Overview
In this guide I’ll be showing you the path from level 1 all the way up to a fully fledged Ultimate Defender!
Introduction
PATCH 1.1 NOTICE
I will update this guide with the new 1.1 Patch Content once I’m more familiar with it and have figured out a route to take! Until then feel free to join me live over at my Twitch channel so we can learn together!
Heyoo! Welcome to my guide on DD:A. There’s going to be a lot of information in here that I hope is helpful to you in some way. While I’m not the best at writing or properly structuring these things, I’ll at least be able to get the information into your hands. I won’t have specific values on everything, and some of this information may not be the /best/ since I have yet to test everything but I will update this as we go!
Feel Free to come say hi or ask any questions you may have in my live stream!
Twitch.tv/Miniishadow
Progression: 1-70
When starting Dungeon Defenders I personally suggest that you just take your time and fully enjoy the early game as you’ll only get to experience that feeling once. Do some campaign playthroughs, see how far you can get in survival on your favourite maps and try out some challenges! Once you’re done with all that here is my personal route through the early game. A few things to note first:
–Make sure you’re playing on Hardcore! You get better loot and more EXP!
–Most of your stats are going to come from your skill points and not your loot until after level 70
–Levelling up a weapon for DPS is VERY helpful. I personally do this two or three times from levels 1-70.
–Builder bonus: If you primarily use Apprentice Towers, you can actively play him through the combat phase and build him for towers but level up your weapon for DPS, this way you’re gaining the builder bonus along with doing hero damage!(Goes for any hero)
–EXP Modifiers
Strength in Numbers: 10% per player.
Unbreakable (25%):Build at least 1 tower, have NONE of your built towers get destroyed.
Tactician (33%): Have at least 5 different towers built.
Untouchable (33%): Have the core take no damage during the wave.
1. Full campaign clear on Medium Hardcore
Doing a full clear on Medium Hardcore wont give you much of a challenge through the campaign but once you’ve completed summit you’ll be around level 35~
OR
1.2. Full Campaign clear on Hard Hardcore
If you’re looking for more of a challenge you can start the campaign on Hard instead, it’ll be a bit more challenging and reward you with more exp and better loot.
2. Summit Campaign Spam
After your campaign clear on either medium or hard, and are looking for some of the best EXP at this stage of the game then you’ll want to farm Summit Campaign on the hardest difficulty you can clear. You may have to do medium for a few more levels but if you can handle hard do that until level 60. Once you’re level 60 you’ll have the stats to start doing Insane Summit until 70.
Progression: 70-83
Congrats on hitting 70! You’ve made it to the mid game and have unlocked Nightmare. Again I’d suggest just having fun and exploring the new difficulty at your own pace, try and do a full campaign clear, do some challenges and test your build on your favourite maps on survival. Once you’re done that and want to get into the grind to 83 you’ll want to follow this path:
1. Clear Deeper wells on Campaign
An orgre comes out on wave 1, what I like to do is place a DST(Deadly Strike Tower) behind the core so it can target all four lanes, then I’ll DPS the small mobs and kite the ogre while the DST kills it. On wave 2 I’ll throw up some walls and use the same method on the ogres. Wave 3 I’ll put up my Flame bursts and strength drain/ensnare auras.
2. Clear Ancient Mines on Campaign
This map is SIGNIFICANTLY easier then Deeper Wells, a simple set up with squire blockades, Flame Bursts, and monk auras should do the trick.
3. Spam NMHC Ancient Mines Survival
This is where the real grind from 70-83 begins. If you use the build I linked, you’ll be able to get really far with very little gear. You should be able to clear wave 14 with just 200 power and 150 defence rate. Make sure to read the description of the build as it will help you set it up properly!
-Farm wave 14 pet rocks on all of your builders, don’t put one on your combat phase hero as the movement speed penalty will get you killed
-You’ll have to repair the walls during the combat phase
-Feel free to dump 20-40M into an upgrade on your apprentice as this is the stage of the game where upgrades are extremely beneficial and you’ll be making a decent amount of gold
-Once you can clear wave 25, take legendary loot off your loot filter until waves 23+ eliminating a lot of your inventory management! Eventually you can take them off permanently and focus on Mythics/Transcendence
-For a more focused EXP run you can start at wave 20
4. NMHC Summit Campaign
-The EXP from here will be amazing, but the real focus is trying to get a level 70+ Speedy Chromatic Gemstone
-Once you obtain it, upgrade the rate(first stat) as much as possible along with how many towers it can effect(second stat).
5. NMHC Survival Promenade
-Once you have fully upgraded mythic gear from NMHC Ancient Mines and you have a level 70+ speedy gemstone you can skip all the way to NMHC Survival Promenade
-This will give you better EXP and loot
-Clearing Waves 20-25 is probably the fastest/easiest EXP to get at this stage of the game
Spider:
-They drop from above all over the map.
-They can jump at you from a distance
-If you get hit by their web attack your movement speed and attack speed will be slowed, same goes for your towers!
-Can’t hit cores
-While they can drop in numbers, they’re fairly squishy
Counters:
-Darkness Traps
-Don’t place towers near the cores and they’ll walk to the core and afk, if you leave an explosive behind for them they’ll be taken care of!
Sharken:
-They spawn from doors
-Their charge attack is one of the more dangerous things in the game. They will start charging up from a distance then sprint down the lane pushing any defences out of the way.
Counters:
-Gas Traps! Even mid charge a gas trap will stop a sharken dead in his tracks
-Spawn camping doors with a wall, this will give 0 room for the sharken to actually charge, he’ll come out of the door and start melee attacking instead!
– Shock Beams: They will stop a poison sharken mid charge!
Djinn:
-They can buff minion making them gold giving them more HP and deal more damage
-They can fly up to your towers and destroy them(red beam)
-Shoots a projectile with some knock back
Counters:
Gas Traps at spawn doors
DST(Deadly Striker Tower from the Apprentice)
GoblinCopter:
-Flies in, in their own lanes
-Drops off an ogre at a specific location every time
-Once the ogre has been dropped off the copter will seek you or your defences out and destroy them
Counters:
-Kill them as they spawn dropping the ogre into the void instantly killing it
-DST
-In some maps you can place either an ensnare or gas trap to buy your DST’s more time to kill them
Progression: 83-90
This is the late game boys, almost there. You’ve unlocked Massacre and there’s only a few things you gotta do to make it a more enjoyable experience.
-The best loot for campaign drops from killing Sirens or doing Monsterfest
-The Glitterhelm challenge Monsterfest was my personal favourite location to grind for loot as I was getting regular 286 upgrade armour pieces
-Gas + Inferno + Ensnare + Electric Aura + Strength Drain + Enrage + Squire Blockade in each lane will be the go to build for Massacre. You’ll have to DPS Goblin Copters, Djinn, and ogres.
1. Obtain either a pet Monkey King or Dragon
I personally prefer the Dragon over the Monkey King but either will work.
-NMHC Survival Endless Spires: Monkey King(Single Target)
60+ upgrades will be sufficient, but if you want to grind for a 80+ Upgrade one that’s fine too! Upgrade the pets damage and attack rate.
-NMHC Survival Summit: Dragon(AOE)
60+ Upgrades will be sufficient, but if you want to grind for a 80+ Upgrade one that’s fine too! Upgrade the pets damage, attack rate, and projectiles
3 Projectiles (sometimes you can’t upgrade the amount of projectiles)
0.40 Attack Rate (sometimes you can’t upgrade the attack speed)
2. Equip a full set of Vitality/Attack gear + Your new pet on a Squire
The squire has crazy HP scaling in Massacre, by simply equipping armour with Vitality and attack you’ll have 300K+ HP along with buffing your pet damage as it also scales off of your attack stat, you can also use blood boil to boost its damage even further! The main goal here is holding right click to block what feels like 99% of any incoming damage allowing you to face tank just about everything while your pet DPS’s everything down as pets have awesome damage scaling in Massacre. While this is far from the best DPS in the game it’s a very easy to obtain entry level to get into Massacre.
3. Clear Campaign up until Alchemical Laboratory
The loot from this map will be leaps and bounds ahead of any other pieces you’ve obtained up until this point, along with the side bonus of dropping the best weapon for each hero for this stage of the game! I’d highly recommend farming this map for a while. If you get stuck on Lava Mines, try and farm Ancient Mine Sirens for some better loot before trying to progress.
4. Progress towards Clearing Summit
Once you’ve obtained some nice sets of 180+ upgrade loot you should have a more smooth experience clearing Massacre. Some maps are A LOT harder then others.
5. MassHC Summit
This map could use a whole guide on it’s own. It requires you to hero DPS ogres, Copters, Djinn, while fighting the Dragon at the same time, it really feels like a raid boss! I really enjoy this fight and it’s been some of my favourite experiences playing Dungeon Defenders. Here is my personal Favourite build by Ayum!
6. Glitterhelm Campaign
You can farm this map until level 90 while obtaining good armour and decent EXP.
7. Leveling
If you’re aiming to focus on EXP then here are my recommended options:
1. NMHC Waves 20 to 25 Prom – This takes about 20 minutes and rewards 60-70M with 4 players.
2. Treasure Hunt Challenge(Summit) – This requires a lot more focus and coordination, it also has a hefty requirement of completing Summit.
3. MassHC Campaign Glitterhelm – I’m not sure on the EXP values but I’ve heard it’s really good as well, and the runs aren’t too long.
4. Massacre HC Survival – Just about any map you run on survival is going to give you a crazy amount of exp. For example, waves 23-25 MassHC Glitterhelm give 490M EXP and take about 20 minutes.
Siren:
– Tanky
– Spawns with a random elemental resistance including physical
– Any monsters that touch her bubble gain this resistance permanently
– Drops best loot
– Shoots heavy hitting projectile
– Towers cannot target her
– She will leave after a while of not being hit by any hero Damage
Counters:
-Having a second player using a different damage type then yourself(One with physical one with Electric)
-Different forms of damage(Electric aura and Inferno Traps)
-Two different forms of CC(Gas Traps and Enrage Auras)
End Game / 1.1 Update / Massacre Survival
Congrats! We’ve finally made it to the end game boys! Now we get farm our behinds off doing MassHC Survival!
-There are now Survival Bosses! They only appear on Alch Labs, Throne Room, And Summit.
-These bosses have a 100% drop chance for a unique boss weapon depending on what hero you open the chest with, along with a random wave 25 pet of that act. So yes, you can get a wave 25 Mista Mine by clearing wave 25 Alch Labs, or a wave 25 Dragon from Summit 🙂
-Summit theoretically drops the best weapons for each hero
-The Protean Blaster(Throne Rooms/Goblin Mech) for the huntress has the HIGHEST base damage in the game making it the best weapon to use for abilities.
– The Protean Slicer(Throne Rooms/Gobline Mech) for the squire has the HIGHEST base damage for the squire making it the best weapon to use for a circular slice build.
1. MassHC Alch Labs Campaign
You’ll be clearing this for the Huntress weapon, the Demon Horn.
OR
2 MassHC Campaign Summit
You’ll be clearing this for the Huntress weapon, the Draconic Spitfire
Or for the monks weapon with 7 projectiles.
3. MassHC Alch Labs
This is by far the easiest act 1 map to clear. You should have roughly 4K power and 2K rate before attempting this, but you may be able to get by with lower stats, I haven’t fully tested it and would love some feedback on these numbers. I’ll have a link for my build along with instructions in there to help with clearing this. Once you can clear it I’d highly recommend staying here until you have like 6K power and 3K rate. Also, once you get a steambot pet with 200-300+ upgrades, you can try your hand at face tanking the boss with the squire and letting your steam bot do all the work!
4. Update Squire Gear
Head over to my squire section of the guide and try to get your squire those items. The campaign Protean Slicer will do your wonders until you can get the survival version.
Campaign/Survival Boss Drops
Demon Lord
Huntress: Demon Horns
Apprentice: Ragnarok
Squire: Demon Carver
Monk: Furnace Poker
Survival Pets: Griffon, Mista Mine, Steam Bot, Propeller Cat, Paddleball
Goblin Mech
Huntress: Protean Blaster
Apprentice: Protean Caster
Squire: Protean Slicer
Monk: Protean Partisan
Survival Pets: Little Wizard, Etherian, Genie, Yellow Ramster, Monkey King, Obsidian
Dragon
Huntress: Draconic Spitfire
Apprentice: Crystalline Focuser
Squire: Dragontemper
Monk: Draketooth
Survival Pets: Ramster, Fairy, Hand, Dragon, Mega Chicken, Lil’ Bomber, Speedy/Powerful/Striking/Sturdy Gemtones
Map Builds
[link] [link] [link] [link] [link]Monk Guide
Massacre Hero DPS
Weapon: DrakeTooth
-0.33 Attack Speed
-x7 projectiles
-Fire Element (Max out the elemental damage)
Armour:
-Vitality(Once you’re at the soft cap on boost you can put the rest into Vitality)
-Boost(You can hit the soft cap at 1400 boost passively with good gear)
-25% Armour (Not 25 points into armour, but 25% armour value on all 4 pieces will get your the armour cap of 75%)
-Attack?(Elemental damage doesn’t scale off of attack so you don’t need any! :D)
Pet:
Genie(Allows you to maintain hero boost permanently)
With this set up you’ll hit the soft cap of Monk boost tripling your damage allowing you to do 7x110K damage with a decent weapon and your permanent hero boost active thanks to your Genie.
Pros:
-Using an elemental weapon allows you to DPS physical Sirens that your teammates cannot.
-Elemental Damage doesn’t scale off of attack, it’s just a flat value
-Since you don’t need attack you can put the rest of your point into Vitality after reaching the soft cap on boost allowing you to be a very tanky boy. It’s possible to reach up to over 400K HP!
-Permanent hero boost tripling yours and your teammates damage
-Very mobile
-Decent Damage still while being a support
Cons:
Can’t kill fire immune enemies forcing you to either rely on towers or your team, a small price to pay for how good this build is!
Builder stats
Fortitude: Have enough HP for your auras to survive the wave, anymore is a waste.
Range: Make sure your auras have enough range to cover the distance you need
Rate: If you’re not using electric auras then you don’t need damage rate, if you are then make it exactly half of your power for the most effectiveness.
Power: Put the remaining points into power as it will increase the slow % on ensnares, the Damage reduction on Strength drains, and the damage on Electric auras.
Squire Guide
Hero DPS
Weapon: Protean Slicer
Armour
-Vitality: You don’t need to put any points into Vitality because the amount you’ll get passively is enough
-Attack: Put the rest of your points into attack once each piece is at 25% armour
-Boost: This will boost your blood boil ability increasing your damage and pet damage.
-Skill: This will increase your circular slice damage, pairs REALLY well with blood boil.
-Armour 25%
Pet
Steam Robot: With this pet + Blood Boil your pet will be doing over 1M AOE per tick at 0.16 rate
Genie: This will give you a permanent blood boil + 1 circular slice per genie refund.
Builder Stats
Unfortunately the squires only building use was blockades, and while his 3DU blockade has more HP than EV’s 3 DU wall, her wall covers more ground, so his only building use was replaced by her pretty much. His DPS towers are also very bad compared to the apprentice, he definitely could use some love.
Huntress Guide
Hero DPS
Weapon
Massacre: Draconic Spitfire
Easy-NM: Minigun or Paintball gun with the highest amount of upgrades
Armour
Vitality
Attack
Boost
25% Armour
Pet
Genie(Will allow you to have your boost on permanently)
Cat(Will make you more bursty)
Obsidian(If there’s another cat user, you can use this to debuff the boss)
This build paired with a monk boost will allow you to achieve the highest hero DPS in the game.
Pros
– Highest Hero DPS in the game
– When using a genie you’re extremely mobile allowing you to jump all over the map
Cons
– A little squishy
Builder Stats
Fortitude: Have enough so your traps don’t die during the wave, anymore is a waste
Range: have enough range to cover the distance you need
Rate: If you’re not using explosive/infernos then it doesn’t really matter as Gas/Darkness require very little rate to be useful. Cap at 1500-2000 and put the rest into power depending on your stats.
Power: Isn’t needed for gas or darkness, if you’re using explosive and infernos then keep it above rate.
Apprentice Guide
Hero DPS
I haven’t explored a Massacre DPS Apprentice yet but in the early game his right click is amazing AOE.
Defense Stats
Fortitude: You don’t need to put any points into this as your towers shouldn’t be getting hit
Range: 750-800 is all you need for NM content
Rate: Keep it around 200 points under your power until 1500, then put the rest into power until the late game where you can do something like 2600 rate and 4000 power.
Examples:
70 rate / 90 power
150 rate / 200 power
300 rate / 500 power
900 rate / 1100 power
Power: I kind of piled this into rate as well 😛
Pets:
Speedy Chromatic Gemstone(if actively playing for builder bonus and stacking towers)
Rock
Giraffe
Series EVA
Hero DPS
Weapon:
Draconic Spitfire
Protean Blaster
Armour:
Vitality
Attack
Boost
Armour 25% per piece
Builder Stats
Fortitude: Have an EV specifically for Fort, similar to a waller squire
Range: You’ll get this passively from gear, no need to focus on it
Rate: You’ll get this passively from gear, no need to focus on it
Power: Put all your points into power for the Buff Beam
Proton Beam: Really low damage
Blocking Field: Very versatile wall. A squire blockade has more HP then a 3DU Blocking Field but the field covers more ground.
Reflect Field: Place these on your Fort EVA, extremely useful for protecting your towers from ranged attacks
Shock Beam: The damage on these is pretty nice but they’re used for their CC affect. They can stop poison immune sharkens in their tracks. They’re a back up for your gas traps for when a poison Siren comes out.
Overclock Beam: This scales off of every stat but power is the most important one IMO
Pets
I’ll list some useful pets in this location along with a brief explanation of why they’re useful
Cat
Location: Alchemical Laboratory
Wave: 15
Look for: 90%+ Boost with 3 targets fully upgraded. They can reach up to 120%~ boost
Great DPS pet!
Dragon
Location: The Summit
Wave: 15
Look for: 80+ Upgrades / 3 projectiles / 0.40 rate full upgraded
Throw this on a blocking squire and watch everything die on Massacre
Monkey King
Location: Endless Spires
Wave: 15
Look for: 80+ Upgrades
Single Target DPS pet for the Squire
Genie
Location: Ramparts
Wave: 15
Look for: Doesn’t really matter, you can only put around 16 points into the mana return
Allows you to maintain either the monk boost or huntress boost permanently
Mr Mine(rock)
Location: Ancient Mines
Wave: 15
Look for: High Builder Stats
This is a great starter pet for your builders, but will be replaced with a Giraffe once you can get them!
Giraffe on a Treadmill
Location: Any map
Wave: 25
Look for: High builder stats
Best builder pet in the game
Speedy/Powerful Chromatic Gemstone
Location: The Summit(Campaign)
Wave: 5
Look for: Level 70 with 4 targets fully upgraded
Amazing pets for boosting your tower DPS, if playing with a friend you can have a apprentice use the speedy and using their C buff giving your towers insane fire rate and have your friend play a monk using their tower boost and powerful gemstone increasing the tower damage by a ton. It’s an amazing combo for stacking DST’s.
Tips and Tricks
You Can interact with the aura symbols to repair and upgrade them
Try and use the movement speed increasing abilities from the monk, squire, and huntress to deal with those building timers!
You can press T for the overhead building mode, while repairing in the overhead few your cursor will automatically move to the next thing that needs to be repaired
Striking Gemstones work on Auras and traps allowing you to make some BIG BOYS.
FAQ
Q. EXP Modifiers?
A.
Strength in Numbers: 10% per player.
Unbreakable (25%):Build at least 1 tower, have NONE of your built towers get destroyed.
Tactician (33%): Have at least 5 different towers built.
Untouchable (33%): Have the core take no damage during the wave.
Q. When to Upgrade Gear
A. While progressing through the campaign for the first time I only upgrade a weapon when I need more DPS, I wait until I hit Nightmare before I start upgrading any armour for builder stats. Dumping around 20-40M into each armour piece for more builder stats will help you reach those higher waves on survival a lot easier allowing you to make more money and find better loot!
Q. Armour types for each hero?
A. It doesn’t really matter which set you put on which hero as long as they’re wearing a full set for those sweet 40% bonus
Q. Giraffe vs Rock
A. The Giraffe as better stats then the rock without the movement speed penalty but the rock is a much easier to obtain builder pet early game. Once you can farm NMHC Survival Giraffes replace those rocks!
Q. Darkness Traps
A. They make enemies unable to target anything except for Ogres and Dark Elves
Q. Ensnares VS Gas Traps
A. Gas traps are better for spawn camping with a blockades but ensnares are better if you’re using the whole range of them because they slow down Dark Elves and Ogres where Gas Traps have no effect on them.
Q. Best loot farm?
A. Glitterhelm MassHC Survival
Q. Best Exp?
A. MassHC Summit