On the May 14th stream we continued our string of reveals. Previously we’ve shown off the new Maps (The Mill, The Outpost, The Keep, and Foundries and Forges), the new heroes (The Warden and The Rogue), some new weapons (The Woodland Set), and even the new enemy (The Lycan). Those are just some of the things being added to the game, but now it’s time to get into some of the new features coming to Dungeon Defenders: Awakened. Let’s start with a big one — GEAR!
GEAR UPGRADE
Gear is getting a major face lift in Episode 1, and for a lot of reasons. We’ve been taking a heavy look at what players are doing with gear, how well they understand it, and what that means for metas. Currently, the meta is boost-only to succeed. Boost builds are fun, but they shouldn’t be the only way to experience the game. We’re going to keep boosting viable, but we’re also going to add options to help give our ever-expanding roster of heroes and content more ways to be enjoyed and conquered (respectively).
Stat Changes
There’s a lot to unpack here, so first let’s get into the changes that are coming. We’ll focus first on what’s being removed, what’s being added, and last the additional systems that are added that are built off this new foundation.
Stat Removal
On our May 7th stream we talked about removing Ammo and Reload from the game as a concept so that heroes using Crossbow weapons weren’t hindered when choosing to play with a crossbow wielder. Here’s a total list of what we’re removing from items, and what’s going to happen with them:
Ammo and Reload Speed As previously mentioned, they just weren’t fun mechanics. They punished early players and scaled so high they didn’t matter to late game players.
New: The Huntress gains the ability to shoot an arcing explosive that deals damage to enemies hit. If the Huntress is in the explosion radius, she gets launched based on her orientation to the explosion. Rocket jump!
Agility This stat capped out at 100, meaning that a lot of players with 1000’s of agility because of gear rolling all the stats were getting punished for every decent agility roll on gear.
New: Agility cannot be upgraded, but instead scales from levels 1 - 50, with 50 giving the player the equivalent movement speed increase of 100 agility from before Episode 1.
Block Not all heroes who use swords block.
New: Block is an ability that statically scales based on the source of the attack, with smaller enemies taking less block resource and stronger enemies taking more.
Casting Another stat that caps out pretty quickly and ultimately takes power away from gear.
New: Casting now scales based on your hero level up to a cap. The higher your level, the faster you build, repair, and upgrade defenses.
Charge Rate Another stat that was a little too complicated to understand.
New: Now is baked into abilities that charge (i.e. Apprentice Secondary Attack)
Knockback More stats that people weren’t upgrading or cared to receive.
New: Now scales off specific weapons innately.
Melee Attack, Ranged Attack, and Elemental Attack The difference between these has always been confusing as to which ones to upgrade for players. Veterans might understand what to do here, but it's not really clear. As a result:
New “Damage”: We’ve decided to just merge these into one type “Damage”. That means if an elemental weapon drops, there’s one source to upgrade that guarantees you’ll be doing more damage. This new approach will keep damage scaling the same as before.
Projectile Count (Polearms) We removed this stat as it pretty much locked polearms to only the Monk, unless any hero we made in the future used ranged fire as their secondary stat.
New: Projectile Count for the Monk now scales with their level. Early in the game you have a single projectile, and then after a continued progression it’s permanently set to 7 projectiles.
Projectile Speed Upgrading this actually made some weapons unusable because their projectiles moved so quickly that they would not hit enemies.
New: Now this stat is set on a per weapon basis, meaning some weapons shoot faster or slower than other types.
Skill and Boost These two have been pretty hard to describe what they do for a lot of players, and they also lock us into this idea of new heroes always having both, or having to disjointedly say “ability two is for boost” or “Carnage on the Rogue scales from boost”. There’s a lot more we could get into here, but the TL;DR is that they weren’t intuitive.
New “Ability” stat: Ability is just Skill and Boost combined and are incorporated into the scaling of any ability a hero uses. Previously playing a boost Apprentice? Well now you can go drop mana bombs that pack a punch while keeping your boost build going.
That’s a lot of changes that were made as the result of us heavily investigating gear, looking at player profiles, watching streams, watching video guides, and surveying players. We really dug into what players want and the best way to provide that. We’re not stopping there. We’re going further. Let’s talk about some new stats that are coming.
New “Crit” and “Crit Scaling” Stats - Melee Only This stat is not a new concept to players, but the way it's implemented might be. We wanted to give melee heroes a chance to compete with ranged heroes. Ranged heroes have projectile count that deals multiplicative damage that’s not split amongst projectiles, and get to send a barrage of attacks to enemies while not having to worry too much about taking an axe to the face. Melee heroes however have to focus on avoiding too much damage, getting in and out, and not having as high uptime on dealing damage.
Critical strikes help bring balance to this difference. Melee heroes do have the advantages of cleaving, but in the late game projectile counts more than make up for that bonus. Critical strikes are a chance for us to make playing a melee hero a lot more fun. Critical strikes only apply to primary attacks and not abilities. As this is a new stat coming in with a lot of changes, we want to make sure it's powerful enough to balance the scales.
Wow, okay, that was a lot to write about stats, but these are huge changes coming to items that we really need to explain as a foundation. But wait, there’s even more — let’s get into some item changes!
Item Changes
Now that we have stats laid out, the presentation of these stats is going to change. As previously mentioned, a lot of players felt forced to only play with their defenses. We think that’s a great way to take on challenges in DDA, but it shouldn’t be the only way to play. Instead of forcing players to choose between a defense-focused hero only and a damage-focused hero only, we’re going to let you do both.
Stat Locations
Where stats show up changes within this update and we wanted to provide a breakdown of their new homes:
Hero Stats
Damage: Weapons, Pets
Attack: Weapons, Pets, and Offhands
Ability: Weapons, Pets, and Offhands
Vitality: Weapons, Pets, and Offhands
Armor: Helmets, Gloves, Chest, and Boots
Firing Solution: Crossbows, Staves, and Pets
Projectile Count: Crossbows and Staves
Critical Chance: Polearms and Swords
Critical Severity: Polearms and Swords
Tower Stats
Fortitude: Helmet, Gloves, Chest, Boots, Masks, Bracers, and Brooches
Power: Helmet, Gloves, Chest, Boots, Masks, Bracers, and Brooches
Def. Rate: Helmet, Gloves, Chest, Boots, Masks, Bracers, and Brooches
Range: Helmet, Gloves, Chest, Boots, Masks, Bracers, and Brooches
One thing we noticed was people were managing a lot of heroes to do multiple things, sometimes the same hero to build and another version of that hero to damage. There was so much that required you to have to set up and maintain, keeping you from taking down enemies for that sweet, sweet loot. This now gives you two options to play with at the same time instead of one. The note we made earlier with Ability letting you drop a Mana Bomb while also tower boosting? This lets that happen more.
The end goal of all of this results in us balancing these items so you have the same tower or hero strength that you had before Episode 1, but now having the both. Your individual character’s strength doubles as a result of this, which is why you may have noticed “offhands” as a term describing where certain stats would appear.
Offhands This is a new item slot type that’s also kind of... not new. In order to really pack a lot of power into heroes and not bloat the strength of weapons, we decided to use a slot we have and make it more impactful. The Squire has a unique slot that has made it a little harder to balance him, and so looking at him we decided to unify this slot across all heroes. Now all heroes that do not dual wield weapons (Series EV-A and The Rogue) have an Offhand slot. These are as follows:
Ammo Pouch: Crossbow heroes
Shield: Sword heroes
Tome: Staff heroes
Whetstone: Polearm heroes
This is a lot of changes and balancing to improve player experiences and to open things up a bit when it comes to playing your hero in multiple ways. A lot of this is built upon a goal of ours: make gear more interesting. You may be wondering how removing stats, combining stats, and making stats native to heroes makes them more interesting. That part makes it simpler to understand what gear does and more ways to play for sure, but doesn’t really mean things are interesting. That’s where Item Effects come into play.
Item Effects
This is a new system that is coming to all gear in DDA. Item effects are unupgradable additional stats and effects that are applied on all your gear. For Episode 1, our goal is to lay it out as a foundational system that we are going to continue to build upon. The first iteration will be a bit simpler, with more complexity coming in future episodes.
What are Item Effects? They’re additional effects that roll on your gear. There are a ton of these (with more added each episode) that should help boost your strength. Some only roll on specific item types, but this is something that’s easier to explain with examples than get into the weeds of it, so let’s look at a few types:
Stat types: These roll additional stats on pieces of gear that those stats could appear on.
Example 1 - “Increases your Power by X” rolls on armor and accessories.
Example 2 - “Increases your Attack by X” rolls on weapons and offhands.
Elemental Increases: These roll additional elemental damage increases.
Example 1 - “Increases your hero’s Fire damage by X%” rolls on weapons and offhands.
Example 2 - “Increases your defenses’ Fire damage by X%” rolls on armor and accessories.
On Attack: When using your Primary Attacks, these have a chance to activate.
Example 1 - “Your Primary Attacks have X% chance to Enrage enemies for Y seconds”.
Example 2 - “Your Primary Attacks have X% chance to explode, damaging all enemies in range. Y seconds cooldown”.
This is just a brief look into what item effects are, but this doesn’t even come close to encompassing all of them. Item Effects allow us to now drop gear that lets players continue to progress playing through with less random base stats, but then have the ability to fully customize heroes by hunting down the right effects that bring a lot more unique power.
How does this affect my current character? Going into Episode 1, we will be updating everyone’s gear to fit within this new system. Your current hero strength and setup should be maintained very similarly to how you currently perform, with the added bonus of your damage heroes being able to build and your builder heroes able to deal damage. We’re also working on having some specific item effects be included on this new gear as well, setting you up for a ton of success when Episode 1 launches.
To make sure everything scales correctly, upgrades are going to be changing since stats are being altered. As a result we’re going to be refunding you a plethora of gold based on your upgraded gear and removing the upgrades from this gear. This will let you then choose where to spend your upgrades within this new system. While it might take some time, we’re doing what we can to make sure it’s as easy and doesn’t make you feel that your previous decisions lock you out from taking part in all these changes.
Oh, you think this post is long? That’s too bad, because there’s even MORE. Let’s talk Set Bonuses. We’ve got them, you want them.
Set Bonuses
This shouldn’t come as a surprise entirely, as we’ve talked about adding more set bonuses in the future, and that’s what we’re doing here. Set Bonuses are additional stats and functionality that you get out of wearing pieces of a specific set at the same time. Previously in DDA, the only set bonuses gave item stat increases or turned specific defenses into Fusion towers. They still do, but now there’s more!
New Set Bonuses The ones you’ve collected so far are still included, but we wanted to add some additional opportunities for you to build sets and customize your characters. We’ve got these broken into two different types that either increase your hero power or your tower power. Here’s two examples:
Erupting Defense: Increase your defenses’ Fire damage by X%.
Armor Set, 4 Pieces
Like Fusion gear, your item stats are still increased, but by a lesser percentage.
This increase will make your Fire defenses your strongest defenses for this hero.
Thundering Assault: Increases your hero’s Lightning Damage by X%.
Weapons, 2 Pieces (Weapon and Offhand)
New to weapons, but plays off elemental weapons you acquire.
There are more set bonuses that are thematic to what we’ve laid out here, and even a few that aren’t. However, since set bonuses have been focused on towers primarily for a while, we’ve decided to add a bit more fun and flair with Hero Weapon Sets.
Hero Weapon Sets We wanted to offer new sets that allowed players to take advantage of how active they can be if they choose to. These new weapon sets only work on a specific hero, and aren’t specifically aimed at changing their gameplay, but instead provide some more utility to their abilities. For now, we’ll give you a taste of one:
Protean Cannon MK II: Protean Surge deals X% increased damage and ensnares enemies by Y% for Z seconds.
Weapon Set, 2 Pieces (Crossbows and/or Staves)
This is something experimental that we wanted to put out there. They’re a ton of fun to use and let players come up with even more unique builds and choices on how they play DDA. We’ll be looking to expand this system as we release additional episodes.
How you see and interact with all of these new additions is incredibly important. So without further ado, let’s start talking Inventory improvements.
Inventory Update
DDA has a lot of stats and things going on when it comes to items, stats, set bonuses, characters, etc. It’s a lot to take in and isn’t currently explained in the best way. That’s where Episode 1 comes in.
New Layout We’ve optimized our layout so that everything is together, making it easier to understand what you’re doing within your inventory.
Just from this image alone there’s a lot to see. One of the first things we’ll note is that items and equipped gear are now next to one another making it easier to equip pieces both with mouse and keyboard, as well as gamepad.
Next you’ll notice at the top there are a plethora of bags. We’re adding additional iconography that allows you to change the visuals for your bags, making it easier to know what each contains based on your personal preferences. That means that you need to have specific filters for specific bags. We’ve got you covered:
Now it’s easy to customize your bag, setting the name of the bag, the image, the quality of gear, elements tied to gear, weapons, armor, accessories, and more!
Oh did you want better sort options that are easier to navigate? YOU GOT’EM
The fun doesn’t stop there. We’ve just begun to pull back the curtains that are the wonders of the new Inventory. Want the ability to select multiple items and choose to lock, unlock, or sell them? BEHOLD, MULTI-SELECT:
Want better ways to inspect pieces of gear? LOOK A FEW PIXELS DOWN: Developer Note: Crit and Crit Bonus are only applicable on Swords and Polearms. Grenade Launcher listed here is incorrect and will not be able to roll those stats.
“Irradiate and Detonate? That’s not straight forward, what the heck do those even do?” PAGE OVER TO ACQUIRE THE KNOWLEDGE YOU SEEK!
“All these new items are great, but I wish I knew what I was upgrading and what it did.” WISH NO LONGER, FOR IT IS A REALITY WITH THE INSPECT BUTTON:
Wow that’s so much for the Inventory! But wait, maybe you’re asking “Weren’t there other tabs?” and you’d be right. The way character stats are displayed and upgraded are all in one convenient location on the Stats Tab:
And last, but certainly not least, is the Abilities tab. This explains what your abilities and towers do for your selected hero. We’ll continue to expand on this feature in the future, but for now it should be made more clear what your heroes can do:
Alright we’re exhausted, there’s no way there’s more. Oh wait. There’s so much to take in here, a lot of things changing, and a lot of things being added. Previously we were asked about having limited choices in the Hero Deck that make all the new things we’ve shown before this post somewhat harder to desire. Then the next topic shall be HERO DECK CHANGES!
Hero Deck Changes
We anticipate the need for the amount of heroes needed to go down compared to what players use now (with a lot of these item changes), but we also want to make things a bit more open and diverse. As we talked about it, and with the plan to add more heroes, we knew we needed to make some changes. First, let’s talk size.
Hero Deck Size Now four heroes is great and all, but based on survey results, 95% of our players use 6 heroes at most. As we said, we expect the amount of heroes to go down (by at least 1), so when choosing a max, we wanted to accommodate adding new heroes alongside what players use. This made the decision pretty easy for us. So, in Episode 1, the new Hero Deck size is going to be SIX HEROES!
Hero Deck Incentives Currently there are three hero deck incentives that affect players:
XP Shared across all heroes in the Hero Deck (this is on the UI)
Active Hero towers’ gain 33% increased damage (mentioned in the tutorial)
Fusion Set bonuses activate (not mentioned in game).
We surveyed players asking if they’d like to have more incentives to use the Hero Deck, and so here’s what is changing in Episode 1:
Experience points being shared among all heroes in the Hero Deck is nothing new, except you have 50% more heroes now that will benefit from it.
Active Set Bonuses and Item Effects accomplish two things. The first is that we wanted to provide a space for players to make unique builds with specific customization. We’re adding a lot and by having this in place we make sure players don’t feel pressured to have every hero with every combination incorporated into a single build. The second is that we are going to be working on additional systems that take the item effects system and turn it from 10 to 11. If we did not place this restriction, we would be locked in with only the item effects in this first iteration.
Lastly, for Episode 1, we’re removing the restriction of “Active Hero” gaining increased Tower Damage. This means that all of your Hero Deck towers will be gaining a boost to damage. We’re currently working through the balance of what that percentage is, but the goal is to give you more power, try more diverse builds, and give you more ways to win.
Summary
There was a lot covered here and a lot of this stuff is subject to change until we have it out the door. We’re excited to get all of this tested and out to you, OUR GLORIOUS DEFENDERS. This is the standard of what you can expect with Dungeon Defenders: Awakened development and our episodic releases. A lot of this work is going to be expanded upon with future Episodes that we’re excited to work on and share with you!
What’s Next?
Believe it or not, this isn’t everything. Next week we’ll have even more reveals for the stuff coming into Dungeon Defenders: Awakened Episode 1. There’s even a new update for Dungeon Defenders II being worked on. We’ve got so much going on at Chromatic Games and we are making sure this stuff is ready to go before we ship it out, but we promise it’s on its way!
Console Update
We want to reassure you all that DDA ports for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 AND PlayStation 5 are still very much under way. We’re still working hard on getting Nintendo Switch through the Lot Check process, fixing bugs, and prepping it to be live for you all while also knocking out Episode 1. The Switch version will be completed and released before PlayStation, but we are aiming to have DDA on all consoles by the end of the year.
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During our dev stream last Friday, we mentioned this week would bring the biggest news yet. We weren’t joking! We’ve finally made it to the reveal of the brand new, never-before-seen hero coming to Dungeon Defenders: Awakened in Episode One. A couple of weeks ago, we revealed the Warden, who happens to be the spiritual successor of the Dryad. Who will be joining her in Etheria? The second hero goes by… The Rogue!
Now that you have a name (which some of you correctly guessed on our Twitter and Instagram posts), guess we need to tell you more about this new hero. Have we built up the excitement enough? We sure hope so. Let’s get to the learnin’!
New Hero: The Rogue
As some of you super sleuths guessed (was it the ears??), the Rogue is a highly trained elven soldier. The catch - he’s the last remaining elite warrior from an ancient elven army, meaning he comes ready to battle enemies head on as a melee and ranged dual-wielding hero. As a combat-only defender, the Rogue is agile, dashing in and leaping out of battle as he sees fit.
A lack of defensive towers does not mean the Rogue is without protection. Going Stealth activates invisibility and his arsenal of devices combine to disable, poison, and slow your enemies’ advances. Let’s dive into the details of these attacks, abilities, and devices.
Attacks and Primary Abilities
Developer Note: All of these things are subject to change in regards to balance, functionality, and visuals.
Weapons of Choice: Dual-wielding: Melee (Right hand) and Crossbow (Left hand)
Primary Attack - Melee Attack: The Rogue swings his equipped sword, dealing damage based on the weapon’s stats.
Secondary Attack - Ranged Attack: The Rogue fires his equipped crossbow, dealing damage based on the weapon’s stats.
Primary Ability 1 - Swift Assault: Dashes forward and deals AoE damage once reaching the destination.
From Stealth: Hero throws a single deadly knife at an enemy, dealing massive single-target damage.
Primary Ability 2 - Disengage: Throws daggers forward dealing AoE damage and applying Rogue’s Mark to all enemies hit during attack. The Rogue leaps backwards out of the danger, providing a gap between him and his foes.
From Stealth: Daggers deal more damage and pin enemies to the ground, immobilizing them for a short period.
Devices and Utility Abilities
The Rogue has been specially trained for direct combat—a “fighter” some may say—and brings a preference for battling enemies with some very powerful tools. With this battle style, the Rogue does not build defenses, but instead this lone warrior comes equipped with devices that act as mobile traps that deal elemental damage and apply debilitating status effects to all Marked enemies during combat, regardless of the distance between defender and enemy. The Rogue’s Stealth also comes in handy for those moments when defenders want to surprise their foes, escape danger, or mark enemies from afar.
Developer Note: We wanted the Rogue to play like no other pure damage characters that we’ve made in other Dungeon Defenders games. We wanted him to feel like there was strategy in his abilities, similar to placing towers. He’s designed to fill the role of a special enemy killer, focusing down the strongest foes with both consistent and burst damage when you focus a specific enemy (with nearby enemies taking some hits being an added bonus). For our first non-building hero, he’ll have a lot of big moments and strategies similar to when a tower is beating down enemies, except you’ll BE that tower!
Passive - Rogue’s Mark: Marks are applied to a maximum of 8 enemies while using Swift Assault, Disengage, or attacks from stealth. The Rogue can then activate debilitating Devices on Marked enemies.
Device 1 - Arcing: Snares Marked enemies with nets of lightning, disabling their attacks and abilities, while causing attacks against them to deal additional lightning damage.
Device 2 - Napalm: Incinerates Marked enemies, dealing a large amount of fire damage over a short time. Enemies also take increased damage from other attacks and abilities from The Rogue while Napalm is active.
Device 3 - Noxious: Injects Marked enemies with a highly potent toxin that slows movement and deals poison damage while Noxious is active.
Utility Ability 1 - Stealth: The Rogue becomes invisible for a short duration. While invisible, the agile hero can Mark enemies with primary attacks, secondary attacks, and empower non-Device abilities. He cannot be targeted by enemies, but he can still take damage from their attacks if he gets within damaging range.
Riposte Buff: Using a non-Device ability breaks invisibility and applies a buff to the Rogue. This buff reduces incoming damage from all sources and deals his melee weapon damage back to attacking enemies for a short period of time.
Utility Ability 2 - Carnage: The Rogue throws a flurry of deadly piercing daggers, dealing AoE damage every half a second throughout its duration. Defenders can move while this ability is activated and it can be channeled until you’re completely out of mana.
From Stealth: AoE damage radius is increased and it breaks invisibility.
New Map: The Keep
Throughout the month of April, we’ve revealed one new map each week that’s being added to DDA in Episode 1 on our weekly Friday Funday dev streams on Twitch. You’re definitely missing out on some of the best beans if you haven’t made it to a stream yet, but we can’t keep all the secrets to ourselves. So, LOOK AT THIS BRAND NEW MAP. It’s called The Keep and it’s as spooky in game as the picture suggests.
With the other three maps we’ve revealed as remakes of fan-favorites from other Dungeon Defenders games—The Mill, The Outpost, and Foundries and Forges—we wanted to save the best for last. These cursed grounds form a gigantic map. We mean that. It is HUGE. Don’t believe us? Watch the live playthrough from last Friday.
The Keep’s sheer size is a challenge in itself. Do you focus on pushing enemies into tight lanes to maximize AoE damage? Do you find the perfect hiding spot for your DSTs? Guess we’ll have to wait and see what The Keep has in store for defenders.
New Enemy: Lycan
Another big bean we revealed last week is the new enemy, the Lycan. As you can see from the picture, they’re certainly looking to bring more destruction to Etheria. Using the werewolf’s signature ability, “Howl,” the Lycan empowers himself and nearby enemies, while reducing the effects of incoming attacks.
Lycan enemies show up on each of the new maps, but they show up in earlier waves as you progress through Act 4. Are you up for the challenge? We sure hope so because Etheria needs you!
What’s Next?
We still have lots of exciting changes and updates coming to DDA that we’ll share with you all during our Friday Funday dev streams, including showing off the Rogue this week! We’ll post a reminder on social media, but make sure to head over to Chromatic Games’ official Twitch page this Friday at 3PM EST to hear all the juicy B E A N S we can’t wait to spill.
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We’ve shown two maps in the past two weeks coming in Episode 1, and now we’re excited to present… ANOTHER MAP! Wait, sorry, we read that wrong, it was supposed to say A NEW DDA CHARACTER. Wow, that’s actually way cooler. Let’s get into it!
New Hero - The Warden
As hinted at in our April Fools Day “update”, we misspelled the hero name as The Andrew (an anagram for Warden, what a coincidence). A guardian of the forest that was banished to the realm our heroes find ourselves in, The Warden joins our roster to help push back the evils that stand in your way!
In our surveys and roadmap voting, the Dryad from Dungeon Defenders II was one of the most requested heroes. The Warden is her spiritual successor, using the powers of the forest to take down any foe that approaches. Let’s dive into the abilities and defenses for this guardian of the grove.
Attacks and Abilities
Developer Note: All of these things are subject to change in regards to balance, functionality, and visuals.
Weapon of Choice: Polearm
Primary Attack: The Warden swings her mighty polearm like a scythe clearing a field, destroying foes that stand before you in melee range.
Secondary Attack - Sprout: The Warden calls forth a sprout that erupts from the ground, dealing low AoE damage to nearby enemies, shooting a seed a short distance away.
Normal Form: Picking up the seed instantly regenerates 15% of the Warden’s mana.
Wrath Form: The seed grants increased damage and movement speed for 5 seconds.
Ability 1 - Mushroom Circle: Beckons forth a burst of mushrooms from the desired location.
Normal Form: Mushrooms heal allies within the circle, while slowing enemy movement speed and reducing attack rate.
Wrath Form: Enemies take damage while within the circle. After 10 seconds, the mushroom circle erupts, dealing damage and stunning all enemies within the circle.
Ability 2 - Wrath Form: Calls upon the power of the forest causing the Warden to surge with energy. Wrath Form increases the strength of all her abilities and defenses while active, regardless of range.
Defenses
Defense 1 - Roots of Purity: Summons a blockade that can take a beating from enemies. Blesses the ground with the Zone of Purity around the roots that allows the Warden’s other defenses to be constructed. The Zone of Purity restores 1% HP per second to any hero within its coverage.
Mana Cost: 20 Build Mana
Defense Units: 1 DU
Wrath Form: The Zone of Purity becomes the Zone of Wrath, dealing damage over time to enemies within its boundaries, while also slightly reducing enemy damage.
Defense 2 - Wisp Den: Opens a portal, pulling through three wisps that focus down enemies within its range, always prioritizing high-threat targets.
Mana Cost: 50 Build Mana
Defense Units: 4 DU
Wrath Form: Wisps become enraged, attacking enemies at a much faster rate.
Defense 3 - Beaming Blossom: Grows a flower that collects solar energy that then goes crazy towards enemies within its range, shooting a pure continuous beam of solar energy that deals high damage.
Mana Cost: 70 Build Mana
Defense Units: 5 DU
Wrath Form: The beam becomes magically empowered, piercing through enemies.
Defense 4 - Shroomy Pit: A pit appears that spawns a Shroomy, a brave mushroom warrior of the forest. Shroomies don’t have a lot going on in their heads, and as a result they do two things. Idly stand still, and as they spot an enemy, charge legs first (they’re a bit off-balance) and explode into enemies, dealing damage in a large area.
Mana Cost: 40 Build Mana
Defense Units: 5 DU
Wrath Form: Shroomies enter their own Wrath Form, applying a damage over time effect to enemies hit by their explosion.
Defense 5 - Sludge Launcher: Vines and logs are infused together, pulling in toxins from the ground, shooting out giant globs that explode on contact, dealing a large amount of damage to the first enemy hit and heavily coat them in sludge, lightly covering nearby enemies in sludge, slightly slowing them.
Mana Cost: 80 Build Mana
Defense Units: 7 DU
Wrath Form: If the Warden attacks heavily sludge covered enemies, they can be stunned for 1.5 seconds.
We’ve discussed on stream quite a bit, which if you haven’t been watching you should join us on Fridays at 3:00 PM ET, the new maps and heroes we are adding to DDA. The goal is to bring back fan favorites, while also bringing in brand new additions. We’ve also got a lot of fantastic never used characters in our vault that we’ll be using as a foundation and reworking to give them new life as they make their way into DDA. The Warden is further proof we’re looking at adding in the things you, our GLORIOUS DEFENDERS, want to see in future DDA updates.
What’s Next
We’re going to be streaming The Warden THIS WEEK on April 23rd at 3:00 PM ET over on Twitch, showing off all of her nature-infused power. If you’re not able to make the stream, we post our VODs and a condensed version of the new info in a “Just the Beans” edit the following week on YouTube.
We’re also going to continue doing weekly reveals until Episode 1 is out in the wild, so there’s a lot to look forward to. With all of this going on, we’re still continuing our Nintendo Switch and PlayStation development. The console development takes the efforts of specific individuals, so while we’re showing off all the episodic content we’re working on, rest assured that we’re still diligently working on getting DDA onto the remaining promised consoles.
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Every day we inch closer to releasing a lot of the awesome hard work that many of us here at Chromatic have been focused on in order to get some great content out to you all. That also means we inch closer to revealing a new part of Episode 1. Oh wait, that’s today! Let’s get into it.
New Weapons - The Woodland Set
What would a new update be without new weapons? These aren’t all of the new weapons you’ll be seeing in Episode 1, but they are pretty friggin’ awesome! They are themed around the first two maps, being more focused on a living forest.
Bonus, there’s one in 3D. You’ll have to wait for the episode to release in order to see the rest!
Maybe they have something to do with our next hero? Nah, probably not. They’re just cool runic weapons from the woods, don’t need to think about it past that at all.
New Map - The Outpost
As previously mentioned, we’re focusing on remaking some of our previous maps with some changes to gameplay, while bringing in a brand new map as the boss map of the episode. The Outpost is following that formula. The Outpost is a remake of the Drakenfrost Resort map from Dungeon Defenders II, a map that not many people have had the opportunity to explore and defend. It hangs on a cliff, overlooking where you’ve previously come from, and acted as a barracks of sorts to keep soldiers of Etheria stationed outside of town, with a giant belltower to warn of incoming threats.
One of the things we wanted to do with these maps in this act is have a seasonal shift as you play through them. You’ll notice a dramatic shift and change in the season and tone as you progress onwards and fight the enemies that await.
These maps are some of our favorites visually, and there’s still some you haven’t seen. There’s so much you haven’t seen yet… Maybe we’ll shake that up next week a bit. Maybe. Probably. Just look out early next week for some B E A N S. That’s the “What’s Next Section”. Watch, we’ll put all of that there.
What’s Next
These maps are some of our favorites visually, and there’s still some you haven’t seen. There’s so much you haven’t seen yet… Maybe we’ll shake that up next week a bit. Maybe. Probably. Just look out early next week for some B E A N S. See, we did it. This is a callback to the previous paragraph. Something about these forests is driving us a little crazy.
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We’ve been talking a lot about what’s to come in Dungeon Defenders: Awakened future, teasing at various bits here and there, and by making this sentence even longer, we’re still teasing more just putting off the inevitable of what’s coming your way.
Real quick, let’s talk about how Ramsters came to exist. Hamster and ram? That doesn’t even make any sense! Oh wait, you probably wanted to talk about the first thing. Okay, time to talk about the first thing. Let’s get into it.
Episodes
Now what the heck are Episodes? Well in short, they’re our FREE major content updates, but MCU was already taken (you may have heard of it), so Episodes it is! We covered the “in short”, so now it’s time to describe the “in long”.
An Episode continues the story of our heroes adventure but it also does a lot of other things, specifically they ADD A LOT OF NEW CONTENT. But what is “content”, where does it come from, and does it truly exist? To answer in reverse order, yes it exists, we make it, and that first one is too philosophical, and we’re sure you want to get right to the good stuff.So let’s talk about what you can expect.
New Maps
In each episode of Dungeon Defenders Awakened you’ll be receiving four new maps that increase in difficulty off the base campaign. We’re following a formula for the new maps where we provide a brand new map as well as recreate three fan favorite maps. Maybe we’re going to show off the first one later on in this post (spoiler: we are).
New Enemy
With each episode, there will be a new enemy that comes into the fray. The new enemy will be similar to the nightmare enemies, bringing in new mechanics that you’ll need to thwart in order to achieve victory.
New Boss
The last map of each episode contains a brand spankin’ new boss. These are similar to the previous bosses, requiring more active hero combat to take them down. They will be thematic to the content that we’re releasing, as well provide unique and thematic loot.
New Heroes
Yes, that’s correct, PLURAL. Each episode contains two heroes, with one hero being a throwback to a previous hero, and the other being a completely brand new hero. These heroes are meant to stand on their own and feel wholly unique from one another.
New Gear
We’ll be providing a slew of new gear that continues to follow previous item progression. There’s also a ton of fun stuff we’ll be adding (that we’ll get into in the coming weeks), that we’ll continue to build off of. Stay tuned for more info!
New Features
This is going to be super nebulous, but there’s a lot of stuff we’re looking to add that really makes your journeys in Etheria a lot more exciting. More to hunt, more to do, more to conquer, more more more more more!
Quality of Life, Overhauls, and Polish
We’re going to be addressing a lot of systems in the game that were put into a “good enough” state for our release, and getting them into a “great enough” state, if that’s a thing. For our first episode, this means overhauling the inventory and item tooltips (which we’ll be showing off in the coming weeks).
Bug Fixes, Balance, Etc.
This is the stuff you normally see in patches, but of course it’ll be included in our Episodes as well. We’ll continue to get out patches to address these things.
Supporter Packs
With each episode, we will be offering a supporter pack that players can purchase. These things offer cosmetic only items that apply to weapons and accessory slots. Since the episodes are free, we’re offering this as players have asked us for additional ways to support our development, and we thought this would be the most fair way to do so.
Episode 1
We’re going to be showing off pieces of the episode over time, and what better time than right after explaining what’s in an episode?! How about a piece of the first episode? Sounds like a good idea to us, so without further ado, here is the first map of Episode 1: The Mill
The Mill
The Mill is the first stop the heroes make upon leaving the castle to continue their journey. They enter a bright and vibrant forest that used to be used to provide lumber and materials for building the castle and nearby towns. Though it seems calm and peaceful, an army of enemies awaits to prevent our heroes from pushing onward with their journey.
If you squint REALLY hard you’ll notice that this map is a remake of a fan favorite, and highly requested map, Mistymire. We made a couple of changes to make building defenses feel better, as well as modified some lanes to make things play out more smoothly. During the last wave, this map will also introduce our new enemy for the Episode. We’re wanting to make sure that as you play through the maps of each episode, you’re introduced to a new enemy over time while taking on potentially new mechanics depending on your game mode.
What’s Next?
We’re going to continue to reveal more and more about Episode 1 over time, with the goal of revealing something new at the end of the week, every week. If we run into any issues, we’ll let you know, but everything is coming together, so it’s time to start showing off some of our hard work. We hope you enjoy it!
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Last week we ran into a few more bugs and community reports that we needed to address since our last hotfix. Here’s a patch for defenders that brings back the Monkey King’s damage, mana on Alchemical Labs, and a few other improvements that will make sure your focus stays on defendin’ Etheria. Let’s get to it:
Content
Corrected scaling for Baby Phoenix pet’s attack animation.
Kept being reborn and having to grow up quick. Now it’ll stay the same size.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue where the Monkey King pet did not damage enemies.
Fixed an issue where mana was not dropping on early waves in Alchemical Lab.
Fixed an issue where color sliders were not appearing as a selection when editing costumes using gamepad.
Fixed an issue where old nameplates were appearing in game.
Fixed an issue where clients’ enemy nameplates were falling through the terrain.
Fixed an issue where skeletons' elemental immunities weren’t applied after resurrection.
Fixed an issue where enemies were stuck when trying to find a path to defenses below them.
Fixed an issue where pings on certain surfaces did not appear where intended.
Fixed an issue where previously focused entries were still selected when navigating up the hero list.
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Things are getting exciting here at Chromatic Games! With the official launch of Dungeon Defenders: Awakened on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One, we’re celebrating with even more good news—a Day 1 Update with LOTS of exciting changes coming to PC. Last week we teased some of the additions, revisions, and fixes included in this latest update in our Update 1.3 Preview post. Now that it’s here, let’s break down what you can expect to see in Etheria after you’re all updated.
Content
Tutorial
We’ve updated the tutorial! With the addition of new tasks and tooltips, any player can enter the Deeper Well to brush up on their defending skills. Even the most experienced defenders can reap the benefits of a new tutorial, too. Everyone who makes it to the end of the new tutorial is rewarded with the exclusive Summoner’s Hood mask to show off their mastery of the basics!
You’ll also notice there’s a new objective tracker part of the tutorial. Expect to see this throughout the entire game in future updates!
Massacre Additions
After completing the tutorial, defenders can now test their skills in the new Massacre levels within Pure Strategy and Mix Mode. These new difficulties introduce immunity-granting Siren enemies to the game modes, and defenders are handily rewarded for their successes. Here are the new loot details:
Quality of item drops was adjusted in Pure Strategy to be equal to Survival mode.
Quality of item drops was increased in Mix Mode at Massacre difficulty.
Performance
Enemy Counts
To improve performance for all defenders across all platforms, we felt reducing the number of enemies on all maps in Survival, Mix Mode, and Pure Strategy would do the job. We specifically focused on lowering the amount of our weakest enemies first—goblins, archers, and wyverns—because they were jamming up the lanes and unnecessarily dragging out the time it took to complete waves. After we were happy with the improved performance from those changes, we moved on to lowering the enemy counts in Survival Mode. With fewer enemies, we also adjusted wave schedules, which should result in dramatically faster wave times. Here’s a breakdown of what you can expect to see in the improved Etheria:
70% reduction in enemy counts for Wyverns, Archers, and Goblins on all maps.
50% reduction in enemy counts for Orcs, Mages, Warriors, Kobolds, and Spiders on all maps.
Adjusted wave schedules to decrease wave lengths.
Did you think you were going to get away with fewer enemies without any catches?? Of course you didn’t. We wanted to make sure the difficulty levels remained relatively the same even with the reduction in enemy counts, so active enemies are now beefier, meaning each enemy’s HP has been increased to compensate for the smaller crowds. With such a big change, we’re going to monitor the community feedback to make sure players are happy with the new balance.
Nameplates
Nameplates are looking nifty now. We added missing nameplates above some enemies, heroes, and crystals, as well as cleaned up the general display of nameplates in game. Players should see a significant difference in the quality of the displays with this change and have a much easier time keeping track of enemy HP, a necessary feature to accompany the increased HP of enemies. Cleaning these had some nice performance gains for all platforms, so on top of looking great, they are also helping make the game run better!
Damage Numbers
Get ready for some new and improved damage numbers during combat! Last week we showed you what changes were to come in this area, and now they’re finally here. Players should notice clearer and more consistent displays of damage numbers when attacking, and fusion hits on Rifted enemies will stand out with larger number displays. Like nameplates, we hit some optimizations here as well, so your performance is better while it’s also easier to read damage numbers than before.
Limited Login Event - St. Patrick’s Day Reward!
While today is already a super special day for us at Chromatic, we haven’t forgotten it’s also St. Patrick’s Day. To celebrate, we’re giving out a special green-themed goody to players who download Update 1.3 and log in to DDA by Monday, March 22. This special gift will be available for PC players today through Monday.
Steam Trading Cards
You read that right - we’ve got Steam trading cards for Dungeon Defenders: Awakened now. Because we’re feeling generous today, here’s a sneak peak of a couple of the cards you’ll be able to collect:
Bug Fixes
Along with all of the exciting changes mentioned already, we also fixed a whole bunch of bugs that were bothering players (or helping them a little too much…). Here’s are the fixes defenders can see in the game.
General
Adjusted mask positions to better fit heroes.
Fixed an issue where Steam Family Share accounts could play Online.
Fixed an issue where “WASD” keys still functioned as movement inputs even when replaced.
Fixed an issue where multiple players simultaneously swapping in heroes with Gem boosts allowed them to stack.
Fixed an issue where accessories didn’t fade out when cameras switched to first person while players were backed up against a wall.
Enemies
Fixed an issue where enemies were stuck in Magus Quarters.
Fixed an issue where enemies were stuck in Endless Spires.
Fixed an issue where enemies were getting stuck in the Throne Room.
Fixed an issue where Sirens would not attack heroes.
Fixed an issue where Skeletons would not show they had full health when resurrected by themselves.
Gameplay
Fixed an issue where defenses were able to be placed above the spawn door in Glitterhelm Caverns.
Fixed an issue where defenses were able to be placed near the bottom of Lava Mines.
Fixed an issue where some tooltips would not appear after cancelling the placement of multiple defenses.
Fixed an issue where the inferno trap was not affecting enemies.
Fixed an issue where leaving and rejoining a match to let players place multiple Fusion defenses wasn’t working properly.
Fixed an issue where the Gem pet boost flickered on and off periodically.
Fixed an issue where traps with Use Scale after swapping would have a very small scale.
What’s Next?
While we’ll be monitoring this release and update, addressing any issues that may arise, we’re currently hard at work on getting our other ports for Nintendo Switch and PlayStation out the door to many eager Defenders. That’s not all, as we’re also getting a ton of work done on brand new content, including heroes, maps, enemies, and so much more! We’ll be getting word out soon to give all Defenders insight into what’s coming for DDA, and maybe a tease or two along the way.
Social Defenders
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DEFENDERS, We’re releasing a fresh patch today that includes some balance changes to the Squire’s defenses and hero stats (Hint: MORE HEALTH), and a return of the Siren’s death animations. You’ll also see added “fun” in Tornado Valley - just like you asked for! Let’s get to the entire list, then!
Balance
General
Added Ogres to Tornado Valley for all difficulty levels.
“Unbreakable” award is now based on the entire party, not just the individual.
No defenses destroyed grant +25% XP per wave.
Removed Rifted Warriors from the following difficulties: Easy, Medium, Hard, and Insane.
Rifted Warriors will continue to show up in Nightmare and Massacre difficulties.
Heroes
Squire
Hero Stats
Increased base HP to 300 (from 280).
Increased HP scaling from Vitality to 0.265 (from 0.26).
Developer note:This value scales with higher difficulties that change health values as well. You’ll see bigger gains in Nightmare and Massacre difficulties.
"Skill" attribute now reduces the cooldown of the Circular Slice ability.
Slice N Dice Blockade
Reduced Defense Unit cost to 6 (from 8).
Reduced Mana Cost to 100 (from 140).
Increased HP starting value to 700.
Increased HP scaling from Fortify attribute.
Bouncer Blockade
Increased HP starting value to 725.
Increased HP scaling from Fortify attribute.
Decreased targeting range to ensure enemies are hit when attack is activated.
Adjusted knockback angle.
[/list]
Bug Fixes
Tavern
Fixed an issue where the VIP Cake didn't allow interaction to trigger Gilded Tavern.
Fixed an issue where pressing a Hero Swap binding (default is F1-F4) and inspecting a defense at the same time caused the inspect tooltip to stay on the screen.
Fixed an issue where the employee portraits in the Tavern’s hidden room didn’t play sounds or show their text.
Fixed an issue where employee portraits were able to be selected through walls.
Fixed an issue where the “Save” button was not enabled when non-color sliders were changed in the Transmog Menu.
Fixed an issue where the Reset Options action didn’t save unless other changes were made.
Heroes and Defenses
Fixed an issue where some defenses’ tooltips were showing incorrect DPS and Attack Rate values.
Fixed an issue where defenses were capping their attack rates causing their DPS to be lower.
Fixed an issue where the Monk’s Tower Boost could be interrupted.
Fixed an issue where the Monk’s Healing Aura was not healing swapped-in heroes unless they left and reentered the aura.
Fixed an issue where enemies were not retaining their slowed movement effect after leaving a Fused Ensnare Aura.
Fixed an issue where a hero’s defense and ability icons were not properly updating when there were insufficient resources or a hero was at too low of a level.
Fixed an issue where both of EV’s abilities were available at Level 0.
Proton Charge is now available at Level 12.
Fixed an issue on clients where attributes were displaying lower than they actually were while viewing in Inventory.
Enemies
Fixed an issue where Djinns would sometimes get stuck in the spawn area and need to be killed by the stuck enemy timer.
Fixed issues with Sirens’ death animations were not activating correctly.
Siren was playing casting animation at death instead of death animation.
Gameplay
Fixed an issue where defenses could be placed during Combat Mode in Pure Strategy.
Fixed an issue where slain enemies did not drop mana in the Raining Goblins Challenge on Massacre difficulty.
Fixed an issue where billboards weren’t functioning or displaying properly for clients.
Fixed an issue where the ballistas on The Summit could be glitched to fire quickly.
Social Defenders
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Defenders, We are deploying a hotfix patch to address some of the issues that have surfaced since our last patch. If you are experiencing bugs or have any feedback please post to our discord in the appropriate channels.
General
Implemented Siren casting animations for her aura channeling and activation.
Changed the Siren aura not to appear until the cast has completed.
Balance
Added jumping back to Monsterfest (Glitterhelm Challenge Map).
Build Timers are now only active if Hardcore is enabled.
Adjusted the DU & Build timers on the Promenade.
Increased DU to 125 from 110.
Increased Hardcore build timer on the first wave to 70s from 60s.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue on Insane, Nightmare, and Massacre cores are visually healed for clients when they aren't actually healed.
Fixed an issue with some bushes and other plant meshes are blocking defense placement on Royal Gardens.
Fixed an issue that could occur if you're dead when the map transitions into build phase that could cause you to not receive build phase mana.
Fixed an issue with trophies in the tavern not having their name and description when targeted.
Fixed an issue where targeting adjacent defenses for inspection, and other modifications, prioritized the most distant defense.
Fixed an issue after deleting a transmog loadout that would cause the gear shaped options button to disappear, requiring you to close and reopen the loadout list to delete a loadout.
Social Defenders
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Defenders, We are deploying a sizeable hotfix patch to address some of the issues that have surfaced over the last month, including an item stacking exploit that took some time to squash. If you are experiencing bugs or have any feedback please post to our discord in the appropriate channels.
Balance
Aura effects no longer stay active on enemies after they leave the aura.
Gas Trap can no longer affect bosses.
The Enrage Aura application rate now properly matches its displayed chance %.
Exploit Fixes
Fixed a Goblin Mech positioning exploit.
Fixed an issue where players could stack EV’s weapons, pets and items.
This fix will unequip all stacked items and place them in your inventory. If the inventory is full, the items will no longer exist. If you were exploiting and lost items, do not contact support. :)
BUGFIXES
Fixed a crash related to upgrading attributes on items.
Fixed an issue where, on low FPS, towers spin when trying to place.
No Towers Allowed, Moving Core, and Chicken had the wrong names displayed.
Fixed an issue that blocked mouse input after rotating your hero in menus.
Fixed an issue with EV's Weapon Swap, it was not properly updating on previously created EV's
Fixed disappearing door frames on Promenade.
Djinn AI improvements and various Djinn bug fixes.
Fixed an issue where traps were blocking enemies from spawning in on the eastern side of Royal Gardens.
Pets no longer jitter when following the player.
Fixed an issue where enemies were snapping while rotating.
Distant Ogres no longer throw their projectiles at their feet.
Fix for not being able to attack if you unequip an item and go back to the default item.
Mask is now dropping properly on wave 15.
Fixed a Post Processing / Visual Error with Respawning.
Upgrade points spent can no longer exceed those available on gamepad (visual).
Tier 3 archers no longer displaying as rift and tier 7 archers are no longer showing as tier 3.
UI Fixes
General
Added gamepad support to Hero View.
Added additional inputs for gamepad and mouse + keyboard.
Updated context actions for Hero View UI.
Party Bar could be focused while not visible on gamepad.
Upgrade points utilization was incorrectly handled on gamepad.
Clients no longer show the invite players button.
Added a missing hover description to the Offline Play Button on Main Menu.
Forced Ready Up Leading to Incorrect Enemy Count.
Client EV ammo counter on offhand weapon not updating.
UI elements are no longer duplicating if host matchmakes while clients are still on the loading screen.
Item Filter UI
Elemental Filtering had no way to specify if you wanted an element type + normal items that don't have any element in the item filter UI.
Fixed an issue where “Always pick up pets” didn't always pick up pets.
Transmog UI
Fixed an issue where the first time you opened the transmog UI with no profiles the focus does not move to the loadouts UI.
Gamepad support and visual polish on Transmog UI.
Fixed a Transmog UI focus issue when using a keyboard to create the name of transmog slot but then switching to gamepad.
Social Defenders
To get reliable updates on the future of DDA make sure to follow us on all our social media platforms: