Genre: Real Time Strategy (RTS), Strategy, Tactical, Indie
Orcs Must Die! Unchained
OMDU Weekly Challenge "We Can Rebuild It"
Be prepared to build and rebuid your killbox to deal with waves of every minion and boss type Centre has to offer. You'll have to think quickly about your strategy to complete this challenge!
Can you complete this weekly challenge with Stinkeye, Gabriella, and Midnight?
A Look into the Future of OMDU!
Hello War Mages!
It's been a while since my last update, so I thought I'd give everyone a heads-up on the latest happenings and plans for Orcs Must Die! Unchained over the next few months.
The biggest OMDU news of the summer was the release on Playstation 4 in July following the launch on PC earlier this Spring. On the PC side of the world, we've been focusing on tons of smaller, long-requested improvements that have hopefully made a big difference in your playing experience. Things like fast restarts, rerolling Chaos Trials, and some fundamental changes to how players interact with their Daily Quests have rolled out recently and there are more changes like this to come. Plus, we've managed to sneak in a few biggies like Deadeye, four new Endless maps, and the Endless Summer event on all platforms. We’ve even added some fun vanity rewards to achievements in-game!
One area that we'd really like to improve on is synchronizing our PC and PS4 releases. As it stands now, our Playstation release is usually 3-4 weeks behind the release of the PC version of the game. Having the releases out of alignment in this way is painful for development (which is our problem), but more importantly, it hurts the long-term growth of the game. To address this, we’re going to bring the PS4 version of the game up to be concurrent with PC and ensure that all our future releases are coming for both groups at the same time. By lining up the release schedule we can spend more time adding new features and less time managing the ins-and-outs of staggered releases.
There is some short-term pain to get the PC and PS4 updates synchronized, however. In order to achieve this, we'll need to break our regular monthly update cycle for September and there will not be another update for the PC until October. The extra wait is not ideal, but the end result will be our largest OMDU update yet, and it will be available to both platforms at the same time.
Harmonia will dig into the details soon, but expect to see some of the great new content you've been asking for, some new features, a new community event, and perhaps even a certain “coming soon” hero! Oh, and PC players, we'll finally get our long-promised Discord integration into the October release.
That's all for now. We've got some really fun plans for the rest of the year, and we're looking forward to sharing them with you soon, too. Keep the feedback coming!
Chris Rippy
VP of Production
OMDU Weekly Challenge "Doublets"
No, you're NOT seeing double. In this weekly challenge, waves double in size each wave for 5 waves. Do you think your hero can stop this prison break?
Can you beat this weekly challenge with Temper, Tundra, and Zoey?
OMDU Weekly Challenge "Do The Trap Shuffle"
Hero abilities deal no damage in this challenge. Use the generous coin your hero is given at the start of the match to set up a killer killbox. Your hero will have to rely on traps and indirect damage to survive.
Can you beat this week's challenge with Cygnus, Tundra, and Blackpaw?
Endless Summer Continues!
August may be coming to a close but summer is not over just yet, War Mages! The Orcs Must Die! Unchained Endless Summer event is here to end the season in gibtastic fashion. Live now and continuing until 10 am Thursday, September 28 there will be four week-long community challenges available during the event.
Work together as a community to complete goals and earn seasonal vanity prizes -- backplates, titles, and avatars – and complete all 4 goals to earn a very special, very summery, Summer of Stunning Maximillian skin! Kill orcs, soldiers, and survive as many waves as you can in any game mode before the event (and Summer) come to an end.
All participating players will receive an Endless Summer Event Chest for each goal that is completed by the community! Each chest will contain summer-themed vanity items. If the community completes all 4 goals successfully, players will also receive the grand prize Summer of Stunning Maximillian skin!
We’ll see you at the rift, War Mages!
Endless Summer Event!
August may be coming to a close but summer is not over just yet, War Mages! The Orcs Must Die! Unchained Endless Summer event is here to end the season in gibtastic fashion. Beginning at 10 am Thursday, August 31, and ending at 10 am Thursday, September 28 there will be four week-long community challenges available.
Work together as a community to complete goals and earn seasonal vanity prizes -- backplates, titles, and avatars – and complete all 4 goals to earn a very special, very summery, Summer of Stunning Maximillian skin! Kill orcs, soldiers, and survive as many waves as you can in any game mode before the event (and Summer) come to an end. But wait, there’s more! To coincide with the Endless Summer event we are introducing four new maps to Endless mode for War Mages of all levels.
Defend the quiet garden cloister of the Banquet Hall from the swarming hordes of unruly orcs, kobolds, and their insidious pals. Protect the ancient dwarven home of Thuricvod Village from an onslaught of Unchained enemies. Journey to the Highlands to protect its fair fortress from an incursion of Order foes, or stalwartly defend the frozen fortress in Avalanche from its Northmun attackers. Tackling these brand new endless challenges is a fantastic way to contribute to the event goals, but progress can be earned in all game modes throughout the duration of the event.
All participating players will receive an Endless Summer Event Chest for each goal that is completed by the community! Each chest will contain summer-themed vanity items. If the community completes all 4 goals successfully, players will also receive the grand prize Summer of Stunning Maximillian skin!
We’ll see you at the rift, War Mages!
Update 2.4 is LIVE!
New Feature: Fast Restart
A highly requested feature has finally arrived! We have added the ability for non-matchmade games to be restarted by the party leader (you cannot restart Chaos Trials or Sabotage games).
New for Endless: Four Endless Maps
Four new Endless maps are now available as part of the Endless Summer event beginning this Thursday!
Banquet Hall (Apprentice)
Thuricvod Village (War Mage)
Highlands (Master)
Avalanche (Rift Lord)
New for Sabotage: Map and Consumables
Temple Graveyard is now available in Sabotage (Master and Rift Lord).
Frost Giants are now a playable minion card.
Minions Drop Grenades Buff: Causes player sent minions to have a 50% chance to drop grenades on death.
Teleportation Staff: Drops a staff that will teleport players to a random location if they stay within its area for several seconds.
New for Chaos Trials: Modifiers
Guardians Damage Allies: Guardian Spin damages barricades and players.
Unstable Rift Polymorph: Failing to close an Unstable Rift will cause the entire team to be polymorphed.
New Vanity Items: Skins and Achievement Rewards
New skins are available for Smolder, Hogarth, Ivy, Stinkeye, Maximilian, Cygnus, Midnight, Gabbriella, Bloodspike, and Bionka. A number of avatars, backplates, and titles have also been added as rewards for earning in-game achievements!
A highly requested feature has finally arrived! We have added the ability for non-matchmade games to be restarted by the party leader (you cannot restart Chaos Trials or Sabotage games).
New: Sabotage Map - Temple Graveyard
The Temple Graveyard map is now available in Sabotage Mode! This map is available at Master and Rift Lord difficulty levels.
New: Chaos Trial Modifiers
Guardians Damage Allies - Guardian Spin damages barricades and players.
Unstable Rift Polymorph - Failing to close an Unstable Rift will cause the entire team to be polymorphed.
New: Sabotage Consumables
Frost Giants
Minions Drop Grenades Buff: Causes player sent minions to have a 50% chance to drop grenades on death.
Teleportation Staff: Drops a staff that will teleport enemies to a random location if they stay within its area for several seconds.
New: Skins
Skins have been added for the following heroes: Smolder, Hogarth, Ivy, Stinkeye, Max, Tundra, Cygnus, Midnight, Gabby, Bloodspike, Bionka.
Note: Not all of the skins will be available on patch launch. Many will be enabled over the coming weeks.
Additional Patch Notes Since Last Update:
There have been several patches since the previous update that have introduced changes to OMDU. Here is what you may have missed:
Apprentice Hero victory chests now drop 2 cards, instead of 1.
Oziel max soul stacks increased to 300 (from 75).
Steam Trading Cards have been added to OMDU!
Sabotage matches will occasionally launch 1v1.
General:
Control resistance now reduces the magnitude of slows, rather than the duration.
MANY achievements have had rewards added to them. These rewards are retroactive.
Serpent Guardian (formerly a promotional item) has been added to War Mage, Master, and Rift Lord chests.
Trigger parts no longer drop in apprentice and warmage chests.
Players may now re-roll each quest once per day, rather than a single quest.
"Win 2 Sabotage Games" daily quest has been changed to "Kill 450 minions in Sabotage".
"Win 5 Matchmade Games" daily quest has been changed to "Kill 1200 minions".
Terminology for abilities has been updated to "primary attack, secondary ability, third ability, fourth ability, and fifth ability."
Leaving a Sabotage game will now cause you to lose rank.
Fixed a bug where Kobolds were 20% faster than intended.
User Interface:
A Refer-a-Friend link is now visible in the friends list.
Quests have been added to the daily login reward pop-up on login.
Quests now have minion icons and ability icons to better indicate completion requirements.
The dashboard no longer minimizes when launching a game.
The splash image for launching games has been removed.
Damage, coin, and combo fly-offs have been revamped! These fly-offs are much smoother and have a much smaller performance footprint.
When players leave in non-Sabotage games, a message is now displayed, indicating that the game has re-balanced.
Many dashboard elements now have a higher resolution.
Sabotage enemy mini-maps are now slightly more opaque.
New loading screens have been added to the first three maps of apprentice and the first map of warmage.
Art/Audio:
Explosion sounds have been updated. There's fewer duplicate explosion sounds; sounds are now more unique.
New sounds have been added for when players teleport through portals.
Chaos Trials:
Lower difficulty Chaos Keys will drop on average. This does not affect players level 55+.
Purchased Chaos Keys can now be re-rolled for whatever currency they are purchased with (gibs or gold).
Unstable Rifts now gain less health with each tier in Chaos Trials.
Balance Changes
Medium Earth Elemental:
Health reduced by 20%.
Deadeye:
Infamy no longer reduces the damage of Deadeye's primary attack against a single target.
Infamy splash damage lowered by 25%.
Developer Comment: This change was based on community feedback. Players didn't like that there was a trade-off to obtaining infamy stacks. As a result, the buff now simply adds area damage, rather than also reducing primary damage.
Bouncing Bomb cooldown reduced to 9 seconds (from 12 seconds).
"More Misdeeds" weaver upgrade no longer provides cooldown reduction for Bouncing Bomb. This was not intended.
"Hip Shot" damage bonus decreased to 20% (from 50%).
Developer Comment: This change was based on community feedback. Players didn't like that Deadeye needed to use her dive skill off of every cooldown in order to maximize her damage. As a result, the buff now persists longer than the cooldown of the skill.
"Outta the Way" roll speed increased by 50%. Distance remains unchanged.
"Outta the Way" now provides invulnerability for its duration.
Developer Comment: This change was based on community feedback. Many players commented that Deadeye's dive skill didn't really feel like it gained her distance. In addition, many players noted that they were taking massive hits while diving, which is what the skill is intended to avoid. As a result, we have increased the dive speed and made the skill provide invulnerability while active.
Gabriella:
Devious Allure cooldown reduced to 12 seconds (from 15).
Developer Comment: We have decided to make Devious Allure a more "attractive" skill to use. Many players are avoiding using the ability entirely right now, especially in group play.
1st weaver upgrade now also provides 50% mana cost reduction to Blink.
Final weaver upgrade cooldown reduced to 15 seconds.
Blink now teleports you in the direction you are moving.
Developer Comment: Players have asked for the ability to more easily control the direction of Gabby's blink for a long time. Our argument used to be that we liked the skill ceiling associated with teleporting backwards. However, since we made her a starting hero, we decided to revisit the design decision. We hope this will make the ability more useful at all levels of play. Be warned, it can take a bit of getting used to if you are accustomed to the old functionality.
Hogarth:
AMBUSH! cooldown reduction weaver upgrade changed to 50%, rather than 5 seconds. This results in no effect on the power of the skill unless stacked with other cooldown reduction sources.
Maximilian:
In Your Faces cooldown reduced to 12.5 seconds (from 14).
In Your Faces mana cost lowered to 45 (from 50).
Absolutely Stunning Bolt cooldown reduced to 11 seconds (from 12).
Absolutely Stunning Bolt mana cost reduced to 45 (from 50).
Primary attack damage increased by 10%.
Developer Comment: Maximilian is simply weaker than many of the other heroes in the game. Since he is also a starter hero, we want to prioritize a few all-around buffs.
Oziel:
Passive updated: Now gains 5% max mana with each battle level.
Soul stack messaging has been moved to "Haunting Spirits".
Fixed a bug causing Oziel to gain far too many stacks from "Vexing Surge".
Fixed a bug where Oziel would not gain the full number of souls from certain weaver upgrades.
Fixed a bug where certain effects would not trigger if a minion was killed with Haunting Spirits active.
Developer Comment: We revamped Oziel in patch 2.3. These changes were oriented around making him more useful in modes other than Endless and Rift Lord levels. However, we also recognize that this has made the hero more generic. As a result, we made several changes based on community feedback: Bringing back scaling mana (but not damage) and increasing his soul cap to 300.
Smolder:
Fixed an issue where Smolder's mana costs were higher than intended.
Ballistas:
Re-fire delay slowed by 10%.
Developer Comment: While this is likely a change that will have mixed reception, we have been struggling to make other ceiling traps (and other traps in general) compete with the Ballista. As a result, we are making a small nerf to the ballista traps and making many other options SIGNIFICANTLY more powerful. In addition, we have also made other ceiling traps more accessible on high ceilings by increasing their range.
Big-Game Zapper:
Vertical range increased by 1.
Cost reduced to 500 (from 1000).
Brimstone:
Damage reduced by 5%.
Cursed Ground:
Cooldown lowered to 15 seconds (from 36).
Decoy:
Health increased by 40%.
Quarter Pounder:
Range increased by 0.25.
Cost reduced to 750 (from 1000).
Fire Cracker:
Damage reduced by 5%.
Floor Scorcher:
Re-trigger delay slowed by 20%.
Damage increased by 10%.
Ice Vent:
Charges increased to 30 (from 25).
Lightning Rod:
Vertical range increased by 1.
Overload Trap:
No longer disables floor traps that do not deal damage.
Trigger delay increased by 1 second.
Power-up Traps:
Buff duration increased to 24 seconds (from 15).
Shock Zapper:
Vertical range increased by 1.
Damage increased to 400 (from 350).
Floor Spikes:
Damage lowered by 5%.
Summoner Trap:
Damage increased by 40%.
Trip Wire:
Placement collision reduced to a 2 trap width (from 3). Effect area remains the same.
Bug Fixes:
Fixed a bug where Arcane Phaser would regain its charges during Go-Breaks.
Fixed a bug where "Spudging Pickups" would cause Bloodspike's pigs to cause him to become spudged.
Fixed an issue where minions were getting stuck in walls regularly.
Fixed a bug where Stunning Accumulator was affecting all minions, rather than flipped minions.
Ring of Last Stand now properly provides 3 seconds of immunity. It was only providing 1.5 seconds before.
Smolder's passive no longer knocks back mercenaries.
Fixed a bug that was causing hero death sounds not to play.
Fixed an issue where achievement rewards were not always shown.
Fixed an issue where community events could be shown in the wrong language.
Fixed missing icons for Poison and Homing keywords.
Fixed an issue where bosses' drain life would continue functioning while stunned.
Fixed an issue where post-game stats would very rarely fail to report.
Fixed an issue where whisper tabs don't properly re-position in rows when exiting a lobby.
Fixed an issue where opening a whisper from the friends list would cause the button to remain lit.
Fixed a bug causing Oziel's achievements for soul collection to not function properly.
Minions will now be killed if they are knocked against the wall on Throne Room.
Fixed an issue where firelings would not explode if the player is standing still.
Fixed mismatching icons for Debilitation Resonator.
Fixed several situations where the iMage could get stuck when spawning.
Fixed an issue where ballistas would revert to lower-tier textures when disabled.
Fixed an issue that caused minions to dramatically backtrack on Crogon Keep.
Many ability tooltip fixes.
OMDU Weekly Challenge "Who's The Boss?"
This challenge pits you against numerous bosses. Take them down using big game traps.
Can you defeat this week's challenge with Deadeye, Cygnus, and Midnight?
Unchained Invasion!
Attention War Mages,
This weekend we’ll be running the second Orcs Must Die! Unchained weekend event. Beginning at 10 am Thursday, August 17, and ending at 10 am Monday, August 21 there will be four concurrent community challenges available. All four challenges will be available throughout the Orc Invasion event.
Each enemy killed will count towards the collective goals. Each successfully completed challenge will award a chest to participants. The larger and more difficult the enemy, the larger the reward. The first challenge will award an Apprentice chest, the second a War Mage chest, and so on. If all 4 challenges are successfully defeated, all participants will also receive a bonus Rift Lord chest.
Let us know what you think about the concurrent event in the forums! One known issue that has already been resolved for the next update is the *displayed text for each contribution*. Though the text will indicate only one type of enemy is being counted towards the goal the contributions are functioning correctly and counting enemies of all types. For example, all orc kills will count towards the orc-killing goal, but the text will always say "light orcs."
Log in, kill orcs and their Unchained friends, earn extra chests, and have an orc-tastic weekend in Orcs Must Die! Unchained!
