Dungeon Defenders: Awakened – Beginners Guide

This should cover most of the common questions relating to Dungeon Defenders: Awakened.

New Players Guide

Autoloot!

Yes DDA has autoloot. The first thing you should do when getting into the game is set up your autoloot preferences.

The option can be accessed by pressing ESC, click options and its under the gameplay tab. As a new player I recommend these settings.

Inventory

The inventory has its own loot filter options, if you select filters then sell all it will only sell the stuff you select in that filter.

Inventory Shortcuts:

• E – Equip.
• U – Upgrade.
• W – Quick change sort.
• F – Open filter.
• L – Lock.
• S – Quick sell (hold).

Hero Swapping

All four heroes in your deck will receive xp at the same rate, having less wont funnel that into a specific hero. This means that you should always run with 4 heroes!

You can have 4 heroes in your deck at any given time. Something you may not know is that you can right click and click swap on any of them, this allows for more than the 4 slots in your deck and can be quite useful if you plan to try different builds with different selections of heroes.

You can swap out a builder with another hero and your defenses will remain. One thing to note about this is that as with not having your builder as your active hero, you will lose the 33% damage bonus from those defenses.

TL:DR Right click to swap heroes from the H menu.

Armour

As you might have noticed there are different kinds of armour in dungeon defenders awakened! No Item is for a specific type of stat, each armour merely has a stat that it will always roll with.

• Ancient – Always rolls with Skill.
• Guard – Always rolls with Vitality.
• Militia – Always rolls with Attack, Hero stats.
• Miner – Always rolls with Power, Defense stats.
• Primitive – Always rolls with Movement.
• Arcanist – Not in the game just yet!

Equipping 4 from the same set provides you with a set bonus. This bonus is a flat 40% of the stats granted from your Helmet, Chest, Gloves, and boots.

For instance if you’re getting 100 power from all 4 pieces you will instead get 140 power by having all pieces from the same group, EG Miner.

Multiplayer Etiquette

• Do not build unless you are asked!
• If all the build points are not spent, gather, and give mana to the host/builder.
• If all the build points are spent, ask the host what they would prefer you upgrade first.
• Ready up with the host.

Make Use of Synergy

Consider using a Monk to boost a deadly strikes tower clusters.

Alternatively use an Apprentice’s overcharge ability to boost towers – Activate C and right-click.

Farm up either a Powerful (Defense Power) or Speedy (Defense Rate) Gemstone pet from Summit, max out the Defense Power boost or Defense Rate boost, and max target stats.

Extra Stuff…

Inventory size: 525 items, 15 pages.

Builder bonus: If you stay on the hero that built the defense during the wave you will see a 33% increase in the damage those defenses deal.

Early XP Gain Tips

Campaign:

• Medium: Complete the campaign and move on to hard; after beating the campaign you should be able to easily beat Hard.
• Hard: Beat the campaign and if you are not able to do the Insane campaign keep beating the map ‘summit’ until you are high enough to beat insane
• Insane: Beat the campaign and if you are not able to do the Nightmare campaign keep beating the map ‘summit’ until you are high enough to beat Nightmare, you can also start doing survival for better drops and xp. (see below)
• Nightmare: Go as far as you can in the campaign and start survival. (see below)

Survival:

• Insane: If you are struggling with nightmare (not able to complete any maps) then a good way to start getting some xp is starting insane survival, some of the best maps to do will be promenade and summit. These maps will grant the highest xp/h and some of the best loot drops for your area. Once you have the ability to do nightmare move onto to that.
• Nightmare: There are 3 main survival maps that you should farm. Firstly Ancient Mines, this will be your starting grind point, this will start to give you nightmare tier gear and will help you advance to later survivals. Once you can easily clear wave 25 ancient mines move onto promenade and summit; promenade will be easier but provide slightly less quality gear. Once you can easily clear 4 man summit congrats! You have gotten to the current endgame of Early Access

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