Survey Giveaway
Your chance for a Steam Key!
Before diving in, I want to announce a survey, open to current players, long-time wishlisters, or people just now discovering our game! We want to hear not only what excites you most about Dawn of Defiance, but also what you love about our genre more generally! This information is super important to us, as it helps us 1) identify key features to focus on for 1.0 and 2) highlight our game's strongest features to reach even more players on Steam and social (which is better for our development AND our community)! We will be selecting 10 survey submissions to receive a Dawn of Defiance steam key, so take a few minutes to fill out this survey (survey now closed for analysis!) for a chance to get your friend or yourself a copy! Make sure to provide your email address, so we can contact you if you win!
Update 7/15/26: As of this morning, all 10 Steam key winners have been emailed. Keys were sent to the emails provided on the form, so take a peep there for an email from traega.com. Thank you to everyone who completed the survey. We're already looking through the responses and excited to incorporate the feedback!
Link to the survey!
Survey now closed! Thank you!
Hounds of Zeus Announcement
Combining our next two releases!
You may remember from our news in April that we released an updated roadmap that anticipated two "Hounds of Zeus" updates, including a Mountain Biome release and a separate Temple of Zeus release, the former of which was planned to come Q2 this year. It is, of course, now Q3, and we have not released the Mountain Biome-focused update!
We are still progressing well on Dawn of Defiance "Hounds of Zeus" and excited for what we have to share with you, but we decided to combine those two releases after all into a singular update. This means that while the mountain biome content is roughly in the state we anticipated for Q2, we're still finishing the content we had planned across both updates. At the time, we planned to separate those releases for efficiency reasons. Being able to package up and ship content as soon as we finished it looked to be a smarter idea for us as a small team, but as we progressed, we decided the experience of receiving all the Hounds of Zeus content at one time will be better for our players overall. Similarly, a singular Hounds of Zeus update presents a better opportunity to promote our update and actually allows our team to shift our focus to 1.0 content sooner!
I did hope to have an anticipated month for the Hounds of Zeus release to share with you all today, but for now, I can only say it will be coming later this year. This change may seem like there is a delay in the progress for Hounds of Zeus as a whole, but rather you will now be receiving all the Hounds of Zeus content at the same time you would have otherwise received the separate, second Temple of Zeus release. Our 1.0 timeline is not affected by this change! Still, we know that any change in timing can be disappointing when you’ve been looking forward to something. But this is a planned adjustment to the roadmap, made with the best in mind for Dawn of Defiance and you guys, our players! Thanks for your patience through these adjustments. We're a small team, but everyone is working really hard to get you guys another exciting update!
June Developments!
Mountain Changes
With the big news out of the way, let me share some cool stuff our team worked on in June, starting with those mountain biome revisions! The Smolikas mountains are not only getting new enemies and new shrines, but we're also overhauling the ambience with new landmarks and snowy weather. Take a look at new images below, and also check out the video above to hear new environment and sound effects from our audio director Nathan! He has been cleaning up his own foley from last year's snow storm to integrate in the new and improved mountains.
Funnily enough, these images leave out, arguably, the most unexpected changes coming to the mountains....I will have to save that for another month :)
Farming
In May, we showed one of the new facilities coming to improve the cooking experience. That cooking refinery will be making use of the new farming mechanics coming to Hounds of Zeus! While there will not be terraforming, players will be able to place a farming plot to grow crops like mint, basil, potato, and onion which will be used to improve your recipes. You will need to water, fertilize, and be conscious of your crops preferrable weather conditions. Please note, this art is not finalized. Farming plots, for the sake of navigation, will more than likely be placed in raised flower beds, rather than directly into the ground.
Frontend UI
Since early access began, we have not touched any of the frontend UI art! We will be making some big adjustments with this next release. Screens like Character Select & World Setup will be undergoing some visual changes, and you will also find new screens like a difficulty select page, brightness calibration, and a couple others. Here are a couple mockups to demonstrate some changes you can expect!
New Mountain Enemy!
Lastly, we asked you in May to vote on which mythic enemy you think was pictured in isolated shots of some new concept art. I had a lot of fun seeing you guys discuss in Discord. Perhaps I made it too hard for everyone ;) since both polls in Discord and Twitter guessed incorrectly.
Get excited for Centaurs to challenge you in the snowy mountains! These guys look SO cool finalized. I am so excited to share a video. They are already intimidating in the art, but REALLY intimidating in motion. Now, keep in mind, these are NOT the new raid bosses for the Temple of Zeus. Can you guess which mythic enemy will be in the raid? There is a hint laying in plain sight.... Leave your guesses in the comments.
Thank you as always for being here and supporting our game in early access. So far in the past couple months, we have discussed soldier camps, cooking, farming, centaurs, UI, and mountain changes coming to Hounds of Zeus, but we actually still have plenty more to share and reveal, so stay tuned! Remember to check out our survey. We'd really love to hear what you think.