Dawn of Defiance news & patch notes

Hello Spartans! Since we will not be releasing a content update in June, I am here instead with some community news! Watch the video below with me (Monday!) for a run down of some development progress in May and a look at some possible game features we're investigating! We continue to work towards the previously announced "Hounds of Zeus" updates. if you would like a recap of the last content update, make sure to check out our patch notes from last month: Wandering Spartans & Raid Improvements 0.4.0.0.

Steam Reviews

Special thank you to all the players who have been commenting & leaving feedback across all of our social platforms, including those featured in the video above. If you haven't yet, we would like to invite you to write a Steam Review, good or bad. The input is super valuable to our team, as it directs our focus towards the most important areas of our open development. I will continue compiling the common thoughts I see for my other team members to discuss!

Sneak Peak at Upcoming Content:

Soldier Camps & the Captain Commander

A few of you pointed out the incomplete points of interest on the map! So what are those? These are works-in-progress for new enemy camps which we couldn't quite polish in time for 0.4.0.0. They WILL be included in the next content update, and their defining feature will be the new enemy tier: the Captain Commander. Concept art for him is above, with finalized camp art below!

Cooking Overhaul

Among the feedback I've seen, I know many of you are excited for improvements to cooking. That single meat spit is overdue for an upgrade :D We're excited to start showing some of the additions that will come to the cooking experience. Pictured below is the new cooking refinery bench and cooking tools, which will be added alongside an improved campfire, a new oven facility, new recipes, and some design changes, such as how consumables interact with weather debuffs.

Guess the Concept Art

There is another mythic enemy on the way, this time to the Mountain Biome. I would like to invite you to our Twitter or Discord posts to vote on which of the following myths do you think is pictured in the concept art fragments below... a harpy, centaur, lycan, hydra?? If you don't like socials, then come to the comment section!

Notable Feedback

Also discussed in the video is assorted feedback that I see frequently. Fast Travel was added recently to our roadmap graphic! Expect an iteration of that by 1.0! As for the often requested Freecam, Improved Controller Support, and Expanded Rulesets, we are investigating the extent we could implement and offer these at 1.0, although I cannot promise anything specific yet. If you have strong opinions on any of the above, please do tell!

Design Focus for 2026

Lastly, to share some words from our game director:

Moving forward, we are shifting our design mentality to lean more heavily into our Adventure gameplay, while still maintaining our OWSC as the foundation of the experience. What this means for our player experience is that we will focus less on forcing players to decipher our core gameplay mechanics on their own, and instead provide clearer guidance, so players can get into the fun faster. This includes improvements to UI, clearer messaging, deeper compendium support, map markers, and overall gameplay readability. Importantly, this is not a departure from our OWSC roots. Those systems remain a core pillar of the game. Rather, this pivot is more about how we present and support the experience. Our existing raid-based golden path was intentionally designed to reinforce the sense of adventure we wanted players to feel. This pivot mainly focuses on our in-game messaging and mentality around player experience.

Thank you as always for joining us in Early Access!

You should see a hotfix before our next content update to add a construction zone over the Meteora and the mountain biome. This will be much like the previous one included over the desert to simply indicate where your builds might be affected by upcoming geographical changes.

Until then! -- Traega Monday!

• Added Calming the Storm quest (triggers when completing Poseidon’s quest, A Seal of Abandonment) to address confusion over the ongoing weather storm.

  • This quest guides you to use the pre-existing weather facility "Demeter's Kythera," unlocked during the Temple of Poseidon questline.

  • See "Known Issues."

• Fixed an issue where a Cooking Spit could get stuck “Cooking In Progress”

  • Existing broken assets need to be rebuilt

• Fixed an issue where a “burning” VFX could get stuck on the player

• Addressed several crashes reported by players

• Fixed several raid-related issues

• Fixed several issues with the Wanderer’s armor set

• Fixed an issue where Cyclops could fall through the world after being defeated

• Fixed several issues with buildables

• Fixed several World / Environment issues

• Resolved an issue with shadows from the sun and moon skipping

• Fixed an issue regarding loot bag collision 

• While we have added some additional safeguards, we are still investigating some players losing skills or inventory items on relog.

• New "Calming the Storm" quests does not always auto-track. This will addressed in the next update.

Hello again, Spartans!

Recently we announced that we were investigating an issue with Epic Onlines Services causing a log-in loop in the main menu. We hope this fix will address the issue and allow you to connect to your multiplayer worlds.

Please let us know if the problem persists!

Update as of 4/10/26 @ 7:50PM CT:

We recently pushed a hotfix which we hope addresses this issue and allows you to connect once more to multiplayer servers. Please update your game and inform us if the problem persists.

Thank you to everyone for joining us this week for our latest update! We have been tracking your bug reports and feedback, and we want to confirm we're investigating a multiplayer issue related to EOS.

An issue with Epic Online Services is causing a login loop in the main menu. This is currently impacting players from being able to play multiplayer. For now, if you are affected by this, you are still able to play single player by clicking the X in the top-right corner of the game to close the login window. You may need to do this a few times before you are fully in the game.

The team is working hard to address this issue, and we will report back with a solution as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience! Back soon!

Notice from 4/10/26: We are actively investigating an issue with Epic Online Services causing a login loop in the main menu. This is currently impacting players from being able to play multiplayer. If you are affected by this, you are still able to play single player by clicking the X in the top-right corner of the game to close the login window. You may need to do this a few times before you are fully in the game. We will report back once a solve is in place.

Spartans!

UPDATE 0.4.0.0 HIGHLIGHTS

THE TEMPLE OF POSEIDON 2.0

NEW DECOR KITS

UE 5.7 PERFORMANCE

QUALITY-OF-LIFE

HOUNDS OF ZEUS

FULL CHANGELIST 0.4.0.0

• Unreal Engine 5.7 Update

  • Nvidia DLSS

  • Multi-Frame Gen

  • Reflex

  • AMD FSR

• New Enemy Type, the Cyclops

• Wandering Spartans, challengeable NPCs.

• New Armor Set

• New Weapons:

  • Sword, Demos' Blade Theory

  • Spear, Andronika’s Final Shape

  • Shield, Ajax’s Molon Labe

• New Decor

  • Floor Tiles (4 Variants)

  • Merchant Stands (8 Variants)

  • Paintings (3)

  • Chairs (2)

  • Daybeds (2)

  • Toilets

  • Buckets

  • Rose Pots (4)

  • Bookshelves (5 Variants)

  • Cabinet (2)

  • Curtained Post

• New Desert Reign Labyrinth Puzzles

• Quality-of-Life

  • Toggle Helm Visibility

  • Sort Inventory Button

• Desert Reign Raid Adjustments

  • Petrified debuff removed from Nyssara’s Beam ability.

  • Ironwake is more aggressive and stalls less in combat.

  • Taurok is more aggressive and stalls less in combat.

  • Courtyard vent puzzle changed to a wave-based, lane defense challenge.

  • Clearer entry points and completion markers added to the labyrinth.

  • Labyrinth layout has been simplified, eliminating need for supplementary map.

  • Updated traps

• UI changes to Settings menu to accommodate new UE 5.7 options.

• Repeatable quests are now labeled.

• Load Time Improvements

  • Updated world portal system to the raid version.

  • Reduced portal load time (especially for Clients).

  • Reduced splash (mini-logo) screen load time.

• The intro prologue should now automatically advance upon completion.

• A note about raids requiring bows was added.

• Desert Reign Shrines received a visual polish pass.

• Soldier Camps have been updated but remain visually under-construction. They will be completed for the next update.

• Symbols added to Apollo & Euryale archery challenge for improved accessibility.

• Brazier Buildables are now unlocked with the wood kit.

• Added a “loading” indicator to address confusion with non-functioning “Continue” buttons.

• Inversion and Statis arrows now accessible to players.

• Fixed an issue where the quest to light the Braziers of Prometheus could not be completed. 

• Fixed an issue where some inlay removals could damage the player.

  • (We also fixed the issue where they would enter “ready” stance upon removals).

• Fixed an issue where some durability inlays resulted in repair issues.

• Fixed an issue where “Warm” status would get stuck on the player.

• Fixed an issue where Aphrodite’s quest items could be infinitely obtained.

• Fixed certain armor types being mislabeled as Heavy armor.

• Fixed an issue where inlays were not being removed when completing Jason’s Daily Quest.

• Fixed an issue where some players experienced long wait times when exiting the game.

• Raid World / Environment issues

• World / Environment issues

• Various crash fixes

• We are aware of the issue where some players are losing Skills/Inventory and are actively investigating this

• Some players experience a permanent “Wet” or “Cold” debuff until they relog.

• Some players experience issues with the Cooking Spit until it’s rebuilt.

• Bone Dust asset is missing from Grindstone station.

Set Demeter's Kythera to FULL SUN! The Spartium are in bloom on Aegea!

Gather your closest friends this Spring break for a co-op journey on the Crossroads, or escape the terrible pollen by yourself on mythical isles where flowers can no longer hurt you. You'll see have to deal with the heat though. Sorry about that.

The Steam Spring sale has begun, and that means we're now 35% off until March 26th!

Now's as good a time as ever to grab Dawn of Defiance before we release our UE 5.7 update next month which will improve performance AND improve various aspects of the Desert Reign raid experience that released in December! Plus, we'll be adding a few surprises into the mix that you won't want to miss!

See our previous two articles, including our post in February and our latest community video from January, for the latest news regarding out upcoming update next month!

Dearest Defiers!

Bugs of the Month

Teasers for Next Quarter

--- Traega Monday

As the first month of 2026 wraps up, we wanted to check-in with the community to give you all a heads-up on our next minor update! Watch this video to hear Game Director Tony reflect on Desert Reign and share some important news on our development plans:

The TL;DR:

The Rundown:

Happy New Years to all Defiers!

We hope you have had a wonderful holiday season so far!

We wanted to send you warm wishes and reflect on a challenging, yet rewarding and inspiring year in Early Access! Around this time last year, we were wrapping up a period of optimizations and QoL improvements and only just revealing our roadmap at the OTK Winter Expo with promises of new content to come. The game’s full gameplay loop at the time concluded with a handful of minor labors scattered about an otherwise empty map. The Temple of Athena was but a small, ruined shrine. The desert was a place for golems, ore, and little else.

We had not yet seen the new raid zones, the expansions of the Dark Forest and Ancient Desert with their new puzzles and challenges, the first legendary weapons and all the new gear, or the character creator (with the female player model we’ve been waiting for since release)! The Crossroads are a different place! It has been so exciting to see these goals realized throughout the months, and more exciting yet to look forward to next year where we will continue to fully realize our vision for Dawn of Defiance.

It bears repeating that Early Access would be nothing without our players and our supporters. Thank you for investing in our game, for trusting in our roadmap, and for offering us feedback along the way.

In this interim, we’ve bumped the statuses on a couple items currently on our roadmap feature list to reflect work from Desert Reign. At the start of 2026, we'll be reviewing our plans to lock in dates for our next major update. Until then, we hope we’ve given you plenty to be excited about! I, personally, will be eagerly awaiting more news to share with you all in the new year!

Cheers to 2026!

We're here today to share another hotfix, as well as a PSA on third-party mod tools.

We cannot support the stability of third-party tools. We have no way of knowing how they will affect your game or what additional bugs they may contribute to your experience. This can also hinder our ability to investigate bugs and crash reports, as our reporting methods can be diluted with problems caused by these third-party tools. As of right now, our largest crash count is due to people using these tools.

As a reminder, we've implemented settings in the in-game rulesets to hopefully cover many of the features players are seeking from third-party tools, such as unlocking all abilities and all recipes, infinite build resources and infinite stamina, disabling durability, no drop-on-death, and others.

Before using mod tools, please investigate your options here. If there are essential settings you feel are missing from the in-game rulesets, please submit those as requests to Feature Upvote.

0.3.0.3 Hotfix Patch

Now for the fixes. This latest patch addresses:

• Fixed stamina drain issue for glide

• Fixed an issue with Vitalis arrows not healing friendly players

• Fixed an issue causing ranged based soldiers to not fire

• Fixed an issue with Ironwake Golem's shockwave ability not dealing damage

• Fixed an issue where players couldn’t finish the Fallen Royalty raid

• Fixed an issue where warm stacks would convert to hot stacks

• Fixed an issue where cool stack would convert to cold stacks

• Added compendium entries for Artemis Deer, Bear, and Wolf after killing them

This may be our last hotfix before our team leaves for a much-needed break, so please be patient with us over the holidays. If a developer or admin does not promptly respond to you during this time, do not worry! We will review all reports and feedback in the new year when we will be jumping back into development on our next update, so continue to post your bugs to Feature Upvote. If you need immediate support, please come to our Discord! Best for now!

We have additional bugfixes for you following our Desert Reign update last Friday! If you have experienced any of the following, please update and let us know if you continue to have problems.

• Fixed an issue where some players could not properly create a new character, resulting in skills being reset

  • We've identified Join-By-Presence as a cause for the above issue. With our team going on holiday leave soon, we’re disabling “join by presence” temporarily until we have time to fully resolve all instances.

  • You can expect Join-By-Presence to return sometime after the holiday.

  • Some skill-resetting issues may persist. For now, please join multiplayer sessions through the in-game "Join Game" tab to ensure you are prompted by the character creator.

• Fixed an issue where Seriph’s shield bubble could trap players

• Fixed an issue where some players experienced increased Stamina drain when Gliding

  • We’ll be fixing the issue if players are using the Ruleset “Grant All Abilities”. For now, disabling the ruleset will fix the issue if players have gained abilities through progression as well.

• Fixed an issue where Poseidon' Trident recipe required the incorrect legendary core

• Fixed an issue preventing Building Mastery IV from being completed

Yesterday, we also added our local character save data to the steam cloud paths which should have addressed some other issues causing skills to be reset, so long as you have Steam Cloud enabled, particularly if you are using GeForce Now.

We are also investigating crashes related to unlocked compendium entries for clients, but we cannot confirm at this time it is completely fixed.

Thank you!

Thank you to everyone who has joined us for Desert Reign today!

We hope you are enjoying the new content. We are pushing this hotfix to address bugs players have experienced this evening. Fixes include:

• Clients encountering bugs entering and exiting raids

• Aphrodite's Stillblade can no longer stun bosses

• Fixed an issue with female animations equipping repair kits

We'll continue to monitor players' responses and reports! Until the next one, have a wonderful weekend in the Ancient Desert!

Our second major update Desert Reign is now live! Today, either start a new journey or continue your current odyssey into the Ancient Desert! Nyx guides you to the Temple of Poseidon, but to uncover more answers to the missing Olympians, you’ll need to first survive the desert heat, complete the labors of Artemis, Aphrodite, and Demeter, and then challenge Poseidon’s most loyal guardians!

For players with existing saves! You will be prompted by the character creator before choosing your world save. After creating your Spartan, you’ll then be able to play them in any new or existing world; however, the skills of your new character will have reset to 0. This is because we’ve reworked the skill system and have also tied them to the individual characters. Going forward, when moving between worlds, your character will take their skills with them.

New Bundle!

Alongside our exciting Desert Reign release, we’re bundled with Voyagers of Nera for an extra 10% discount. If you love the myth, ruins, and monsters of Dawn of Defiance, we think you’ll like their game too! Consider grabbing both games at a perfect time to play our Desert Reign update and Voyagers of Nera’s winter update which is on its way next week!

Now before you go forth into danger on the Crossroads, here’s a rundown of our update’s best features, followed by a more thorough changelist. We will keep the bottom of this page up-to-date with known issues to the best of our ability throughout next week.

Dawn of Defiance "Desert Reign"

Features

CREATE YOUR ANTI-HERO

Changelist

New Content

• Expansion of the Ancient Desert

• New Raid “Fallen Royalty,” including

  • 3 New boss fights

  • New raid zone, the Temple of Poseidon

  • New puzzles

• Character Creator

• Female Character

• Demeter’s Kythera, weather facility

• Arcanist Bench facility

  • Plus new, lesser inlay shards

• Biome Hazard mechanics

  • Cold Effects in the Dark Forest

  • Heat Effects in the Ancient Desert

  • Biome Hazard mitigation

• New Legendary Weapons

  • Aphrodite’s Stillblade

  • Poseidon’s Trident

  • Artemis' Spirit Bow

• New Unique Weapons

  • the Ironwake shield

  • the Crownbreaker mace

  • the Eternal Verdict bow, plus Inversion & Statis Arrows

• Two new armor sets

  • Primus gear

  • Signifier gear

• New Merchant and Quest-giver, Jason

• New Resource & Items

  • Quartz

  • Lotus Flowers

  • Infernal Embers

• New Fauna, the Crocodile

• Quests

  • 9 New shrine quests, 3 each for:

    • Artemis

    • Aphrodite

    • Demeter

  • Repeatable & daily quests

• New Decor

  • Two new beds

  • Two Ottomans

  • New Roman Braziers

• Skill Level cap increased

  • New Level 10 perks

  • New level 25 perks

• 4 New skills to earn

  • Downward strike

  • Fishing

  • Dash

  • Legendary

Improvements

• Increased Pomegranate resource locations

• Shields no longer block enemy's entire body. You can aim for feet and legs when shield is raised.

• Bracers now affect unarmed combat

• New Art, Charcoal Kiln

• New Art, Improved enemy camps

• Quests redistributed between Jason & Aeacus

• Aeacus sells more items

• Supplementary lore

  • Lore tablets

  • Prologue VO

• Optimization

  • Gameplay Cues

  • Damage/Combat numbers

• Raid Optimization

• Inlay changes

  • Including equipment slots - Forged items now have two inlay slots, while Unique items only get one (see below)

• Unique equipment changes - Unique items have had new buffs added to them (hence the single inlay slot)

  • Current “Sisters of the Deep” Unique items and “Desert Reign” Unique items have the same buffs, but expect changes in the future.

• Changes to the Bronze Ingot recipe

Bug Fixes

• Players can no longer place Town Center in the Crossroads Portal

• Show Controls Input works on every character blade tab

• Turning 180 no longer breaks Sprint

• Soldier heads less likely to disconnect on death

• Some Z-fighting issues fixed with buildable items

• Golden Bow VFX stay on when switching weapons

• Fixed Hephaestus' Shrine of Soot run-off text

• Fixed Fishing pole stats overlapping window

• Hephaestus forge now blocks foliage

• Added increased damage to Heavy/Sprint unarmed attacks

• Fixed buildables staying on cursor after switching from hammer

• Fixed bear kills counting more than once

• Fixed Golden Bow’s shots not counting towards wrath unless bow is fully drawn

• Fixed “Add Stacks” pulling non-stackable items

• Fixed players losing access to radial wheels if they rebind \

• Fixed Solarium staggering ranged attacks

• Various world fixes

• Audio fixes

  • Strange SFX on game exit

  • Bears making boar sounds

Known Issues

We will continue to monitor the game over the next week and record common issues to advise other players. For now, here's a few things we're still working on!

• As of December 15th, we're tracking a few players who appear to have their character information blanking on a relaunch of the game. If you are rejoining a world, and appear to have retained your inventory and spawn in the correct location, but your character is "blank," and skills have reset to 0, could you please help our developers track down this issue by sending us your latest log file through: Discord: https://discord.gg/dV6s7CHHZj

  Our email: [email protected]). If you want more info about this issue or where to find you log file, please go here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2059530/discussions/0/705506553887834467/

• We're still improving our portal system. Bugs may occur when teleporting.

The countdown begins!

Dawn of Defiance "Desert Reign" is coming to you December 12th, this Friday!

To seek answers to the missing Olympians, you must journey into the Ancient Desert, overcome the devastating heat, and complete the labors of Artemis, Aphrodite, and Demeter to unlock Poseidon's Temple, but be warned! In his absence, his most loyal champions continue to guard his palatial oasis... Get ready for a new raid, new fights, new gear, character creator, and more!

We're On Sale!

To coincide with this news today, we will be featured in Four Is A Party with a 35% Discount!

As part of this event, we reworked our Taurok teaser to include the female player model, so if you want a first look at your newest Spartan in action, check it out:

We'll have a new "Desert Reign" trailer and feature list for you on December 12th!

See you then!

We hope all our players who celebrate Thanksgiving had a wonderful weekend! And everyone else, we hope your weekend was at least pretty good ;) We'll use the season (and any season, honestly) to say thank you to everyone following and supporting our journey in Early Access!

Now December is already here! And to celebrate the end of 2025, we have some exciting news!

Please welcome...

Our new publisher Fireshine Games!

Fireshine Games has worked with other indie, open-world survival crafts like Core Keeper and Len's Island, among other titles, so we're really excited to have their experienced team to support us to our 1.0 release and beyond!

Now what does this mean for Dawn of Defiance? Our partnership is unlikely to have a huge effect on our roadmap features or our vision for the game, but our update cadence might change a tad bit as we take advice from their team on how to roll out improvements with better coverage and optimization! As always, we'll keep you informed of any changes.

We ultimately hope the additional hands and eyes in QA, production, and marketing will mean more polished updates reaching even more players! Consider following them on their socials to get additional Dawn of Defiance updates (Twitter, Bluesky, TikTok).

Lastly, we've partnered with them just in time to share our Desert Reign update this month! Yes, Desert Reign is coming very soon! This time, the update will drop only a couple days after its official date announcement, so please continue to stay tuned. Talk again soon!

Happy Halloween, Spartans!

Production Recap

Level 25 Skill Perks!

As we shared in our initial announcement of “Desert Reign,” this next update will be increasing the skill level cap which will include new skill perks, but there’s a couple other changes you should know! The skill system is being overhauled to have skill progression driven by different entities in the world, so performing more difficult actions result in larger skill gains! This can be seen from mining harder rocks, to killing fiercer enemies. Some skills like hunting also reward skillful players, multiplying skill XP when the player is undetected, hits crit zones, and achieves higher star ratings.

At this new skill cap, there’s now perks at level 10, and 25, which are already in our Dev-build for testing. That’s at least 28 New Skill perks! Some examples include: LvL 25 Hunting | Butcher’s Bounty: 20% chance a carcass placed on a butchers block will produce double resources; and LvL 25 Foraging | Nimble Reaper: Harvesting flowers gives grants 200 increased movement speed for 10 seconds.

Raid Implementation!

Environment Progress!

While our engineers and designers are hammering in the functions of the raid and new shrines around the Ancient Desert, our artists have been bringing in all the assets to replace existing placeholders en masse, from cliffs, walls and doorways, to pathing, props, and foliage-- many of which are new assets unique to the raid zone! The artists progressed from the temple exterior, to the raid entry room, and so on… By the end of today, they will have all temp-art replaced, allowing our remaining production time to revisit and polish!

From our props, there is the new Lore Tablet, which will be found in select locations to offer you more optional, narrative information on your encounters. And to capture the palatial atmosphere of Poseidon’s temple, our environment artist made new hedges and lavender bushes. Can you guess how these hedges might be used in a royal garden…

Female Animations!

Besides the ton of work going into the character creator, such as bringing the new customization features and UI Art into the game, revising the flow of the front end UI, and very specific functions like thumbnail generation of completed characters, we’ve also been progressing on the implementation of the female player model!

Audio Preparations!

Nearly every asset, enemy, location, and animation that is added to the game necessitates a change or addition to the sound design. This month. our audio director has been working on new sounds for fauna, boss abilities and idles, interactions like door variants, and adjusting playback locations and audio loops. On the list of unsung specifics, they are experimenting with how to allow for NPC footsteps to accommodate enemies interacting with water...

Lastly, as a Halloween treat, we dare you to witness the tricks that our wonderful game has played on us since our early access launch: the Horrors of Early Access!! i.e., A collection of our favorite bugs! And with that, let us say a big thank you for your support during our open development. It may not always go perfectly, but we think it is always worth it!

Happy Halloween… but an even happier Halloween to QA devs everywhere!

You could buy coordinating togas for Halloween, or you and your friends could get Dawn of Defiance on sale today and become real Greek heroes. Or you could do both. Both is good.

The Steam Autumn sale has begun, and that means we're now 30% off until Oct 6th!

If you've been on the fence about grabbing Dawn of Defiance, consider getting us on sale before our next major update "Desert Reign." Start planning your cozy, autumn dates by buying your partner a copy ahead of the update's new character creator feature, including the female player model, plus more content like a new raid in the Ancient Desert, the myth-inspired champion Taurok the Crownbreaker, new legendary gear, and more!

See our previous news article for the latest announcements regarding "Desert Reign!"

Last week, we streamed a ton of behind-the-scenes art of the upcoming "Desert Reign" content. The stream began with a reveal of the next final boss: Taurok, the Crownbreaker who awaits you at the end of the Temple of Poseidon! Art Director Dwight and Game Director Tony then chat through a slide deck covering the female player model, the WIP character creator, new environments, new gear, and finally a couple additional enemies! Tomorrow is the last day to watch the VOD on Twitch, but you can now watch the full stream here on our YouTube channel! You'll see the video with some convenient timestamps for you.

However, we know livestreams aren't the format for everyone, so we wanted to break out important highlights for all players. Keep in mind, what you see below is not EVERYTHING covered in the livestream, but here's a quick rundown of key topics you might have missed:

Female Player Model

Concept Art

Yes! "Desert Reign" will introduce the new female model. This addition has been a long time coming. Rather than a simple reskin and minor adjustments to armor and animations, our directors set out to redesign them to be both practical and aesthetic for a female model specifically! This includes female models sporting long skirts instead of cloaks, among other subtle decisions! Check out the concept art for the unique revisions coming to all existing gearsets for the female player model, plus four hairstyle options in the works, then hear from the art director himself of his thought process and decisions:

Character Creator

WIP Menus

While we're still revising the UI menus and testing the integration of character creator, our directors answer a number of questions about how this new feature will function at its first iteration in "Desert Reign." The character creator will allow you to start from a collection of presets, then you'll have the option to adjust your model in 9 categories with non-destructive sliders for facial features like eyes, nose, mouth, skin, and others while allowing you to return to adjust your face shape at any time.

The following video is an example of the slider controls for the creator.

While we continue to avoid resetting world saves completely, it is likely at this time that we will be resetting all player skills in order to launch the character creator within existing saves. This is because skills are being uncapped to level 20 and will now be attached to the character specifically, but going forward, it will allow you to take both your physical preset and your skills with you to a friend's save. You'll be able to return to the creator to make edits to the character at any time.

The following image is a WIP of the Character Creator UI Menus, including placeholders of the 9 categories and a placeholder of the 3D model previewer. Lastly, hear the directors discuss this further in a few highlights from our livestream:

Environment

In-Game Stills

Like "Sisters of the Deep," this next major update "Desert Reign" will be overhauling one biome, in this case the Ancient Desert, plus adding a brand new raid zone: the Temple of Poseidon! The Crownbreaker teaser and the images below give you a glimpse of the Temple of Poseidon, a slice of paradise amidst the dangers and despair of the Ancient Desert!

New and improved shrine objectives will populate the biome, this time with a greater emphasis on story-telling. This update will also bring more weather mitigation, challenging players to navigate the oppressive heat of the Desert to unlock the Temple. Those who survive will be rewarded with a brand new weather facility, giving our mortal Spartans the godlike ability to control the weather. Listen to the following video for more hints on what's to come to the Ancient Desert:

Armor & Arsenal

Concept Art

Every major update for Dawn of Defiance during Early Access will present new armor and weapons! "Desert Reign" brings the Primus Gear, inspired by Poseidon and the regality of his temple! Our Art Director explained in last week's livestream the process by which he reached the final concept art, featuring integrations of the trident and deep sea creatures! See part of the process below:

"Desert Reign" will also be making adjustments to weapon tiers. The entry tier "Forged" weapons will have no specific perks, but two customizable inlays. The secondary tier "Unique" weapons will have a perk and one inlay for customization. Then godlike weapons, "Legendary" tiers which are earned through temple raids, will have unalterable, powerful abilities that will be balanced by specific burdens.

This update introduces the legendary Artemis bow, visually inspired by her Greek symbolism and lightly encouraging players to use the weapon in close range. Hear more about both this powerful bow and the Primus Gear from our directors:

Enemies

Early Art and Final Models

To uncover the truth on the Crossroads, you'll have to continue to the Temple of Poseidon and face his powerful court of enemies, including his High Priestess Nysarra. Reminding the god of his cursed love Medusa, Poseidon has brought Nysarra to his temple to be his Queen. The High Priestess is a boss in her own right, quick on her feet and coursing with power. See some of the early iterations of her design below and her final textured model:

Defending the Temple is Nysarra's guardian, the Ironwake Golem. Not only is he better equipped than the golems of the Desert, he is more experienced and more creative. See the evolution of his impressive armor and pauldron below:

Last but not least, Taurok the Crownbreaker. Poseidon's minotaur champion will be your final boss within his Temple. Dual-wielding two giant axes, you'll find this monster launches into terrible attacks that our team hopes you'll love to hate. Check out his official teaser here, then listen to the following video for our directors' thoughts on this milestone character:

If you wish to see even more images, make sure to watch the full livestream! Thank you all for your continued support of our game and our Early Access development! Thank you to everyone who came to support our stream live! If you enjoyed this behind-the-scenes look at our next update, please consider sharing our Crownbreaker teaser or any of the highlight videos above, so our game can reach even more players! Give us a follow on YouTube or Twitch for more similar content. Leave us a comment or a question on any platform. We look forward to hearing from you and sharing more information soon! Until our news post next month, cheers!

You're invited!

Join us for a Developer Livestream this week for a behind-the-scenes look at new "Desert Reign" content! Follow us on Twitch to be notified! Or set a reminder here on Steam for the event start time! See the right panel!

If you missed our last stream, you aren't going to want to miss this one! Our Developers have compiled concept art, 3D models, and in-game stills of brand new content coming to "Desert Reign," and they're sharing them THIS WEEK! Get an early look at new enemies, character creator features, gear and more. Mark your calendars for:

September 18th, 5pm CT

Traega Games Twitch

If you cannot make the stream while live, but you wish to leave a question for our Directors, please visit one of our forums here, and we will address them and save the VOD for later viewing on YouTube.

Reddit Questions

Steam Discussion Questions

Hello Defiers! Last Friday, August 15th was our 1 year anniversary in Early Access! We wanted to thank all of our players for joining us so far in early access and lending your valuable feedback throughout this open-development process! We're really excited to continue working on Dawn of Defiance to make it the best Greek-myth survival craft game on the market!

Reflect back on our time in Early Access together with the recap video above! But if you're only here to find out what's next...

DESERT REIGN

Our next major update is already well underway and coming to players before the end of 2025! Dawn of Defiance "Desert Reign" will bring a new raid to the Temple of Poseidon in the Ancient Desert with more puzzles, more gear, and more enemies! It will also bring additional skill levels and the first iteration of character creator, including the female player model! That's right, you will be able to play a woman on the Crossroads THIS YEAR!

You'll see "Desert Reign" now reflected on an updated Roadmap graphic which has moved a couple features to a separate category. As we intend to expand on the raids, enemies, and gear with every major update, you'll see those remaining in the "updating soon" category as a "regular" feature. Features specific to the next major update will move to "in-progress," as you'll now see for "character creator."

This information was first revealed and discussed on our Twitch, including a conversation with Game Director Tony. The VOD is temporarily saved on Twitch, and it will be archived on our YouTube channel. If you wish to join our livestreams for future announcements and behind-the-scenes developments, make sure to follow us! Please get excited to hear more about these specific features and a closer look at behind-the-scenes progress next month!

Giveaway

As for our anniversary! We wanted to celebrate by hosting a Giveaway for 5 Dawn of Defiance keys! If you want a key for yourself or a friend ahead of "Desert Reign," here's how you can participate: Before August 27th 1. Follow us at https://x.com/traegagames 2. Retweet our "Desert Reign" Twitter post here. I will select 5 winners on August 27th from those that do both of the above, and I will DM you on Twitter with your key, so keep your eye out after that time. We still have less than 1,000 followers on Twitter, so even if you don't wish to participate in the Giveaway, we hope to see you there! Thank you all again for your incredible support. Stay tuned for more on Desert Reign!

Happy Tuesday! Today we have an update with a couple important hotfixes, addressing the frozen/stuck refineries players were experiencing following our last minor update, plus a raid-related crash.

After today’s hotfix you’ll also see a pretty obvious change to the world map! This overlay that extends past the existing biome has been added as a warning indicator of incoming geography changes with our next major update. Any part of the landscape within the highlighted region may be altered as soon as the next update, so we advise you to not build here OR to remove your existing builds from within this region!

This overlay is NOT an indicator that you are currently unable to enter or play in the desert. Please continue slaying skeletons to your heart’s content.

As stated in our minor update last week, more details surrounding the next major update will be provided with a couple status changes on the roadmap next month. Thank you for your patience. Until then!

0.2.1.1 Hotfix Changelist

ADDITIONS:

•  Desert “Barrier” - Map Art Warning Indicator (in preparation for next update)

BUG FIXES:

• Fixed a Raid-related crash

• Fixed an issue where existing Refineries were not working properly

• Arrows were not deconstructing properly and have been temporarily removed as an item for the Salvaging Bench.

  • Will be readdressed in a following update

Hello Defiers! Today we're pushing live a minor update that brings a few new items and further bug fixes and improvements to combat, the raid experience, audio, and more. Now in-game is the Salvaging Bench (yes, the same one players had noticed missing from a quest objective last month). Unlock this facility to deconstruct crafted items! You can also enjoy more wood furniture and cloth decor to adorn your base!

Thanks again to all players for joining us in Early Access. It's been roughly a month since Sisters of the Deep released, and we really appreciate the continued feedback. If you've finished the latest content, you may be wondering what's next...

We intend to maintain a 3-4 month cadence between major updates, so we'll be updating the roadmap next month to reflect the latest statuses of features ahead of the next raid experience coming to the Ancient Desert! We're really excited to share more news then, in addition to celebrating our one-year anniversary in Early Access!

We've been tracking bugs and feedback reported by players. Please read through the following changes to see if we've addressed issues you may have had. Please continue to report your bugs to Feature Up-vote (FUV) or visit us in Discord for questions and conversation! FEATURE ADDITIONS:

•  Salvaging Bench - It’s in the game for real this time, we promise!

  • The often-requested ability to deconstruct old stuff is now in-game! Unlock this new facility after the Temple of Athena.

• New furniture/decor buildables added

  • Unlock these items through the building mastery quest.

  • New Wood Furniture (requires Darkwood)

    • “Wood Bench” - two variants

    • “Wood Bookcase”

    • “Wood Chair” - two variants

    • “Wood Table” - two variants

    • “Wood Table Side”

    • “Wood Table Small”

    • New Cloth Decor

      • “Pile of Folded Cloth” - six variants

      • “Roll of Raw Cloth” - four variants

      • “Cloth Roll Pile” - four variants

IMPROVEMENTS:

• Repairing buildables no longer require additional mats. Hammer quality now affects repair rate and durability.

• Player’s unarmed combat animations

  • That left hook is sneaky!

• Player’s animation blending

• CPU optimizations related to navigation

BUG FIXES:

• Fixed issue where loot VFX were not displaying properly for Clients

• Fixed issues with legendary items not proccing properly for Clients

  • Some persisting issues

• Fixed issue with Taxidermy Leopard requiring incorrect carcass

• Fixed issue with Euryale’s Crown of Sorrows attack

• Fixed issue with Seriph’s protective bubble trapping players against walls

• Fixed issue with Seriph pads displaying interaction prompts after being deactivated

• Fixed issue with Seriph teleporting into walls

• Fixed issue with Seriph’s idle animation

• Fixed issue with Euryale’s Starcaller SFX not playing for Clients

• Fixed issue with Raid Boss HP bars not updating properly for players

  • This can affect Hecate’s and Raid Boss (and Host as well)

  • Some issues may still be present

• Fixed issue with missing Raid ambient audio

• Fixed issue with water not displaying properly in raid environment

• Fixed issue where player would lose any item on their cursor when they perished

• Fixed issues with resource nodes not displaying/harvesting properly for Clients

• Fixed issue with Aeacus' contribution values not always displaying properly for Clients

• Fixed issue with player waypoints not marking locations correctly based on world map placement

• Fixed issue with Apollo’s Golden Bow empowered VFX not being removed properly

• Fixed various text issues (UI and Quests)

• Fixed various world environment issues

• Adjusted Simple Hammer recipe to properly reflect tier level

• Adjusted Athena’s Solarium block stat to properly reflect tier level

• Adjusted Apollo’s Golden Bow damage to properly reflect tier level

• Adjusted forged bracers and greaves to properly reflect tier level

• Adjusted forged mace recipes to properly reflect tier level

• Adjusted the collision for Wood Roof Open buildable

Known Issues and/or Requests: The following are related to active issues or feedback we've received from players that we are tracking and intend to address, but will need additional consideration and playtesting before pushing to an update. We appreciate your patience.

• Portal issues, including players teleporting in place and are unable to use portal

  • Quick fix with a game restart

• Clients unable to glide or fire arrows

  • Quick fix with a game restart

• Audio not accounting for player no longer being in the Raid

  • Quick fix with a game restart

  • Closing an audio task on Feature Up-vote to account for previous fixes, but we will continue working on this more specific issue.

• Grass flickering near buildables

• Resources nodes growing through buildables

• Confusion surrounding Ares' bronze boars (FUV)

New Small Patch! Last week we released our first major update on our roadmap, “Sisters of the Deep!” It has been awesome to see you all play through the new content and conquer the Temple of Athena! We also really appreciate everyone who took the time to submit their bugs to Feature Upvote and our Discord. Your help has been valuable to us in quickly tracking down some additional improvements needed. Please read through the following changelist to see what has been addressed.

Note: While testing this hotfix, we found there’s still a chance for players to get stuck in the Temple. As of this current patch, it appears restarting the game should correct this, but we’ll continue working on an additional fix.

Next up, we have a minor update planned and alongside that, we’ll reveal more information on the next major update already in progress! Stay tuned, and please continue to report your bugs to Feature Upvote.

0.2.0.1 Patch Notes

IMPROVEMENTS 

• Improved Raid progression saving

  • Addresses players getting locked in the Temple of Athena

  • Address players being unable to pass the Bosses' doors.

• Clay nodes on Veilpoint are now easier to mine

• Updated VFXs for Stheno, Euryale, and Seriph

• Boars will no longer stagger the player

• Stick/Branch resource replaced with new art

• Updated default orientation when constructing Hephaestus Forge and Town Center

• Additional entries added to Compendium

BUG FIXES:

• Fixed issue preventing players from completing Aeacus' Build Mastery IV

• Fixed issue with Town Chests not functioning properly

• Fixed issue with audio static, freezing, and performance issues when entering Athena’s temple

• Fixed issue with Euryale’s Death Shard not dropping properly

• Fixed issue with Stheno’s Geometric Crystal being in the wrong loot category

• Fixed issue with Athena’s Solarium (Ambrosia) recipe requiring too many items

• Fixed issues with inlays not displaying properly after being slotted

• Fixed issue with poison debuff icon not displaying properly on enemies/fauna

• Fixed issue with fall damage incorrectly displaying “0” damage

• Fixed issue where players could construct floating buildables

• Fixed issues with Compendium entries not unlocking properly

• Fixed issue with directional navigation in Compendium UI

• Fixed issue where players could craft from the wrong menus

• Fixed issue with Wolf Heart displaying incorrect buff duration

• Fixed various spelling/grammar errors in Quests and Compendium

• Fixed various world issues, like floating grass and water clipping through the ground

SISTERS OF THE DEEP

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:

HIGHLIGHTS

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!

More Dangerous

”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.

More Powerful

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.

More Engaging

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.

and More Intuitive!

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! 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 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.

CHANGELIST

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. See you next week. -- Traega Team

Story and Map Changes

Weapon Highlight

New Lesser Fauna

Boss Sneak Peak

• The current state of the game's UI
• Visions for quality of life changes
• Needed menu improvements
• Design decisions and the implementation process
• Visual alignment and art direction
• Improving the new player experience
• and the Compendium, the in-game "wiki" in development!

0.1.7.0 PATCH

Improvements