Since you made it here, if you would like to help shape the next Dungeon Defender title please email me at contact@greyhoundgames.com and let me know that you want to provide ideas, suggestions or even constructive criticism and I will give you access to our discussion group. This help topic will discuss the games mechanics in great detail. If you just want to play the game and get right to it, click the back link to go back to the simple help. This help file will be added to overtime as questions arise.

The Following is a description of the avatars and what they excel at:

Death Knight: The death knight is a melee avatar. His main weakness is he cannot deal damage from a safe distance. How he makes up for this is by being ethereal(able to pass through solid objects). He gains the following special abilities at higher levels:

Bash: Stuns a single enemy target for 6 seconds. Resets in 20 seconds.

Tower Shield: Gives the death knight the ability to reduce ranged damage by 20%(applied after all other defenses)

Lay On Hands: The touch of a death knight is very deadly. Lay on hands deals damage equal to the maximum hit points of the death knight and resets in 40 seconds.

Chaos ranger: The chaos ranger wields a crossbow and specializes in high damage attacks. He gains the following special abilities at higher levels:

Multishot: The chaos ranger's regular attack now shoots three arrows instead of one. His reload time is increased slightly.

Trainer: If the chaos ranger is standing next to a lair, creatures produced their will gain permanent bonuses to their stats.

Critical Strike: The chaos rangers regular attack has a chance to deal double damage.

Evil Wizard: The evil wizard specializes in area effect damage. He physically weaker then the other heroes but he makes up for it with his magic. At higher levels he gains the following abilities:

Chain Lightning: A bolt of lighting bounces between targets, with each bounce the damage is reduced twenty five percent.

Gate: The wizard gates in a demon that will follow and protect him for a time.

Poison Cloud: A noxious cloud of poison will form over a target dealing damage to any who stay inside it.

Gameplay

Once an avatar is chosen the game will start. You will want to pause it with the spacebar if you need time to become familiar with the controls. The objective of the game is to survive all the waves of heroes without running out of gems. You gain gold from defeating heroes. The higher level a hero is, the more gold it will drop.

Controlling The Game

Your avatar can be controlled with the arrow keys or wasd. Interacting with the game is mainly done using four panels on the right side of the screen. The four panels are:

Lairs: Lets you mark areas for digging and build lairs.

Support: Lets you place traps and support buildings.

Items: Lets you see your collected items and equip them.

Avatar: Lets you see your avatar's stats.

You can also select anything on the game panel and get details about it in the selection window(below the four tabs)

Buildings

In addition to all the normal lairs that are on the build tab, each avatar has a unique lair that only they can build. Buildings are placed in open spaces and can be destroyed by any enemy that gets too close to them (excluding flying enemies).

The following buildings are available:

Lairs: Goblin, Centaur, Minotaur, Manticore, Vampire, Lich, Elemental, Hydra[Death Knight], Demon[Evil Wizard], Wyrm[Chaos Ranger]

Gym, Track, Academy: Provide a stat bonus per level of strength, dexterity, and magic respectively to creatures built in lairs adjacent to these buildings.

Gold Vault: Provides interest on certain round numbers. If a map has only one spawn point, it is every round. If it has two spawn points its every other round. Essentially its once per each spawn point releasing a wave.

Lairs

The most common building is the lair. A lair is a dwelling place for monsters that you control. Lairs attract monsters over time up to a limit dependant upon the lair type. If a monster is killed, a new one will arrive after a while. Lairs fall into two categories, ranged and melee. Ranged lairs produce ranged units that will not move from the lair. Melee lair's produce the grunts of the game and they will travel out from the lair to attack anyone who comes within their patrol range(which can be adjusted by selecting the lair). Both types of creatures can be killed as soon as they step out of their lair. In addition some creatures are flying and can only be attacked by ranged units or other flying units.

Traps

Traps are devastating weapons that never become obsolete. They deal percentage based damage, stuns, and other nasty effects that never grow old. Once a trap is triggered it will become inactive for a time until it has reset. You can only place a limited number of each trap type. Each avatar has a unique trap that he or she can build. The following traps are available:

Spike Trap: Deals damage relative to the targets maximum hit points. You get a lot of these, place them places where enemies spend a lot of time.

Pit Trap: Stuns enemies who trigger it for a long time.

Boulder Trap: Releases a large boulder which will roll towards the target, crushing it and anyone behind them. The boulder stops once it hits an obstacle.

Maim Trap: Cripples a target rendering most of its stats to a fraction of their original values.

Death Trap[Death Knight]: Instantly kills a target.

Grave Trap[Evil Wizard]: Home to a powerful undead creature which will attack anyone who comes close.

Swarm Trap[Chaos Ranger]: Releases an enchanted swarm of insects that will keep multiple enemies busy as they try to kill it.

Combat mechanics:

Avatars regen while not in combat. Some avatars regen more then others(the death knight for example has very high regeneration). There are 3 main stats, strength, dexterity and magic. Each stat corrolates to an attack type: Melee, Ranged and Magical. When a unit attacks, it deals damage equal to the stat that is appropriate to the attack type. Custom attacks may modify the final result. Each attack type has a coresponding resistance that is used to defense against it. Resistances are a percent reduction applied to damage. The other stats are speed(how fast a unit moves), hit points(how much damage a unit takes before it dies), and level(a relative measure of power). Ther are two ways things level up in Dungeon Defender. Avatar's level up when any enemy unit on the map is killed as long as the avatar is alive when the kill occurs. Creatures do not level up, but rather spawn at a level equal to their lair's level. Their lair levels up based on damage dealt by creatures from that lair. Damage dealt to enemies higher level then the lair yeild more xp, and lower enemies yield less. Ok so you made it to the end of this giant help file. As a reward here is a secret: Your home tile provides a bonus to all creatures built in lairs that are adjacent to it.