking Slime Pits that scale much better in Chaos Trials!

• Alos increased base scaling from Defense Power and Defense Crit Damage.

Skeletal Orc

• Reduced the Orc Skeleton Direct Command’s damage bonus from Ability Power from 12 to 9.

  • This Direct Command has proven quite excellent at smashing single targets, and even after this update, the potential damage output is still quite monstrous with the correct shards.

Sandstorm Warrior Shard

• The Sandstorm Warrior’s buff no longer stacks with itself.

  • Unfortunately, the stacking effect of this Shard was never intended and was caused by a technical issue. This is actually a bug fix, but since it has an impact on certain strategies, we’ve documented it here in the balance section.

Heavy Cannonball Shard

• Greatly increased the damage of the Heavy Cannonball Shard, but reduced the duration of the stun and slightly reduced the proc rate.

  • During our last update, we modified many Shards that added stun, slow, and other utility effects to defenses. Unfortunately, we missed the Heavy Cannonball shard in that update. As such, we've gone back and updated it, bringing it more in-line with our other defense proc shards. The stun duration has come down a good bit, but it has been accompanied by a substantial increase in damage to help ensure it remains competitive against other Shards.

Bug Fixes

Thanks to all of the players submitting bugs on our Bug Reporting Site! As we get closer to our exit from Early Access, it’s vital that everyone is reporting bugs to the site and upvoting the bugs you feel are the highest priority to fix. Together, we’re going to fix as many bugs as possible! Let’s do this.

• Fixed a crash that could occur while opening and closing the Scavenger’s...shop? Is it a shop? He’s just fishing around in his jacket and giving you back your loot. That reminds us:  Wash that loot off. Thoroughly. You’ve been warned.

• Fixed an issue where the Abyss Lord’s secondary attack could fire faster than intended. This attack now has a proper absolute maximum attack rate like other ranged attacks.

• Fixed a bug where the Dark Torment damage over time effect did not appear.

• Enemies should get stuck less often in the Echoing Tunnel on Dragonfall Sewers.

• Fixed a bug where Cyborks were not properly affecting the Fissure of Embermount.

• All decked heroes should now heal to maximum health when entering Build Phase.

• Taser Suit Shard now works on Assassins that are bound to the player.

• Life Leech Shard now works on the Abyss Lord’s primary and secondary attacks.

• Sundering Blows Shard works properly now.

• Abyss Fountain Heal Ascension Power now works properly.

• Power of Embermount Shard properly works, it does.

• ‘ey, you remember the Fire for Effect Shard? We hear it’s working now. And properly, too! Crazy, right?

• Betsy Cluster Nades Shard. Work? Properly? Now? Yes. A thousand times yes.

• Fixed a bug on the Water Elemental Shard where it was doing 30% additional damage of your Defense Power rather than 30% additional damage of the defense itself. In most cases, this was resulting in lower damage than intended.

• Oil Geyser Slow Ascension Power wasn’t giving any additional benefit after 15 points; it does now.

• The Trials Victory screen no longer erroneously tells players to Replay Map when there is no “Replay Map” button.

• Fissure of Embermount now displays on the minimap.

• Fissure of Embermount’s upgrade tier now displays above it.

• Fixed a bug where the Angry Nimbus base Defense Speed was a teensy tiny bit higher than intended. Does not impact gameplay, just makes his stats less mildly infuriating to look at.
  

• Several shards with stacking effects have had their descriptions clarified to reflect that they stack off any attack rather than only primary attacks.

• Changed the description of the Overwhelm Shard to match the effects. This Shard procs off of both primary and secondary attacks (the old description only said primary attacks). Added a 3 second delay between procs to prevent issues with certain secondary attacks.

• Unequipping Shards from an item while your Inventory is full will now tell you they were sent to the Scavenger.

• Snipe Critical Power Shard no longer incorrectly increases the Critical Damage of primary attacks.

• Fixed a bug where Flying Kobolds will always dive bomb Abyss Stones. They are now wise to the tricksy Abby.

• Fixed an issue where Tomes could generate with elemental damage stats even though they weren’t being applied. This fix only affects Tomes generated going forward and will not reroll previously generated Tomes.

• The Mystic’s Appeasement buffs now work properly again.

• Fixed a bug where the Confuse effect in the Forest Biome was set to 60s rather than the intended 5s. Players were exploiting this to perma-cc the whole map.

• Power Bolts Shard can now be equipped on non-Legendary Relics.

• Fixed a bug where an area would become unbuildable if you kicked a player who’s in the middle of building a defense there.

• Adjusted some spawners to properly block towers in the Assault on Throne Room.

• Betsy’s name splash no longer stays on the screen after she comes down on wave 5.

• The icon of the Monk's Chi Blast no longer shows up near the Scavenger.

• Items are now successfully removed from the Blacksmith/Relic NPC shops when purchased.

• Fixed the Fire Mushroom buff stacking issue.

• Updated Earthshatter to correctly deal single-target damage on all attacks.

• Shards that increase stats for defenses will now update the Inventory screen stat display for your current hero (fix for the other decked heroes coming soon).

• Fissure of Embermount now plays upgrade SFX when upgraded.

• Fixed some incorrect names and descriptions for maps on the Any Map section of the War Table.

• Fixed an issue where enemies were walking through sub-objective lanes too soon before the lane fully opened on Greystone Plaza.

• Fixed an issue with the Orb display in the Relic shops.

• Gran Ma'ster and War Recruiter Shard Packs now use the right Shard Pack mesh (previously they all used the Chaos 1 Mesh).

• Fixed minimap icon issue for the air lanes in Little-Horn Valley.

• Galactic Weapons no longer drop 100% from Throne Room in any Chaos difficulty.

• Fixed an issue where Shards were using the wrong tooltips when in the Scavenger’s dirty little hands.

• There is now a visual indicator for activating Pet Abilities when using gamepad.

• Fixed a bug where opening a consumable box with a full Inventory would send those items to the Scavenger; now there’s a pop-up telling you that your Inventory is full.

• Fixed an inspect tooltip issue with the Hornet's Nest.

• Minor update to the description text for Lightning Strikes Aura to indicate that it does Storm damage.

• Tier 1-3 Abyss Lord Tomes now have names and should persist between map loads.   

• Fixed a bug where the titles of certain consumables were not wrapping. This was most obvious with unidentified Shards.

• Fixed a UI issue with the Session List.

• Fixed typos in several Shard descriptions.

• Fixed the descriptions for Dawn of the Blood Moon and Buried Bastille.

Known Issues

• (PC/PS4)  Navigation of the Costume Shop with the controller has issues.

• In some cases, the Emporium UI might get stuck. Hit ESC or Back on your controller to exit out as a workaround right now.

• Ascension - Movement Speed power doesn't change the hero movement speed value on the left side of the inventory. Just a visual thing.

• Heroes for Hire Board - All hero images link to the Dryad in the Create Hero screen.

• If the user has more than 8 inventory bags, then the price of the "max out bags" bundle will go negative. (Nothing bad happens from it.)

• Controller Input: With the controller active, if you cancel a purchase from an NPC shop the cursor moves to the top of the list instead of staying where it is.

• The Costume Shop will not close correctly (leaving the character stuck) when you access it via the Emporium and close it by selecting the yellow "X" close button. Just open the shop again, and you’ll be ok.

• Shards - Annoyance Shard effect stays in last location the equipped hero was present.

• Haunting Shard - Gains stacks from secondary attacks, but does not shoot the ghosts.

• Sandstorm Warrior - Bubble showing the buff does not last the full duration of the upgraded Shard.

• The hatch button doesn't pop up when the egg is ready to hatch. Closing the UI or leaving/re-entering the tavern or marketplace should cause this UI to refresh properly.

• On the PS4, opening the Emporium shop via the Colonel NPC and then selecting Browse All will cause the Emporium shop to not close correctly when you exit the Costume Shop/Create Hero screen. If you experience Emporium shop problems, transitioning to another map or pressing the circle button twice in the Emporium shop will correct the issue (fix incoming later this week).

Birds chirping. Breeze blowing. Leaves growing. Springtime is here!

At least, that’s what we’ve heard. For us, this Spring means staying indoors and getting Dungeon Defenders II ready to leave Early Access (which we’ll talk about in more detail in the near future). We’re tying up loose ends, fixing the biggest issues, squashing the biggest bugs, and polishing the most visible areas. The Spring Forward Update is the beginning of this process, and you’ll see more improvements in our regular patches after the update lands.

So when will the Spring Forward Update come out? How about next Tuesday, April 18th? Does that work for you? Cool. We’ll put that down in our calendars then -- April 18th:  Make Great Spring for Glorious Playerbase Nation. Done!

Here’s what’s in the update:

Two New Chaos Tiers

We told you the next Chaos tiers would happen soon! This update adds Chaos VI and VII, and with it comes two new enemies, better loot, and most of the Shards that were disabled in Patch 19.5. 

So what fearsome new enemies are we adding now?

Hex Throwers

With their mighty javelins, Hex Throwers curse your defenses from long range! You’ll first encounter these Olympic rejects in Chaos VI.

Kobolts

Keep your eyes on the skies! These flying EMP Kobolds disable your defenses when they explode! You’ll first encounter what is sure to be everyone’s favorite enemy in Chaos VII.

Beyond these new Chaos tiers, we’re continuing to investigate changes to our loot system, difficulty balance and economy. Look for improvements in the coming weeks!

Tower Skins Are Coming

Finally! This was by far the biggest system we needed before our Early Access exit since many of you purchased a certain Collector’s Pack a long time ago and have been patiently waiting on certain Tower Skins. This update includes 8 sets of Tower Skins available for purchase and the Collector’s Pack Tower Skins given to owners of the pack and to our Defense Council members.

Tower Skins

Tower Skins come in Sets, and each Set includes 4 Tower Skins -- one for every defense in a hero’s kit! The first sets are for the Squire, Monk, Huntress and Apprentice, and Tower Skins for the other heroes are coming soon! 

We've added a new Cosmetics tab in the Inventory, and this is where you'll equip Tower Skins (and eventually Costumes). In this tab, you can individually select which skin you want on which defense -- so if you want the Corrupted Poison Dart Tower Skin and the Defense Council Blaze Balloon on the same Huntress, go for it!

Defense Council/Collector’s Pack Tower Skins

On the Store Page, we said we were going to make 4 Tower Skins for the Collector’s Pack -- one tower skin apiece for the four original heroes. Well, we’re giving you 16 Tower Skins -- that’s a skin for every Squire, Monk, Huntress and Apprentice defense! If you own the Collector’s Pack or if you’re a Defense Council member, you’ll find these Tower Skins when you login after the update comes out. Thanks for the support!

PC Controller Support

Speaking of support, in this update, we’re adding near-total PC controller support! Controllers will natively work for every command and every in-game menu except for the Options menu, which we’re hoping to get setup very soon!

Bag Auto Sorting

In this update, we’re adding an Auto Sort option to bags! When you select Auto Sort, items in the bag will re-organize by type (Weapons, Armor, Consumables, etc.), and within that type sorting, items will organize by rarity (for example:  Legendary Weapons, Mythical Weapons, Legendary Armor, Mythical Armor, Consumables, etc.) While this option is on, items will automatically sort based on these rules. If you wish to move items around in the bag, you’ll need to turn off the Auto Sort function.

Breaking the Assassin Cycle of Silence

Let me speak! In this update, we’re adding a 5-second protection between Assassin attacks while playing and a 10-second protection from Assassins after respawning. No more permanent chain-silencing!

Open Trials Matches on the Game Browser

Now you can view every open public Trials match on the Game Browser! This is perfect for finding the map to begin your win streak.

New Town Marketplace

Our world artists really went to town on the marketplace! *badumtish* But seriously, it’s amazing. New out-of-bounds scenery. New buildings. New skybox. It’s just one of those polish areas our world artists wanted to get in before we left Early Access!

The Emporium

Another feature we’ve been putting off is a unified shop, and as we’re approaching our exit from Early Access, now is the time to add it in! From this one single shop, you can find almost all of our in-game purchases. The Emporium is also available anywhere via the Pause Menu.

Crit Update

After Patch 19.5 came out, a lot of you told us that crits were OPOP. We believe you! We’re looking into it, and we think we’re zeroing in on the reasons why. We should have some changes for this in the update. Thanks for the feedback!

Bug Fixes

No update would be complete without bug fixes! This update fixes, among other things, a long-standing firing issue with the Skyguard that made itself more visible in Patch 19.5. The Skyguard was firing at 60% of its expected fire rate, but now this baby is singing. We also hear Slime Pits are affected by Defense Speed now! The full bug fix list will be available next Tuesday.

Patch 19.5 is live now on PC and PS4! This patch contains changes to Shard drops, balance, UI and more. 

Here are the full patch notes:

Shard Changes

According to our recent survey, Shard drops were the #1 biggest frustration from the Trials update. Our biggest focus for this patch was to improve Shard farming time speed and improve your ability to specifically target farm the Shards you want.

• Each Shard Pack now contains unique Shards. For example, Shards A, B and C can only be found in Chaos I Shard Packs, while Shards D, E and F can only be found in Chaos III Shard Packs.

  • This also means that Standard Shards will no longer drop from within Chaos Shard Packs!

• Each victory in Trials will guarantee at least 1 Chaos Shard Pack from that given difficulty. For example, when you beat Chaos II Trials, you will be guaranteed a Chaos II Shard Pack.

• Before, Shard Packs had a chance to give you 1 Shard from a pool of up to 120(!) different Shards. In the patch, we’re reducing the Shard pool per pack from ~120 to somewhere between 25-35 Shards per pack, which will increase the chances of getting the Shard you want when you open a pack.

  • Some Shards have moved around. Be sure to check out DD2Tools, our official Wiki or the Interactive Shards Sheet for details on where Shards drop now!

  • Some Shards have been disabled from dropping, but don’t worry, most of them will return with the new Chaos tiers, which will come out very soon!

• Standard Shard Packs and Chaos 1-4 Shard Packs are now available for purchase at the Gran’Masta and War Recruiter shops.

• Victory Chests will now drop 2 Shard Packs guaranteed every time.

  • When you win, you’ll receive one Shard Pack from that difficulty and one Shard Pack from any previous difficulty (for example, if you beat Chaos III Trials, you’ll receive 1 Chaos III Shard Pack and 1 Chaos II, Chaos I or Standard Shard Pack).

By making Shard Packs drop unique Shards, increasing drop chances within a pack, guaranteeing Shard Packs per difficulty, giving you 2 Shard Packs guaranteed on every victory and adding a Shard bonus for consecutive wins (more details below), it’ll be much faster to get the Shards you want. Again, if you want to know the new Shard drop locations, check out our Wiki and on our community-made webtools (like Czokalapik’s DD2Tools and Pandynator and xlogisticsx’s Interactive Shard Sheet).

Trials Consecutive Win Shard Bonus

This patch adds the first pass on our Trials consecutive win bonus, which gives bonus rewards for winning consecutive random maps in Trials. This patch adds the Shard consecutive bonus; in future patches, it’s our goal to add XP and Gold bonuses, too.

• Once you win 3 consecutive random maps in a row in Trials, you’ll activate the Shard consecutive bonus. On your 4th consecutive victory onward, you’ll earn an extra Shard Pack for as long as the streak continues.

• This extra Shard Pack is a guaranteed Shard Pack from that difficulty.

  • That means once you activate the win bonus, you’ll get 3 Shards guaranteed every victory (2 Shard Packs of that difficulty, 1 Shard Pack from previous difficulties) until the streak is broken.

Sort Shards By Name

Another pain point brought up in the survey was the frustration of trying to find the Shard you want within your Inventory. A popular suggestion (both in the survey and in the community) was a Shard filter that sorts Shards alphabetically by name, and we were able to get it in for this patch! We’re investigating more Shard filtering options and possible Shard icon improvements for future updates.

• Added the “Name” filter in the All Bags -> Shards section, which sorts Shards alphabetically.

Hero Management UI Changes

Something we’ve heard from players with a high number of heroes is that it’s difficult to navigate to certain heroes in the new Hero Management UI. These changes are aimed at alleviating that frustration.

• Added a Quick Select option. Quick Select displays up to 18 heroes per page. Select a hero to go to that hero’s position in the Rolodex. More improvements to the Quick Select feature will come in future patches!

• You can now interact with any visible hero card in the Rolodex. Previously, you needed to use the arrows to navigate through the hero cards. (FYI:  You can also use the Middle Mouse Wheel on PC to scroll through your hero cards.)

Bag Quick Scrolling

On the PC version, we’ve added hotkeys that will cycle left and right through your bags! This should make moving items from one bag to another much faster, especially for those of you who don’t have a Middle Mouse Wheel.

• Q and E will scroll between left and right between bags on PC.

• Reminder:  The Middle Mouse Wheel can also scroll through bags, too!

Return to Tavern No Longer Forces Everyone Back to Tavern

If one person selects Return to Tavern, that person will leave. Not you. You will Continue, baby. And you’ll keep Continuing as long as you want to Continue.

New Weekend Event Support

This patch includes the ability to do Weekend Gold and Weekend XP events! Perhaps you’ll see them soon...

New Title:  Discord Defender

We’ve added a new title that you can earn by being active on our Discord server!  

Defense Balance Changes

With this patch, we’ve taken a serious look at the viability of all defenses as well as how several of our specific defense stats scale, and we made some fundamental changes as a result. We hope these changes will make many defenses, at least when it comes to raw DPS and utility, viable in later Chaos difficulties. You can read an expanded explanation of these changes in our Patch 19.5 Preview blog.

• Defense Power scalars have been refactored on all defenses. Every defense receives more damage bonuses from Defense Power.

• Defense tier upgrades now increase Defense Power and Defense Crit Damage much more significantly on low-DU defenses than high-DU defenses.

  • As a rule, high-DU defenses are still more efficient at Tier 5 than low-DU defenses, but this makes the gap smaller and removes much of the penalty of using 20 DU defenses like Explosive Trap.

• Defense Crit Cap increased from 30% -> 33%.

  • Note:  Hero Ascension Powers no longer break the Defense Crit Cap.

• Defense Crit Damage scalars on most defenses are set to 500% that of the Defense Power scalar.

  • Exceptions apply to certain unusual defenses, like Poison Dart Tower and Obelisk.

• Defense Crit Damage Cap increased to hopefully unreachable levels.

• Defense Speed has been refactored to apply consistent benefits across all defenses.

• Attack Rate caps have been refactored. Primarily damage-dealing defenses have rate caps of 4x faster than base Attack Rate. Primarily utility defenses have a rate cap of 2x faster than base Attack Rate.

  • We’ll keep an eye on this. We would ideally have similar rates on all defenses, but certain utility defenses become nearly unstoppable (by themselves) at very high attack rates.

• Defense Rate shard no longer breaks the Attack Rate cap on a defense.

• Default Attack Rate of some very-slow defenses has been slightly increased to reduce overkill damage inefficiencies on Goblins and other weak targets.

  • Lightning Strikes Aura and Earthshatter are the primary beneficiaries.

• All defense-based stuns, slows, and similar utility effects, including those provided through shards, have had their durations updated to account for the changes in Defense Speed and Attack Rates.

  • In many cases, this means that the duration of these effects are slightly lower, as the defense can apply them more frequently at higher defense speeds.

  • Ascension Powers and Shards that increase the duration or power of stuns, slows, and other utility effects have also been rebalanced for the same reasons.

• Defense Range Gambit Ascension Powers have been refactored and standardized across defenses.

  • All many-target defenses (like the Flame Aura and the Flamethrower) may now gain up to a 25% increase in range from these powers.

  • All fixed-target defenses (like the Hornet’s Nest and the Cannonball Tower) may now gain up to a 50% increase in range from these powers.

  • We will keep an eye on these values and adjust accordingly, but we want fixed-target defenses to receive larger benefits from range upgrades than many-target defenses.

• Fissure of Embermount now benefits from Defense Speed.

• Gunwitch Sniper Roost tower has double the default crit chance.

• Snaking Sands now benefits from Defense Speed and no longer has a hidden 12s cooldown.

• Sand Viper’s Defense Power scalar heavily revised. Should now be much more competitive with other fixed-target towers.

• Obelisk’s Smite and Fire mechanics have been heavily revised.

  • Smite Damage and Rate are now displayed on Inspect.

  • Smite rate now properly scales with Defense Speed and no longer has hidden cooldowns.

  • Additional Obelisk buffs (Shield, Transmog, Bubble) now apply more frequently thanks to Defense Speed scaling.

  • Fire (from maximum appeasement) stats are now more clearly labelled on Inspect.

  • A chunk of the Obelisk’s damage output has been moved from Fire to Smite. While we like the mechanic of rewarding players for playing combat Mystics, we did not want the Fire effect to be so vital to the defense that the defense was useless outside of it. We’ll keep a close eye on this balance going forward and try to ensure its viability in a non-Fire spam role.

• Lightning Strikes Aura health no longer breaks during tier upgrades, and the health has been reduced to sane values.

• Reflect Beam description clarified to explain the Torpedo effect better.

• All effects that modify the slow % of a defense or ability are now multiplicative, rather than additive.

  • Tier upgrades, Ascension Power upgrades, and shard upgrades that improve slows are now multiplicative, rather than additive. This means that a 10% improvement on a base 65% Slow will only reduce the Slow to 58.5%.

  • This was a necessary step to fix some defenses in achieving negative slows on enemies, as well as giving us more room to improve slows with additional shards / powers.

  • This affects the Oil Geyser, Proton Node, Frostbite Tower, and the Dryad’s Powder Toss ability.

• Frostbite Tower's chill/slow effect has been rebalanced across all Ascension Powers/shards/upgrades (no more moonwalking…)

  • Through Ascension Powers/shards/tier upgrades, the maximum slow the Frostbite Tower can achieve is around 50% now, rather than being -15%...

• Mystic’s Serpent’s Coil has been heavily improved.

  • Benefits from Mystic’s defense Ascension Powers.

  • Benefits from Defense Speed stat.

  • While it still cannot be upgraded, it is a very efficient 20 DU defense now.

• Poison Dart Tower’s projectiles deal basic damage again. We will be revising this defense’s mechanics again once technical upgrades allow us to handle the Crit Damage issues more gracefully.

• Frosty Power shard no longer stacks with itself.

  • We felt the power of this shard was strong enough on its own that allowing it to stack, especially in conjunction with a specific other shard, was giving too much bang-for-the-buck.

• Colossal Fissure scaling stat changed to Ability Power and now deals damage properly.

Hero Balance Changes

• Increased default mana regeneration on the Apprentice, Huntress, Monk, and Squire from 2 MP/s to 3 MP/s.

• Abyss Stone damage increased by 10%, but Abyss Knight damaged decreased by 10%.

  • Abyss Lord's primary damage ability is intended to be his Abyss Stone, but we've noticed the trend is to spam Abyss Knight more so when it comes down to brass tax.

  • As a result, we're moving some of his damage dealing power from Abyss Knight to Abyss Stone to separate the functions of these two abilities a little more.

• Fixed several Abyss Lord and EV2 ability descriptions incorrectly specifying they scaled from stats they did not scale from. Abilities scale from Ability Power.

• Molten Brimstone Tome now has proper gameplay values, scales entirely from Ability Power, and functions more usefully at shard level 1.

• Power of Storms shard has been refactored completely.

  • Shard description updated to state the new effect. When triggered, it increases mana regeneration by 20 MP/s for 3s but has a 10s cooldown (at max level).

• Shards that deal damage directly now have proper, unique Crit Damage scalars.

  • Crit Damage from these shard attacks can no longer reach infinite values…

Campaign Balance Changes

• Enemy levels in Campaign have been increased to account for the increases in overall defense damage.

• Hero level 1 stats slightly increased to account for slight increase to enemy levels in campaign

  • Except EV2. Her level 1 stats were slightly decreased, because for some reason they were way, way, way higher than everyone else’s….

• Certain intro enemies had their HP reduced in the campaign (Lady Orc, Wyvern, etc.)

Chaos Balance Changes

• Enemy levels in Chaos have been increased slightly to account for the increases in overall defense damage.

  • We paid specific attention to enemies that are generally not affected by defenses (Witherbeast, Siege Rollers, etc.) and re-weighted their stats accordingly. They can still be slain in a timely fashion only by heroes.

• In combination with the above changes, we’ve reduced the Chaos 1 enemy level by 10%. The result of this along with our defense balance changes should result in a smoother entry into Chaos 1. We’ll continue to monitor both player feedback and our internal data to see how players are progressing into Chaos 1.

Stuck Special Enemy Fixes

One of the biggest bugs we wanted to fix was the Stuck Special Enemy bug where Siege Rollers and other Special Enemies were getting stuck in their spawners. Our world builders have gone through the maps reported to us and changed geometry within the spawners that were causing trouble. If you see a stuck Special Enemy after this patch, please report it to our bug site!

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a crash when replaying The Wyvern’s Den.

• Fixed a duplicating bug in the Inventory.

• Slow improvements now show as benefits rather than negatives on all inspect and Ascension Power interfaces.

• Mana Bomb no longer causes the Flamethrower to stop attacking.

• Flamethrowers will now attack the Demon Lord.

• Fixed Shield Geodes touching Cores and setting them to 3K health.

• Shield Geodes moving over EV nodes will no longer create a Shield on the nodes.

• Frosty Bind Shard now properly improves slow speed.

• Howling Feast Shard now functions properly.

• Withering Fountain Shard now functions properly.

• Lateral Blast Shard now properly deals damage.

• Mega Rock Shard now properly deals damage.

• Rain of Oil Shard ignite now properly deals damage.

• Defense Crit Damage and Destruction Shards now work on EV2’s Buff Beam.

• Weapon Manufacturer now updates if you equip gear after it’s built.

• Monk Skyguard Slow Ascension Power now properly caps at 20.

• Lightning Touch Shard, Water Elemental Shard, and Shattering Torpedo Shard now deal proper bonus damage.

  • These shards had bugs that would sometimes cause them to deal considerably more or less amounts of extra damage. The damage stated on the shard description is now their actual bonus damage and should show properly as damage numbers.

• Fixed an issue where the Flamethrower would try to target enemies outside of its range.

• Fixed a bug where the Pumpkinator Shard was applying to defenses of the hero who equips it.

• Fixed an Inventory tooltip issue that would display items with the wrong item type information.

• Rain of Oil Shard description clarified.

• Bots of Oil Shard description clarified.

• Updated EV2 Shard descriptions.

• Updated several Shard descriptions that used incorrect stat names.

• Shard and Shard Pack tooltips now display their sell price.

• Mystic’s Defense Crit Chance Ascension Power now displays the proper number.

• When EV2 nodes are stunned, all nodes display the stun VFX.

• Fixed an issue where the Ascension Point displays would overlap.

• Updated The Dead Road boss schedule to spawn from Wave 2 onwards.

• Fixed goofy Monk weapon holding in certain situations.

• Fixed VFX on the Quake Shard.

• Harbinger Squad challenges updated to be completed on Campaign Hard instead of Nightmare II.

• Fixed a sub-objective naming issue on Forgotten Ruins.

• Gold Ingots now look like Gold Ingots instead of weird Gold Crystals.

• Campaign Relics no longer have a chance to generate with Defense Range.

• Fixed lighting issues on several maps.

• Fixed collision issues on several maps.

• Fixed several typo issues.

• Fixed an issue where some costumes were displaying incorrect names and descriptions.

• PS4 - Fixed a cursor clone issue in the Inventory.

• PS4 - Mailbox UI no longer becomes unresponsive after closing the soft keyboard.

Over the past year, we’ve worked under the cover of darkness on a game-changing update — so game-changing we’re compelled to do something special. Something extraordinary. The game is evolving. The name should evolve, too.

We’re excited to introduce the world to Gobu Defenders II!

Become a Goblin Warrior and defeat the evil Heroes standing between you and your rightful claim to the Eternia Crystals. This update introduces five new Goblin Warriors, completely new gameplay, the Commander system, and more.

Become a Goblin Warrior

Despite an average height of 4’10”, the Gobu Legion stands tall. The Legion represents all Goblins within the Old Ones’ Army, but only a select few are called upon to be Goblin Warriors. These brave few are gifted with incredible powers -- which includes the incredible power of dying fast and often!

Play as one of these brave Goblin Warriors in the update:

• Mudgrinder, the Siege Roller Expert

• Steampot, the Mech Engineer

• Screechy, the Expert of Death

• Fastrocket, Death with Wings

• Mr. Bombs, the Demolitions Gobu

We’ll reveal the full powers of our Goblin Warriors in a future news update.

Begin the Gobu Assault

As a Goblin Warrior, it’s your job to lead the charge on the battlefields of war. Gone are the days of playing as those pathetic humans. They’re the enemy now! Beyond your incredible power of dying, your biggest strength is the size of the Gobu Legion. Your best tactic is to run in a straight line directly at their defenses. Don’t dodge. Don’t jump. Just run straight ahead until you overwhelm their defenses with your claws, your jaws and gallons of your goblin blood. And when their defenses are down, kill the Heroes, destroy the Eternia Crystals and then...the thing happens. You know, the thing. The crystal blows up, the world gets dark, and it has something to do with the Old Ones. There’s totally a strong lore basis for it. And it’s up to you to make that happen, gobu!

Become the Commander

The Gobu Legion is vast, but they need a leader. Someone cunning. Bloodthirsty. Someone willing to sacrifice as many gobu as it takes to win. They need a Commander. And they need You.

Every three months, a new Commander is selected by the community. The Commander is the ultimate authority over the Gobu Legion. Commanders decide where to attack, what resources to gather and what daily objectives to complete. As the Gobu Legion completes these orders, new bonus reward options are unlocked, and it’s up to the Commander to choose which rewards to give the Legion. Commanders also get a unique, full-size Betsy mount to display their awe-inspiring power to other players. Our first Commander is none other than dreamanime, whose dedication to the Gobu Legion is second-to-none.

We’re very excited about this next step. If you want to talk about the next evolution of our game, @Kaoelol has set up the Gobu Defenders II subreddit and Gobu Defenders II Discord!

Patch 19.5 comes out next week on PC & PS4! This patch contains changes to Shard drops, balance, UI and more. If you missed the Devstream, you can watch the Twitch archived video. (The YouTube version is available now.)

Over the past month, we’ve been working on improvements to the Trials update based on your feedback. We sent out a survey last week about Shards and the Trials playlist, and beginning with Patch 19.5 we’d like to start introducing most of those ideas into the game. The full Patch 19.5 Notes will be available when the patch comes out, but below is an overview of the changes coming:

Shard Drop Changes

From the survey results, we learned that most players were satisfied with the concept of Shards but not with their current implementation. In fact, Shard drops were the biggest point of dissatisfaction in the entire update. The main areas of concern were the time it takes to get the Shard you’re looking for and frustration over the confusing setup of Shard Packs (which is what we call the containers you get from Victory Chests).

These are the areas we’ve focused on in Patch 19.5:

Improving Shard Target Farming

Right now, Shard Packs do not drop unique Shards per pack. There’s a lot of overlap between different Shard Packs, which means players can get a Standard Shard from a Chaos III Shard Pack, and players don’t understand where they need to farm in order to get the Shard they’re looking for (say, the coveted Defense Range Shard, which can actually drop from multiple Chaos Shard Packs).

In Patch 19.5, each Shard Pack will have unique Shards. For example, Shards A, B and C can only be found in Chaos I Shard Packs, while Shards D, E and F can only be found in Chaos III Shard Packs. This also means that Standard Shards will no longer drop from Chaos Shard Packs! Along with this, each victory in Trials will guarantee at least 1 Chaos Shard Pack from that given difficulty. For example, when you beat Chaos II Trials, you will be guaranteed a Chaos II Shard Pack.

With these changes, you’ll be able to specifically target the Shards you want. Once this update goes live, we’ll share the complete Shard drop locations on our Wiki and to those players who are making amazing webtools (like Czokalapik’s DD2Tools).

Improving Shard Farming Time

Right now, Shard Packs have a chance to give you 1 Shard from a pool of up to 120(!) different Shards. In the patch, we’re reducing the Shard pool per pack from ~120 to somewhere between 25-35 Shards depending on the pack, which will increase the chances of getting the Shard you want when you open a pack.

We’re also changing the drop rates and drop setup on Shard Packs in Victory Chests. Instead of having a chance to drop between 1-3 Shard Packs, Victory Chests will now drop 2 Shard Packs guaranteed every time. When you win, you’ll receive one Shard Pack from that difficulty and one Shard Pack from any previous difficulty (for example, if you beat Chaos III Trials, you’ll receive 1 Chaos III Shard Pack and 1 Chaos II, Chaos I or Standard Shard Pack).

We’re trying to get the first pass on the Trials consecutive win bonus into this patch, which gives bonus rewards for winning consecutive random maps in Trials. This first pass would add a Shard bonus. Once you win 3 times in a row, you’ll earn an extra Shard Pack on every victory after that for as long as the streak continues. This extra Shard Pack would be a guaranteed Shard Pack from that difficulty. That means once you activate the win bonus, you’ll get 3 Shards guaranteed (2 Shard Packs of that difficulty, 1 Shard Pack from previous difficulties) until the streak is broken. If the Trials win streak doesn’t go into Patch 19.5, it will be available in a patch soon thereafter.

By making Shard Packs drop unique Shards, increasing drop chances within a pack, guaranteeing Shard Packs per difficulty, giving you at least 2 Shard Packs guaranteed on every victory and adding a Shard bonus for consecutive wins, it’ll be much faster to get the Shards you want.

Sort Shards By Name

Another pain point brought up in the survey was the frustration of trying to find the Shard you want within your Inventory. A popular suggestion (both in the survey and in the community) was a Shard filter that sorts Shards alphabetically by name, and we were able to get it in for this patch! You can find the “Name” filter in the All Bags -> Shards section. We’re investigating more Shard filtering options and possible Shard icon improvements for future updates.

Hero Management UI Changes

These were discussed in a previous blog, and they’re coming in Patch 19.5! Something we’ve heard from players with a high number of heroes is that it’s difficult to navigate to certain heroes in the new Hero Management UI. We’re adding a Quick Select option that allows you to see a large number of heroes at one time and then go to that hero in the UI. We're also allowing you to select the other cards in the Rolodex view without having to click the darn arrows. This isn’t the end of our Hero Management UI improvements. More changes coming in future patches.

Bag Quick Scrolling

On the PC version, we’ve added hotkeys that will cycle left and right through your bags! This should make moving items from one bag to another much faster, especially for those of you who don’t have a Middle Mouse Wheel.

Return to Tavern No Longer Forces Everyone Back to Tavern

If one person selects Return to Tavern, that person will leave. Not you. You will Continue, baby. And you’ll keep Continuing as long as you want to Continue.

Defense Balance Changes

With this patch, we’ve taken a serious look at the viability of all defenses as well as how several of our specific defense stats scale, and we made some fundamental changes as a result.

Below is a deep-dive into how we approached balance for this patch and how we hope these changes will make many defenses, at least when it comes to raw DPS and utility, viable in later Chaos difficulties.

Defense Speed and Defense Power

One of the biggest changes has been a complete overhaul of the Defense Speed formula. Previously, some defenses would benefit very heavily from Defense Speed, while others would hardly benefit at all. Some defenses had very restrictive rate caps, while others had very flexible rate caps, and that made it difficult to balance these defenses as item stats progress into Chaos 5 (and soon, Chaos 6 and beyond…).

So, we took a step back and rebalanced all Defense Speed scalars and rate caps across all defenses. Defenses scale consistently with Defense Speed now, such that +100 Defense Speed gives the same % DPS benefit to each tower. We also fixed a number of defenses that had hidden cooldowns that prevented their Defense Speed from correctly affecting their Attack Rate. There are still a few exceptions (Slime Pit still needs more work before it benefits from Defense Speed), but nearly every defense now benefits from it in an obvious way.

As to Attack Rate caps, we adjusted those to more consistent levels. Most raw ‘damage’ defenses (like the Flamethrower) can go up to 400% faster than their starting attack rate, while more ‘utility’ defenses (like the Geyser Trap) can go up to 200% faster.

We also looked at various utility effects, especially stuns and other forms of hard crowd-control. Those effects become more potent as the attack rate gets faster, so we made adjustments to the duration of many of these effects. We have a rough target ‘uptime’ that we try to maintain, and as such, most of these utility defenses saw balance updates to prevent them from reaching ‘infinite stunlock’ situations at higher firing rates. In addition, we also updated many of the Shards that add utility effects (especially stun procs) to ensure those also don’t develop into ‘infinite stunlock’ situations as Defense Speed increases.

Is this a buff or a nerf? It varies. Some defenses, like the Earthshatter Tower, were receiving very little benefit from Defense Speed, and this change results in substantial improvements. Others, like the Flamethrower Tower, were benefitting heavily from Defense Speed and will see no benefit.

But fear not! Across-the-board, we made increases to the Defense Power ratios of nearly every defense! Every non-blockade is now much deadlier to the foes of Etheria, especially in earlier difficulties, thanks to the increase in raw damage numbers. This increase is intended to help offset the loss of Attack Rate on some defenses, but you will definitely see some defenses (like the Cannonball Tower) once again strike fear into the hearts of Etheria’s enemies.

Also, we modified the base attack rate of some defenses (Lightning Strikes Aura, we’re looking at you) to try and reduce the amount of ‘overkill’ damage these defenses were inflicting on weaker enemies. Many single-target towers are much stronger in this update, and we hope you’ll try them out again! (To note:  We’ve discussed other changes to single-target towers to make them more appealing, and we’ll continue to keep an eye on the community’s tower usage data and feedback for more improvements.)

Defense Crit Chance and Crit Damage

Defense Crit Chance and Damage had similar scaling issues to Defense Speed. Both stats were very underutilized in earlier difficulties, making it hard for new players to appreciate the stat. Making things worse, we discovered several bugs with Defense Crit Chance where specific Shards and Ascension Powers allowed you to exceed the Crit Chance maximum, creating random inconsistencies where some heroes could have higher Crit Chances than others.

We’ve fixed all those bugs (we hope!) and also set new baselines. All defenses now have an innate Crit Chance of 10%, up from the old 3%, to make the Crit Damage stat more valuable early in the game. In addition, we increased the Crit Chance max to 33% on all defenses and fixed the bugs that were allowing various defenses to bypass the maximum.

Defense Crit Damage was re-standardized across all defenses to make it a much more valuable stat, rivaling that of Defense Power once your Crit Chance gets close to the max. In general, you should see much more value in the Crit Chance and Crit Damage stat on Defenses, as pretty much every defense receives much better benefits from the stat.

Defense Tier Upgrades

Yet one more major defense change is the complete rebalance of how defenses progress as they receive tier upgrades in-game.

Some defenses scaled very poorly at later tiers, namely low-cost defenses like the Explosive Trap. Others gained massive benefits from each upgrade like the Earthshatter Tower.

We’ve redone every tier upgrade to provide larger benefits for low-cost defenses and less benefits for higher-cost defenses. As a general rule, higher-cost defenses still perform more efficiently at Tier 5 than lower-cost defenses, but with this rebalance, the gap is much, much, much smaller.

Fans of Explosive Traps, Oil Geysers, and other low-cost defenses rejoice, as you can now upgrade these defenses without fear of them becoming grossly inefficient by Tier 3+!

Max Target Changes

Some defenses were limited in the number of targets they could affect, with the cap being 8 (some exceptions). Other defenses could affect an unlimited number of targets, and there was not a lot of rhyme or reason as to which defenses had caps and which did not.

As of this patch, all defenses have a max targets of 10. Defenses that used to have a max of 8 targets have been increased to 10, and defenses that had no cap are now capped at 10.

To note, these caps exist to try and make the balance between fixed-target defenses and many-target defenses somewhat plausible. We’ll keep an eye on it moving forward and make adjustments as the relative balance between these subtypes dictates.

Range Gambit Ascension Powers

Not to sound like a broken record, but Defense Range had scaling issues as well, most notably with the inconsistencies between how the Range Gambits would affect different defenses. The Skeletal Ramster notoriously had almost no benefit from this Power, while Explosive Trap could alter the face of Etheria at maximum values.

And once again, we went back and re-standardized how defenses are affected by Defense Range. We broke this down into roughly two categories:

Fixed-Target defenses, meaning those that generally hit a set, small number of targets, will get large benefits from Range Gambits. This includes the Cannonball Tower, Hornet’s Nest, and others. As the range benefit to these towers generally doesn’t really let them clear a wave that much faster, they receive more benefit from Range Gambits.

Many-Target defenses, meaning those that generally can hit 5+ targets, will get much smaller benefits from Range Gambits. This includes defenses like Flame Aura, Skeletal Ramster, and others. (That said, the Ramster will get more Defense Range from the Gambit in this patch than it currently does.) As each range increase on these towers makes it more likely they’ll hit additional targets, these defenses receive less benefit than Fixed-Target towers from Range Gambits.

This is something new that we’re testing out for the first time, and we’ll continue to adjust the Gambits as we go along. This change does NOT affect the Defense Range shard Deadly Strikes, as we’ve left that at a flat % increase for now.

Enemy Levels and Stats

With all these defense buffs, we had to make a few tweaks to the levels of enemies to ensure they didn’t get blown out of the water. The level of all enemies, in all difficulties, across both the Campaign and Chaos difficulties has increased. But fear not, as your mightier defenses will make quick work of these slightly-tougher enemies! The net effect is that balance has taken a slight shift towards defenses, away from heroes.

To note, we paid special attention to enemies that are generally immune / unaffected by defenses and have altered their stats accordingly. Pests like Witherbeasts, Dark Mages and Siege Rollers, which are very difficulty to kill with defenses, have had their stats re-weighted to ensure they can still be slain by hero focus-fire in a very timely fashion.

Chaos 1 Enemy Level Reduction

In combination with the above changes, we’ve reduced the Chaos 1 enemy level by 10%. The result of this along with our defense balance changes should result in smoother entry into Chaos 1. We’ll continue to monitor both player feedback and our internal data to see how players are progressing into Chaos 1.

Mana Regen Updates

We wanted the base 4 heroes to have a little more ability uptime to closer match some of the heroes like Gunwitch. As a result, we’ve increased the base mana regeneration of our core 4 heroes from 2 MP/s to 3 MP/s. This should have a big impact on Campaign (50% more mana!), and this should give roughly about 20% more mana alongside the Channel Shard.

But we must also mention we had to make substantial changes to the Power of Storms Shard. Sadly, the Shard was bugged -- it was giving some heroes nearly infinite ability mana, which was not the goal for the Shard! We’ve reworked this Shard, and it now provides a large burst of mana every 10-12 seconds, but it no longer feeds the hero a nearly bottomless stream of ability mana. The Shard’s description has been overhauled, so the actual impact/effect is clearly stated, and players can work out if they’ll benefit more from Channel or Power of Storms in their build.

Stuck Special Enemy Fixes

One of the biggest bugs we wanted to fix was the Stuck Special Enemy bug where Siege Rollers and other Special Enemies were getting stuck in their spawners. Our world builders have gone through the maps reported to us and changed geometry within the spawners that were causing trouble. So far things are looking good, but if you see a stuck Special Enemy after this patch, please report it to our bug site!

New Weekend Event Support

This patch includes the ability to do Weekend Gold and Weekend XP events! Perhaps you’ll see them soon...

And More Bug Fixes

Which includes Shard fixes (hello, Frosty Bind), defense bug fixes and more.

Full patch notes will be available when the patch comes out!