Episode 1 Changes to Rifted Enemies and Hero Levels

Chromatic Games June 2nd, 2021

DEFENDERS,

We’ve shared a lot with you over the last few weeks about all of the exciting additions and revisions coming to Dungeon Defenders: Awakened with the release of the Epsiode 1 update. It’s been a blast showing off our two new heroes, the Warden and the Rogue, along with introducing new maps and our new inventory and stats system on our Twitch dev stream each week. For this week, we shared some more goodies that will add to Defenders’ experiences.

Enemies in Rifted

After our last update where we reduced the number of enemies across the board to boost game performance, the experiences in Rifted mode were impacted more than we (and Defenders) wanted. Rifted was designed to challenge the most dedicated Defenders, but as the enemy counts reduced, this mode kind of felt like a punishment rather than an exciting challenge. The longer runs that resulted weren’t an intentional design choice and we’re fixing that to make Rifted all it was meant to be.

How are we doing this? Rifted will no longer spawn any normal enemies! Only Rifted enemies will show up when you choose Rifted mode. The Rifted enemy counts, attack damage, and HP are staying exactly the same as they are now. You just won’t need to bat off the normies anymore. This means fewer enemies overall with the increased challenge from Rifted enemies, achieving our goal of having Rifted require more skill but less time out of Defenders.

Hero Levels

For all of you who feel reaching Level 100 wasn’t difficult enough, we’re increasing the level cap for all heroes with the Episode 1 release to 105. The best items in Episode 1 require level 105 to equip, meaning you’ll need to conquer many foes on your journey to utilize the strongest gear available!

What Else?

If you’ve been keeping up with our news, we’ve spilled a lot of beans over the last month. We’ve been paying attention to your feedback and can’t wait to show off all of our hard work to our GLORIOUS Defenders. We haven’t announced a release date for Episode 1 yet, but know that we’re working hard to get the awesome and exciting updates into your games as soon as possible. We promise we’re as giddy as you are to see and try out these changes!

Another important topic to Defenders is updates on console development. We want to reassure you all that DDA ports for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 AND PlayStation 5 are still very much under way. We’re working hard to get Nintendo Switch through the Lot Check process, while fixing bugs and prepping it to be live for you all while also knocking out Episode 1. The Switch version will be completed and released before PlayStation, and we are aiming to have DDA on all consoles by the end of the year.

Finally, we’re also working on an update for Dungeon Defenders II. We’ve got so much going on at Chromatic Games and we are making sure this stuff is ready to go before we ship it out, but we promise it’s on its way!