DEFENDERS,
As has been the trend over the last few weeks, here we are with another PTR patch! You’ll see some minor changes and bug fixes as we keep cleaning up the episode using your super-duper feedback and reports. Keep them coming! (A friendly reminder that you can go back and edit your survey responses if you want to change anything based on patch revisions.)

It’s not too late to join the PTR build! We’ve received awesome and helpful feedback from tons of our GLORIOUS Defenders, and we want to make sure your voice is heard. If you own Dungeon Defenders: Awakened on PC/Steam, head over to our forum post that breaks down how to enter the PTR build on Steam: Click here to read the post.

We know one of the perks of being a part of the Public Test Realm is the chance to experience new content and features. On top of that, we also want to thank each and every one of our testers by giving out this pair of Brown Eagle Wings as a gift once Episode 1 drops. All you need to do is try out the PTR for a minimum of 30 minutes and fill out our in-game survey that can be accessed through the Escape menu. You only need to fill out the survey once (even if it is updated), but of course, we’d love to get as much of your feedback as possible.



All Ranged Pets

• Increased chance of spawning with a max attack rate of 0.63s.
  
• Increased target range by 50%.
  
• Increased all projectile speeds by 300%.
  
• No longer target Siren.
  
  • NEW Target Priority: Djinn > Copter > Ogre/Sharken/Lycan/CopterOgre > Spider > Warrior > Bosses > Everything else

Air Ship

• Increased chance to spawn with max projectiles (3).

Dragon

• Increased chance to spawn with max projectiles (3).
  
• Increased attack damage by 20%.
  
• Now always rolls with Fire damage.
  
• Updated projectile appearance.

Griffin

• Increased chance to spawn with max projectiles (3).
  
• Increased attack damage by 20%.
  
• Now always rolls with Lightning damage.
  
• Updated projectile appearance.

Little Wizard

• Now has 1 projectile.
  
• Increased attack damage.
  
• Rolls for any elemental damage, except Fusion.
  
• Projectile travels through all map elements for a set duration, dealing damage to all enemies hit on path.

Mega Chicken

• Increased projectile AoE by 15%.
  
• Increased melee extent by about 43%
  
• Increased attack damage.
  
• Increased scaling for hero stats.
  
• Added VFX for projectile and melee attacks.

Mista Mine

• NEW: While the hero with this pet equipped is ACTIVE in play the Hero Deck Builder bonus is increased by 10%.
  
• Reduced Hero Stat scaling by 10%.

Giraffe

• NEW: While the hero with this pet equipped is ACTIVE in play the Hero Deck Builder bonus is increased by 5%.
  
• Reduced Hero Stat scaling by 10%.

Irradiate

• Reduced duration scaling to 1s to 3s from 3s to 6s.
  
• Will now scale for non-boss damage.
  
• Reduced the amount of damage dealt to bosses.

The Mill

• Increased enemy difficulty by 25%.

The Outpost

• Increased enemy difficulty by 25%.

The Keep

• Increased enemy difficulty by 33%.
  
• Updated collision to stop ranged enemies from sniping the Crystal.

• Updated enemy spawn door previews across all maps to improve visibility.

• Adjusted hacker flag rules so Defenders are not flagged when rolling some non-hacked items.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Warden’s Wrath Mode was not dealing AoE damage.
  
• Fixed an issue where Roots of Purity was incorrectly buffed by Gemstone pets.
  
• Fixed an issue where Roots of Purity was incorrectly buffed by Yellow Ramster Can pet.
  
• Fixed an issue where Shroomy Pit was incorrectly buffed by Defense Resist Gemstone pet.
  
• Fixed an issue where defense rate could not be upgraded.
  
• Fixed an issue where the second page of the Transmog menu was not showing.
  
• Fixed an issue where the transmog was displaying item tooltips.
  
• Added missing Siren on The Summit in Wave 2 of Massacre difficulty.
  
• Fixed an issue with Warden’s run animations when she was low health.
  
• Fixed an issue where Ogres’ snotball VFX were staying on the map.
  
• Fixed an issue where Elemental Lycan enemies were not dealing their elemental damage.
  
• Fixed an issue where the pause between melee attacks was too long.
  
• Fixed an issue where Clients weren’t able to Reforge properly.
  
• Fixed an issue where Rogue was not rooting enemies while using Stealthed Disengage.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Rogue would leap into the air when Stealth was activated in the middle of Swift Assault or Disengage.
  
• Fixed an issue where a controller’s left bumper could not be used to navigate Warden’s towers.
  
• Fixed an issue where multiplayer sessions for Survival, Mixed, and Pure Strategy modes could not be joined on lower difficulties, even after a Client beat a higher difficulty.
  
• Fixed an issue with the Wisp Den attack animation on Client.
  
• Fixed an issue where some Fusion Polearms would drop with Poison damage.
  
• Fixed several issues with stuck enemies and inaccurate collisions on The Outpost.
  
• Heroes can no longer stand on rocks outside of the map parameters on The Outpost.
  
• Fixed an issue where heroes could not walk up stairs on The Outpost.
  
• Fixed several issues with heroes getting stuck or walking out of the map on The Keep.
  
• Fixed an issue where the wolf pillars had no collision on The Keep.
  
• Fixed an area on The Keep where you could see through the map.
  
• Fixed several issues with heroes being able to walk off the map on The Mill.
  
• Fixed a collision issue with the treetops on The Mill.
  
• Fixed an issue where PTR play was triggering Steam achievements.
  
• Fixed an issue where all equipment items had incorrect max values.
  
  • This will not adjust items that are already picked up.
• Fixed an issue with EV’s SFX.
  
• Fixed an issue where transmog items were not able to be clicked on after selecting a profile after being on default.
  
• Fixed some issues with collision and lighting on Endless Spires.
  
• Fixed several issues with incorrect weapon positions.

To stay up-to-date on the latest news from Chromatic Games and the Dungeon Defenders franchise, follow us on all our social channels:

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For Etheria!
Chromatic Games

DEFENDERS,
We’re now on Week 3 of the PTR and we’re just as excited to share more changes and revisions as we were at the launch of this new adventure! This week’s patch brings a whole bunch of balance changes to a whole bunch of areas. (Anyone know how to actually measure a “whole bunch”?) We keep saying it, but it needs to keep being said that we’re so appreciative of the feedback we’ve received so far. We literally could not do this without all of GLORIOUS Defenders. One more thing! Don’t forget that as the PTR changes come in, you can update your survey responses, but only if you want to.

The first great news is that you can still join the PTR! All the cool kids are doing it. Click here to find out how to join.

We want to remind Defenders that all progress made while in the PTR will not be transferred over to your live game. The beta and live games are not linked and cannot be linked, so please be aware that your account will be reset back to your last live save once you leave the test realm.

The second great news is Defenders who play the PTR for at least 30 minutes and complete the in-game survey (accessible from Escape menu) will receive these gorgeous Eagle’s Wings at the Episode 1 launch! You get to try out new content, give your feedback, AND earn a cool reward. What’s not to love about this?

• Melee Attacks
  
  • Melee attacks no longer deal damage based on the enemy getting hit by the weapon’s model. Instead there is now a (pretty generous) hitbox that deals damage.
    
    • Developer’s Note - This change was made because:
      
      • Melee is already punishing to play. Increasing the range gives a little more safety and a lot more consistency with damage.
        
      • Various animations would make it so attacks would sometimes not hit. The animations pull from a pool of options, so sometimes RNG animations could punish you if their attack range didn’t extend as far.
        
      • Transmogging a weapon would change the range at which it hit, and made the transmog system potentially punish players that weren’t using the biggest weapons.
        
      • It’s just more fun.

Defenses

• Magic Missile Tower
  
  • Projectile damage was increased by 60%.
    
  • Projectile speed was increased by 50%.
• Flameburst Tower
  
  • Projectile damage was increased by 75%
    
  • Projectile speed was increased by 50%.
• Lightning Tower
  
  • Projectile damage was increased by 80%.
    
  • Bounce range increased and set to 600 units.
    
    • Previously at base level was 275 units, and fully upgraded to 350 units.

Defenses

• Overlock Beam
  
  • Decreased minimum DU cost to 3 from 4
    
  • Increased width to 25 from 20

Abilities

• Primary Abilities
  
  • Added SFX when Stealth Swift Assault and Disengage throws are activated
    
  • Added SFX when Stealth Swift Assault and Disengage hit enemies
• Rogue’s Mark
  
  • Updated VFX to improve visibility when Marking enemies

Devices

• Arcing Device
  
  • Decreased cooldown time to 15-8 seconds
• Napalm Device
  
  • Decreased cooldown time to 10-4.5 seconds
    
  • Now increases damage dealt to Marked enemies by 20%, down from 25%
• Noxious Device
  
  • Decreased cooldown time to 12-5.5 seconds

Defenses

• Harpoon Turret
  
  • Projectile damage was increased by 33%
    
  • Projectile speed increased by 50%
• Bowling Bowl Turret
  
  • Projectile damage increased by 45%

Attacks

• Secondary Attack - Sprout
  
  • Sprout now deals 4x weapon damage instead of 2x.

Defenses

• All
  
  • Defense Rate scaling is no longer affected by difficulty.
    
  • Updated tower collision to make placement easier.
• Wisp Den
  
  • Wrath mode now increases Damage instead of Rate.
• Shroomy Pit
  
  • Reduced the starting cooldown to 7 seconds from 10

Multiplayer Enemy HP

• Reduced HP scaling for most enemies when in multiplayer mode
  
  • Add 50% HP to each enemy for each additional player:
    
    • Ogres
      
    • Copter Ogres
      
    • Siren
      
    • Lycan
  • Add 25% HP to each enemy for each additional player:
    
    • Sharken
      
    • Djinn

• Update to comparing items mechanisms
  
  • NEW: Mouse and keyboard - toggles between comparing and not comparing
    
  • NEW: Dual-wielding heroes - weapon comparisons toggle between “Mainhand”, “Offhand”, and “No Comparison”
    
  • Comparing items in the inventory has been updated
• Upgrade weapon icons will only show when new weapon is better than the equipped weapon of the same type
  
  • For example, when comparing weapons for the Rogue, swords will only compare against the Mainhand weapon currently equipped and bows will only compare against the Offhand weapon currently equipped

• Item Upgrading now has a Reforge option
  
  • Keyboard: R Hold
    
  • Gamepad: Left Thumbstick Hold
• Filters will now work for Offhand weapons
  
• Added visual effect to highlight new items in inventory
  
  • NEW: New items will shimmer before hovering over the first time
• Updated various visuals in Hero Stats page

• Reduced the turn rate of the Goblin Mech

• Test of the Ancient III
  
  • Added one custom weapon to Monk with 1 projectile
    
  • Slightly decreased Monk damage

• Updated various Item Effects to use correct buffs.
  
• Fixed an issue where offhand Item effects were giving attack rate instead of damage.
  
• Fixed an issue where Warden defenses were not targeting Lycans.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Rogue would get stuck in Upgrade and Repair animations after using them.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Rogue’s firing sound was not playing when it was intended to.
  
• Removed all Hero Stats from Paddy's Lucky Cap.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Southernmost Tornado Valley billboard was partially stuck in the spawn door.
  
• Fixed an issue where Warden defenses didn't deactivate after the Roots of Purity powering them was sold or destroyed.
  
• Fixed an issue where Fusion Sets weren't properly applying Fusion Damage to some of the Rogue's devices.
  
• Fixed a potential crash with Item Effects that have passive abilities.
  
• Fixed an issue where Wisps from the Wisp Den were not removing the attack rate bonus of the Warden’s Wrath ability on kill.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Wave 25 victory chest would not automatically open in bonus wave build phases.
  
• Fixed an issue where Rogue’s Upgrade / Repair / Sell were not working on Client.
  
• Fixed an issue where Num5 and Num6 were not default to the binds for Slot 5 and Slot 6 of the hero deck for swapping.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Warden’s Roots of Purity was not displaying a health bar.
  
• Fixed an issue with the Warden’s Sprout seeds bounce animation.
  
• Fixed an issue where Boss Test was not unlocking for players who completed the map on a higher than required difficulty.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Homing Missiles Item effect was not connecting with enemies correctly.
  
• Fixed an issue where rotating a Defense after selecting placement caused issues with placing towers close together.
  
• Fixed an issue where reward chests were floating above the ground on most Ep. 1 maps.
  
• Fixed a bug where the Rogue's Heal ability would cancel with an attack.
  
• Fixed an issue where no Repair and Upgrade were not ending animations when complete.
  
• Fixed an issue where regeneration effects were lingering on death.
  
• Fixed an issue where defenses were not showing any damage dealt in their tooltips.
  
• Fixed an issue where Roots of Purity's Wrath damage could kill enemies that should have been immune.
  
• Fixed an issue where the compare tooltip showed up for slots that didn't have anything equipped.
  
• Fixed an issue where defenses were unable to be placed on the pipes in Lava Mines.
  
• Fixed an issue where Rifted Ogre's Kobold projectile was exploding too soon.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Set Bonus counts were incorrect on tooltips.

• The Reforge option on the Upgrade screen will only work for the host.

To stay up-to-date on the latest news from Chromatic Games and the Dungeon Defenders franchise, follow us on all our social channels:

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For Etheria!
Chromatic Games

DEFENDERS,
First, we want to send a big THANK YOU to those of you who have taken the time to try out our Episode 1 test build. It’s been exciting for all of us to finally share our hard work and talk about the changes with our community! With that, we have another PTR patch ready to go for you, as we continue to rebalance, add new things, and fix bugs based on your helpful feedback.

If you haven’t joined our PTR yet, you still can! Click here to find out how.

We updated the survey and would greatly appreciate it if you could fill it out. We’ll be updating the survey to compare data over time and all your input is incredibly helpful! Remember, by filling out at least one of the surveys, on Episode 1 release you will be rewarded with the Eagle’s Wings!

• Lycan King Wave
  
  • Massacre Survival and Rifted
    
    • Increased Demon Lord HP by about 3x.
      
    • Increased Goblin Mech HP by about 2x.
      
    • Increased Ancient Dragon HP by about 2x.
• Ancient Dragon Wave
  
  • Massacre Survival and Rifted
    
    • Increased Demon Lord HP by about 50%.
      
    • Increased Goblin Mech HP by about 50%.

• Test of the Demon
  
  • Increased Huntress damage on Demon
    
  • Decreased EV-A damage on Demon
• Test of the Dragon
  
  • Decreased Monk damage
    
  • Increased movement speed of Wyverns on Test of the Dragon III

• Massacre Difficulty
  
  • Increased health of all Massacre enemies by 10%.
    
  • Removed 10% Armor from all Massacre enemies.
• Lycan
  
  • Increased health to be about half that of an Ogre.
    
  • Added Lycan Nameplates to match other Special enemies.

• Damage Reflect
  
  • Now a flat value instead of a percentage.
    
  • New: Strength ranges from 45 to 300,000.
• Heal Interval
  
  • Increased scaling to 5% Max HP per second from 1% Max HP per second.
• Reworked item effects on Boss and Challenge weapons. This will result in missing item effects on existing weapons but newly dropped items should have them.

• Doubled Build Mana on Lava Mines for Insane, Nightmare, and Massacre Campaigns.
  
• Increased DU on The Outpost to 130 from 90.
  
• Decreased DU on The Mill to 120 from 140.

• Secondary Attack
  
  • Increased max projectile to 8 from 6.
    
  • Updated attack to hit for 50% of melee damage per projectile.
    
  • Decreased attack rate scaling.

General

• Added correct voice-overs.
  
• Updated SFX for abilities.
  
• Updated Spawn SFX on UI menu.

Stats

• Increased HP scaling on the Rogue by about 50%.

Abilities

• Stealth
  
  • Removed Stealth requirement for applying Marks with Primary and Secondary abilities.
    
    • NEW: Primary and Secondary Attacks now apply up to eight Marks to enemies at all times.
  • NEW: Heals for 5% Max HP every 0.5 seconds that Stealth is active (50% HP healed max)
    
  • Reduced cooldown to 15-7 seconds from 30-15 seconds.
    
  • Duration no longer scales and is always 5 seconds.
    
  • Riposte Buff
    
    • Now granted regardless of how Stealth was ended.
      
    • NEW: Applies a: 25% Damage Buff.
• Swift Assault
  
  • No longer costs Ability Mana to activate.
• Disengage
  
  • No longer costs Ability Mana to activate.

Devices

• Arcing
  
  • No longer applies the additional damage component and instead deals a single large tick of damage when applied.

General

• Updated Spawn SFX on UI menu.

Abilities

• Sprout
  
  • Increased the max targeting range to 1000 from 500.
• Mushroom Circle
  
  • Increased the max targeting range to 1000 from 500.

Towers

• Roots of Purity
  
  • Now scales off the Range stat.
    
  • Upgrading to max rank scales the range to 50% larger than base rank.
• Beaming Blossom
  
  • Reduced beam attack time (duration of the beam) to 0.6 from 1.6 seconds.
    
  • Added max attack rate (cooldown between firing and not firing) of 0.65 seconds.
    
  • Reduced damage tick rate (amount of hits while firing) to 0.3 from 0.4.
    
  • Increased base damage to 80 from 25.
• Wisp Den
  
  • Increased Wisp Den range to be similar to the Lightning Tower.
    
  • Increased Wisp movement speed by 50%.
• Shroomy Pit
  
  • Decreased DU cost to 3 from 4.
    
  • Lowered Shroomy scream volume.

• Added bag icon material for the inventory and filters UI.
  
• Added x10 and x25 modifiers while adding stat points or upgrading.
  
• Added new icons for all weapons.

• Fixed an issue where repair times were incorrect and taking longer on some defenses.
  
• Fixed an issue where enemies were stuck on Endless Spires near the Northwest spawn point.
  
• Fixed an issue where the enemy count tracker was not working during the second wave on The Mill.
  
• Fixed an issue where Hero Stat points were resetting after upgrading an item and then returning to the Hero Stat menu.
  
• Fixed an issue where Vitality would not show as increasing when adding points.
  
• Fixed an issue where Crossbow weapons did not continue firing while holding the button to attack after double-clicking.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Bonus Wave Selector wasn't selecting correctly and tried to play bonus waves that didn't exist.
  
• Fixed an issue where a Bonus Wave looped back to Build Phase after losing a wave.
  
• Fixed an issue where the XP required for Level 102 was significantly lower than intended.
  
• Fixed an issue where defenders could build in the lava on Foundries and Forges.
  
• Fixed an issue where Rift Portals can open in the Build Phase.
  
• Fixed an issue where the “Sell All” function wasn’t working on PC.
  
• Decreased delay on the spawn of the last Ogre on Ancient Mines on Massacre Survival.
  
• Fixed an issue where incorrect Fusion weapons were dropping on Act 4.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Crystals could be attacked on Alchemical Labs while the boss timer was counting down, resulting in an instant stun when the Demon Lord spawned.
  
• Fixed an issue Repair / Upgrade / Sell abilities were not cancelling after swapping to Build Mode.
  
• Fixed an issue where Clients could see their own HP bar above their head.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Megachicken was showing incorrect projectile count.
  
• Fixed an issue where the pointer was missing from the main menu.
  
• Adjusted various accessory placements on heroes.
  
• Fixed an issue where a host’s activated Swift Assault caused the Rogue’s VFX to linger and flicker on clients.
  
• Fixed an LOD issue with the Baby Phoenix Pet’s VFX.
  
• Fixed an issue where Level, XP, and Unspent Points don't update if you swap heroes while on the stats tab in the inventory
  
• Fixed an issue where IE ability passive abilities were not restarting on defender death and respawn.
  
• Fixed a lighting issue on Deeper Well.
  
• Updated max Hero Stats on gear from 9999 to 999999.
  
• Fixed an issue where Copter Ogres would get stuck after their Copter was shot down.
  
• Fixed an issue where Sirens were getting stuck when fleeing.

• Squire
  
  • Fixed an issue where the Squire lost his base mana regen value.
• Rogue
  
  • Added rebinding for Rogue's Special Abilities.
• Warden
  
  • Fixed an issue where the Wisp Den was not attacking while following targets.
    
  • Fixed an issue where the Warden defenses were not showing nameplates when damaged by enemies.
    
  • Fixed an issue where Wisp Den was not attacking Spiders.
    
  • Fixed an issue where the Warden’s cast animation for Right click and F abilities were not working for clients.
• Apprentice
  
  • Fixed an issue where the Lightning Tower was improperly scaling attack rate overflow.

• Wisp Den is not currently targeting Lycans.
  
• Boost Damage chance item effect is currently restoring ability mana instead of boosting damage.

• Fixed an issue where Etherian Marksman and Champion sets were not working properly.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Double Edge Item Effect was damaging defenders below 50% HP and killing them.
  
• FIxed an issue where Rogue and EV Item Sets were dropping on Offhands.
  
• Fixed an issue where Offhands couldn't drop their elemental item effects.
  
• Fixed an issue where Defense Damage was not scaling correctly.

To stay up-to-date on the latest news from Chromatic Games and the Dungeon Defenders franchise, follow us on all our social channels:

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For Etheria!
Chromatic Games

We’ve got some PTR changes in after receiving a lot of feedback and getting a ton of help from the brave adventurers who have jumped into the PTR. Keep the feedback coming, and as we continue to polish Episode 1, we’ll be sure to include as much as we can. We appreciate all your help in making Episode 1 the greatest it can be!

• Added MVP Piercing Projectile VFX.
  
• Updated Piercing Projectile to have a larger hitbox and no collision with the world.

• Added SFX to bow firing on Rogue.
  
• Updated audio on Rogue abilities.

• Added SFX for the Lycan.
  
• Slightly sped up Lycan’s run animation.
  
• Fixed an issue with Lycan’s bones.

• Equalized the ambient sound of The Mill to better mesh with the music and environment.

• Reduced Foundries and Forges max loot quality to match Mill.
  
• Foundries and Forges is now unlocked after beating the Mill.

• Slightly reduced the size of damage numbers.
  
• Updated static effect visuals for tooltips so that static effects always show as legendary.

• Adjusted Hero Attack Power Item Effects.
  
• Removed health scaling for repair.
  
  • This will mean that no matter how much MAX health the tower has it should take 3 seconds MAX to repair a tower in the combat phase. This is to counteract not having “Cast Rate”.

• Increased Huntress’ Secondary Ability damage from +50% to +100% of Base Damage and Removed falloff.

• Increased EV’s Secondary Ability damage from +50% to +100% of Base Damage and Removed falloff.

• Decreased Rogue's Carnage ability cooldown by 50%.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Rogue couldn't activate Upgrade / Repair / Sell without looking at a defense directly.

• Increased Sprout damage to +100% of base damage.
  
• Increased angle of Sludge Launcher from 15 to 45.
  
• Beaming Blossom tooltip now shows fire damage instead of physical.
  
• Roots should now heal.
  
• Reduced volume of Shroomy’s scream by half.

• Adjusted timing of Lycan’s howls.
  
• Increased Lycan’s Health.
  
  • 5x on Easy to Medium
    
  • 10x on Insane and above

• Updated VFX on Polearm trails.
  
• Added new method to weapon actors for implementing swing trails.
  
• Updated and added VFX for various polearms.

• Side swiping enemies with the Rogue's Assault ability no longer allows the player to continue the dash animation pose indefinitely.
  
• Rogue can now transmog his offhand weapons.
  
• Fixed a bug where transmog tooltips weren’t showing.
  
• Updated buff count to scale properly from rolling.
  
• Fixed an issue where healing may not have worked properly.
  
• Removed Defense stats from Bow 15.
  
• Fixed a bug that would cause leaving the inventory to crash the game.
  
• Fixed a few stuck enemy issues on The Mill.
  
• Fixed a crash that would occur when upgrading then swapping heroes in the inventory.
  
• Fixed a lot of visual and functionality bugs for item effects, their VFX, and displays.
  
• Fixed an issue where Ability Count effects were not correctly counting shots fires from ranged weapons.
  
• Double Edge should now be working.
  
• Fixed a bug where Upgrade / Repair / Sell weren't canceling each other when activated so you could have multiple activated at once.
  
• Fixed an issue where Sirens were getting stuck when fleeing to their spawn points.
  
• Fixed an issue where Act 4 Maps didn't save wave progression.
  
• Survival: if you beat a certain wave on a harder difficulty, you can now play the same wave on a lower difficulty.
  
  • Example: if you beat Wave 20 on Massacre you can play up to Wave 20 on all lower difficulties.
• Healing Item effects are now healing % of Max Health.
  
• Fixed an issue where the scroll box was spamming with geometry valid checks.
  
• Fixed an issue where Ogre Copter’s hat was too large.
  
• Fixed speed limiter on projectiles.
  
• Fixed up frame timing logic in scroll box.
  
• Added Attack Rate stat to display correctly.
  
• Mainhand/Offhand stats on the Hero Stat Panel is now updating correctly.
  
• Fixed an issue where Map Selection wasn't selecting your last map played difficulty.
  
• Fixed an issue where Cooldown text wasn't showing when you swap heroes.

To stay up-to-date on the latest news from Chromatic Games and the Dungeon Defenders franchise, follow us on all our social channels:

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• Twitter
  
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For Etheria!
Chromatic Games

The Public Test Realm (PTR) is out now and there’s a lot for you to test ({LINK REMOVED}click here to find out how to get in). We’re going to be gathering feedback on and updating based on that feedback as we go! You may notice there is more in this update than what we have already announced (and we plan on adding even more as we get closer to launch), so we will frequently be adding to this list in order to get your feedback on additional elements and changes.

This is a PTR build. That means that things are going to be in a rough state, not finished, maybe a bit buggy, etc. It’s by no means a perfect representation of the game, or final in any means. Please take this into consideration when providing feedback. We’ve spent a lot of time working hard on getting this massive update going. We ask that you be respectful when providing feedback and understand that actual people put a lot of time and effort into everything you’re testing.

Through the escape menu, there is a link to a survey. You can fill this survey out and edit it over the course of the PTR.

For your time spent testing the PTR (we ask at least 30 minutes if possible) and filling out our survey, you will earn a brand new reward, Tester’s Eagle Wings:



We are able to track your account, so don’t worry about adding any identifying information, we’ll get the reward automatically unlocked on your account when Episode 1 launches. To ensure it gets unlocked, there is a question on the survey that has your “PlayFab ID” (this is what we use for cloud storage and account saving). Do not edit whatever is in that field, otherwise the rewards will not be able to be applied to your account.

In future PTR tests, we will have additional rewards for your time. We really appreciate your feedback and constructive criticism, and our goal is to give something back. :)

Before we get into everything else, we want to talk about Defense Rate changes. Through our development with the Switch, and throughout our certification process, our game was not able to perform with the speed at which towers were attacking, effectively making releasing on the Switch impossible (due to how towers calculate enemy positions, priorities, tons of AI tracking, VFX being played, damage calculations, etc.) because of how many resources they took to make those processes work. As a result, we’ve provided a cap for Defense Rate that caps most towers at 0.50 shots a second.

This brings in Defense Rate overflow. Basically what this means is when you pump Defense Rate into a tower, that stat is rolled over into Defense Power instead. This means that while some towers will be attacking slower than before, they will be hitting harder to compensate for the Defense Rate cap (so the stat is not wasted). This includes any Defense Rate increase that you would get from boosting a tower using Overcharge or Speedy Gemstone for example.

We had to act pretty fast on this to ensure we can release it on Nintendo Switch. We discussed having two different versions (a Switch version with the lowered rates), but that just isn’t possible for us to maintain with a team of our size. Balancing it and making it fair would be impossible, and there might be metas where playing certain content on one platform may be easier than others, which is something we want to avoid entirely.

We’re looking to get as much feedback as possible here to make sure this change feels good while allowing us to fulfill our promise of releasing on Nintendo Switch.

The Rogue and The Warden are now available for testing!

The Mill, The Outpost, The Keep, and Foundries and Forges are all available for testing!

Our new system dubbed “Item Effects” have been added to gear (lower level pieces do not contain them) and are available for testing!

New Set Bonuses have been added to gear and are available for testing!

Test of the Demon, Mech, and Ancient have been added in a new game mode called Tests and are all available for testing!

In Nightmare and Massacre Survival, Bonus Waves are now available for testing (unlocked after beating Wave 25 Survival of each difficulty on Alchemical Labs, Throne Room, The Summit, and The Keep)!

The Act IV boss, The Lycan King, is not available for testing at this time.

Selecting Rifted and playing the new Act IV maps will have Rift Portals appear and is now available for testing!

Rifted enemy schedules have been changed to not include non-Rifted enemies and are available for testing!

The level cap has been increased to 105 and is now available for testing!

Wings have been added to the game and are now available for testing! (you must complete one of the Boss Test maps)

Offhands have been added to drop tables and are now available for testing!

The Hero Deck size has been increased to six, as well as providing additional bonuses for heroes in the hero deck. This is now available for testing!

Critical chance and critical bonus have been added to swords and polearms and are now available for testing!

The Huntress’s secondary is a grenade toss, and the Monk’s secondary now scales off level instead of weapon. Both are now available for testing!

Ammo and reloading have been removed from the game and replaced with an exploding secondary on crossbows (you can rocket jump with it). This is now available for testing!

Projectile speed has been adjusted across the game and is now available for testing!

These speeds have been adjusted across the game and are now available for testing!

All pets have been updated, except “Giraffe on a Treadmill” and “Mista Mine” (these will get updated in a later PTR patch).

Work-In-Progress

• The Outpost
  
  • Combat/Build phase music
• The Mill
  
  • Combat/Build phase music
    
  • Needs wisps
• The Keep
  
  • Combat/Build phase music
• Lycan
  
  • Tacmap image
    
  • Billboard image
• Warden
  
  • Create-A-Hero select sound (currently same as EV)
    
  • Roots of Purity tooltip does not display a correct range
    
  • Roots of Resonance tooltip does not display correct range
    
  • Wisp Den tooltip does not display correct range
    
  • Shroomy Pit tooltip does not display correct range
• Rogue
  
  • Spellbook
    
  • Create-A-Hero description
    
  • Create-A-Hero select sound (currently same as The Huntress)
    
  • Unfinished SFX on some Rogue abilities
• Cinematics
  
  • Missing audio in Cinematics
• UI
  
  • Stats panel isn't in its final form
    
  • Spellbook is missing some information
• Pets
  
  • Mista Mine is not up to date.
    
  • Giraffe on a treadmill is not up to date.

Known Bugs

• The Outpost
  
  • Gas/sludge can be inconsistent with dealing damage to the player while moving through it.
• The Mill
  
  • Collision issues
    
  • Boundary issues
• The Keep
  
  • Collision issues
    
  • Boundary issues
• Endless Spires
  
  • Enemies getting stuck
• Lycan
  
  • Subsequent howls are not faster than the original
• Rogue
  
  • Melee attacks are missing when it should be on target and hitting.
    
  • Cannot sell/upgrade/repair on Keyboard and mouse
• Weapons
  
  • Flamethrower doesn't continue firing if double clicked and held
    
  • Certain weapons look appear too dark in game
• UI
  
  • Ctrl+Shift does not work for assigning points
    
  • Stat tooltips on Clients may not always show
    
  • Defense Ability Bar will sometimes disappear on Clients when swapping heroes quickly
    
  • Ability cooldown countdown visual freezes after entering an menu
    
    • Countdown is still completed and ability is able to be activated
      
    • Icon resets after swapping heroes
  • Item Effects on Weapons might not show on tooltip for Clients
• Other
  
  • Repair speed is taking longer than it should

We’ll be updating the PTR based on feedback and bug fixes. Meanwhile we’re also still working on Nintendo Switch certification, as well as a DD2 update. We’re plenty busy at Chromatic, and are super excited to share with you this newest update coming to DDA!

To stay up-to-date on the latest news from Chromatic Games and the Dungeon Defenders franchise, follow us on all our social channels:

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Chromatic Games

We need YOUR help! Starting today, we’re asking for input from Defenders through our own Public Test Realm (PTR) build for Dungeon Defenders: Awakened. The main goal for our PTR tests is to gather player feedback on game updates before releases—we want to make sure each of you feels a part of the development process. You get to try out new content and we get to make sure the new content works as planned by its release. Sounds like a win-win!

The PTR format is a bit different from our past testing system and current live-game action, so we want to break down what this looks like for those who are interested:

• The PTR is only available for PC/Steam Defenders. Those interested in joining the public test realm must own the game on PC.
  
• You will only be able to choose the Play Online mode. Sorry, no playing offline within playtesting.
  
• The PTR will not always be available. We keep the build open for specific periods and if you try to join outside those times, it’ll shut down when you try to Play Online. We’ll let you know what these available times are for each testing cycle.
  
• No changes are made to your normal saves! (cloud or local) Your data is pulled down from the cloud and stored locally.
  
• The build includes specific updates, not all of them. We choose specific features and changes that we need feedback on for the relevant updates, but these builds do not include ALL of the new content. We need to keep some of it a surprise! Check out what's in the latest build here.

Now to the important stuff. How do you actually become part of the testing crew? Here’s how:

1. Log in to your Steam account.
   
2. In your Steam library, right click on Dungeon Defenders: Awakened.
   
   
   
   
3. Select “Properties” from the menu that appears.
   
   
   
   
4. Once the Properties window opens, click “BETAS”.
   
   
   
   
5. In the BETAS window, click the drop-down menu for the “Select the beta you would like to opt into” prompt and choose “recruit - Public Testing Realm”.
   
   • Note: If you only see the “None” option from the drop-down menu, you will need to restart Steam.
   
   
   
   
6. Once “recruit - Public Testing Realm” is selected, you can close the window. The test build will begin downloading automatically and you’ll be able to enter the game once the download is complete.
   
7. Testers can then provide feedback under the Discord section “DDA - PTR” on the Dungeon Defenders Discord server.
   
   • Join the server: Dungeon Defenders Discord
     
   • New members will only be able to see the 📌COMMUNITY section. If you are a new member, you’ll need to go to the channel #❗-role-assignment-❗. Then, choose “DDA” at the bottom of the role instructions.
     
   • Once the DDA channels show up in the server, find the section titled “DDA - PTR”. (This will only be visible when a PTR build is active.)
     
   • Read through the #getting-started channel to learn more about the rules and expectations for feedback.
     
   • Give us your feedback in the channel #ptr-bug-reports.
     
   • Please keep in mind that we may not be able to implement your feedback by the release of an update, but we always appreciate your comments and suggestions.

We are SO excited to get this first build out to Defenders today. As an indie studio, feedback from you all is integral to our continued success with Dungeon Defenders: Awakened, and with your help, our upcoming update can be the best one yet.

To stay up-to-date on the latest news from Chromatic Games and the Dungeon Defenders franchise, follow us on all our social channels:

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For Etheria!
Chromatic Games

We’ve shared a lot with you over the last few weeks about all of the exciting additions and revisions coming to Dungeon Defenders: Awakened with the release of the Epsiode 1 update. It’s been a blast showing off our two new heroes, the Warden and the Rogue, along with introducing new maps and our new inventory and stats system on our Twitch dev stream each week. For this week, we shared some more goodies that will add to Defenders’ experiences.

After our last update where we reduced the number of enemies across the board to boost game performance, the experiences in Rifted mode were impacted more than we (and Defenders) wanted. Rifted was designed to challenge the most dedicated Defenders, but as the enemy counts reduced, this mode kind of felt like a punishment rather than an exciting challenge. The longer runs that resulted weren't an intentional design choice and we’re fixing that to make Rifted all it was meant to be.

How are we doing this? Rifted will no longer spawn any normal enemies! Only Rifted enemies will show up when you choose Rifted mode. The Rifted enemy counts, attack damage, and HP are staying exactly the same as they are now. You just won’t need to bat off the normies anymore. This means fewer enemies overall with the increased challenge from Rifted enemies, achieving our goal of having Rifted require more skill but less time out of Defenders.

For all of you who feel reaching Level 100 wasn’t difficult enough, we’re increasing the level cap for all heroes with the Episode 1 release to 105. The best items in Episode 1 require level 105 to equip, meaning you’ll need to conquer many foes on your journey to utilize the strongest gear available!

If you’ve been keeping up with our news, we’ve spilled a lot of beans over the last month. We’ve been paying attention to your feedback and can’t wait to show off all of our hard work to our GLORIOUS Defenders. We haven’t announced a release date for Episode 1 yet, but know that we’re working hard to get the awesome and exciting updates into your games as soon as possible. We promise we’re as giddy as you are to see and try out these changes!

Another important topic to Defenders is updates on console development. 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 working hard to get Nintendo Switch through the Lot Check process, while 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, and we are aiming to have DDA on all consoles by the end of the year.

Finally, we’re also working on an update for Dungeon Defenders II. 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!

To stay up-to-date on the latest news from Chromatic Games and the Dungeon Defenders franchise, follow us on all our social channels:

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Chromatic Games

DEFENDERS,
With all the news on gear upgrades from last week, it may feel like we can’t possibly give away any more Episode 1 news, but you’d be wrong. Here we come with even more reveals with a brand-new game mode and some spicy additions to current play.

Developer Note: All of these things are subject to change by the release of Episode 1.

We’ve got a NEW GAME MODE! We’re calling this the “Tests” mode because it’s one defender being tested against one big baddy. The “big baddy” can be any of DDA’s infamous bosses, and you fight one-on-one to defeat them on their own map. One more small detail—you fight the bosses with zero defenses. Wait, there’s one more small-ish detail to add to that. You can’t use your heroes. You must choose to fight with one of two predetermined heroes. Don’t worry, they come with their own gear, too.

Guess it's time to hone those combat skills!

Now for the details of the fights. Each fight has a 3-minute timer, so you need to be skilled and quick. These fights should be difficult, but not impossible to beat. To help with this, you have one extra life during the fight. That means you can die once and everything is peachy. If you die twice, though… That’s the end of the fight.

Along with the extra life, each boss has three difficulty levels for you to choose from: Tier I, Tier II, and Tier III. Each boss is also equipped with a “deadly” mechanic that deals some serious damage. This should go without saying, but you definitely need to avoid being hit by the deadly mechanic at all costs. We warned you.

We’re sure there are lots of questions running through your head right now. What heroes can you use in these fights? What is this “deadly” mechanic you should avoid? What else did we leave out because we love keeping secrets? Well, here’s the breakout for each “Tests” battle.

Test of the Demon

• Available Heroes:
  
  • Huntress
    
  • Series EV-A, with staves
• Demon Lord specials:
  
  • Demon Lord is immune to damage unless stunned by the Generators
    
  • When Demon Lord is stunned, goblins and/or orcs rain from the sky
    
  • Deadly mechanic: Fireball

Test of the Mech

• Available Heroes:
  
  • Apprentice
    
  • Series EV-A, with bows
• Goblin Mech specials:
  
  • Mech has increased movement speed
    
  • Mech takes reduced damage from hits that don’t hit the weak point
    
  • Dark Elf Warriors periodically spawn
    
  • Deadly mechanic: Melee attacks

Test of the Ancient

• Available Heroes:
  
  • Monk
    
  • Squire
• Ancient Dragon specials:
  
  • When flying around the map, the Dragon can only be damaged by the Ballista
    
  • Wyverns spawn after Dragon is shot by the Ballista
    
  • Deadly mechanic: Fireballs

You’re probably asking yourself what the rewards are like for this new game mode. That’s a great question! Since we want to keep some of this a surprise, the answer to this is kept simple for now. For defeating each of the bosses at each of the tiers, you can earn unique rewards that are only available through Tests. With three different bosses at three different tiers in this game mode, there are 9 unique rewards up for grabs.

This type of game mode that gives Defenders a way to just fight bosses with only a hero is something we’ve seen people asking for. This is also something that’s easy for us to add and test out. It is a bit of an experiment for DDA, and if you all enjoy it, we’ll be sure to include it in all of our future episodes.

Speaking of other fun experiments… Our next section goes over the fun we’re adding in for fans of Rifted.

Another fun addition to DDA in Episode 1 is Rifted Portals. What the heck are portals?!

Rifted Portals are alternate spawn points for enemies that appear at set locations and times on Rifted Episode 1 maps. Enemies are removed from their original lane and ported to the alternate location. What defenses they miss along the way, nobody knows.

How do you deal with these pesky portals?? Lucky for Defenders, these can be destroyed by your hero. There’s a catch, of course. Portals cannot be destroyed by your hero’s defenses. So, choose your hero wisely!

An added benefit to destroying a portal is the loot that drops once it’s gone. There’s always that incentive to take it down. If you don’t destroy it before the wave is over, it will quietly disappear and a fresh portal will reappear on the next wave, but you won’t receive any loot. Gotta work for the goods.

Finally, let’s talk about Bonus Waves. These are one of those spicy additions we’re adding for late-game defenders who are itching for that extra challenge. With an extra challenge comes extra rewards in the form of a chance to get max quality gear from EVERY MAP. What’s the point of a Bonus Wave? To earn extra awesome gear, of course! And you should believe us when we say these rewards are extra awesome.

What Are Bonus Waves?
The basic explanation for these are extra waves that can be unlocked once defenders complete Wave 25 on any Boss map in Survival and Mixed modes at Nightmare and Massacre difficulties. All maps have their own Bonus Wave that unlocks once you defeat the boss within its respective Act. As you can imagine, enemies in this extra wave are faster, stronger, and tougher, but as we said, you’re rewarded for your hard work.

These Bonus Waves are purely opt-in, meaning you can choose to complete them on each map if you want — you don’t have to complete them to finish the map, though. Oh! Here’s a fun fact: Bonus Waves for Boss maps also feature the boss! Sorry, not sorry for that goodness. To note, Bonus Waves for Boss maps only appear after defeating the next boss. For example, you unlock a Bonus Wave for Alchemical Labs once you’ve defeated the Throne Room Nightmare/Massacre Survival Wave 25.

We’ll spend the rest of this section going over how to actually access the dang maps and what goodies come from completing them.

Unlocking Bonus Waves
The tricky thing here is that defenders can only unlock Bonus Waves in each Act after completing Survival Wave 25 on the Boss maps on Nightmare and Massacre difficulties. We want to make sure Defenders are rewarded for attempting (and completing) more difficult maps, too. So, once you complete a Boss map, that boss’ named Bonus Wave is unlocked for all prior maps. For example, defeating the Goblin Mech at the end of Act 2 will unlock the Goblin Mech Bonus Wave for all Act 1 and Act 2 maps (minus the Throne Room and Endless Spires).

This gives defenders freedom to choose the battle that’s appropriate for your style of play. If you want to skip over the Demon Lord and Goblin Mech maps, heading straight to Ancient Dragon to open the Bonus Waves for all three Acts, you’re able to do that.

Here’s a handy example explaining how Bonus Wave unlocks work:

You, a glorious defender, complete the Alchemical Laboratory on Massacre Survival. With this great takedown of the Demon Lord, you unlock access to the Demon Lord Bonus Wave on all prior Act 1 maps.

If you, our GLORIOUS Defender, go on to complete Tornado Valley, you don’t yet have a Bonus Wave for that map. Quickly realizing this, you defeat the Throne Room on Massacre Survival, and this unlocks access to all prior Act 2 Goblin Mech Bonus Waves at Massacre difficulty, plus Goblin Mech Bonus Waves for all maps in Act 1.

There’s more we want to add that may make it into Episode 1, if not a future update. We want you to have multiple Bonus Waves to choose from (e.g. Demon Lord and Goblin Mech), where you’re only able to choose one of those waves to complete. So, in the case of the example above, when opting-in to the Bonus Wave on Deeper Well, you must choose to complete the Demon Lord Bonus Wave or the Goblin Mech Bonus Wave. Not both, or at least not in the same session.

You may be asking, “Why bother with these extra waves if they’re just tougher challenges?” Well, we left out some important pieces of information…

Loot Drops
We hope you’re ready for some AWESOME rewards because that’s what defenders are getting from these Bonus Waves. Many of you already know this, but it’s worth explaining again just in case some of us need a refresher. The quality of the loot drop from a map’s chests are dependent on a number of factors, including the game mode, selected difficulty, whether or not you’re playing on Hardcore and/or Rifted, and, of course, RNG.

These Bonus Waves are no different, but there are some small-ish differences to ensure the reward is equal to the work. We do this by increasing the loot quality of every Bonus Wave according to the level of the boss associated with the wave. Basically, Act 1 Bonus Wave loot drops will increase in quality after you defeat Demon Lord, and Act 1 and 2 Bonus Wave loot drops will increase (again) after you defeat Goblin Mech. Activating Hardcore and/or Rifted further adds to the quality of Bonus Wave loot drops on all maps.

That’s Bonus Waves, Defenders!

Like we revealed on our Friday Funday stream, Episode 1 ramps up DDA’s difficulty with a new Tests game mode, Rifted Portals, and Bonus Waves that reward you for your hard work. Once we have this content in place, we’ll be able to expand on it in future episodic content. This is just the beginning!! We can’t wait for you to try it all out and pick up some awesome gear at the same time.

We haven’t announced the release date for Episode 1 yet that includes all of these additions, along with the new heroes, new maps, and an overhaul of gear, but be on the lookout on our social pages. We love sharing that kind of exciting news on those pages first!

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.

To stay up-to-date on the latest news from Chromatic Games and the Dungeon Defenders franchise, follow us on all our social channels:

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For Etheria!
Chromatic Games

DEFENDERS,

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 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).

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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!

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!

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.

To stay up-to-date on the latest news from Chromatic Games and the Dungeon Defenders franchise, follow us on all our social channels:

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For Etheria!
Chromatic Games

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’!

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.

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.

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.

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.


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!

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.

To stay up-to-date on the latest news from Chromatic Games and the Dungeon Defenders franchise, follow us on all our social channels:

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For Etheria!
Chromatic Games