DEFENDERS,
Our update was so HUGE that we needed 2 different posts to let you know all about the sweet new content additions, inventory revisions, and other exciting changes. Well, don't wait any longer! Let's wrap this up.
TWO-WEEK EPISODE 1 LOGIN REWARD!
We mentioned this in our first post, but just in case you missed that one... Check out this login reward we're giving out for TWO WHOLE WEEKS!
First thing’s first, to celebrate the launch of The Lycan’s Keep Update and DDA on Nintendo Switch on the same day, Defenders who log in to the game will be rewarded with this fancy Royal Shroomy Hat. This login event will only last for two weeks, so go go go!
Since this is a login reward for the new update, Nintendo Switch Defenders will have two weeks from the release of the update on that console to earn that reward. Don’t worry; we wouldn’t let anyone miss out on the Shroomy hat fun.
Inventory Layout Update
One of the details we’ve been anxiously waiting to add to the live game is the new Inventory layout and information. Especially with all the changes in this update, we knew we needed to deliver information on items, stats, set bonuses, heroes, etc. better than before. We did this by optimizing the layout with updated organization, better sorting options, and more and more helpful information in the tooltips.
We’ve optimized our layout so that everything is together, making it easier to understand what you’re doing within your inventory.
Bags
You’ll notice at the top there are a plethora of bags. We added additional iconography that allows you to change the visuals for your bags, making it easier to know what each contains based on your personal preferences. That means that you need to have specific filters for specific bags. We’ve got you covered:
Stats
Wow that’s so much for the Inventory! But wait, maybe you’re asking “Weren’t there other tabs?” and you’d be right. The way character stats are displayed and upgraded are all in one convenient location on the Stats Tab:
Spellbook
The Spellbook tab explains what your abilities and towers do for your selected hero. We’ll continue to expand on this feature in the future, but for now it should be made more clear what your heroes can do:
NEW Item Reforging
Reforging allows you to reset an item’s assigned upgrades and re-upgrade that item in a different way. Reforging the item doesn't take gold but you will have to repurchase any upgrades that you wish to add back on. This is great for if you accidently upgrade the wrong stat or if you want to try something new.
“Tests” Game Mode
We let loose a NEW GAME MODE! This new mode is called “Tests” because it’s one defender being tested against one big baddy. The “big baddy” can be any of DDA’s infamous bosses, and you fight one-on-one to defeat them on their own map. One more small detail - you fight the bosses with zero defenses. Wait! You can’t use your heroes to do this, either. You must choose to fight with one of two predetermined heroes, built by your favorite devs.
Each fight has a 3-minute timer, so you need to be skilled and quick. We’ve spent our PTR phasing honing these different tests so each battle feels fun, tough, and fair. Those of you who were testers during the PTR probably felt those changes throughout testing, and now we’re super excited to show off this new mode with AWESOME NEW REWARDS! Keep reading on to learn all about the new Tests.
Test of the Demon
- Available Heroes:
- Huntress
- Series EV-A, with staves
- Demon Lord specials:
- Demon Lord is immune to damage unless stunned by the Generators
- When Demon Lord is stunned, goblins and/or orcs rain from the sky
- Deadly mechanic: Fireball
Test of the Mech
- Available Heroes:
- Apprentice
- Series EV-A, with bows
- Goblin Mech specials:
- Mech has increased movement speed
- Mech takes reduced damage from hits that don’t hit the weak point
- Dark Elf Warriors periodically spawn
- Deadly mechanic: Melee attacks
Test of the Ancient
- Available Heroes:
- Monk
- Squire
- Ancient Dragon specials:
- When flying around the map, the Dragon can only be damaged by the Ballista
- Wyverns spawn after Dragon is shot by the Ballista
- Deadly mechanic: Fireballs
The tests all provide reward for our brand new WINGS transmog slot! Wings are only unlocked through transmog, and do not provide an item that goes in your inventory. It’s a fun cosmetic piece that we’ll continue to incorporate into rewards with future updates!
Changes to Rifted
Rifted Portals
Another fun addition is Rifted Portals. What the heck are portals?!
Rifted Portals are alternate spawn points for enemies that appear at set locations and times on Rifted Act IV maps. Enemies are removed from their original lane and ported to the alternate location. What defenses they miss along the way, nobody knows.
How do you deal with these pesky portals?? Lucky for Defenders, these can be destroyed by your hero. There’s a catch, of course. Portals cannot be destroyed by your hero’s defenses. So, choose your hero wisely!
An added benefit to destroying a portal is the loot that drops once it’s gone. There’s always that incentive to take it down. If you don’t destroy it before the wave is over, it will quietly disappear and a fresh portal will reappear on the next wave, but you won’t receive any loot. Gotta work for the goods.
Rifted Enemies
After Update 1.3 where we reduced the number of enemies across the board to boost game performance, the experiences in Rifted were impacted more than we (and Defenders) wanted. Rifted was designed to challenge the most dedicated Defenders, but as the enemy counts reduced, this mode kind of felt like a punishment rather than an exciting challenge. The long runs that resulted weren’t an intentional design choice and we’ve fixed that to make Rifted all it was meant to be.
To meet this goal, Rifted no longer spawns normal enemies. Now, only Rifted enemies show up when you choose this mode. The enemy counts, attack damage, and HP stay exactly the same. You just won’t need to bat off the normies anymore.
Bonus Waves
These are one of those spicy additions we’ve added for late-game defenders who are itching for that extra challenge. With an extra challenge comes extra rewards in the form of a chance to get max quality gear from EVERY MAP. What’s the point of a Bonus Wave? To earn extra awesome gear, of course! And you should believe us when we say these rewards are extra awesome.
Unlocking Bonus Waves
Defenders can only unlock Bonus Waves in each Act after completing Survival Wave 25 on the Boss maps on Nightmare and Massacre difficulties. We want to make sure Defenders are rewarded for attempting (and completing) more difficult maps, too. So, once you complete a Boss map, that boss’ named Bonus Wave is unlocked for all prior maps. For example, defeating the Goblin Mech at the end of Act 2 will unlock the Goblin Mech Bonus Wave for all Act 1 and Act 2 maps (minus the Throne Room and Endless Spires).
This gives defenders freedom to choose the battle that’s appropriate for your style of play. If you want to skip over the Demon Lord and Goblin Mech maps, heading straight to Ancient Dragon to open the Bonus Waves for all three Acts, you’re able to do that.
You may be asking, “Why bother with these extra waves if they’re just tougher challenges?” Well, we left out some important pieces of information…
Loot Drops on Bonus Waves
We hope you’re ready for some AWESOME rewards because that’s what Defenders are getting from these Bonus Waves. As with all other loot drops, the loot quality increases according to the level of the boss associated with the Bonus Wave. Basically, Act 1 Bonus Wave loot drops will increase in quality after you defeat Demon Lord, and Act 1 and 2 Bonus Wave loot drops will increase (again) after you defeat Goblin Mech. Activating Hardcore and/or Rifted further adds to the quality of Bonus Wave loot drops on all maps.
NEW ACHIEVEMENTS!
You asked for it, and we thought it was a great idea. Now there are even more achievements to unlock as you defend your way through Etheria - 18 new achievements for Defenders on both platforms, to be exact. Enjoy!
Hero Balance
Apprentice
Defenses
- Magic Missile Tower
- Projectile damage was increased by 60%.
- Projectile speed was increased by 50%.
- Flameburst Tower
- Projectile damage was increased by 75%
- Projectile speed was increased by 50%.
- Lightning Tower
- Projectile damage was increased by 80%.
- Bounce range increased and set to 600 units.
- Previously at base level was 275 units, and fully upgraded to 350 units.
EV
Defenses
- Overlock Beam
- Decreased minimum DU cost to 3 from 4.
- Increased width to 25 from 20.
Huntress
Defenses
- All traps
- Reduced attack rate cap to 0.65 from 2.
- Explosive Trap
- Increased damage by 10%.
- Inferno Trap
- Increased damage by 100%.
- Thunder Spike Trap
- Increased damage by 50%.
- Decreased reset time by about 40%.
Monk
Secondary Attack
- Now scales from Primary Attack Damage.
- Increased max projectile to 8 from 6.
- Projectiles now scale with hero level.
- Updated attack to hit for 50% of melee damage per projectile.
- Decreased attack rate scaling.
Squire
Defenses
- Harpoon Turret
- Projectile damage was increased by 33%.
- Projectile speed increased by 50%.
- Bowling Bowl Turret
- Projectile damage increased by 45%.
General
Melee Attacks
- Melee attacks no longer deal damage based on the enemy getting hit by the weapon’s model. Instead there is now a (pretty generous) hitbox that deals damage.
- Developer’s Note - This was change made because:
- Melee is already punishing to play. Increasing the range gives a little more safety and a lot more consistency with damage.
- Various animations would make it so attacks would sometimes not hit. The animations pull from a pool of options, so sometimes RNG animations could punish you if their attack range didn’t extend as far.
- Transmogging a weapon would change the range at which it hit, and made the transmog system potentially punish players that weren’t using the biggest weapons.
- It’s just more fun.
- Developer’s Note - This was change made because:
Enemy Balance
Multiplayer Enemy HP
- Reduced HP scaling for most enemies when in multiplayer mode
- Add 50% HP to each enemy for each additional player:
- Ogres
- Copter Ogres
- Siren
- Lycan
- Add 25% HP to each enemy for each additional player:
- Sharken
- Djinn
- Add 50% HP to each enemy for each additional player:
Survival Rifted Boss HP
- Increased HP for all Survival Bosses to be 100% more in Rifted.
Bug Fixes
On top of the new content, we fixed lots of bugs reported by the community for PC and Xbox platforms. Here is the list of those fixes:
General
- Fixed a bug where transmog tooltips weren’t showing.
- Updated buff count to scale properly from rolling.
- Fixed an issue where healing may not have worked properly.
- Fixed a bug that would cause leaving the inventory to crash the game,
- Fixed a crash that would occur when upgrading then swapping heroes in the inventory.
- Fixed an issue where Ability Count effects were not correctly counting shots fired from ranged weapons.
- Fixed a bug where Upgrade / Repair / Sell weren't canceling each other when activated so you could have multiple activated at once.
- Fixed an issue Repair / Upgrade / Sell abilities were not cancelling after swapping to Build Mode.
- Fixed an issue where Sirens were getting stuck when fleeing to their spawn points.
- Survival: if you beat a certain wave on a harder difficulty, you can now play the same wave on a lower difficulty.
- Example: if you beat Wave 20 on Massacre you can play up to Wave 20 on all lower difficulties.
- Fixed an issue where repair times were incorrect and taking longer on some defenses.
- Fixed an issue where Hero Stat points were resetting after upgrading an item and then returning to the Hero Stat menu.
- Fixed an issue where Vitality would not show as increasing when adding points.
- Fixed an issue where Crossbow weapons did not continue firing while holding the button to attack after double-clicking.
- Fixed an issue where Clients could see their own HP bar above their head.
- Fixed an issue where the Megachicken was showing incorrect projectile count.
- Fixed an issue where the pointer was missing from the main menu.
- Adjusted various accessory placements on heroes.
- Fixed an LOD issue with the Baby Phoenix Pet’s VFX.
- Fixed an issue where Level, XP, and Unspent Points didn’t update when you swapped heroes while on the stats tab in the inventory.
- Fixed an issue where IE ability passive abilities were not restarting on defender death and respawn.
- Fixed an issue where Map Selection wasn't selecting your last map’s difficulty.
- Fixed an issue where the “Sell All” function wasn’t working on PC.
- Fixed an issue where the Wave 25 victory chest would not automatically open in bonus wave build phases.
- Fixed an issue where Num5 and Num6 were not default to the binds for Slot 5 and Slot 6 of the hero deck for swapping.
- Fixed an issue where rotating a Defense after selecting placement caused issues with placing towers close together.
- Fixed an issue where no Repair and Upgrade were not ending animations when complete.
- Fixed an issue where regeneration effects were lingering on death.
- Fixed an issue where defenses were not showing any damage dealt in their tooltips.
- Fixed an issue where the compare tooltip showed up for slots that didn't have anything equipped.
- Fixed an issue where the transmog was displaying item tooltips.
- Fixed an issue where the pause between melee attacks was too long.
- Fixed an issue where some Ranged DPS pets could hit max stat on damage.
- Fixed an issue where Clients would not see the correct value for stats when inspecting built traps.
Enemies
- Decreased delay on the spawn of the last Ogre on Ancient Mines on Massacre Survival.
- Fixed an issue where Ogre Copter’s hat was too large.
- Fixed an issue where Copter Ogres would get stuck after their Copter was shot down.
- Fixed an issue where the Crystals could be attacked on Alchemical Labs while the boss timer was counting down, resulting in an instant stun when the Demon Lord spawned.
- Fixed an issue where Rifted Ogre's Kobold projectile was exploding too soon.
Heroes
- Squire
- Fixed an issue where the Squire lost his base mana regen value.
- Apprentice
- Fixed an issue where the Lightning Tower was improperly scaling attack rate overflow.
Maps
- Fixed an issue where the Southernmost Tornado Valley billboard was partially stuck in the spawn door.
- Fixed an issue where defenses were unable to be placed on the pipes in Lava Mines.
- Fixed a lighting issue on Deeper Well.
- Fixed an issue where enemies were stuck on Endless Spires near the Northwest spawn point.
- Fixed some issues with collision and lighting on Endless Spires.
- Fixed an issue where Ogres weren’t spawning in Promenade Massacre Survival.
- Fixed an issue where Defenders would instantly die in a specific spot on Ancient Mines after using melee attack.
Social Defenders
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For Etheria!
Chromatic Games