Our first major update is here! As you begin a new journey in the afterlife, seeking Elysium through the Crossroads, you discover the gates of the Underworld are sealed! The answer may be hidden within Athena’s Temple, but be warned, Spartan! In the Gods' mysterious absence, her shrine has been overrun by her enemies…

“Sisters of the Deep” asks you to start from a new save to enjoy improvements from very early gameplay objectives to the new end of our current early access content. For a look at the major feature additions, please enjoy this content trailer:

Our first major update begins to address our own, original early access goals, but also to address the feedback we received from our players! You’ll find new enemies that draw from the Greek myths, new weapons inspired by the Gods, ease on new players, yet more depth of challenge and reward as players progress, and more!

”Sisters of the Deep” brings our first raid experience against the game’s first major bosses, the Gorgon Sisters. Take on each sister in a multi-stage fight in the instanced Temple of Athena! And even beyond the Temple and the Dark Forest, you’ll find the new Satyr enemy type and more fauna to defeat on the Crossroads.

With greater challenge, comes greater reward! Overcoming the dangers of Athena’s Temple will earn you new powerful relics, from unique items once carried by creatures of myth, to a new inlay system to empower your gear. These items come alongside a new armor set to the Armory, plus a brand new facility, the Hephaestus Forge where you weld together the Gods' very own weapons.

In our quest to make better quests, we’re overhauling the major shrine objectives on the Crossroads and this update starts with revisions to the first four shrines: Apollo, Hephaestus, and Ares, adding puzzles and new challenges across the Dark Forest, each which drive you closer to the raid on Athena’s Temple! Plus! The first iteration of fishing! Rejoice! No more wolf hearts tonight.

Besides the adjustments to early tutorial objectives, which includes movement ability based challenges to the Places of Power, new Defiers should find their way on the Crossroads with more guidance, now in the form of new experience pop-ups and the new player Compendium! With the Compendium, you can compile and access information you discover on your odyssey!

And this update is only the beginning! These changes offer fun, new content and lay significant groundwork for our future updates, but there’s much we still intend to add and improve upon, from both the original release content and new content we’ve added with Sisters of the Deep. We’re excited to continue expanding, and community feedback has been a huge part of this process. Thanks for helping us make this happen, and we hope you all are excited to continue this journey on our 1.0 Roadmap!

As with release, please track and report your bugs or feedback on Feature Up-vote[dawnofdefiance.featureupvote.com]! This is the most reliable way for our team to assess community alignment on content and mechanics, so please use it! We also regularly compile the bug reports from there. You can also go to our Discord[discord.gg] to ask for support, discuss content, or band together with other defiant Spartans!

Reminder! This update is likely to cause significant issues with old saves. The main menu should prevent you from accessing old saves, but if you attempt to bypass this method and launch an old world, you are likely to experience a variety of gameplay issues, if not frequent crashes.

FEATURE ADDITIONS:

•  New Raid Experience in a new instanced location, the Temple of Athena

• New Mythic Enemies, including:

  • Three New Bosses: The Gorgon Sisters

  • Satyr Enemy Type (in three variants)

• New Fauna

  • Chicken/Rooster

  • Mallard

  • Leopard

  • Brown Bear

• New Inlays

  • Crystals

  • Shards

• New Legendary Items

  • Athena’s Solarium

  • Ares' Impetum

  • Apollo’s Golden Bow

• New Unique Weapons

  • Euryale’s Diresong

  • Stheno’s Fulgur

  • Seriph’s Judgement

• New Forged Level Maces (2)

• New Gear - Imperator Armor Set

• New Facility - Hephaestus' Forge

• New Compendium for archiving player discoveries and providing information.

• Fishing and fishing consumables!

  • 9 Fish to Catch!

• New Taxidermy & Decor to reflect new fauna and enemies

• New Quests and Puzzles in a significant overhaul to four shrines:

  • Athena

  • Ares

  • Apollo

  • Hephaestus

IMPROVEMENTS:

• Expansion of the Dark Forest biome

• Narrative and voiceover alignments with the game’s overall planned story arc

• Improvements to Veilpoint Places of Power to include movement ability-based challenges

• Improved tutorialization, including:

  • Revised objectives for nearly all tutorial quests

  • New player experience pop-ups

• Updates to existing UI elements, including:

  • Character Screen

  • Workbenches

  • Chest containers

  • Merchant buy/sell tab

  • Skill icons

• Spit is now built separate from a fire and can be added to existing campfires.

• Buildable unlocks are no longer tied to the current hammer tier

  • Any hammer can craft any buildable but better hammers still decay slower and offer better glide stamina reduction

  • Buildable recipes are all unlocked via quests and merchants

• Refinery interactions now include a radial wheel to select specific items

• Loot emits VFX light for visibility

• Listen servers now display list of players and their latency

• Elemental arrows are now reserved for the Golden Bow

• Temporary removal of certain shrine objectives and shrine rewards in preparation for future improvements

  • This includes the Trident reward which will return with more abilities in a later update

• Improved World setup for better Ruleset visibility

• Added the stalk behavior for aggressive fauna

  • Aggressive fauna now stalk players that glide at low height

• Adjusted consistency of elemental arrows

• Adding player hair in preparation for character creator

BUG FIXES:

• Character

  •  Switching from bow to shield no longer keeps the bow stance

  • Fixed camera issues and falling logs

  • Fixed bow “resetting” when equipping torso armor

  • Fixed situation where player would re-enter relaxed state when bow is equipped

  • Quick transferring hotbar items when in a chest should now transfer to chest

  • Improved bow always entering relaxed state when gliding

  • Players can “hit” friendly players and see the impact VFX

  • Fixed beard culling at very short distances

  • Character can no longer jump higher after dodge roll

  • Reduced likelihood that swapping consumables will keep player in the last known weaponset

  • Reduced stuck states when performing Downward strike

• Construction

  • Taxidermy grass no longer culls

  • Reduced flicker of grass near buildables

  • Smelter does not emit fire vfx when being placed

  • Fixed the label of Doorway Small when the doorway style is selected

  • Reduced structure buildables snapping to chests

  • Improved stone corner steps snap points

  • Removed hunting lures

• Combat/AI

  • Fixed aggressive fauna not retargeting player after being airborne

  • Reduced wolf being stuck in alert state while pursuing player

  • Fixed wolf getting stuck in alert tree

  • Fixed wolves attacking rapidly

  • Fixed enemies range attacking through trees

  • Gorgons no longer deal damage when Enemy Damage world setting is 0

    • Remaining problems persist

  • Fixed issues with patrol soldiers on Island 1

  • Player cannot perfect parry Captain’s Shout

  • Addressed Gorgon teleport vfx not playing for listen server clients

  • SFX now plays when blocking wolf with shield

  • Lesser boars no longer perform super charged attacks.

    • They can still stagger the player

    • Player can now block boar stagger attacks

• World

  • Fixed statues' oversized collision for Hermes and Zeus

  • Added collision to statues ahead of mountain biome

  • Fixed select gold veins being unmineable

• Misc

  • Added audio differentiator for positive and negative paint

  • Enemy health bars are more persistent

  • Quest tracking stays on screen longer

  • Added pop-up to indicate forge restored equipment

  • Simple Spear and Simple Shield recipe chests have been swapped

  • Improved formatting and styling of items within the merchant buy tab

  • Server settings no longer change when switching between host and singleplayer

    • Multiplayer sessions now default to “Private”

  • Messaging for insufficient tools improved

  • Fixed Silver Guardsmen tint misspelling

  • ESC cancels quit game option

  • Server info is now separated from world description

  • All stone nodes now properly display tool requirements

  • Stone nodes mention “stone” in tool requirements

  • Sneak vignette does not persist on map tab

  • Fixed character tab highlighting when shortcut keys are used to access other tabs

  • Fixed consumables slots not resetting to default

  • Fixed mislabel of Primitive Axe

  • When resetting Rulesets, confirmation button has been moved

  • Fixed inconsistencies with recipe listings

Today we begin the week long countdown until the gates of Athena's Temple will be opened and our honorable Defiers may rise to fight the Sisters of the Deep!

Prepare yourselves, Spartans.
If you wish to read more about what to expect on June 17, 2025, when our first major update "Sisters of the Deep" will go live, please make sure to read our previous news, including a look at the environment art behind the new raid location and a sneak peak at the map changes, bosses, and weapons. We'll have a more extensive break down of all changes on the 17th, highlighting new features like the Compendium, Fishing, etc, as well as things we've removed to make room for the new objectives.

Reminder, this update is more than likely to break your old saves, so if you wish to revisit and grab snapshots of your current builds, now is the time to do so. Read more about this here.

As you wait to challenge the Gorgon Sisters, join our community in the Discord.[discord.gg]
See you next week.

-- Traega Team