News

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!

Update:  This survey is now closed. Thanks for the nearly 3,000(!) responses, and thanks again for your feedback!

Greetings Defenders,

We’ve created a survey to gather more feedback about Shards and Trials. This survey also contains some ideas we’re discussing on how to improve these two systems, and we’d love to hear your thoughts on them!

Click here to fill out the survey!

Thanks for your feedback, Defenders!

Love,
The Trendy Team

Patch 19.4 is available now on PC & PS4! Thanks again for all of your feedback so far, and we'll continue to make adjustments to the game in our forthcoming patches. 

Here are the full patch notes for 19.4:

Chaos Enemy Spawn Changes

Here's our Chaos philosophy: For each Chaos tier, we want to introduce enemies that counter certain defenses and strategies. Based on that, we want to reward you for recognizing and countering that threat. Each Chaos tier should have its own counters and strategies, and the build variety should be in the ways that you can counter them. Not everything should be effective, but there should be enough things that are effective to keep things interesting. Before this patch, the combination of Chaos enemy spawns muddied the enemy and defense counterplay. There were so many types of defense counters happening that there was a very narrow set of counters you could use, especially in Chaos IV and V. These changes are aimed at expanding the viable set of defenses per-Chaos.

Chaos II

Cyborks are an anti-trap/aura/node enemy. If you’re attempting to take down Cyborks with these defenses, you’re going to have a hard time. If you’re building around the Cyborks, we want to reward you for that behaviour. We don’t want to spawn enemies that also counter the defenses you would use to destroy Cyborks, so in Chaos II, there are no longer any Vanguards from the previous Chaos (Chaos I).Vanguards are replaced in the rollouts with standard enemies. We adjusted some of the support enemies (Dark Mages, Kobolds, Witherbeasts, etc.) in the same manner of reinforcing the Cyborks.

• Removed Vanguards from Chaos II

• New Chaos II Enemy List:  Cyborks

Chaos III

Chaos III is all about the Shield Geode and blocking projectiles, so having Cyborks show up in this Chaos impairs your ability to counter the Geode. Again, we don't want to punish players for countering the Chaos enemy theme; however, Vanguards support the Shield Geode theme of projectile blocking, so you will still see them in Chaos III.

• Removed Cyborks from Chaos III

• New Chaos III Enemy List:  Shield Geodes, Vanguards

Chaos IV

This Chaos is centered around the Berserker Orcs. Berserkers are all about being fast and dealing high damage upon reaching defenses, so using things like stuns and knockups to slow them down are your main counter for this threat. Cyborks counter most of those kinds of effects, so you won't see Cyborks in this Chaos tier anymore.

• Removed Cyborks from Chaos IV

• New Chaos IV Enemy List:  Berserker Orcs, Shield Geodes, Vanguards

Chaos V

Chaos V is all about Dark Assassins. We want players to work together to get those pesky Assassins off, or if you’re solo, we want your defenses to have a clear line of sight on them to prevent them from teleporting and healing. So having Shield Geodes and Vanguards disrupts that, so you won’t see them in Chaos V anymore.

• Removed Shield Geodes and Vanguards from Chaos V

• New Chaos V Enemy List:  Dark Assassins, Cyborks, Berserker Orcs

Once you try out these changes, let us know how they feel. We’ll continue to make tweaks to the experience based on what we’re hearing!

Siege Roller No Longer Destroys Traps, Auras and Nodes

Rejoice! The Siege Roller caused players to never build certain defenses out of a certain crushing fear, and we figured that with our Chaos enemies providing enough counterplay, we can remove this.

There's also a bug where more Siege Rollers are spawning than intended. We're looking into a fix for the near future.

Item Comparison Change

Now you can more easily compare two pieces of loot in your Inventory, even when the items are equipped. Pick up an item and hover over another item to compare those two items directly against each other. More Inventory UI changes coming soon! (Note:  For now, the default Relic comparison popup is disabled.)

Multiplayer Enemy Scaling Reduction

It looks like the multiplayer enemy scalar was dramatically increasing the difficulty in multiplayer matches, so we’ve reduced the multiplayer enemy health and damage scalar from 35% to 25% per player. For multiplayer scaling, our goal is not to punish you for your playing with your friends. Our long-term goal for MP scaling is to increase enemy stats for each player added to ensure the content isn't trivialized and to increase the rewards you get per player added to encourage MP games. For the time being, we have reduced the enemy stat scaling per player added until we can make those changes.

Thanks for the feedback on this issue, and we’ll continue to make adjustments!

Campaign Changes

We’ve been monitoring progression from Campaign into the Chaos difficulties, and we’ve found we agree with player sentiment that the initial ‘jump’ is a bit too awkward to make. The goal with these changes is to make breaking into Chaos a bit more sensical and easy, by providing more Chaos-ready loot in the final few Campaign maps. We'll continue to monitor this and make adjustments as needed.

Secondly, we wanted to put an end to players blitz-farming Harbinger’s Warship as a way to get easy XP. While this wasn’t much of an issue for players at the appropriate difficulty, players with very high-end gear could clear the map much quicker than desired. As a result, this map now provides much better Campaign loot, but provides no experience after the first clear.

• Assault on the Throne Room can now drop the highest power items in the campaign, the same as Harbinger’s Warship.

• Harbinger’s Warship only provides experience on the first clear, and subsequent clears provide almost no experience.

• The Harbinger himself drops over double the number of items (on average), making killing him far more rewarding for players gearing up for Chaos 1.

Construction Shard Update

We love the Construction shard, but we felt the repair rate bonus was starting to trivialize some encounters. A number of strategies started to evolve around repair-stalling enemies at blockades rather than building defenses to counter enemies earlier in-lane. We want to ensure that Construction remains a valuable shard, but as we move forward, we very much want to see key enemies engaged prior to reaching the blockades. As a result, Construction has lost some of its punch, although it remains a significant time saver when it comes to repairing blockades.

• • Base bonus decreased from +125% to +25%

  • Max bonus decreased from +205% to +75%

Ghastly Halberd and Lunar Portal Revisions

• Ghastly Halberd

  • Max Summons 5 -> 3

  • Halberd Damage scalar decreased 350% -> 150%

  • Halberd Attack Rate decreased by 50% (attacks only 2x per second now)

• Lunar Portal

  • Max Summons 5 -> 3

  • Portal Damage scalar decreased 350% -> 300% (attacks 1x per second)

• Descriptions of both of these effects now documents their damage, attacks-per-second, and lifespans.

Bug Fixes

• Dark Assassins were unintentionally being instakilled by shattering and other instakill effects. (Next on our list is looking into the Frostbite fast-freezing bug.)

• Worm Scarf now properly reduces damage taken, instead of increasing damage taken. We had thought that dying faster was going to provide an advantage on some maps, but it turns out we were horribly, horribly wrong, and we should have realized that players generally don’t want to die faster by equipping expensive shards. ;)

• Goblin melee units had somehow starting equipping themselves with Armor-ignoring cleavers. We’ve discovered their treachery, and have forced them to start using their normal cleavers once again.

• Gunwitch’s hands have become quite frostbitten, and she will no longer sometimes double-fire Ice Needle as she warms them up.

• Enlightenment, a mythical Apprentice Magic Staff, is now equippable again, and will once-again generate as a random mythical weapon skin.

• Fixed a bug where the Dryad came back to life with 1 health if she died in Corrupt Form.

• Fixed collision issues on Unholy Catacombs.

• (PS4) Fixed a bug where the Victory Screen wasn’t fully visible while in split-screen

• (PS4) Fixed a bug where, while in split-screen, picking up or equipping an item would make it appear twice in the Inventory.

Known Issues

• We’re taking a deep dive into the stuck Siege Roller spawns that are being reported to us. If you see a stuck Siege Roller, please report the map, lane name, wave and difficulty on our Siege Roller reporting thread.

• EV - Shield Geodes moving over EV nodes cause the nodes to create a visual Shield.
  

• Looks like a set of Vanguards and two Shield Geodes manage to sneak their way into Chaos 5. We'll nuke them.
  

• We’re also investigating changes to our loot system, Shard drops, gold gain and more. Keep the feedback coming! <3

Greetings Defenders,

It’s been a wild couple of weeks here at Trendy. We’re excited to see people coming back and braving the Trials of Chaos. We’ve also truly appreciated all the feedback you’ve provided as it is helping guide our actions towards improving DD2 overall! As we mentioned earlier this week, we’re not done with the Trials update and have a series of changes we’re considering, implementing, and testing. Some are scheduled to come out next week, some are going to take us a couple weeks to complete, and others are scheduled to come out in future milestones. To show you that we are listening and taking your (sometimes soul-crushing) feedback seriously, we wanted to take some time to discuss some of the concerns you’ve raised since the Trials update:

Changing Chaos Enemy Spawns

Here's our Chaos philosophy: For each Chaos tier, we want to introduce enemies that counter certain defenses and strategies. Based on that, we want to reward you for recognizing and countering that threat. Each Chaos tier should have its own counters and strategies, and the build variety should be in the ways that you can counter them. Not everything should be effective, but there should be enough things that are effective to keep things interesting. Right now, the enemy and defense counterplay is muddied by the current combination of Chaos enemy spawns. There are so many types of defense counters happening that there's a very narrow set of counters you can use, especially in Chaos IV and V.

In next week's patch, we're changing the enemy spawns in Chaos II, III, IV and V:

Chaos II

Cyborks are an anti-trap/aura/node enemy. If you’re attempting to take down Cyborks with these defenses, you’re going to have a hard time. If you’re building around the Cyborks, we want to reward you for that behaviour. We don’t want to spawn enemies that also counter the defenses you would use to destroy Cyborks, so in Chaos II, there won't be any Vanguards from the previous Chaos (Chaos I).

Vanguards are replaced in the rollouts with standard enemies. We adjusted some of the support enemies (Dark Mages, Kobolds, Witherbeasts, etc.) in the same manner of reinforcing the Cyborks.

• Removed Vanguards from Chaos II

• New Chaos II Enemy List:  Cyborks

Chaos III

Chaos III is all about the Shield Geode and blocking projectiles, so having Cyborks show up in this Chaos impairs your ability to counter the Geode. Again, we don't want to punish players for countering the Chaos enemy theme; however, Vanguards support the Shield Geode theme of projectile blocking, so you will still see them in Chaos III.

• Removed Cyborks from Chaos III

• New Chaos III Enemy List:  Shield Geodes, Vanguards

Chaos IV

This Chaos is centered around the Berserker Orcs. Berserkers are all about being fast and dealing high damage upon reaching defenses, so using things like stuns and knockups to slow them down are your main counter for this threat. Cyborks counter most of those kinds of effects, so you won't see Cyborks in this Chaos tier anymore.

• Removed Cyborks from Chaos IV

• New Chaos IV Enemy List:  Berserker Orcs, Shield Geodes, Vanguards

Chaos V

Chaos V is all about Dark Assassins. We want players to work together to get those pesky Assassins off, and if you’re solo, we want your defenses to have a clear line of sight on them to prevent them from teleporting and healing. So having Shield Geodes and Vanguards disrupts that, so you won’t see them in Chaos V anymore.

• Removed Shield Geodes and Vanguards from Chaos V

• New Chaos V Enemy List:  Dark Assassins, Cyborks, Berserker Orcs

Once you try out these changes, let us know how they feel. We’ll continue to make tweaks to the experience based on what we’re hearing!

Siege Roller Changes

In next week's patch, the Siege Roller won't destroy traps, auras and nodes! Rejoice! The Siege Roller caused players to never build certain defenses out of a certain crushing fear, and we figured that with our Chaos enemies providing enough counterplay, we can remove this.

There's also a bug where more Siege Rollers are spawning than intended. This won't be in next week's patch, but we're looking into a fix for the near future.

Inventory Loot Comparison Improvement

In next week’s patch, we’re including a way to more easily compare two pieces of loot in your Inventory, even when the items are equipped. You can pick up an item and hover over another item to compare those two items directly against each other. For example, in the picture above you can see our friendly neighborhood QA maestro Petire comparing an unequipped Totem with an equipped Totem.

Comparing Upgraded vs. Unupgraded Loot

While this is still in the investigation phase and not scheduled for next week’s patch, we’re discussing how to improve the user experience of determining whether an upgraded loot drop is better than your upgraded loot. Right now, our idea is to display the maximum potential stat value so you can determine if that shiny new loot drop will be better once it’s fully upgraded without having to do tricksy head math.

(super work-in-progress shots)

Hero Management UI Improvements

Something we’ve heard is that players with a high number of heroes are having a hard time navigating to certain heroes in the new Hero Management UI. We’re working on 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 where you can then put them into your deck, check out stats or equip loot without putting them into the Deck. We're also allowing you to select the other cards in the Rolodex view without having to click the darn arrows. These changes are not in next week's patch, but they are coming soon.

Bag Sorting

Another big pain point we heard is that players can no longer sort individual bags. We’re still in the investigation period here, but this is something we want to get in sooner rather than later. Once we have more to show, we'll show you in a future blog!

Thanks again for all of your feedback! While we don’t have concrete details to share right now, we’re also investigating changes to improve the new loot system, Shard drops and more. We’ll have more details to share in future blogs.

And as a final reminder:  Our 3X Daily Weekend Event is live from now until Monday. Enjoy!

Thanks for your feedback so far! Today’s hotfix addresses some of the bugs we’ve seen since the last patch, and we’ll have more fixes in our patch next week. Keep an eye out for our blog later today [Edit: RIGHT HERE] where we discuss the bigger changes we’re making to Chaos enemy spawns, Siege Roller, UI and more.

At 1PM EST today, we're turning on 3X Daily Missions for the weekend! Enjoy. 

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where Flamethrowers and Fissures would stop attacking

• Fixed an issue where Colossus, Skeletal Orc and World Tree would take increased damage from enemies after upgrading

• Fixed an issue that was causing the Cybork’s EMP attack to shutdown the Angry Nimbus, Moss Hornet’s Nest and Slime Pit from longer range than intended

3x Daily Weekend Event!

• Get three Daily Missions every day this weekend!

• Here’s how it works:  Every 8 hours starting at 1PM EST today, you’ll receive a new Daily Mission until the event ends on Monday. Make sure you complete all of your Dailies to take full advantage of the event!

• Mission Madness runs from 1PM EST today until Monday, March 13th at 2PM EST

Thanks for your feedback! This patch fixes some of the bugs and balance issues we’ve seen so far. In the next few weeks, we’re going to address the more pressing UI and gameplay issues we've seen, which includes the hero management UI and Chaos enemy spawning. We’re hoping to have details of those changes either at the end of this week or next week.

UI Changes

• The Item Comparison tooltip now displays +/- Number of Upgrades

• Added text to display what the next Ascension Point investment will give

• Updated the UI style for consumables (pet consumable UI change to come soon)

Enemy Changes

Cybork

• Lifespan of EMP disable reduced from 30 seconds to 15 seconds

• EMP disable now activates on every attack

• Cyborks now ignore Buff Beams

Hero Changes

Abyss Lord

• Secondary Attacks

  • Uncharged Secondary Attack damage reduced from 11 to 9

  • Charged Secondary Attack damage reduced from 13 to 10.5

Apprentice

• Arcane Barrier

  • Health scaling reduced from 200 to 150 match other 30 DU Blockades

Dryad

• General Defense Changes

  • The Dryad's Defenses, except Slimes, now consistently benefit from Defense Speed

  • Hornet's Nest and Harpy's Perch no longer reach maximum rate with minimal Defense Speed additions

  • Rebalanced Hornet's Nest, Harpy's Perch and Angry Nimbus damage to be more comparable to other defenses

• Angry Nimbus

  • Now benefits from Defense Speed, and his Inspect displays his Rain Rate

  • Should no longer damage multiple targets; should consistently only hit 1 target

  • Range decreased from 3,500 to 2,500

• World Tree

  • Upgrade costs increase to 125 / 275 (was 50 / 50)

Gunwitch

• Book Drop

  • Lifespan reduced from 15s to 6s

  • Now affected by Tenacity

Huntress

• Poison Dart Tower

  • Default Crit Chance decreased to the default 3% used for all other defenses

  • Crit Damage reduced from 5 to 2.5

  • Defense Speed adjusted to match other towers

Mystic

• Viper’s Fangs

  • Health upgrades slightly increased to now match other 30 DU blockades (example:  Tier 2 upgrade increased from 1.2 to 1.3)

  • Bubble lifespan decreased 5.0s -> 4.0s

  • Bubble base rate decreased 6.5s -> 8.0s

  • Bubble maximum rate raised 3.0s -> 5.0s

Lavamancer

• Maw of the Earth Drake

  • Now has a slower maximum fire rate (raised from 4.5s to 6.0s)

Series EV2

• Weapon Manufacturer

  • Damage decreased from 3.0 to 2.5

  • Speed rebalanced to be comparable to other towers

Shard Changes

Radiant Power

• Level Max decreased from 14 to 5

• % Bonus Max decreased from 30% to 6%

• Updated description to clarify effect

Bug Fixes

• Shard Auto-Collect will now correctly pick up Shard Packs

• Fixed a bug where blank Shard Packs dropped in Campaign

• Fixed a bug where the Siege Roller could be insta-killed when petrified

• Fixed the maximum Ascension Level XP curve (it was 9,999,999 and now it’s 2,500,000)

• Fixed a tooltip issue where long tooltips on equipped items would go off-screen

• Fixed a tooltip issue where long tooltips on items in the bottom 3 rows of the Inventory would go off-screen

• Fixed a crash that would happen when getting stunned during a cinematic

• Fixed an equip issue with the Iron Reaper Squire weapon

• Fixed a bug where clicking an Inventory Bag tab while the bag was open would cause the bag tab highlight to disappear

• Abyss Lord’s Abyss Stone now shows an ability mana icon instead of a builder mana icon when out of ability mana

• Fixed a bug where the Cybork would continuously try to stun Abyss Stones

• Fixed a Dark Assassin bug involving hotswapping heroes

• Fixed a bug where swapping heroes while an item was grabbed in the Inventory caused some wonkiness (official scientific term)

• Fixed a bug where if you right=clicked on an equipped item on a non active hero while you were on the All Heroes screen, it would bring up the Item Enhancement UI instead of unequipping/equipping the item

• Fixed an issue where only one of EV2’s nodes would display a stun VFX when disabled by a Cybork (Reflect Beam still has the issue for now)

• “Trials” now appears on the Pause Menu

• Flamethrower and Earthshatter Range Gambit descriptions now show the full text

• Fixed lighting issues on several maps

• Fixed several SFX issues

• Fixed several collision, environment trap trigger and camera fading issues

• (PS4)Fixed a bug where split-screen players could not interact with an item that was equipped

• (PS4) Fixed a bug where Bag Options would not work while in split-screen

Known Issues

• Items often appear as the wrong type when moving them into an inventory slot that is occupied until the UI is refreshed.

• Radiant Power - Shards that were fully upgraded before the update will not move to new cap for Radiant Power. This is only a display issue, shard will show as upgraded to 14/5 level or similar numbers.

• The issue with the names showing up at 999 on the session list appears to may have come back (on PS4)

The PS4 version also includes last week's PC hotfix changes.

Hey everyone,

Thank you so much for the feedback so far! We're discussing ways to improve the Trials experience and mitigate some of the pain points with the new UI. Keep an eye on our patches over the next few weeks for more details.

Today's hotfix is for PC and PS4. Here are the full notes: 

PC Changes

• Added performance optimizations for the Inventory and netcode. (PS4 will get these changes in our next patch.)
• Added server performance optimizations. (PS4 will get these changes in our next patch.)
• Fixed an issue with people seeing a black screen when loading into the Main Menu.
• Rebound "Item Interaction" from MMB to Shift + Right-Click so that players without MMB can use Shards.
• Rebound "Sell All" all the way over to Y to mitigate some of the accidental sell all issues.
• Removed the "Are you sure you want to sell" popup from Epics. This is only on Mythicals and Legendaries now. With fewer popups when managing the Inventory, we hope players will be more focused on what the popup says to help reduce accidental sell all issues.

PC & PS4 Changes

• Bewitching Hour Shard for the Gunwitch now only procs on snipes.
• Ramparts Siege will no longer show up in Chaos V.
  

We have another patch planned for next week. More details soon!

Greetings Defenders,

Trials: The Endgame Update is now available on PC and PS4! Check out the Trials Update Page for an overview of the changes.

This update represents our shared vision of the core Dungeon Defenders II gameplay experience. It’s the culmination of two years of new features, bug fixes and conversations with you about where the game should go. As a result, this update is MASSIVE. But it’s also not the end. From here, we’ll continue to expand our endgame with more Chaos tiers, more Shards, more maps, and … well, you’ll just have to wait and see.

On a personal note:  We hope you love this update as much as we loved making it. Many of us gave up our holiday breaks, our nights, and our weekends to make this update a reality. This game is built by the seemingly endless passions of our small team, and with your support, our game will keep growing and growing.

Features and Changes

Chaos Difficulty and the Trials

• Nightmare is over. Now is the time of CHAOS!

• This update scratches the surface with five tiers of Chaos, but don’t get too comfortable because we have more Chaos tiers in store. (queue maniacal laugh track)

• As you descend through the tiers, new threats will appear and combine to lay waste to your heroes and defenses. Following us on social media may or may not give you some indication of what’s to come. (SHAMELESS CROSS PROMOTION!)

• Chaos is unpredictable and can only be thwarted through conquering the Trials.

• In the Trials, the Knight Commander assigns you to a defense commensurate with your power. Survive enough Trials at a specific difficulty, and you will accumulate the experience, gear, and resources needed for the Knight Commander to deploy you on even more dangerous fronts.

• If certain Trials prove to be too much initially, you can perfect your strategies by practicing on any map at any difficulty. Remember, though, that the Trials are the only path to glory, gear, and gold (among other valuables).

Shards:  A New Way to Build Your Hero

• Goodbye Passives and Skill Spheres; hello Shards!

• Shards are upgradeable artifacts that slot into your Defense Relics, Armor, and Weapons.

• Shards give you extra buffs, bonuses and sometimes even new functionality!

• Most Shards can be moved between gear. No more leaving your Passives behind when you find an upgrade!

• Defense Relics can hold up to 3 Shards and can only equip Defense Shards.

• Armor and Weapons can hold up to 2 Shards and can only equip Hero Shards.

• Shards drop in Victory Chests.

• Shards can be upgraded directly from the all-new Inventory to further augment your dominance on the battlefield.

• When Veteran Defenders first login, they’ll find themselves ahead of the game with a complementary bundle of Shards we’re giving all Defenders as a thank you for their patience and support while we polished this update to be something truly special. You’ll also find that all the Skill Spheres you’ve previously purchased have been replaced by a bounty of gold! (Trust us, you’ll need it.)

Ascension:  Go Beyond Level 50!

• How far past 50? Your imagination is your only limit in Ascension. That and the code that comprises the system...

• With this update, heroes at the level cap will generate account-wide Ascension XP that accrues towards Ascension Points.

• Ascension Points are invested on a per-hero basis in Ascension Powers that bestow additional bonuses and augmentations.

• Some Ascension Powers are universal for all heroes; some are unique to each hero.

• Harder challenges award greater sums of Ascension XP.

• Multiple Level 50 heroes in your Hero Deck will not grant additional XP.

Defense Relics, Defense Speed & Defense Range

• Now you can build powerful defenses AND be a fearsome combatant at the same time!

• All Relics are now Defense Relics and will roll with up to three Defense stats. Armor and Weapons will roll with up to two Hero stats.

• Heroes can now customize each of their defenses’ strengths individually by attaching a Defense Relic to them.

• Defense Speed is back as a stat!

• Defense Range is now available as Shards and as Ascension Powers.

• Two new Relics are available:  Orbs and Marks. Orbs are for Defense Speed builds, and Marks are for Defense Crit Power builds.

Five New Enemies

• The Siege Roller was just the beginning. Whatever horrors Chaos brings, rest assured that they will push you to experiment, adapt, and overcome. You will need to achieve perfect hero/defense unity to best what awaits you in the Trials.

New Inventory

• Everyone (and we mean everyone) is getting a brand-new inventory UI!

• We’ve streamlined the loot management process by putting more stuff in fewer bags, consolidating item management to a single UI, and bringing hero and item management under one roof.

• Additionally, we expanded the item sorting and management options to empower you to interact with, compare, and save/sell loot more easily, efficiently, and expediently.

• Added the ability to lock items on PC and made Locking do what it should have done in the first place on PS4 (oops).

Loot System Upgrades

• Loot generation has been revamped, reworked and revised. The new system will help you find more upgrades more often.

• iPWR has been removed. We hope that players will enjoy the new feeling of focusing on our new item systems and stats. Items still generate with stat ranges in each difficulty tier, and some stats reach a maximum cap in each difficulty. Want higher stats? Crank up the difficulty!

• Now you can enhance your loot (and Shards) without leaving your Inventory (or putting on pants)!

  • Also, no more silly “put 5 pieces of loot in” nonsense. Just upgrade with Gold or Defender Medals!

Hero Changes

Every Ability and Defense has been completely rebalanced, and these changes are more fundamental than just a numbers update. Each Defense now has its own stats, and many have undergone changes that alter their fundamentals so the entire defensive playing field is very different.

Rather than provide a before-and-after stat difference (which would be a bit misleading and very messy due to every defense being modified in several ways), below is a summarized list of the major changes to each hero’s defensive kit. This will include information such as changes to defense lineup, changes to defense roles, and other major high level changes to gameplay.

All Heroes

• Adjusted all Hero Damage, Critical Damage and Ability Power scaling.

• Adjusted all Defensive Stat scaling across all Defenses.

• Blockade towers aggro levels are now equalized. Abyss Lord’s Colossus has a slightly higher aggro value.

• All normal tower aggro levels reduced to Flamethrower levels. Traps and Auras remain unchanged.

• 2-Spread and 4-Spread firing solution weapons are disabled from spawning. The only firing solutions are Single, Triple, Penta, Burst Shot, and Scatter Shot.

• Improved handling when in the air on all Heroes to closer match the Gunwitch.

• Balanced all Hero swing information to closer match the Squire swings (results in a substantial Monk melee DPS increase).

• Charge attacks now deal more damage.

Abyss Lord

• Direct Command now scales with Ability Power instead of Defense Power. (Except Skeletal Orc)

• Revised basic attack values to improve DPS slightly.

• Removed AoE effect from secondary attacks.

Apprentice

• Flameburst Tower has been replaced by Flamethrower Tower.

• Arcane Barrier now maintains collision when in its deactivated state.

• Arcane Barrier DU cost increased from 20 to 30.

• Earthshatter DU cost increased from 50 to 80.

• Apprentice Flameburst Tower Challenge/Achievement now relies on Flamethrower Tower.

Dryad

• Revised core stats to match new melee hero scaling.

• Revised melee combo multipliers.

• Reworked Blessing to provide damage reduction instead of an armor buff and updated the description.

• Revised slow and damage values on Powder Toss.

• Adjusted Starfall’s damage and Corruption cost.

• Moss Hornet’s Nest spawns an additional hornet and gains additional Hornet movement speed in Corrupt Form.

• Slime Pit’s oil applied by Corruption can now be ignited.

EV2

• Anti Gravity Bots, Death From Above and Proton Charge now only scale with Ability Power.

• Proton Charge heat consumption doubled.

• Rebalanced heat dissipation values of certain Canister types to be more viable.

• Reduced secondary attack charge time to better match the audio and VFX.

• Mortar weapon types now properly do AoE damage.

• Cleaned up Weapon Manufacturer inspection tooltip.

• Reduced Reflect Beam DU from 60 to 30 for two nodes, with an additional 10 per node.

Gunwitch

• Removed Hero Damage scaling on abilities.

• Increased/added Ability Power scaling on abilities.

• Twice the Price activation cost increased from 60 to 80.

• Book Drop Broom Power cost increased from 30 to 40.

• Broom Storm cost increased from 50 to 60.

Huntress

• Oil Flask duration reduced.

• Increased Blaze Balloon DU from 50 to 80.  (Remember that we changed all defense scalars all over the place!)

Lavamancer

• Hero Health refactored to be slightly closer to Squire.

• Damage resistance decreased slightly to fall in line with other melee heroes.

• Balanced all Ability costs.

• Removed innate resource generation.

• Inflame no longer makes you take more damage while activated.

• Oil Geyser can now properly combo with fire effects to ignite enemies.

• Added a Fissure of Embermount 30 DU Cost.

• Reduced Maw of the Earth Drake DU Cost from 80 to 60.

Monk

• Added double jump.

• Lightning Aura is now Flame Aura.

• Serenity Aura has been removed and has had some effects combined with Boost Aura.  Boost Aura now can equip all Serenity Aura shards but does not heal heroes standing within.

• Lightning Strikes Aura has been added as a base tower at 40 DU.

• New weapons spawned for Monk will come with one of the new firing solutions (does not affect pre-existing weapons).

• Lightning Aura Challenge/Achievement now relies on Lightning Strikes Aura.

Mystic

• Revised core stats and base health to match new melee hero scaling.

• All secondary attack firing solutions provide more consistent DPS.

• Reduced Dark Torment’s DoT and Tower duration.

• All ability costs revised and Serpent’s Coil now costs 20 DU.

• Increased arc on Viper’s Fangs and updated decal to show new size.

Squire

• Adjusted ability, hero damage scaling, and base stats to match new melee hero scaling.

• Reduced mana cost of Sword Beam from 25 to 20.

• Balanced Light and Heavy damage multipliers to closer match Medium.

• Increased Training Dummy DU from 20 to 30.

Enemy Changes

Siege Rollers

• We’re reducing the maximum number of Siege Roller spawns. This applies to both solo and multiplayer matches.

• Siege Roller rockets can no longer damage the core. The Siege Roller must hit the core with the roller to hurt it.

• Siege Roller can now be stunned with diminishing returns based on the number of players.

• The hitbox on the weak point is being adjusted so that melee heroes and certain defenses can hit it more easily.

Ogres

• Ogre melee range reduced. This change makes Ogres slightly harder to kite and less likely to miss defenses placed on slopes.

• Ogre punches are slightly quicker.

Special Enemies

• Special enemies’ HP / Damage increased substantially to match closer to Ogre category. All special enemies should now present a threat (even Griblok).

• Tenacity has been rebalanced for them as well. Most enemies have 50% Tenacity. Some have less (Gnash, Lady Orc Berserker). Some have more (Griblok, Tuskar, generic melee meatbags).

Other Changes

• Rebalanced Campaign to account for all of these changes. We made it slightly harder overall based on your feedback.

• Updated the Campaign Quest rewards to reflect our new loot changes.

• Crit chances now display as percentages.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed all of the Passive and Skill Sphere bugs by removing Passives and Skill Spheres from the game.

• Fixed all of the old Inventory bugs. Now there are new Inventory bugs to discover! Yay!

• Fixed all of the Onslaught bugs by...removing Onslaught from the game. We’re seeing a trend here…

• Honestly, there are so many community-reported bugs that we fixed in this update by virtue of our system changes.

• Melee goblins now hit towers and cores much more reliably. Be scared. Be very scared.

• Demon Eye and Eye of Cthulu no longer get knocked back and fall through the world when using knockback or knockup abilities / towers.

• No longer can G up before the chests show up on Harbinger’s Warship.

• Fixed a bug where the Lavamancer was able to get stuck on Gates of Dragonfall while submerged.

• The Create Hero voiceover volume is now properly controlled by the Volume settings in the Options menu.

• Player names in the Session List will no longer stay at "999" (the default data).

• Slime Pits no longer glow like the sun in bright areas. Tower base and top are now unlit meaning their lighting will look more even across the board.

• Fixed collision issues in Dragonfall Sewers.

• Fixed collision issues in the Ramparts.

• Okay, we fixed collision issues on all of the maps.

Quick Hits: What Happened To…?

The Skill Sphere System

• We converted most of our old Skill Spheres into Shards.

• Some Skill Spheres were turned into Ascension Powers.

• Some Skill Spheres were removed from the game.

• Those who’ve purchased Skill Spheres with either Gold or Defender Medals received a Gold refund. Our goal is to make sure that your choice to invest in your hero’s power is translated over into this new system -- you’ll need all the Gold you can get to upgrade your Shards and your Loot.

  • All gold and Defender Medals spent on Spheres will be reimbursed based on a calculated conversion ratio.

  • For this compensation only, every Campaign quest completed will give players 2 Standard Shards per quest. Players who have completed all Campaign quests prior to this update will receive a maximum of 36 Standard Shards.

The Passives System

• Passive have been changed into Shard Slots on gear.

• Many of the bonuses previously offered by Passives can now be found in Shards.

• Others can be found as Ascension Powers.

• A select few item-specific passives in this update (those on the Terraria weapons) have turned into special LOCKED shards that come with the weapon and cannot be removed.

• Some Passive effects were lost along the way (the flu hit really hard this year) and will possibly be added in at a later date.  Others were removed or reworked.

The Stat Allocation System

• The previous Stat Allocation System is retired.

• You will be able to find many similar options in the Ascension system and level them to the MAX.

Nightmare Difficulty

• It’s gone to make room for better things.

My Inventory

• Bags were consolidated to fit more items in fewer bags.

• Converting to this system has been constructed to ensure that you will receive the same if not more item slots when you log in for the first time.

My Current Gear

• Most Passives turned into Shard Slots; some weapons kept their unique passive as a locked Shard.

• Relics are now used for Defense stats. Weapons & Armor are now used for Hero stats.

• Medallions and Totems will retain their primary stats and gain a random secondary and tertiary stat. Rings will be rerolled into different Relics with different defense stats and will no longer exist in the game.

• All Weapons & Armor have been rerolled with new hero stats.

• Loot XP Boosters and Wyvern Tokens are now gone.

Terraria Weapons and Wayfarer

• We didn't want players to immediately shortcut to owning Chaos V weapons with Souls when the update launched, so for now, you can only buy the Campaign and Chaos I versions of the Terraria weapons. We're still finalizing our plan on how players can acquire later Chaos versions of the Terraria weapons.

Guaranteed Drops

• The only guarantee in Chaos is your doom!!!

• We might re-visit these in the future.

Incursions

• Will remain in game as a fun way to earn Defender Medals.

• For the time being they will only be at Campaign Hard difficulty.

  • Will these be updated? Only the shadow knows… and Jason because he sets the schedule.

Onslaught

• Onslaught is finally taking the rest we’ve been talking about. In the future, we have plans for an Onslaught revamp or for a new system to take its place. It shall be reborn!

Miscellaneous

• Daily Map Bonuses have been removed.

• The My Heroes UI on the Pause Screen has been removed.

• The Forge now links to the new Inventory interface.

• Titles and Collections have been moved to the Pause Screen.

Known Issues

• Keybinds may have been reset due to changes.

• Controller is not supported on all user interfaces. We’re working on it!

• Some Incursion weapons and their respective passives/Shards have been removed in this patch and will be re-introduced at a later date.

• Volcano tower does not get increased attack speed from Eruption anymore.

• Ramster Gambit Talent only gives 3 range per talent point (should be higher).

• Tooltips display improperly in the Scavenger UI.

• Frostbite Slow Talent displays as negative (harmful) on Inspect.

• The inspect tooltip of the Frostbite Tower says the slow gets worse as you upgrade it more. This is visual only as the slow does get stronger as you upgrade.

• Whenever the Cybork stuns a chain of EV nodes, only 1 node in the chain will have the stun VFX.

• The arc that the arcane volley projectiles take to their target is a lot higher than intended.

• If you’re having continued odd game problems, validate the integrity of the game cache via Steam.

• PS4: The Equip/Unequip context icon doesn't update after you equip or unequip a pet in the Petrinarian UI.

• PS4: Various navigation issues on the PS4 costume shop.

• Magic and physical resists have been removed from the game, but they are still on pets. Please reroll them using your millions of saved pet reroll items.

• Worm Scarf is the best shard in the game and is totally not broken right now.



Devstream 71 is over! If you couldn't watch us live, you can catch the YouTube archive above.

In this Devstream, Elandrian and Blacksmith showcases the new features coming in Trials: The Endgame Update, which launches on Tuesday. They also dove into Chaos and...they died. A lot. As expected. 

This is the last Devstream before Trials:  The Endgame Update comes out on Tuesday. We hope you'll enjoy the update as much as we enjoyed making it!

Greetings Defenders,

We’re on the home stretch now. There’s only six more days until Trials: The Endgame Update comes out. Alongside the community playtesting group, we're playing the hell out of the update to make sure we nail the endgame feeling we’re going for. We’ve made some modifications to the update, so some of our previously reported details have changed. Final details will be available on release day, but everything is really coming together now.  

Today’s report comes from Prime Scout Atticus Scout -- yes, this report comes from Prime Scout Scout. We hope he gets that promotion so we don’t have to call him Prime Scout Scout anymore -- he’ll be Scoutmaster Scout:

Vanguards

“Prime Scout Scout here. I’ve been scouting all week, and scout’s honor, I’ve discovered a new enemy. They walk about in packs, and the things I’ve seen their shields wipe out...no doubt, we’re gonna need to change strategy.

This has been a scouting report from Prime Scout Scout. Over and out.”

Greetings Defenders,

Trials: The Endgame Update comes out February 28th!

It’s been a busy couple of months here at Trendy, and we’re finally putting the finishing touches on the update (gold accents, chandeliers, at least one marble statue of a mostly naked person, you get the idea). This update represents our shared vision of the core Dungeon Defenders II gameplay experience. It’s the culmination of two years of new features, bug fixes, and conversations with you about where the game should go. As a result, this update is MASSIVE. Here’s a preview to tide you over till the end of the month. Keep in mind that these details are subject to change between now and the update release.

New Systems and Changes

Shards:  A New Way to Build Your Hero

• Goodbye Passives and Skill Spheres; hello Shards!

• Shards are upgradeable artifacts that slot into your Defense Relics, Armor and Weapons.

• Shards give you extra buffs, bonuses and sometimes even new functionality!

• Most Shards can be moved between gear. No more leaving your Passives behind when you find an iPWR upgrade!

• Defense Relics can hold up to 3 Shards and can only equip Defense Shards.

• Armor and Weapons can hold up to 2 Shards and can only equip Hero Shards.

• Shards drop in Victory Chests.

• Shards can be upgraded straight from the all-new Inventory to further augment your dominance on the battlefield.

• When you first log in, you’ll find yourself ahead of the game with a complementary bundle of Shards we’re giving all Defenders as a thank you for your continuing patience and support while we polish this update to be something truly special. You’ll also find that all the Skill Spheres you’ve previously purchased have been replaced by a bounty of gold! (Trust us, you’ll need it.)

Ascension:  Go Beyond Level 50!

• How far past 50? Your imagination is your only limit in Ascension. That and the code that comprises the system...

• With this update, heroes at the level cap will generate account-wide Ascension XP that accrues towards Ascension Points.

• Ascension Points are invested on a per-hero basis in Ascension Powers that bestow additional bonuses and augmentations.

• Some Ascension Powers are universal for all heroes; some are unique to each hero.

• Harder challenges award greater sums of Ascension XP.

Defense Relics, Plus the Return of Defense Speed & Defense Range Stats!

• Now you can build powerful defenses AND be a fearsome combatant at the same time!

• All Relics are now Defense Relics and will roll with up to three Defense stats. Armor and Weapons will roll with up to two Hero stats.

• Heroes can now customize each of their defenses’ strengths individually by attaching a Defense Relic to them.

• Gobus will have nowhere to hide because Defense Range and Speed are returning as stats!

Chaos Difficulty and the Trials

• Nightmare is over. Now is the time of CHAOS!!!

• This update scratches the surface with five levels of Chaos, but don’t get too comfortable because we have more Chaos levels in store. (queue maniacal laugh track)

• As you descend through the levels, new threats will appear and combine to lay waste to your heroes and defenses. Following us on social media may or may not give you some indication of what’s to come. (SHAMELESS CROSS PROMOTION!)

• Chaos is unpredictable and can only be thwarted through conquering the Trials.

• In the Trials, the Knight Commander assigns you a defense commensurate with your power. Survive enough Trials at a specific difficulty and you will accumulate the experience, gear, and resources needed for the Knight Commander to deploy you on even more dangerous fronts.

• If certain Trials prove to be too much initially, you can perfect your strategies by practicing on any map at any difficulty. Remember, though, that the Trials are the only path to glory, gear, and gold (among other valuables).

Five New Enemies

• The Siege Roller was just the beginning. Whatever horrors Chaos brings, rest assured that they will push you to experiment, adapt, and overcome. You will need to achieve perfect hero/defense unity to best what awaits you in the Trials.

New Inventory

• Everyone (and we mean everyone) is getting a brand-new inventory UI!!

• We’ve streamlined the loot management process by: putting more stuff in fewer bags, consolidating item management to a single UI, and bringing hero and item management under one roof.

• Additionally, we have expanded the item sorting and management options to empower you to interact with, compare, and save/sell loot more easily, efficiently, and expediently.

• Added the ability to lock items on PC and making Locking do what it should have done in the first place on PS4 (oops).

Item Enhancement

• Now you can enhance your loot (and Shards) without leaving your Inventory (or putting on pants)!

• Also, no more silly “plus 5 pieces of loot in” nonsense. Just upgrade with Gold or Defender Medals!

Siege Roller Updates (Because we listen and care deeply about you)

• We’re reducing the maximum number of Siege Roller spawns. This applies to both solo and multiplayer matches.

• Siege Roller rockets can no longer damage the core. The Siege Roller must hit the core with the roller to hurt it.

• The hitbox on the weak point is being adjusted so that melee heroes and certain defenses can hit it more easily.

Balance Changes

• The entire game has been rebalanced. No… really, we didn’t just nerf PDTs and call it a day. Dan and Brett have been doing nothing but re-balancing since New Year’s. Well… that and shards and eating and I think sleeping? Maybe?

Bug Fixes

• Check! And the update after this will have even more.

Quick Hits: What’s Happening To…?

The Skill Sphere System

• We converted most of our old Skill Spheres into Shards.

• Some Skill Spheres were turned into Ascension Powers.

• Some Skill Spheres were removed from the game.

• Those who’ve purchased Skill Spheres with either Gold or Defender Medals will receive a Gold refund when the update comes out. Our goal is to make sure that your choice to invest in your hero’s power is translated over into this new system -- you’ll need all the Gold you can get to upgrade your Shards and your Loot. We’ll have the exact figures of how much Gold you’ll receive on release day.

The Passives System

• Passive have been changed into Shard Slots on gear.

• Many of the bonuses previously offered by Passives can now be found in Shards.

• Others can be found as Ascension Powers.

• A select few item-specific passives have turned into special LOCKED shards that come with the item and cannot be removed.

• Some Passive effects were lost along the way (the flu hit really hard this year).

• The exact details will be listed in the patch notes on release day.

The Stat Allocation System

• The current Stat Allocation System is retiring.

• You will be able to find many similar options in the Ascension system and level them to the MAX.

Nightmare Difficulty

• It’s gone to make room for new better things.

My Inventory

• Bags are being consolidated to fit more items in fewer bags.

• Converting to this system has been constructed to ensure that you will receive the same if not more item slots when you log in for the first time.

My Current Gear (In case you missed it in all the previous stuff)

• Most Passives are turning into Shard Slots; some weapons will keep their unique passive as a locked Shard.

• Relics are now used for Defense stats. Weapons & Armor are now used for Hero stats.

• Medallions and Totems will retain their primary stats and gain a random secondary and tertiary stat. Rings will be rerolled with defense stats.

• Weapons & Armor with hero stats will remain the same. Weapons & Armor with defense stats will be rerolled into hero stats.

• Loot XP boosters are going away, so use them now!

Pets

• A handful of balance changes, otherwise the same… for now!

Terraria Weapons and Wayfarer

• The weapons are still in the game, but the way you acquire them is something we’re still discussing.

Guaranteed Drops

• The only guarantee in Chaos is your doom!!!

Incursions

• Will remain in game as a fun way to earn Defender Medals.

• For the time being they will only be at Campaign Hard difficulty.

  • Will these be updated? Only the shadow knows… and Jason because he sets the schedule.

Wyvern Tokens

• Wyvern Tokens were disabled last May, but with this update, they’ll be fully removed from the game. Spend them now!

Onslaught

• Onslaught is finally taking the rest we’ve been talking about. In the future, we have plans for an Onslaught revamp or a new system to take its place. It shall be reborn!

Grandma

• We’re sorry, Billy. Grandma left us yesterday. But don’t worry, she’s having fun in nice big Vegas upstate where she can spend lots of time with other grandmothers and play slot machines all day! No, sorry, we can’t go see her. We’re not allowed back in Vegas. No I can’t explain why honey, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

\

In last week's report, we heard from the late Prime Scout Andrelian about an electrically charged new Orc. Today’s report comes from Prime Scout Xavier, whose drawing seems to have the exact style as Andrelian...

“What an unusual creature. Or is it a device? I can’t really tell. The little guy doesn’t eat. Doesn’t drink. Just follows orders. But it gets angry if you poke it with a spear as one of our scouts discovered. RIP Eddie. You were an idiot, but the kind of idiot everyone needs in a group. You completed us!

The Geode emits some sort of shield when activated. I wonder if the Geode itself is vulnerable to attack. Hmm, maybe it wasn’t angry when Eddie hit it with the spear. Maybe it was scared.”

“I have seen the gathering Chaos… the thundering footsteps… the spine-chilling roar… oh woe, oh terror, the green sea that descendeth upon us! Wait, do you hear that, Billy? By Grabthar’s hammer, run! Get out of here! Our insurance won’t cover this!”   

- Prime Scout Andrelian, as recounted by his second-in-command, Billy

Andrelian's death was not in vain, for along with that… err… pleasant anecdote came a detailed drawing and a brief description of a new addition to the Old Ones’ army:

“Later phases of Chaos contain these enormous brutes. They appear to be powered by the evil sky magic called electricity. I can only speculate on the exact impact of their hammers, but I’m sure whatever they do will be positively shocking!

Even in the face of death, I cannot ignore a good pun.”

On Friday, Elandrian and Blacksmith discussed Trials: The Endgame Update! Watch the archived stream above.

In the first half, we spoke about the new power you'll discover when the update comes out. If you'd like to learn more, check out our New Power blog. In the second half, we answered tons of your questions.

Stay tuned next week for more details on the new challenges standing between you and your new power. 

"Those who want Power must cast themselves into the Chaos." - A quote we totally didn't make up.

Greetings Defenders,

Trials: The Endgame Update is the systems update you’ve been waiting for. We’re improving progression, herocrafting, strategy, challenge and so much more. We’re pouring every ounce of ourselves into our most ambitious update yet, and we hope you’ll love it as much as we do when it comes out soon.

There’s a lot in this update, which also includes new threats, new difficulties, new ways to play, a new Inventory, balance updates, quality of life improvements, bug fixes and more, but this week, let’s focus on the new power you’ll find in the update:

Shards: A New Way to Build Your Hero

Our brave Etherian scouts ventured deep into the emerging Chaos. While evading fearsome new foes, they discovered powerful new artifacts called Shards! Shards slot into your Defenses, Weapons and Armor where your passives once were. Shards give you extra buffs, bonuses and sometimes even new functionality, which can be upgraded to augment your defensive capacity!

Defenses can hold up to three Defense Shards; Weapons and Armor can hold up to two Hero Shards. When you enter the new update, you’ll find your previously acquired gear -- slightly modified -- alongside a complimentary collection of Shards to start you on your way. Those with iPWR 750 loot will initially venture further into Chaos than other players by leveraging these complimentary Shards, but all will eventually find their way to greater iPWR glory (more on this in a future report). Best of all, most Shards can be moved between gear, which allows you to modify and improve your builds without losing earned progress!

Gone are the days when you bowed in tyranny to the RNGsus of Passives. Now you only need to bend one knee slightly to the Shard Gods!

Summary of the Shards system:

• Goodbye Passives and Skill Spheres; hello Shards!

• Shards are gemlike artifacts that slot into your Defenses, Armor and Weapons

• Shards give you extra buffs, bonuses and sometimes even new functionality

• Shards are found as loot drops separate from your other gear

• Shards are upgradeable

• Most Shards can be moved between gear. No more leaving your Passives behind when you find an iPWR upgrade!

• Defenses can hold up to 3 Shards and can only equip Defense Shards

• Armor and Weapons can hold up to 2 Shards and can only equip Hero Shards

• When you login, you’ll be given Shards to help you on your journey into Chaos, and depending on how many Skill Spheres you’ve purchased, you’ll be given a ton of gold (which you might think you have enough now, but you’ll need all the gold you can get for upgrading Shards)

Ascension: Go Beyond Level 50

While our scouts risked life and limb in the Chaos, our magical scholars made a discovery of their own -- you can now go beyond Level 50! They’re calling it the Ascension system, and they’re quite proud of the name. (They’re as smug as they are clever, those scholars.)

Oh, and what’s the new limit, you ask?

You’ll be delighted to know our scholars believe this path to be limitless! Trust us, our scholars have been testing it. They’re as thorough as they are smug.

When a hero hits Level 50, any XP gained from that point forward goes towards your Ascension Level. Some of you might be wondering whether a deck of four Level 50 Heroes gives you four times the Ascension XP. Some of you might be on the right track! Having multiple level 50 Heroes and braving the toughest challenges rewards you with the greatest bounty.

Earning an Ascension Level gives you points to invest in Ascension Powers. Some Ascension Powers are universal while others are unique to specific heroes. To be the best, you’ll need to rise off your laurels, test yourself, bring your A-game and choose your Powers wisely.

Summary of Ascension:

• Go beyond Level 50 with the Ascension system!

• When a hero hits Level 50, all XP gained after that point goes towards your Ascension Level

• Earning Ascension Levels gives you points to invest into Ascension Powers

• Some Ascension Powers are universal for all heroes; some are unique to each hero

• Harder challenges will grant more Ascension XP

• Four Level 50 heroes in your Hero Deck = 4x the Ascension XP

All Heroes Become Master Builders AND Master Fighters

The Blacksmith and the Relic Hunter have something up their sleeves for you, too. You’ve seen them cozied up in the Marketplace, haven’t you? They’ve been working on updates to Relics, Armor and Weapons that will transform your heroes into simultaneous master defense strategists and combat experts!

All Relics are now Defense Relics

The Relic Hunter fashioned a method for attaching a Relic onto each of your Defenses. Rather than specializing all your gear towards a single Defense, you can now augment each of your Defenses individually! Want a Defense Health Blockade and a Defense Speed Ballista? Done.  Want Defense Range Cannonballs with Defense Power Training Dummies? Easy. You can do all of that with a single hero! Mix and match Relics, Defense Shards and Ascension Powers to make a build that is specifically you!

And yes, you read that above correctly:  The Relic Hunter rediscovered Defense Speed and Defense Range! Be sure to stop by the Marketplace to thank him.

Armor and Weapons Reforged

In conjunction with the Relic Hunter, the Blacksmith reforged Armor and Weapons into Hero Gear!   Similar to Relics, Hero Gear will now allow you to empower and modify your raw combat potential and mystical abilities. Combine gear with Shards and Ascension Powers to make your mark in the annals of Etheria.

Summary of Loot Changes:

• Now you can build powerful defenses AND be a powerful fighter at the same time

• All Relics are becoming Defense Relics

• Defense Speed and Defense Range are returning as stats!

• You can equip a Relic per defense, so you can customize the stats of each defense individually

• Armor and Weapons will now roll with only Hero stats, which means you don’t have to choose between hero stats or defense stats!

These loot changes combined with Shards and Ascension Powers provide new potential for hero builds, and we can’t wait to see what new builds you’ll create.

Phew! That was a lot, and we haven’t described even half the changes coming in the update! In our report next week, we'll shine a light on the forces of Chaos that stand between you and your new power.

Frequently Anticipated Questions

You haven’t asked them yet, but we know you’re going to.

Q:  Wait, there's even more coming in this update?

Yep! This is hands down our most ambitious update. We're putting in long hours to make this the best update yet, and we hope you’ll enjoy our changes as much as we do.

Q:  Does Trendy need feedback on these changes? How can I help with that?

Yes, we do! The most useful feedback would be your hands-on impressions, and if you want to do that, you can join our Remote Playtesting Group. Email dani.moore[at]trendyent.com if you’re interested! Other than that, we’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!

Q:  What’s happening to the Passive and Skill Sphere systems?

Most Passives and Skill Spheres are being converted into Shards and some are becoming Ascension Powers. When you login, you’ll be given a number of Shards to aid you on your journey into Chaos, and depending on how many Skill Spheres you’ve purchased, you’ll be given a ton of gold (which you’ll need for upgrading Shards). Those who have purchased more Skill Spheres than others will be given a big leg up here as gold will be key to upgrading Shards and getting further into Chaos faster than other players. And those who farmed iPWR 750 loot will be able to start deeper into Chaos than others.

Q:  What happens to my current Relics, Weapons and Armor?

The most important thing is that your iPWR will remain the same! Your Medallions and Totems will still be Defense focused. Any Defense stats on weapons and armor will be rerolled into Hero stats. Rings will become a Defense Relic and will contain Defense stats. And again, if you have iPWR 750 loot, you’re ahead of the curve.

Q:  Does that mean that investing my time into Skill Spheres and farming gear was worthwhile?

Yes! The more Skill Spheres you purchased, the more gold you’ll receive when this update comes out. Gold is essential to upgrading Shards and gear. And your iPWR will be untouched in the update, so those with higher iPWR gear will be able to start further into Chaos than other players when used in conjunction with the new Shard system! It’s always a little tricky when an in-development game makes big changes, but top-tier players now should remain our top-tier players when the update comes out.

Q:  Will one Defense Relic give me the same amount of stats for a Defense as before?

Maybe not perfectly 1:1, but the goal is that one Defense Relic along with your Shards and your Ascension Powers should give you all the power you need for an individual defense. Our overall goal is that you can have the power fantasy of being an awesome builder and an awesome fighter at once.

Q:  Will I want to build multiples of the same hero now?

We imagine that players will create different builds of a given hero using Shards + Gear Stats + Ascension Powers similar to other loot-driven RPGs.

Q:  I have more questions! Where can I ask them?

You can ask them in the comments below, and we’ll do our best to answer them. You can also join us on our Devstream this Friday at 3PM EST, and we’ll answer as many questions as we can!

Welcome to 2017, Defenders! I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays. For the first time in nearly six years at Trendy, I took a month off to focus on my mental health. Apparently going 110% all the time isn't healthy. Weird.

While I was slacking off, the team went into hyper-overdrive before the break. Blacksmith and a few others worked through the holidays to help us conquer our ambitions. I firmly believe this update will turn some heads in the community. I believe it'll also achieve world peace, but setting reasonable expectations is my resolution this year, so I'll settle for turning water into wine.

I was hoping to share more specifics this week, but those details need some extra time in the oven. But there are some questions about the update I can answer now:

Q: What's the goal of the update?
A:  The goal is endgame! This won't be the final version of our endgame, but it lays down a foundation we can expand upon in future updates. It also aims to improve loot, build customization and a lot more.

Q: What is this update called?
A: We're having fierce internal debate, but you should leave your suggestions in the comments below. We've used community names in the past! (Wipeageddon came from someone in our Twitch chats.)

Q: When is the update coming out?
A: We don't have a date just yet because we want to give ourselves iteration time. We also want to get player feedback in as early as possible, so we can iterate off of that, too.

Q: How can I give feedback on these changes?
A: The best way for you to give feedback is to join the Remote Playtesting Group. The RPG is a group of volunteer community members who get to play early builds and offer feedback. Contact dani.mooretrendyent.com if you're interested. You can also keep an eye out for our update blogs in the coming weeks and leave your feedback in the comments.

Since we've returned, we've been digging into your Siege Roller feedback from the last update. We're investigating some issues with the weak spot hitbox that is making it more difficult for towers and melee heroes to deal damage to the spot. We're also discussing how many Siege Rollers spawn for solo players. I hope to have more info for you soon.

Also, it seems like this week's patch improved connection performance for a ton of players! That's freaking awesome! If you're still experiencing issues, let us know.

Most of us are too busy diving into our next update to come up for air, but a few of us breached the surface to give you a few extra treats this week:

Steven Collins, Lead Level Designer (Esorath)

Working on a massive update for Dungeon Defenders II and that comes with some new enemies. Here is a sneak peek at one of our favorite enemy designs. Let the theorycrafting begin….

Jesus Diaz, World Builder (N3oDoc)

Hello, Defenders!

I've been doing some fixes to the Social Hub and Private Tavern, so you can expect some new cool things in the next update! Aside of that, I'm working on new assets for the upcoming DD2 levels!

Daniel Diaz, World Builder (@Danimix1983)

Hope you all had a good start this new year! I've been so busy working on new assets, fixes, updating some levels, collisions, lots of stuff! Here's a preview of one of the new assets I've been working on this week (work-in-progress).

John Muscarella, Digital Puppet Master (Muskie4242)

New year.  New people.  New challenges.

The Animation and Tech Animation departments are now teaming with new faces. There is a lot of fresh talent here to help us push through 2017.  

SO! To kick off the new year, I’d like to give you all a gif-t. Please enjoy these reaction .gifs that you can now use to harass us and each other on the forums. (Shhhhhhhh…  Don’t tell Isom these are from me.)

Happy New Year, Defenders!

Hello, Defenders! Thanks to your reports on our Bug Reporting Site, we’ve been able to track down some of the lag issues in our game! This patch for PC & PS4 should improve connection performance for a large number of players.

Please note that this is not a complete and total fix of all connection performance issues. You may still experience issues while playing, and our team is dedicated to crushing them. More fixes will come. Also note that some of these fixes may create additional issues, so please help us keep an eye out for any new bugs and report them to the Bug Reporting Site!

Connection Performance Improvements

• Optimized towers to potentially fix the multi-builder lag issue. Please let us know if the issue still persists, or if your towers aren’t updating properly when you change items or hotswap between heroes.

• Fixed several issues that were causing our servers’ CPUs to spike. These issues would cause what looked like lag in the game. Please let us know if your heroes are not properly getting XP after this change.

Holiday Event Complete

• The Holiday Event is now over! We hope you enjoyed your presents!

• Just like the real holidays, the decorations may be gone but the snowpocalypse lingers. Stay warm out there.

Happy Holidays from everyone here at Trendy Entertainment!  Thanks for a great 2016 and we can’t wait to share what’s coming up in 2017.  Here’s some tidbits about some of the things we’re working on in the game.

Daniel Haddad, Design Director (Blacksmith)

There are no holidays in the camp of Blacksmith. We’re working on three huge changes coming to Dungeon Defenders II very soon. Today I am going to talk about 1.5 of those changes.

While we were working on the Terraria crossover, our back burners were burning away thinking about what we can do to DD2 to make it a more entertaining experience and help empower the end game. While I was playtesting the bloodmoon incursion, one of the answers was staring right at me the entire time. Do you guys see what is wrong with this picture?

Even though we give you the option to carry four heroes in your hero deck, in order to achieve the full fantasy of a hero, you need three of that hero. In the image above, I had:

1. Defense Health Dryad dedicated to building tanky trees

2. Defense Power Dryad dedicated to building damage dealing defenses

3. Hero Damage/Ability Power Dryad dedicated to wrecking face during the combat phase

We are all used to this by now and it’s funny that this has been staring all of us in the face for years now, and we never realized how obtuse it feels. In order for a player to achieve the fantasy a hero promises, that player needs to level 3 of the same hero and farm for at least 18 pieces of gear.

While thinking about this seemingly obtuse problem in DD2, I started thinking about how players interface with loot and realized that loot itself is also currently obtuse. Imagine you are a hero. Imagine you are wearing a full legendary ipwr 800 set of armor. You’d feel powerful right? Protected? Safe? That is what armor is for right? Not in current DD2, if that armor had defense stats on it, well, you will get 1-shot in nightmare… What about if you have an iPwr 800 legendary weapon! Surely you can deal great damage to your adversaries right? Well, not entirely … you more like tickle them to death if that weapon had the wrong stats… Similar to how you interface with your hero deck, there is a lot that does not make sense about DD2’s loot.

To fix these problems I proposed one simple rule. “Whoever equips an item, is affected by that item”. What does that mean? Well, if a hero is equipping a piece of gear, only that hero is affected by that gear. This allows us to make armor and weapons make sense once more. You will no longer find a weapon with Defense Stats nor will you find Armor with Defense Stats.

“What the ploop Blacksmith! What are you doing!? You know this is a Tower Defense game right! Why are you taking tower stats away this is garbage!”

Aha! But wait! There is more! Heroes can no longer equip relics and the game is going to have a total of 5 relic types:

• Medallions

  • Primary Stat: Defense Power

• Totems

  • Primary Stat: Defense Health

• Rings

  • Primary Stat: Defense Range

• X (not sure what this will look like yet)

  • Primary Stat: Defense Crit Damage

• Y (not sure what this will look like yet)

  • Primary Stat: Defense Attack Rate 

Each one of your towers will now have an equipment slot in your equipment belt that can equip a single relic. So for example, on the Squire you will see:

• Weapon Slot

• Shield Slot

• Helm Slot

• Chest Slot

• Gloves Slot

• Boots Slot

• Cannonball Relic Slot

• Blockade Relic Slot

• Ballista Relic Slot

• Dummy Relic Slot

Each tower is now only affected by the relic they equip. What does all this mean? Well this change allows us to combine those 3 heroes you did before into a single hero. Your hero deck of 4 heroes can now literally be 4 different heroes (or 4 squires if you really want to, you can do what you want, you’re all grown…). Each hero can now fulfill the fantasy role in its entirety.

But Blacksmith, what about hero diversity? At least before you had 3 different Squires… It now sounds like all Squires are going to be the same!

Nope! They won’t be, and here is why. If you think about it really, the 3 different Squires you had before were not at all very exciting differences. The next two changes (that I cannot yet talk about) are targeted at adding customization and diversity to each hero type so that you can have different sorts of Squires, Apprentices, EVes (EVii?) and so on.

One of the two things (that I cannot yet talk about, but I am going to anyway) revolves around how you interface with Passives. Right now passives are a good customization tool but are also a massive pain to interface with. You are dependent on RNG to get you the 3 passives you want in the right combination. We are changing that. We are thinking that passives will no longer spawn on gear. Instead, gear spawns with passive slots and passives drop independently on different maps. We are also thinking that passives will no longer have random values but instead will start at a fixed value and can be upgraded through item enhancement. Instead of finding a passive that says “Cannonball Tower does +15% more damage” you will now find an object, let’s call this object a shard, that says “This shard improves the damage of the tower it is socketed into by 5%, can be upgraded 10 times”. By divorcing loot and passives (it was a doomed relationship from the start), you can now invest in the passives you want to and when you get a higher iPwr piece of gear, simply unsocket that passive and move it to the new piece of gear.

All these changes are highly experimental, a lot may change about them, and are the reason why I will be working through the break to deliver these changes to all of you as quickly as possible. We will talk about all these changes in the future, but I wanted to reveal some of them to you know so we can start gathering your feedback. If you have something to say please comment and include “Blacksmith” in your reply. If you have concerns or even if you like what you hear and want to send a few encouraging words please reply in the comments below!

(Also examine the inventory screenshot below closely, you may see the new equipment slots for each hero)

Joshua Javaheri, Tech Art Director (Javahawk)

First and foremost, Happy Holidays! It’s been a long year and a long journey thus far for us and for you, and we're really glad to be here with you throughout. The last few patches have been relatively quiet as we continue to work on huge system overhauls that will dramatically change the way we play and interface with DD2.

A few of us are wrapping up our year here with some much anticipated quality of life improvements to the inventory UI. Gone will be the days of the hero's forge soon, as we're shoving a ton of important hero and inventory specific information onto this revamped inventory system. The right side of this new UI will be the inventory management screen while the left side is relegated to dealing with your hero deck, equipment, and various stats.

One of the questions we've been getting lately is "will these inventory changes affect the structure of bags, and if so, how will this affect my previous purchases?" Simply, yes, we are getting rid of the concept of standard and premium bags in favor of a simpler system. All bags will have the previous premium functionality and will consist of 64 inventory slots apiece.

All players who return will get converted to the new system with the same-or-higher number of inventory slots as they previously had (rounded up to the nearest 64 slot bag). So that means a player who currently has a total of 144 slots (9 bags of 16 slots) will get rounded up to 192 slots (3 bags of 64 slots). THIS MEANS THAT IN EVERY CASE, PLAYERS WILL RECEIVE THE SAME OR GREATER NUMBER OF TOTAL INVENTORY SLOTS.

Additionally, all bags will have extensive sorting functionality. More specifically, players will now be able to sort by Weapons, Armor, Relics, Pets/Pet Items, Consumables, and Lockboxes, and our smart after sorting algorithms will also intelligently sort between different types of items. For example, if a player currently has a huntress equipped, when they sort by weapons, the top hits will all be bows, followed by other weapons with similar ranged stats. We also have a second layer of sorting, with tags such as iPWR, rarity, recent, etc, for even more sorting control.

We are also giving players the tools they need for smarter auto-loot collection. Players will be able to specify, on a per bag level, which loot goes where! It will now be possible for a player to throw all legendary huntress bows into one bag, and all garbage low tiered items into a garbage bag automatically. This should help some of the tedious item management pain points we've noticed players experiencing.

Here are some other cool inventory notes players can expect when we release inventory 2.0:

• Inventory Item locking

• Sell all in bag feature (Locked items ignored)

• Unified design across all platforms

• Full gamepad support

As a parting shot, we are also working on a solution to upgrade gear from the inventory, similar to DD1! :)

What're these!?:

Colin Fisher, Assistant Producer (Elandrian)

I can’t wait for this next year, and I can’t wait to share all the hype that I have been containing since I started working on DD2. We’re going to be on our holiday break for a while, but we’ll be back in January and grinding hard at some big boy system updates.

I might stream a day or two over our break, and if you’re interested in streaming over the holidays, let me know!  I’ll still be around the interwebs interacting with the community when I’m not sipping martinis (shaken not stirred) on a beach and hopefully hosting some fun people on our Twitch channel!  

Jesus Diaz, World Builder (N3oDoc)

Happy Holidays Defenders!

For those who didn't read the last Devlog, we are working on a barbarian themed level, and this week we've been focusing on some viking huts meshes and textures.

We already made some good progress and can't wait to start the world building phase of this level! Meanwhile, here are some of the new assets.

Daniel Diaz, World Builder (DanielKami).

Hey Happy Holidays everyone! As Jesus said, we're working on a barbarian themed level, mostly doing art test stuff. We had some master classes and received some great advice from Jordan this week to help us improve our hand painting skills.

Here's an example:

The Holiday Siege Update and new Hotfix is live on PS4 and Steam.  Check out the Holiday Tree for presents each day!
The Permafrost Pack of all the ice-themed hero costumes is live on Steam today, and is coming out on December 22nd for PS4!

HOTFIX 18.1

• The Goblins will deliver presents once a day to the Holiday Tree in the Heroes Marketplace or the Private Tavern.  Then they will patiently wait 24 hours after you take the present and possibly give you more...

• Iron Reaper can now be properly equipped on the Squire again.

• PS4 - Fixed an issue with the analog stick with Game Browser navigation.

Experience Winter in Etheria with the Holiday Siege Update Out Now on PC, Later this Week on PS4!

FEATURES

Siege Rollers, ROLL OUT!

After months of Goblin Research and Development, the Harbinger has deployed a new war machine onto the battlefields of Etheria.

Holidays in Etheria!

New decorations in the Heroes Marketplace and on a limited number of maps!

Happy Holidays! The goblins are toiling relentlessly making presents for the Holiday Tree. Check back soon for presents!

Costume Showcase

Check out even more costumes in the newly designed Costume Showcase at the Seamstress.

BALANCE

• Dryad

  • Removed collision from the Hornets so they can properly target enemies.

BUG FIXES

• There were some areas of Siphon Site D that the Dryad could sneakily build … Well, NOT ANYMORE!

• Fixed an issue with some skeletons spawning underneath the main core on Greystone Plaza.

• We learned how to spell “Watermelon.”

• Hornets no longer attack empty space on the Dawn of the Blood Moon Incursion.

• Fissure of Embermount’s AoE graphic should be less distorted in some cases.

• No more typos in the Forest Biome loading screen and description.

• No more typos in the Soul of Night tooltip.

• Fixed typos with Little-Horn Valley’s description.

• Fixed the wording for the Skeletal Orc Health and Abyss Knight Damage passives.

• Fixed some collision issues with areas of the Heroes Marketplace.

• Fixed some collision issues with pillars on both forms of the Ramparts maps.

• Fixed a case where people could get behind the enemy spawner on Forest Biome.

• Fixed the Mystic’s Hemolytic Poison sphere’s poison stacking infinitely.

• Fixed an issue on the Harbinger’s Warship where you could G up before the victory matinee and not get your victory chest.

• Fixed an issue with the From the Ashes Phoenix Box Passive where it would travel along the ground rather than firing into the sky.

• The “Delete Hero” button at the Forge works again.

• Mystic’s Sand Viper towers now focus targets affected by Dark Torment properly.

• Mystic’s Sand Viper tower now can be affected by buff beam.

• Fixed an issue with Damage over Time effects not critting properly.  This change should have added critical chances back for a number of defenses/abilities: Dryad's Corrupt Mushrooms/Blessing, Huntress's Blaze Balloons/Poison Dart Tower DoT, Gunwitch's Snipe Poison Rune, Mystic's Lash Out and Dark Torment, Squire's Sword of Unholy Fire, Abyss Lord's Left Click attack, Lavamancer's Fissure of Embermount and Monk's Lightning Aura.

• Souls of Night no longer expire.

• Fixed an issue where a buff beam would be destroyed if a buffed tower was moved or sold.

• Fixed some visual effect issues with goblins.

• Proton beams no longer drain Boost Aura when not hitting anything.

• Fixed an issue with the Dryad where you couldn’t upgrade towers in corrupt form.

• Fixed an issue with the Dryad’s Hornet’s Nest health value being displayed too high above the tower.

• Fixed a typo with the “3 Castle Wins” quest.

• Fixed a typo in pet tooltips.  Learned how to spell “Abilities.”

• Buried Bastille has the correct iPwr recommendation and correct description now.

• PS4 - Fixed an issue where the cursor would go back up to the top of the item category after the “Are You Sure” confirmation box.

The Holiday Siege Update comes out next Tuesday, so let’s take a look into the update and at the past year of development.  (If you want to see it in action, tune in to our Holiday Siege Devstream tomorrow at 3PM EST at twitch.tv/trendyent !)

Colin Fisher, Assistant Producer (Elandrian)

I thought this Dev Log should be bits of what Dev Logs have been before and a little bit of looking back over the year of development.

This is my first Dev Log debut, but here’s a little introduction for anyone that doesn’t already know me from the forums/Twitch/community/etc.This past year, I’ve gone from end-game player, Dungeon Defenders II Twitch streamer, Production Intern at Trendy, to a full Assistant Producer helping out with more aspects of development than I can count.

The past year of development for Dungeon Defenders II has been filled with updates (58 at the last count @_@) and the team here at Trendy has been diligently working on game systems, content, and trying to keep development on two platforms up to speed with each other.  Did I also mention that we had over 950 bug fixes? (We counted.)  

We’ve also had some huge moments for the game happen over the past year:

• Releasing the first new hero, the Abyss Lord

• Hot-swapping in combat between heroes

• Finding games via the Game Browser

• We revamped the campaign experience, providing more story and quicker progression to get into the end-game.

• Hero Deck Overhaul - Remember when you could only build with the four heroes in your deck?  Remember when we fixed it so that you can build with all your heroes!?  (I ‘member.)

• Community Bug Reporting Site - Vote for the bugs that bother you the most and we review it on a regular basis!

• Getting the opportunity to work with Re-Logic and the Terraria on an amazing crossover.

• We wanted to pack the game with content over the year, and we really achieved that with boatloads of new maps, incursions, weapons, and heroes.

Looking back at a feature-packed year, I’m beyond hyped for the next year working on Dungeon Defenders II. Stay tuned for our January blog where we’ll put together a comprehensive retrospective and future plans for DD2.

I guess it’s time to delve into the details about the Holiday Siege Update! This patch is definitely one of our smaller updates, but it’s still one of our more meaningful ones. We’ve been talking about adding new enemies into the normal enemy schedules on maps for a while now and are continuing to work on adding more, but we’re delivering on that now with this update. As someone who is in a “player-first” mentality (since I still actively play and interact with players), I’m pumped for any/all new enemies.

The Siege Roller is really going to shake up a lot of the popular builds right now. On the recent Trendy Friday Fun Twitch stream, a couple of community members and I decimated the Forest Biome with a Volcano tower spam build. I tried to replicate that scenario using Volcanoes against the new Siege Rollers and the struggle was REAL. My Volcanoes did a good job of destroying the normal mob waves, but the Siege Roller blasted right through my walls and defenses and dumpstered my core. It was AWESOME!!!

In addition to the Siege Roller, we’re adding in some fun Holiday content as well.  Our artists really go above and beyond when it comes to decorating our social areas for the holidays.  The Heroes Marketplace and Private Tavern have been decked out with holiday decorations, and remember to head over to the Holiday Tree for a chance to get a present each day that contains some random consumables!  (Maybe, it’ll even give you some Souls of Night!)

In the spirit of the season, the art team came together and pumped out seasonal Ice-themed costumes for every hero currently in our game.  (I’m partial to the Lavamancer because he’s in a perpetual state of confusion … Is he lava? ... Is he ice? Who knows anymore!)

This next year is going to be chock-full of improvements to the core game experience with the next couple months primarily focused on end-game, and I can’t wait for everyone to try it out.

Daniel Haddad, Design Director (Blacksmith)

I’m going to bust out some crazy stats, too! This year, we wrote 1.93 Gigabytes of Design Documentation. We created 995 (we’ll probably hit 1k) design files that are all contained within 212 folders because we like to stay organized. The design team thudded on their desks in frustration a grand total of 288 times, Brett was thanked for last night roughly 210 times this year, 33% of our design team was punched at least once in the eyeball, and we managed to get by this year with only one heinous act of unprofessionalism…

In all seriousness though, I’m happy at what we all managed to accomplish in 2016, and I’m super proud of the phenomenal people I get to work with every day. At the start of this year, we hadn’t made a new hero in about 3ish years. It was an intimidating and terrifying task. The year is over, and we launched 6 new heroes, and designed about 9 of them. We learned a lot with each release and then started a grand push towards getting the game out of early access. We also got the chance to work with the awesome team at Re-Logic on our Terraria crossover which was probably one of the more involved crossovers between two companies I’ve seen so far.

As we wrap up 2016, I hope you all are looking forward to what 2017 will look like. We have massive, maassssssivvvee changes coming to DD2 that aim to revitalize its end game. While we can’t talk about much yet, we hope that by the end of 2017, the game will look substantially different. Making games and working on a live game, specifically, is never easy, and the road ahead is long and potentially tricky, but with such an awesome community backing us, I’m confident we can work it out.

Speaking of our community, we also hired Colin Fisher this year. He is a huge fan of DD2, is part of our Caster’s Guild, eventually came onboard as an assistant producer, and is doing a bangup job spreading the cheer and memes around the office. We also hired Eric Petrie, another dedicated DD2 player, semi pro Overwatch player, and a phenomenal QA tester. Are there more of you out there? Maybe… let’s see what happens in 2017.

John Muscarella, Digital Puppet Master (Muskie4242)

It’s been a long but fun year here at Trendy. Lots of changes and more than a few late nights and weekends. Here are a some of my favorite pieces from the last 365.

Wait a minute, who is this guy?

Must be some character the community never voted for....

Steven Collins, Level Design  (Esorath)

Working on creating some updated enemies to add new threats and mechanics. We’ve seen some threads floating around about mechanics that already exist in the game that you would like to see on enemies. Taking these and some internal ideas we’ve got some serious threats coming out.

Jesus Diaz, World Builder (N3odoc)

These last weeks, I've been working on a new tileset for what might be our next level. That means I've been creating new meshes, textures, and materials mostly, but I've also been fixing some world building/collisions related bugs.

Finally, I'd like to share with you a pic of the level we worked on. As you can see this level focused on the barbarian aesthetic.

Daniel Diaz, World Builder (DanielKaMi)

I've been working on multiple task last weeks, from bug fixing (most of them related to collision problems) to an art test for future levels. We're trying to improve our painting skills and that means a lot of fun!.

Here's some stuff I did for the art test level.

Tim Shannon, PS4 and Live Producer (TimmyTrashTier)

I am working on a secret project which I can neither confirm or deny.

We're talking about the Holiday Siege Update on this Devstream.

Check it out!

We talk about the new Siege Roller enemy, Holiday Event and the future of DD2!

Here are the notes for Hotfix 17.2 on Steam and PS4!

PS4 HOTFIXES

• Reverted the check for restricting hero equipment to the heroes that they rolled for.

• Create Hero Screen was focusing on costumes that you don’t own instead of just showing the regular hero creation causing some confusion.  

• The Eye of Cthulu and Demon Eyes cannot be killed by making them follow you down pits and off the edge of the map.

• The Poison Imbuement Buff from Vile Mushrooms no longer applies to the Eye of Cthulu.  (No more four-shotting, hope you already got your Meowmere)

• Random Ogres don’t spawn together and get stuck anymore on the Forest Biome map.

• Dryad’s Harpy’s Perch does not keep attacking if the World Tree near it is sold and then rebuilt.

• Boots no longer generate with default stats for all heroes.  There was an issue where they were dropping with incorrectly rolled stats for Gunwitch, Abyss Lord, etc.

• Abyss Lord’s Skeletal Orc was maintaining the Direct Command buff for wayyy too long.

• Pressing X on the souls of the night consumable no longer removes them from the inventory.

• Tooltips no longer stay on screen during the Item Enhancement process on PS4.
• Fixed an issue with not being able to build near the World Tree.

PC HOTFIX