Light your torches, prepare your spellbooks, and sharpen your swords, because a new Dark and Darker Mobile pre-season update is officially here. Krafton’s ported dungeon-crawler is introducing a treasure trove of new content, along with some important quality-of-life tweaks based on player feedback, as the game continues its North American soft launch.
The season update, aptly called A Step Towards Greatness, introduces new high-tier items to be found in the Forgotten Castle dungeon – as long as you’re brave enough to tackle it on Hell difficulty, and take on the Ghost King boss – and the Unique rarity equipment on offer promises some exciting and powerful effects. Providing, of course, you can make it out alive. Our Dark and Darker Mobile preview lets you know exactly how excited we are for a worldwide launch, and the new pre-season update brings us ever closer to the DNDM release date.
If, like us, your main priority is getting the hell out of dodge and home with your precious loot, you’ll be pleased to know that the second pre-season update has improved escape mechanics. The reduced cooldown on Headstones means you won’t have to wait quite as long to get the portal going as the darkness, or your enemies, press ever closer. A new ping system also means you don’t have to communicate on voice or text chat, and it’s also easier to keep an eye on debuffs in the height of combat, with improved visual effects for burn, poison, and bleed statuses.
Cleric mains can rejoice and thank their respective gods – or Krafton – for a significant buff to their healing, attack, and defense skills, and fighters and barbarians can enjoy increased skill damage for a tankier, more offensive presence in the dungeons. The A Step Towards Greatness update also improves the mercenary AI, so your borrowed buddies will actually dodge any attacks coming their way and position themselves a little more dynamically. Sure, they’re cannon fodder, but at least they can actually help you out now. Plus, they’re far cheaper to hire, because you can use gold instead of platinum coins to buy their services.
You can check out the patch notes here, but if you’re outside the U.S. and Canada, you can sign up for Dark and Darker Mobile pre-registration now, because the full launch is officially coming later this year. If you can’t wait, check out our picks for some of the best mobile games to tide you over, including the best RPGs or the best dungeon crawler games. Or, if you just want some freebies, we’ve got plenty of Tribe Nine codes and Mythic Heroes codes for you, too.