Genre: Real Time Strategy (RTS), Role-playing (RPG), Strategy, Turn-based strategy (TBS), Adventure, Indie
Minion Masters
Balance Changes in Version 1.12
Minion Masters!
New Expansion Reveal coming on the 1st of May - Don't Miss it!
Upcoming Balance Changes
While we have the upcoming Wild Cards Test, we've still got a host of balance changes we'll be releasing alongside it. Here's just a few of the changes coming soon:
Ting, Teng & Tung
Damage 100 -> 90
Projectiles cannot bounce off of dead minions
Developer Comments
Projectiles bouncing off of minions that were already dead was somewhat of an unintended behaviour, so half of this change can be classified as a bug fix, but we're listing it here as it's a significant change to the balance of the card.
Snake Druid
Speed 2 -> 3
Developer Comments
Snake Druid often seemed to have stayed on your side of the field far too long for your opponent to effectively deal with him due to his low speed. By giving him a speed increase in this way, we want to maintain his current strengths but allow your opponent to simply wait him out, or push other lanes, more effectively.
Zealots of the Burning Fist
Mana Cost 7 -> 6
Developer Comments
Despite being able to output some serious damage in the right circumstances, the mana cost for Zealots of the Burning Fist was too high to justify playing it in most scenarios. Hopefully a simple mana reduction can help out the card a lot.
Dragon Ball
Activation Mana Cost 6+ -> 5+
Developer Comments
Dragon Ball's activation cost was making the card significantly difficult to fit into decks, and we believe the meta has developed to a state where it's a good opportunity to ease up on the restrictive nature of the card's condition.
As always, there's more balance changes to come - Look forward to reading the rest with the release of the 1.12 Patch Notes!
BadAsAFish80's 2v2 Tournament #6
BadAsAFish is back again with another installment of his excellent tournament series! Featuring a $100 Prize Pool provided by BetaDwarf, this multi-day event is a great way to team up with your friend and engage in some competitive Minion Masters if you're stuck at home during the quarantine.
We're always on the lookout for great displays of creativity from the Minion Masters playerbase, and our eyes this week were drawn to some amazing fanart of Succubus by nekochelle!
We fully recommend checking out the original linked above - The resolution on this is massive! We fell in love with this piece the moment we saw it, and so did our users on Reddit. Check out nekochelle's Instagram accounts - nekochelle and miqchips for more of their great work.
Cheers from BetaDwarf!
New Stormbringer Animations
Minion Masters!
New Stormbringer Animations in Version 1.12
Those that have been paying dutiful attention to our Road Map know that Stormbringer is getting a shiny animation overhaul. His current animation set has been with us since the very beginning of Minion Masters, and we think it's time to give him an upgrade. Our animator has been hard at work creating these great new visuals that we think better represent Stormbringer's acrobatic and showboating personality. Check them out and let us know what you think:
[previewyoutube="Ia_yQ_H6z1A;full"]
Stormbringer's new style will be arriving in Version 1.12, due for release on the 30th of April.
Staying together, no matter the distance
With the continued duration of the Covid-19 quarantine, it's important to all of us that we stay in contact in this period of isolation. We've already talked about how we're still working from home on the next Minion Masters update, but the BetaDwarf team have also taken to special remote gaming nights. We've been up to everything - Playtesting new (and secret!) things, or getting together and hitting public game servers with the might of the Dwarves. There's even been word of setting up a private BetaDwarf Minecraft server... Perhaps we'll have things to show you from that if the idea takes off ;)
But we also want to hear about you all - What have you been up to during the quarantine, productive or recreational? Everyone at BetaDwarf wishes you the best, and we want to hear from you!
Cheers from BetaDwarf!
Expeditions on hiatus in Version 1.12
Minion Masters!
Expeditions going on Hiatus in Version 1.12
We've made the difficult decision to put Expeditions on Hiatus from the game in our upcoming update. Our stats and survey indicated to us that only a small portion of the Minion Masters playbase actively engage with the mode, yet putting Season Tokens behind it that were significant to new players meant people would have to play through a mode they don't enjoy, and found confusing. We think it's time to retire the game mode for the time being as maintaining it was becoming a difficulty on our end without revisiting the mode, and we want to take the opportunity to have time to focus and improve the experience of the remaining game modes.
We'll replacing the weekly expeditions with a weekly quest that will grant tokens for winning 5 matches in Premade 2v2 Battles, as to not simply be removing earnable rewards. We'd like to thank everyone that's enjoyed Expeditions since its inception.
BadAsAFish80 Charity Stream
We're always on the lookout for inspiring tales of awesomeness from our community. With the recent Covid-19 pandemic, there's never been a better time for the Minion Masters community to come together, and nowhere has there been a better example of this than BadAsAFish80's week long charity stream!
Started as an endeavour to fundraise for the UK's National Health Service, BadAsAFish undertook the event spanning from the 6th to the 10th of April, with any and all proceeds from his Twitch stream being donated towards this great cause. As of writing (Wednesday the 8th), he's already raised a phenomenal $1350!
Make sure to check him out over this Easter period and give him our best wishes - Everyone at BetaDwarf is proud of what he's achieved!
Wild Cards is a topic that's been at the forefront of Minion Masters discussion for a long time. It's been a divisive issue that proved difficult to gain a consensus upon - Today, we'll be talking at depth about our plans with the mechanic going forward.
The Aim
For those not familiar with the subject of Wild Cards, the main issue that we're attempting to solve is the usage of the mechanic for "cheese" strategies - Where decks would simply take one strong card that was usually perfectly acceptable on their own, and simply add extra copies of it in order to require more direct answers from the opponent lest a severe mana advantage be gained.
At the same time, we acknowledge that there are more innocent uses of Wild Cards - Users that make creative decks from them or simply use them to have fun with their favourite card even if the strategy isn't viable. Because of this we opted early on to not simply remove the mechanic, as we felt it would have been a significant loss to the game to outright remove a feature a sizeable portion of the playerbase enjoys.
As such, the direction we're trying with Wild Cards is to balance them as a mechanic and make them an alternative strategy - So that they can still be appreciated by those that liked Wild Cards before, but also making them more of a considered choice than a straight upgrade to most competitive decks.
What we're doing
This is the solution we're trying:
Wild Cards are now added as the 11th and 12th cards in your deck.
You must have 10 unique cards in your deck to start a match.
This comes about as a result of a long period of theorycrafting, testing and design behind the scenes at BetaDwarf. We considered many, many solutions to Wild Cards and will go into more detail about why we didn't opt for specific solutions below.
The main idea with this is to create a significant drawback to the addition of Wild Cards in your deck - Having to cycle extra cards makes decks function much slower than those without, allowing non-Wild Card decks to be able to ideally reach their core cards or responses faster in comparison.
Regarding the Balance Changes we made in 1.11, we felt it was necessary that for this concept to work, significant changes would need to be made to the 1 drop Mana Cost slot to avoid a scenario where users simply included powerful 1 Mana Cards to offset the cycling disadvantage this would provide.
With Version 1.12, we intend to implement this change on the live server for the duration of the patch (Until Version 1.13) as a public test of the Wild Cards rework. While this change was tested with our PTR groups, it was determined that we would need a much larger sample size of games to get a comprehensive and accurate conclusion as to how effective these changes would be. To this end, we're trying out if a full Ranked season can provide the data we'd need.
As such, Version 1.12 can be considered as a "Wild Cards Rework Beta", and we will frequently be polling the community throughout the month to get your feedback as the meta develops.
Other solutions we considered (And why we didn't do them)
Separate Queues with no Wild Cards
Our main concern with this solution was that it would significantly shrink the populations of ranked queues regardless of which modes we implemented this in, and we had no intention of making this a solution purely for 1v1 modes - Wild Cards were problematic in every queue, and ignoring one or the other for the sake of what we saw as a potential bandaid fix wasn't justifiable to us. We also did not want to accelerate an elitist stigma within the Minion Masters Community - Be it "Casual vs Serious" queues, or "2v2 isn't a serious mode, because they still have Wild Cards". We wanted to fix the problem for all of our playerbase, and not to leave major parts of it behind.
Make Wild Cards cost more Mana
This was probably one of our most frequently discussed options. Ultimately there were three elements that made us not go forward with this solution:
It would also significantly hurt the "fun" uses of Wild Cards
What about 10 mana cards - Would we implement Mana Freeze? Would that be too confusing to newer players? Would we have to instead make it Mana Freeze for all Wild Cards - At which point, would that have much of an impact?
Higher cost Wild Cards are affected significantly less by this change - I.E. 3x Lord-Sentinel Thelec
Make Wild Cards unlock with experience/perks (with them being the 11th and 12th cards, but no changes to 1 drops)
This change was tested behind the scenes at BetaDwarf, but we quickly found that it opened up a lot of opportunities for combo decks, both on certain masters (Ravager in particular) or with decks in general that wouldn't have much use for the combo pieces earlier in the game. It allowed you to create a very defensive strategy early game and then transition with game swinging power cards later on.
Version 1.11
Minion Masters!
The Zealots of the Burning Fist have made their way to the jungles of Jadespark to join the fight! Log on to Minion Masters within a week of this patch and receive a free copy of this brand new Supreme Card! We’ve also got a set of big balance changes coming up aiming to significantly shake up the metagame, primarily by way of targeting low-cost “cycle” cards.
New Card - Zealots of the Burning Fist
A copy of this card is available to all users for free if they log on from the 26th of March to the 2nd of April. Don’t miss out!
The Zealots of the Burning Fist are battle hardened soldiers of the notorious Order of the Burning Fist and are loyal to High Inquisitor Ardera, fighting with a reckless abandon that demonstrates little care for their own safety. This fervor allows them to hit harder than the regular Warrior, dealing 100 damage instead of the regular 70, but it comes at a price - With each attack, they lose 10% of their own health. But that's not all - If you only control one Zealot, it gains Rage and Haste, capable of outputting massive damage if they aren't handled with care.
Balance
Developer Comments The main idea behind this set of changes is to re-balance the value of one drops. We currently feel that the mana slot offers far too much value for what should be primarily included in your deck for the cycling value, and we generally want 1 mana cards to be on the same power level as a Mana Puff.
There's a lot of interesting play space in both the control style and bridge grab metagames, and we believe that by removing the efficiency that most 1 mana cards have, we can create a more diverse spectrum of choices for players to make when it comes to those elements.
Additionally, these changes are going to help pave the way for an upcoming Wild Cards rework we’re planning to do. You can expect to hear more news about this very soon.
Illusory Cleaver
Damage 20 > 10
Nether Bat
Mana Cost 1 > 2
Damage 20 > 35
No longer has a reduced Aggro range
Screaming Scrat
Mana Cost 1 > 2
Damage 60 > 100
Health 60 > 100
No longer shares properties with Armored Scrats
Sewer Scrat
Mana Cost 1 > 2
Poison Duration 5 > 3
Now an Armored Sewer Scrat. Turns into a regular Sewer Scrat once the Barrel Shield is broken (See: Armored Scrats)
Armored Scrats
Rework: Turns into a Scrat instead of dying
Damage 20 > 10
Developer Comments
Armored Scrats have always sat at an awkward position of being intended as slightly tankier, annoying minions to remove, but we felt they haven’t ever been able to fulfill that role. We took some inspiration from our previous game Forced SHOWDOWN for this change, giving them an identity as a group of pesky scrats that will typically require more direct combat to remove.
AtG Drone x8
New Attack: Shoots 6 projectiles at random targets
Damage 30 > 10
Bats Bats Bats
Mana Cost 4 > 5
Duration 6 > 5
Developer Comments
This change primarily comes as a result of the significant increase in damage on the Nether Bat unit.
Blood Imps
Zealots of the Burning Fist
Minion Masters!
Get your Free Supreme Card with Version 1.11!
You've likely seen it in the in-game news - We're offering all players a free Supreme Card with the release of Version 1.11. Anyone who logs in for the first week of the patch (from the 26th of March until the 2nd of April) will receive a copy of the new card, Zealots of the Burning Fist. But what is this card?
The Zealots of the Burning Fist are battle hardened soldiers of the notorious Order of the Burning Fist and are loyal to High Inquisitor Ardera, fighting with a reckless abandon that demonstrates little care for their own safety. This fervor allows them to hit harder than the regular Warrior, dealing 100 damage instead of the regular 70, but it comes at a price - With each attack, they lose 10% of their own health. But that's not all - If you only control one Zealot, it gains Rage and Haste, capable of outputting massive damage if they aren't handled with care.
Make sure to collect your free copy with the release of Version 1.11 on the 26th of March!
Warrior Re-Model
Also coming with this update is a new set of model and animations for the Warrior and Divine Warrior cards, to make their appearance more consistent with the Empyrean faction. Check them out and let us know what you think:
Coming in Version 1.11 is a major overhaul to how we're treating low mana cost cards. The main idea behind the upcoming changes it re-balance the value of 1 mana cards in general. Currently, we feel that the mana slot is offering far too much value for cards that should be primarily included for their cycling value, and should not be able to out-value cards of higher mana costs. In general, we want to aim for 1 mana cards to be on the same power level as a Mana Puff.
Specifically, we feel that cards like Screaming Scrat and Sewer Scrat are two of the biggest offenders in this regard, frequently trading for cards that are of a much higher mana cost than them as well as offering cycle opportunities and easy bridge capture. Particularly at a high level, there is no real downside to including these cards in your deck, often limiting choice when it comes to deckbuilding.
So, what are the changes? In some circumstances where we felt a card was too powerful to be a 1 drop at a design level, we opted to re-scale them to a higher mana cost rather than harm the identity of the cards. An example of this would be Sewer Scrat, who becomes a 2 mana card with a slightly lowered Poison duration to 3 seconds, but now comes as an Armored Sewer Scrat instead.
There's a lot of interesting play space in both the control style and bridge grab metagames, and we believe that by removing the efficiency that most 1 mana cards have, we can create a more diverse spectrum of choices for players to make when it comes to those elements.
Additionally, there is a secondary benefit to the changes we wish to make - It helps lay the ground work for the upcoming Wild Cards rework we are currently planning. We'll have more news on this at a later date, though do note that this will not be included in Version 1.11.
Here are the changes we're currently planning to make:
Blood Imps
Mana Cost 0 > 1
Damage 10 > 15
Attack Speed 1 > 1.1
Illusory Cleaver
Damage 20 > 10
Nether Bat
Mana Cost 1 > 2
Damage 20 > 35
No longer has a reduced Aggro range
Bats Bats Bats (This change is being made due to the re-scaling of Nether Bat)
Mana Cost 4 > 5
Duration 6 > 5
Screaming Scrat
Mana Cost 1 > 2
Damage 60 > 100
Health 60 > 100
No longer shares stats with Armored Scrats
Sewer Scrat
Mana Cost 1 > 2
Poison 5 > 3
Now an Armored Scrat
Additionally, there are some extra changes related to these that we feel are appropriate to share:
Armored Scrats
Instead of dying, now turn into a regular Scrat
Damage 20 > 10
Bridge Buddies
Changed back to "Summon a Scrat. If you own a bridge, summon an Armored Scrat".
Propeller Horde (This change is being made as Illusory Cleaver was a significant stopgap to the power level of the card)
Unactivated Unit Count 5 > 6
Activated Unit Count 10 > 8
Those aren't all the balance changes coming in Version 1.11, so stay tuned closer to the release of the update on the 26th of March!
Get Might of the Slither Lords DLC for FREE with Twitch Prime
Everyone's a fan of free DLC, right? For a limited time only, you can get a free copy of the Might of the Slither Lords DLC from Twitch Prime, usually worth $15, even if you already own the DLC!
Might of the Slither Lords gives you a wide variety of powerful Slither cards - From the humble Slitherbound to the ever-useful Daggerfall, it's the perfect set of cards to add to your collection, and comes with two exclusive Slither cosmetics. Don't wait - Get your free DLC now with Twitch Prime!
News regarding the Corona Virus
Due to measures being taken in Denmark regarding the Covid virus, we're switching to working remotely as much as possible for the next two weeks. There's no immediate risk to us, but we're doing our part to help stop the spread of the virus. Unfortunately, this may mean expectations of upcoming updates may be slightly lowered - A bug fix might take a bit longer, news might be delayed - But we don't think it will have a major impact unless it becomes more serious.
We just wanted to share the news so you know why the spring might be a little different from what we normally do. Now to figure out how we're the most effective when we're apart :)
Cheers from BetaDwarf!
FREE Zealous Inferno DLC & Saving Jadespark Jungle out now!
Ardera, High Inquisitor of the zealous Order of The Burning Fist, is carving a path of death and destruction through Jadespark Jungle, seemingly searching for something. The Zen-Chi must stave off Ardera’s crusade on their home and save Jadespark Jungle!
Featuring 10 Brand new cards, a new Adventure, a new Legendary Arena, and more!
The once-peaceful remote jungles of Jadespark of the Southern Jungles has come under attack by Empyrean forces. Lead by High Inquisitor Ardera, the Burning Fist are leaving a trail of destruction in their wake in their search for a dark secret.
New Adventure - Saving Jadespark Jungle
Team up with the Zen-Chi and help defend their home from the insidious High Inquisitor Ardera as you uncover her true schemes!
Brand New Story - Tying mechanics closer to the story than ever before, build your troupe of cards from the ground up and take on the Burning Fist!
Build your deck as you go. Start with a Master-specific deck and with each victory, you get a choice of cards to add to your deck.
6 unique masters, with new champions and old favourites lending their strength to the jungle!
Powerful relics and treasures to empower your deck as you play, with some brand new ones made just for this Adventure!
Rewards - Across all the chapters you’ll earn tokens, xp, exclusive avatars and even a Legendary card! Completing hard mode awards an exclusive rare and supreme avatar.
Price - Chapter 1 is free, with Chapters 2 & 3 costing 1400 rubies as a package, or 1000 individually. You can play owned chapters as much as you want.
Also featuring 10 New Cards:
New Mechanic: Growthburst Shrooms When you draw a card with the new Growthburst Shroom keyword, a Mushroom will spawn at a random point in your arena. When a Zen-Chi Minion walks over it, they’ll gain a powerful 25% Health and Damage buff.
New Mechanic: Holy Fire An AoE holy flame that heals allied minions and damages enemy minions over time for 100 Health.
This Expansion will last until May
10 new cards have been released!
Two new skins have been released - Settsu of the Burning Fist and Apex Ravager
A brand new Legendary Arena has been released - Jadespark Jungle
Balance
Arcane Ring
Damage 20 > 25 (Total Damage 160 > 200)
Black Hole
Duration 6 > 1.5
Minions will keep their original target from before they are affected by Black Hole
Developer Comments
Black Hole's change comes about as a response to the card simply being far too versatile for its intended usage. Black Hole has consistently been one of the most powerful cards in the game, and a lot of the meta has been defined by the potential to completely shut down a lot of counters. We didn't want to move it back to 3 mana due to the fact that the card massively underperformed the last time we made the nerf, so we opted for this change where the ability to dodge certain spells is still very much possible in the hands of a skilled player, but it no longer can completely shut down everything.
Bridge Shrine
Health increased 300 > 350
Caber Tosser
Damage increased 80 > 90
Crossbow Guild
Health increased 400 > 450
High-Mage Leiliel
Damage increased 35 > 40
Attack Speed decreased 1.7 > 2.0
Now has the AoE attack of Crystal Arcanist
Leiliel’s Vortex
Mana Freeze 2 > 1
Damage 100 > 80
Lord-Sentinel Thelec
Damage 70 > 55
Morgrul the Swarmer King
Health decreased 240 > 225
Attack Speed increased 1.5 > 1.1
Damage decreased 35 > 25 (Overall DPS is only slightly lowered)
Developer Comments
This minor nerf is primarily to consolidate Morgrul’s stats with Elite Swarmer.
Red Golem
Reworked: Now summons a Blue Golem. If you have 50% or less life, summon a Red Golem instead.
Red Golem has 50% more HP and Damage than Blue Golem
Developer Comments
Red Golem's change is a product of us trying to consolidate how we handle minion scaling in general to try and make it more consistent, and less volatile. We also feel the card has been very underplayed for quite a while, so we're hoping this change might also affect it in that area.
Spawn of Fury
Damage & Health Reduction increased 25% > 33%
Developer Comments
Spawn of Fury has been largely dominant, so we believe a nerf to the stats of the units it produces should help keep it in line.
Swarmer Totem
Production Speed increased 7 > 6
Wall
Health increased 600 > 700
Woodsman
Damage increased 80 > 90
Misc
The Max Health indication has been changed when a unit’s health is buffed (i.e. Spirit) to make it easier to understand how much the card has been buffed.
Some Buff names have been changed to shorter versions, or terms that are more indicative of their effect (Energized > Mana Surge, Enraged > Rage, etc.)
A lot of cards have had their descriptions changed to better separate Flavour from Mechanics.
Mayhems now appear in the carousel when they are available.
Updated unit formations for 3 and 5 count minion cards.
Bugs
Fixed High-Mage Leiliel not reducing damage from a minion that is dead - Thanks SoSiskodemon!
Fixed the copy produced by Spawn of Fury having full health.
Fixed an issue where you could not see your teammate’s hologram in 2v2.
Fixed an issue where Gax could target Drone Buzzers.
Fixed Nyrvir being pushed around by Leiliel’s Vortex.
Fixed being able to use skins you don’t own.
Fixed Gambler’s Ball odds being incorrect.
Fixed Troubadour’s music still playing after being removed via Glenn’s Brew.
Fixed Frenzied owls from Frostfeather Flyby not attacking units - Thanks SoSiskodemon!
Cheers from BetaDwarf!
Incoming Developer Stream!
Minion Masters!
Saving Jadespark Jungle Developer Livestream
Looking for some real-time previews of in-game Jadespark Jungle content? The BetaDwarf Developer Stream is the place to be! On Thursday the 27th of February at 1900 UTC, join Community Manager That Sprite as we guide you through all of the new Battle Pass Expansion content. Here's what you can expect to see on the stream:
Reveals of upcoming Balance Changes in Version 1.10
Gameplay of all the previously announced cards
Exclusive reveal of the new 10 Mana Legendary card - Jahun, Keeper of Jadespark
To support our XBOX friends in the community, TEAM MANA FRENZY is proud to host a large-scale Minion Masters Organized Play opportunity that will be run on XBOX!
PRIZES for this event include a $200 cash prize pool and the extremely rare Dynasty MORELLIA Skin!
This event will be held Sunday, February 23, 2020. Space may be limited, so be sure to register in advance!
Stream and matches start around 12 Noon EST, be sure to check in early to avoid losing your slot.
