Minion Masters Friday - Spawn of Fury

Minion Masters!

It's been an exciting week at the office after the launch of Minion Masters. It's certainly been a wild ride and we're ecstatic to see so many new players joining the fold, especially from our new friends on Xbox One! We certainly saw enough traffic to make our servers sweat from the pressure, and the amount of interaction we saw on Twitch was phenomenal as well (even if we may have been giving a bit too much away from the Twitch Drops ;) ). We're close to 2 million registered users now, so thanks to everyone for making it such an unforgettable occasion! With that out of the way, it's no time to start the brakes on the hype train, and today we're talking about Version 1.1, which is due to release on Wednesday the 5th.

Spawn of Fury

Our headliner for this update is the Community Voted card, Spawn of Fury! Chosen as part of the Card-House Contest last year, this new Legendary spell card will be available in v1.1 for 2000 shards, or as part of regular Power Token spins. Let's take a look at what to expect:

Spawn of Fury can duplicate your powerful, hard hitting minions, but it comes at a hefty price - 50% health is certain to make even the biggest of creatures a lot more vulnerable. The health reduction becomes the new maximum HP of the unit, rather than simply setting the unit's health to 50%, so you can't just heal the unit back up or take advantage of an easy Ravager perk 2. Additionally, the duplicated minion will spawn behind the original.

How do you think you can best take advantage of Spawn of Fury? What minions do you think can make the most of that duplication? We'd love to hear your thoughts!

Morellia the Lich Queen & Version 1.2

On the not-so-distant horizon, our new master Morellia will be arriving in Version 1.2, bringing her powerful Undead magic to the flying battlegrounds. The merciless sister of Milloween has been a ton of fun to play with behind the scenes, and we've been receiving extra feedback from our PTR group to try and make sure she's in the best state possible for her release, along with a whole heap of Balance Changes to shake up the meta, including our proposed change to Guardian. Expect to hear more about that in the run-up to v1.2! 

Want to help out with testing future content and Balance changes? Sign up for our PTR today using this application form!

Prince Puff Cup 2

The Second Prince Puff Cup has been scheduled! Last time was an entertaining off-season tournament, and it'll be great to see all the new blood that joined Minion Masters competing again for that wonderful prize of Dynasty Milloween and a Super Mega Dwarf Pack! Here's the pitch written by none other than Julaiwnl themself:

Hey there, @everyone!

June 15th, 14:00 UTC, 7:00 PST, 10:00 EST, 15:00 CET, the Prince Puff Cup will be looking for a a new champion, or well... to have Sunless lift the trophy again!

For the 2nd PPC, we will be doing the following:

Double-Elimination Bracket, with Sideboard.

Players will submit 4 complete decks (Master + 10 cards), and an extra list of 10 cards used for Sideboard. They will be able to replace ANY of the cards from their original decks with those from the extra card list in-between games only, so chose them wisely!

Banned Cards from the Tournament:

- Divine Warrior

- Fire Imp

- Scrat Tank

Wildcards & Duplicate Masters are banned from the King Puff Cup related events.

Please, take a look at the full rulebook before participating: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VmSU0mv9BzS1lyu5KSCkseen5UjdF4PQm4Bx8UEBWcU

Registration Page: https://www.toornament.com/tournaments/2542823211618557952/information

Registrations will close on June 14th, 14:00 UTC, 7:00 PST, 10:00 EST, 15:00 CET, exactly one day before the event.

The King Puff Cup Staff~

Both the King Puff Cup and BetaDwarf Staff look forward to seeing you there!

Cheers from BetaDwarf!

Celebrating v1.0 & 9 years of Dev with -100% off DLC and Free games!

We just can’t help ourselves today, Masters!

Here at Betadwarf, we’re celebrating v1.0 and 9 years of making games with a -100% off Accursed Army Pack DLC and giving away 99,999 copies of our games!

Yep.

How do we make money when we keep giving away gifts, DLC and our games?

We don’t care, it’s the release of Minion Masters!

We’ve compiled this handy list of Acquisition for you:

• Hurry and read Chapter 3 of our crazy story to claim a free key for our games!
• Head to the Steam store and grab your -100% off Accursed DLC (Also available on Discord and Xbox)
• Join our Discord Server for more giveaways in the following days!

Phew, so much giving wears you out, but there’s no rest at the BetaDwarf fortress. We’ll be active on all the channels today, answering questions and collecting information, and you might even find us on the ladder. Strictly testing, of course.

But first, we celebrate, and we want you to send your best toast our way!

v1.0 - Bones & Bravery

Minion Masters!

v1.0 is here and the game is released!

As we look back at our time in Early Access, we see a long list of planned and unplanned features that took shape with your help!

We'll remember major experiments such as Expeditions - if you haven’t heard Videogamer77 shout “Baguettes!” on stream, you really should check him out. The introduction of Team Battle brought a whole new group of players into the fold, and the various events we've iterated on throughout the 1½ years of Early Access turned into a dependable way for Streamers and the community to share rewards.

v1.0 is a major milestone. We’ve finished the core of Minion Masters - and we'll use that to build the future.

Guilds was the last big thing to iterate on, and we've ironed out many issues and successfully completed Conquest (for now - we still have plenty we want to do!).

Quite importantly however, is the fact that Minion Masters releases on Xbox One today, and a whole new community joins us to enjoy the game!

Of course, there’s no 1.0 without a good batch of new things, so with this update comes the Battle Pass Bones & Bravery, balance and more!

As mentioned, v1.0 is but a milestone. It's not the end, it's not even the beginning. But it is a beginning.

From here we will keep updating the game with new Battle Passes, iterations on old features, possibly new platforms, and of course a bunch of new and exciting features!
There's still much to do in optimizing, bug fixing and balancing, and it'll all come along the way.
With your help we'll keep gathering information about every obscure (or obvious) bug in existence, and we'll thank you for your contributions!

As a great way to kick off this new evolving period - we've revealed a brand new Master coming to the game - Morellia, the Lich Queen!

You can check her out on the update site.

And without further ado, let's get into the changelog:

Bones & Bravery

Accursed Ascension
Collect 20 Spectral Essence to activate Accursed Ascension.
Spectral Essence is gained from Accursed Minion and Spells.

• This content season will last until August
• 8 new cards have been released!

Twitch Extension and Twitch Drops

With v1.0 we’re also releasing an upgraded version of our Streamer integrations. Now, when a Streamer wins a Watch & Win fight while streaming, every member of their audience who has linked their in-game and Twitch accounts will receive the prize via Twitch Drops instead of the shareable code system.

Twitch Extension - Streamer Audience

• The Streamer Audience is now integrated with a Twitch Extension interface
• Viewers on Twitch get their own character in-game to cheer the Streamer on!
• Read more about it on the Streamer Boost website

Twitch Drops - Legendary House Event

• Starting with v1.0 is a new Legendary House Event! Collect 15 keys for the house of your choice to earn a copy of Ghost, Howling Moon or a Random Legendary Card. You can only claim the reward for one House, so choose wisely!
• Keys are earned through Prize Fight events while playing that will appear at random when a match starts. Win the match to earn a key!
• Keys are also earned through watching Streamers that complete Watch & Win events. Make sure you have your in-game account linked to Twitch to receive Twitch Drops!

Balance

• (Mechanic) Spirit
• Health Bonus 100 > 200
• No longer stacks
• Grants one Spectral Essence to the buff’s owner once the unit dies
• Developer Comments
• Check out our Blog Post on the Spirit rework on our blog

• Spirit Vessel
• Mana Cost 3 > 2
• Health 250 > 50
• Damage 40 > 25
• Attack Speed 1.1 > 2.0

• AIM Bot
• Now also gains Shield when Summoned
• Developer Comments
• AIM Bot's original intention was to trade off the increased Mana Cost by making it a safer supportive card through the use of Marksmanship, but the increase in range simply was never useful enough to justify paying the premium for it over Drone Walker. We'd like to reinforce the "safe" aspect of the card by making it much more durable against removal through the addition of a Shield, while not removing its weakness against cards that can close the distance quickly such as a Prowler or Incubus.

• Rampage
• Mana Cost 3 > 2
• Area of Effect 8 > 6
• Developer Comments
• Rampage is a card that has been in a weak spot ever since the Rage nerf removed its volatile nature. Increasing the usability of the card as such should make it an easier inclusion in the types of decks that would effectively make use of the Damage increase while hopefully not being as explosive to play against as the status effect was in its prime.

• Caeleth Dawnhammer
• Mana Cost 9 > 8
• Developer Comments
• This change to Caeleth is fairly straightforward - He was too difficult to make use of at 9 mana, with his Divine Shield effect, while strong, not being enough of a justification to include in most decks. Hopefully this change will give him the boost he needs to be useful for play.

• Demon Warrior
• Attack Speed 2.5 > 2.2
• Developer Comments
• One noted weakness of Demon Warrior was when she had to face off against multiple units. Even as a win condition, she would suffer against even the smallest groups of swarm due to her slow Attack Speed - So we're giving that aspect of her a significant boost, but not to the extent that it removes her primary weakness. This change should make her more of an immediate threat that you have to answer.

• Dragon Ball
• Mana Cost 5 > 6
• Mana Cost to activate Dragon Ball’s effect 6 > 6+
• Developer Comments
• Dragon Ball has been a particularly efficient card ever since its inception, finding a home in aggressive decks of all shapes and sizes. We've tried to keep it at 5 Mana so that it met two particular goals; that it didn't feel too bad to play unactivated, and to be a viable activator for Shars'Rakk Twins. However, the value provided from the Dragon Whelp ultimately proved to be too much regardless of what mana cost the Activator was at, merely shifting around what kind of deck could make the most of the card. As such we're opting to push it to the 6 Mana mark, but in exchange make it slightly easier to activate in a deckbuilding sense by expanding the range of options you have to combo it with.

• Shieldguard of Light
• Mana Cost 6 > 7
• Developer Comments
• Shieldguard has been a powerhouse card for a while, and how best to change him was a frequent topic of discussion internally after our previous smaller adjustment didn't have an effect on his prominence. Suggestions included lowering his health or cutting his damage and focusing on his charge, and while we did consider and work with these changes at first, we iterated into focusing on the "One Man Army" identity of the card. We wanted him to be powerful, and thus we are instead opting to put him at a higher mana cost without particularly reducing his effectiveness on the battlefield.

Misc

• The Leaderboard has been reverted from Top 150 to Top 20 to help reduce server load.

Bugs

• Fixed Shen Stormstrike ignoring volume options - Thanks everyone
• Fixed Xiao Long's card indicator not disappearing if it dies while hypnotised.
• Fixed Pirate Mordar’s jaw stretching into infinity again.
• Fixed Bannerman’s buff indicator radius being based upon where your cursor is - Thanks TomatoMato!
• Fixed the Leaderboard not grouping cards together correctly - Thanks Thigh Imp!
• Fixed the Leaderboard showing the glory of your cards on everyone’s decks - Thanks Sunny!
• Fixed instances where Volco’s hammer would not return to his hands properly - Thanks Jess Tha Bes’!
• Fixed Jungle Jumble being obtainable from Future Past & Present - Thanks TGXAndy!
• Fixed the wrong rank image being displayed after ranking up - Thanks Zundmaster!
• Fixed Harbinger applying knockback to units that were black holed as the attack hit - Thanks Khazlariko!

Finally, if you’re ever wondering what we’re working on, check out the Roadmap on our store page and you’ll catch a glimpse.

Cheers from BetaDwarf!

Bones & Bravery Fanart Contest!

Minion Masters!

It's time for another Fanart Contest in the run-up to the exciting launch of Minion Masters! With a grand prize of 5,000 Rubies, we're hoping to see more of the great community inspiration we saw in our last contests. This time, the special rule is that entries should be based on the Bones & Bravery Battle Pass, or perhaps what you think that Something Special is... Here's what you need to do to enter:

1. Make what you think is the best Bones & Bravery fanart ever created.
2. Entries must be related to Bones & Bravery or your interpretation of "Something Special", as noted on the website.
3. Head on over to our Official Discord at http://discord.gg/minionmasters and post your entry in the #fanart-contest-2 channel.
4. Once the Contest ends on the 31st of May, a winner will be chosen by us to receive in-game codes worth 5,000 Rubies, and two runner-up prizes of 1,000 Rubies!

Please note that all entries need to be original artworks! You can use any medium you like - Sketches, digital, 3D, but they need to be your own work to be eligible for the contest.

The contest runs from the 13th of May to the 31st of May, 0900 UTC. Good luck, Masters!

Cheers from BetaDwarf!

Minion Masters Friday - Spiritual Flight

Minion Masters!

The countdown to release ticks to 14 days, and there's still so much more v1.0 content to reveal, as well as the start of our Xbox One Open Beta. We'll also be doing another run of a certain community contest from earlier this year - Stay tuned for more information on that. Let's not waste any more time and get into those juicy details:

Spirit Rework

Coming in v1.0 will be a rework to the Spirit mechanic. We decided to rework Spirits as we aimed to create an environment that normalized the effectiveness of the buff, and to make it fit into more traditional buff rules, with an increased investment if you wanted to get the maximum value possible from the mechanic.

Here's what will be changed with the update:

• Spirit now gives 200 Health
• Spirit can no longer apply more than once to the same Minion
• Spirit grants Spectral Essence once the buffed unit dies

Additionally, the card Spirit Vessel will be reworked to fit the new mechanic:

• Mana 3 > 2
• Health 250 > 50
• Damage 40 > 35
• Attack Speed 1.1 > 2.0

These stats match the new Skeleton base unit found in Skeleton Horde and Nyrvir's Breath, and hopefully provides a nice, easy way to quickly develop a Spirit buff for your other units on the field. No other cards with the Spirit mechanic will be receiving any changes with this rework. Let us know what you think regarding these changes, and how do you think you can best use Spirits in v1.0?

Final Beta for Xbox Insiders

The Minion Masters Xbox One Final Beta stage starts today! Previously the number of users that could access the beta was limited, and progress was reset. But now the game will be available for everyone on Xbox One with no more account resets, and cross-play compatibility with Steam and Discord users. If you're playing on Xbox, make sure to look out for our Official Club that will be posting all the upcoming content and announcements you need, as well as soon providing a hub to connect with other Xbox players. Welcome to Minion Masters!

Dwarf Stream Incoming!

Next Friday will mark our last Early Access Developer Stream before our full release. Join That Sprite as we walk through everything that v1.0 has to offer, as well as some announcements for some exciting community events in the run up to our Launch! You can find it on our Twitch Account, next Friday the 17th, at 1900 CEST! Make sure you're there!

Cheers from BetaDwarf!

Minion Masters Friday - v1.0 is coming!

Minion Masters!

It's been a busy few weeks here at the office, but release is finally in sight, and there's a lot to discuss regarding it, whether you're playing on Steam, Discord or Xbox!

Version 1.0

With the release of Minion Masters also denotes a new versioning scheme for the game as we leave Early Access, with future patches following the schema of 1.0.X. This Update will include the launch of Bones & Bravery, our seventh Battle Pass, as well as a number of Balance adjustments and the full release of the game on Xbox One. The release of Minion Masters is currently scheduled to be the 24th of May and will include the Founder's Gift gift of a Legendary Card and 5 Power Tokens for everyone that purchased Minion Masters before we went Free to Play.

The Early Access period of Minion Masters has been a fun and exciting period in BetaDwarf's history, and we're glad we were able to share this experience with all of you since the game's inception. Thanks to everyone for your continued support!

Balance Changes

As mentioned before, coming in v1.0 are some much requested Balance Changes that we've been working on behind the scenes. Here are some of the Balance Changes you can expect to see coming in Version 1.0:

• Dragon Ball
• Mana Cost increased from 5 to 6
• The Card Mana Cost to activate Dragon Ball's effect has changed from being 6 to 6+
• Developer Comments:
• Dragon Ball has been a particularly efficient card ever since its inception, finding a home in aggressive decks of all shapes and sizes. We've tried to keep it at 5 Mana so that it met two particular goals; that it didn't feel too bad to play unactivated, and to be a viable activator for Shars'Rakk Twins. However, the value provided from the Dragon Whelp ultimately proved to be too much regardless of what mana cost the Activator was at, merely shifting around what kind of deck could make the most of the card. As such we're opting to push it to the 6 Mana mark, but in exchange make it slightly easier to activate in a deckbuilding sense by expanding the range of options you have to combo it with.

• Shieldguard of Light
• Mana Cost increased from 6 to 7
• Damage increased from 60 to 70 (It already has 70 damage due to a bug, but was intended to be 60)
• Developer Comments:
• Shieldguard has been a powerhouse card for a while, and how best to change him was a frequent topic of discussion internally after our previous smaller adjustment didn't have an effect on his prominence. Suggestions included lowering his health or cutting his damage and focusing on his charge, and while we did consider and work with these changes at first, we iterated into focusing on the "One Man Army" identity of the card. We wanted him to be powerful, and thus we are instead opting to put him at a higher mana cost without particularly reducing his effectiveness on the battlefield.

• AIM Bot
• Now also gains Shield when Summoned
• Developer Comments:
• AIM Bot's original intention was to trade off the increased Mana Cost by making it a safer supportive card through the use of Marksmanship, but the increase in range simply was never useful enough to justify paying the premium for it over Drone Walker. We'd like to reinforce the "safe" aspect of the card by making it much more durable against removal through the addition of a Shield, while not removing its weakness against cards that can close the distance quickly such as a Prowler or Incubus.

• Rampage
• Mana Cost decreased from 3 to 2
• Area of Effect reduced by 2
• Developer Comments
• Rampage is a card that has been in a weak spot ever since the Rage nerf removed its volatile nature. Increasing the usability of the card as such should make it an easier inclusion in the types of decks that would effectively make use of the Damage increase while hopefully not being as explosive to play against as the status effect was in its prime.

• Caeleth Dawnhammer
• Mana Cost decreased from 9 to 8
• Developer Comments
• This change to Caeleth is fairly straightforward - He was too difficult to make use of at 9 mana, with his Divine Shield effect, while strong, not being enough of a justification to include in most decks. Hopefully this change will give him the boost he needs to be useful for play.

• Demon Warrior
• Attack Speed increased from 2.5 to 2.2
• Developer Comments
• One noted weakness of Demon Warrior was when she had to face off against multiple units. Even as a win condition, she would suffer against even the smallest groups of swarm due to her slow Attack Speed - So we're giving that aspect of her a significant boost, but not to the extent that it removes her primary weakness. This change should make her more of an immediate threat that you have to answer.

One particular set of cards that we have received many requests for balance adjustments to is the Stormy/Priestess/Guardian decks that have been prominent since the release of Stormy. Guardian in particular is a card that has been in our sights as problematic for a long time, particularly as an enable of "cheese" decks. However, we want to make sure that when we make a significant change to the card that it's the right one that allows Guardian to retain its status as a tanky protector, but much less combo reliant in order to be viable. Hopefully we'll have more news we can share in the future as we investigate solutions to the card.

But in terms of balance changes, that's not all you can expect out of our big release update. Next week we'll be discussing a rework to a certain Buff mechanic, so stay tuned to hear more about that!

Cheers from BetaDwarf!

Update 93 - The last Early Access update

Minion Masters!

This Update is a preparatory patch for Xbox Flight to be on the same server as our Discord and Steam users in roughly a week. We’ve included a lot of optimization changes as well ahead of release, which we are currently planning for the release of Bones and Bravery on Friday the 24th of May. Expect to hear lots of news in the coming weeks as we rapidly approach the exciting launch of v1.0 of Minion Masters!

Misc

• Many various optimization improvements.
• Added more Power Tokens to the Recruit Friend rewards. These extra Power Tokens will be claimable from the Referral menu if you previously achieved the number of Referrals required.

Bugs

• Fixed Guild Conquest Season 2 Rewards being unclaimable if a user had joined the guild late in the previous Conquest Season. The rewards can now be claimed.
• Fixed Guild Conquest Leaderboard Rewards incorrectly being rewarded twice visually - Thanks to the PuffChamp Guild!
• Fixed Ruffles being invisible on certain Diona skins - Thanks TomatoMato!

Cheers from BetaDwarf!