Tag Archives: Patch

Patch 2.4 is now Live on the OMDU closed beta servers in North America. You can now start downloading and join in the fun. Robot are streaming throughout the day on Twitch. http://www.twitch.tv/orcsmustdie.

For EU players, please sit tight just a little longer. GameForge are working out some technical issues and are looking to bring the patch live in the next day or so.

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.

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

Robot Entertainment are poised to release the next patch for Orcs Must Die! Unchained closed beta. Dubbed “Rifty Business” in the spirit of Cygnus getting his very own unique weaver tree. As always the patch is jam packed with changes. Here are some of the highlights.

Cygnus’s Weavers

Cygnus now joins the party having his own unique weaver upgrades, rather than “borrowing” some of the other heroes! Here is what’s got lined up for Cygnus in patch 2.2:

Additional Guardian for each lane on each map

Thats right, there are now three guardians on each lane of each map. The third guardian stands alone and does not have a glyph spot. He is also weaker than the current existing guardians so he will fall faster. The idea behind this is that the team on offense will now feel like they are making more progress on the earlier waves, rather than having to slowly bring down the current guardian, possibly only getting minor damage each wave. (Depending on the team, of course.) Now it should feel a whole lot better for offense when the first guardian falls and it should put the pressure on defense.

The guardian change has recently been covered on Insider Access. If you want to hear more about these changes, just hit the play button below.

Unchained Fortress gets more polish

The art bots have been hard at work improving the Unchained Fortress map with new art and lighting it looks even better than before. The map has also had quite a few geometry changes too. In similar vein to the escape route that was added to Clffside Clash there is now an escape route running down the middle of Unchained Fortress. Here is a capture from Insider Access showing the new escape route. You can check out the full Insider Access video below to see some of the great new lighting thats going into this map in patch 2.2. Hats off to the art bots!

Shiny new deck builder UI

The deck builder has been given a pretty extensive make-over too. Infact, its had quite a redesign and now works a whole lot better and more logically. The “My Decks” screen now lists all your decks along with a pretty smart preview of what cards are inside.

Delving into a deck there is now a handy preview on the left hand side so you can see more clearly what is in your deck. On the top navigation cards are split into categories allowing you to filter all your available cards that apply to that category as before, but the menu now looks cleaner and more obvious.

The improvements to the dashboard, I’m sure will be most welcome!

Hero health, range and leadership / coin changes.

Interestingly in this patch all of the heroes have had their health reduced by 10%, except for Ivy. Also instant ranged attacks will now deal lesser damage the further away the target is. The damage penalty applies from 5000 to 10000 range, scaling from 100% to 50%. This is to help balance cases where ranged heroes could camp out at certainly locations and deal un-due amounts of damage.

In other interesting news offense now gains experience 15% slower and defense now gains experience 35% faster and player kills are now worth 50% more leadership and coin, making killing other heroes more valuable.

Hero seekers and trap cap

Glory seekers are now known as “Hero seekers”, in most part to avoid players having the “Whats a Glory Seeker” question. The term “hero seeker” avoids the ambiguity of what the trap does. The damage of these traps will scale depending on the level of the owner, and the damage is flat, not based on percent.

Also the trap cap is now a set figure based per map. This means if a player drops out, the full trap cap is available to all players. Hoorah!

As always this is just a summary of the patch notes. To find out more about the changes in patch 2.2 you can sink your teeth into the full patch notes on the forums. The patch will be landing next Wednesday, 20th May for both North America and EU!

Patch 2.1 for Orcs Must Die! Unchained closed beta is now live and can be downloaded by opening your game client. The patch is live for the North American region only, but it will very soon be available in the EU. Stay tuned for news on the EU release. Remember to check out the patch notes to keep you informed of the changes made in this release. Robot’s Community Manager, Justin “SixOkay” Korthof has also taken to video to give us a run-down on the changes!

Official Wiki and Key Giveaway (NA and EU!)

Also launching with patch 2.1 is the Official Orcs Must Die! Unchained wiki! The wiki is full of TONS of information, numbers and statistics about heroes, traps gear and much more. The OMDU Wiki replaces Robot Fans’ old numbers and statistics pages. The wiki format is a much better presentation and enables much more detailed information to be available and searchable. This excellent community resource like all wiki’s can be edited by the community. It really is by the community, for the community!

Be sure to check out the wiki on the link below and let us know your feedback. If you would like to help out with the project, just let us know!

orcsmustdieunchained.gamepedia.com/Orcs_Must_Die_Unchained_Wiki

To celebrate the launch of the wiki, Curse have teamed up with Robot to offer up to 10,000 closed beta keys to be given away to lucky winners. The key giveaway is available for both NA and EU. Be sure to enter for your chance to play!

• NA Residents Click Here Beginning April 28th
• EU Residents Click Here Beginning April 30th

Hot on the heels of the Phase 2 release, Robot is poised to release the next patch, version 2.1 this Tuesday 28 April. The patch contains a number of bug fixes and improvements based on community feedback on the forums, bug reports and Twitch chat. In Patch 2.1 we also see the introduction of unique weavers for Gabriella and Stinkeye. Robot have produced a quick summary of the changes, as below:

• Co-op is much easier to matchmake and PvP matchmaking produces far better matchups!
• A new Dashboard layout!
• New Weavers for Stinkeye and Gabriella!
• Games reward A LOT more skulls!
• Iron and Runed Chests may now be purchased in the Store!
• Oak chest doesn’t reward 150 skulls anymore!
• Cliffside Clash map changes: there is now an escape route from the far side lane, and the Rift Guardian has been moved!
• Rift Lightning from the Rift that attacks minions and enemy Heroes!
• Before the first wave spawns, gates are invulnerable and you can resell traps for a full refund!
• You can now see your escort aura on your minions!
• Each Offensive hero may only play one glyph per match.
• Added new Kill and Assist Callouts!

New Weavers

Gabriella

Stinkeye

Full Patch Notes

To read the full patch notes just head over to the official forums and join in on the discussions!

https://forums.orcsmustdie.com/discussion/3584/patch-2-1-notes/

Good news for OMD fans, the wait is almost over for the next big OMDU beta release. Phase 2 of the closed beta is kicking off this Tuesday, March 24th in the US and soon after in the EU.

Its been four months since we last saw an OMDU update from Robot, back in November where we saw the Apprentice being added to the hero roster. Since then the studio has been working very hard over these last few months to make some big changes to make the game even more awesome. As you can imagine all these changes over these few months is sure to result in one biiiiig patch list! Indeed – Robot has now made available the almighty patch notes for Phase 2 highlighting the signficant amount of changes that we will be seeing.

Some of key changes in phase 2 is the pace of the game has been slowed down, heroes move slower, hero abilities have animations that take a small amount of time to play out and some abilities now need to be unlocked via weaver upgrades before they can be used. Speaking of weavers, they have been completely re-designed in Phase 2 as shown in a recent Insider Access stream. The weavers now unlock over time in a match and players can choose certain upgrades at that point.

The weavers are just one of many things that have been changed and added. There are now bosses, new traps, and a re-worked minion and currency model. Heroes are now assigned clear and defined roles (offence / defence) and they now get an appropriate type of currency at the start of the map depending on their hero type.

There is just so much new and changed stuff it is difficult to cover everything here. However Ian “Mother” Fischer has provided us with a handy summary on the patch notes to help us get in the picture for those not brave enough to soak in the full patch notes.

There are a couple of additional things worth highlighting – not all the heroes will be playable in the first phase 2 build. These heroes are still being worked on and will show up later down the line. The heroes confirmed for the first build this week are:

• Smolder
• Stinkeye
• Cygnus (Master)
• Maximilian (War Mage)
• Gabriella (Sorceress)
• Midnight
• Ivy
• Blackpaw
• Hogarth
• Dobbin (Prospector)

You may also notice they some of the Heroes now have names. This is to allow the clever minds at Robot to build in some back story for the heroes.

The trap limits per card have been abolished. Now when you own the card you can place the trap as many times as you like, subject to currency and overall trap count cap. Also heroes no longer take damage from traps. (They only took negligible damage in the first place). This also means heroes can no longer set off traps, too.

The traps available in the first phase 2 build are:

• Anti-Magic Field – This Trap removes glyph effects from Minions that cross it and silences passing enemy Heroes briefly.
• Arrow Walls – A number of the old variants have been removed. The normal Arrow Walls, Fire Arrow Walls, and Glory Seeker Arrow Walls are active.
• Ballistae – A number of the old variants have been removed. The normal Ballista, the Cursed Ballista, and the Glory Seeker Ballista are active. All Ballistae target in a full 360 degree arc now, rotation does not matter.
• Barricade – An old favorite that makes a huge difference in the design of your killbox. Be careful using too many of these and not enough damage Traps. Original versions and the Great Wall (2×1) are in the game.
• Boulder Chute – Triggered and does more damage with higher placement. The damage is a shorter duration now. The default version and the Iceberg version are in the game.
• Brimstone – Variants have been retired, only normal Brimstone is currently in the game.
• Cursed Ground – No more Greater Cursed Ground but this one still does Arcane damage to Minions atop it. This Trap now uses charges.
• Floor Scorcher – Directional, pop-up floor Trap that does fire damage. (Note that it does not flip Minions atop it when it fires.)
• Floor Spikes – All variants of this Trap have been retried but the default spikes are still around (and fairly important in many early games).
• Grinder – Anything close gets a good grinding.
• Hammer Drop – This Trap requires a 2×2 ceiling space to place but only does damage in a 1×1 corner of the Trap. Good against larger, higher health Minions.
• Healing Well – Allied players near this Trap regain health.
• Ice Vent – Floor Trap that does frost damage (remember, frost stacks and can freeze enemies).
• Mana Well – Allied players near this Trap regain mana.
• Pounder – Normal and concussive pounders are currently in the game.
• Powerups – These Traps occasionally drop powerups that can be picked up by allied players. There are shield (armor) and attack (damage) variants of this Trap.
• Shock Zapper – The regular and Glory Seeker versions of the Shock Zapper are currently in the game.
• Speed Pad – This is a support Trap. When charged, allied players moving across it gain a movement speed increase for a brief time. Excellent for speeding up movement between lanes.
• Steam Vent – Slows larger Minions but launches smaller Minions skyward.
• Swinging Mace – As before, but now capable of hitting things and doing damage.
• Tar Trap – Normal and Viscous variant are currently in the game.
• Wall Blades – Normal Wall Blades and the Charged (electrical damage) variant are currently in the game.
• Web Spinner – Wall Trap that fires webs, slowing enemy Minions much like a Tar Trap.

Hero Victories

Hero Victories are a new feature for phase 2 and encourages players to play with other heroes. Players now get rewarded as they play with heroes and each victory counts against a running total. Depending how many victories you have with a hero depends on the rewards you can unlock. This sounds like a great incentive for encouraging variety with the heroes people choose to play as. Players unlock a unique skin at 100 victories as that hero too. The rewards you can get are as follows:

Full patch notes

We’ll be covering off some more highlights in the almighty patch notes over the next few days. If you can’t wait until then be sure to check out the full patch notes over on the OMDU forums for both NA and EU.

• NA Patch Notes
• EU Patch Notes

See you all on March 24th! There will also be an Insider Access twitch stream at 3pm CST on March 24th as well, be sure to tune in!