Dungeon Defenders II Now Out of Early Access

By Austin Phoenix,

Dungeon Defenders II is officially out of Early Access and free-to-play on Xbox One, PC & PS4! With this major milestone in our game’s history, we’re releasing Update 1.0.

Update 1.0 focuses on our New Player Experience. This update fixes a ton of bugs, adds a lot of polish, introduces more quality-of-life changes, improves our early-game experience, and gets new players through Campaign and deep into Chaos. After today, we’re spinning up on features and changes you’ve been asking for (Endless Mode says hi).

We’ve been in Early Access for more than two years. With more than 60+ updates, Dungeon Defenders II has grown up before our very eyes. It’s been exciting and, quite frankly, a little unnerving to develop a game with you watching every step of the way. Our growth and improvement is because of your support, your feedback and the dedicated members of our team who went above and beyond to drive our game forward. We’re proud of where Dungeon Defenders II is today, but launch is just the beginning. With your support, Dungeon Defenders II is only going to get bigger and better!

Here are the notes for Update 1.0:

Xbox One Version Available Now!
Brewed in secrecy, the Xbox One version is finally here! We’re also pleased to announce that the Xbox One version, at launch, is completely caught up to our PC & PS4 versions!

Features

The Initiate
Come on and SLAM!

The Initiate is our first gender-swap hero. This powerful Chi-wielding warrior is the gender swap of our bald friend, the Monk. She uses the same defenses as the Monk, but she comes with a suite of new abilities:

Chi Stomp: A powerful slam that can be activated in mid-air!
Crippling Chi Wave: The Initiate builds up a glowing ball of Chi and launches it at her enemies, which damages and debuffs any enemies hit!
Talisman of Empowerment: The Initiate places a talisman on the ground that temporarily boosts the power of nearby defenses!

The Initiate is available at a lower Gem and Defender Medal price than other heroes. And don’t worry: The Barbarian will have his time to shine soon.

Updated Tutorials
Play our all new Tutorial map and check out our new Tutorial videos with the new How To Play Menu! The new videos and map cover a variety of helpful hints, tips, and tricks that will aid in your defense of Etheria!

Updated Story and Campaign
Etheria has never felt so alive! Play through the updated story in our revamped Campaign experience and stave off the Old Ones advance. Prepare for new threats and twists that will appear. Make sure to keep an eye out during Build Phase!

New Summary Screen & Score System
At the end of each map, whether you win or lose, there’s a new summary screen that will score you based on your performance. Our new scoring system includes many different modifiers and bonuses to help you tweak your builds and get higher and higher on your personal mental leaderboard. Shortly after the release of score, we’ll add some form of score tracking for players to see!

Updated HUD & Health Bars
We’ve updated a number of our Heads-Up Display elements to make the UI cleaner while providing more information. The biggest change is the addition of hero deck hotkeys above the Health Bar. Now you can easily see which hero is in which hero deck slot hotkey, which is especially handy if you’re the kind of player who constantly rotates heroes in and out of your Hero Deck!

New Tower Skins
Check out the all new Bit Crush Dryad, Woodland Apprentice, and Hypno Abyss Lord Tower Skins! (Time for an Abyss Lord/Monk defensive DANCE PARTY! Unce unce unce #hype)

New Shard Icons
We’ve added new iconography for some of the most popular Shards in the game. We’ll continue to improve on our Shard icons after launch!

Channel - Icon Type Change
Inspiration - Icon Type Change
Hero Critical Strike - Minor Border Change
Life Leech - Icon Type Change
Speed Boost - Icon Type Change
Superconductor - Icon Type Change
Construction - Icon Type Change
Explosive Guard - Icon Type Change
Defensive Critical Damage - Minor Border Change
Destruction - Minor Border Change
Fortification - Minor Border Change
Deadly Strikes - Icon Type Change
Panic Fire - Icon Type Change
Press Your Luck - Icon Type Change

Incursions & Legendary Weapons
As part of our New Player Experience, we’ve introduced Incursions into Chaos! The goal of our Incursions is to provide variety and progression milestones as players progress through Chaos.

Each Chaos tier will now have its own unique Incursions. After completing an Incursion, you’ll unlock unique Legendary weapons at the Wayfarer! The Wayfarer will forge these unique weapons based on your highest powered hero. The Wayfarer will sell these weapons for Defender Medals, so be sure to sell those Souls4Gold when the update comes out!

As for long-term gameplay variety in our endgame, we have a number of interesting changes and features we’re going to add post-launch. Stay tuned!

New Weapons
In addition to the Wayfarer weapons, we’ve added many new weapon models to the game across many of our different heroes. Go forth and get that sweet new loot!

PS4 Optimization
This update improves PS4 framerate, especially when a lot of enemies are on-screen at once. This is just the first of our optimization updates for the PS4 — shortly after launch, we have a litany of other changes that should improve framerate even more!

Quality of Life

Added a new Minimum Ascension Level host option.
Added the ability to rename your heroes for free in the Inventory.
Added controller sensitivity option on PC.
Revamped range indicator decals for visibility.
Now you can play and access everything on PC with a controller, including the Options Menu!
Added the names of defenses under relic slots.
Added Server Region display to the Main Menu.
Improved the Flamethrower Tower’s visual effects.
Added a minimap and NPC blips to the Heroes Marketplace.
Improved player name display with proper capitalization!
Added a “Hold to rotate tower” for PC controller users.
Improved and unified the look of many different UIs.
Updated the first quest in the game to have smarter text and a better UI.
Victory chests show up on all minimaps.
The War Table in the Private Tavern should now default to Private Games. Such private. Many seekrits.
Updated the game icon to the Squire’s Head. This was the most important change of all.

Balance

Core Health

Increased the core health in Chaos to protect against enemies one-shotting the core.

Shards

Ballista - Black Arrow damage increased from 50% to 60%.
Cannonball - Stun Fire proc increased to 25% and stun duration from 2.4 to 3.0 seconds.
Cannonball - Heavy Cannonball damage increased from 950% to 1250%.
Earthshatter - Earth Toss proc chance increased from 35% to 100%. Knockup duration increased slightly.
Fire for Effect chance increased from 25% to 45%
Flame Aura - Encroaching Flames proc chance increased from 25% to 30% and damage increased from 40% to 60%.
Skeletal Archer - Explosive Arrows proc chance increased from 15% to 30% and damage increased from 110% to 450%.
Snakes on a Plane - Proc chance increased from every 5 seconds to every 3 seconds and damage increased from 525% to 3000%.
Enduring Bubble - Levels increased from 8 to 10. Buff duration decreased from +5 seconds to +2 seconds.
Lateral Blast - Damage increased from 725% to 2250%.
Mega Rock - Proc chance increased from every 10 volleys to every 5 volleys. Damage increased from 1150% to 4000%.
Frosty Proton Node - Proc chance increased from 5% to 25%, duration decreased from 5 to 2 seconds.
Gunwitch’s Hunting Blind Tower damage unchanged from 0% to 0%.

Betsy Weapons

Betsy weapons now have their shards locked in a shard slot to mimic their old, pre-shard passive effects.
Apprentice and Huntress Betsy Weapons have had updated firing rates and damage to better match our new balanced solutions.
Updated Betsy’s Empowered Lightning Shard description to make more sense.

Bug Fixesss

Fixed another magical Proton beam crash. Huzzah!
Fixed an issue with an endless black screen after multiple loading screens.
Hero Information and Currency indicators should no longer overlap.
Improved fullscreen and windowed game display modes.
Fixed another Siege Roller stuck issue.
Power Transfer Shard functions when equipped to Boost Aura now.
“Speeds” are now “Orbs” again.
“Skulls” are now “Marks” again. We have no idea how that happened.
This also means the Orb and Mark filters work again!
Abyss Lord’s Abyss Stones are now able to crit.
This update fixes a bug where multiplayer enemy health scaling was scaling higher than intended. Per-player enemy health scaling is now +25% rather than +50%. Go forth and defend with friends!
Fixed an issue where you could not drop a Shard onto a bag icon.
Shard Packs and Shards should go through the proper auto-collect flow now.
Fixed a text pop up at a really high Ascension level.
Jumping and using the right click dash on the Lavamancer should work properly now while dashing around the map. No more randomly hitting invisible walls! HOORAY!
The Ogres on the Forest Ambush Incursion thought it’d be really cool to just T-pose for fun. We set them straight.
The crosshair reticle should now turn the correct colors when targeting allies and other things in game. It will be colors other than red now! ADDITIONAL HOORAYS.
Updated several error message text to make more sense.
The resolution selector in the Options Menu is now scrollable with scroll wheels.
The World Tree now properly gets destroyed during the Victory animation if it’s too close to the Victory Chests.
Updated the description on the Shadowflame Dagger.
Updated the consumable tooltip to use the new UI.
Combined Power - Serpent’s Coil beams will now attack training dummies.
Updated the error text if there are no marked targets for Arcane Volley.
Gunwitch’s Snipe Critical Damage Shard no longer applies to all elemental damage.
Fixed the Level 50 Level Up Pop Up to show Level 50 instead of “Level 0”.
Renamed the default hero names to their classes. Squire is now “Squire.” Monk is now “Monk.” Barbarian is now “Pete.”
Fixed a challenge display issue where it would render completed challenges twice in the UI.
Flame Aura properly calculates crit damage and chance into its inspected DPS number.
Fixed a matchmaking issue where if Player 2 declines, then Player 1 gets an “Unknown Error.”
Fiery Brimstone Shard now only works for the Abyss Lord as originally designed and fixed the critical damage scaling on the procs from 100% to 12% where it should be.
Unequipping items will go through the auto-collect flow and go to the bags that they should be.
Fixed an issue where swapping to EV2 Mark III was causing a rogue torso to display.
Fixed Drakken’s eyes and mouths to be glowing properly.
Added a notification that a party request has been sent to another player.
The “Could not authenticate with Steam… try again?” pop up was missing some buttons. We gave them back.
Fixed a crash if you had selected Exit on a menu screen while an immediate message was being displayed.
Mystic’s Dark Torment damage over time critical effect is no longer scaling inversely with hero damage.
Fixed a billboard issue on Siege of the Throne Room.
Fixed an area where Kobolds could get stuck in the Ruins.
G4T0’s facial animations have been restored! Beep boop. Bloop.
Fixed a boost aura description typo. “Precentage” is right… right?
Fixed small lighting issues on the Dryad Hornet’s Nest and Slime Pit.
Monk’s alternate attack is no longer blocked by towers.
Fixed the wyvern death animation.
The Weapon Filter on the Filter By… bag no longer has defense stat options.
Fixed a spot on Dragonfall Plaza where the Dryad could exit the map.
Fixed several small issues with tower damage challenges.

Known Issues

No “Press G to End Match” message is displayed after beating wave 4 on Airship Battle. This is only a visual problem and G still functions correctly.
Glaive of Storms isn’t currently purchasable in the wayfarer shop. It still unlocks and drops from the Power Surge Incursion.
Glaive of Storms’ unique shard is missing its icon.

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Written by Austin Phoenix

Site Moderator, Walkthrough Manager and Newshound here on TSA. Moderator, Walkthrough Supervisor and Site Help Editor over on TA.

Space Cowboy in my free time.