Well technically, it began yesterday, but our latest update is available now!
The Journey Begins update is the first step on a journey to finish the game. Our next step: Improving the endgame! We’re excited to share more details on what that means over the next few weeks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqN4dtvNFSA
The Mystic
- New Hero: The Mystic! Watch her hero trailer.
- A reformed thief with a dark secret, the Mystic struggles to control the ancient Serpent God in her gauntlet. Summoning powerful strikes, the Mystic harvests the souls of her fallen enemies, appeasing the slithering deity. But without a constant stream of enemy souls, who knows what her master might do?
- Abilities
- Snakes?
- Ability One - Lash Out: The Mystic summons the Serpent God to lash out at her enemies, which deals massive poison damage.
- Ability Two - Call to Madness: The Mystic summons the serpent’s screech causing nearby enemies to turn on each other.
- Snakes!?
- Ability Three - Dark Torment: Hurls a dagger into a single enemy, which causes nearby Sand Viper towers to focus on the foe. Enemies defeated under Dark Torment turn to sand and get reborn as a friendly tower that hurts nearby enemies.
- Ability Four - Serpent’s Coil: The now immortal Mystic has no need for traditional healing. With Serpent’s Coil, she hurls a dagger into the ground, and a snake wraps around it. The dagger deals damage to nearby enemies, and when the enemy dies, it turns into a healing orb that any hero can collect.
- SNAAAKEEEEEEEES!?!?!
- Defenses
- Defense One - Snaking Sands: When an enemy trips this sand trap, a vortex appears and slows enemies down as they sink into the ground.
- OH GOD, THEY’RE EVERYWHERE!!!
- Defense Two - Sand Viper: The Mystic summons a slithering incantation that fires an increasingly damaging beam at an enemy. When the Mystic uses her Dark Torment ability, any nearby Sand Viper focuses its beam on the tormented foe.
- Defense Three - Viper’s Fangs: The Mystic’s barricade. Not only does it stop enemies in their tracks, it also fires a poison bubble that lifts enemies into the air. Pop the bubble to create poisonous rain on any poor sucker caught underneath it.
- AHHHHHHH!!!!!
- Defense Four - The Obelisk: Inflicts up to five debilitating status effects on enemies across the battlefield while potentially shielding heroes. When the Mystic is fully appeased with souls, the Serpent God himself appears on the Obelisk to breathe unholy fire upon enemies.
- Everything isss fine. Life is better now. All hail our new ssslithering overlords.
New Story and Progression
- We have moved the awesome animated intro video from the tutorial to the game’s startup.
- 18 maps have been tied together under one unified storyline divided into Acts.
- We redesigned the Game Browser map list to scroll vertically. Map selection should be much clearer in the new sequence. The map order of campaign becomes the map order across the game.
- New “Next Map” Button on Campaign
- Want to just keep going through the Campaign without being kicked back to the Tavern or Hub? Just hit “Next Map”!
- New Campaign Story-centric Loading Screens
- Check out the new chunks o’ story on our awesome looking loading screens. Then click to continue whenever you’re finished reading!
- New Campaign Quest Line
- New to the game? Visit the Knight Commander to get started!
- Start out as a Squire or Apprentice, then unlock the Huntress/Monk on the first quest!
- If you previously completed part of the Campaign quest line, we have translated your progress into an appropriate quest in the new quest line.
- All of the NPCs and their functionality is unlocked from day one. None of this unlocking item upgrading at level 34 business. We want you to have access to everything from day one so you can decide what you want to do and when. It’s your game; play it how you want.
- The game modes are Campaign, Defense, Incursions, and Onslaught. Difficulty for Campaign is Normal and Hard. None of this Freeplay/End Game/Insane monkey business.
- The Campaign now takes all the heroes in your hero deck from level 1 to 50.
- You may find yourself gaining 2-3 levels in one map! Be wary though, because the enemies get harder too.
- SAS points have been reset and are now awarded every five levels.
- New Rewards from Campaign
- The way loot drops has been changed on every Campaign level.
- Earlier levels have slightly higher drop rates of items to help you get started.
- We’ve added specific loot into chests throughout the game to ensure you have important pieces to be successful as things heat up.
- Lower-tier items now have more stats on them to make them a little more helpful.
- Pet eggs drop earlier in the game
- At the end of Campaign, you’ll be geared for the bottom end of Nightmare I.
- Each win rewards Gold, Exp, and DM, especially for that first play through when you’re knocking out the campaign quest for the first time.
- Sell and repair are now available at level 1!
Early Game Enemies and Difficulty
- Campaign Normal and Campaign Hard are both harder than what they used to be based on the feedback we’ve received from our community during Early Access.
- Enemy spawns are punchier. You should see more enemies out at once.
- Many Campaign maps have less waves, but less means harder.
- Enemy health and damage are also increased.
- We completely redid all enemy introductions. What is a tough enemy early becomes the norm later.
- We rebalanced Defense Mana and Defense Unit budgets in the campaign revamp. Your defense placement choices and strategies are more meaningful and tougher.
Quality of Life and General Improvements
- New Main Menu
- We’ve completely redesigned the Main Menu with a focus on our fantastic world art and easier-to-understand navigation options.
- We’ve added clearer social buttons, a news panel and a new ticker to keep you up-to-date on the latest and greatest from Dungeon Defenders II.
- By adding the news panel on the Main Menu, we’ve killed it from where it used to be, which was an annoying popup that showed up when you entered the Town or Tavern for the first visit of a session.
- Now you can continue the campaign from where you left off, straight from the Main Menu.
- Warmup Phase Change
- When you enter a map, we’ve reworked how the warmup phase timer works. Now you can hit “G” to end the warmup phase and kick off the first build phase.
- Changed the size and decay of damage numbers to clean up some of the UI clutter in our game.
- New Options Menu Features
- We’ve added new controller options on the PS4:
- Look Sensitivity -- Change how fast the screen scrolls when you move the targeting reticle with the right thumbstick
- Dead Zone -- Change how far you have to push the right thumbstick to move the targeting reticle
- Play the Tutorial as many times as you want, now located on the Options Menu. (Bigger Tutorial changes coming soon!)
- Region Selection is now in the Options Menu; however, you can only change the setting while you are on the title screen.
- We’ve added new controller options on the PS4:
- Passives on gear have been slightly tweaked. They now roll in different amounts on different rarities of gear.
- Gray through Blue should have no passives.
- Epic and Mythical have two passives.
- Legendaries have three.
- New Create a Hero screen
- We even added some fancy-schmancy voice overs tell you about each hero.
- We tweaked the “Create Game” pop-up to be a little easier to understand.
- We greatly increased the timer at the end of matches so you can go through your loot at your own speed.
- Music Updates
- We’ve added a new Victory track that plays whenever you complete a match. #nostalgia
- We’ve also added a new track for the Town!
- PS4 - Several Options moved to the profile so they can be supported in split-screen
- Invert Y-Axis
- Scavenger Level (it’s a PS4 thing that will hopefully go away soon with the new inventory)
- Show Hints
- Coalesce Damage Numbers
- Show Damage Numbers on Dummy
- Show Damage Numbers
- Cleaned up many UI messages to only show more relevant announcements.
- You can now sort your bags by iPWR.
- Enemy intro videos have been removed… for now.
- The Relic Hunter and Petrinarian have new dialogue.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed more issues with the coalescing damage numbers to increase game performance.
- Fixed Poison Dart Towers being able to shoot through walls.
- Ogres can no longer be teleported by Null Void to get stuck behind the spawns.
- Fixed the Oiling Strikes and Chilling Strikes skill spheres not applying.
- Fixed the Medium Experience Bonus II Skill Sphere.
- Fixed an issue with the Explosive Guard and Shielding Guard Ubers not functioning on Squire Blockades.
- Fixed an issue with the Lavamancer where Molten Core would cost more Molten Power when wearing a Helm of Storms.
- Fixed an issue with the Lavamancer’s Volcano where you could teleport around while moving the Volcano to new locations.
- Fixed an issue where Volcano would stop shooting after casting Eruption several times.
- Fixed an issue where EV2 would have full heat at the start of a Combat Phase.
- Fixed some issues with displaying the proper stats when inspecting towers.
- Fixed an issue where you couldn’t close some UI elements with the B button on controllers.
- Fixed an issue where some enemy spawns didn’t have the correct minimap icons to show where enemies were coming from.
- Fixed an issue with Drakin pathing on Nimbus Reach.
- Fixed an issue where Betsy wouldn’t spawn if you hit G in certain areas.
- Fixed some text issues on the Hero Creation screen
- Fixed when “Flameburst Tower Destroyed” would spam the UI when a series of EV2 nodes would get destroyed.
- Fixed an issue with the Gun Witch’s Ice Needle being able to cause Altar Assassins to fall into pits while invulnerable.
- Fixed an issue with Frosty Towers trying to shoot into the ground. (More Frostbite fixes incoming.)
- Fixed an issue where Harbinger would just walk off of his ship if a player used Lavamancer’s Submerge.
- Fixed the Bling King randomly pausing during animations
- Fixed the Power Surge Incursion not loading the correct music during the warm up phase.
- Fixed an issue on Ramparts and added Ogres on Nightmare.
- Cleaned up the collision on Arcane Barrier to have more placement options of other defenses near it.
- Fixed some broken animations on the Huntwitch and Black Magic Ops Gunwitch skins.
- Fixed a typo in the Abyss Lord’s Explosive Arrows passive.
Known Issues With This Update
- Profile options (listed in “Quality of Life and General”) will stomp main menu options. This should not affect region selection. Also Main Menu Options Menu navigation will be a targeted area of improvement for navigation in a patch coming soon.
- We disabled Victory Chest re-rolling for now to prevent an existing loot bug. It will return in the future!
- Towers have decided to show solidarity with the Old Ones’ army and will not display their health bars if enemy health bars are turned off. Stand strong brothers and sisters.
- The region setting will not display what region you’re in the options menu once you are in game if you did not open the options menu on the title screen first. (even if you didn’t change the default setting)