Dont know if you caught this:
IGN: What sort of new items can we expect? Will they mostly be variations or more powerful versions of what we've seen before?
Jeremy Stieglitz: The specific arsenal of new gear introduced by the Eternia Shards campaign is all-new both in visual appearance and functionality. For example in the first Eternia Shards section, Mistymire Forest, among 12 new unique items, you can find a "Shroomite" pet (basically a little mushroom-man) that will slow down nearby enemies that he infects with his spores, and you can get a "Leaf Blower" weapon that will constantly drain enemies' health over time. This expansion campaign places an emphasis on adding new mechanics like these, as opposed to just visual content, so that players are incentivized to rethink and redesign the strategies that they previously became comfortable with.
IGN: What level or at what point do you have to be in the campaign to access this content?
Jeremy Stieglitz: You can access and capably tackle the content at just about any character level, depending on what difficulty you select. If you play the new Campaign on Easy, you have a fighting chance to complete it with your Hero starting around level 20 using cruddy gear, whereas on Normal you'll want to be about level 40 and reasonably equipped, and Hard you'll want to be level 60 with solid gear, and Insane you should be Level 70 with high-end gear.
IGN: Why does each of the four new campaign missions have an actual boss? Is this something to expect going forward, or can we also just expect boss waves?
Jeremy Stieglitz: We wanted to provide each distinct geographic region of Eternia with a set-piece battle to make it particularly memorable and challenging. The Bosses are introduced in typical Dungeon Defenders style, with the final wave of the mission being a boss wave, then an introductory cinematic that hints at how to defeat the boss, and then it's on!
IGN: Will each of the new bosses have specific strategies to defeat them?
Jeremy Stieglitz: Definitely, while the new Bosses are quite beefy, none of them are just damage soaks. Each Boss has specific weaknesses, weakpoints, and methods you can use to effectively defeat them, and some of the Bosses even have puzzle elements. One of the bosses is a gigantic battle-cruiser that involves landing on the deck of the ship and working your way to its power-core. And of course they all have some devastating attacks, which you can avoid or counter if you pay attention to what they're doing...
IGN: Each of the new missions also has new enemies. Are they reworked versions of previous enemies, or do they have unique attacks and powers?
Jeremy Stieglitz: The new enemies are totally unique creations for the Eternia Shards campaign, with very distinct capabilities that pretty much upend any original-game strategy. For example, in Mistymire there are spiders, which sling down from the trees on their weblines, often behind your defensive lines. The Spiders will then proceed to web up your Defenses, causing them to be much less effective, and then they'll come after you. When you're webbed, you're slowed, can't use abilities, and are vulnerable to a subsequent Spider jump attack. So they're nasty little creatures, not necessarily for the direct damage they do, but in terms of how much they can upend a traditionally-laid out defensive plan. The key to Spiders is to setup specific Defenses and Traps oriented to take them out, and to deal with any stragglers personally. The new enemy types introduced in the other missions are every bit as distinctly devious, and when you recover and recombine all the Crystal Shards, you might get more than your bargained for with them...
IGN: There's clearly a much larger emphasis on PVP in this DLC, is that something players have been asking for? Have the levels themselves been designed for pvp?
Jeremy Stieglitz: The levels for PvP are new creations specifically for deathmatch, and they're more clever and varied than the tiny little PvP bonus map included in the original game, allowing players to mix it up when they're tired of cooperating and want to just bludgeon their friend to death. And for PC specifically, we also have added an 8-player cooperative mission called "Uber Monster Fest" (yes!) that allows a large team to take on a horde of monsters for fun and loot.
IGN: What sort of unique objectives do the challenge missions in the DLC offer?
Jeremy Stieglitz: Some pretty crazy stuff that goes well beyond the more simple Challenges in the original game. The Mistymire Challenge involves defending a portal against a horde of leaping spiders hell-bent on making their way to the Castle, while the Desert Challenge involves raising an army of friendly allied Djinns to combat an opposing army of enemy Djinns, and the various additional challenges involve everything from puzzles to aerial warfare.
IGN: How much is the DLC? And will it be available for all platforms on the same day and date?
Jeremy Stieglitz: $3.99 for each of the four sections, which combined have almost as much content as the original game. The Xbox 360 and PS3 versions should be launching on December 21st, and the Steam PC version launches December 15th. On Steam in particular, when you purchase the entire Eternia Shards campaign (there'll be a bundle available at launch), you also get access to the new "Nightmare" difficulty mode, yielding new "Mythical"-quality loot and introducing the new 'Eternia Shard' enemies throughout the original campaign (which has been re-balanced specifically for this mode).
IGN: The expansion addresses the need and desire for more content, but can we expect more champions, or champion abilities in the future? Maybe an expansion of the level cap in an even more massive expansion?
Jeremy Stieglitz: Oh yes, very much so. We introduced 4 new Hero variants in November, which were gender-swapped versions of the original classes with different abilities and slightly different statistics, but fully original Heroes are on the way, starting with the dual-wielding "Barbarian" in January, and then the steampunk automaton "Series EV" in February. These new Heroes bring with them completely new Defenses, abilities, and weapon capabilities -- and when introduced they're going to provide new ways to play this game. That's why we're taking the time to properly balance them!
I'll also point out that the level cap on PC is raised to 74 with the introduction of Eternia Shards Part 1, and will go up to 80 and beyond as subsequent installments are introduced. Reaching these levels is not nearly as easy as getting from 0-70, and the best new gear does require such higher levels to wield. But as the level cap goes up, the new Campaign gives you new territory and methods to earn your stripes! Beyond this Eternia Shards expansion, we're going to continue building on the solid foundations of Dungeon Defenders as long as fans are interested in playing the game.
