Tag Archives: Orcs Must Die! Unchained
The Ancestor has now been added to our OMDU strategies page ready for members to upload their expert strategies. The Ancestor is a brand new hero in the most recent OMDU 1.6 patch. If you think you can provide some tips and tricks on how best to play as him be sure to let us know your thoughts.
We’re running our competition until the end of October. Anyone who uploads a hero strategy will be in with a chance to win 1x set of OMDU backpack, wrist band, shirt, and button set. Whatsmore if you rate other members strategies one lucky winner will be picked at random to also win those sweet prizes!
Check out the full details and start submitting and rating hero strategies!
The Halloween season is soon to be upon us and Robot Entertainment is set to get us ready early for the spooky season with the V1.6 patch for OMDU due to land on October 14th. The patch is, as always, jam packed with not only changes but also some brand new content. Here we go with the REF summary!
New Hero – Ancestor
A brand new hero is set to join the OMDU line up and in-keeping the season we’ll soon be seeing the Ancestor as a playable hero.
As you might be able to guess from his purple themed powers, the Ancestor is an arcane based hero. He has some very interesting abilities. His passive ability lets him increase his Mana pool as others die around him. Primary and secondary abilities are as follows:
- Primary: A Vampiric main attack that costs Mana to do Arcane damage,
but also grants Ancestor a portion of that damage done as health.
- Secondary: Area of Effect centered on Ancestor that heals allies and
damages enemies proportional to the size of his Mana pool.
In addition:
- A convert-health-to-mana burst that allows Ancestor to keep going
without the need for an afternoon nap.
- And an Area of Effect terrain ability called ‘Hallowed Ground’.
Enemies that die on Hallowed Ground are worth double the Ghost Link Mana
increase. Also, the ghostly hands of his Bridge buddies reach up and
will randomly Root enemies in the area of effect.
Three-lane map “Highlands” is back
Those who have been in the OMDU beta for some time may remember the three lane map which was released for initial testing a few months ago. The map was only available for a short period before being taken back into development. Patch 1.6 now brings back this three-lane map which will be selectable only via the custom game type at this time.
It is worth noting that there are some interesting things about Highlands. The number of placeable traps on this map has been increased to 20. This suggests we could be looking at a varying number of placeable traps in the future depending on the chosen map or game type.
Creepy Cliffside Clash
The default map will be changed in patch 1.6 to a halloween themed version of the existing two lane map, Cliffside Clash. The newly themed map is aptly named “Creepy Cliffside Clash”.
Featuring Jack-o-Lanterns, hanging skull decorations and a night time theme. Along with the inclusion of the Ancestor as a playable hero you can now get into the holiday spirit without leaving your home!
More skins!
Hogarth gets an excellent new Lumberjack skin which suits him well. Blackpaw decides to expand his wardrobe with the amusing Tutu D-Loo skin and Ivy “peaces out” with her knew skin. The Sorceress and War Mage keep things a little more seasonal with their spooky costumes which will be free for all players. Here are the all new skins:
Chat & Dashboard sound
The chat system in the dash has been improved – chat messages are now persistent which means messages won’t disappear as you move through screens. How about that! Also this patch introduces music in the dashboard.
Hero changes
As with all patches there are some changes to heroes. There are not too many changes this time round. The most notable are changes to the Prospector and these are as follows:
- Tunnel (Name change! “Underground Roads”):
- ‘Dig’ Mana Cost reduced from 50 to 30.
- Delay between player uses reduced from 5s to 3s.
- Killing one tunnel end no longer kills the entire Underground
Road.
- Sand Cloud (Name change! “Dust Devil”:
- Mana cost reduced from 50 to 30.
- Cooldown reduced from 15s to 12s.
Gear Updates
There are some changes to two items of gear. We’ll just list these verbatim from the patch notes:
Gnomish Repair Kit
- Mana cost reduced from 60 to 50.
- Cooldown reduced from 5s to 2s.
- Now clears trap disables when it hits a trap.
- Now penetrates through allies or enemies to target.
Anti-Trap Vambrace
- Now penetrates too, instead of incorrect previous settings.
For other hero and gear changes check out the full patch notes which also include full details of all the changes and some miscellaneous changes not covered here. We will also be updating our statistics database on the day of the patch go-live which is October 14th. See you in-game then!
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.
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.
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:
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!
Some of the bots from Robot Entertainment have been hanging out at PAX Prime this weekend, hosting their very own PAX panel titled “An afternoon of fun with Robot Entertainment”. In our first part of our two part series we cover the first part of the panel which looks at Robot history including their time at Ensemble Studios and the games that lead up to Orcs Must Die! Unchained. For anyone who was in attendance there were plenty of free things being given out including a bag, poster, buttons, t-shirt, band and “Founders PAX” access to the Closed Beta.
Fans who tuned in to the stream on Twitch were also in for an opportunity to win these sweet prizes. Also making an appearance again is the exclusive Cardboard Tube Samurai skin for the War Mage. This exclusive vanity skin is only being made available to PAX attendees and lucky Twitch stream winners.
Ensemble days
Digging into the panel things started off with an introduction to the studio including highlighting Robot’s internal biergarten that they have in the studio and the colour coded pods for each discipline of staff (artist, programmers, design, community etc). Following an introduction of the studio the panel began to talk about Robot’s roots including their time previously at Ensemble Studios taking the audience through the past legacies such as the Age games and Halo Wars, including the big Halo MMO project codenamed “Titan” that was unfortunately cancelled by Microsoft.
The panel go into some detail about the cancelled MMO project and is well worth watching the stream for any Ensemble fans. Ian Fischer confirms previous Ensemble staffer comments that the game was largely cancelled due to Microsoft’s desire to pursue more casual games.
Age of Empires Online
The panel went on to talk about Age of Empires Online and how it started out as Age 4. Ian Fischer described how they originally thought about going back to the old caveman Age 1 settings whilst still at Ensemble Studios. When the studio was shut down, Microsoft wanted to continue the Age 4 project but didnt want it looking like another Age game and wanted to pursue a more casual look. It is this reason why Age of Empires Online adopted the casual more cartoony look in the final product.
Robot also pushed to have all the Age games put on Steam instead of Games of Windows Live. Although they never did it in Robot’s time managing the Age Community, Microsoft has finally got round to it recently and the Age games have been top sellers on Steam for some time now.
Prototyping new games
Whilst most of the studio were working on Age of Empires Online there was a small group in the Orange Pod who spent time prototyping new games for the studios first original IP. Before things morphed into Orcs Must Die! the studio worked on a “tool kit” that would allow players to build their own games. This tool kit idea then turned into a game codenamed “Saber” which later became “Orcs Must Die!”. Here are some early art and designs for the game:
You will notice that Saber started off looking much darker more serious than the lighter more comic feel of OMD today. As the development progressed and things like physics traps were added the OMD we see today was born. Of course it was soon time for the studio to name the game beyond its prototype name “Saber” and there were alot of discussions in the studio.
“Orc Invasion”, “Overrun” and “Onslaught” were some of the names that were considered alongside Chris Rippy’s “Orcs Must Die!”. In the end it was whittled down to just two, “Onslaught” and “Orcs Must Die!” and the studio was split 50/50 on each name and in the end a decision was made to go with OMD. The OMD name also helped Robot’s art and design move the game into a more lighter setting. This can also be seen in the War Mage’s art development where he started out more serious before becoming the more goofy hero we see today:
Orcs Must Die! shipped in 2011 and went on to win AIAS Strategy Simulation game of the year.
Hero Academy
Robot’s next original IP was to be Hero Academy a mobile game on Android, iOS and Steam. Once again the project started out from the orange pod. Patrick Hudson talked about the Team Fortress 2 integration and the relationship with Valve and also that they got approached by a number of other IP’s about adding more teams in the game, but it was felt that those would not be as good a fit. Hero Academy also won an award at AIAS, Mobile Game of the Year.
Echo Prime
The next mobile game spearheaded by Chris Rippy was a sci-fi RPG “Echo Prime” on iOS and Steam. Which by the way has recently had a price reduction if you haven’t already picked it up.
Orcs Must Die! 2
OMD2 was released 30 July 2012 and added a whole bunch of extra monsters, a second playable character (Sorceress) and added Co-Op. After OMD2 the studio decided that they were going to let OMD rest for a bit.
More prototyping – coming up in part 2
Whilst the OMD series was placed on hold the bots began prototyping more new original games across various genres from strategy to FPS. We’re going to cover these very interesting prototypes in part 2 of this blog series later this week. Be sure to check back where we discect some of the other original ideas what have been toyed around with in the studio.
In the meanwhile… be sure to check out the stream VOD of the PAX panel where you can see the hour long panel talk about all of the things mentioned above and some of the things we are covering in part 2 later this upcoming week which includes these awesome never before seen concept ideas, and of course Orcs Must Die! Unchained. Check back soon!
