The Buried Bastille Update is coming out on June 21st for both PC and PS4! That’s right, it’s our first simultaneous release, which means PC + PS4 PARITY IS HAPPENING NEXT WEEK. From this point forward, our goal is to have the PC and PS4 releases be no more than a week apart. This is huge. We’re so excited for our PC and PS4 players to experience new content together!
So what’s in The Buried Bastille Update?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHxdc3PGEnA
- New Map -- The Buried Bastille: As selected by you in our Influence Vote, we’re releasing The Buried Bastille in this update! This sprawling, ancient prison is a remake of DD1’s Glitterhelm Caverns. Four cores lurk in these shadows for you to protect. The Buried Bastille is the biggest map released in Dungeon Defenders II to date, so we’re eager to see how you feel about its size and complexity.
- New Incursion -- The Bastille Master: It’s a race against time to kill all of the enemies in The Bastille Master Incursion! Not only is time and the size of The Buried Bastille working against you, but you only have a limited number of lives, too!
- New iPWR 750 Apprentice Weapon -- The Ghastly Halberd: If you complete The Bastille Master Incursion, you’ll earn the new Ghastly Halberd Apprentice weapon! Using this weapon turns the Apprentice into a ghost, reducing damage taken by enemies from 35%-90%! Using the alternate fire of the weapon will spawn a variable number of halberds that will attack nearby enemies. Halberds scale off of Hero Damage and Ability Power.
- New iPWR 750 Helmet: This Incursion will have a chance to drop an iPWR 750 Helmet from the Victory Chest.
- New Apprentice Elemental Variant Costume -- Guardian of the Dead: The Apprentice is joining the Monk and the Huntress in getting an elemental variant costume of his own!
- Improved Daily Missions: In our last update, we introduced Bonus Missions as part of our ongoing effort to increase the earn rate of Defender Medals for all players. In this update, we’re doing two things. The first is improving the Daily Missions themselves. Our Daily Missions will now be about winning a certain amount of maps (some with extra provisions, some without). No more Daily Missions like “Ignite X Enemies” or “Gain X Pet Affection Levels.” It’s all about winning and being rewarded for winning. Play how you want to play and get rewarded for it -- unless how you want to play is to lose, in which case, we’re sorry. The second thing is...
- Temporary Change -- Increased Daily Mission Payouts: For the next two weeks, we’re increasing the amount of Defender Medals gained to 225 - 450 Defender Medals apiece. We’re going to pay close attention to the number of people completing Dailies and how these new reward amounts are affecting the Medal earn rate for all players. So please login, play with the Daily Mission changes and let us know on the forums how you feel.
The PS4 version of the update will also contain Series EV2 and the entirety of The Bling King Update!
Here’s what we’re working on this week:
James Reid, Software Engineer (@Driscan)
Full steam ahead on the Game Browser! Still very much work-in-progress:
Daniel Haddad, Design Director (@DanielLoony)
We now have a good idea on how to make DD2 potentially more fun with the Enemy Redesign I am proposing. We are trying to figure out a plan of attack since it is not a small task and ideally we would like to involve you all along the way as we revamp our enemies to make sure we are on the right track. Until then, we want to try to make the game a little more bearable until the time comes.
This week I’m doing my best to take the first 4 heroes and buff them to be as close to the Abyss Lord and EV2 as possible. There isn’t a lot of time and support to do this task (which makes sense since we still want to revamp these heroes at some point), so all I will be doing is buffing the numbers and changing a few things to make them more viable. After that, I’ll be taking a look at the many build passives (build passives being things such as Frost Fire and Phoenix's Call on the four original heroes) and nerfing them. Why are we nerfing them? Well, since we are about to buff the first 4 heroes, their build passives do not need to be as powerful as they currently are, especially since the new heroes do not have build passives. Like we mentioned before also, we aren’t very happy with how build passives ended up and ultimately we will be moving away from things that are structured in that regard. So the end result of our changes should be that the four base heroes are near the same level as our newest heroes.
That is already a lot of work we are trying to get done this week but on top of that we are also trying to add a little “something” to DD2 for you guys to chase after and enjoy… I won’t dive into details here because we might not get around to it, but time will tell, and hopefully you will enjoy it!
Daniel Diaz, World Builder (@DanielKaMi)
Once again, you guys proved to be true Defenders! The level we're working on is, effectively, Endless Spires with a pirate theme. We’re trying to keep a similar gameplay space with some new features. Also, this time it will be easier to move around the level due to multiple player-only paths.
Jesus Diaz, World Builder (@N3oDoc)
We are almost done with the art pass for the pirates themed level. Just need to focus now on the farther out-of-bounds areas. I think this is going to be one of the most enjoyable DD2 levels so far!
Tim Shannon, PS4 & Live Producer (@TimmyTrashTier)
What isn’t happening this week? A much needed hotfix for PS4 came out on Tuesday that should hopefully drastically improve stability on the PS4. We’re also working on finalizing the next PS4 update that will include EV2, the Bling King Incursion and the Buried Bastille Incursion as well as an update to both the Bonus Mission system, an improved Daily Mission system and all of the other changes from those updates. Right now we’re targeting to get that out next week, but with things still coming together that may change if we run into something serious.
On the live team side, it’s a similar story. The Buried Bastille Update will be coming out next week (barring anything unfortunate), and we’re working on some final improvements and polish for that release.