DEFENDERS,
The Pre-Episode 2 Patch 2 is now live on PC, Xbox and PlayStation, including some major enhancements to the endgame in the form of Endless Survival, Rifted Mixed and Pure Strategy, and lots of balance changes. Let's dive into the changes!
Endless Survival
Ever felt like 25 waves just wasn’t enough? Ever wish you could keep your build and keep playing forever? Well now’s your chance! Endless survival does just that by allowing the player to keep playing after wave 25 to no end. Each wave will get increasingly difficult, carrying on potentially forever.
Item quality will stay the same as wave 25, as this helps to avoid too much power creep. Every 5 waves we will reward players with a Map Victory chest, which will contain the same item rolls and potential as that of Wave 25. Bosses will spawn every 5th wave and gain 20% health each time.
Endless Survival can be started by the host pressing continue on the summary screen. Players will still be able to start on higher waves but must start on a wave after a Victory Chest. (Ex: Every 5th wave such as 26, 31, 36)
Since loot quality doesn’t scale we have added special rewards for endless survival in the form of Golden Pet Transmogs! Every map has a golden pet transmog to unlock by beating wave 100 on Massacre Survival on the respective map. With the exception of the Golden Giraffe On a Treadmill which is unlocked by beating wave 100 Massacre Survival on every map (Act 1, 2, 3 & 4).
Cutting Attack Rate Caps
We’ve received lots of feedback overtime asking for changes to the attack rate caps and as such In this update we are cutting attack rate caps for defenses in half for PC, Xbox and PlayStation. This means towers will attack much faster than they have in the past. We’ve also removed the higher attack rate caps on specific towers like Deadly Striker and Sludge Launcher. Unfortunately this is the only change in this list that Switch users will not receive.
Bonus Waves are now Bonus Difficulties
Bonus Waves are now a feature of the past, and Bonus Difficulties will be replacing it. Bonus Difficulties work almost identically to how bonus waves work with one exception. Instead of getting a bonus wave after completing the map, Bonus Difficulty will scale up the entire map’s difficulty and loot quality.
This means you no longer have to casually play through wave 23, 24 and 25 to get to the single hard wave that challenges you and provides the loot quality you are looking for. Bonus Difficulties unlock the same way as bonus waves and are usable in the same locations.
HUD Party Bar
Tired of not knowing who is not readied up? Wish you could see who joined your game without having to go to the escape screen? Want to know what level your friends are?
Well now you can do all that and more! The HUD party is a way to see a quick all of that and more at a quick glance. You’ll be able to see Names, Hero Type, Hero Level, Hero Health and Ready up status.
4 New Fusion Pets
We have added another set of 4 new Fusion pets for you to collect!
- Act 1: Griffin
- Act 2: Etherian
- Act 3: Lil Bomber
- Act 4: Lycan King Mini
Fusion Pet Drop locations have been adjusted. Here is the complete list of where to get Fusion Pets:
- Griffin: The Deeper Well & Ancient Mines
- Steam Robot: Lava Mines & Alchemical Labs
- Paddle Ball: Magus Quarters
- Little Wizard: Tornado Valley & Tornado Highlands
- Etherian: The Ramparts & The Throne Room
- Monkey King: Endless Spires
- Lil’ Bomber: Arcane Libary & Royal Gardens
- Dragon: The Promenade & The Summit
- Mega Chicken: Glitterhelm Caverns
- Angry Cloud: The Mill & The Outpost
- Mini Lycan Prince: The Keep
- Demon Lord: Foundries and Forges
Rift Mixed & Pure Strategy
In order to fill out the game more and work towards our goal of eventually having more gamemodes open to the player at the endgame, we’ve added the ability to play those gamemodes with rifted enabled.
This will be something we continue to expand on in the future but wanted to offer the player the ability to play these modes with rifted enabled.
Pure Strategy will not be getting a rework in this update, We decided it was best to hold off on that rework till we can offer special rewards to go along with it. As currently other gamemodes are just offer inherently better rewards and so this is something we want to address at the same time.
Mixed Bosses and Bonus Difficulty
With Rift added to mixed mode we wanted to offer players more reason to play mixed as well. As such we’ve added Bosses and allowed Bonus Difficulties to be used on mixed. This means the waves will be harder but the loot will scale to that of the bonus difficulty selected.
Balance
The goal with these changes is to provide players with more options for Pets, Weapons and Defenses. As with anything in this patch we will be monitoring this to see if any further adjustments are needed.
This is gonna be a long list so get ready!
Defenses
- Squire
- Spike Blockade
- Health increased by 100%
- Harpoon
- Damage increased by 10%
- Bouncer Blockade
- Health increased by 100%
- Slice N’ Dice
- Health increased by 100%
- Monk
- Lightning Aura
- Damage increased by 10%
- Strength Drain Aura
- DU decreased from 5 to 4
- Apprentice
- Magic Blockade
- Health increased by 100%
- Magic Missile
- Damage increased by 10%
- Flameburst
- Damage increased by 10%
- EV
- Proton Beam
- Starting Attack rate increased from 0.3s to 0.5s
- Damage scalar increased by 10%
- Overall this is a nerf to early game and a buff to endgame
- Physical Beam
- Health increased by 100%
- Warden
- Roots of Purity
- Health increased by 100%
- Wisp Den
- Damage decreased by 10%
Pets
- Angry Cloud
- Increased damage by ~600% at the endgame
- Demon Lord
- Increased damage by ~185% at the endgame
- Dragon
- Increased damage by ~300% at the endgame
- Etherian
- Increased damage by ~20% at the endgame
- Hippogriff
- Increased damage by ~275% at the endgame
- Lil’ Bomber
- Increased damage by ~360% at the endgame
- Lycan Prince
- Fusion version gives Rift Armor
- Mega Chicken
- Increased damage by ~150% at the endgame
- Monkey King
- Decreased the damage increase per stack from 10% to 5%
- Increased the damage stack limit from 10 to 30
- Paddle Ball
- Increased damage by ~55% at the endgame
- Steam Robot
- Increased damage by ~65% at the endgame
- General
- Increased movement speed of all pets by 200%
Weapons
- Boss Weapons
- We increased the damage scalars of all Demon Lord, Goblin Mech and Ancient Dragon Boss weapons to try to be within 5-10% of the potential power of a Lycan King Boss Weapon when dropped at similar quality.
- The goal here is to allow players more choice to choose which of the boss weapons fit their playstyle the best. So playing Bonus Difficulties on Boss Maps should provide weapons with the potential to be as good as Lycan King Boss Weapons.
Bug Fixes & Misc
- Bonus Difficulty is now displayed on the pause menu in the bottom left corner.
- Opening launch cinematic has been replaced by a simplified loading screen.
- Fixed issue with a couple Mixed & Pure Strategy maps having wrong item quality drops.
- Fixed issues with Fusion pets dropping a really low quality in higher difficulties.
- Fixed issue where clients couldn’t cancel carnage.
- Fixed issue with Foundries and Forges having the wrong experience in Survival.
- Fixed Issue with auto sell loot total display showing negative numbers.
- Fixed issue with woodland weapons not dropping.
What’s Next?
The next step for DDA is Episode 2 Part 1 PTR which includes Runes, Trading, The Outcast Summoner Hero, 2 Maps, The Bazaar and The Lost Metropolis. That’s not all though there will be additions coming in October that players will be excited for. Outside of DDA, we are still hard at work making a new update for DD2.
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For Etheria!
Chromatic Games