Dark and Darker’s Early Access Season 6.9 is a tight four-week mini-season that resets characters, items, stashes, and progression. It brings SSF for two weeks, a condensed quest and reward tune, random High-Roller maps, faster key drops, and balance adjustments before the full Season 7 arrives September 23, 2025.
This is Ironmace’s short stopgap – not a complete content expansion, but a focused shake of the game systems to gather data and keep the run loops interesting. You’ll see a Semi-Semi-Wipe reset, Solo Self-Found play early on, and several balance curve changes to health, action speed, and spell casting speed. Want a little chaos in your next run? Ah, it might be fun.
Highlights up front: SSF (first two weeks), marketplace and trading post opening September 9, 2025, reduced stash unlock costs, more frequent special key drops that must be used in-session, the Arena running weekend pools, and a new random map pool for High-Roller dungeons to concentrate players. Triumph levels were reset, seasonal pack bonuses stay active until the next season, and there’s a small Welcome Delivery pack for anyone who logs in.
Below are the full patch notes from the Steam post. I kept them intact so you can scan the exact list – I’ll be back with impressions once I’ve had time to clear a few dungeons.
Patch Notes
Early Access Season #6.9
Welcome to EA Season #6.9, a super condensed four week mini-season to make the remaining time leading up to the actual major season update more interesting. Please note that this update is just to spice things up and not meant to introduce major new content. The real new content will be showcased with EA Season #7 launching on September 23, 2025.
EA #6.9 includes the following changes.
- SSF mode for the first two weeks of the mini season. The marketplace and trading post opens on September 9, 2025. We have drastically reduced the cost to unlock additional stashes to accommodate this change.
- All character levels, items, stashes, inventory, reward tokens, karma, quests, and affinity have been reset.
- Quest difficulty and content has been tuned slightly to adapt to the condensed season. The rewards for several quests have also been updated including the final quests giving ‘Artifact’ gear as a reward.
- A new Adventure Rank mini season with new rewards will commence immediately.
- A new religion mini season with new rewards will commence immediately.
- A new Arena mini season with a new map pool will run every weekend until the end of the mini season. Equipment will be limited to ‘Rare’ grade gear for this mini season to encourage maximum participation.
- Triumph levels have been reset, allowing you to earn additional Bluestone shards until the start of the next season.
- Seasonal Pack DLC bonuses will remain active until the start of the next season.
- A small ‘Welcome Delivery’ pack will be given to all players who log in for this Semi-Semi-Wipe that gives an array of starting items to help with your adventures. Please collect your ‘Welcome Delivery’ pack from the Expressman’s ‘Post Express’ service tab.
EA Season #6.9 also brings an update to the matching pools. We are now fully committed to supporting Solos, Duos, and Trios matching pools. Although we’d love to give all party sizes the full freedom to select any dungeon, we realize that this is difficult with the current population.
We have introduced a ‘Random Maps’ system for the High-Roller dungeons to concentrate players for that mode. This change allows us to enable Solos, Duos, Trios for all maps for across the ‘Normal’ dungeons, giving more freedom to a substantial portion of our player base. The ‘Random Maps’ system also allows us to control better the flow of players for the ‘High-Roller’ Dungeons, giving us better tools to combat teaming and stream sniping.
We understand that this makes pre-planning for an HR adventure more difficult, especially when it comes to quests and using special keys. We have tuned the random dungeon system to utilize a more hybrid approach where certain modules will always appear or appear using much higher weights to make things more predictable when it comes to quests. We have also reworked the special key system so they drop much more frequently and must be used within that session instead of being carried out to be used as a store of value.
Finally, we have tuned several of the main attribute formulas such as health, action speed, and spell casting speed. We are still testing the extremes of the balance we’ve established from the first Semi-wipe and will continue to use this mini-season to collect additional data. We thank you for your patience and support and see you in the dungeons!
IRONMACE
Bugfixes:
- Fixed an issue where the Sorcerer’s Mud Shield sphere appeared smaller than intended.
- Fixed an issue where weapons could become invisible when equipped while under the effect of a skill or potion that grants invisibility.
- Fixed an issue where some walls could flicker in the Mimic Lair module of The Ruins of Forgotten Castle.
- Fixed an issue where Chests that were actually mimics in the Bandit Camp module of The Ruins of Forgotten Castle would sometimes fail to properly attack.
- Fixed an issue in the Graveyard module of The Ruins of Forgotten Castle where monsters could not enter certain areas.
- Fixed an issue where Druids in rat form could fall into a specific hole in the Staircase Hill module of the Ice Abyss.
- Fixed an issue where attacking some training dummies in the dungeons would result in the attack being blocked.
- Fixed an issue where Silver Coins could sometimes not be picked up.
- Fixed an issue where item names that were too long would be displayed as “…” in the chat window.
- Fixed an issue where an ‘Uncommon’ grade cloak could be incorrectly given as a quest reward.
- Fixed an issue where the ‘claim rewards’ button from the previous season could disappear.
Game Updates:
- EA6.9 Season has begun! All character levels, items, stashes, inventory, reward tokens, karma, quests, and affinity have been reset.
- Receive a special ‘‘Welcome Delivery’’ pack from the Expressman when you login.
- SSF mode will be in action for the first two weeks of the mini season. The marketplace and trading post opens on September 9, 2025. We have drastically reduced the cost to unlock additional stashes to accommodate this change.
- The ‘Normal Dungeons’ have been changed so Solos/Duos/Trios can now select from all map locales.
- The ‘High-Roller Dungeons’ have been changed to a random dungeon pool.
- Special Keys (Mystical Gem, Frozen Iron Key, Golden Key, Old Rusty Key, Skull Key) can only be used inside dungeons during the session they are found. Special Keys will disappear upon escape or death.
- The drop rate for special keys have been significantly improved and will now drop from specific sub-boss and boss monsters.
- Special locked rooms have been added to both Adventure Mode and Normal Mode.
- The Arena map pool has been updated with new maps.
- Quest requirements and difficulty has been adjusted to match the shorter season.
- Weekly Sales for cosmetic items will be available during the shortened season.
- The display time for the recent chat window has been increased from 10 seconds – 15 seconds.
- Improved LOD for the ‘Low’ graphics settings.
- A new feature has been added that automatically displays the remaining maintenance time as a system message when maintenance begins.
Balance Updates:
General
- Name tags for allies are now displayed in all dungeons and game modes.
- The spell casting speed curve has been adjusted to become much flatter at the mid to upper end of the curve.
- The action speed curve has been adjusted to give slightly more action speed in the beginning and give less in the mid to upper end of the curve.
- The maximum Health curve has been adjusted to give less HP per VIG/STR at the mid to upper end of the curve.
- The maximum Health curve has been further adjusted to provide a static +15 Health across all sections.
- The Barbarian’s default Vigor has been changed from 25 to 20.
Items
- Random modifiers have been updated to include a larger variety of possible stats.
- All primary modifiers for gear have been reduced by 1 starting from the ‘Uncommon’ grade. For example, ‘Uncommon’ grade Cloth Pants used to give +4 dexterity but now give +3 dexterity.
- Primitive attributes can no longer be enchanted via socketing gems. Since this means the ‘Diamond’ gem is no longer useful for socketing, players can exchange their diamond gems to the ‘Treasurer’ for an equivalent grade gem of their choice.
- ‘Unique’ grade gems have been re-added to the loot pool.
- The Rapier’s base damage has been increased by 1.
- The Void Blade has been updated to add +2 True Magical Damage.
- The Felling Axe’s weapon animation speed has been slightly reduced.
- The Plate Boots primary modifier has been changed from Strength to Vigor.
Fighter
- The duration of Taunt has been reduced from 10 seconds to 8 seconds.
Druid
- The damage of the Bear’s Swipe attack has been reduced from 32 to 29.
- The damage of Bear’s Bash attack has been reduced from 46 to 43.
- The animation has been slowed down, a 2-hit sequence has been added, and the recovery delay has been increased for the Panther’s scratch attack.
- The damage of Panther’s Scratch attack has been increased from 16 to 21.
- The damage of Panther Neckbite attack has been increased from 18 to 23.
- The cooldown of Shapeshift stack has been increased from 9 seconds to 10 seconds.
Sorcerer
- The duration of Mud Shield has been increased from 4 seconds to 6 seconds.
- The duration of Wall of Fire has been reduced from 12 seconds to 10 seconds.
- Time Distortion has been updated as follows:
- Applies a Magic Damage Bonus of –25%.
- Move Speed Modifier has been changed from –1% to –3%.
- It now removes only a single stack instead of clearing all stacks.
- Lightning Bolt attribute bonus ratio has been changed from 1.0 to 0.5.
Join the conversation below – tell us about your first runs and what you noticed.
