Hey everyone,
Scott here, sole developer of Defense of the Dauntless and founder of Threesided Polygon.
I'm insanely excited to be releasing version 1.1 today, which entails a complete overhaul of the base game. What started out as a quick revamp, blossomed into a complete, end-to-end overhaul of nearly every system, enemy and asset.
Before the full patch notes, I just want to briefly talk about the update as a whole. About 8 weeks ago I decided on a whim to revisit the game and address some feedback and criticism I received around progression and a lack of content. What happened instead was, well... I changed... everything.
The core gameplay is the same: build towers, kill endless waves of enemies, unlock useful reinforcements and upgrades, and unleash powerful hero abilities to sway the tide of battle and try and survive; but everything else around it has changed dramatically. Here are the two biggest changes:
- There is now a world map with new battlefields to unlock and progress through, each with new castles and biomes, as well as new bosses to defeat.
- Victory is no longer the end! You can now play in "Endless Mode" where exponentially tougher enemies will continue to spawn to try and take you down.
As I worked through these two big additions, it became apparent how much I needed to improve the entire experience. As a result nearly every asset has been given a visual upgrade: icons, menus, enemies, terrain and more have been given some love.
These new maps also introduce new layouts for you to build upon, meaning a complete balance rework to allow for the core systems to remain fresh and fun no matter where you do battle. Most progression costs have been reduced dramatically, and higher tier towers and hero abilities have been boosted to make you feel more powerful.
It has been a labor of love these past couple months and i could not be more proud of what you will get to play starting today. I can't wait for you all to check it out :)
Stay dauntless folks.
-- Scott
Defense of the Dauntless -- v 1.1 Full Patch Notes
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Overview
- World map added:
- 3 new maps added to world map with unique environment art and unlock progression
- New bosses:
- Each map has its own castle and unique boss to face with unique resistances and abilities
- Battle map grid changed
- from 8x8 squares to 12x12
- Fewer towers can be built but this means a buff to range. Other balance changes also made increase potency of each tower
- Improved tower management:
- You can now left click and drag to box select multiple towers
- You can shift + click or shift + click and drag to add towers to already selected towers
- You can control + click a tower to select all towers of a given type
- Once selected, you can upgrade individual towers, or all towers selected
- While in demolition mode, you can hold shift to continuously destroy terrain
- Endless mode:
- Endless mode can be unlocked for completed maps. For endless mode, each successful boss defeat will reset mob spawns with "prestige" level added.
- Increased enemy HP scaling for prestige 1 and beyond. Score and gold scale with prestige. Play until you die or surrender!
- Graphical overhaul:
- Lobby menus reworked to fit the world map
- Hero select given a visual update to highlight ultimate art
- Reinforcement cards visual update
- New splash screen
- New title screen
- Visual style and effects of some bullets updated
- Visual style and look of some enemies changed
- New Reinforcements:
- Tower Regrowth: You castle slowly heals itself over time for a set amount. Permanent, stackable stat.
- Rampart: Your castle can gain additional armor, up to 1,000 total
- Bestiary Added:
- Track the enemies you've defeated in battle. Important information such as their stat lines and any special abilities are also listed here, which can be very useful!
- New Settings Options:
- You now can toggle damage numbers to be visible on-screen
Balance
- Lowered cost of unlocking most towers and heroes
- Lowered cost of building some higher end towers
- Increased stat buffs applied for leveling up almost every tower type
- Increased discount prices for all towers
- Lowered odds of getting higher tier towers from "Reconfigure" reinforcements
- Lowered charge required for each hero ultimate
- Reduced scaling on higher level hero ultimate abilities
- Increase number of levels towers gain from gold and prismatic augments
- Lowered HP on Fire elementals, Cavaliers, Golems, etc.
- Greatly reduced gold accrued from killing Dragons
- Lowered Armor on Stone Golems
- Decreased gold earned from late game enemies
- Decreased health, shield and armor in late game mobs
- Torch towers do reduced damage, but more damage over time
- Hive towers do more damage, but increased from 800 - 1200 build cost
- Charm tower base fire rate slowed
- Blizzard tower fire rate slowed
- Sniper Towers and Arcane Snipers damage scaling reduced, upgrade cost increased
- Prism Tower damage scaling increased
- Max applicable slow reduced from 99% to 68%
- "Reconfigure" reinforcements will have reduced odds of spawning high tier towers
- Dauntless mode no longer changes which boss you face. The lich dragon has decided to attack elsewhere...
- Gold and prismatic upgrade scaling increased:
- Gold increase for Base Towers and Arcane Towers from 2 -> 3
- Prismatic increase for Base Towers and Arcane Towers from 3 -> 8
- Prismatic increase for all other towers increased from 2 -> 5
- Final stand prismatic will now level up all base towers by 50 levels
- Added more mid boss spawns and moved most mid-game bosses to spawn earlier
- Skeletons are now immune to burn damage
Bugfixes
- Towers now properly tracking their kills
- Towers more accurately detect enemies in range
- Pathing for dragons and enemies alike more predictable
- Dragon and Lich dragon bosses now properly navigate and attack on the battlefield
- Reinforcements no longer relevant removed from pool properly
- Save files should properly reconcile local vs. Steam cloud and keep better sync