Since the release of Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance, players have been fortunate to receive a series of updates to the game post-release. The developer, Tuque Games, advertised that it plans to work on the game far after its release, which is a promise the company has stood by. Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance players have been finding bugs throughout the game, though, and have experienced some multiplayer issues during play.
Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance functions similarly to other games such as Left 4 Dead or Warhammer Vermintide, in that players take on the role of a small cast of characters bound together with a single objective: reach the end of the level. Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance is both a single-player and a co-op multiplayer player versus AI game, where players are equipped with a multitude of tools and abilities in order to defeat hordes of enemies between them and their goal.
The community has experienced a handful of bugs and exploits, with the exploit for skipping the Icewind Boss fight phases now patched. Another exploit which allowed players to infinitely upgrade crystals at the Merchant has been patched, realigning the game to how it was intended.
In multiplayer matches, the most annoying problems for Dark Alliance players are connection stability and rubber-banding. Fortunately, patch 1.18 should alleviate many of these issues, including upgrading the matchmaking system for players without a party. For solo Dark Alliance players, there's a multitude of gameplay fixes, from invisible enemies, bugged stamina usage, and players being knocked down to enemies spawning in the wall; all problems the developers look to fix with the addition of this patch.
These are all welcomed changes to the game, as the community has had a list of desired fixes for Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance since release. Games in this similar genre rely heavily on well-oiled multiplayer gameplay without massive connectivity issues. The recent patches have all made an attempt to make multiplayer more friendly for its players, and both online with friends as well as matchmaking will be key in retaining its player base. Fortunately, with the developer's long-lasting support for the game and the addition of several more bosses throughout the year, the community will most likely continue to receive bug and exploit support in the future.
Here's a full list of Patch Notes:
Full Patch List
Lore Items/Now It Makes Sense Achievement:
- This achievement now triggers correctly. If you collected all collectibles before this game update, you will need to create a brand new character and pick up a collectible for the achievement to pop (the one at the Base Camp works).
Increased Font Size:
- Text for objectives, dialogue and journal entries now have increased font size.
AI Improvements
The following changes have been made to enemy AI:
- When teleporting, enemies now use the player’s position at the start of the teleport.
- Fixed an issue in which the Stygian Charger in The Order of the One Light Act 1 was unresponsive after being attacked.
- Enemies now notice the player more quickly.after being dropped in multiplayer.
- Enemies transition out of their taunt to attack the player character as soon as the player character is in range.
- Enemies are now more difficult to stun-lock.
Exploits Removed
The following exploits have been removed, allowing the game to function as intended:
- Fixed several issues in which Icewind’s boss fight phases could be bypassed.
- Crystals can no longer be infinitely upgraded after downgrading them once at the Merchant in Kelvin's Cairn.
Controls
The following adjustments have been made to the controls:
- Restored a missing keybind for opening the Player Menu by using a keyboard in the options menu.
- Fixed an issue in which the mouse was not functional when attempting to navigate the Party Management screen and the Journal in the Character Sheet.
Multiplayer
The following improvements have been made to the multiplayer experience:
- Party host can access the Trophies menu in Basecamp.
- Resolved the delay when attempting to pick up quest-essential items in multiplayer.
- Fixed an issue in which players would sometimes join a public session after accepting an invite from a friend.
- Stability improvements.
- Matchmaking improvements.
- Fixed issues in which players would be unable to enter boss rooms after teleporting to the party leader.
- Fixes to rubber banding.
- Fixed an issue in which muted players would get unmuted automatically after returning to Kelvin’s Cairn.
- Fixed an issue in which Catti-brie's healing spirit effect lasted until the players were loaded back into the base camp.
- Fixed an issue where starting any act alone while in Multiplayer set the act to difficulty challenge rating 1.
- Quickplay bonus now provides XP in the tally screen.
- Fixed Alchemist Fire damage not displaying in Multiplayer.
- Fixed an issue in which the forced respawn button would disappear after pressing start.
- Coldstone Guardian armor's set bonus invulnerability now expires after Bruenor's whirlwind ability has finished in multiplayer.
Combat/Gameplay
The following changes affect the overall combat and gameplay experience:
- Reduced the delay for characters getting up after being knocked down during combat.
- Fixed collision issues allowing players to go out of world.
- Improvements to the enemy threat indicator HUD.
- Fixed issues in which some enemies were invisible to the player.
- Fixed several issues involving enemies spawning inside level terrain.
- UI and objective marker improvements.
- Fixed an issue in which stamina usage was inconsistent between different heroes.
- Fixed issues in which characters would get stuck to training dummies and some enemies while in melee combat.
- Fixed burning debuff when character walks into a lava fall.
- Added VFX for the Frost Giant's Ground Shatter AoE attack.
Progression
The following changes affect character progression and building:
- Fixed several instances of player progression being reset.
- Fixed an issue in which characters would not level up upon returning to basecamp after having completed a challenge rating 6 mission.
- Fixed an issue in which loot completion rewards would not be displayed in the tally screen after completing an Act.
- Removed the 10-second wait time before the tally screen after a player successfully completes an act; thetally screen can now be skipped.
- Fixed issues with stat and combat power calculations in the UI.
Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance is available now for PlayStation, Xbox, and PC.