After last month’s health issues I was able to catch up on what I didn’t quite finish. I ended up accomplishing a whole heck of a lot more than I anticipated in October! Here are the updates:

Steam Store Page Translated

¡Hola! The descriptive content on the Steam store page is officially in Spanish (Latin & European), French, and German.

Old Crone NPC

I’ve added a new NPC to the gang! She actually is already in the game – she blesses you with upgrades when you level up in battle – but now she has a permanent home at the beginning of the realms of the gods. She will greet you, explain a bit about the realm, and bless you with a randomly generated upgrade to kick off your battle. She’s blind and has a floating skull and somehow has the ability to grant you super powerful blessings…there must be more to her than she’s letting on…

BIGGER Levels!

Initially I designed this first level to be quite small. It was mostly so I could test the other systems of the game, but I grew tired of running back and forth on a single plane…so I made it bigger and more complex. Now there’s a lot more verticality to the level, I’ve updated the background to make it feel even more overgrown and I’ve also updated the enemy spawning logic. Now after enemies spawn, they will check at what altitude the player is, and if on a different floor, the enemy will despawn and respawn on the same floor as the player but at a random distance.

Disciple Actions

When the player assigns a disciple to a job, the disciple will walk to the appropriate room and an icon will appear over their head that signifies what task they are doing.

Crosshairs

I’ve added a crosshair so that the player can more easily intuit where they are pointed. At the moment the default weapon shoot in the direction the player is facing, so this crosshair should help communicate that behavior.

More Tutorials

I also implemented tutorials for basic movement actions (running left, right, and jumping) in first Realm the player will enter. This should weave together with their initial meeting of the Old Crone who will also explain a few basic pointers to the player in her intro.

Main Menu at the Citadel

I also finally implemented a main menu for the Citadel portion of the game…this was sorely needed but unfortunately I just kept kicking this can down the road. Still needs a bit more design polish, but it’s sufficient for now.

Focus in November

• Polish the new-player-experience: Ensure the tutorials are adequate and they trigger at the optimal times.

• Fix saving & loading: A few things have broken in the save-game/load-game system since I’ve introduced these new game-states for tutorials. This may take a bit of time for me to debug since I wrote the save-game system almost a year ago.

• The Blighted Realm polish: Now that I’ve made the level design for the first roguelike level more complex and larger, I need to polish the background illustration and incorporate a few more elements to make it a bit more compelling.

• NPCs at the entrance of the Blighted Realm: At the moment the player is welcomed to the roguelike level by the Old Crone who bestows a gift upon the player. I plan to incorporate a few more narrative-focused NPCs into that initial area of the level to set up the story a bit more and set expectations for the player.

Onward & upward!

Bobby @ Long Tooth Llama

This patch includes some minor balance changes and introduces a new, optional arcade mode: Gauntlet.

Gauntlet is a 10-opponent ladder ending against Cannon Fodder, the mad gunhead of Slumslum City, instead of the renowned Stratosphere Chaingear.

Gauntlet counts as a classic Arcade mode for the sake of unlocks (and for some achievements too), so, if you hated fighting the Chaingear, you can now try your luck against another final boss which plays more by the rules of the game.

The choice is yours - the 'gear is still mandatory in Time Attack and Survival mode, but now you have more options to unlock costumes and stages!

Did you know you could access a Quick Settings menu from Character Selection by pressing Back/Select on your joypad? Well, I'm not surprised if you didn't, because there was no visual indication of it, my bad!

Now, you can see a handy prompt whenever you can access them. Works in Arcade and Free Match, allowing for a quicker access to settings such as CPU difficulty and number of rounds!

There have been minor character adjustments, mostly due to unintended behaviors reported by some players:

• Improved frame data on j.P and reduced landing lag, making it more useful as it was originally intended to be

• Delayed cancel window of 8R/2R after 5KKK to avoid unwanted back grab meterless combos. It still works on counter hit

• Reduced frame advantage on hit for 2P, 5K 2R+K, 8R+K

• Yume-Yume was able to string 2P and 5K indefinitely and combo into j.K from 5K, which wasn't intended behavior. Yume-Yume is still very strong, but now can't lock down the opponent in a 25 hit combo without them being able to escape (she could do that, yes)

• Added two followups to 4P on hit - this move felt rather useless, but now they can cancel it into 3P or 6R on hit

• Fixed move list to remove reference to non-existing chain

Exploding Judo Federation was added to their account by more than 11'000 people. I could not fathom such a result even just one month ago. Thank you very much again and keep sending me feedback! I'm listening (in my own way)!

Hey Defenders,

Today’s hot fix comes with a little surprise. There’s a secret Easter egg hidden inside the Tavern, and it’s not going to reveal itself easily. Somewhere within those walls lies an encoded message waiting to be uncovered. To decipher it, you’ll need to use multiple Julius cipher shifts and Vigenère shifts, and the key for the Vigenère cipher is hidden in plain sight within today’s patch notes. The first player to find and fully decode the message will earn the chance to name a weapon or accessory in a future update. Once the message is cracked, we’ll release a follow-up hot fix that will make it appear in-game for everyone to see. To qualify, the decoded message must be posted in the Tavern DD:A channel on the official Dungeon Defenders Discord server.

As always, we’re deeply thankful for all your feedback, bug reports, and support. We see everything you share across all our social channels, and beyond and it truly means the world to us. We wouldn’t be here without you, and every bit of input you give helps shape the future of Dungeon Defenders: Awakened.

See you in the Tavern,
The DD:A Community Development Team

Fixed an issue in the previous update that stopped the primary fire working correctly

• Rebuilt Ranking and Stats system code.

• Fixed Challenge save issues.

• Cash Store: fixed transaction and display bugs.

• Server Travel: fixed desync and transition errors.

• Improved overall graphics quality.

• Change song if played more than 2 minutes and clicking "Next Trial" or "Retry" after a successful trial
  
• 71 new failure messages (375 total)
  
• New image for "Any attack" as "ATK" in a gray square. This should reflect in Command List and Combo Trials (e.g. Arisette #10)
  
• Yellow font color for recommended layout texts
  
• Add tip for the Discord in Online menu

Hey there Trovians!

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Best wishes,

Your Trove Team.

• 2-6 Equipment Attribute-Purifying Stone

Hi all, a quick update today to address an issue in V2 with animals that was causing people's games to crash whenever an animal dies.

This should now be fixed, so for anyone having an issue where your game was crashing on the turn of a month/year, this update will most likely address that issue.

Big thanks to elineaestelle for their help tracking down the issue!

Hello everyone! It's been nearly a year since our last survey, where we set out priorities and got to work. While we have not been able to deliver on all of them as quickly as we wish, we plan to release the first iteration of AI upgrades in the very near future. In the meantime though, we would like to host our first AMA to see what all of your questions are about the future and current state of Sea Power. Feel free to submit your questions here!

Note: Your alias/name will be shared publicly if you choose to fill it in on our AMA form. If you wish to remain anonymous, feel free to put N/A!

https://forms.gle/8GEEBWJoQxYjbGAr7

*Should be active for 2-3 days!*