Great news for Steam gamers this week as Robot Entertainment announces that following Orcs Must Die! 1 & 2 the new PvE and PvP Orcs Must Die! Unchained will also be coming to Steam! This has been much requested on the forums and Robot Entertainment will be delivering! The game will be available on Steam as soon as Open Beta starts.

This is such great news that to help celebrate Robot is also making OMD1 and OMD2 available at a huge 90% off on Steam. If you have any friends who haven’t yet checked out OMD – be sure to tell them!

There are also a ton of streams happening this week, so much so there is a new website ‘Orc Week’ to keep you up to date. Check out http://www.orcweek.com. We’ve got streams from the studio and the hosteses with the mostest – Nananea!

Great news to all closed beta players for OMDU the MEGA PATCH version 2.7 is out now in both EU and NA regions simultaneously. The download is a biggie so you will want to get it going as soon as possible so that you are ready to play. As a reminder there has been an account wipe with this patch so your progress will start again from the beginning. This is as result of the huge changes which almost make patch 2.7 feel like a completely new game.

Highlights

Just a small  selection of highlights from this new patch include:

• 3 (yes, three!) brand new PvE exclusive maps!
• A single player campaign mode for survival!
• You can now choose whether you want to play as an defensive or offensive role as a hero of your choice. Heroes no longer have fixed roles. A new role of “roamer” has also been introduced.
  • Some heroes still may play better on one particular role than another and this will be indicated in the dashboard.
• Heroes now move faster.
• Account level is now the sum of your hero levels.
• All cards in the store can now be crafted.
• Bots will now attempt to capture neutral objectives.
• And of course some new traps and minions!

These are just scratching the surface. Check out the full patch notes to dig into the full details of all the changes, including designer notes from Doug Houserman. What are you waiting for? Start downloading! Whilst you wait you can also check out this weeks episode of Insider Access which also covered all the big changes in this patch.

Be sure also to tune into Meet Your Match on Friday at 6.30pm US Central time for streaming games with Nananea. It’ll be great to see you there!

The final of three brand new PvE maps coming to Orcs Must Die! Unchained in the next patch due out this Thursday is Frostbite. This map gives us a nice change of scenery, a snowy map with a fortress along the Arctos glacier. The art for the map looks great and Frostbite looks to be a great addition to the growing PvE exclusive map line-up. From the OMDU blog:

Built with the cooperation and generous financing of the grizzly royal family, Frostbite Fortress sits at the edge of the Arctos glacier protecting grizzly territory from the Unchained. Rift activity is particularly high on the glacier, probably because of its proximity to Centre’s northern pole. It is also rumored that the grizzlies are protecting a secret rift to their home realm deep within their territory, which makes Arctos a very enticing target. Open, stable rifts are sources of great power, and the rift is most likely what makes the grizzlies so much better at frost magic than any other race. Letting the Unchained find this rift, if it exists, would be a disaster; the fortress must keep the Unchained out for the safety of the grizzlies and their rumored rift.

Lets take a look at some sweet sweet screenshots of this chilly map:

Another new PvE exclusive map that will be arriving in closed beta patch 2.7 for Orcs Must Die! Unchained next week is “The Wall”. The map lives up to its name and is indeed one big wall that connects to the fortress. The OMDU blog describes it as:

The Wall is just that–a fortified wall connecting the volcanic rim of a sunken atoll in the Eastern Crescent. The Eastern Crescent is a peninsula and island chain that extends east from the main continent of Centre. This atoll, named Niu, is the southernmost point of the chain and a strategic position for gaining access to the Eastern Crescent–and the eastern edge of the Eight Groves beyond. This fortress protects not only the elven Eight Groves but also the felinoid races that are native to the Crescent. Unfortunately, not all of these natives are Order-aligned or very happy with the Order building a fortress on Niu which makes defending the area from the Unchained difficult.

It looks like this map could be something a little different to the norm and should have some interesting mechanics. Here are some screenshots:

We have one more map to be revealed shortly too. Patch 2.7 is certainly going to have lots of new content for testing.

There is a new map coming to the Orcs Must Die! Unchained closed beta in patch 2.7 which is due to land next week. As revealed on the OMDU blog the new map is “Crogon Keep”, a map aligned to the Unchained. According to the blog:

The site of Crogon Keep was originally a small town, Murkdale, on the outskirts of the Territories Humaine and situated on the banks of the fertile Greenthorn Swamp. After it was repeatedly invaded by the horrible, reptilian crogons, the settlement was abandoned and reclaimed by the swamp. However, because the swamp has been abandoned, the Unchained have been using it as a hiding place for their ships and troops.

This map has been made exclusively for PvE play, so it won’t be appearing in Siege mode for PvP. Exclusive maps for PvE was something that was talked about on the last episode of Insider Access. In order to tailor things better for PvE play such as Endless and Survival instead of re-hashing maps designed for PvP play, new maps are going to be designed which will be a better fit and more aligned to these game modes. This means that over time as more maps get added the existing PvP maps will be phased out of PvE play and there will just be a set of fine tuned, high quality PvE maps.

We will then have the best maps crafted specifically for PvE or PvP.

Some screenshots of the new map can be found below and you can read more about it on the official blog:

https://na.orcsmustdie.com/#!/en/blog/Crogon-Keep-Preview

The bots at Robot Entertainment are so hard at work getting patch 2.7 they have announced that there won’t be an ‘Orcs After Dark’ stream today unfortunately.

The servers will be open as normal for closed beta testing from 6pm (US Central) tonight until Sunday at 10PM.

Stay tuned for patch 2.7 news over the next week or so!

The Trello board has recently been updated with the forthcoming changes for patch 2.7 for Orcs Must Die! Unchained. You can find the link to the Trello board below, some quick highlights are:

• Changes coming to player speed
• Environmental traps being added to siege maps
• Hero role selection so that heroes can be toggled between offense and defense.
• More crafting changes
• Siege tutorial
• New Survival maps and traps
• Plus a whole lot more!

Check out the full listing at:

https://trello.com/b/MdjpvJn9/orcs-must-die-unchained-release-roadmap

Patch 2.7 will also be the last patch we get in the closed beta as after that, the game moves onwards into open beta. No release date has been set for patch 2.7 yet, but keep your eyes peeled. Remember there will be an account wipe when 2.7 goes live.

For some more information about whats coming up in video form – check out last weeks Insider Access with Ian Fischer and Jerome Jones.