Update 1.2 - Corruption of the Rift

DEFENDERS,

We’ve been hard at work on great things here at Chromatic Games, and it’s time to let one of those things spread its wings and fly. Update 1.2 is now live and ready for you to hop right into! An insane amount of bug fixes, Rifted maps, Rifted enemies, new weapons, new gear, new accessories, transmog, and more are coming your way. Let’s cut the intro and get into it, there’s A LOT!

Update 1.2 - Enter the Rift

We’re going to be splitting this update into two parts to make sure everything we add is in the best state possible. The first part of this update includes additional gameplay, features, rewards, and bug fixes; the second part includes additional features and Kickstarter rewards. The goal with Update 1.2 is to put a bow on what we consider the baseline DD:A experience before we move onto major content updates, with 1.2 serving as the foundation for us to build something wonderful!

Rifted Maps

Throughout Campaign and Survival you are now able to activate the Rifted toggle before joining a map, similar to Hardcore. This tears open the portal and provides access to Rifted enemies. Rifted Maps serve to evolve the challenge and experience of DD:A, providing players something new to take on, regardless of their experience with Dungeon Defenders.

Rifted Enemies

The total number of enemies is reduced by 50%, but a portion of the remaining enemies become distorted from the Rift, granting them increased strength and mechanics. For starters, all Rifted enemies have increased health and deal increased damage. Oh, and also they have additional mechanics. You know, not a big deal, probably not anything worth mentioning. OH WAIT, VERY BIG DEAL! Here’s what they do:

• Goblins are larger, potentially absorbing hits for other enemies.
• Dark Elf Archers shoot homing arrows that chase down their targets.
• Dark Elf Mages have an increased healing radius, and summon skeletons that EXPLODE on death.
• Dark Elf Warriors are invisible to non-Fusion towers and drain mana on hit.
• Kobolds have an increased explosion radius.
• Orcs are tankier and take reduced damage.
• Ogres, oh no, Rifted ogres snot ball ensnares. Also the first snot ball isn’t a snot ball, but is a Rifted kobold. Also they deal increased damage to towers. Why did we make them so strong?!
• Spiders can no longer shoot webs, but they jump all over the place now. They also apply a web on melee hit that acts like normal webs with an added damage over time effect.
• Sharkens enrage when their charge is interrupted, increasing their damage and movement speed while becoming IMMUNE to crowd control effects.
• Djinn’s apply an Onyx buff to enemies, a much stronger gold buff. They also take less time to destroy towers, with an increased range, and decreased cooldown to do so.
• Goblin Copters are truly a terror from above, dropping Rifted ogres, have an increased missile and crashing explosion radius.
• The Siren is already a Rifted enemy. Surprise!

There’s a ton of new mechanics to master, but what fun is a new challenge without new rewards? Onwards we go!

Rifted Rewards

Fusion Gear

Fusion gear is a new type of item that is only available on Rifted maps. There are two types of Fusion gear, weapons and armor.

Fusion Weapons

These are special weapons that have a chance to drop on all Rifted maps. Rifted weapons are like normal weapons, except that they deal greatly increased damage to Rifted enemies! While they have a chance to drop on all maps, Rifted map bosses also drop Fusion versions of their weapons, providing the ability to target farm powerful weapons!

Fusion Armor

This new type of armor provides a ton of power to defend against the Rifted ruffians that are running your way! Not only does Fusion armor give you 5% Rifted Armor, causing you to take less damage from Rifted enemies, but if you combine an entire set you gain a Fusion set bonus. Depending on the set, the Fusion bonus converts a specific tower into a Fusion tower! This causes your tower to deal greatly increased damage to Rifted enemies, take reduced damage from them, and also negate their Rifted abilities (i.e. they now see Dark Elf Warriors)!

There are five Fusion sets total for you to search out to take on the Rifted foes that approach you!

• Ancient Set: Apply Fusion affinity to your Hero’s first tower.
• Guard Set: Apply Fusion affinity to your Hero’s second tower.
• Militia Set: Apply Fusion affinity to your Hero’s third tower.
• Miner Set: Apply Fusion affinity to your Hero’s fourth tower.
• Primitive Set: Apply Fusion affinity to your Hero’s fifth tower.

What does each of the sets do to each of the towers? They retain their base mechanics, affect and target Rifted enemies that they may have not been able to previously affect or target, as well as gain increased strength and functionality. That’d be a lot to type. Sorry, that’s going to be a lot to type. Here you go!

Apprentice

Magic Missile Tower

• Damage increased by 100% against Rifted enemies.

Magic Blockade

• Armor increased by 30% against Rifted enemies.

Fireball Tower

• Damage increased by 100% against Rifted enemies.

Lightning Tower

• Damage increased by 100% against Rifted enemies.

Deadly Striker Tower

• Damage increased by 100% against Rifted enemies.

Huntress

Explosive Trap

• Damage increased by 100% against Rifted enemies.

Gas Trap

• Causes Fusion to do 10% more damage to affected Rifted enemies.
• This effect stacks with other similar effects.

Inferno Trap

• Damage increased by 100% against Rifted enemies.

Darkness Trap

• Causes Fusion to do 10% more damage to affected Rifted enemies.
• This effect stacks with other similar effects.

Spike Trap

• Damage increased by 100% against Rifted enemies.

Monk

Ensnare Aura

1. Causes Fusion to do 10% more damage to affected Rifted enemies.
2. This effect stacks with other similar effects.

Lightning Aura

• Damage increased by 100% against Rifted enemies.

Healing Aura

• Increases heroes armor against Rifted enemies by 50%.

Strength Drain Aura

• Causes Fusion to do 10% more damage to affected Rifted enemies.
• This effect stacks with other similar effects.

Enrage Aura

1. Increases chance to enrage by 5% against Rifted enemies.

Series EV-A

Proton Beam

• Damage increased by 100% against Rifted enemies.

Blocked Field

• Armor increased by 30% against Rifted enemies.

Reflect Field

• Damage increased by 100% against Rifted enemies.

Shock Beam

1. Damage increased by 100% against Rifted enemies.
2. Increased stun effect by 50% against Rifted enemies.

Overclock Beam

• Gives towers that are buffed 50% armor against Rifted enemies.

Squire

Spiked Blockade

• Armor increased by 30% against Rifted enemies.
• Damage increased by 100% against Rifted enemies.

Ballista

• Damage increased by 100% against Rifted enemies.

Bouncer Blockade

• Armor increased by 30% against Rifted enemies.
• Damage increased 100% against Rifted enemies.

Bowling Ball Tower

• Damage increased by 100% against Rifted enemies.

Slice and Dice Tower

• Armor increased by 30% against Rifted enemies.
• Damage increased 100% against Rifted enemies.

Oh my goodness! That’s a lot of power! Fusion gear locations! Where!? Where do they drop!? We’ll never tell, except for in the list down below, but outside of that good luck:

Fusion Ancient Set

Helmet

• Tornado Highlands Wave 25
• Ramparts Wave 25
• Throne Room Wave 25
• Any Act II Campaign Map Wave 5

Chest

• Arcane Library Wave 15
• Arcane Library Wave 25
• Any Act III Campaign Map Wave 5

Gloves

• Deeper Well Wave 15
• Deeper Well Wave 25
• Any Act I Campaign Map Wave 5

Boots

• Tornado Valley Wave 15
• Tornado Valley Wave 25
• Any Act II Campaign Map Wave 5

Fusion Guard Set

Helmet

• Promenade Wave 25
• The Summit Wave 25
• Glitterhelm Wave 25
• Any Act III Campaign Map Wave 5

Chest

• Royal Gardens Wave 15
• Royal Gardens Wave 25
• Any Act III Campaign Map Wave 5

Gloves

• Ancient Mines Wave 15
• Ancient Mines Wave 25
• Any Act I Campaign Map Wave 5

Boots

• Tornado Highlands Wave 15
• Tornado Highlands Wave 25
• Any Act II Campaign Map Wave 5

Fusion Militia Set

Helmet

• Alchemical Labs Wave 25
• Magus Quarters Wave 25
• Tornado Valley Wave 25
• Any Act I or Act II Campaign Map Wave 5

Chest

• Promenade Wave 15
• Promenade Wave 25
• Any Act III Campaign Map Wave 5

Gloves

• Lava Mines Wave 15
• Lava Mines Wave 25
• Any Act I Campaign Map Wave 5

Boots

• Ramparts Wave 15
• Ramparts Wave 25
• Any Act II Campaign Map Wave 5

Fusion Miner Set

Helmet

• Endless Spires Wave 25
• Arcane Library Wave 25
• Royal Gardens Wave 25
• Any Act II or Act III Campaign Map Wave 5

Chest

• The Summit Wave 15
• The Summit Wave 25
• Any Act III Campaign Map Wave 5

Gloves

• Alchemical Labs Wave 15
• Alchemical Labs Wave 25
• Any Act I Campaign Map Wave 5

Boots

• Throne Room Wave 15
• Throne Room Wave 25
• Any Act II Campaign Map Wave 5

Fusion Primitive Set

Helmet

• Deeper Well Wave 25
• Ancient Mines Wave 25
• Lava Mines Wave 25
• Any Act I Campaign Map Wave 5

Chest

• Glitterhelm Wave 15
• Glitterhelm Wave 25
• Any Act III Campaign Map Wave 5

Gloves

• Magus Quarters Wave 15
• Magus Quarters Wave 25
• Any Act I Campaign Map Wave 5

Boots

• Endless Spires Wave 15
• Endless Spires Wave 25
• Any Act II Campaign Map Wave 5

We also wanted to provide something for players to target farm alongside Fusion Weapons. Specific Fusion armor pieces drop from Wave 5 campaign and Waves 15 & 25 in Survival, allowing you to focus farm which sets you want to use!

Fusion armor set bonuses are channeled only to heroes that are actively equipped to your hero deck, providing you the ability to use up to four Fusion towers at any given time. This means currently in multiplayer you can have up to SIXTEEN Fusion towers to absolutely decimate your foes. Don’t fret though, the mode is not balanced around that extreme. Maybe there are ways to overcome this in the future…

Increased Drop Quality

One of the points of feedback that we’ve received from players is a faster track to earn the best gear in the game across all difficulties. Rifted has an increased floor of loot quality, meaning your chances of getting better gear is increased on Rifted maps. Higher risk, higher reward!

Rifted Exclusive Accessories

By completing Rifted maps, you have the chance to obtain new masks and accessories! They drop with difficulty equivalent stats and are a cool way to show off your prowess and luck to other Defenders! There’s over 20 new pieces to hunt down, best of luck!

What’s the point?

In Dungeon Defenders Awakened we’ve got multiple types of players. There are Defenders who enjoy the traditional Dungeon Defenders experience, want to spend tons of time farming for that perfect drop, and like to set up an intricate grid of defenses that they can set and forget. Then there are Defenders who want an additional challenge, want better loot faster, and want somewhat shorter play sessions. With every one of our updates, the first group will get what they want, but for the second group, Rift Mode is our chance to provide an increased challenge that evolves as we develop the game.

This isn’t a one-and-done feature either. It’s a Rift, and as we progress further and further into DDA with our major updates, the Rift continues to tear open more and more, introducing new mechanics and challenges for players to overcome. Every new enemy added to the game will have a Rift version as well, diversifying the gameplay and introducing a new obstacle to overcome.

Really it’s just a mode to provide a reward that decimates the Siren. Everything else is just extra. And to introduce sweet new accessories. Why does that matter? One word — Transmog!

Transmog

Defenders want ways to customize their characters in fun and unique ways. You get a lot of cool looking gear during your journeys, but sometimes the gear with the best stats isn’t visually your cup of tea. But what’s a Defender to do, look like an epic noodle but hit like a wet one, or look like a peasant but decimate their foes with the power of legends? With Transmog, you can look how you want while wearing your best gear. Go for that insane over the top neon colored Goblin with the pulsing Rift weapons, or go for a more understated look to catch your enemies offguard with your insane strength.

(Yes, you can change the Squire’s boxer colors now, something science said was impossible!)

Here’s all the stuff you can do with Transmog by visiting the Blacksmith in the Tavern:

• Replace your weapon with the visual of any equivalent weapon type that you’ve collected after Update 1.2.
• Replace your Mask, Bracers, Brooches, and Shields with the visual of any equivalent accessory type that you’ve collected after Update 1.2.
• Change the hue, saturation, and brightness of the above, as well as your heroes. Oh, and we added even more colorization options to the heroes default costumes.
• Save specific cosmetic loadouts that you can change on the fly. It’s all about options!

As we add more gear to the game, it’s usage is instantly multiplied with this system, making the items you acquire provide even more usage!

Tavern Changes

With our game constantly growing, we’re adding some additional functionality to every Defenders home-sweet-home!

Difficulty Button

We’ve added a couple things to the Tavern with this update. First is the Tavern Difficulty Adjuster Button (PUSH AT YOUR OWN RISK). This changes the Tavern from a normal map, to Nightmare version, or Massacre version that applies different scaling to your defenses that you would find in maps of whatever difficulty you have selected.

Rifted Target Dummy

Somehow this thing got Rifted. While it doesn’t drop any loot, it does take increased damage from Fusion damage. Test your DPS to your heart’s content!

Now you may be asking yourself, all of this sounds good and wonderful, but where in the heck do you get that giant corgi helmet?

Limited Login Event Rewards!

Download Update 1.2 and play Dungeon Defenders from now until December 14th at 7 pm EST to receive the Corgi Cover cosmetic mask AND the Shadow EV skin FOR FREE! These are available for a limited time, so make sure to get them now while you can.

With that out of the way, let’s get into the months and months and months of general changes to the game, as well as a ton of the bug fixes included in Update 1.2!

CPU and Networking Performance Optimization!

With all the hard work we have put into getting consoles out to y’all we have picked up some nice PC performance gains along the way. With this patch we have brought in our CPU and Network optimizations from the console work. We nativized a lot of blueprint’s in UE4, this is a process of transferring a blueprint into native C++ code. Nativization can be tricky at times, but for the consoles it was necessary to go back and revisit some of our older work in order to increase performance. Depending on your system, number of players in your game, and what mode you’re playing your frame rate may now even be double what it was beforehand! CPU goes vroooom, Network goes yeeeee

Offline Mode

We have added support for offline mode, you can find this on the main menu after launching the game. In offline mode you will only be able to use a local save, that will never upload to the cloud until you play online mode again. Offline mode will use a local save that you have when you enter for the first time. This means you can take your online profile offline, progress the game and when you enter online mode again you can choose to take your offline save to upload progress to online mode. When entering online mode again, be sure to select the proper save! Take DD:A on the road!

General Changes

Miscellaneous

Ready Up

• Hosts are now able to force ready up by holding Ctrl + G.

Hero Scene

• Removed various environment objects from inventory and character creation to better display transmog customization colors, and reduce background noise.

Damage Numbers

• Added a number of options to Damage Numbers to have greater control over what is displayed

Yes, the filter UI will get an art pass soon :)

Maps

• Added 15-20 seconds to build timers for all maps and difficulties.

Heroes

Auras

• If an aura overlaps, enemies are only affected by the aura they came in contact with first.
• This was to fix a long standing exploit wherein players would unequip gear, build auras next to one another, then re-equip gear to have overlapped death zones.

Apprentice

Towers

Magic Missile Tower

• Increased Defense Power scaling by 18% in Massacre.

Flameburst Tower

• Increased Defense Power scaling by 18% in Massacre.

Lightning Tower

• Now scales from bonus attack rate.
• Increased Defense Power scaling by 18% in Massacre.

Huntress

Towers

Explosive Trap

• Decreased Defense Power scaling by 8% in Massacre.

Poison Gas Trap

• Decreased the Effect Duration Scaling by 50%.

Inferno Trap

• Decreased Defense Power scaling by 8% in Massacre.

Thunder Spike Trap

• Decreased Defense Power scaling by 8% in Massacre.

Series EV-A

Towers

Reflect Field

• Now displays 1:1 total hits it can reflect instead of arbitrary HP values.

Squire

Abilities

Secondary Attack: Block

• Block no longer can be held indefinitely.
• Now the Squire has a Block resource, indicated by a shield above the Squires head.
• Different enemies attacks reduce the resource at different rates.
• Block regenerates when it is not being used.
• If the Block resource is completely used, players are unable to block again for 5 seconds.
  • With enough armor, this caused the Squire to become a blockade, and created an unhealthy meta that had players using a Squire and pet to handle an entire lane. This change prevents future map balance from having to take into account this meta, which if left in tact would ultimately reduce the amount of DU given in future maps.

Towers

Harpoon Tower

• Increased Defense Power scaling by 18% in Massacre.

Bowling Ball Tower

• Increased Defense Power scaling by 18% in Massacre.

Slice N’ Dice

• Now scales from bonus attack rate.

Enemies

Skeletons

• No longer target Crystal Cores.

Dark Elf Warriors

• No longer knock back players.

Djinn

• Updated channel time for Djinn’s destroy tower in Massacre to 8 seconds (down from 9) to match Nightmare.

Copter Ogres

• Now have propeller hats!

Siren

• New functionality: the Siren no longer spawns with her aura. Instead, she reaches her destination and begins casting. If she is not defeated quickly, she creates an aura based on her elemental affinity, and then runs back to her spawner, applying an unremoval version of her affinity to enemies she passes through.
• The Siren takes increased damage from Fusion sources.

Demon Lord

• Decreased Massacre damage by 30%.

Ancient Dragon

• Decreased Massacre damage by 30%.

Bug Fixes & Change Log

With ~1800+ commits to our dev branch, we are going to make a separate post covering all of the relevant bug fixes and changes. Head over to the forums and check out the list here.

We’re going to be watching this update very carefully and pushing out hotfixes for any issues that arise as we are able to get them out.

What’s Next?

We’re not a very large team, so when it comes to getting things done, we have to be really efficient and smart with what we work on. Our team has been hard at work on getting our console versions ready (work is still going on as of this post), which is a very time consuming and incredible engineering feat to accomplish. As such, there’s a couple features that we want to give a little bit of additional time and focus on to make sure they release fully functional.

Trading

This is going to be a pretty straightforward feature to many. Trading will allow players to open up a UI with other players to trade items that they have acquired throughout their journeys, for an agreed upon price. We’re wanting to spend additional time on this feature to make sure it not only has transactions working without a hitch, but also to remove any potential exploits that can ruin the experience of other Defenders.

Item Reforging

Sometimes you get a good drop and invest a ton of points into a piece of gear, only to want to reallocate the Upgrades that you’ve spent after acquiring more gear to really Min/Max your perfect setup. With Item Reforging, you can do just that! Just take a trip to the Blacksmith, and for a fee, he will allow you to reinvest your items’ upgrade points.

Kickstarter Rewards

Part of this update is putting a bow on the base game, and that includes fulfilling our in-game Kickstarter, Backerkit, and Preorder rewards. We’ve got most of the skins out, but will be adding in:

• Custom enemy names
• Custom weapon names
• Custom armor names
• Legends Tablet
• Credits/Special Thanks
• Hero Titles

Console Releases

If you haven’t read our console progress check-in and what we’re doing, please head on over to that post here to find out more!

Social Defenders

To get reliable updates on the future of DDA make sure to follow us on all our social media platforms:

• Discord
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitch
• Forums

Keep an eye out for more info!

For Etheria!
Chromatic Games