Greetings Defenders,

It is time to finally announce the next expansion coming to Etheria — Dungeon Defenders II: Protean Shift! We’ve released information regarding this expansion and are ready to give a preview as to almost everything you can expect. The entire team has and still is working very hard to make sure this is a great experience for Defenders new and old. We’re going to cover some information posted in our DevLogs, as well as some new information, and how it all ties together. Let’s get to it!

This is our most foundational change in the update. When Protean Shift launches, you’ll notice that your gear’s stats looks much different than before. Our first change is making the damage from critical strikes scale off of the base damage for both your heroes and your towers. Critical Damage is no longer going to be a secondary stat, but is going to be a percentage increase that you can gain through Gear, Shards, and Ascension Levels. Because of the change to Critical Damage, the Critical Chance cap of 33% has been removed — the sky’s the limit now!

One of the goals of the Critical Damage change is to make damage more reliable. Critical Damage builds are still fun, but other playstyles should feel just as rewarding. Every hero and tower’s base damage has been increased to account for the changes made, making damage more consistent and allowing for even more unique builds!

Since we are changing how Critical Damage is understood, we decided to tackle another confusing area for players: Defense Speed. This stat is now a percentage instead of being numbers that go into the thousands. The change here allows players to understand exactly how much faster their defenses attack rate will increase.

This expansion really provides the opportunity to build how you want to, and gear is a huge reason. We wanted gear to feel more unique, instead of just giving you every stat whenever you received a legendary tier of gear. Now your gear and choices can reflect the kind of Defender you want to be.

Gear now has a primary stat and a secondary stat. For heroes, the stats vary depending on the piece of gear. On helmets, gloves, chest, and boots, the primary stat is Armor, and the secondary stat pulls from Health, Ability Power, or Hero Damage. On weapons, the primary stat is Hero Damage and the secondary stat can be Armor, Health, or Ability Power. As a reminder, base hero damage for their attacks and abilities was buffed to make sure your heroes feel comparably as powerful after Protean Shift releases compared to how powerful they currently are.

For towers, it varies as well. On totems, Defense Health is the primary stat and Defense Power is the secondary stat. Inversely on Medallions, Marks, and Orbs (if you still have any), Defense Power is the primary stat and Defense Health is the secondary stat. An additional reminder, we increased defenses base stats to try and retain the power your defenses currently possess. This leads us to M.O.D.S.

M.O.D.S.



Professor Proteus applied his inventive intellect to all of the gear in Etheria! Magically Offense/Defensive Subroutines (M.O.D.S. or even simpler — Mods) are what allow you to make your gear your own! Mods can do everything from normal stat increases (Defense Speed, Critical Damage, Critical Chance) to less normal bonuses like stun immunity on Defenses. They even offer new ways to combat your foes! Want to:

Have towers immune to Hex Thrower curses? You can do that.
Pierce a Shield Geodes shield? You can do that.
Make your traps, auras, and nodes, immune to Cyborks?! You can do that!

Mods are an additional property on gear, similar to Shards. Mods compliment Shards and also unlock in a similar fashion, based on the quality of gear, and start appearing on Uncommon quality gear:

• Uncommon: 1 Mod slot
  
• Epic: 2 Mod slots
  
• Mythical: 2 Mod slots
  
• Legendary: 3 Mod slots

This means that a Legendary piece of gear now has two stats, three Mods, and empowers three Shard slots, making them truly Legendary. This is just the tip of the iceberg! Over 120 Mods are here to give you the chance to defend Etheria the way you want to. Some of these Mods are the result of community feedback as a unique and engaging way of tackling challenges set before you, the Defenders of Etheria.

Mods are something Professor Proteus added to gear, and what good would Mods be if you couldn’t modify them? That’s where Tinkering comes into the mix! Tinkering is the ability to move up to three Mods at a time from one piece of gear to another piece of the same type and Chaos tier or higher. This means that Mods on Chaos VII weapons can only be moved to another Chaos VII weapon, from one Chaos III helmet to another Chaos III (or higher) helmet, and so on. Once you transfer Mods from one piece of gear to another, the original piece is destroyed in the process.

Tinkering allows you to continuously mix and match your Mods to create the build you enjoy the most. The amount of customization that Tinkering offers truly lets you play how you want. It doesn’t stop there. When combined with our new Upgrading and Evolving features, even more choices await you, even potentially choosing the look of the weapon you want!

Upgrading
Upgrading is a feature that many of you are well acquainted with, it’s the best way to squeeze extra power out of your gear. But this is Protean Shift, so it’s time to UPGRADE THE UPGRADE! You no longer max upgrade a piece of gear and wait for another piece of gear that’s a higher quality and/or Chaos tier to replace it. You can take that gear, and through the genius of Prof. Proteus, Advance that gear to the next tier!



Advancing
Have an Uncommon piece of gear with the stats you want early on? You can now upgrade that piece to its max level and once it’s maxed, you can Advance that piece of gear into Epic quality. The same can be done to go from Epic to Mythical, and from Mythical to Legendary. This isn’t the only form of improving your gear, which is where Evolving comes in!



Evolving
Evolving is icing on the gear permanence cake. Regardless of a piece of gear’s quality tier, you can choose to Evolve it to bring it through the various Chaos levels. With Evolving you can now choose to push a sword that you found in Chaos II all the way up to Chaos VII, and beyond!



Upgrading, Advancing, and Evolving applies to every piece of gear that drops — weapons, armor, and relics!

Adventures
We’re adding in additional ways for both new and veteran Defenders to play! The Campaign is now different than many of you experienced in the past. After completing the Campaign, Defenders can now take on Adventures! These let you choose specific side stories to progress and prepare for the challenges that await you in Expeditions, Onslaught, Mastery, and Incursions provide.

Expeditions
Map choice, map choice, MAP CHOICE! Something many have wanted is now here. The Chaos Trials are finished, and Defenders can now go on Expeditions throughout various Chaos difficulties. Do you have one favorite map to play, and just want to play that one as you progress through different Chaos difficulties? Now you can!

Expeditions also provide the ability to acquire different materials needed for new systems being added, such as Evolving and Tinkering. Different types of maps drop different specific materials as you play through a map and as you complete them. You can choose to farm for a specific material on a specific map, or play random maps that offer more materials. These materials are earned as you play a map and when victory is yours!

Shard Dusting
Shards are a great way to really increase the power of the heroes you play. Some players enjoy playing only a few select hero, so it can be a real bummer if you get Shards for heroes that don’t fit your play style. Now you can take any unwanted shards and break them down into dust through Shard Dusting. You can take the Shard Dust from unwanted shards and trade them in for Chaos equivalent Shard Packs to have another try at getting the shard you want. You can use this process to help work towards getting the shards

Gilded Shards
All our gear is getting the ability to be pushed past its limits, so it’s only fitting that Shards get the ability to as well. When you Gild Shards, you combine Shards of the same kind to unlock additional upgrade levels. This is a focus for end-game players to grab additional power in order to take on the challenges that Onslaught, and also protect their shards from being reset when attaining Ancient Power!




Professor Proteus is a man of intellect, sophistication, and style. In Protean Shift every hero is receiving their own special weapons, with their own special appearances! Some of these weapons not only look legendary, but contain legendary power in the form of unique Mods. These Mods are found on the Prestigious weapons gained from attaining Ancient Power, though that’s not the only way to get them!

In Protean Shift, gear is no longer magically locked to each Hero Deck. Professor Proteus has slightly alleviated the restrictions that existed previously.

All Defenders will be able to list their items for sale on their own personal Player Shops. Most items that have not been altered in some way (think Upgraded/Evolved/etc.) will be available to post on your shop! You will be able to browse all the Player Shops from the Player List on the Pause Menu. Feel free to shop to your heart's content!



In addition to creating your own Shop, you’ll be able to enter the new Markets. From the War Table, you can browse lists of open Markets and choose which to join. Markets are themed for the various types of items that can be sold, but you can still freely sell any item of your choice while you’re there. If you don’t see a Market of the item type that you’re looking for, you can always just Quickmatch and it will automatically create one for you!

We’ve been spilling the beans for a while now, and there’s one last bean that we have to spill — the release date. Dungeon Defenders II: Protean Shift is releasing on June 19th on PlayStation 4, Steam, and Xbox One! This release is very close to one year since we’ve released and there’s more to come.

Check us out on social media for additional updates and game discussions with our awesome community:

• Twitter
  
• Facebook
  
• Discord
  
• Twitch

We’ve got one more Devstream to show off more stuff coming with Dungeon Defenders II: Protean Shift. Thank you for defending Etheria with us, there’s only more to come. Stay tuned!

For Etheria!

The Dungeon Defenders II Team

Greetings Defenders,

The update is coming along smoothly and lots of work is being done as we speak. We released two DevLogs over the past two weeks, and there’s one more coming, but we didn’t want to leave a week without any beans spilling, so we’re going to spill a couple today. Just as an extra note, some of the terms discussed here and any content is still subject to change. Let’s go!

Gear and stat changes affect the entire game, meaning Shards are also affected. With the upcoming update, just about every Shard is going to change as a result (get ready for probably our longest patch notes ever). They should more or less retain their same power, but because of the stat changes and base damage increase on towers, you may find some Shards way more useful than before! There’s also an additional feature being added that affects Shards, what we’re currently calling Shard Dusting.

Shard Dusting
While a lot of Shards are gaining additional strength or coming into the spotlight because of tower/gear changes, there are many different Shards in the game. Very few people utilize all the Shards that drop. Some people like playing with the base four heroes and focus on Shards for them, and some like using just the Mystic and the Lavamancer. Getting Shards for the heroes you don’t use can sometimes feel like you aren’t working towards improving your own unique build. With Shard Dusting, you can now find a utility for unwanted Shards instead of just selling them for little gold.

Taking the Shards you do not want, and deconstructing them into dust, it now allows you to acquire another chance at getting a Shard you want. For a set amount of dust, you are able to go to our Shard vendor and trade your dust for another Shard container that contains a random Shard from the appropriate Chaos tier. This a feature the community asked for, and we’re here to deliver! Getting multiples of the same Shards also has an advantage as well.

Gilded Shards
Gear is getting a major overhaul and additional features to increase its power, we wanted to give Shards some attention as well. With this next update, the Shards (both wanted and unwanted) you find are going to possess more utility than they currently do. Gilded Shards are Shards whose power pushes past the current limits. When gilding a Shard, they gain increased upgrade levels, increasing their power. That’s not the only bonus — Gilded Shards do not get reset when you attain Ancient Power, alleviating some of the currency costs that come with resetting!

Now you might be thinking, “Lawlta, how do I gild my Shards?”, and that’s a great question. Gilded Shards come from combining a specific number of the same Shard. We’re not announcing any specific numbers yet, but we want to make sure this feature feels good to use, and are getting great feedback from our RPG and RQA testers. The goal for this is to allow players who are pushing in end game Onslaught to increase the power of their favorite and/or most used shards. This is our first step towards adding more goals for end game players that have long lasting impact on their power.
New Weapon Models

Professor Proteus is a man of intellect and sophistication, but also a man of style. There are more weapon models coming for every weapon type this update, and they may be attained in a special way. Here’s a sneak peek of what our artists created:



2D Concept Art by Zack Smith


3D Models by Zack Smith

There are more weapons coming, this is just a sneak peek of the awesome ones we are introducing into this update!

The beans continue to flow! The systems discussed here build upon all of the things we discussed in the previous DevLogs. Believe it or not (actually just believe it), there’s even MORE coming!

The next DevLog is going to be a summation of everything we put out so far, as well as a feature that brings together a lot of the features revealed in recent weeks. There may also be a release date in there that’s sooner than you (don’t) think. It’s going to be our last DevLog before we release the Patch Novel™ (calling them notes doesn’t capture just how gigantic that post is going to be).

A lot of the changes that are coming give us a lot to create additional future content. Many of the changes within this huge update, including Shard Dusting, are a result of community feedback on what Defenders want. The feedback all of you provide is incredibly important. Game development is a very arduous process, and at times can feel like we aren’t listening if the changes you want are not released very quickly. These changes (and ones coming in future updates) have a heavy community influence to them. You all are great at providing constructive feedback and it helps us make sure the additions we make are something you enjoy! :)
If you want an early look (as well as helping us polish things before release), our testing groups are just for you! There’s so much coming, and every bit helps to make this expansive update great.

Check us out on social media for additional updates and game discussions with our awesome community:

• Twitter
  
• Facebook
  
• Discord
  
• Twitch

There’s even more information coming next week. We’re really excited to share the last beans of this update, and hope you enjoy what’s coming. Stay tuned!

For Etheria!

The Dungeon Defenders II Team

A red spaceship has arrived in Etheria! Dragonfall guards have questioned a small robot that says his name is “Protobot.” After a brief examination, Protobot hands a mysterious letter to the guards. Let’s open it and see what it says:

Greetings Defenders!

I thought everyone could benefit from one of my more recent discoveries that I’ve made in my research, my new Shrink-o-matizing technology! It really was just a simple matter of combining a crystal core with the matter quantizing array. This allows all sorts of items and materials to be stored at a much smaller size than before! This is only one of the many new item transmorphications that I plan on making.

I do hope that Protobot is in good health and did not damage anything upon his arrival. He’s had some slight malfunctions in his navigational subroutines recently, but his Shrink-o-matizer is in perfect condition! You can trust your items to be protected and stored properly upon the Vault Ship.

I can’t wait to arrive in Dragonfall to share all of my latest research with all of you. I simply was held up making some last minute adjustments to my latest creation, the Robo-witch Prime! Or was it Mecha-witch? Gunda-witch? Don’t worry, I’ll figure out what I’m calling it and head right over! I can’t wait to share all my latest findings with everyone! The Old Ones won’t know what hit them!

Sincerely,

Professor Sebastian Proteus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_00szBO9u7o
Patch 2.4 crash landed into the Dragonfall Marketplace today and is now live! This patch brings a highly requested feature in the form of a shiny spaceship — The Sky City Bank! With the bank’s arrival come some tremendous improvements to load times, optimizations, and bug fixes. Let’s get into it!


The Sky City Bank is now available! This futuristic bank is located directly behind the Emporium in Town, or next to the training dummies in your Private Tavern. The bank is used to store items that you want to hold onto, but don’t necessarily need on your journeys throughout Etheria.

For starters, every player gets at least one Bank Vault for free right when they login. This means if you only have the default inventory space, you now have that same default inventory space AND a Bank Vault upon logging in!

For people that purchased the old Inventory Packs or the Bag Booster Pack are going to notice a shift in their inventory. Bags obtained through those packs become Bank Vaults with this patch. Previously it confused players when they saw other players with ten or eleven bags, when they could only have eight. Because of this, we are standardizing inventory bags.

The change looks like this:

Pre-Patch 2.4

• 8-11 Possible Maximum Inventory Bags
  
• 0 Bank Vaults

Post-Patch 2.4

• 8 Possible Maximum Inventory Bags
  
• 12 Bank Vaults

To celebrate the Sky City Bank’s arrival, we are offering a FREE bundle that you can redeem from the in-game shop for 0 Gems. This bundle awards:

• One additional Bank Vault!
  
• Shutter Shades Flair!

By redeeming the free bundle, you are able to start off Patch 2.4 with at least two free Bank Vaults! This bundle is available for two weeks, so grab it while it’s here!


This patch brings the ability to split stackable items into different stacks and amounts. For instance, if there’s a stack of 99 pet food in your inventory, you can now break it down into two or more stacks of whatever size you choose. Want to keep some items on you, but store the rest of the stack in the bank? Now you can do that! Stacks on stacks on stacks.

Now that the Sky City Bank is open for business, moving items quickly to the bank is a must. You can now move an entire bag full of items with one button press. The “Transfer All” button moves all non-locked items in the bag you currently have selected into the Bank Vault that you have selected. You can move Locked Items as well, they are just done individually. “Transfer All” also automatically stacks any stackable items so you don’t have to!

Patch 2.4 contains an emphasis on inventories. Our Lead Programmer looked into ways our inventories could be better to really add some “oomph” to this patch. After investigating how profiles saved, loaded, and handled inventories, we made a lot of improvements when loading into any part of the game! Some players are going to notice drastic load time decreases, while others may notice slightly quicker loads.

Pets

• When at the Hatchery, eggs can be hatched directly. No more drag and dropping or incubating!

Visuals

• Tower Inspect UI updated for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One (PC already has this).
  
• Zapper Kobold Flier now has a red outline.
  
• Made Lavamancer Weapon drops larger, something hot now looks cooler.
  
• Mana Node received some visual improvements.
  
• Slight tweaks to some of the Barbarian’s Accessories.
  
• Minor adjustments to the Barbarian’s whirlwind.
  
• Blacksmith’s shop no longer has a confirmation pop-up for purchases.
  
• War Table Cybork info now includes that they disable nodes.
  
• Bug reporting page received updated buttons.

Audio

• New audio cue for Wave Complete!
  
• Betsy fight sequence in Dragonfall Bazaar received updated sound cues.
  
• Added and improved on Berserker Orcs during the Glitterhelm matinee.

Dryad

• Corrupt Form
  
  • When building a tower in Corrupt Form, towers now gain the Corrupt benefits when placed.

• Slime Pit Tower
  
  • No longer slow enemies that are immune to slow. Berserker orcs aren’t afraid of slimes!

Huntress

• Shards
  
  • Explosive Poison
    
    • The shard is now working correctly, spreading poison if a poisoned enemy dies.

Shards

• Inspiration
  
  • Can no longer be equipped to the Abyss Lord or EV2

• Fixed an issue where EV2’s Proton Charge could produce higher than intended damage while gaining zero heat.
  
• Fixed an issue with the Barbarian’s Leap preventing resource decay.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Flamethrower Tower’s VFX did not get larger when defense range was increased.
  
• Fixed an issue where Auto-Equip Relics did not work on the first press.
  
• Fixed an issue where Chaos 3 Shard Packs were not on the Emporium.
  
• Fixed an issue when comparing equipment on the Squire.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Barbarian could get out of bounds in The Throne Room.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Sub-Cores are on the incorrect sides in The Throne Room.
  
• Adjusted the Dryad Starfall resource cost so it no longer overlaps.
  
• Fixed an issue that allowed parties to play the tutorial maps (we are looking into letting parties into these maps down the road).
  
• Fixed an issue that caused an infinite loading screen. Please let us know if you experience them after this update.
  
• Removed the ability to auto-equip when in the Portal.
  
• Fixed a bug where multiple towers could be placed simultaneously. May look into adding a stable version of this down the road.
  
• Fixed an issue where several weapons were not consistently dropping in the world without their vfx visible.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Lavamancer VFX would appear on some maps when using the Barbarian Leap.
  
• Fixed an issue where the champion crowns were not properly rotated on hero cards.
  
• Updated an issue where golden eggs would show up as a regular egg in several places.
  
• Fixed an issue where purchasing the last item in the list from the Blacksmith or Relic Hunter shop using a controller causes the list to lose focus.
  
• Fixed an issue where several items in the blacksmith shop were displaying improperly.
  
• Fixed an issue where item comparison was not working for equipped items.
  
• Removed references to the shards being equipped on the sell all message.
  
• Equippable is now spelled correctly in the shard folder when you have no shards available for the gear slot. Stay in school kids.
  
• Removed a reference to the old pet bag when trying to hatch an egg with a full inventory.
  
• Fixed a visual issue where a large number of shards displayed the current upgrade level is in the wrong location on the tooltip.
  
• Quest Complete pop-up will now say Daily Mission completed when completing a Daily Mission.
  
• Attempting to equip a shard to an invalid tower slot throws either unknown error, or no error. Now has a valid error string.
  
• Fixed an issue on XB1 where sub-core icons were not being removed after losing a sub-core.

The Sky City Bank is the first arrival for something much larger coming to Etheria. Over the next couple months we are going to be actively discussing the new features coming with our next expansive update. For more information sources as we post updates, be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter (doing so also gets you the Pirate Monk and Academy Apprentice skins for free):

• Twitter
  
• Facebook
  
• Discord

We’re still tinkering away to get some gigantic changes to Dungeon Defenders II that we think you’re really going to enjoy. More information coming soon!

For Etheria!

The Dungeon Defenders II Team

Greetings Defenders,

The Barbarian’s Wrath, Update 2.3, has stormed into Etheria! This update heralds the arrival of the Barbarian, a pure damage hero powerhouse; huge changes to item progression and gearing; shard changes to get you out of the inventory and into the battle; and updates to many important systems. Grab your axes, it’s time to slash through some barbaric patch notes!

https://youtu.be/FMSJV2vNb1w



“Hailing from the mountains of Etheria, the Barbarian is a notorious warrior king that can wield the powers of Wrath and Fury to crush his enemies. Becoming an unstoppable flurry of muscle and steel, the Barbarian can hurl himself into battle becoming a whirlwind of death. His foes tremble at the mighty shouts of this tremendous warrior leaping in to crush his enemies.”

The Barbarian is the first hero to have two unique resources: Wrath and Fury. Wrath is gained whenever the Barbarian deals damage, and Fury is gained whenever damage is received. In order to put out the most damage you are going to be in the fray constantly. Stance dancing and balancing your Wrath and Fury are your keys to being an unstoppable force!

The Barbarian is a hero with only damage abilities — four abilities and four stances that modify his play style:



Furious Slash

• A mid ranged Fury resource spender that pierces enemies but does not trigger weapon shard activation abilities.

Staggering Shout

• A mid ranged frontal cone debuff ability whose effects are modified by the Barbarian’s primary active stance.

Whirlwind

• A powerful persistent AOE damage ability that gains different abilities based on the primary active stance.

Hawk Strike

• A high damage short ranged attack that consumes all the Barbarian’s Wrath resource when used.

Tornado Stance

• Increases movement speed, attack rate, and jump height, but primary attacks deal less damage. With Tornado Stance active, Staggering Shout and Whirlwind will slow.

Turtle Stance

• Reduces attack speed and less mobility, but takes less damage and become immune to crowd control. Staggering Shout gains a stun and Whirlwind withers enemies.

Siphon Stance

• Turned damage dealt with primary attacks into self-healing. Siphon Stance causes Staggering Shout to apply a lifesteal debuff to affected enemies, converting Whirlwind damage dealt into self-healing.

Lightning Stance

• Gain bonus storm damage to primary attacks and chain storm damage every third attack. Each hit causes self-inflicting damage. Staggering Shout causes enemies to take more damage and Whirlwind gains chain storm damage.

Along with the Barbarian are a lot of visual additions. There are the four material effect costumes and the terrifying Blood Reaver costume with five additional accessories, twenty-seven different axes, and custom enemy death animations for smaller enemies. Send them gobus flying!


Item Progression
Items and upgrades produced a lot of issues for players as they progress through Onslaught and Chaos Trials. With this update, we took a good hard look at items and progression. Players wanting to progress the fastest used a system called “muling” to have a steadier stream of gear upgrades drop. Now, mules are a thing of the past! Every piece of equipment that drops is now based off of the highest gear score you’ve seen drop. Not picked up, not equipped, but dropped. All of this is tracked behind the scenes, taking all of the spreadsheet calculating and muling away, so you can get into the action sooner!

Gear Score

We mentioned above that gear is tracked off of the highest gear score item you’ve seen drop. Gear score is a new take on a previous system used to display an item’s power — iPwr. This system previously did not reflect the strength of an item correctly, causing items that may not be upgrades to have a higher iPwr than equipped items. This affected item progression and the general flow of how players were intended to progress.

Hero and Champion Score

Hero and Champion Score are additional ways to help measure the strength of your heroes’ gear! Hero Score is the average of all the gear equipped to any specific hero, and is shown on your hero cards as shown above. Champion Score is the highest Hero Score among all of your heroes, indicated with a crown above your hero cards (and a smaller one on the hero with the highest Hero Score). These scores are used to let you know when you’re ready for growing challenges you encounter as you progress. To better smooth out progression, different Chaos Trials are unlocked once you reach the appropriate Champion Score.

Auto-Equip Gear and Shards

There is a lot to learn in Dungeon Defenders II in order to become the greatest Defender of Etheria! While gear maketh the Defender, it can be a lot to manage when learning the intricacies of every hero and enemy. To help through this process, we’ve created an Auto-Equip feature for both gear and Shards. Both buttons (located below your relics) have you confirm if you want to use this feature, and if confirmed, equips the highest Gear Score for every slot. For relics, it will discern between a blockade and towers, focusing on equipping Totems for blockades and Medallions/Marks for all other towers.

If you wish to only Auto-Equip the highest gear score per slot, you will be able to select the slot and “Auto-Equip Slot”. On PC this is bound to "U" by default; on PlayStation 4 by pressing “”; and on Xbox One by pressing “”.


Previously, Shards were placed into Shard Slots located on equipment. This system caused Defenders to spend more time in their inventory, moving shards around any time they received an upgrade or wanted to change their build than we liked. When progressing for the first time, or after gaining Ancient Power, this meant a lot of time spent managing your inventory.

In this update, Shard Slots are now equipped on equipment slots directly to your heroes! This means as you receive upgrades, you equip them and your shards stay put. You can still equip up to three shards per slot. However, all three slots will be active only if you have the appropriate tier equipped. Slot activation follows the same conventions it previously did, with Uncommon activating the first slot, Epic activating the first and second slots, and Mythical and Legendary activating all three.

In this update, shards that are on equipment already equipped to your heroes are automatically migrated to those heroes. You login and continue playing without having to manage the shards they were previously wearing. However, shards slotted into equipment that is in your inventory will be removed from the gear. If your inventory is full, the shard(s) are placed into Shards of Containment and sent to the Scavenger.

Incursion Weapons

Incursion weapons are very unique items in the game as they each contain unique passives that previously took up a Shard slot. With this Shard change, we wanted to make sure that Incursion weapons were still something players wanted to acquire. Now, all Incursion weapons will retain their passives AND have three Shard slots. We took a balance pass at these weapons as well, which we’ve included below.

What Happens To Stored Shards?

For users that do not have enough inventory space to hold all of the shards that was previously attached to gear, we've created the Shard of Containment. This Shard is a tool used to segway Defenders into our new Shard system while reducing stress of losing items many of you have farmed. Any shards previously in equipment that cannot fit in your full inventory with the Shard migration are placed into a Shard of Containment and sent to the Scavenger.

The Shard of Containment holds up to 16 shards before another one is created. These are located on the Scavenger and NEVER expire. Shards will be grouped by their upgrade level, bundling the highest Shards together, and the lowest Shards together. This makes it easier to decide which Shard of Containment to open in order to get all of your most used shards.

In order to use a Shard of Containment, you must have the amount of inventory slots open equal to the number of Shards located within the Shard of Containment. If you have 8 Shards, in order to open a Shard of Containment you’ll need 8 inventory slots.

Shards of Containment are a tool we’re using as we bring in our new Shard equipping system. There are more inventory management changes coming down the road!




There’s a lot for new Defenders to learn in order to properly defend Etheria, and it is not an easy undertaking! This update introduces a New User Experience to help acclimate new players understand the basics of the game without getting bogged down on reading tons of details and instructions.

There are a myriad of changes that go along with this:

• New floating instructional text!
  
• Tutorial level replaced with new animated interactions with Betsy!
  
• Huntress available immediately
  
• Ascension UI locked until 50

Mananode Changes
Green mana allocation is now completely different! Mananode chests are a thing of the past, here’s what you see now:

• Green mana is now automatically distributed by Mananode itself at the beginning of the Build Phase!
  
• There is no longer a green mana cap. There is a green mana bar that goes to 2000 green mana. If you go above this amount, the bar starts to fill again!
  
• Mana and gold collection radiuses are TRIPLED during the build phase. No more pesky out of reach mana!

These changes are an additional measure to allow Defenders to do the things they enjoy the most: building and fighting!

• When you create a hero, you can now choose to create them at your highest hero’s level or at level 1.
  
• On gamepads, hitting Right Button + D-Pad Down will open the Inventory.
  
• The D-Pad can now be used on gamepads to navigate the left side of the inventory.
  
• Added East and West descriptors to subcores for Throne Room maps.
  
• Added new Loading Screen text:
  
  • “Mastery provides some of the toughest challenges in all of Etheria but rewards you with powerful Hyper Shards, golden pets, flair, and more!”
    
  • “The stars you earn across different Chaos difficulties in Mastery pool together. Tackle maps in any order that you want to unlock rewards!”
    
  • “Defender Packs contain costumes, accessories, exclusive flair, and much more! Earn them by achieving victory on your current highest Onslaught floor!”
    
  • “Feeling lucky? Rerolling Defender Packs gives you another chance at earning rare rewards!”
    
  • “Beating Incursions allows you to purchase exotic weapons from the Wayfarer.”
    
  • “Got eggs? Visit the Stable Boy in the Town HUB or Tavern to hatch new pets!”
    
  • “Pet eggs that expire in your inventory will turn into resources that you can use to evolve your pets.”
    
  • “Get your style on! You can access the Cosmetics Manager from the Inventory.”
    
  • “Climbing higher in Onslaught and earning Ascension Levels allows you to unlock your Ancient Power!”
    
  • “Need a boost? You can spend gold and Defender Medals to upgrade equipment and shards!”

We’ve added a slew of new costumes and flair to our Defender Packs:
Flair (crowns):

• Ebonfire Blaze
  
• Winner’s Crown

Flair (Wings):

• Gilded Honorwings
  
• Earth Drake Wings
  
• Great Eagle Wings
  
• Hive Strike Wings
  
• Gargoyle Wings

Flair (Sets):

• Bonemancer Set: Bonemancer Crown and Bonemancer Wings
  
• Bramblewood Set: Bramblewood Crown and Bramblewood Wings

Costumes:

• Gilded Chrome EV2
  
• Rosen Chrome EV2
  
• Amethysium Chrome EV2
  
• Verdanite Chrome EV2
  
• Carbide Chrome EV2

Incursion Weapons maintain their previous effects as passives with the new Shard changes. With maintaining these passives, we took a balance pass to adjust some slightly overpowered passives, while buffing underperforming passives.

Molten Tome
Now deals:

• 1000% (previously 950%) Ability Power per Meteor.
  
• 850% (previously 650%) Ability Power per Lava Fissure.
  
• 200% (remains the same) Ability Power burning over 5 seconds.

Haunted Halberd

• Summons up to 5 (previously 3) Halberds that deal 250% (previously 150%) Ability Power.

North Pole

• Secondary Projectiles now deal 350% (previously 1000%) Hero Damage.

Shadowflame

• Now hits up to 4 targets dealing 75% (previously 135%) Hero Damage.

Glaive of the Storms

• Storm deals 1000% (previously 1500%) Ability Power as Storm Damage.
  
• Bolts deal 350% (previously 500%) Ability Power as Storm Damage.

All Incursion Weapons not listed here will have their max upgraded shard values applied to their new passives. For instance, Terra Blade’s passive will pierce up to 3 targets dealing 100% Hero Damage.


Barbarian
Abilities

• Furious Slash: Mid-range attack that pierces enemies.
  
  • Cost: 5 Fury
    
  • Cooldown: 2 seconds
• Tornado Stance: Hit faster, move faster, jump higher, but deal less damage.
  
  • Cost: 6 Fury per second.
    
  • Cooldown: None.
• Turtle Stance: Take less damage, become crowd-control immune, but move slower.
  
  • Cost: 6 Fury per second.
    
  • Cooldown: None.
• Siphon Stance: Gain Health Points while attacking.
  
  • Cost: 6 Fury per second.
    
  • Cooldown: None.
• Lightning Stance: Attacks gain additional lightning damage, but self-inflict damage.
  
  • Cost: 10 Wrath per second.
    
  • Cooldown: None.
• Staggering Shout: Debuff enemies in a frontal cone.
  
  • Cost: 15 Wrath.
    
  • Cooldown: 5 seconds.
• Whirlwind: Deal Area of Effect damage to enemies within melee range.
  
  • Cost: 26 Wrath per second.
    
  • Cooldown: None
• Hawk Strike: Deal massive damage in a small area. The more Wrath consumed, the higher the damage.
  
  • Cost: All Wrath.
    
  • Cooldown: 10 seconds.

Shards

• Zephyr’s Warpath: Increase movement speed in Whirlwind by 5%-105%.
  
  • Found in Campaign.
    
  • Equipment Slot: Boots
• Full Shell Ahead: Increases movement speed while in Turtle Stance by 25-525.
  
  • Found in Chaos I.
    
  • Equipment Slot: Boots.
• Turtle Power: Increase Damage Protection while in Turtle Stance by 1%-21%.
  
  • Found in Chaos II.
    
  • Equipment Slot: Chest.
• Cowabunga!
  
• Echoing Shout: Increases the duration of Staggering Shout debuffs by 0.5s-4.5s.
  
  • Found in Chaos III.
    
  • Equipment Slot: Helmet.
• Draining Strikes: Increase the healing from Siphon Stance by 5%-25%.
  
  • Found in Chaos IV
    
  • Equipment Slot: Helmet.
• Maelstrom: While Lightning Stance is active, the Barbarian's attacks have a 5%-25% chance to drench enemies, stunning them for 1.5s-3.5s.
  
  • Found in Chaos V.
    
  • Equipment Slot: Weapons.
• Talon Strike: Hawk Strike now stuns for 2s-4.5.
  
  • Found in Chaos V.
    
  • Equipment Slot: Weapons.
• Boiling Blood: Causes the Barbarian to take 20%-2% of his Max Health as damage, every 5s during combat phase gaining Fury.
  
  • Found in Chaos VI.
    
  • Equipment Slot: Chest.
• Shellshock: While Turtle Stance is active the Barbarian's attacks wither enemies hit for 3-13
• seconds reducing their damage to 75%-35%.
  
  • Found in Chaos VI.
    
  • Equipment Slot: Weapons.
• Ride the Lightning: Increase the damage bonus of Lightning Stance by 1%-21%.
  
  • Found in Chaos VII.
    
  • Equipment Slot: Gloves.
• Wreckless: The Barbarian deals up to 0.5%-20.5% bonus damage based upon current Wrath.
  
  • Found in Chaos VII.
    
  • Equipment Slot: Gloves.

• Adjusted Dark Arts Apprentice green clouds effect.
  
• Fixed issues causing floors to appear black.
  
• Fixed an issue causing crashes when opening extremely large numbers of Defender Packs.
  
• Adjusted the material on the Yesteryear Nymph costume.
  
• Fixed an issue on Nimbus Reach with the Victory Chest always being Powerful (green).
  
• Fixed an issue on Dead Road in death areas where character models would fall through the map.
  
• Fixed an issue with Direct Command not castable on multiple Skeletal Orc towers.
  
• Fixed an issue where Slime Pits were not dealing damage to enemies affected by the Power Block mutator.
  
• “To HUB” now says “To Town”.
  
• Fixed an issue being able to play as a deleted hero.
  
• Fixed an issue where Haunting Shard was not showing the correct VFX.
  
• Fixed an issue when using a controller that would lock NPC/Object interactions.
  
• Fixed an issue when multiple cores are active and one dies, it would show a dead core with 75% health value.
  
• Fixed a split screen issue where core health bars were not displaying correctly.
  
• Fixed a frame drop issue when inspecting a billboard and then looking away from it.
  
• Fixed an issue with Betsy’s Curse zones disappearing when switching heroes.
  
• Fixed an issue with The Abyss Lord’s primary attack SFX.
  
• Fixed a split screen issue where health bars for Player 1 were appearing much larger than intended.

• Inputs were reset for all platforms.
  
• Sometimes you have to hit “Auto-Equip Relic” a few times before it works.
  
• When using the All Bags option in the inventory and sorting items by Weapons, it will cause all items in the inventory to disappear. Purely a visual issues and toggling inventory bags will refresh the inventory screen and they will reappear.
  
• Occasionally the Auto Equip function doesn't prioritize the highest gear score items first.
  
• Occasionally players will get stuck on a black screen when trying to load into the Outdoor HUB. Restarting the game will fix it (or if you know where the menu options are in the escape menu you can click the Leave game button which will still work if you can find it).
  
• Occasionally when booting up the game with the controller already active, the navigation focus will be on one of the social media links to the side instead of the main menu options.
  
• The keybindings that appear throughout the tutorial maps don't show the correct button icons with custom keybindings set.
  
• The icons of the towers on the mini-maps of the tutorial maps are different colors.
  
• Some of the weapon firing rates did not carry over correctly.

Greetings Defenders,

In our most recent Devstream we announced that the Barbarian is making his glorious return to defend Etheria once more. His return is something Defenders waited for a long time, and he’s bringing some great features with him:

• New Hero: The Barbarian, a whirlwind of wrath and fury!
  
• New User Experience: New Defenders are thrown into the action of defending Etheria!
  
• Shard Slot overhaul to spend less time in your inventory and more time on the battlefield!
  
• Item Progression rework to increase power and knowledge of the gear you acquire!

We recently discussed the changes to the shard system and our item progression during our last Devstream (check it out here). Our latest Devstream recapped that information and also showed off the might and power of the Barbarian in all his glory! This update included a lot of work to create this new Hero and make some much anticipated changes to core systems of the game. Let’s get started!

Check out our forum devlog to check out some of the animations, artwork, and inventory preview by clicking here!


Since working at Trendy, there have been two things that our brave, powerful, and passionate community of Defenders have wanted for a long time: The Barbarian and a way to track gear strength. Everything in this update has been affected directly by the feedback and desires that all of provide, and we’re very grateful for your help in making the game better as a result.

Creating The Barbarian was an amazing process to be a part of. We went from having a base design, and overhauling him completely to crank his epicness up to 11! There was a huge goal of capturing the spirit of the Barbarian from Dungeon Defenders 1 and turbo-charging that spirit. The result is a whirlwind of wrath and fury that is both an immovable object and an unstoppable force. HE. IS. A. BEAST.

With his arrival is something as a player I am stoked to see in the game — gear and shard changes. As someone who has gained Ancient Power and is climbing Onslaught, not having to move shards combined with the changes to gear progression and visibility feels so great! You’ll experience yourself very soon.

The introduction to Dungeon Defenders II is also vastly different than before. Our veteran Defenders are not exposed to this area of the game, but we noticed a lot of newer players were not getting pumped up with the original tutorial and so we set out to improve tenfold! Now new Defenders experience action from the get go, with a certain dragon really setting the pace of the rest of the game.

We cannot wait for all of you to really sink your teeth into this meaty update!


Hey everyone, just a quick update from me. I have been making larger posts recently about upcoming features so the Dev Log won’t have TOO many tidbits… but I’d like to give everyone some pieces to start thinking about. There’s some areas of our game that we’re planning to improve, so I’d like to clue you in on what those are. I’m sure I’ll have mentioned some of them before, but I’d just like to reiterate what we’re looking into next.

We’re looking at ways to store items, ways to create and customize existing items, ways to exchange items, and ways to enhance items. Did I mention that we’re heavily looking into making items more interesting? We have some features that we’re planning, but we’ll reveal more specifics about them at a later date. There’s a lot of ways we want to make the game more engaging and interesting to players, while also figuring out a plan to continue rolling out new content like maps, costumes, heroes and such. We’re a small team, so finding that balance between improving areas of the game while also adding content is a challenge.

We appreciate our community that are playing, giving feedback, and even just following our updates on the site, forums and social outlets. Can’t wait to tell you guys about what’s to come, so stay tuned!


Being a Dungeon Defenders player and playing a ton of Barbarian in the past, I wanted to bring the visceral gameplay of jumping across the map at rapid speed while also clearing hordes of enemies and wiping bosses off the map with a speed second to none. One of my goals was to bring back the stances that made the Barbarian so much fun to play, flying between lanes and destroying any enemy.

He is meant to have some of the strongest and most fun abilities to use that require an active playstyle to have his damage reach its highest potential. Many different ideas were thrown around to allow players to interact with other players or other heroes/defenses; the end result is we wanted the Barbarian to be focused on just absolutely demolishing the hordes of monsters you face. This means that instead of being able to buff others, he can debuff enemies in some fun and unique way for other heroes and defenses to interact with.


I was recently hired at Trendy, and I am very excited to be here! When I started there was a working model of the Barbarian that was already modeled and textured by the previous character artist. Likewise this older barbarian was fully playable, but it did not meet the new look that we were trying to achieve. So my first task here was to model and texture the “New” Barbarian.

The process to create the 3D model of the Barbarian consists of a couple of steps. First, I took the concept art into Zbrush and quickly made a body. Then I took that into Maya to complete the rest of the modeling and created the clothing and armor. Many iterations went into making sure everything worked properly.

From that point, I took the model into 3D Coat and Photoshop to paint the textures. My biggest hurdle that I faced in getting the “style” of the textures of the barbarian was matching the look of Dungeon Defenders.

This took a lot of work, but I am glad to say that the hurdle was vaulted and the Barbarian looks awesome next to all the other characters in game. Now that he is finished, I really enjoy seeing this hulking mass of muscles, that I helped to get into this game, glide through combat like a beautiful murder ballerina!


Hey Defenders! Rage, wrath and sheer power were just a few of the words going through my head while animating the Barbarian. Oh, and SMAAAAAAAASH! He is definitely not a dainty ballerina, but he is still quite an agile character. I would say one of the greatest challenges while animating this human tank was moving all that muscle mass around while making him quick enough to react for the Defender playing him. One way we approached this was to really focus on emphasizing the weight shift in his shoulders.

Some of my favorite animations that I got to work on for this bad boy were the death animation (finding interesting ways to make characters meet their demise can be fun), and the stances.

The four stances were challenging because of the animation needed to depict the functionality of the stance in a split second, while still showing the weight of this huge character. One of the animations that I had the most fun with was a one armed handstand pushup that unfortunately didn’t make it into the game, but you can see it here.

There is one thing related to the Barbarian I got to animate that I feel makes playing him a whole lot more interesting, the enemy death animations. Each time the Barbarian smashes a Kobold, Goblin, or Javelin thrower they will — well, give him a try and see what happens. Run, don’t walk!


Hey Everyone! Since last update I have been ESSENTIALLY focused on various Quality of Life improvements. Chief amongst those is the revamp of the previous iPwr system. In theory, iPwr should have been a good indicator to know how strong an item is, but in practicality it didn’t reflect that. You could have an uncommon item drop alongside a legendary item and both of them would have similar iPwr, but because the legendary had multiple stats, it seemed to be way better. This led people into equipping lower iPwr items by trying to maximize their stats.

This also led to the ‘muling’ issue many of you are aware of. Since the highest iPwr of your heroes would determine the drops you see in the game, you were encouraged to have a throw-away character to get the best drops.

GearScore is the solution we came up for both issues. A piece of equipment’s GearScore value is determined after evaluating every single element of what makes it strong. That is the value of the item’s stats, the number of Shard slots it will enable, and the number of secondary stats it has. Like we mentioned in the Devstream, GearScore should give you the certainty that an item with a greater GS value is overall better than a lower one. Of course, if you are pursuing a certain strategy, you are encouraged to play the game your own way and ignore GS.

Alongside this, I want to say under no ambiguity: Muling is dead. The gear that we are dropping in the game has no relation, whatsoever, with what you have equipped, or what’s even in your inventory. The strength of the items that you see in DD2 is tied to your progression. The more you play, the stronger items you will see, across all game modes. Of course, each game mode and difficulty has a ceiling of the strength at which items may drop, so you are encouraged to always keep pushing higher.

On a different note, we also brought some improvements to Shard management. We want you to keep playing the game with the least amount of interruptions as possible, so we decided to streamline the Shard equipping process. Now shards will be tied to Gear Slots, instead of Gear. This will allow you to naturally equip better Gear, without having to move your Shards around to keep your same build. These Shards improvements come with inventory adjustments to the UI so you can quickly equip and unequip shards.

Anyhow, I’m sure these new systems will allow you to keep doing what you like to do the most: blasting goblins and building towers. I’m more than happy to listen to your feedback, post on our forums and I will see it. Happy defending =).


Hey Defenders! From this day forward, I am officially taking all noobies under my wing! Since the Power of the Ancients update, I’ve been hard at work revamping the new user experience (NUE) of Dungeon Defenders II. Our goal was to make the first hour of the campaign exciting, informative, and most importantly, a showcase for what makes Dungeon Defenders II special.

Over the past couple of months we’ve brought testers into our studio and watched them play both the current tutorial level and the first hour of the campaign. These tests revealed that many people were confused about how to interact with some of the fundamental systems of DD2. Players were having a hard time understanding how to interact with gear that was dropping, they were forgetting to go to the green mana chests, and worst of all, many didn’t realize you could swap between different heroes!

It was clear that the new user flow needed an overhaul. The approach we took involved creating immediate stakes for players by throwing them straight into the action-packed combat of DD2. We also wanted to incrementally introduce the foundational systems of the game so that players could fully appreciate their intricacies. Finally, we wanted to present each mechanic in a way that is concise, clear, and within context that demonstrated its value.

After many late nights and frequent focus group testing of our work, I am very pleased to announce that my self esteem remains (mostly) intact and that our new user experience will be dropping “sooner than you expect.” Happy defending!

Love,
Mark

P.S. All of the designers read every single forum post. Keep the awesome feedback coming.


Our testing groups had fun putting the early Barbarian through his paces. The ability to combine stances made for some interesting discovery of combinations, but also some interesting bugs and balance issues over the course of testing.

The new shard slots were immediately pounced upon as a solid quality of life addition by most of the testing folks, and thankfully didn't present too many issues.

We're also looking to expand our tester pool once again. Our testers get the chance to try out our still-in development work, in exchange for some cool stuff as a thanks. They help us with balance, feedback and bugs and their contributions to our releases are very valuable.

We have two teams:

• RQA - our daily bug hunters (for folks with lots of free time each day),
• RPG - our larger team for balance and feedback (for folks with limited free time).

If you are interested, drop me an email at dani.moore@trendyent.com and ask. I'm happy to provide more information on both teams to see what best suits. A big thanks to everyone involved in the Barbarian and the heaps of work and sweat that went into it all.

Greetings Defenders,

Dungeon Defenders II: Power of the Ancients is live for all platforms! This expansion is full of new progression, power, and challenges.

The content released in this expansion is massive. We’ve included the long awaited Onslaught game mode, our new largest map ever, The Lost Temple, and our new Ancient Power system. There’s tons of things to share in these patch notes, so let’s get right to it!




Onslaught introduces a new floor based progression, enemy mutators, and unique enemy schedule and lane selection. You gain better loot with every floor, see different enemies in every lane, and have to tailor your defense to each and every threat. The deeper you descend, the stronger your opponents become, unleashing familiar Trials enemies, as well as progressively difficult mutators and enemy schedules.

In addition to the new systems, we’ve added some new Onslaught rewards! For beating certain floors, you can unlock new Flair sets. You might even be able to find a new companion from Victory Chests…

Did I mention Victory Chests? Onslaught will feature a new Victory Chest that is exclusive to Onslaught and is a little more visually impactful. You’ll see what I mean when you beat your first floor!

Floor Progression

In each floor of Onslaught, there can be 1-3 maps on each floor. This will cycle between 1, 2, and 3 until you reach our end-game scaling around Floor 60.

For Example:

• Floor 1: 1 Map
  
• Floor 2: 2 Maps
  
• Floor 3: 3 Maps
  
• Floor 4: 1 Map
  
• Floor 5: 2 Maps

And so on and so forth. In our end-game, every floor will be three maps.

Each floor that you beat will have better and better loot up to our current maximum Chaos VII level.

Mutators

Mutators are a system that existed in the game previously, but now we’ve really cranked it up to eleven. There are over 20 different mutators that will unlock as you progress deeper into Onslaught. These mutators will be semi-randomly selected based on the enemies that they’re assigned to. Mutators will shift and change how you need to build each lane, so pay attention to the enemy billboards that appear over each enemy spawn, and check out the new corresponding Mutator icons that will show up when you target an enemy that has one. We’ve blacklisted certain combinations of Mutators from appearing together, but there are some crazy combinations that will definitely crank up the difficulty for players interested in strategizing.

Some Example Mutators:

• Berserker Mutator: Enemies start off weak, but become stronger the longer they are alive.
  
• Exhaustion Mutator: Enemies start off strong, but become weaker the longer they are alive.
  
• Detonator Mutator: When enemies die, they explode, causing damage to heroes and defenses around them.

New Enemy Schedules

Groups of enemies within our game are referred to as “schedules” in our studio. These schedules determine what types of enemies that spawn out of each enemy lane. In Onslaught, each lane will spawn a different enemy schedule and will require you to build a set of defenses that is effective against that group of enemies.

Example Enemy Schedules:

• Game Ogre Enemy Schedule: All enemies are Ogres.
  
• Timmy’s Revenge Enemy Schedule: Every type of Goblin in a lane. Gobu.
  
• Cy-hex Lava-zerker Wompers: Cyborks, Hex Throwers, Lava Orcs,
• Berserkers, and Melee Goblins… have fun!
  
• And many more!

New Gating and Unlock Progression

The choice is YOURS!... in regards to how you progress. As you unlock more floors through Onslaught, more tiers of Trials are unlocked, and on the flip side, the more Trials tiers you complete, the more floors you unlock. Current players that have completed certain difficulty levels of Trials will already have appropriate Onslaught floors unlocked. For example, players that completed Chaos VII have Onslaught Floor 55 available now. Here’s a list of where you’ll end up in this expansion when you first load in:

• Chaos I: Onslaught Floor 3
  
• Chaos II: Onslaught Floor 4
  
• Chaos III: Onslaught Floor 7
  
• Chaos IV: Onslaught Floor 10
  
• Chaos V: Onslaught Floor 16
  
• Chaos VI: Onslaught Floor 37
  
• Chaos VII: Onslaught Floor 55

Defenders can choose to progress through each Floor of Onslaught, or clear through our unlock progression via Trials and each Chaos difficulty. Check the Challenges UI for details about when these unlock or check out the next Chaos level of Trials at the War Table and it will show you the requirement needed to unlock the next level.




It’s HUGE, it’s crazy, and it changes every time you play! The Lost Temple is by far the largest and most interesting level we’ve ever made. During each visit to this humongous map, different lanes and cores will be selected and activated, providing a different experience upon each visit. As you are playing the map, keep an eye out for an additional lane opening up. When a new lane opens up, we’ll give you more mana and Defense Units to be able to properly defend it.

Another awesome addition to this map is the sheer number of enemies that will be able to be on the map. Combat may be a little more chaotic with the huge waves of enemies that will be spawning on this map. We cranked up the number of enemies on screen by almost 200%! Maybe even more? I don’t know, it’s insane… but also very fun. We hope you’ll enjoy it.




Get far enough into Onslaught, and unlock the ability to gain Ancient Power, an additional character progression system. Each time you gain Ancient Power, you will receive a number of permanent account buffs, raise the maximum cap of points that you can put into each Ascension talent, and keep/increase your new Minimum Ascension Level.

Minimum Ascension Level

The Minimum Ascension Level is based on your Highest Achieved Ascension Level, your Highest Achieved Floor of Onslaught, and will increase each time that you push your limits. You will gain +3 to your Minimum Ascension Level for each additional Floor of Onslaught that you beat over Floor 65 and for every 50 Ascension Levels that you have when you finally hit “Gain Ancient Power”. When you gain Ancient Power, your new Ascension Level after the reset will be whatever your Minimum Ascension Level is.

For example:
On your first playthrough, you hit the minimum requirements to gain Ancient Power and have beaten Floor 65 and have 250 Ascension Levels. Your Minimum Ascension Level will be 15. You got +0 for beating Floor 65 since you didn’t push above it, and you gained +15 for your 250 Ascension Levels.

On your second playthrough, you also only do the minimum requirements to gain Ancient Power. You will gain +0 to your Minimum Ascension Level because you did not push any additional Floors past 65, and you didn’t gain any additional Ascension Levels that would have raised your “Highest Achieved Ascension” number.

At this point you need to push Onslaught Floors or Ascension Levels over 250 to gain more Minimum Ascension Level.

Permanent Buffs

Each time you gain Ancient Power you will also yield permanent buffs:

• +5% Permanent Experience Bonus
  
• +5% Permanent Gold Gain Bonus
  
• Ascension Talent Cap raised by an amount that corresponds with your
• progression.
  
• Increase or Keep your new Minimum Ascension Level

Ancient Powers

In addition to the permanent buffs, you will also receive one point that you can allocate into a number of additional unique Powers! These are the ones that stack with other party members. Some of these include:

• Increased Tower Health %.
  
• Increased Tower Damage %.
  
• Lifesteal based of x% of Hero Damage dealt.
  
• Reduced resurrection timer.
  
• Increased resistances %.
  
• And more!

All the buffs can be used in every game mode!

Limited Progression Reset

When you gain Ancient Power, your progression will be reset back to Onslaught Floor 1 and Chaos I with your gear and shards reset to that appropriate level. Using your new Powers, you’ll be able to reprogress back through our end-game at a quicker pace and push into deeper floors of Onslaught with your newfound strength!


We are adding leaderboards to see who have progressed the furthest through Onslaught. There are two new boards that track different things. The first, our Onslaught Leaderboard, will track the furthest floor progressed similar to Mastery’s leaderboard (i.e. players completing the highest floor at the same are both listed as first).

The second, our Ancient Power Leaderboard, will track which players have acquired the most Ancient Power. There is more info regarding these leaderboards down the road, but are currently used to see who is the best of the best!


We’re introducing a new system, Defender Packs, to acquire flairs, costumes, pets, and accessories. We weren’t a fan of our old lock box system because it had limited accessories you could unlock, and required keys to open them. Defender Packs were made to always feel rewarding whenever you received one. There are various ways to acquire them, a couple include completing the campaign or progressing through Onslaught. They have a chance to drop from the highest floor you've completed, even when farming your highest floor. If you’ve already completed the campaign, you automatically receive the Defender Packs you would have earned.

Defender Packs include a giant inventory of different skins and flairs, some being extremely rare and prestigious. If you happen to receive a flair, costume, or accessory you already own, you’ll be rewarded handsomely with gold instead!


Forest Biome

• Updated to give 1250 mana from 1000 mana.
  
• Now matches the maps Defense Unit cap.

• Fixed a button display issue with Ev-2 when placing a defense with a controller.
  
• Frostbite Tower can now target training dummies.
  
• Fixed a spelling error with The Dawn of the Blood Moon Incursion.
  
• Fixed an issue where the “G-Up” sound was not playing correctly.
  
• Fixed a pet unequip issue at the Petrinarian.
  
• Fixed an issue where the town hub music was tied to the SFX slider.
  
• Thunderbolts and Lightning can only be equipped to magic staves now.
  
• Fixed Lavamancer Harden/Inflame VFX.
  
• Fixed an issue with Start Campaign appearing after completing it.
  
• Escape can now cancel pet rerolls.
  
• Water spout trap now named properly.
  
• Orbs should no longer drop during Campaign.
  
• Less words are caught by the profanity filter now.
  
• Glaive of Storms attack animation ends correctly now.
  
• Fixed an issue where controller inputs could provide an extra daily mission.
  
• Fixed an issue where Automation was healing more than intended.

• We are investigating an issue where Harpy’s Perch currently does not gain the pierce buff while corrupted.
  
• We are investigating an issue where Angry Nimbus does not gain storm damage or change material while in Corrupt form.
  
• Frosty Beams Shard affected enemies are not kept frozen through the entire duration.
  
• Vampiric Empowerment Shard’s current stat boost is being displayed incorrectly.
  
• Automation does not work on Snaking Sands, Slime Pits, Geyser Trap, and
• Angry Nimbus towers.
  
• Tuskar is currently using Witherbeast's icon.
  
• Assault on Throne Room with mini-Ogres has a chance to spawn at the core.

This is just the start for what’s to come in Dungeon Defenders II! We poured a lot of love into Power of the Ancients and know you’ll enjoy Onslaught. We have a lot of planned for Dungeon Defenders II in 2018, and are grateful for the support you show us to make the game the best it can be.

For Etheria!

The Dungeon Defenders II Team

Greetings Defenders,

Dungeon Defenders II: Power of the Ancients is live for all platforms! This expansion is full of new progression, power, and challenges.

The content released in this expansion is massive. We’ve included the long awaited Onslaught game mode, our new largest map ever, The Lost Temple, and our new Ancient Power system. There’s tons of things to share in these patch notes, so let’s get right to it!




Onslaught introduces a new floor based progression, enemy mutators, and unique enemy schedule and lane selection. You gain better loot with every floor, see different enemies in every lane, and have to tailor your defense to each and every threat. The deeper you descend, the stronger your opponents become, unleashing familiar Trials enemies, as well as progressively difficult mutators and enemy schedules.

In addition to the new systems, we’ve added some new Onslaught rewards! For beating certain floors, you can unlock new Flair sets. You might even be able to find a new companion from Victory Chests…

Did I mention Victory Chests? Onslaught will feature a new Victory Chest that is exclusive to Onslaught and is a little more visually impactful. You’ll see what I mean when you beat your first floor!

Floor Progression

In each floor of Onslaught, there can be 1-3 maps on each floor. This will cycle between 1, 2, and 3 until you reach our end-game scaling around Floor 60.

For Example:

• Floor 1: 1 Map
  
• Floor 2: 2 Maps
  
• Floor 3: 3 Maps
  
• Floor 4: 1 Map
  
• Floor 5: 2 Maps

And so on and so forth. In our end-game, every floor will be three maps.

Each floor that you beat will have better and better loot up to our current maximum Chaos VII level.

Mutators

Mutators are a system that existed in the game previously, but now we’ve really cranked it up to eleven. There are over 20 different mutators that will unlock as you progress deeper into Onslaught. These mutators will be semi-randomly selected based on the enemies that they’re assigned to. Mutators will shift and change how you need to build each lane, so pay attention to the enemy billboards that appear over each enemy spawn, and check out the new corresponding Mutator icons that will show up when you target an enemy that has one. We’ve blacklisted certain combinations of Mutators from appearing together, but there are some crazy combinations that will definitely crank up the difficulty for players interested in strategizing.

Some Example Mutators:

• Berserker Mutator: Enemies start off weak, but become stronger the longer they are alive.
  
• Exhaustion Mutator: Enemies start off strong, but become weaker the longer they are alive.
  
• Detonator Mutator: When enemies die, they explode, causing damage to heroes and defenses around them.

New Enemy Schedules

Groups of enemies within our game are referred to as “schedules” in our studio. These schedules determine what types of enemies that spawn out of each enemy lane. In Onslaught, each lane will spawn a different enemy schedule and will require you to build a set of defenses that is effective against that group of enemies.

Example Enemy Schedules:

• Game Ogre Enemy Schedule: All enemies are Ogres.
  
• Timmy’s Revenge Enemy Schedule: Every type of Goblin in a lane. Gobu.
  
• Cy-hex Lava-zerker Wompers: Cyborks, Hex Throwers, Lava Orcs,
• Berserkers, and Melee Goblins… have fun!
  
• And many more!

New Gating and Unlock Progression

The choice is YOURS!... in regards to how you progress. As you unlock more floors through Onslaught, more tiers of Trials are unlocked, and on the flip side, the more Trials tiers you complete, the more floors you unlock. Current players that have completed certain difficulty levels of Trials will already have appropriate Onslaught floors unlocked. For example, players that completed Chaos VII have Onslaught Floor 55 available now. Here’s a list of where you’ll end up in this expansion when you first load in:

• Chaos I: Onslaught Floor 3
  
• Chaos II: Onslaught Floor 4
  
• Chaos III: Onslaught Floor 7
  
• Chaos IV: Onslaught Floor 10
  
• Chaos V: Onslaught Floor 16
  
• Chaos VI: Onslaught Floor 37
  
• Chaos VII: Onslaught Floor 55

Defenders can choose to progress through each Floor of Onslaught, or clear through our unlock progression via Trials and each Chaos difficulty. Check the Challenges UI for details about when these unlock or check out the next Chaos level of Trials at the War Table and it will show you the requirement needed to unlock the next level.




It’s HUGE, it’s crazy, and it changes every time you play! The Lost Temple is by far the largest and most interesting level we’ve ever made. During each visit to this humongous map, different lanes and cores will be selected and activated, providing a different experience upon each visit. As you are playing the map, keep an eye out for an additional lane opening up. When a new lane opens up, we’ll give you more mana and Defense Units to be able to properly defend it.

Another awesome addition to this map is the sheer number of enemies that will be able to be on the map. Combat may be a little more chaotic with the huge waves of enemies that will be spawning on this map. We cranked up the number of enemies on screen by almost 200%! Maybe even more? I don’t know, it’s insane… but also very fun. We hope you’ll enjoy it.




Get far enough into Onslaught, and unlock the ability to gain Ancient Power, an additional character progression system. Each time you gain Ancient Power, you will receive a number of permanent account buffs, raise the maximum cap of points that you can put into each Ascension talent, and keep/increase your new Minimum Ascension Level.

Minimum Ascension Level

The Minimum Ascension Level is based on your Highest Achieved Ascension Level, your Highest Achieved Floor of Onslaught, and will increase each time that you push your limits. You will gain +3 to your Minimum Ascension Level for each additional Floor of Onslaught that you beat over Floor 65 and for every 50 Ascension Levels that you have when you finally hit “Gain Ancient Power”. When you gain Ancient Power, your new Ascension Level after the reset will be whatever your Minimum Ascension Level is.

For example:
On your first playthrough, you hit the minimum requirements to gain Ancient Power and have beaten Floor 65 and have 250 Ascension Levels. Your Minimum Ascension Level will be 15. You got +0 for beating Floor 65 since you didn’t push above it, and you gained +15 for your 250 Ascension Levels.

On your second playthrough, you also only do the minimum requirements to gain Ancient Power. You will gain +0 to your Minimum Ascension Level because you did not push any additional Floors past 65, and you didn’t gain any additional Ascension Levels that would have raised your “Highest Achieved Ascension” number.

At this point you need to push Onslaught Floors or Ascension Levels over 250 to gain more Minimum Ascension Level.

Permanent Buffs

Each time you gain Ancient Power you will also yield permanent buffs:

• +5% Permanent Experience Bonus
  
• +5% Permanent Gold Gain Bonus
  
• Ascension Talent Cap raised by an amount that corresponds with your
• progression.
  
• Increase or Keep your new Minimum Ascension Level

Ancient Powers

In addition to the permanent buffs, you will also receive one point that you can allocate into a number of additional unique Powers! These are the ones that stack with other party members. Some of these include:

• Increased Tower Health %.
  
• Increased Tower Damage %.
  
• Lifesteal based of x% of Hero Damage dealt.
  
• Reduced resurrection timer.
  
• Increased resistances %.
  
• And more!

All the buffs can be used in every game mode!

Limited Progression Reset

When you gain Ancient Power, your progression will be reset back to Onslaught Floor 1 and Chaos I with your gear and shards reset to that appropriate level. Using your new Powers, you’ll be able to reprogress back through our end-game at a quicker pace and push into deeper floors of Onslaught with your newfound strength!


We are adding leaderboards to see who have progressed the furthest through Onslaught. There are two new boards that track different things. The first, our Onslaught Leaderboard, will track the furthest floor progressed similar to Mastery’s leaderboard (i.e. players completing the highest floor at the same are both listed as first).

The second, our Ancient Power Leaderboard, will track which players have acquired the most Ancient Power. There is more info regarding these leaderboards down the road, but are currently used to see who is the best of the best!


We’re introducing a new system, Defender Packs, to acquire flairs, costumes, pets, and accessories. We weren’t a fan of our old lock box system because it had limited accessories you could unlock, and required keys to open them. Defender Packs were made to always feel rewarding whenever you received one. There are various ways to acquire them, a couple include completing the campaign or progressing through Onslaught. They have a chance to drop from the highest floor you've completed, even when farming your highest floor. If you’ve already completed the campaign, you automatically receive the Defender Packs you would have earned.

Defender Packs include a giant inventory of different skins and flairs, some being extremely rare and prestigious. If you happen to receive a flair, costume, or accessory you already own, you’ll be rewarded handsomely with gold instead!


Forest Biome

• Updated to give 1250 mana from 1000 mana.
  
• Now matches the maps Defense Unit cap.

• Fixed a button display issue with Ev-2 when placing a defense with a controller.
  
• Frostbite Tower can now target training dummies.
  
• Fixed a spelling error with The Dawn of the Blood Moon Incursion.
  
• Fixed an issue where the “G-Up” sound was not playing correctly.
  
• Fixed a pet unequip issue at the Petrinarian.
  
• Fixed an issue where the town hub music was tied to the SFX slider.
  
• Thunderbolts and Lightning can only be equipped to magic staves now.
  
• Fixed Lavamancer Harden/Inflame VFX.
  
• Fixed an issue with Start Campaign appearing after completing it.
  
• Escape can now cancel pet rerolls.
  
• Water spout trap now named properly.
  
• Orbs should no longer drop during Campaign.
  
• Less words are caught by the profanity filter now.
  
• Glaive of Storms attack animation ends correctly now.
  
• Fixed an issue where controller inputs could provide an extra daily mission.
  
• Fixed an issue where Automation was healing more than intended.

• We are investigating an issue where Harpy’s Perch currently does not gain the pierce buff while corrupted.
  
• We are investigating an issue where Angry Nimbus does not gain storm damage or change material while in Corrupt form.
  
• Frosty Beams Shard affected enemies are not kept frozen through the entire duration.
  
• Vampiric Empowerment Shard’s current stat boost is being displayed incorrectly.
  
• Automation does not work on Snaking Sands, Slime Pits, Geyser Trap, and
• Angry Nimbus towers.
  
• Tuskar is currently using Witherbeast's icon.
  
• Assault on Throne Room with mini-Ogres has a chance to spawn at the core.

This is just the start for what’s to come in Dungeon Defenders II! We poured a lot of love into Power of the Ancients and know you’ll enjoy Onslaught. We have a lot of planned for Dungeon Defenders II in 2018, and are grateful for the support you show us to make the game the best it can be.

For Etheria!

The Dungeon Defenders II Team

Greetings Defenders

Today we announce the next chapter of Dungeon Defenders II, the Power of the Ancients expansion, releasing next month! Check out the [/url]trailer here.[/url] Within our expansion are some legendary additions to the game:

• Onslaught, our new game mode that is your main focus of progression.
  
• Ancient Power, our new character progression that allows you to push the limits as defenders and increase your strength.
  
• The Lost Temple, our new HUGE map that changes its layout every time you attempt to conquer it.
  
• Defender Packs, a new way to unlock unique flair, costumes, and pets.
  
• And much more!

We are going to be revealing more Power of the Ancients info soon, and talking about Power of the Ancients on our Devstream this Friday at 3PM EST! To give insight into what we’ve been working on, we’re having some of our epic developers chime into the work they’ve put into Path of the Ancients, experiences throughout our development process, as well as what we’re most hyped about! Let’s get started:

For those of you who don’t know me from our different social platforms, I’m Community Coordinator turned Community Manager for Dungeon Defenders II. My focus has been taking all the feedback that you, our courageous, strong, glorious community, have provided to help make sure that Power of the Ancients is a behemoth of an expansion that you all want to conquer. This means taking your feedback and wants, meeting with designers, discussing the things that defenders enjoy, molding our new content to the things you enjoy, and then testing the beastly content that is created. You’re in for a wild ride!

Onslaught provides something for everyone to enjoy, from those who have just completed campaign, to the grizzled veterans of Chaos Trials 7. The progression feels so incredibly solid and polished. You steadily get gear and shards that are improvements as you progress. Trials now drop MORE gear and shards than before, making them more rewarding for taking on harder enemies sooner than you would in Onslaught. You can choose to progress through Trials to unlock Onslaught floors, or through Onslaught floors to unlock Trials, which just feels great having the option to go between the two and still progress. On top of this you also can increase your Ancient Power (a new form of character progression), which just offers a slew of benefits and choices that provide meaningful character advancement.

Besides putting time into our new expansion, I’m constantly working on ways to make our community a better place to be. I’ll be rolling out some new initiatives to make our social spaces an even better place to interact with one another; give our streamers a single banner to fly under, transparent requirements, maybe even some incentives; and everything I can to spotlight the greatness that is the Dungeon Defenders II community. There’s more to come soon!

FINALLY. I’ve probably been teasing most of our players for too long about our new “end-game mode” and “update” that we’re working on, but now I can finally talk about it! Huzzah! It’s not just a “game expanding update” anymore… It’s an expansion.

I remember a day, where I was just a baby armchair developer, playing the old version of Onslaught, wishing for checkpoints and some sort of save system that would keep my progress. Whelp, I wish I could say those were the “good ol’ days”, but this new version of that game mode is far beyond anything I could have expected.

We’ve taken several pain points of gameplay that players have been experiencing and kicked them to the curb! Facing off against the same enemies every map and the build never changes? CURBED. Tired of smart loot being weird? CURBED. Wanted more things to do in the game, but Trials was the only option? CURBED? (DISCLAIMER: Trials is still an option, but we tried to make Onslaught a better option. I mostly just wanted to use the “kicking to the curb” analogy but it may not have been the right choice. The aforementioned “CURBED” features still exist in the game in the Trials game mode, we’re just building future content in a better way.)

To give a really quick “Elandrian’s TL;DR” set of bullet points about this expansion:

• Onslaught is a brand new game mode that completely changes our end game progression and is nothing like the previous version of Onslaught.
  
• Onslaught features new loot progression that makes sense. Higher Floor Number = Higher Loot Stat Numbers.
  
• Onslaught features enemies and modifiers that will make your defense different each time.
  
• Onslaught will save which floors you were able to beat, you can then immediately play the next floor in your progression.
  
• Ancient Power is a way to do a limited reset on your account but keep progressing over time.
  
• The new map is unreal. You’ll have different lanes and cores each time you load in.

We’ll go over the specifics about each feature in future Devstreams and posts, so make sure to stay tuned for more specifics! You could also probably join our Remote Playtesting Group, sign an NDA, and check out the new content early, but I’m sure Dani will mention that below!

Howdy defenders. It’s been a while.

This milestone the animation team has been pretty focused on some very ambitious cinematics to announce our awesome release. Hope you enjoyed them. As well as an in-game event piece that you end game players will be seeing very soon...

There is a lot more to come, but until then, please enjoy one of my favorite cosmetic flairs we’ve been working on over here.



Creepy right? Almost like it’s going to reach out and grab you…

Our testing teams have been hard at working getting Onslaught up and going, and we’re ready to expand testing to our Remote Playtesting Group to get our community feedback and gut checks before we push for release.

Our playtesters are great folks and have helped make our releases better. If you want to get early access to Onslaught in exchange for giving us feedback and helping us iron out issues before release, we want you!

If you are 18 or over (sorry you need to sign our NDA so we can’t bend on this rule) and wish to help (PC only help for now, sorry console bros!), email me dani.moore(at)trendyent.com and let me know. We’re hoping to start testing this week, so you’ll want to be there when we do!

Holy frick, this map was a challenge and a half. This isn’t your grandpappy’s old Dungeon Defenders II level.

Since there are so many different possibilities that can happen in this game mode, I wanted to be really intentional with everything this map has to offer. We ran through scenarios and tests as to what combinations of the different Onslaught elements could appear and made sure that these combinations came together in a meaningful manner.

When the lanes open and cores are different each time, you get to have a different experience with different core and lane combinations. These two things working alongside the enemy modifiers make this one of the top experiences for Dungeon Defenders II.



Hey Defenders!

I can’t tell you how fun it has been to watch all of you play Mastery each week, and I am incredibly grateful for the positive feedback you’ve given me. I’m still hard at work revamping the loot generation system (it’s going to make sense, dammit) and designing out some new and exciting things coming in the future. I can’t wait to see the final weeks of Mastery and to watch you guys conquer Onslaught and beyond!

Love,
Mark

My first thought when looking at the concepts for the Onslaught expansion was, “whoa! I get to create these amazing concepts in 3D?!” I was very excited to create a variety of the 3D models and textures for the Onslaught Expansion. I enjoyed creating a wide range of assets ranging from a dragon to a tiling floor texture. The goal was to create a look that was mysterious, fun, and vibrant with bold colors.



Hey Everyone!

My name Jose and I’m a Technical Designer here at Trendy. Over the past couple of milestones, I have been working as the designer for the new Onslaught game mode. It has been a long and tiring endeavor, but we are so happy to finally have reached the point where you can see what we made for you.

Let me go over a few points to give you insight on our expectations for Onslaught and the immediate future of DD2. For this I need to go back to the somewhat-distant past of March 2017 and the release of Trials. While we enjoyed what Trials provided to the game, as a recurring game mode, it was evident that we needed a true end game with a longer life, and clearer progression.

This led us into thinking about how to create a new game mode that will keep you engaged with exciting content and challenges, regardless of how much time you put into the game. Onslaught, at its core, is just that: an ever-increasing challenge that will grow alongside the player, for as long as they want.

The main obstacle in front of us to achieve this goal was how to ensure a satisfying replayable experience. The immediate answer for us was the enemy selection, and how to mix them effectively. So far, every game mode in DD2 has run the same enemy types in each lane whenever you load into a map. However, for Onslaught, each lane will have different enemies coming through them. For example, one lane may have Cyborks and the other one may have Vanguard Goblins. That means that the same build will not work in every situation, and you will have to react independently to each lane. We gave each schedule of enemies a distinctive name, which you can use to strategize and share your best builds online on how to counter them.

As a secondary way to achieve replayability, we are bringing back enemy Mutators with full force. In the past, Mutators are modifiers that have been used to affect the performance of a given lane. A few months ago, I asked people in the forums to give me ideas for exciting new Mutators, and they did not disappoint. I’m pleased to say we have made roughly 35 new Mutators, all of them impacting gameplay in many ways. None of them are going to be boring flat number increases, but our goal was to provide you with fun challenges to overcome. In fact, some Mutators act as double-edge swords for the enemies by making them stronger in some way, but weaker in another.

Finally, the best example of Onslaught’s replayability lies in the new map we made for it: The Lost Temple. The Lost Temple is the biggest DD2 map yet, with 30 lanes and 10 cores! Of course, these are not going to be all open at the same time, but different lane/core combinations will be selected each time you play it.

Alongside replayability, our priority from Design was to help clarify the game’s gear progression. For this we are dividing Onslaught into Floors that will guide players in an upwards ladder of power progression and enemy difficulty increase. No longer will you have to worry about whether or not you should be playing a given Chaos difficulty to progress effectively, you now can just simply play the next floor in Onslaught and you will know you are on the right track.

My job was to design, balance, and work on the implementation of all the systems that I have talked about in this log. Anyway, I think I wrote way too much already. I don’t use twitter, but you can reach me on the official Discord. I hope you will enjoy all the exciting content we are preparing for you in the expansion =).


We'll be talking more about Path of the Ancients over the next few weeks. To make sure you get the most up-to-date information, check out our social media platforms:

• Facebook
  
• Twitter
  
• Discord

Also visit our Devstream this Friday at 3PM EST on Twitch, where we'll be showing off some Path of the Ancients goodness.

As always, we are incredibly grateful for the support that you, our glorious community, provide us. Get ready to dive deep into Onslaught, it’s going to be here before you know it!

For Etheria!

The Dungeon Defenders II Team

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

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

Greetings Defenders,

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


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

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

• Hyper Shards
  
• Exclusive Flair
  
• Golden Pets
  
• Ascension levels
  
• Defender Medals
  
• Gold on gold on gold

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

• Mastery 1: October 11th (TODAY!)
  
• Mastery 2: October 18th
  
• Mastery 3: October 25th
  
• Mastery 4: November 1st
  
• Mastery 5: November 8th
  
• Mastery 6: November 15th
  
• Mastery 7: November 22nd

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

• 50 Stars: Mass Destruction
  
• 155 Stars: Vicious Strikes
  
• 260 Stars: Radiant Critical Power
  
• 365 Stars: Explosive Shielding Guard
  
• 470 Stars: Thunderstruck
  
• 575 Stars: Destructive Pylon
  
• 680 Stars: Super Fortification

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

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

• Head (Halos, masks, and auras)
  
• Back (Wings)
  
• Waist (floating objects and auras)
  
• Feet (auras, fire, and other effects)

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

• Collecting stars through Mastery
  
• Future game content
  
• In-game Shop
  
• Platform Storefronts (Steam, Xbox Live, and PlayStation Network)

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

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

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

• 90 Stars: Golden Gato Egg
  
• 195 Stars: Golden Creeper Egg
  
• 300 Stars: Golden Dragon Egg
  
• 405 Stars: Golden Gato Egg
  
• 510 Stars: Golden Creeper Egg
  
• 615 Stars: Golden Dragon Egg
  
• 720 Stars: Golden Gato Egg

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




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

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


Selling Equipment With Shards

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

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

Orbs

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

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

Mystic

• Call To Madness
  
  • Cooldown increased 10 seconds to 20 seconds.
    
    • Previously players were able to infinitely confuse a lane when using the inspiration shard.

Series EV-2

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

Weapons

• Shadowflame Dagger
  
  • Projectile life-time reduced to 2 seconds.

PC users will notice a command window opening with the game. This is a window to help us monitor any errors that might come with this update. If you close this window it will also close the game. It's only temporary and will be removed with our next patch.

• Fixed an issue where comparing items on the ground was not properly appearing.
  
• Fixed a homing issue with Shadowflame Dagger.
  
• Fixed an issue with Deadly/Vicious Strikes being removed from a world tree, that allowed defenses to remain outside the reduced range.
  
• Fixed an issue where pressing Esc to leave the Emporium or Inventory caused lag spikes.
  
• Fixed an issue where clicking To Hub would freeze players and return them to the title screen.
  
• Fixed an issue where Power of Storms shard was restoring 56 mana instead of 60.
  
• Fixed an issue with the Limit Break challenge not properly awarding score bonuses.
  
• Fixed an issue with the Heroic Power shard not performing correctly.
  
• Fixed an issue where failing the Kobold Bling King map allowed you to continue playing the map.
  
• Removed Consecutive Win row on scoreboard when it would appropriately show “0”.
  
• Fixed an issue that disconnected players loading into Forest Biome on Xbox One.
  
• Fixed an issue with various shards using incorrect values.
  
• Fixed an issue where Join Game and Create Game were placed incorrectly.

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

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

For Etheria!

The Dungeon Defenders II Team

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

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

Greetings Defenders,

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


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

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

• Hyper Shards
  
• Exclusive Flair
  
• Golden Pets
  
• Ascension levels
  
• Defender Medals
  
• Gold on gold on gold

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

• Mastery 1: October 11th (TODAY!)
  
• Mastery 2: October 18th
  
• Mastery 3: October 25th
  
• Mastery 4: November 1st
  
• Mastery 5: November 8th
  
• Mastery 6: November 15th
  
• Mastery 7: November 22nd

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

• 50 Stars: Mass Destruction
  
• 155 Stars: Vicious Strikes
  
• 260 Stars: Radiant Critical Power
  
• 365 Stars: Explosive Shielding Guard
  
• 470 Stars: Thunderstruck
  
• 575 Stars: Destructive Pylon
  
• 680 Stars: Super Fortification

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

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

• Head (Halos, masks, and auras)
  
• Back (Wings)
  
• Waist (floating objects and auras)
  
• Feet (auras, fire, and other effects)

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

• Collecting stars through Mastery
  
• Future game content
  
• In-game Shop
  
• Platform Storefronts (Steam, Xbox Live, and PlayStation Network)

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

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

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

• 90 Stars: Golden Gato Egg
  
• 195 Stars: Golden Creeper Egg
  
• 300 Stars: Golden Dragon Egg
  
• 405 Stars: Golden Gato Egg
  
• 510 Stars: Golden Creeper Egg
  
• 615 Stars: Golden Dragon Egg
  
• 720 Stars: Golden Gato Egg

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




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

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


Selling Equipment With Shards

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

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

Orbs

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

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

Mystic

• Call To Madness
  
  • Cooldown increased 10 seconds to 20 seconds.
    
    • Previously players were able to infinitely confuse a lane when using the inspiration shard.

Series EV-2

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

Weapons

• Shadowflame Dagger
  
  • Projectile life-time reduced to 2 seconds.

PC users will notice a command window opening with the game. This is a window to help us monitor any errors that might come with this update. If you close this window it will also close the game. It's only temporary and will be removed with our next patch.

• Fixed an issue where comparing items on the ground was not properly appearing.
  
• Fixed a homing issue with Shadowflame Dagger.
  
• Fixed an issue with Deadly/Vicious Strikes being removed from a world tree, that allowed defenses to remain outside the reduced range.
  
• Fixed an issue where pressing Esc to leave the Emporium or Inventory caused lag spikes.
  
• Fixed an issue where clicking To Hub would freeze players and return them to the title screen.
  
• Fixed an issue where Power of Storms shard was restoring 56 mana instead of 60.
  
• Fixed an issue with the Limit Break challenge not properly awarding score bonuses.
  
• Fixed an issue with the Heroic Power shard not performing correctly.
  
• Fixed an issue where failing the Kobold Bling King map allowed you to continue playing the map.
  
• Removed Consecutive Win row on scoreboard when it would appropriately show “0”.
  
• Fixed an issue that disconnected players loading into Forest Biome on Xbox One.
  
• Fixed an issue with various shards using incorrect values.
  
• Fixed an issue where Join Game and Create Game were placed incorrectly.

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

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

For Etheria!

The Dungeon Defenders II Team