Monthly Archives: September 2014

Here at REF we’re looking for your Orcs Must Die! Unchained hero strategies! We would like to build a small database of expert strategies from the community so that players can learn about the strengths and weaknesses of certain heroes and certain play styles. This will be another resource for players to discover new ways to play the many heroes we have access to in Unchained. Strategies can be rated by REF members to highlight which strategies get the communities seal of approval.

There are plenty of discussion points on hero strategy. At the high level there are things like should the hero be mainly played on offence or defence. Delving deeper though you could think about when a hero should push on offence – should they wait for certain cards or conditions? What about which other heroes and cards work best along side this hero? If going on defence what trap combinations work best for this hero?

Take a look at our example Ivy strategy.

Have you got some top secret tips that you would like to share with the community? Hop on over to our Hero Strategy page to submit them!

Win PAX Prizes!

We’ve got some sweet prizes lined up from Robot Entertainment and you will be in for a chance of winning some exclusive OMDU PAX swag just for taking part. For those who submit a strategy to the database and are ranked one of the higher ratings you will be in for a chance to win. Also if you take the time to read and rate some of the contributions from the community you too will also be in a chance to win these sweet prizes. Up for grabs we have:

• 2x OMDU backpack, wrist band, shirt, button set, and Founder’s PAX!

Two chances to win, either by a higher rating strategy (randomly selecting amongst the  top rated strategies) or being randomly selected by reading and rating strategies (just make sure you are signed in to your REF account!).

The latest patch for OMDU is now ready for download. Just start the beta client and it will begin updating straight away. Be sure to read our update summary to be in the know of the changes.

We have also updated our number and statistics database with the latest changes.

Next Tuesday 23rd September is poised to be the next patch day for OMDU. There are a fair few changes lined up as we have come to expect. REF is here to bring you the highlights!

New selectable difficulty levels

Co-op players will now be able to choose from four different pre-set difficulty levels before starting a game. These difficulty levels will impact how the bots play and the four levels are defined as easy, normal, hard and for the brave amongst us, “nightmare“. The difficulty level system changes variables such as bot HP and damage to scale to the appropriate difficulty level.

All new players must have first played at least one game on the “Easy” difficulty and beyond before they unlock the next. The rewards players get for playing difficulties is shown as below. If players can stick it out with the nightmare difficulty they can sweep up 150% worth of rewards.

• Easy games are 75% (base reward – they also provide a bonus to players under 10) until level 10.
• Normal games are 100% until level 15.
• Hard games are 125% with no level limit.
• Nightmare games are 150% with no level limit.

Guardians

Some much improvements have been made to Guardians to better bring them in line to the end goal, though its worth noting the Guardians are still very much still a work-in-progress. Some of the headline changes are that Guardians no longer care about damage type and they do unmitigated damage. They also provide +50 worth of armor for every type when players are near by.

Heal and Mana regeneration from Guardians is granted as an aura, applied to allies in proximity. BUT… players who are in combat no longer receive the health and mana regen boost.

Ball and Chain

The lovely Ms Ball and Chain bags herself some extra HP taking her from 560 up to 610HP. Her motivation now lasts longer and While motivated, orc minions (sorry Bloodspike) now do an additional 20% damage.

Prospector

Dwarven fans should be pleased the Prospector’s mana cost for dynamite has been decreased from 50 to 40 mana.

Sir Winston

Sir Winston has had a few nerfs that players need to be aware of, so for Sir Winston here are the changes in full:

• Curse heal on minions changed to 60 HP + 15% of maximum HP from a
  flat 120 HP heal.

• Curse heal on players to 100 HP from 120 HP.

• Curse mana cost decreased to 35 mana from 40 mana.

• Curse cooldown decreased to 8 seconds from 10 seconds.

• Primary damage reduced to 32 from 40.

• Secondary damage reduced to 40 from 50.

Smolder

She has had her mana costs reduced for Fireform, Ignite and Flamethrower.

Sorceress

Mesmorize now works on players! (3 seconds). Broken by any damage.

Stinkeye

Stinkeye also enjoys some mana reductions:

• Spawning either totem mana cost decreased to 15 mana from 20 mana.

• Arcane Bomb mana cost decreased to 80 mana from 100 mana.

Tundra

Tundra has had a number of buffs with HP going up from 560 to 610 and his heal going up from 100HP to 150HP. Winter mode will now keep going until mana runs out (it won’t just stop after 30 seconds). There are some more changes too so be sure to read the patch notes in full.

War Mage

The War Mage is a trustworthy hero indeed. So in this patch Robot have increased the effectiveness of his “Trust Me” ability.

• Trust Me, duration increased to 10 seconds from 7.5 seconds.

• Trust Me radius increased to about three traps from about one trap.

• Trust Me movement bonus increased to 40% from 25%.

Traps

As players would expect the patch brings a number of tweaks and changes to traps. Its worth reading the full patch notes if you want to dig into these. The main changes are with Boulder Chutes which now gives more damage the higher the trap is placed. Maximum damage is achieved at a height of five trap spaces. For a regular boulder chute, the worst placement will yield 215 DPS and the best will yield 484 DPS.

Some amendments to Cursed Ground are notable:

• Cursed ground cost increased to 2000 from 1750.

• Greater Cursed Ground arcane armor debuff dropped to -40 arcane
  armor from -70 arcane armor.

On the less notable front, decoys can now be rotated – how about that.

Lightning Ring

The popular lightning ring is getting some changes. Instead of firing one single large bolt of lightning it will now be numerous smaller shots. Quite a significant change. Robot says:

The general sentiment is that the one-big-pulse items aren’t fun for the user (when they miss and then have nothing) or the target (when they suddenly get hit as part of a burst for a giant chunk of HP).

Considering its high use in game it will be interesting to see what feedback comes out of this change from players.

Wrapping up

The above pretty much covers the main changes. However as always, be sure to have a peruse of the full patch notes to be fully in the know of all the changes that are taking place in patch 1.5 next Tuesday!

Following on from our first part of Robot’s PAX Panel review we now move on from looking at the studios history to present day to looking at some of the interesting prototypes they have been working on in-between OMD2 and OMDU. For the first time we get a glimpse at some of he games that could have been from the creative minds at Robot.

Mithril

The first concept that came up at the studio was a game called Mithril, a project that Lance Hoke worked on. It was an accessible hex based browser game that would have the feel of Age that would work well on web browsers and tablets like the iPad. Similar to Tribal Wars but with a much deeper level of strategy. We saw the following concept art from the PAX slides:

There wasn’t too much detail on this one, it sounds like it didnt get very far along before the next concept came to surface, not much to report on this one but be sure to check out the commentary on the Twitch VOD.

Lonestar

Lonestar was the next concept the studio worked on. Ian Fischer described it as emergent gameplay which refers to the gameplay adapting to the actions of the player. For example in games like The Sims where players can tell their own story and the gameplay is shaped by the actions they take. Another example might be games like Fable where players actions can shape the world around them.

In Robot’s case with Lonestar they set out to create a sci-fi sandbox world that woul have completely randomly generated planets. The players ship had crashed on one of these planets and the player was tasked with finding a way to survive and escape the planet. Everything about the planet would be a randomly generated simulation including the beings that were already living on it.

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The only downside with Lonestar were the challenges of managing the in-game ecology and for a number of other reasons, the project would have been a very large under-taking. Robot went on to scale down the project for their next prototype called “Victory”.

Victory

The biggest thing that you’ll notice about Victory when watching the PAX panel video that it was a shooter. A big departure from the typical type of game for the studio to work on. Once again it involved planets that were generated emergently and colonies would be formed on each planet. The generated planets would all have their own unique environments and properties and everything in the game would be a simulation. One simple example would be how close and far the planet would be from the sun would affect the properties and environment of the planet. Players would take the form of a space troubleshooting team who would travel out to these planets. Players would have to figure out what was happening on each planet and what problems there were that needed fixing.

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Ian game some example of problems such as overheating reactors and being taken over by space pirates as just two possible scenarios amongst many others. Players would be challenges to resolve planet problems as quickly as possible before things got too bad. For instance enemies might get bigger and stronger over time, like this monster:

Robot considered making a very early preview of Victory at PAX the year before, but in the end decided they would return back to Orcs Must Die! for their next game based on TONS of feedback they were getting from the community and press alike. As great and as interesting as these concepts are, there was just so much overwhelming demand to continue the OMD franchise and out of that Orcs Must Die! Unchained was born.

Orcs Must Die! Unchained

Following two very successful games of OMD the bots at Robot had long heard the calls to expand the multiplayer element of the game, first adding co-op in OMD2 and then having to cater for the desire to have PvP OMD gameplay. It was out of this that Unchained! was born, and Robot is set to deliver all the things a budding OMD fan could want including full 5v5 fortress siege multiplayer action.

For the first time in the series players would be able to experience the offensive side of playing OMD.

We are able to see some excellent early art of the game coming together from its early stages. It is interesting to see the steps Robot took before getting to what we see today in the closed beta. They even had long hair for the War Mage and Sorceress at one point to show that they have aged between OMD2 and Unchained. Here we can see one of the very early levels and early UI design:

We can can also see some early hero designs below, some of which may still make it into the game. These are actually just a selection of hero ideas that are currently sitting on the walls at Robot HQ. They have a ton of ideas and there certainly isnt a shortage of ideas on the OMDU hero front. Check out some of these cool designs:

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Thoughts to take away

Things that we can learn from the PAX panel is that Robot is a very diverse studio with very creative minds and can work on a number of different projects over an array of different game genres. We can get an idea that the studio is still interested in strategy but also have a keen interest in emergent gameplay. As we move forward into the future looking at Unchained and beyond, its an exciting time to be a Robot Entertainment fan and I’m sure the studio to continue to keep us guessing even more so from this PAX panel on what kind of other concepts are being though up from the orange pod inside the studio!