Monthly Archives: July 2014

Fan Friday is back! This week we’re putting the spotlight on OMDU regular Void2258. Void is very active over on the North American forums and if you visit often you will have surely come across one of his posts by now. Lets find out a bit more about him!

The Basics

• Name: Elliot Jenner
• Home Town: NYC, currently Pittsburgh

Questions

• What is day job?  

Graduate Student (physics)

Thanks for taking part Void!

If you are new to the world of Orcs Must Die! Unchained – have you checked out Juicy’s awesome how to play guide? The guide is a great place to start to learn the basics from one of the communities esteemed players!

Today we’d like to highlight some of the FAQs and handy hints from Juicy’s guides. Check them out below – you might learn something new!

• Guardians and Rifts apply a buff to you which heals over time. You can leave the guardian or rift’s side and this effect will stay for a few seconds.
• You can disable glyphs by using trap disable skills. This is extremely useful on defense against healing glyphs, as you can prevent large minions from healing at all from a healing glyph.
• You can buy 1,000 coin weaver upgrades during the initial game countdown. This is especially useful when buying the extra damage to gates and guardians weaver upgrade, if you plan on attacking a gate as soon as possible.
• The trickle leadership weaver is extremely strong. Most people go into that weaver just for that upgrade.
• Your whole team gets coins and leadership for each minion that gets through a gate. For example, whenever your minion wave spawns, if an enemy kills them in the first area of dirt and grass, you won’t get any. For each minion that gets through the first gate, your team will get bonus coin and leadership (small amounts, like 3-25) for each one. You will get that bonus again if they get through the next gate, and so on. This means if you can push your minions through an extra gate – totally worth it (unless you died. Then maybe not). Because of this system, it’s ALWAYS better to put traps in the first keep between the 1st and 2nd gates. You want to kill the enemy minions as soon as possible to limit the leadership the enemy team earns. In ALMOST ALL cases, the most leadership wins the game, so it’s important to make sure your enemy has as little as possible.

• You have a few seconds after placing a trap before it becomes active. During this time, if you sell the trap you get a full refund. If you place a trap in the wrong spot, sell it fast.
• You can place and sell traps at any time you want.
• You can spend leadership and put minion cards in any time you want – they’ll take effect for the next coming wave
• The timer on minion spawns is unforgiving. It looks like you have a few seconds after it ends, but if you’re a millisecond late, you’re too late.

>> Check out the full how to play guide!

This week we take a look at Stinkeye, one of the more trickier heroes to understand and play. Stinkeye is a very interesting hero to play primarily because of his use of totems which is perhaps Stinkeye’s main speciality. Totems are unique and exclusive to Stinkeye, players can place them on the map via the primary “Q” ability, the totems fire onto enemy units and if Stinkeye shoots the totems it splits the shot dealing damage from afar. Totems are very powerful and allow Stinkeye players to place them in such a a way that they can do damage while Stinkeye can stand back in additional safety. Take the below for example:

In the above example the totem fires outwards through the door so that Stinkeye can damage incoming waves whilst he is safe behind the corner.

With Stinkeye’s “E” ability he can place another kind of totem, a time totem. The time totem reduces the speed of enemy minions and heroes in range while allies are sped up. Aside from totems Stinkeye’s main attack lets him fire small arcane energy balls from his staff and his secondary main attack lets him charge an arcane bomb which when fully charged explodes and causes damage to near by enemy heroes and minions. If on the offensive the explosion also disables traps. Stinkeye’s arcane bomb is a powerful attack.

His passive ability called “A change of heart” spawns a ghost Stinkeye whenever he is killed. The left behind ghost fires healing projectiles.

In general Stinkeye is strongly recommended to be played as a defensive hero. Clever positioning of his totems enable him to play very well defensively, standing back from incoming waves and using his totems to extend his primary ranged attack.  When minions start to get too close for comfort, charge and fire his arcane bomb to help restore the balance.

Hero Card

Good news for EU OMDU players, the much awaited store is now open for business! Heroes, card packs and skins are all available for purchase. Those with Founder Packs also have their gold now available in their accounts ready for spending. If you’re in the EU hop on in and check out whats on offer. The store can take a little while to open up for the first time, so you may need to be a little patient.

Some players have asked what the differences are between the NA and EU stores. First up – the reason why there are different stores is because Gameforge are handling things in the EU, they have their own payment system and will be dealing with things like multi-languages and local currencies. There is the same content (for now) in both stores. They do look a little different as you can see from the screenshots below.

Screenshots showing the differences in design between the stores are of course how it looks right now. Everything is subject to change.

You can clock on any of the images below to enlarge them.

Store homepage:

NA:

EU:

Heroes

NA:

EU:

Hero Details

NA:

EU:

Purchase Complete

NA:

EU:

Card Packs

NA:

EU:

Purchase card packs

NA:

EU:

Skins

NA:

EU:

Purchase Gold

NA:

EU:

In the EU it is also possible to get gold via completing offers:

Robot Entertainment have today released the next OMDU early access patch for the NA region (EU patch is due tomorrow) and this is the first patch for the beta. Its quite a biggie too with patch notes spanning many lines. Luckily REF is here to give you the quick summary on the bigger changes of this patch.

Leadership

First up Leadership. This has changed quite a bit in terms of how it is earnt. Before there was a leadership trickle that players earnt in various ways (eg. killing players and spawning minions). Directly from the patch notes Robot had to say:

Early in the game, trickle is the dominant way to get leadership (later, minions are lot more valuable). Minions, being lower level, are harder to score with and provide less leadership when you do manage this. Early hero kills are similarly pretty low-value (although a few of them will allow a player or two to do a few things early). This trickle was 5 leadership per second, per player (1800 total per team, per wave).

We think this arrangement contributes to the current slow pace start of the game and also makes sitting on defense as a group a lot more attractive and a lot less of a risky.

Post patch leadership will now be earned by the player being close by to friendly minions. Leadership will no longer be gained by means of trickle as described above. This sounds like quite a drastic change, but trust me you wont feel drastic effects when playing. Lets dig down into the patch notes to see how this works:

You now earn leadership ANY time you are within a short distance from ANY of your minions. So, if you are on offense and are moving with your waves, you will earn leadership for your team (you’ll see leadership flyoffs for this).

The base amount of leadership earned by staying with your minions is 35 leadership per second. If only one player is escorting, that’s all the team will get. If another player is there, the team will get 1.5x (52.5 per second). A third takes it up another notch (61.25 per second).

The goal of this change is to try and speed up the early game and make it more risky for too many players to be sitting on defence. It adds more strategy into the mix as teams who spend more time on the offensive and can balance their defence effectively will be able to score big returns in leadership.

This remains obviously quite a significant design change, and as we’re in beta Robot will be very interested in hearing community feedback on this change via the forums. If you have feedback – good, bad or even just in-different, be sure to hollar on the official forums.

Smolder

Some important changes for those who like to play as Smolder. Robot felt there were a number of design issues with Smolder in particular with regards to her primary attack and defensive ability post wave 3:

Her prior incarnation had area of effect damage everywhere, but not for much of a reason. Why would you ever flame form and then run through enemy minions to set up an ignite when you could (when you could get it to work) just charge up a giant ranged fireball and set everything alight from safety? Plus she had little escape, and her defensive ability fell off after the enemy hit Level 3 at their war camps.

To help alleviate the Smolder concerns her primary attack has now changed, it is no longer chargeable and she instead just fires larger single shot fireballs that are slower moving. Her “Q” ability that provided her fire form now additionally provides crowd control immunity. With these changes it is felt that Smolder will be better balanced particularly in the later game amongst other heroes. See the patch notes for full details on the Smolder changes.

Dieting Heroes

All of the heroes have been on a diet! Ie. all the heroes have been made smaller in size. This has been changed to help make “collision” where you collide with other players (and also getting stuck in terrain) less painful. From the patch notes:

In internal testing, this has been positive – it is easier to get past heroes, harder to body block, more ranged shots hit (instead of being stopped by colliding with the cubic meter of air under your Bloodspike ally’s axe), and you don’t get caught on terrain as often.

Initially this seems like a positive change, but again one where feedback will be welcomed via the official forums.

Improvements to Wi-Fi connections

There have been numerous reports on both the NA and EU forums about difficultied playing on Wi-Fi connections. Good news is that improvements have been made in this patch to help resolve some of those connection problems (lag).

Changes to sprinting

This change is a little deeper in the patch notes but is quite important to be aware of before you next play. By default your hero will now spring (ie, run) rather than walk. Instead of holding SHIFT to run you now hold it to walk. This change might feel a little strange and might take a bit of getting used to. As before, hit up the forums to give your feedback.

More more more

There are TON of addtional things changes in this patch. The above is a mere summary of what we think are the more important points. We encourage all budding OMDU players to check out the full patch notes over on the OMDU website. The full patch notes can be found here:

https://forums.orcsmustdie.com/discussion/1013/build-number-10058

Store opens for EU tomorrow!

For EU players we have some great news to share! Gameforge have posted that the EU store will be open for business from tomorrow once you have downloaded the patch.  Purchasable card packs, heroes and vanity ahoy! Gameforge are also running a promotion where you can earn even more gold in your founders pack if you upgrade before 11am CEST tomorrow. Check out the comments from Gameforge:

To reward all the players that bought a Master or War Mage pack or Upgrade before the in-game shop was opened, we will grant even more Gold: Masters will get a total of 157.500 Gold and War Mages a total of 31.500 Gold with their Pack.

Don’t miss out on that extra gold which is perfect to go towards heroes, card packs and skins!

This week the OMDU fan spotlight is shining down on Sagius. Or not shining as the case may be with his shadowy mysterious picture! Find out what we can learn about this man of mystery.

The Basics

• Name: Onur ‘Sagius’
• Hometown: Çanakkale, a small coastal city in Turkey

Questions

• What is your day job?

I’m a mechatronics engineer graduate, currently looking for a job while studying for exams for a master’s degree.

• What is your favourite food?

Rice, with chicken! And for a dessert anything with chocolate or icecream.

• What kind of music do you like?

I like all kinds of music/art that is made to express feelings and not made to make money in an industrial fashion. Lately I’ve been listening to a lot relaxing music, soft rock, opera rock, country, classical music, any combination of violin/piano/guitar.

• Biggest life adventure so far?

Not really an adventurous kind of guy. Spent most of my time in university looking to enjoy refined tastes, rather than going to parties or doing crazy stuff. I was into all kinds of nerdy stuff, theater, philosophy, psychology, quantum physics etc.

• How did you find out about Orcs Must Die! ?

Through the trailer video. I was a big warcraft fan, and used to play all kinds of custom maps, including tower defense and battle arenas. When I saw OMD trailer, i knew i was going to play it for a long time.

• What do you think about the new three lane map?

“It’s big!” I think once it gets polished it will be “the OMD:U map”. The map size, number of lanes, makes it feel more of an OMD game compared to the 2-lane map. You get to do more strategic decisions on warcamps/trap placements and you even have to make decisions on how to use your time between waves as it’s very limited. I like it a lot more than 2-lane map.

• Which OMDU Hero is your favourite and why?

Ivy. All of her skills remain useful throughout the game. Although she isn’t very good at duelling other heroes, she has the ability to turn the fights around both in offense and defense. A good root/heal or trap disable can change the flow of the entire game. I think the quality of her skillset needs to be the standard for all heroes.

• Which minion cards are most essential when you play?

Pride hunters, dwarf shamans and ogres. I just use whatever has those in them. Dwarf shamans are getting nerfed and ogres are just standard fatties. But pride hunters need a big nerf, they do twice the damage they should be doing. 🙁

• Whats the biggest thing you would like to change about OMDU right now?

Collision! Seriously! It’s the only thing that feels clunky about the game.

Shout Out

• Is there anything you would like to say to all the OMD fans out there right now?

Ivy is not a defender! NO! Just, DON’T!

Now if like me, you might wonder what a mechatronics engineer does. According to good old Wikipedia it is summed up as follows:

Mechatronics is a design process that includes a combination of mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, telecommunications engineering, control engineering and computer engineering. Mechatronics is a multidisciplinary field of engineering, that is to say, it rejects splitting engineering into separate disciplines.

How about that. Sagius is a clever guy!

This evening saw Robot Entertainment challenge their EU publishing partner GameForge in a best of three OMDU showdown match! The fighting was fierce. In the first match Robot and Gameforge took very different strategies with Robot opening two war camps at level one with GameForge choosing to focus on the initial upgrade of their first war camp to level 2. With some very aggressive pushing from Robot they were able to win the match quickly with a 20-0 rift points score with thanks to Ogres.

On the second match GameForge faired a little better with a more equal early and mid game, but continued aggressive pushing from Robot saw that match too end with 20-0 rift points.

You can check out the replay of the battle right here with excellent commentary from SixOkay!

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