Defiance's second DLC, Arkbreaker, will pit Ark Hunters against the deadly Volge.

Conquer the Warmaster

The epic new boss added in Arkbreaker is called the Volge Warmaster. A towering beast covered in crystalline plates, originally shown during a demo in 2011, his AI was reworked to make battling him a dynamic experience.

Before taking on the Warmaster, players must call down an ark at a Major Arkfall Site. These fights are estimated to last 7-10 minutes before the fight moves inside the ark. The arkfalls are public instances supporting a maximum of 24 players before a new instance spins up. Your survivability is raised with more participants and rewards are not reduced for anyone contributing in the battle.

Ideally it takes 17-20 players to take the boss down. He makes strategic battle decisions, such as attacking a heavily populated area with showers of destructive cold fire. This adaptive AI marks a new development perspective for Trion and a very different fight than players have ever seen before. The Volge Warmaster also marks the first boss fight in Defiance where you can fail, with a timer of seven minutes. Players must band together to bring down this difficult beast; the Warmaster becomes more aggressive as the fight lingers on, his attacks becoming more accurate and effective.

Everyone can contribute and help out—for example, using spikes and stims will benefit all. This plays in with a philosophy that Trion is trying to instill throughout the entire game: “The arrival of a new player should always be a positive experience, and [you] should never feel excluded when you arrive to content.”

Speaking more about the Warmaster, Trick said that he’s “taken it to about the limit of damage we can do with it still being a good and fair fight. Any well-designed boss is very, very threatening, but there’s always got to be a tolerance for forgiveness. You can’t just have them instantly dropping everybody in the room because that’s not any fun.”

Arkbreaker Signature Gear

Several new weapons are introduced in the Arkbreaker DLC, featuring Volge cold fire technology in the form of a pistol, sniper rifle (that can be charged up) and an assault rifle with burst fire (Trick recommended not using it in point blank range fighting). Players can discover up to 25 new Legendary weapons which have rarity rolls and bonuses added to them, making them slightly more effective than any other weapon in the game. These bonuses, tailored to the gun itself, can include a damage increase, higher reload rates, larger clip size and so on. The goal is to “spice up” Defiance’s current weapon arsenal.

When it comes to getting loot from the Volge Warmaster, failure to defeat him before his timer expires results in zero chance at a Legendary weapon drop, though “good quality gear” will still drop, as Trion recognizes that Major arkfalls are a significant time investment.  Non-DLC players can trade, sell or salvage the Arkbreaker exclusive weapons but cannot equip them until they purchase the DLC.

Defiance: Arkbreaker will be available for purchase on most platforms on Tuesday, December 10. If you’re new to the game you can join the battle for the New Frontier now by downloading the free trial!

 Ann "Cyliena" Hosler, Managing Editor

Follow me on Twitter: @Cyliena