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!
New Game Mode: MASTERY
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!
Special Event: PROVE YOUR MASTERY
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!
New Shards: HYPER SHARDS
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!
New Cosmetic System: FLAIR
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!
New pets: GOLDEN PETS
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!
Halloween in Etheria
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.
Quality of Life
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!
Hero Changes
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.
- Cooldown increased 10 seconds to 20 seconds.
Series EV-2
- Weapons Manufacturer
- Adjusted range scaling with the introduction of Vicious Strikes Hyper Shard.
General
Weapons
- Shadowflame Dagger
- Projectile life-time reduced to 2 seconds.
Bug Fixes
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.
Even More On The Way...
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