Ark Hunters,
We are approaching the 5-month mark since relaunch, and it’s the perfect moment to celebrate the milestones we’ve achieved together and share what’s coming next for Defiance.
🎉 Major Milestones Achieved
- All 5 DLCs released for free: Every Ark Hunter now has access to the full Defiance experience.
- Server stability at its best: The servers are now running more stable than at any point in the history of Defiance. This is one of our biggest achievements and a foundation for everything else.
- Easy Anti-Cheat integrated: One of the most important changes since relaunch. EAC has helped us combat abuse and exploits from cheaters using third-party software, greatly improving fairness across the game.
- Events with corrected drops: Event rotations are back with loot tables functioning as intended.
🔧 Event Drop Fixes – How & Why
When Defiance was originally live, event rewards were handled by a hidden system called Karma, which was part of Trion’s backend. That system was never transferred to us, and no documentation or development details were ever provided.
Re-creating Karma today would require:
- Months of investigation just to guess how it worked.
- Even longer to develop and test a replacement.
Instead, we made the decision to manually assign drops to each event. This allows us to bring events back one by one, with their rewards restored and working as intended.
- The first event we fixed was 99 Problems, which is now live and functioning correctly.
- The next event, Hulker’s Hell, has also been fixed and is ready for rotation in the middle of October.
- We are now working to cover all remaining events for the rest of the year, so once they are complete, we can shift focus to other systems without worrying about event progression.
This path is slower than a global system, but it gives steady, visible results and ensures long-term stability.
🔍 Berk Abuse & Fire Rate Exploit
Another area we’re actively investigating is the situation with Berk and the excessive item drops + selling for script that are contributing to inflation in the game.
We’ve received a lot of helpful information from both players and the GS team, including several videos showing the exploit. We’re currently evaluating ways to adjust the drop rates to make them more balanced and coherent. If needed, we may temporarily disable the arena until we can implement a proper fix.
We also know this issue is connected to the fire rate exploit, which is also under investigation. The GS team have provided detailed information that we’re reviewing, and we’re exploring potential design changes that could help prevent this kind of abuse going forward.
This is only the beginning, and we’re proud to share this journey with every Ark Hunter who stood with us through the challenges.
See you in the fight, Ark Hunters!
— The Fawkes Team
