The Golden Crusade

Defenders, we are very excited to launch our biggest update for Dungeon Defenders 2: The Golden Crusade update. This update includes a new hero, new maps, a new boss fight, new elemental rumble elements, new pets, new skins, memory optimization for consoles and A LOT of quality of life / bug fixes.

New Hero: The Templar

A knight blessed with divine power and arcane magic, the Templar protects the innocent with his golden touch. His abilities combine devastating offense, protective auras, and restorative magic to turn the tide of battle.

Abilities:

• AdjustedShield BashSlam your shield with your sword, dealing damage in a frontal area. Enemies hit are Gilded, turning them to gold and causing them to take x% increased damage.
• AdjustedDivine JudgmentThe Templar slams the ground, dealing impact damage and leaving a zone of Divine Judgment that damages enemies over time. Allies inside the zone take % reduced damage.

• Smite: Calls down a pillar of mystical fire at a target location, dealing damage over time to enemies while healing nearby allies.

• Aegis Shield: Summons three golden shields around the Templar and nearby allies, granting damage reduction and healing over time.

Defenses:

• AdjustedMidas Trap (Trap)A golden pressure rune that activates when stepped on. Enemies caught are transmuted into gold for a short duration, taking increased damage from all sources.

• Golden Knight Armor (Blockade): Summons a suit of enchanted golden armor animated by divine light. The Golden Knight boasts immense durability and delivers crushing blows to nearby enemies.

• Anti-Air Cannon (Anti-Air Defense): A heavy golden cannon designed to pierce the heavens. It only targets flying enemies, unleashing radiant blasts at extreme range.

• Divine Relic (Damage): A radiant relic that channels divine energy to smite enemies from above. It selects random enemies within range, striking them with beams of celestial fire.

Shards:

• Aegis Safeguard: While Aegis Shield is active, increase your armor by x%.

• Shielded Smackdown: While Aegis Shield is active, increase damage by x%.

• Aegis Fortitude: While Aegis Shield is active, gain x% damage reduction.

• Aegis Aid: Increases the healing of Aegis Shield by x%.

• Harmonized Justice: Increases the damage and healing of Judgment’s ground zone by x%.

• Empowered Judgment: Increases Judgment's damage by x%.

• Golden Reckoning: Increases Judgment’s damage against Gilded enemies by x%.

• Divine Flow: While inside Judgment, gain 25 mana every X seconds.

• Divine Ward: Increases the Templar's armor by 25%, causing enemy projectiles to deal x% of their original damage.

• Gilded Bane: +x% damage to golden enemies.

• Holy Aura: Blocking summons an aura that deals x% of your armor as damage to enemies.

• Combat Conditioning: Attacks grant +x Hero Damage and Armor per stack. Stacks up to 15 times. Resets completely after 3 seconds of not attacking.

• Midas Might: Increases Midas Shield’s damage by x%.

• Lingering Luxury: Midas Shield’s Gilded effect lasts X seconds longer.

• Golden Volley: Midas Shield throws 2 additional projectiles and lasts X seconds longer.

• Precision Smite: Increases Crit Chance of Smite by x% and increases Crit Damage by 50%.

• Empowered Smite: Increases Smite's damage by x%.

• Executing Smite: +x% Damage to Enemies below 50% health.

• Air Burst: When the Anti Air Cannon hits a target, it explodes dealing x% damage to nearby enemies.

• Gilding Blow: Anti Air Cannon has a x% chance on hit to stun target for X seconds.

• Divine Surge: Divine Relic has a x% chance to deal x% more damage.

• Divine Precision: Divine Relic gains 100% Crit Chance but reduces Damage by x%.

• Enchanted Armor: Imbues the Golden Knight armor, increasing health by 25% and making enemy projectiles deal x% of their original damage.

• Golden Renewal: Each time your Golden Knight attacks, it heals for x% of its max health.

• Brittle Alloy: Increases the damage increase of Midas Touch's golden effect by x%.

• Golden Feet: Midas Trap reduces enemies movement by x% for X seconds.

Defender Pass:

New skins:

• Golden Knight Dryad

• Fallen Knight Cyborg

• Golden Knight Gunwitch

• Fallen Knight Aquarion

New Flairs:

• Crown of Light (Head)

• Crown of Light (Back)

• Chain of Faith (Waist)

• Aegis Ring (Feet)

New Pets:

• Griffin

• Evil Griffin

• Tiny Goblin Mech

New Maps!: Promenade Golden Down / Nightfall

New Boss Fight: face the Airship & the Goblin Mech on Promenade Golden Dawn:

Elemental Rumble: New Elements!

Golden Elemental: Enemies are immune to Stuns, taking 200% Physical, and Magical damage, 50% from Fire, Water, and Earth, and 25% Poison damage.

Golden Elite: 25% of enemies are Elites, which have 50% more health, deal 25% more damage, move 30% slower, and take 50% less damage.

Poison Elemental: Enemies are immune to Slow , taking 200% Earth, 50% from Poison, Physical, and Magical damage, and 25% Water damage.

Poison Elite: 25% of enemies are Elites, which have 50% more health, deal 25% more damage when they die they will leave an area that deals damage and reduced damage of hero and towers by 50%.

New gear sets:

• Golden Set:

  • 2 / 4 Bonus: +5000 Ability Power and Armor

  • Adjusted4 / 4 BonusAbilities activate Golden Armor. While Golden Armor is active, gain 15% increased Ability Power, regenerate 5% of maximum Health per second, and take 40% reduced damage for 5 seconds. This effect can only trigger once every 10 seconds.

• Poison Set:

  • 2 / 4 Bonus: +5000 Hero Damage and Ability Power

  • Adjusted4 / 4 BonusPoison enemies on hit, dealing magical poison damage equal to 300% of your Hero Damage and Ability Power each second for 5 seconds. Poisoned enemies take 25% increased damage from all sources. This effect can only trigger once every 5 seconds.

Balance

Jester Changes

• Boomerang Hammer: +50% damage scalar

• Card Barrage: +11.8% damage scalar

• Chattering Teeth: +19.0% damage scalar

• Balloon: +15.4% move speed

• Party Popper: +20% damage

Jester Shards

• HAMMER TIME!: +36.4% damage

• CONCUSSIVE POP: activation chance +28.2%, damage +84.2%

• Critical Miss: +25.0% damage

• COMEDY EMPOWERMENT: +25 to 45% damage % increase

• DRAINING PUNCH: +53.8% healing

Storm Set

• Cooldown 8s to 5s

• Damage +56.3%

Earth Set:

• Tenacity 50% to 100%

All Ancient Gear can now be sold for 1 - 3 godly orbs

Bug fixes / Quality of Life:

• Fixed an issue where the node-based towers were not being correctly destroyed.

• Fixed an issue where the Game Browser UI would automatically expand but would not display the button needed to collapse that automatic expansion.

• Fixed an issue where the game would crash when disconnecting an audio device (PC).

• Fixed an issue where some Jester cosmetics were not working correctly.

• Fixed the "critical miss" shard showing a negative crit chance as +100%.

• Fixed sound volumes resetting to default after each map load.

• Fixed boss waves occasionally giving zero tower mana.

• Fixed a build-mana shortfall that left the match one mana short in larger parties.

• Console memory optimizations that fixes lots of crashing issues.

• Fixed an issue where sometimes a tower would shoot at nothing if a target died too early.

• Enemies that got stuck inside the spawn area (soft-locking the wave) are now nudged back onto their lane, or cleared out as a last resort, so waves keep moving.

• Fixed getting stuck on the loading screen forever after using Retry from a wave: the game now recovers and rejoins.

• Fixed losing a shop listing item when retrieving it while your inventory was full.

• Pet stat rolls can now actually reach the top of their range (previously the maximum value was just out of reach).

• Hero Picker edit/reorder now places your heroes exactly where you put them, even when not all hero slots are filled.

• Many stability and crash fixes across towers, abilities, menus, spawning, pets, and the minimap.

• Tower tooltips now show the same, correct numbers for every player in the game (they could previously show different or wrong values depending on who was looking).

• Camera now starts fully zoomed out on every map.

• Defender Pass popups now respect your "Hide Loot Pop-ups" setting.

• Enemies stuck in the spawn area are now automatically freed so waves can't stall.

• Allow heroes to place towers while hovering/jumping/etc

New Features:

• Inspect a Tower to See Its Full Build: Aim at any tower and its tooltip now shows the complete setup: the relic (with its name in its rarity color and its Power), the relic's mods with their roll quality, and every shard socketed into it (gilded shards shown in gold). Works even for towers that were already placed before you joined the game, so you can hop into a match and instantly read someone's build.

• Equip Shards Straight From Your Shard Vault: When you click an empty shard slot, the shard picker now also lists the matching shards sitting in your Shard Vault, not just the ones loose in your inventory. Pick one and it's pulled out of the vault and equipped in a single click. No more digging through the vault first.

• Perfect-Item Rainbow Border: Items with a 100%+ roll now have an animated rainbow border everywhere they appear (inventory, player shops, vault, and more). Hold Shift to also give them an ornate gilded frame, perfect for showing off your best gear in screenshots.

• Shard Vault No Longer Wipes Shard Levels: Putting a leveled-up shard into the Shard Vault used to reset it back to Level 0 when you pulled it back out. Shards now keep their level (and gilding) through the vault. Leveled shards sit in their own stack so their level is never lost, and the vault entry shows the level right on the name.

• Smarter Shard Picker: The shard picker is now sorted alphabetically, with your inventory shards listed first and your vault shards after, so matching shards (like a "Destruction" and a leveled "Destruction") line up right next to each other and your loose inventory shards always come first.

• Use Shops & Inventory During Combat: Browse, sell, and inspect your gear while a wave is in progress. (Changing your active loadout is still locked during combat.)

• Pet Reroll "Keep Rolling": Rerolling pet stats now lets you keep rolling continuously on both the console popup and the PC stable, plus a fix for a reroll that could get stuck.

• AdjustedFaster Player-Shop BuyingReduced the cooldown from 15s to 1s between player-shop purchases so buying multiple items in a row is much snappier.

• Match Host Protection: The player who starts the match is now a protected host: they can't be kicked, host passes to someone else if they leave, and in public matches only the host can remove players.

• Public/Private toggle mid-match: Hosts can now flip a match between Public and Private at any time from the pause menu, no need to back out and restart.

• Host can force-start combat: The match host can skip the ready-up wait and start the next wave immediately (Ctrl+G / L1+Back), with a host-only prompt so it won't trigger by accident.

• Store consumables in the Material Vault: Popcorn Machines, salves, candies, tickets and other consumables can now be stored in the Material Vault in stacks of 9,999, just like crafting materials, automatically covering current and future consumables.

• AddedFind My ItemA new search tool (Ctrl+F / R1+Y) that scans every container at once: equipped gear, bag, gear vault, shard vault, and material vault, and tells you exactly where each match is. Search by item name or by mod, and right-click any result to pull it straight to your bag.

• Added auto ready-up feature.

• Unlock Camera for Controller while placing defense: Left stick still rotates defense, right stick moves camera now.

Known Issues:

• The Aquarion's Dark Knight skin has some visual issues with its weapons and cosmetics. This is purely visual and will be fixed in a future hotfix.

• The Elemental Rumble timer may occasionally display incorrect values. This is a visual issue only and does not affect gameplay.