Dungeon Defenders Wiki
Advertisement
DarkElfWarriorIconHard
PC Only Content
Information on this page is PC specific.
DarkElfWarriorIconHard

Dungeon Defenders Redux or DD1 Redux (pronounced /rēˈdəks/) is a large conversion mod of the first Dungeon Defenders video game on PC. It was created by Aydan "IHDC" Edwards and co-developed with Mischief. Both are formal members of the Community Development Team (CDT).

Redux was a semi-official continuation of DD1 content updates post-2019. It notably introduces a new difficulty level above Nightmare called Ascension which has its own mechanics, loot and progression paths; new defenses, hero abilities, weapons, pets and missions. It also re-balances the game at a macro scale, without completely undermining dominant strategies from Vanilla.

On December 14, 2020, Chromatic Games granted official Steam branch support for Redux. It is now accessed through the "Betas" tab under DD1's properties (done by right-clicking the game in one's Steam Library). Prior to Chromatic's post, download and installation instructions were handled on Redux's old Discord server.

Prior to Version 9.X of DD1 Vanilla, Ranked data automatically copied over on the first-and-only time the user connected to Ranked on Redux. This alternate branch is no longer compatible with save data from Vanilla.

Dungeon Defenders Redux Changelog[]

*Adopted from Chromatic Games' announcement in December 2020 and later patch notes. Details not found in these posts were taken from update changelogs on the Redux and "Dungeon Defenders Runs n Giveaways" Discord servers.

Heroes and Defenses[]

General[]

Apprentice/Adept[]

  • ' New Tower!' Snowball Tower
    • Costs 8 DU and 150 mana.
    • Throws a snowball that does high generic splash damage to enemies and slows them.
    • Prioritizes Wyverns and Wasps and freezes them after two hits, causing them to fall straight down.
  • Hero Damage scaling matches that of the Jester.
  • Overcharge
    • Increases the Apprentice's damage and movement speed, in addition to his Casting Rate.
    • Mana cost overtime rises faster than before, and the ability has a longer cooldown.
  • Mana Bomb cooldown reduced from 45 --> 35 seconds to match Purity Bomb.
  • New Ability! Fire Bomb
    • Costs 150 mana.
    • Casts a powerful slow-moving fireball that explodes on impact.
    • Scales with Hero Damage.

Squire/Countess[]

  • Spike Blockade
    • Increased health and damage scaling.
    • Generates 10x more aggro, causing enemies to far more likely attack it over Eternia Crystals or other defenses.
  • Bouncer Blockade
    • Increased health, damage scaling and aggro generation.
  • Harpoons and Bowling Balls travel faster.
  • Slice N Dice Blockade
    • Increased health, damage scaling and aggro generation.
    • Has a new suction mechanic:
      • Distant non-boss opponents the blockade has line-of-sight to get pulled into its blades.
      • The strength of the suction scales with Defense Damage, while its range scales with Defense Range.
  • New Tower! Mortar Turret
    • Costs 8 DU and 150 mana.
    • Shoots a powerful bomb that inflicts high generic splash damage at limited range.
  • Blood Rage and Call to Arms mana cost overtime increases at a slower rate.
  • Joust
    • Massively increased weapon damage scaling.
    • Leaves behind a fire trail; its damage scales with the Countess's Hero Damage.
  • New Ability! Blade Vortex
    • Costs 200 mana.
    • Drops a set of spinning blades that last for 10 seconds.
    • Scales with Hero Damage.

Huntress/Ranger[]

  • Proximity Mine and Inferno Traps have increased damage scaling.
  • Ethereal Spike Trap has increased damage and attack rate scaling.
  • New Tower! Oil Trap
  • Invisibility grants a speed boost (in addition to cloaking the Huntress).
  • New Ability! Dark Shot
    • Costs 200 mana.
    • Debuffs enemies hit (including bosses), causing them to temporarily take up to 40% more damage and deal 40% less damage.
    • This ability scales with Hero Damage and the user's weapon. Debuff potency caps at ~5,700 Hero Damage.

Monk/Initiate[]

  • Remote Defense Boost
    • No longer requires builders near the Initiate to buff their defenses.
    • Instead of buffing select defenses regardless of distance, this ability buffs the damage resistance, range and attack rate of ALL defenses within its radius.
  • New Ability! Fire Aura
    • Costs 150 mana.
    • Creates a fire-damaging aura around the Monk/Initiate for 5 seconds.
    • Scales with Hero Damage.

Series EV[]

  • Proton Beam
    • Increased damage scaling.
    • Now additionally slows enemies touching it.
  • Shock Beam
    • Increased damage scaling.
    • Enemies killed by the beam directly trigger explosions that damage other enemies based on the victim's max HP.
  • Physical Beam has increased health scaling and generates more aggro.
  • New Tower! SAM Unit
    • Costs 8 DU and 150 mana.
    • An anti-air turret that launches heat-seeking missiles that explode on impact, dealing splash fire damage.
    • Enemies hit by this tower have an increased chance to target it.
  • Holographic Decoy
    • Increased damage and aggro radius.
    • Now deployable while airborne.
  • New Ability! Tesla Bomb
    • Costs 100 mana.
    • A lightning projectile that bounces around before exploding similar to a grenade.
    • Scales with Hero Damage and the base damage of EV's selected weapon.

Barbarian[]

  • Now has Towers! Damage and Speed Totems
    • Both cost 8 DU and 100 mana.
    • The Damage Totem increases damage dealt by all nearby heroes by a maximum of 50%.
    • Speed Totem increases the movement speed of all heroes on the map, regardless of distance, by up to 1.3x.
    • Only one Speed Totem can be present on the map at a time.
  • Lightning Stance
    • Removed recoil damage.
    • Activation cost increased to 100 mana and cooldown to XX seconds.
    • Every normal melee swing shoots a lightning bolt that deals 50% damage.
    • Adds 35% lightning damage to Hawk Stance.
  • Siphon Stance's damage resistance penalty is less severe (in Vanilla, it makes the Barbarian take 3x damage).
  • Turtle Stance
    • Activation cost reduced to 20 mana.
    • Mana cost overtime increases at a slower rate.
  • Battle Leap and Pound have significantly improved weapon damage scaling.

Jester[]

Summoner[]

  • Archer Minion arrows travel further before they despawn.
    • This fixes an issue where their arrows cannot hit a distant target within the archer's firing range.
  • Ogre Minion mana cost reduced from 600 --> 400.
  • Flash Heal can be casted while airborne.
  • New Minion! Spider Queen
    • A crystallized version of the Spider Queen boss.
    • Costs 600 mana and 30 Minion Units, dethroning the Ogre Minion for the single most expensive defense.
    • This super-bulky minion fires webs to cripple enemies and does high melee damage. It also comes with 10% damage reduction.
  • Two New Abilities! Summon Kobold and Pet Boost
    • The former summons a Kobold to self-destruct on enemies.
    • For the duration of the latter, the Summoner's pets deal 25-450% more damage and attack 25-250% faster.
    • Both abilities scale with Hero Damage. For Pet Boost, the damage increase caps at ~6.6k, while its attack rate buff caps at ~7.1k.

Hero Costumes[]

New Maps and Gameplay Features[]

Gameplay[]

Ascension (Difficulty)

Ruthless Mode

  • A toggle similar to Hardcore that increases the loot quality multiplier (1.55x vs. 1.45x). It also raises the minimum loot quality floor.
  • There are less enemies and they move slower. However, they have more health and take reduced damage from all defenses.

Integrated (Controller) Emulator

  • A built-in emulator that allows the player to have up to four active heroes at once, without needing to plug-in physical Xbox 360 or similar video game console controllers into their PC.
  • Uses the keys F2-F8 to switch between players to control, quick add and remove alt. heroes, and toggle active split screens. The last control (F8) hides the split screens for Players 2-4 without removing them from the hosted game.
  • Can be turned off in the Options Menu.

Divine Quality

  • A quality tier above Ultimate++. Listed stat bonuses cap at 1,099 each.
  • Divine armor gives passive health regeneration to the hero and their non-minion physical defenses every 5 seconds; minions and all non-physical defenses: traps, auras and non-Physical Beams instead have their max health increased by 2.5% per Divine piece, 15% for a complete set.
    • In True Boss Rush, because ALL healing effects from equipment are disabled, Divine armor instead increases the wearer's max health for only this challenge specifically, by 2.5-15%.
  • The set bonus for Divine armor pieces is 45%, compared to the 40% of Ultimate-Ult++.

Void Element and Quality

  • A quality tier above Ultimate++. Listed stat bonuses cap at 1,099 each.
  • Void weapons inflict void elemental damage, represented by purple damage numbers.
  • Void armor gives the wearer additional Hero Damage and Defense Range, +2.5% per piece, 15% for a full set.
  • The set bonus for Void armor pieces is 45%, compared to the 40% of Ultimate-Ult++.

Tavern Updates[]

Divine and Void Forges

  • Used to craft Divine/Void Crystals into various items. The Forge Room is accessed through a door on the second floor.
  • Each Divine Crystal yields 10 high-quality armor pieces of the same material and component, with at least one being Ultimate or higher on average. These crystals are sometimes rewarded for completing any non-PvP mission on Ascension.
  • Void Crystals may be used to craft one of four void weapons or a new pet. The player may choose to have the weapon selected at random for higher overall quality. These crystals are obtained from completing missions inside the Crystalline Dimension on Ascension, (or Nightmare for the Crystalline Resurgence series).
  • The player can change their tavern's theme to any of the previous thirteen via the in-game Options Menu.
  • At the 'Diamond Forge,' Coal can exchanged for 10 billion mana per piece. Small Coal may be exchanged for 2 billion mana each.
  • True Boss Rush has its own UI. The host can choose which checkpoint to start at and convert Experience Orbs into mana. One XP Orb yields 100 billion mana.

New Maps and Challenges[]

Winter Wonderland 2

Town in the Cliffs

Halloween Spooktacular 3!

Returnia

The Great Turkey Defense

Enemies[]

Cyclops

  • A terracotta-colored Ogre variant that spawns on most maps played on Ascension.
  • Shoots a large blob of poison that releases a damaging cloud on impact.
    • Its damage overtime can be lethal to minions and heroes (even with 90% poison resistance).
  • Forward club swings can knockback heroes further away than normal.

Nutcracker

  • An enemy exclusive to Winter Wonderland 2.
  • Unaffected by Gas Traps, regardless of elemental immunity.
  • Takes 20% reduced damage from all defenses, regardless if Ruthless is enabled or not.
  • Explodes on death.

Loot Goblin

  • Found only in Mix Mode.
  • If killed, it drops many items. These can include Ascension-level holiday weapon rewards (ex: Blade of the North).

Weapons[]

*The following is only a sample of such additions.

Staff, Sword, Bow and Spear of Hearts

  • Valentine-themed weapons obtained from Sky O' Love, Temple O' Love and the new Wandering Heart challenge.
  • For the sword and spear, enemies hit may become 'charmed' which causes them to fight other enemies for the effect's duration.
  • Staff and bow give 1.10x movement speed.

Pumpkinator 2000 and Vampiric Bone Sword, Bone Spiker and Grim Reaper

  • Halloween-themed weapon rewards from Halloween Spooktacular 3!
  • Give 1.10x movement speed.
  • The three "Vampiric" weapons restore the hero's health by a small percent of the damage dealt.
    • This effect is disabled in True Boss Rush.

Spartan Sword

  • One of two weapon rewards from Town in the Cliffs.
  • Every melee swing has a 5% chance to activate "Spartan's Rage" which increases the wielder's damage by 1.25x for five seconds.
  • Gives 1.10x movement speed.

Genie's Scimitar

  • One of two weapon rewards from Town in the Cliffs.
  • Ranged attack tosses a sword that homes in on an enemy, then ricochets off of them to seek another target, even through walls.
    • Must have initial line-of-sight within a <= 180° arc to track the first enemy.
    • Each projectile can ricochet up to four times.
  • Gives 1.10x movement speed.

Unicorn Staff

  • Sometimes rewarded upon completing any mission on Ascension.
  • Projectiles pierce through terrain and smaller enemies.

Fire Axe

  • Sometimes rewarded upon completing any mission on Ascension.
  • Swings slowly, but gains a very high amount of base damage per upgrade.

Heart Breaker

  • Sometimes rewarded upon completing any mission on Ascension.
  • Gives 1.10x movement speed.

Highland Ripper

  • Sometimes rewarded upon completing any mission on Ascension.
  • A broadsword that swings faster than most weapons of its type and size.
  • Gives 1.10x movement speed.

Plane Gun

  • Sometimes rewarded upon completing any mission on Ascension.
  • Shoots long range rockets that deal generic splash damage.
  • Gives 1.10x movement speed.

Devil's Pitchfork

  • Sometimes rewarded upon completing any mission on Ascension.
  • Ranged attack tosses explosive fireballs that inflict dual elemental damage.
  • Secondary/Elemental damage stat scales with the user's Hero Damage.
  • Gives 1.10x movement speed.

Boomerang

  • Sometimes rewarded upon completing any mission on Ascension.
  • Ranged attack throws a returning projectile that pierces through all enemies.
  • Gives 1.10x movement speed.

Pets[]

*The following is only a sample of such additions.

Many new pets to earn exclusively through survivals and challenge missions.

Air Plane

  • Awarded for beating Sky City Survival.
  • Attacks in three-round bursts for high single-target damage from medium-long range.

Eye of Devastation

Pet Turkey

Baby Old One

  • Created from 40 Void Crystals.
  • Stats cap at 999 each.
  • Gives 1.25x movement speed, as well as 0.9x gravity.
  • Attacks siphon mana from enemies, similar to the Dice pet, and deal void damage.

Radioactive Diamond

  • Crafted from 22 Radioactive Coal which is exclusive to winter holiday maps on Ascension.
  • Stats cap at 999 each.
  • Gives 1.45x movement speed.

Fluffy Dragon

  • Rewarded for completing the Wandering Heart challenge.
  • Shoots bursting hearts at enemies which may turn them into temporarily allies on-hit.

Accessories[]

*The following is only a sample of such additions.

Quality of Life[]

  • Inventory sorting can be toggled between sorting by item type and by quality tier.
  • Stat modifiers previously hidden on equipment, like hero speed boosts, are displayed next to their detailed info.
  • Ultimate++, Divine and Void armor can be 'rerolled' anytime outside of combat for the cost of 4 Void Crystals.
    • This replaces the item with a random material and armor piece that has the same base quality tier, but different stats.
    • However, rerolling an item has a 40% chance to curse it instead.
  • Added an in-game option to auto-censor the display of stats on high-value items (ex: Ultimate++, Divine and Void gear).
  • The general graphics quality can be changed under the in-game options, not just within the launcher.
  • The dark outlines on 3D models (heroes, NPCs, terrain, etc.) can be toggled on/off in-game, without disabling other post-processing shaders.
  • Added percentage labels to sliders in the Options Menu.
  • Damage resistance values for wall- and blockade-type defenses are displayed under their tooltips.
  • Minions always ignore collision with other minions.
  • Dropped armor on the minimap is distinguished from other items by the its inventory icon texture.
  • Golden enemies always render over non-golden enemies on the minimap.
  • The countdown to an incoming boss fight is back up to 15 macro-seconds on some maps that had a shorter timer.
  • The hosting player can press the [N] key to speed up the boss fight countdown.
  • Vulnerable Dark Elf Mages turn golden during the Wizardry challenge.
    • This cue is only visible to the host (currently).
  • Fixed golden enemies in the Treasure Hunt challenge not appearing golden on the minimap.
  • Fixed an issue where the Wyverns can get stuck at a specific location in Uber Death From Above.

Misc.[]

Ascended Defender

General Chances and Balance Changes[]

  • Improved the visuals of many maps.
  • Armor item models have been redone.
  • Pure Strategy has been overhauled:
    • All constraints this game mode puts on players and enemies in Vanilla have been removed. Pure Strategy is now playable with Hardcore/Ruthless active, since the enemy can attack and kill heroes once again.
    • The first-wave chests contain 2,020 mana, regardless of what wave the host/hostess chooses to start on.
    • Once the first Combat Phase begins, Defense and Minion Unit capacities are set to zero; absolutely no more defenses can be summoned for the rest of the run.

True Boss Rush

Maps and Missions[]

Emerald City

    • Defense/Minion Units increased from 120 to 165.
    • Optimized game performance slightly.

Temple of Water

The Summit

  • Now has a secret puzzle on Ascension Campaign. If it is solved before the Ancient Dragon spawns, all players receive an additional accessory and a special weapon. The weapon can only be obtained once-and-only once per account.

Embermount Volcano

  • Disabled the map's initial difficulty multiplier on Survival, on all difficulty levels.
  • The airlifts push players up with greater force.

Lab Assault

  • Timers have been updated for all difficulty levels.
  • Added minimap icons for the enemy EVs.
  • On Ascension, enemy EVs warp back onto the map if they fall off.

Sky O' Love

  • Difficulty adjusted on all levels.
  • Has a secret on Ascension; if solved before the boss fight begins, everyone earns an unique accessory for completing the map.
  • Gendered mobs spawn more often, and the distance they can pair up has been increased.
  • Build Phase timers are 20 seconds longer.
  • Mega Cupid's arrows deal more damage.
  • Added Valentine-themed weapon rewards.

Pirate Invasion

  • Enemy health scaling reduced.

Temple of Polybius

  • Removed the long unskippable delays for the Kraken duo and Mischief to spawn.
  • Mischief is now immune to Proton Charge Blast. His health scaling by the number of players has been reduced to accommodate.
  • There are numerous changes to the boss fights on Ascension.

Other

Enemies[]

Weapons[]

  • Buffed/Nerfed the damage of many map-specific weapons and Monk weapons, primarily those acquired on the new Ascension difficulty level.
  • The displayed Base Damage for many weapons has been changed to better reflect their actual base damage. Weapons affected by this change include the Obsidian Sparus and Gladius.
  • Enemy weapon drops unique to shard maps now also drop on CDT maps:
  • The weapons earned from defeating the Goblin Battlecruiser on Sky City Campaign roll with negative stats far less often.
  • Backstabber's damage multiplier has been increased by 25%.
  • Ban Hammer gives 1.10x movement speed, up from 1.05x.
  • Some weapons that did not increase the wielder's movement speed before (ex: Spear of the New Kingdom) now grant a 1.10x speed bonus, but only to those acquired on Ascension.
  • Staves cannot roll above a Charge Speed Bonus of 70-75.
    • This is to prevent most players from accidentally 'overcharging' their weapon which leads to less damage-per-second, due to the kickback caused by unleashing 100%, fully-charged shots.

Pets[]

  • Rebalanced the damage of many attack pets.
  • All classic campaign Survival pets (Griffon-Dragon) have been buffed.
  • Nessie is awarded for beating the last wave of Dread Dungeon Survival.
  • Laser Robot can now fire up to five (5) laser blasts per shot.
  • Imp repairs all defenses in a radius simultaneously, instead of a single target. However, it heals each defense for less than it does in Vanilla.
  • Squire Guardian stacks with the resistance boost of Buff Beams on affected defenses.
  • Shroomite and Donkey pets can fire up to six (6) projectiles at once and their velocity can be upgraded.
  • Propeller Cat rolls with better stats more often and can now roll up to Supreme quality.
  • Rainbow Unicorn has a projectile speed modifier.
  • Mr. Owl is 15% larger, making him more competitive against his event-only rival: Mr. Crackers.
  • Deadly Striker Pet's attack speed upscales properly.
  • The Christmas Elephant now heals the hero off of its attacks.

Cowboy Monkey

  • Bananas heal for less on Ascension than NM.
  • Overall quality is now indifferent between monkeys acquired through Akatiti or Karathiki Jungle Survival.

Accessories[]

  • Annatar set (from Palantir) rolls with better stats.
  • Bow and Top Hat (from Temple O' Love) rolls with better stats.
  • The Greater Turkey Hunt's accessories roll negative stats far less often.
  • Ember set quality multipliers on NM Embermount Campaign and Survival have been increased to 1.7 to match the map's Flames of Rebirth challenge.
  • Magic Hat accessory renders bigger by default.

Development[]

Redux was first conceived by IHDC long before he joined the CDT. Motivated by not wanting the game to die off, Aydan decided to bring the project to life while working on Update 7 in 2019. In their post on the Dungeon Defenders forums website, he describes the mod as (originally): "... a different version of Dungeon Defenders (1) that I wanted to play."

In particular, the developers found the Lightning Tower and Wheel O' Fortuna overpowered in Vanilla DD1. Discord user Moose explains that LTs have dominated the "tower meta" ever since they were massively buffed by the CDT. Their main purpose is to kill 'trash mobs,' but the mage tower also attracts Ogres which has become a crucial mechanic to utilize on numerous endgame maps. Lightning Towers were experimentally nerfed in Redux to deal half damage to Ogres; this change was later reverted after playtesting. IHDC expresses nerfing the Wheel O' Fortuna a very difficult decision to make. Numerous towers were buffed to compensate. The team also long considered patching the tower stacking quirk, though ultimately went with keeping it in the game. In their Discord comment on November 5, 2021, Scrub paraphrases IHDC's final verdict to not remove stacking and avoid community backlash.

During a livestream from MrJuicebags in August 2020, IHDC explained some of Redux's general design principles. One revolves around loss aversion in regards to balance changes. More useless things are buffed than the amount of good things nerfed, whether it be heroes, defenses or items.

On September 15, 2022, Chromatic announced future Vanilla/Live DD1 development, and the first update in nearly three years was officially released on October 6. Some of Redux's features were ported to Vanilla, including the integrated emulator and item censoring option. Redux development had been shelved months prior. It is assumed that the mod will no longer be updated.

Mentioned Features[]

Main Article: Redux/Mentioned Features

User Suggestions[]

Main Article: Redux/User Suggestions

The Redux staff primarily viewed player/user suggestions that were posted on the DDRnG Discord server.

Reception[]

While no known articles from professional journalists exist, DD1 Redux was well-received by the Dungeon Defenders community. Some players argue that this is what Awakened should have been.

However, some are repelled by its lack of public lobbies vs. Vanilla, weaker in-game economy, an endgame-only stigma, or refuse to play Redux because it is a mod. The increased power ceiling in Redux also devalues numerous event items and the Ultimate++ gear veterans have spent years amassing.


Legacy[]

In 2021, Chromatic Games hired Redux creator IHDC into a "game design" position with no further details shared publicly. His experience developing Redux might have caught the studio's attention, but this is unconfirmed. Neither IHDC or Chromatic have explicitly disclosed why or how he was hired or what projects the new employee was assigned to, apart from Dungeon Defenders II updates. As of March 2024, he is the current lead developer of DD2.

Pet Boost was added to the Outcast Summoner's abilities in Awakened, replacing Phase Shift.

The new Dungeon Defenders Team (DDT) at Chromatic frequently discusses the pros and cons of Redux internally.

Notes and Tips[]

Technical[]

  • Redux does not automatically come with its own .ini configs patched to prevent excessive texture compression/downscaling in-game.
    • A "FixedIni" zip file for Redux can be downloaded off of IHDC's pinned comment in "redux-general" on DDRnG—or >>here<<.
  • It is possible to have both Vanilla and Redux installed on the same PC:
    • This is doable by copying the former game's folder to a non-Steam location before installing Redux.
  • None of the new towers or hero abilities have an assigned hotkey by default.
    • If you want to bind them (or anything else from your hero's Action Wheel), move your mouse cursor over an action, then press-and-hold a number key from 0-9 to assign the defense/ability to that number.

Gameplay[]

  • Ogres and/or Cyclopes can spawn on the first wave of Ascension missions, with HP in the multi-millions. Bring at least one Jester or any DPS hero to deal with them.
  • Like Ogres, Cyclopes will never attack heroes, defenses or Eternia Crystals directly if they are blocking their path to a different hero or defense they have aggro on.

Gallery[]

Trivia[]

  • The Ascension difficulty level used to be called "Insanity." Enemies were colored cobalt blue instead of white (light gray on the minimap).
  • "Iron Man" was a placeholder name for Ruthless Mode.
  • In pre-release test builds, Harbingers (which are normally exclusive to Lost Quests) used to spawn during the Sky City boss fight on Ascension.
  • The SAM Unit is likely named after real-life surface-to-air missiles which were developed during World War II.
  • Some of the new maps and challenges in Redux released via Steam Workshop beforehand. A few of them have been the subject of community-held events through the Vanilla game:

References[]

Advertisement