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Well we can’t say we wernt forewarned that the upcoming 2.4 patch for Orcs Must Die! Unchained was to be a biggie, the patch notes are now available online, and wow, are they long! The sheer length of the patch notes is also an indicator of just how many changes even with the core game play are coming with 2.4.

To help you digest the patch notes we’ve picked out some headline changes.

New Hero – Oziel

Oziel replaces the Ancestor from the earlier OMDU patches. His tagline is the “Soul Thief” and he is of the Unchained alignment compared to Ancestor who was fighting for the Order. His abilities have been adjusted from the Ancestor and he retains many of the same underlying abilities such as his life steal (now Vampiric Burst). The Soul Harvest now has alot more depth, allowing him to get stronger as the game progresses for players who can harvest souls well. Here are his details from the patch notes:

• Soul Harvest (passive): Any time any minion (allied or enemy) or hero dies near Oziel, he gains soul stacks, one per minion and 10 per hero. Stacks increase his maximum mana.

• Vampiric Burst (primary): Oziel’s main attack heals him with life he steals from opponents. This scales with his maximum mana. (Deals 3 + 7% of max mana and returns 50% lifesteal.)

• Wraith Surge (secondary): Oziel launches a spirit that deals arcane damage. Upon a successful hit, Oziel’s next use of Wraith Surge within seven seconds costs more mana and does amplified damage. (Deals 50 damage + 20 per use. Mana is a base cost of 40 and increases 50% per use.  5s cooldown.  Damage scaling for successive hits resets to zero if the ability does not hit again within 7s.)

• Desecrated Ground (Q): Oziel smashes a jar of souls on the ground, creating an area in which enemies are slowed and damaged. Effects scale with his maximum mana.  Deaths that happen within the area of Desecrated Ground always reward Oziel souls, regardless of his proximity to the deaths. (Deals 10 DPS for 8s.  Slows by 16% at 0 stacks and scales to 50% at 300 stacks.  20s cooldown.)

• Haunting Spirits (E): Oziel sends a lost soul to haunt nearby enemy heroes. Haunted heroes do 30% less damage.  If Oziel damages a haunted player, the soul bursts and deals arcane damage around the haunted player, the amount increasing with Oziel’s maximum mana. (Deals 18 +30% of max mana in damage. 150s cooldown.)

• Essence Siphon (shift): Oziel converts his health to mana (2% of health to 4% of mana / second). Oziel can never kill himself with this ability.

• Note: Stacks above 200 are worth only 25% per stack.

Pillage & Removal of Leadership

In 2.4 Robot will be removing Leadership as a resource. This is quite a significant change and re-designs alot of how war camps work. The main driving factor behind this is to reduce the complexity of the war camps which player feedback continued to suggest were confusing for new players. By removing the need to spend leadership also means players don’t have to keep thinking about going back to spend their leadership at the war camp, disturbing their focus. Now in 2.4 the war camps level up automatically, simply by escorting minions or pillaging resource caches.

The resource caches will currently be pots that have been placed on each map and when broken allow players to help level up their war camps. This will be called pillaging. Picking up pillaged items splits 100 XP amongst nearby allied heroes (making the heroes level faster) and sends 250 leadership to the war camp associated with the lane (making it level faster). Once destroyed the cache will be re-spawned  in 70 seconds. The new caches add extra depth for defenders who will now also need to think about  defending these resources in addition to guardians and barriers (gates).

Fog of War

In order to make resource cache collecting more interesting and to increase more random encounters, Fog of War has been added in patch 2.4. This means enemies won’t be visible on the map unless they are in the line of sight of allied heroes, guardians or barriers (gates).This has just been added to PvP for the moment.

Barriers are the new Gates

Gates have long been a discussion on the OMDU forums with alot of people taking issue of their usefulness and confusion they present for new players. In patch 2.4 gates have been completely re-worked and they are now “barriers”. These barriers allow allied players to pass through freely, whilst stopping enemy units and heroes. The barriers can still be destroyed like gates, but they can now be repaired. This helps give defenders something to think about during wave spawns. It also means the barriers are more useful for the duration of the game, as opposed to gates that could not be repaired once destroyed.

The new barriers are simple: allies can move through them, enemies cannot. There are no controls. The barriers have fewer hitpoints than the old gates, but they can be repaired when destroyed by channeling at them (if a repairing player takes damage, it interrupts the repair).

It will be interesting to see how the new barriers work out in testing, they represent quite a major change. It’ll also means the end of Nananea’s #Gated twitch stream animation – travesty!

Levelling

The changes keep rolling. Levelling has also been adjusted, increasing the total number of levels from 12 to 20. There was a feeling that players didn’t “feel” like they were levelling up with levels feeling much the same. The additional levels will be gained faster and players can help gain levels by combos or killing other heroes. XP from player kills is based on level of players involved. The weaver upgrades will happen at levels 3, 6, 9, and 12.

Smarter Bots

Bots have been given alot of attention in patch 2.4 which is great news as they sure did have some.. intelligence.. issues before! The Sir Winston bot caused alot of frustration so he has been removed and replaced with Bot Oziel. Bots should overall be smarter and be more useful. The specifics of the bot changes can be found in the full patch notes.

Another tidbit is that bot heroes will now show up as enemies in Endless Mode, joining and escorting the attacking waves in addition to bosses.

Physics Traps

Classic OMD’ers will be able to say hello again to some fan favourite physics traps from the earlier OMD games. Robot have announced the return of The Haymaker, Flip Trap, Push Trap, Spike Wall, Boom Barrel, and Boom Barrel Dispenser. These will be available only in Endless Mode. (They cannot be in PvP mode due to technical reasons. Read why here.).

It will be great fun to see the return of these well liked traps which will see minions flying over the screen.

Unchained Meter and other endless (survival) changes

There are a few changes coming to Endless mode (now survival). The unchained meter can now be triggered manually once the meter is full rather than it automatically going off. This will be useful to stop the unchained meter going off right at the end of a wave or during idle times. Unchained is also activated individually and the UI shows when a team-mate has activated their unchained. Unchained is more powerful when teammates use it together.

And more…

This post just contains a summary of some of the high level changes coming in patch 2.4. As always the full patch notes have all the detail for you to dig into and you can discuss the changes in the forums. Robot are swinging by responding to feedback.

The patch will be released this Wednesday August 26, 2015.

IMPORTANT – Wipe

This patch has so many changes that an account wipe is a necessity. Unfortunately this will mean that your progress will be lost and your deck and friends list reset.

Everything will be wiped with the exception of: items that were included in Founder packs will remain on your account and promotional vanity skins (like PAX skins) will remain on your account.

GameForge have been at Gamescom this week to show off Orcs Must Die! Unchained to the masses, and boy did they show off OMDU in style! The Gameforge team have put together one of the best booths I have seen, with gates, corridors and even wall traps such as Grinders and Wall Blades. Its impressive to say the least and definetly sets the scene for OMDU. Check out some of the pictures and videos from the EU Facebook page.

Watch video on Facebook

[Show as slideshow]

Great job GameForge team!

Patrick Hudson, Robot Entertainment’s CEO has taken to the official website to update eager fans on the current status of Orcs Must Die! Unchained and where things are heading. Its been around a year since closed beta and Patrick makes note that this process has truely been a closed beta and not akin to a “pre-release demo”. Indeed we have seen comprhensive changes from what we see today in the closed beta than what we had a year ago.

Patrick’s open letter updates fans on the plan going forward. Things are going to start to take a faster pace as the studio targets the Go Live date for OMDU to be early 2016. This means we will see an open beta between now and then. We don’t have an open beta date just yet, but it should be forthcoming soon.

In a nutshell the priorites for the game going forward are:

1. Improvements to the PvP mode aimed at better combat, hero depth, crafting and general offensive gameplay breadth.
2. New heroes consistently rolled out starting with the next patch.
3. More PvE. We think of PvE as traditional Orcs Must Die! gameplay. We have ambitious plans for PvE that we can’t wait to unveil. The Endless mode recently released is just the beginning.
4. Polish. Lots and lots of shiny polish.

In addition Robot is keen to provide regular updates and more insight for fans on the roadmap going forward, including patch dates and content. On Insider Access, Community Manager, Justin “SixOkay” Korthof hinted of a system where we can upvote certain feature requests.

We’ve got a new OrcsMustDie.com website coming soon along with some detailed updates, including another open letter from SixOkay to give us even more information on the plans ahead coming out later this week. Be sure to keep yourself in the know and look out for this on the OMDU Forums.

Meanwhile take a look at the full letter from Patrick Hudson on the website using the link below:

https://na.orcsmustdie.com/#!/en/news/the-road-to-open-beta

If you are new to Orcs Must Die! Unchained and want to get a super quick overview on what the game is all about check out Zylvian’s new overview video below to get you up to speed in no time!

Zylvian’s – What is Orcs Must Die! Unchained

An overview on what OMDU is all about all in two minutes and includes information on how to get access to the closed beta for EU players.

Wow, just wow. If you have been keeping an eye on the Orcs Must Die Unchained! leaderboards you will have seen some incredibly high new scores lately including the 531,381,459 score from community OMDU experts Adlehyde, RoyalFino, Crecraft, Exhayle along with Robot staffer N8dogg.

They were fortunate enough to record a video of this amazing score for our enjoyment. Check out the video capture of the match below, and maybe get some tips on how to score big with combos and trap layout.

You can check out the leaderboards on the links below for more high scores:

• EU Leaderboards
• NA Leaderboards

Its been a little while between patch 2.2 and 2.3. This can only mean one thing. BIG changes and new features must surely be on the menu. Indeed, they are! Robot has just announced the patch notes for next Tuesdays patch version 2.3. The patch notes are extensive and there are a few brand new features for the game, most notably the new Endless Mode which is a nod to classic OMD2 gameplay.

Endless Mode

One of the things that has often been a hot topic in the forums is the return for some of the old classic Orcs Must Die! gameplay in Unchained, which is to act as the “platform” for Orcs Must Die! content going forward. With patch 2.3 Robot have announced the return of Endless mode, a PVE option with leaderboards for you to compete with your friends. In the next patch players will be able to play Endlesss mode with four other players via its own matchmaking queue.

The concept for Endless is simple – try to stop the endless waves from getting to to the rift! There are 25 rift points and all types of minions will be making their way to it. Waves get harder and harder as the game progresses. Beating wave 12 counts as a win for your hero. There is no leadership to spend. Droppable potions make a return so you can re-gain health and mana. There are also “Go breaks” which are pauses between waves to allow defensive heroes to plan kill boxes. In the main it is much like the experience players had with OMD2 but with more players and some other cool new mechanics such as the Unchained Meter.

The Unchained meter is something that increases as the match goes on and is fueled by combos, minion kills and Unchained meter pick up items. Once it reaches the top its party time and heroes on the team will enjoy massive buffs to damage, health, mana, and cooldown reduction for a period of time.

I’m sure this new mode will be very interesting to play come next week and will be an excellent game-mode addition to Orcs Must Die! Unchained. Plus with online leaderboards!

Neutral Objectives

Another brand new concept coming in this patch is “Neutral Objectives” for PVP games. PVP games are also now being called “Siege” games. Neutral Objectives are something that has been added to the Cliffside Clash map and are now the new way to play bosses on the map.

At wave 3, objectives open. Teams must stand on the objective in order to capture it. Once both neutral objectives are captured, they lock for a little over 2 minutes and the team that holds the objectives may play Bosses. You have 60 seconds to play a Boss after capturing both neutral objectives. If no Boss card is played during this time, the neutral objectives will open for capture once again after the 60 seconds.

The mode in somewhat akin to capture the flag and should provide and interesting shake up of gameplay during a match. It’ll be very interesting to see how this plays out.

More changes

Along with these great new features comes a long list of other changes. From improvements to art and performance on all the maps, improved dashboard UI and a new hero screen. Bot Hogarth makes his first appearance as Sir Lancebot. New hilarious beach themed skins options for Hogarth and Smolder. Various changes to heroes and minions all of which can be found in the detailed patch notes available on the forums.

The patch will be landing next Tuesday, June 30th. See you online, and don’t forget to tune into Insider Access that same day, at 3PM CST (More timezones)

New beach skins coming in patch 2.3

This week we take to the OMDU EU community to find out a bit more about Soundwave as part of our semi-regular Fan Friday interviews! So without further ado here is some information about the person behind the username. We learn that Soundwave is currently studying Audiology which is the study of human hearing. Interesting stuff and certainly a big change from his original career path! Read on to find out more!

The Basics

• Name: Dave
• Age: 30
• Home Town: London

Questions

• What do you do by day?

Currently a postgrad student studying Audiology. My original degree was in maths so its quite a departure for me but working in finance was just too boring!

 

• What are your hobbies and interests? 

A lot of my freetime is used on videogames but I also do a fair bit of painting. This came from playing tabletop games like warhammer 40k but these days I am more into the painting side of things than playing the games. I’ve backed the OMD tabletop game and looking forward to painting OMD models in the future.

 

• How would you describe your taste in music?

Eclectic

 

• What are some of your favourite websites that you visit often?

Well theres the usual like facebook and twitter. I get pretty much all my game news from Neogaf.

 

• Do you have any pets?

Yep! a dog and a parrot (african grey).

 

• Aside from OMDU, what other games do you like to play?

Recently I’ve started playing Heroes of the Storm and I’ve been enjoying it a lot more than I thought i would. I’ve played a huge amount of games in the past and there is far too much to list all of them – some of the games i’ve invested the most amount of time into though are probably RTS like starcraft 1+2, dawn of war 1&2.

 

I don’t play a lot of FPS these days as I’ve grown a little tired of the standard fomula they tend to adhere to, but I had a lot of fun with the classic styled arena shooters back in the day – Particularly Unreal tournament, which I spent quite a few years playing competitively.

 

I like single player RPGs as well, hoping to get round to trying out both witcher 3 and dragon age inquisition soon.