Patch 3/9/26

Greetings Defenders,

This update focuses on pet progression improvements, Halloween Spooktacular updates, new loot table separation, a new Huntress weapon, expanded Map of the Week rewards, and balance adjustments for the Apprentice.

Pet Updates

• Upgrade maximum for ranged pets increased by a factor of 10

• Upgrade maximum for melee pets increased by a factor of 10

• EV Action Figure now properly drops on Lost Metropolis Pure Strategy with a bonus difficulty toggled

  • Requires Bonus Difficulty and Hardcore to be enabled for the pet to drop

Map Updates

Halloween Spooktacular

• Halloween Spooktacular can now be played with Bonus Difficulties enabled in:

  • Pure Strategy

  • Mixed Mode

  • Survival

• Lanternheart Core is now awarded for completing Halloween Spooktacular in Mixed Mode on Massacre difficulty after completing all other bonus maps

• Halloween Spooktacular Pure Strategy now properly awards a **Tower Giraffe

**

Loot Table Changes

• Massacre Rift Mode loot has been separated from Survival by creating a **dedicated loot table ** Note: This change will allow us to keep certain rewards and loot drops exclusive to specific game modes going forward.

New Weapon

The Harold

A pistol-style Huntress weapon that fires grenades. A weapon named and inspired by the corgi winner Toni in the discord server The grenades explode on impact with enemies or geometry and deal AoE damage within a 375 range.

Drops from:

• Completing Wave 25 on The Bazaar on Massacre Mixed Mode

• Requires Hardcore and a Bonus Difficulty

Rift Variant:

• Awarded from the same completion conditions with **Rift Mode enabled **

Map of the Week

This week’s map is Ramparts.

Requirements:

• Nightmare or Massacre difficulty

• Rift Mode enabled for all modes except Campaign

Completing the Map of the Week in each mode awards special rotating rewards.

Pure Strategy Rewards

Nightmare

• Random Fusion Armor Piece

  • This week: Miner Set

• Random Tower Pet

  • This week: Apprentice Guardian

• Random Tower Weapon

  • This week: Floppy Fish

Massacre

• Fused Accessory

  • This week: Fused Sapphire Brooch

• Random Tower Pet

  • This week: Apprentice Guardian

• Random Tower Weapon

  • This week: Floppy Fish

Mixed Mode / Survival Rewards

Nightmare

• Random Fusion Armor Piece

  • This week: Miner Set

• Random Damage-Dealing Pet (regular version only)

  • This week: Monkey King

• Random Progression Fused Weapon

  • This week: Paintball Gun

Massacre

• Arcanist Armor Piece

  • This week: Arcanist Helm

• Random Damage-Dealing Pet

  • This week: **Monkey King **All three variants can drop, with the Fused variant weighted highest

• Random Boss Weapon

  • This week: DrakeTooth

Campaign

• Completing the Map of the Week in Campaign grants double rune rewards on completion in both Nightmare and Massacre

Challenges

• Completing the Map of the Week in Challenge Mode grants double end-of-map rewards in both Nightmare and Massacre

Tower Updates

Apprentice

Deadly Striker Tower

• Tower damage hero stat scalar increased to 2.1 (up from 1.6)

• Base tower damage stat increased to 380 (up from 350)

Lightning Tower

• Maximum targets increased to 8 (up from 6)

• Base tower damage stat increased to 32 (up from 22)

Fireball Tower

• Explosion radius increased to 400 (up from 250)

• Base tower damage stat increased to 300 (up from 250)

These adjustments help bring Fireball closer in line with the Bowling Ball Tower in overall effectiveness.

Conclusion:

This update continues our focus on improving progression systems, expanding reward structures across different game modes, and bringing several underperforming towers more in line with the rest of the roster. Your continued feedback has been extremely helpful in identifying areas that needed improvements, particularly around pets, rewards, and mode incentives. Alongside these updates, development is also underway on new maps that we’re excited to bring into Dungeon Defenders: Awakened in future patches. More details on those will be shared as they get closer to release. As always, thank you for continuing to play and support the game. We’ll keep refining systems, adding rewards, and expanding content in the weeks ahead. Happy Defending.