Tag Archives: Orcs Must Die! Unchained
Its that Friday feeling time again as we delve into another spotlight on feature. This week we have CusterDawg in the limelight from the North American OMDU community. Custer is a regular poster on the OMDU forums and you may have seen his YouTube channel where you can find his gameplay videos of Hearthstone and Terraria. Soon Custer will start streaming videos of OMDU gameplay thanks to the new integrated Twitch feature found in the recent 1.4 expansion patch. Lets find out a little more about him in preparation for his streams!
The Basics
Name: Custer/CusterDawg/Robert
Age: 25
Home Town: Minnetonka, MN
Questions
- What is day job?
I do temp work and I’m also doing part time work at a school. I’m hoping to head back to school next year to get a degree, after paying down some student loans.
- What is the most exciting thing that has happened so far in 2014?
Besides OMDU? 😛 I’ve loved some of the movies that came out this year. Some highlights were Captain America: Winter Soldier, X-Men: Days Of Future Past, Guardians Of The Galaxy, Godzilla, and The Wind Rises. Can’t wait for Nolan’s Interstellar. Other than that was fortunate to have my 7th nephew born this week. 🙂
- Do you have any pets?
No pets because allergies have always been an issue. I suppose if I could have a pet it would be like a rabbit or something.
- How would you describe your taste in music?
I like to think of myself as a collector of experiences. I try to take that mentality into everything I do. In the case of music, I try to give everything a shot at least once. As a result I have 6000+ songs in iTunes with a bunch of CD’s left to upload. An example of some of my bands I have listed are: Madonna, Arcade Fire, Daft Punk, Beastie Boys, Radiohead, Air, Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings, Rammstein, Beirut, Sigur Ros, Enya, etc. (a more comprehensive list would give people a much better idea, but lets just say there is a lot of stuff I listen to)
- Favourite gaming system of all time? (PC/Consoles?)
Don’t have just one. I have such great memories with a bunch of consoles. My earliest system that I played was the colecovision. Played pretty much most game systems at one point or another, family or friends had it. If I had to choose just one though, it would probably be PC. Not only do most games seem to get a port over to PC or emulation if you own the original game, but you just have more freedom and customization with a PC (Hardware, software, etc).
- How did you discover OMD?
I watch a lot of different Youtubers and the first one I ever subscribed to (Kage848) played the first game as a full LP. I also started watching another Youtuber (Sips), who funnily enough helped inspire one of our current hero’s name, play OMD2. After seeing just how much fun these two people had with the game, I had to get it. conveniently, it was a Steam sale at the time I had made up my mind. So I got both games and started playing the 2nd one co-op the entire way through with my buddy. Hours of fun developing strategies.
- Outside of OMDU what other games are you playing at the moment?
Currently I’m playing OMDU (most), Hearthstone, a Minecraft server with a bunch of mods, and trying to finish some games off in my Steam library.
- What do you think of the new tutorial so far?
It’s a good step in the right direction. It helps new players ease into the game and familiarizes them with some basic concepts to help them play the game. I especially like the fact that at the warcamp sections, you can’t skip out the menu and possibly miss some information. There are some bugs with it, like the arrow can get stuck some places and you have to guess where to go if you’ve never played the 2 lane map. Also, if you move faster than the tutorial intends, it skips over some dialog that might be important.
- Well done for hitting level 40 – how long did that take you?
Well I guess I’ve pretty much played every day for about 3 hours since the wipe (July 22) into Closed Beta. So about a month I guess. There are a few days where I either didn’t play, played a custom/co-op game, or the server was down. So total time to get there was maybe 250 hours? That’s not all wins either.
- If there was one main thing you would like to see changed in OMDU, what would it be?
Besides a bigger population, some tweaks to heroes/traps/minions, and some mechanics, it might be the state of trap disable. Right now, unless you have the Sorceress, an armored trap, or Gnome Repair Kit, your killbox on defense is completely at the whims of the trap disabling pushers. It feels like sometimes you’ve wasted your coin on traps when a competent Ivy player can disable your entire killbox the whole wave. I’d like to see either more armored traps, more heroes with trap reset, a weaver that provides disable resist/immunity, or having trap disable work different for heroes on defense. Like if as Ivy you went on defense, you could use your right click/disable as a trap enable, temporary immunity (before traps get disabled), or a disable time reduction. I realize that in regards to trap disable you need to find a very delicate balance as it affects a lot of the game.
Shout Out
- Is there anything you would like to say to all the OMD fans out there right now?
Just want to tell all players, new ones especially, to give the an honest chance and be patient with it. Sure there are some things that can be frustrating about the game, but the game gets patched fairly frequently and the developers really care about your feedback. Lastly, be sure to do your part to make sure that the game and the community are the best it can be.
Thanks for taking part CusterDawg! We’re looking forward to your future OMDU streams!
Just over a week ago OMDU had a presence at the yearly Gamescom event in Germany. At Gamescom we first learned about the new hero, Tundra and the new captain system. Gameforge staff were on hand at the event to show off OMDU to the masses and some of the bots flew out to join them.
Gameforge have produced a video as below giving fans an inside look at the event and interviewed Robot staffers – producer Chris Rippy and Lead Designer Ian Fischer. Check out the video below!
More Orcs on show this weekend at PAX Prime
Hot on the heels of Gamescom is PAX Prime taking place in Seattle this weekend. Robot will be at the event showing off OMDU including hosting their own Robot / OMDU panel taking place in the HEDGEHOG THEATRE on SATURDAY 8/30 1:30PM – 2:30PM. The panel will be streamed on Twitch as well – so don’t miss it!
Today is the day of the huge expansion patch for Orcs Must Die Unchained! Now is the time to open up your client and update!
If you haven’t already, check out our summary of the patch changes. We have also updated the numbers and stats database with all the changes from the patch. We’re working on getting the new data for heroes, cards, traps etc as they become available. Stay tuned!
Happy patch day!
The Orcs Must Die! Unchained expansion pack as previously detailed now has a shiny new trailer to show off the tons of extra stuff coming in this weeks update. If the 3,500 word patch notes proved too daunting for you here you can see the changes in visual form!
Robot Entertainment are poised to do it again with another MEGA PATCH due to come out next week, August 27th. The patch notes are so incredibly long at over 30,000 words that we can’t possibly post them here. Instead we have summarised some of the highlights from the update notes below. We do of course recommend you check out the full patch notes over at the official forums.
Patch notes quick summary
- Mandatory tutorial is now in-place for new players.
- Guardians have new art! A sun and moon guardian depending on which side of the map.
- Almost unkillable trolls have been fixed – now slower and easier to kill.
- Hunters and Gnolls nerfed to encourage different things to slot in the early game.
- Added bonus XP and Skulls for playing co-op games up until level 10 to encourage newer players to co-op.
- Special packs are now being awarded. At level 10, 20, 30, and 40, a special pack is awarded (containing 3 uncommon, 2 rare, 1 mythic, or 1 heroic, respectively).
- Matchmaking buckets – If you search for a game as a member of a four or five player team, you will ONLY be matched with other four of five player teams. If you search alone, with a single friend, or with two friends, you will have the same type of group added to your team and you will play against a team composed of other singles, teams of 2, or teams of 3s.
- Population of matchmaking buckets is now shown in the dash.
- It is now possible to surrender in a match if the majority of players agree. (Triggered by typing /surrender)
- Leading minions now ONLY earns leadership and killing enemy minions now ONLY earns coin.
- On defense, you now earn more coin (2x) if you kill the enemy minions sooner and less (the normal bounty) if you kill them after they have crossed the first scoring gate
New Hero – Tundra!
Tundra has both a ranged and melee attack, can disable large numbers of enemy traps, can ignore crowd control on occasion, and is capable of making allied grizzlies even scarier than they were before.
New Captain system!
As previously discussed from the preview at Gamescom, there is a new “captain” system added. This is an interesting concept where by at waves 3 and 4 a strong captain minion will be spawned at the upgraded war camp. For the team he is a burden as he is worth no leadership when escorting or past enemy lines, though is worth 2 rift points. For the opposing team however he is an interesting target. If the captain is killed by the opposing team they are awarded 5000 coin and 5000 leadership for a level 3 Captain and 10,000 coin and 10,000 leadership for a level 4 Captain. The rewards are split evenly amongst the teammates.
The captain systems adds another exciting dynamic to the game and helps spices things up. It should also be a mechanism to break out of a snowball, if the team things they are on the slippery slope they can prioritise killing the captain by going all defence for a wave. Then using the rewards get back into the game with better economy.
It should be pretty exciting to see how the captain system pans out. As always this is the first release of the captain system and is in testing so expect to see it refined some more down the line. The Paladin’s have been called upon as stand-in art once again for the captains.
New Cards!
There are 20 new cards including:
- Water Sprayer (like Naptha Sprayers, but for frost-based damage)
- Anti-Magic Field (enemy players atop this cannot use their abilities)
- Glory Seeker Arrow Walls
- Barbed Floor Spikes
- Glyph of Frost Resist
- Firewall Bracers
- Ring of Storms
- Hobgoblin’s Charm (strong targeted heal)
- Mobility Weaver (a lot of speed, escape, and anti-CC upgrades)
- 4 new minion waves
New Vanity Skins!
- Bear Slayer Bloodspike Skin
- Adventurer Master Skin
- Helter Swelter Smolder Skin
- War Chief Tundra Skin
We will be updating our numbers and statistics database on the day the patch comes out. If you’re thirsty for more patch information – check out the full patch notes!
This week on the Insider Access stream over on the official Twitch channel saw community manager Justin Korthof (SixOkay) sit down with Art Director Dave Kubalak (Kube) and designer Jerome Jones (Bugs911) to talk about some of the hero designs in OMDU. the War Mage, Master, Sir Winston and Bloodspike took center stage this time around.Each of these heroes as it happens, had origins from previous games in the OMD series. Bloodspike was first considered a boss fight in OMD2 where he would be in a mine cart throwing dynamite.
The name “Sir Winston” also has a very interesting past. It all goes back to this YouTube video by level player “Sips”. When he encountered the paladin he called the paladin “Winston”. Later in the game when he was able to place paladins on the map he called them “Sons of Winston”. This became a running theme in his videos all from there on all the way through OMD2. Robot decided to name their Dark Paladin concept Sir Winston as a nod to Sip’s YouTube videos. If you skip to 1:40 on the video below you can hear Sip’s first mention of Winston!
During the rest of the Insider Access interview we get to see tons of concept art never seen before and even some sneak peaks at some awesome new skins coming out soon.
Along with some Q&A on the Twitch chat and some answers to some forum threads this insider access is once again well worth watching. Check it out on the video below!
Last week Ian “Mother” Fischer and Patrick Hudson from Robot Entertainment made their way all the way over to Gamescom in Germany to show the masses Orcs Must Die! Unchained. They also took part in the official Twitch stream and as part of their interview showed off what we have to look forward to in the next patch. If you check out the stream here are some of the things you might notice.
New Hero! – Tundra
Yep, if 15 heroes wasnt already plenty we have another hero joining the party and he goes by the name of “Tundra” who is an ice bear. A ranged hero who like Smolder can fire blasts from afar, but of course rather than fire he has an ice attack.
On the abilities front he is able to disable all traps, except ice traps, with his blizzard ability (which might also deal damage). His other ability lets him select friendly bears and highlight a player / guardian for them to target. We can expect to see more of Tundra in the next patch when full details about him will be made available.
Comeback Mine Carts
Also new to the game is a new comeback mechanic that was actually discussed in tandem with Robot on the forums. Sort of in similar vein to Mr Moneybags, around Wave 3 mine carts will appear at each war camp and travel to the opposing rift. If the opposing team manage to kill the mine cart (currently actually a giant) they will gain a ton of extra resources split amongst themselves. The idea behind this is that a team can focus on killing the mine cart they get a big boost of resources to help turn the tide of battle. It introduces another interesting dynamic to the game.
From what we can see so far from the new material shown at Gamescom we are looking at a very interesting new patch coming out later this August.
Check out the Twitch interview
Be sure to check out the full interview and gameplay demo of OMDU at Gamescom on the video below. Just skip to 06:22:00 to see Twitch sit down with the bots!
