Darkest greetings Underlords!

In our State of the Game post last week we announced that there will be some major balance coming to the game in patch 1.2. Today we’d like to take a more in depth look at some of these exciting changes.

As such we’ve got a big long post for you today, if you’re not up for reading all the nitty gritty we’ve also got a video showing some of the biggest changes:

 

The Wall

First up, fortified walls. As many of you have probably noticed, fortified walls aren’t as effective as they should be and some of the most efficient strategies in multiplayer forego them completely.

Our goal with walls was to have them primarily used for defence but ultimately it turned out that they weren’t quite good enough at that job, and many players ended up just having one ‘outer shell’ wall and a modern, open-plan dungeon on the inside. This wasn’t really fulfilling the dungeon fantasy that we or our players were after, so we’re making a few key improvements to walls.

One of the main pieces of feedback we’ve received is that walls having no impact on rooms isn’t a good thing, which brings us to our first major change: Fortified walls will now improve the efficiency of nearby props:

• Most props will gain 8.5% bonus efficiency for every fortified wall in a 2-tile radius
• Impenetrable and diagonal tiles count
• The bonus is capped at 50% (6 fortified wall tiles)

 

In more depth, this means that 5×5 (or smaller) rooms with a full set of walls will be at max efficiency even with one door on every side, but when you start creating larger rooms, adding more doors or removing walls, the bonuses will fall off.

Certain rooms are excluded from this system as their props don’t suit efficiency bonuses and/or have non-standard prop placement. These rooms are: Crypt, Lair, Vault, Arena, Prison, Garrison, Beast Den

What this means is different varied dungeon layouts are now valid, and there will be far more decision making when it comes to laying out your dungeon. From our internal playtests we’ve seen many, many different approaches varying from the classic 5×5 rooms to a patchwork of smaller rooms and corridors in an attempt to make the best use of limited space.

 

Practical and Defensive!

But what about the lacklustre defensive value of walls? Well, that brings us on to our next major change: Explosives no longer instantly destroy walls. Instead, they’ll deal a set amount of damage:

• Underminers deal 100 damage, Hellfire deals 250 damage, Brimstone deals 1000 damage
• Damage from an Underminer does not penetrate through tiles that it doesn’t destroy (meaning multi-tile thick walls are effective options now)
• Fortified Earth now has 300 health (up from 200)
• Garrison aura blocks 50% of damage to walls from all sources, including explosives
• Worker dig speed against enemy walls has been reduced by 33%

What this means is you’ll now need 3 Underminers to break through standard fortified Earth, but there’s plenty of options available to bolster walls with the Garrison, Augrum Wall, Glacial Door and even the Transmutation potion. Similarly, the attacking player also has plenty of options – Underminers are now not the only option.

Hellfire potions are stronger than Underminers in this regard and will damage a standard Earth tile enough to remove the fortification, but not destroy it, whereas Brimstone will still instantly destroy anything it impacts – we wanted to keep the interesting dungeon-planning choices that Brimstone added to maps.

Finally, we’ve significantly buffed the effectiveness of Besiege as it was pretty lacklustre – it now increases the movement speed and construct-summoning speed of workers for the duration, and the bonus dig speed against enemy walls is now 2000% (up from 200%). This may seem extreme, but it will still take 3 level 1 workers 16 seconds to dig through fortified Earth. Bolstering this with higher-level workers, Obey and a good old slap will bring the time down, though.

Digging through fortified walls without Besiege is now very very difficult – it’ll take 3 of your workers several minutes just to get through some Earth, and enemy workers will now be able to repair walls faster than you can dig through them.

All in all, this provides both defending and attacking players multiple options when it comes to how they approach walls.

And speaking of Besiege, that brings us to…

 

Leveling the Playing Field

Like with Besiege, we’ve revisited many under- and over-used aspects and units in an attempt to diversify the amount of viable options available to players.

Outpost (Construct)

The Outpost will now remain in place after being completed and will protect all tiles in a 3×3 radius, instantly re-claiming them if they become unclaimed (until it is destroyed or sold, of course).

Vampire (Unit/Ritual)

The Vampire has a new ‘Bloodthirsty’ passive ability, granting him happiness and reducing his hunger slightly every time he attacks. This will allow you to keep him happy using the Arena or through constant combat, allowing your prisoners to serve alternative nefarious prisoners, which may or may not be better for them…

Frost Weaver (Unit/Potion)

The Frost Weaver was nerfed in a previous update as they were being used for offensive purposes, so we’ve now made them ignore all rally flags and significantly buffed their combat effectiveness so they now successfully fit the role of a ‘living defence’ that we were after.

Spirit Chamber (Room)

The Spirit Chamber’s training speed has been significantly increased and will now also benefit from efficiency bonuses on the prop and on the Witch Doctor, but the gold cost is now tied to the experience gain instead of it being a flat rate per second, meaning all of these things will also drain your Vaults faster.

Well of Souls (Defense)

The Well of Souls was generally way too strong, so we’ve reduced the range, increased the mana cost, and increased the cost of summoning a Wraith by 150%. To compensate, we’ve given it a significant health buff so it can stand up to opponents in a longer exchange.

Bone Chiller (Defense)

The Bone Chiller has received similar changes, reduced range, increased gold cost, and increased health. In addition, we’ve buffed up the slow amount from 45% to 75% and the active ability will now deal triple damage to Ember Demons, as well as disabling the damage from their death explosion for a few seconds.

Magical Meat (Spell)

Magical Meat now fulfills the sleep and hunger needs of your minions, allowing it to fully function as a way for you to keep your army out of your dungeon and fighting for longer.

Overload (Ritual)

The Overload ritual no longer has a ‘crash’ after it expires, and also removes the mana regen cooldown whilst it is active. Combined with the mana cost changes we’ve made to various spells this should now be a very versatile ritual.

Assembly & Construction (Rituals)

The Assembly and Construction rituals were both too strong and imposing, so they have had their preparation times increased significantly and the speed at which they summon defences and constructs reduced a small amount.

Transmuation (Potion)

Transmutation now scales better with how many tiles it’s used on – it costs 2500 gold and grants 1250 gold per tile it hits, up to a maximum of 10000 gold (at 8 tiles).

Blood Money (Spell)

Blood Money now grants gold based on the level and population value of the target unit rather than it’s health, so you should see better rewards from transmuting higher-level prisoners (or minions whose use has expired…).

 

Everything Else

Almost every aspect in the game has received tweaks, from minor cost changes – like the Annex spell’s mana cost being reduced from 150 to 50 – to more significant reworks like the ones mentioned above.

The full change list will be posted up when we release the patch later this month, but in the meantime we hope you like what you’ve read here. If you have any feedback, please do post in the comments below or on our forums.

And with that we’re at the end of our post this evening, stay tuned for more over the coming days. Don’t miss a thing by signing up to our newsletter and you’ll also receive some exclusive previews when the first newsletter comes out very soon!

 

Until next time Underlords,

– WFTO Team

 

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