Tag Archives: Orcs Must Die! Unchained
The latest patch for Orcs Must Die! Unchained open beta is now LIVE! Start your OMDU dashboard and the patch will begin to download. This patch contains a huuuge amount of changes including the return of Bloodspike the brutal! You’ll be sure to want to catch up on the patch notes for this release. Here is a very quick summary:
- New Hero – Bloodspike. Great for Siege offensive play
- Completely redesigned crafting system!
- Survival mode has been completely re-balanced and fine tuned to feel more like classic OMD gameplay. Minions move faster and take more damage. There is also a brand new map too – Banquet Hall.
- Unchained Fortress has a number of changes including re-positioned war camps and boss changes.
- Surival traps now have 7 tiers of upgrades.
Watch live video from OrcsMustDie on www.twitch.tv
Crafting Changes
As part of the goal to simply crafting and the game meta following from fan feedback, the number of in-game materials has been reduced from around 20 to 10. This means some materials are being retired, but don’t worry – you’ll see these being returned to you in the form of other materials. The graphic below explains what will happen. (Click to enlarge).
Click to enlarge
Bloodspike is making a return to Orcs Must Die! Unchained in the next open beta patch. Bloodspike has long been on fans wishlist to make a return to OMDU following his removal at the end of closed beta phase 1. Having appeared in the most recent OMDU trailer he is now back in the fray following a comprehensive redesign.
Meals meals meals
They don’t call Bloodspike “The Brutal” for nothing, he has an interesting new passive ability which demonstrates his sheer brutality. He is able to attack and kill his own friendly minions, when he does he is able to consume them as delicious meals which can then be used to restore Bloodspikes HP. Think of it as sacrifices for the greater good. This sounds like an interesting mechanic and could be interesting in turning the tide of battle utilising Bloodspike to push instead of a sacrificed minion lost through his bloodhungry passive.
Another interesting mechanic surrounding sacrificing your own minions – he has another ability called “Bloodbath“. This melee attack makes up his secondary ability . The more enemies (or allies) that Bloodspike hits, the faster he can power up all of his other abilities. This works in a stacking system similar to Oziel’s souls. Bloodspike gains 8% per stack – up to +80% bonus damage. Unlike Oziel however, Bloodspike’s stacks timeout over time so players need to keep an eye on his stacks to make sure they are getting the best out of Bloodspike at any one time, or if he needs a break to feast on some of those delicious meals.
Powerful Attacks
As a melee hero, Bloodspike wields two mighty axes, delightfully named ‘Bridget’ and ‘Delilah’ take turns as they can be used to slay enemy (or indeed, friendly) minions. Each hit that these axes makes also serves a secondary purpose – lowering the cool-down an Bloodspike’s E ability – Maiming Blow – A double-axe melee attack that deals damage and slows proportional to enemy hero HPs. Low HP heroes are dealt high damage but slightly slowed. High HP heroes are dealt low damage and significantly slowed.
Inspirational
The Unchained can always do with a little bit of encouragement on the battle field – especially those Orcs. Luckily with Bloodspike around confidence is greatly boosted via his Inspiring Frenzy shift ability. When pressed Bloodspike calls out to his minions in close proximity, empowering them with increased attack and movement speed and temporary HPs.
If this isn’t enough to wet your brutality appetite you can also check out Nananea’s excellent hero overview video below to see Bloodspike in action!
Hero Overview Video
You can also find out more about the design process for Bloodspike by reading Paul Hellquist’s blog on the Orcs Must Die! website via the link below which makes for interesting reading.
https://na.orcsmustdie.com/#!/en/blog/prepare-to-be-brutal
Be on the lookout for Bloodspike next OMDU patch – date TBC!
Did you catch the new hero reveal from this weeks Insider Access? Our icy friend Tundra is set to make a return to Orcs Must Die! Unchained next patch. A perfect compliment to the new Avalanche survival match also coming next patch, sticking with the ice theme.
Closed beta players who have been playing OMDU during phase 1 of the closed beta may remember Tundra’s earlier appearance. He, like other heroes such as Bloodspike and Temper have been out of the hero select from the game whilst Robot’s designers give them a thorough re-work. Tundra has a number of brand new abilities and this is an example of great things coming to fans who wait! He has some great new kit to help him in battle.
Perhaps the most impressive of his abilities is the “Avalanche” ability which sees Tundra turn into a giant snowball which he can then literally run over to decimate enemy minions. It also doubles up as a great escape option. This new ability is perhaps one of the most different abilities in the game. When in the snowball form, the controls are also adapted to give greater steering control. Tundra can remain in this form for as long as he has mana or until he hits into a wall.
Tundra has an equally impressive unique trap too, the Saw of Arctos. This new trap looks devastating to enemy minions. The trap is long and thin with ice saws which launch at high speed dealing massive damage to minions. The saw is deployed twice, up and down the length of the trap. Another great new trap to add to the OMDU collection. The long and skinny nature of the trap will make players re-think the usual kill box strategies.
Tundra’s passive ability Permafrost sees frozen minions take extra damage. Tundra’s other abilities such as his standard melee attack Glacial Sweep, where Tundra swings his scepter has a chance of freezing enemies. Or he can make use of his Flash Freeze ability to instantly freeze an enemy, no matter what. On his right click Tundra shoots three projectile ice shards with his Icicle Burst ability. This ability is perfect for hitting those opponents escaping.
Another very unique ability that Tundra has to assist his team is his Wall of Frost. This ability lets Tundra place a solid ice wall which can block minions and enemy heroes path. Friendly heroes can still pass through but enemies cannot. This is an interesting ability as it can be used to urgent scenarios like enemies about to enter the rift, or can also be used strategically to redirect the path that minions take down a lane.
Tundra’s impressive new abilities demonstrate the kind of sweeping changes we can expect to see for the remaining heroes that have been taken out of play for re-works. If Tundra is anything to go by the upcoming heroes to be revealed should be as equally as exciting. The avalanche ability is also a great technical accomplishment of additional tech being implemented in the game to support the ability. Expect lots of interesting new things coming up for heroes in the future.
To learn more about Tundra, lead hero designer Paul Hellquist has blogged all about him on OrcsMustDie.com – check out his blog – The Ice Beat Cometh.
Last week, Orcs descended upon London for EGX Rezzed, a video games event hosted at Tobacco Dock. The event had over 160 games playable and one of those was Orcs Must Die! Unchained where the Gameforge team had set up camp. Community Manager SiS and Senior Producer Duthieboy were on-site along with other staff from Gameforge. Having set up an impressive booth with a number of playable stations the booth entertained hundreds of players who came by to play last week.
The entrance to the OMDU booth
The Gameforge team did a great job setting up the booth and players were able to come by and play PvP or Survival. Whilst queuing videos were playing of the awesome OMDU trailer and how to play videos. From what I could see everyone was having a great time and greatly enjoyed the game.
Anyone who came by got a sweet OMDU hat just for stopping by and killin’ some Orcs.
Existing OMDU players were also able to talk with Gameforge staff about the game and get insights into its current development. Its great to see OMDU at these kind of events. Here are some more pictures from inside the booth:
Be on the look out for more OMDU events soon!
Just in case you missed out the preview of the new survival map in last weeks Insider Access, below you can view a video tour of the new map. “Avalanche” is a heavily modified version the the Surrounded map. Its alot more than a new look and feel, Avalanche has new rooms, entrances, guardian placement, rift room and more. It really will feel like a whole new map! Coming soon to Orcs Must Die! Unchained open beta!
The Robot Entertainment AMA (ask me anything) series continues on Reddit. The latest bot to take part is Design Director – Ian Fischer, you may better recognise him as “Mother” on the forums. Check out his answers over on his AMA. Plenty of interesting discussion about his industry past and the current state of play with Orcs Must Die! Unchained.
You’ll also want to be on the look out for Jerome Jones tomorrow. He’ll be joining Justin “SixOkay” Korthof on the Insider Access twitch stream at 3PM US Central time to talk about a brand new map coming to OMDU. Be there, or be square!
Have you been following closely on Facebook and Twitter? If so you may have spotted some very interesting new “Ask Me Anything” features on Reddit. Known as AMA’s players have been asking questions directly to the bots at the studio. Taking part so far has included:
- Chris Rippy – VP Production
- Justin Korthof – Marketing Manager
- Patrick Hudson – CEO
- Nananea – Community Video Co-Ordinator
AMA Highlights
BadVogonPoet asked Justin:
You’ve worked in a community position across several different companies in the video game industry for quite awhile now.
What are some of the differences you’ve seen in Community Management and Marketing over the years?
Do you think it’s easier to with social media as popular as it is or does it make some aspects of marketing and community management harder?
Justin responds:
The largest change has been that Community Management has split up into several disciplines these days. A CM used to have to kind of be a jack of all trades and manage every conversation that was happening online. These days, it’s all split up. There are social media managers, forum moderators, community feature developers, website developers, and so on. More specializations.
As for whether or not it’s easier with social media, it depends on your goals I think. SM has obviously made it easier than ever to connect with a broad range of people at virtually the click of a button. But it’s also inserted ridiculous amounts of noise into word-of-mouth marketing. It can be REALLY hard to stand out in all that noise if you’re not clever.
RoyalFino asked Chris:
MrBlue42 asked Patrick:
The Steam ratings for the game are currently rather negative sadly, mostly due to the business model, not the game itself. Do you think the business model is good as it is currently or is there still some tweaking necessary?
Patrick responds:
Syndrogo asked Nananea:
