Defiance‘s next major content patch will be arriving this Thursday, May 23rd. In this 1.020 patch we will be receiving an assortment of TV show crossover content that will be made available in the coming weeks as well as the new open world Siege modes and the return of Freight Yard for once and for all. The servers will also be getting a solid amount of performance improvements and voice chat improvements. Additionally, there will be a large amount of bug fixes, balance adjustments, and overall gameplay and UI improvements in this patch. Keep reading for the full list of patch notes, which was made available in this thread on the official forums yesterday.

We get started with a chase scene through the streets of Defiance. The Castithan that is being chased falls down, but tosses out a little mini grenade sort of thing to distract everyone so he can get away. His plan works up till the point where Nolan tackles him. The guy chasing the Castithan catches up and recognizes Nolan. The fought together and are old friends. His name is Eddie and he’s a bounty hunter.

They take the Castithan bounty to the jailhouse. Doc Yewll tends to the Castithan who starts talking to her. He asks if the humans know what she did during the Pale Wars. He know what she did and says he was a big fan. She says that he must have her confused with someone else and leaves. We do learn that the Castithan is named Paul Mattis and he is a weapons designer. He’s wanted by the Earth Republic for war crimes.

It’s mail call time in Defiance and everyone is excited. While most people are getting letters and packages, Nolan is getting ready to escort Rynn to Las Vegas Prison. He’s also guarding the city’s money that Amanda will using to get a train line going through Defiance. Amanda comes across and E-Rep Ambassador that she’s been ignoring correspondence from because she doesn’t want anything to do with the E-Reps. The Ambassador and her two husbands will be traveling with Nolan and Amanda. The only other passenger is a bible salesman.

Meanwhile, Irisa sees someone she thinks she knows. She follow the mystery man into the bar and keeps an eye on him. When he leaves out the back, she confronts him and knocks him out. When he awakes, he’s strapped to a chair in a basement or something. Irisa says she know who he is and she’s going to torture him like he did to her when she was a little girl. He says she’s got the wrong person, he’s just a traveling salesman of trinkets.

A few weeks ago, those who watch Defiance on Syfy were introduced to a character with some less-than great intentions — an Irathient named Rynn. We first met her briefly as part of the group of raiders in the pilot episode, and she made her return when attempting to destroy the town of Defiance by unleashing a massive hive of Hellbugs. As a punishment for her crimes, she was sentenced to two years in Las Vegas prison, but has since escaped custody (we’ll leave the details and spoilers to the recap article being posed very soon).

Last we saw her, she was told that she should consider bounty hunting. We do not know her geographic location at the time of her escape, but we know she has a roller and Las Vegas isn’t too awfully far from San Francisco.

So we were left with two questions…

Just in case you have any lingering questions about how the Salvage Matrix system works in Defiance, Trion released an intel video explaining the breakdowns of the system, which aspects unlock when, and how to break down and modify weapons using the system. One interesting tidbit was revealed in this video which directly corresponds to the topic of an improved Salvage Matrix system that Nathan Richardsson touched on in yesterday’s Letter to the Community.

It seems we’ll be gaining the ability to reset a weapon’s mastery points in the future:

Very cool! Keep reading to take a look at the full video.

In yesterday’s letter to the community posted by Nathan Richardsson, Executive Producer of Defiance, one very interesting set of details was announced– the contents of the first upcoming Defiance DLC (downloadable content) pack. The release date for this first DLC pack, which is being tentatively called “Enter the Castithan”, has not been announced yet, but we do know that there will be three types of content added: Paid DLC content that will set players back $10 unless they have purchased the Season Pass, free DLC content that will be available to all players, and additional, optional in-game store content.

And yes, our first new playable race will be the Castithans! Castithan fans celebrate! So, what other types of content are we going to see? Let’s check it out. Keep reading to take a look.

Defiance Junkies is looking to add a few more enthusiastic, talented writers to join our team.

All that we ask is that you’re a true fan of the game and/or show and can show us that you know a thing or two about writing. You’re more than welcome to set your own schedule and write whenever you feel inspired.

If you have any questions or would like to apply to become a writer for Junkies Nation and Defiance Junkies, please feel free to contact Jason at dreagon@rerollz.net or John at johnp@rerollz.com. Make sure to have a writing sample handy when you contact us!

We are also looking for writers for Elder Scrolls Online site, so if you or anyone you know is as pumped as we are for its release, please get in touch or share this article with them!

As our team works towards the next major patch release 1.020 (details coming soon). We are working to provide smaller updates and hot-fix issues that can be addressed server side only.

DEFIANCE Patch 1.014

- Freight Yard is back…again. (See additional info regarding Freight Yard here.)
- Svushinnira, “the rain of pollution”, grows ever more severe. Horribly mutated Hellbugs dot the Paradise landscape as the Hellbug mating season continues. Nano-effect imbued Hellbugs are now more common and many familiar encounters now carry a new and dangerous change. This includes more Electric and Syphon Monarchs and mutated Hellbugs now appearing at Parraba Ranch, Happy Pow, Bug Basin, Ridgecrest Mine, Big Stone Reach, and Diablo Station.
- Completing Ranks of Echelon now gives you a second outfit to equip in competitive matches.
- Some EGO rating 1900 to 2000 weapons were not getting their rarity bonus’s appropriately. This is now fixed.
- Fixed a crash that could occur when hitting Ctrl-Q.
- Fixed a crash that could occur when resetting missions.
- Fixed a crash associated with Dogtown Mine.
- Removed some of the level up spam that happened upon load in.

Later in the day, the above Patch Notes received an amendment:

We unfortunately missed a few items that were pushed live in today’s 1.014 patch. The affects this had were significant to some of our players and we apologize for this oversight. We also had a shotgun magazine mod adjustment that was incorrectly applied, this will be adjusted to pre-patch settings in a hot fix in the next 48 hours.

I would however like to note that our design team is looking at weapons and mods and how those items affect gameplay vs. all the other weapons in the game. While this magazine mod was not meant to go live, we will be addressing balancing shotguns as needed in upcoming patches. With these changes you can look forward to some in-depth details on why changes are being made.

Added Patch 1.014 Notes:
- Vehicles can now only be found as specials on vehicle vendors.
- Vehicle special price has been increased.
- Additional Challenger variants added.
- Mine 99 rewards have been reduced.

To start off this episode, we see Nolan taking the fight to Datak by busting some of the guys that work for him through selling drugs. When he searches their car, he finds a bunch of weapons. He wants to send a message to Datak that he is going to take him down.

We then see Datak busting into a city council meeting. He says that Nolan’s actions have spooked his supplier. Both the mayor and the audience learn that since the stasis net went down, a plan has been set in motion to stockpile weapons in case they were needed to protect Defiance. Amanda is not pleased that she was left out of this decision.

In a press release published yesterday, Trion Worlds announced that over 1,000,000 players have created Defiance accounts. The team also talked about a few other interesting details and statistics:

• The not so cute or cuddly hellbugs have put up a good fight, but gamers are showing an incredible love for dropkicking, exploding and decimating them by annihilating more than 500,000,000 hellbugs to date.
• Jumping on their ATV and cruising around the Badlands has led to gamers driving 50,000,000 miles around the terraformed Bay Area.
• Banding together, Ark Hunters have engaged in triggering and battling back an incredible 1,000,000 Arkfalls.

Now, it’s important to remember that the number of accounts registered most likely doesn’t correspond directly to the number of players who actually bought Defiance, but statistics are statistics, and as a bonus– that’s a lot of hellbug deaths.

Check out the full press release on Trion’s official site.