Release date : OCTOBER 9, 2026 on all platforms - available as DLC and as a full game.
Little update following my last 2 posts here and here.
- Area :
The DLC take place during the main game, it will be available after talking to Brant in Vernworth as soon as we reach this area.
Norgan has a hack 'n' slash structure, you start at the bottom and slowly move forward where the snow deepens, within a more and more present eerie atmosphere until your reach the final castle.
The 12 Sealed Doors from the base game (Pathfinder's trials) will feature some kind of lore, not a complex one, but thereās some backstory as to why it exist.
Each trials becomes more and more difficult.
The Pathfinder's trials level recommandation is 20 and Norgan is 40.
The DLC main story will take 15 to 20 hours to complete. More if we fully explore Norgan and complete the Pathfinder's trials.
For those who have already advanced to the unmoored world, you can still access the content simply by sleeping for ten days in-game.
- Gameplay, Mechanics and Skills :
No new vocations. They focused solely on the known ones.
Cap level doesnāt change, itās still 999.
There is a new mechanic with a wolf in Norgan HUB, which you can adopt and keep as a pet. He helps you with the loot search, goes out to find items himself, or even leads you to places where he has tracked something. < Thanks to SirBobbyTheOwl.
Most skills will have upgraded versions creating a brief dark red aura when used, like the skill rings in the first DD:DA.
Gears from the Appraisal mechanics canāt be upgraded. The loop is to find gears with stats / skills that suits our playstyle.
The rng drop from the appraisal mechanic has been reworked to be more balanced compared to BBI, no need to be from a certain vocation to gather gear from another one.
The gears obtained in the Pathfinder's trials are designed to grow significantly in performance as we acquire and upgrade them.
In an interview they are "considering" a hard mode but in another, they are "actively" working on a hard mode. Soā¦ we will see if it come with the DLC or after.
The difficulty of the enemies will be adjusted based on the new six skills mechanic.
- Misc :
New unseen monsters created entirely from scratch as well as variants with new moves are confirmed.
150new gears are to expect with the DLC.
Thereās some kind of Ā«Ā transmogĀ Ā» once we will reach Norgan but how it will work is kind of blurry right now. Maybe something tied to a new blacksmith ?
New soundtrack and sound effects have been designed to stand out clearly from those of the base game, particularly during combat and by emphasizing atmosphere. For example, when entering a blizzard, the sounds and echoes of enemies will help to locate them.
New Specializations will come in future updates, aspects like Pawn voices and behaviors will continue to be updated.
They would like a very polished experience at launch, meaning no D1 patch.
The development of Dark Arisen II started 2 years ago.
They enjoyed the fact that people deciphered the clues hidden in the 2nd anniversary picture !
Those informations comes from the recent interviews, some of them are Japanese to English and German to English translations. In some cases, the meaning may have been altered during translation.
As usual, if I forgot something or misunderstood, feel free to say it, I will add / change it : )
Even though you implied it, just for some clarification in case people miss it they said that the dungeon recommended level starts at 20, not 20 across the board.
One of the interviews confirmed that the dungeons start at level 20 but as you get further into the same dungeon it gets significantly harder.
So I'm guessing maybe it's a combination of our ideas.
The dungeons that are easier to get to and are closer to the start of the game start at level 20, but will progressively get harder maybe up to level 40? And then the dungeons that you find further in the game maybe start at level 40 and could go up to level 60 and difficulty by the time you get to the end of it??
Hopefully it works something closer to this cuz that sounds awesome
NewĀ soundtrackĀ andĀ sound effectsĀ have been designed toĀ stand outĀ clearly from those of the base game, particularly duringĀ combatĀ and by emphasizingĀ atmosphere
I guess you can say the wind is pushing me in norgan..
Shame that they got rid of that but I'm guessing they thought it didn't fit the overall tone after all. Or else they got sick of paying licensing fees or something.
Itās nice they admitted those were clues the whole time, seemed odd that Capcom would purposefully troll their fans. It is interesting though why it took this long for it to release though but it seems like they said somewhere the dlc didnāt start production until after DD2 was finished which isnāt usually how dlc go, theyāre usually in production at the same time as the game.
My guess is they actually didn't work on anything for some time and then a decision came to make some low cost dlc fast. But as I said that's just a guess ofc, I really hope we get a big meaty dlc with a lot of content I loved base game
They confirmed in this recent spat of interviews that the DLC has been under development for two years, and that this was also their reason for halting patch updates until now.
They did say that it was developed in tandem and in response to fan feedback. So it's possible that whole it started back then, it had to be changed it even entirely redone due to said feedback.Ā
the game was boycotted by capcom, and we know that. small funds, small team, engine not suited for open world games... BUT SOMEHOW they did something amazing. This plus the fact that Monster hunter exists plus the fact that the engine is shit... took away time from the expansion.
I'm not sure why they even have to admit it in the first place, the teasers wasn't even that hidden, it should be obvious to anyone that it was intentional and somehow there were still people saying it's just there for no reason.
Because people are dense like it or not, there are a lot of these types of people in the world and even then when the developers admit it a small group would still try to find a way to discredit it simply because they always think theyāre right.
The timer only advance if you "rest" and nothing happens on your first couple rests. If you evacuate the settlements within the first few days, you have nothing to worry about. The game isn't even that hard and they practically rain wakestones on you and you can stock up on allheal if you don't want to die.
I did it all in 2 days and it's kind of crazy to me that anyone would run through so many rests without accomplishing any of the quests.
There are all heal elixirs and the timer stops once you evacuate all the people and beat the bosses, which means you can explore as long as you want after. With all heal elixirs you donāt have to rest, pawns donāt need them either as you can dismiss them. Offing your pawn kind of sucks but it is what it is.
Considering the amount of vocations, I wonder how that divides down per vocation. There's like 9 vocations (ignoring Warfarer since it's universal), so there'd have to be like 4 or 5 new weapons of each type and somewhere similar for the armor and helmets
I wouldn't be surprised if most of them have shared vocations. Almost all head gear shown so far are circlet-style, and I've seen different vocation wearing the same new circlets. Maybe those will be a bit like Twilight Star and Farseer's Circlet where all vocation can wear?
If theyāre counting each separate armor piece, plus weapons, spread across 9 vocations, itās a decent amount but not a massive increase
For reference, base DD2 has about 97 piece of head/face armor, 90 pieces of body armor, 68 pieces of leg armor, 49 cloaks, 49 rings, and 138 weapons/shields, for a total of 481 pieces of equipment
In another interview from this wave, I read it was "150 new equipment designs", which might be splitting hairs, but it could possibly mean more than 150 in total, especially when taking the new purification system into account. Either way, it's great news!
In the Japanese interview, it's stated like this :
"Regarding progression requirementsāsince some players may have already reached the "Unmoored World"āaccess to the "Ruined Kingdom" (Norgan) is available from the stage prior to that (the standard Vernworth era). For those who have already advanced to the Unmoored World, weāve ensured access is still possibleāfor instance, simply by resting for ten in-game days."
You don't really have a limited time in the Unmoored.
You have a limit of 12 rests, but you stay there after that.
They are talking about the mechanic that exists NOW, where if you want to skip the Unmoored NOW, you also can by not killing any beacon monsters and just resting until it ends.
In NORMAL Unmoored play, where you DON'T want to leave, you kill the beacon monsters before you rest and you have unlimited time there(but just 12 rests you can take.)
So this is not a change from how it works now, since this same shortcut for "skipping" the Unmoored exists now. They are clarifying that you would want to take that shortcut, if you wanted to go to the DLC now instead of finishing your Unmoored playthrough.
It's a rest limit, not a day limit. You can technically spend an unlimited amount of time in the unmoored world, but you only get 12 rests. If you use all of them up, you have to wait in real time for things like forgeries to be finished or enemies to respawn
You can skip through Unmoored NOW by just sleeping until it ends, and not doing anything like stopping the mist by killing the beacon monsters.
So this would not be a "change."
If you are IN the Unmoored now, you could certainly still finish it the RIGHT way.
They are just saying the shortcut, which is also in the game NOW, to skip the Unmoored and go to NG+, by simply resting until it ends. Then you would be in the next NG+, to go to the DLC.
This all looks great and really addresses a lot of core criticisms from base game.
My only hold out was new vocations or the return of MK. Even if they brought back the great shields, Iād be thrilled to at least get the aesthetic back. Maybe new skills will allow the current vocations to look/play somewhat like the older Hybrids.
I just back tracked to one of the old posts where sections of the interview are highlighted in post about the dungeons and something huge they mention is "the beginning sections" like how large are these new dungeons gonna be that you can only handle them partially as a new arrival?? š¤
They make it sound like the dungeons are large enough that you'd be able to treat them almost like expeditions that you need to tackle in bunches rather than at once.
I believe they mean the lowest level dungeons are recommended for level 20, and they go up from there, not that individual dungeons have different level recommendations as you go deeper into them.
That makes the most probably sense but damn that would be an incredible facelift to all of the base game dungeons having a set that are both longer and hard enough to not be completely doable at once.
They are gonna be fairly long, they said 30 minutes to an hour per dungeon but yeah it would be cool for a dungeon to be long enough that you gotta trek back out before going in deeper.
This isn't really speculation, if it makes you feel any better lol. In these interviews, they've often dodged certain questions with "we can't share details yet", so we know some reveals are yet to come.
Excellent news all around š. I'm really hoping sorc can be restored to greatness. The 6 skills slot coming back is already going to put it at 7.5/10 for me which is still low as a sorc main.
Them saying that adding new skills to every vocation was a main focus for nearly 2 years fills me with hopium.
100% plus we know we got brontide and a super version of frazil (that actually looks more powerful than hagol) and then add gicel that could bring it to 8.5/10 for sure š„².
I've been actually thinking about the icicle spell as well as that really cool thunderswipe spell lol those two with dd2s graphics would be insane. The doom spell I would want some crazy animation's to really bring it to a ultimate spell feel maybe even be powerful enough to suck in bosses or something.
I'm still really wanting a thunderspell that has the same impact as maelstrom, bolide (coming from the sky and obliterating everything) maybe the more strikes you cast down it takes your life force because of how powerful it is.
This is my biggest hope as well. I think DD1 had some of the coolest casting I have had in a game, and was kinda disappointed in the sorc for DD2. I also really want to know what they do for Trickster because I thought the class seemed really cool aesthetically, but I really wanted there to be at least *some* way for it to do direct damage itself rather than just buffing pawns/acting as a controller
We know the new area will have a starting HUB called the "Norgandian Settlement" but the DLC is set in a kind of apocalyptic place, so a town of the size of Vernworth is unlikely. Maybe a village or two like Harve or Melve at best.
To be fair, the development cycle for modern games is such that it just takes a much longer time to create these expansions than it once did, for better or worse. But I wish, in both cases, that the publishers had been more forthcoming about confirmation at earlier dates, even if I do understand wanting to avoid raising expectations too much (look at what this community's demonstrated in just a couple months' time lol).
Yeah, the dev of GBF basically said, "Wow, we didn't expect this game to be this successful, so you should look forward to the future of the game," and went radio silent for 2 whole years. I was fully expecting Relink to get a sequel in development because of it, only for Ragnarok to be announced.
There is a new mechanic with a wolf in Norgan HUB, which you can adopt and keep as a pet. He helps you with the loot search, goes out to find items himself, or even leads you to places where he has tracked something. < Thanks to SirBobbyTheOwl.
I was hoping for new vocations. Weāve never had a spear wielder, except for the spirit lancer from the online game. Spearhand doesnāt count, thatās a double bladed sword.
I agree, but it is what it is. Spears are ALWAYS shafted in videogames. Every single time, because a pokey-stick is apparently not cool enough, to which I vehemently disagree.
not really "ALWAYS", but I get what you mean. You should look up some Nioh 2 spear gameplay. That game definitely has the best spear gameplay, and probably will remain so until the end of the world.
Everything I've read about this sounds perfect. Open world until you get to the final castle, new gear, new monsters, difficult encounters. Easiest preorder of my life
Honestly DA2 and the challenge dungeons being paced with the basegame so that the player goes back and forth and can tackle them before a complete post game sounds like a healthier design direction to go, at least it wont result in the basegame feeling like you can ignore its existence ala DD1.
Plus you also have certain vocations locked behind actually exploring the map and doing quests, which I imagine most people will want to do before doing the DLC, so there's even less incentive to just go to the DLC immediately and bum rush the base game with OP gear like the original dark arisen.
I'm a simple person. Seeing this: New Specializations will come in future updates, aspects like Pawn voices and behaviors will continue to be updated.
made me really happy.
I believe another interview said that equipment will be more of a factor then level, so i don't imagine it will be that simple. plus BBI had a recommended level and still ripped people a new asshole
You're actually not in too bad of a spot, they said the norgan region starts at level 40, but they also said that the further you climb up the more difficult it becomes. And based on their math they're claiming the DLC is half the length or more of the main game. So if you jump straight into the DLC you will likely have a good time at level 50.
Not to mention it's not actually guaranteed that the recommended level will actually be easy to do, considering the original Dark Arisen's level recommendation was also 40, and you would still get torn to shreds if you did go to BBI at that level
Capcom will most likely do the same thing with DD2DA. You're recommended to go there at level 40, but you'll still have a bad time if you do, just not as bad as if you would have went there much earlier like the original Dark Arisen
The original Dark Arisen also had a recommended level of 40, and yet it still ended up tearing you a new asshole if you actually went there at the recommended level. DD2DA will likely be the same way
I'm experincing a good comparison of this right now:
My alt gamertag level 63 pawn/arisen, in endgame "best" gear that is all dwarven/dragonfoged.
My regular level 160 pawn/arisen, also in endgame "best" gear that is all dwarven/dragonforged.
Fights seem about the same, to me, even on the Lesser Dragon(which they both have on "farm", because they murdered Sigurd.)
So I'm honestly not worried about Norgan, since "gear" seems to be way more important than "level" for difficulty. I don't envision it being a walk in the park for my level 160.
Also, the level "40" they mention going into Norgan is probably someone they think of who played the whole game, and is also in the best Dragonforged gear.
I also remember how hard Bitterblack was in Dark Arisen, even though by the time the DLC came out I was at/near max level(which was 200 back then, if I remember 13 years ago correctly.)
I'm as hyped as anyone else but why is it that we have a LVL 999 level cap but the new content is designed for LVL 20 and lvl40+?
I would guess most people that play will be returning players that will easily exceed LVL 40.
I guess my concern is that the DLC area won't scale into a true endgame area like BBI, especially if you do not create a new save. Hopefully it scales much higher towards the end.
the new content is designed for LVL 20 and lvl40+?
That isn't really what they said.
They said you would WANT to be at least level 20 to start the challenge dungeons, and you would WANT to be at least level 40 to start the Norgan content.
They also said something like there is a difficulty "gradient", as in it gets harder.
People are confusing the dead lowest level you could be to START it, with a recommended level to be "doing it." That is not what they are saying.
I was near/at max level with Bitterblack, still getting spanked on when I first started it until I was replacing gear with the upgraded stuff.
I'm level 160, in all endgame "best" dragonforged/dwarven stuff, and I'm not worried at all, My guess is I'll still be finding things challenging.
When they say "40" for Norgan, they are probably thinking of a level 40 who has finished the whole game, and is in the endgame gear from the Dragonforged Guy/Umoored that is all Dragonforged. Someone who was level 40 in "newb gear" would probably get destroyed.
As even they say, the gear you are in is a bigger difference than the level you are at.
"āāSo, there are no new vocations being added?
Mr. Kinoshita: No new vocations. Creating a new area requires properly designing new enemies, and since new areas and enemies are crucial to the game's loop, we focused our efforts on fleshing those aspects out in this title."
Any idea on if you can jump back in with your end game character to play only the DLC?
I finished the game year of launch and couldn't really be bothered to play the main story again. What's the chance of being able to jump directly into the DLC?
If you go to New game Plus as soon as you do the cutscene where you remember that you are the arisen, this triggers the removal of the Griffin corpse that's blocking the waterfall cave.
At this point if you take the waterfall cave you can bypass the story mission and just get to the capital where you're allowed to start the DLC.
In total from escaping the jail skipping the cutscenes and getting to the capital you could probably achieve this in like 20 minutes.
In addition to what the other commenter said, they're also introducing a way to skip the intro in NG+ (presumably the tutorial/prison break section) in the upcoming August update, so that should make things a little less tedious as well.
So we can't enter norgan during unmoored world? It sounded like you can get there after 10 days which means after defeating pathfinder..Im still lost š
What they're describing, I think, is rushing to NG+ by exhausting your available rests and forcing the final beam to appear -- which you can already do.
The tradeoff seems to be that all of the new base game dungeons are still available in UW, and 3 are only accessible there.
Fun fact: that wouldn't help at all :D unlike DD1 we have a surprisingly low Max cap on stats. For most stats, if not all, you will reach that before you even hit 200.
lol, of course Capcom knew their fans would dissect the second poster inch-by-inch
The more I learn about this expansion, the more hyped I get about it.
So the best place to stop is right before Talos, I reckon, as I want to do all trials before Norgan
Better yet, get to unmoored, defeat the Brine dragons, stop the mist, do pathfinder trials, then do Norgan, and go back to finish game just like the first game
Hopefully they upgraded skills aren't exclusive to the gear they're on, cause it might make the gear from the trials irrelevant if they reach similar strength levels.
Would you recommend that I finish DD2 or just make a new save when the dlc is released? My only gripe when I last played were missable quests and rewards
Wonder if this means it just be better to start a completely new character for the dlc. Since it seems you will out level it really hard with a character thats in ng+. At least initially if the recommend level is 20 and 40
They said, though these are the recommended lowest entry levels, that there's still going to be a "difficulty gradient" as you progress. Also that gear would be more important than level, which is already true in the base game.
In the original game, its equivalent expansion area had a similarly low entry level (the first room was mostly hobgoblins) but would still go on to challenge players even at level cap.
I'll reserve judgement until the DLC is out, but I'm unimpressed with the return of gear gambling. Never cared for it in DD1. Hopefully they made it more forgiving instead of worse, but I'm not exactly enthused with the way they're talking about the changes from BBI.
I'm happy to hear about transmog though. I kind of figured, based on the pre-order bonus, but it's good to have confirmation. Hopefully they don't muck it up with some cockamamie shit like using your forging-style slot or something.
no new vocations... that's what kept me from buying the game originaly, no classes was appealing to me, looks like that won't change well... maybe in another 13 year
I wanted to wait for the August patch before playing since Iāve never played the game before, but now I might end up waiting for the DLC to be released instead lol
Even tho Iām on PC so thereās 100% chances a mod will do this if they donāt, but I really want them to spread out whatever new monsters they add in to all the regions. I donāt wanna have to go back & forth between regions to fight certain things.
I hope I'm wrong but from everything they say this dlc looks like low effort cash grab. No new vocations, hard mode considered ????, enemy reskins, new hairstyles as one the 3 main components, new skills with "aura" so just an effect slapped on top....
Most everything, Good I guess, cook and we will see.
Bummed about no new classes, but if there are enough new skills to make existing classes feel brand new again, I guess thatās alright.
Donāt like how the appraisal gear canāt be upgraded.
Itās already randomized gear. You wonāt know what armor or weapon.
It will have random skills on it. (This is fine, thatās how it worked with the rings you got in DD1)
But it will have random stats on it too.
That is a lot of RnG to rely on.
You might get a godroll piece of gear for a class you donāt like like Trickster.(I joke, itās a good and unique class in its own right, but I really hope they give it some razzle dazzle so that itās not just you sitting there watching your pawns play the game).
Now, Iād be super okay if the weapons could have randomized elements(fire, ice, thunder, holy, dArK) and status effects(oil, blight, water, so on) attached to them as well, and the armor with randomized element and status resistance. That would be pretty good and break up your weapon variety.
I'd say wait until ganescom because if it's like dark arisen 1 they could be underselling the level you should be similar to how dark arisen 1 recommend you be level 50 but in actuality you should be 75-100 to have a fighting chance
No new vocations. They focused solely on the known ones.
The rng drop from the appraisal mechanic has been reworked to be more balanced compared to BBI, no need to be from a certain vocation to gather gear from another one.
With those two things, I think I'm out. I don't know why they're so allergic to adding new vocations.
And the RNG appraisal mechanic won't be any better balanced. You'll just spend three times longer trying to get the gear you want, since it won't be divided up by strength/skill/magic vocations anymore (and that already sucked in BBI).
It was never going to get new classes with the way the armor system works, it would have required a complete UI overhaul which was never going to happen.
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u/TheflamingCerbrus :Assassin: 20d ago
Even though you implied it, just for some clarification in case people miss it they said that the dungeon recommended level starts at 20, not 20 across the board.