Fan Art Contest & Valorian Reveals Incoming!

Minion Masters!

It's been an ecstatic start to the new Expansion, with tons of new users from the promotion and exciting matches from the new cards. Which one has been your favourite so far? Moving forward, the news is only going to get bigger, with a brand new Master on the horizon!

NIGHTMARES Fanart Contest!

And what better way to demonstrate the fantastic creativity of our community with a new Fanart Contest? This time, we're going to theme it all around the new Nightmares expansion - Mar'Dred's demon legion vs Valorian and his allies!

As always, the winner will receiving a massive 5000 Rubies, with two runner-ups receiving 1000 Rubies - Here's all the information you need to enter the contest!

1. Make what you think is the best Nightmares-related Minion Masters artwork ever created. This isn't necessarily the cards currently released - Anything to the theme of the expansion is allowed.
2. All entries must be related to the Nightmares expansion.
3. Head on over to our Discord at http://discord.gg/minionmasters and post your entry in the #nightmares-art-contest channel.
4. Once the contest entry period ends on the 17th of September, a community vote will be held between 5 entries selected by the BetaDwarf staff, running until the 21st of September. The winner will receive codes worth 5000 Rubies, while second and third place will receive 1000 Rubies each.

Like before, all entries need to be original artworks! You can use any medium you'd like - Sketches, Digital, 3d, but it must be your own work to be eligible for the contest. Your work will not be used for any promotional Minion Masters material without any explicit contact between you and representatives of BetaDwarf for any potential agreements.

The contest runs from the 27th of August to the 17th of September, 10:00 CEST. Good luck, Masters!

Valorian Reveals coming soon!

It's been on everyone's minds - The new master, Dawn Marshall Valorian, is being revealed this Friday! In just over 24 hours you'll be able to start checking out his reveals on our Update Site, where a special video demonstration will be used to showcase him over the coming weeks both on the site and on our Social Media (Twitter and Facebook). 

Make sure to keep on top of the news and remain as up to date as possible about the Empyrean hero!

Upcoming Minion Masters Tournaments!

There's a wide range of upcoming tournaments you can participate in, Masters!

First off, we've got another 2v2 Tournament straight from BadAsAFish with a $100 Prize Pool. It's a double elimination format with "blind" decks - Meaning you can queue with anything that matches the tournament rules with no banning phases. Check it out here - The tournament begins on Monday!

Meanwhile The Challenger League is making its return! Lead by long time Minion Masters veteran imJules, this Double-Elimination Conquest format 1v1 Tournament is a great place to hone your skills, and as an offline tournament it's going to be very flexible around player schedules. Check it out here: https://www.toornament.com/en_GB/tournaments/3856941991022559232/information

Cheers from BetaDwarf!

Nightmares

Minion Masters!

Nightmares have come to Minion Masters! The great and terrible Mar’Dred’s arrival approaches due to the machinations of Ardera. The Hero of the Empyreum, Valorian, races to Jadespark Jungle to oppose the demonic threat, but only darkness and corruption awaits…

Stay tuned to our Update Site for more reveals about upcoming Season Passes, including details on Dawn Marshall Valorian!

And stay tuned tonight for another big gift!

Nightmares - Season Pass #1

• A new Season Pass has arrived to Minion Masters!
• Tons of new rewards, including 3 cards, a Legendary Skin, bonus cards, and more!
• Three new cards have been added to the game:

• Shadowbringer has also been added to the game!

• This Season Pass will end on September 24th.

New Adventure

It’s time to make your counter-attack against the Voidborne demons. It all comes down to this - You win this war, or Jadespark Jungle may never see light again. No pressure.

• Brand New Story - Fight the demonic hordes to liberate Jadespark Jungle from Ardera and her terrible master!
• Play as a special Adventures version of Valorian - Or play as returning allies Milloween and Nylora with certain encounters having unique Dialogue for each!
• This is a 1 Chapter Adventure that costs 700 Rubies.
• This Adventure concludes the storyline started in Saving Jadespark Jungle.
• Completing the Chapter will get you some cool rewards! Finish Hard Mode with all Masters for Avatars!
• The Adventure releases on September 3rd.

Balance

Arcane Golem

• Speed 3 -> 4
• Developer Comments
• A speed increase means Arcane Golem is present for less time in your arena, making it more vulnerable to enemy counter-play outside of spells sooner.

Assassin / Mal’Shar Shadowfork

• Health 130 -> 150
• Developer Comments
• The Assassin units currently struggle from being too easily removed from spells such as Poison Strike, and in general could stand to be a bit more durable in fights.

Combustion

Explosion Count 5 -> 4

Developer Comments

Simply put, Combustion was proving to be too good when combined with units like Divine Warrior. We are still fairly confident that the maximum damage of 200 will still be strong enough for the card to be worth playing.

Divine Shield

• Duration 5 -> 6

Caeleth Dawnhammer

• Cost 8 -> 9
• Developer Comments
• The Divine Shield change came about because of Divine Warrior and Ardera were underperforming, but Caeleth was on tipping point of being too strong. A buff to Divine Shield massively benefits him due to how he can activate it multiple times during his life, so we believe he will still be powerful at the 9 mana slot.

Dragon Nest

• Now has Mythic
• Duration 30 -> 35
• Developer Comments
• This is somewhat of an experimental change - Part of our concern with Dragon Nest is that by buffing it, it will eventually reach a state where you just play multiple Dragon Nests at once for multiplicative value on the spells you cast.

Lady Infray the Spire Warden

• Piercing Shot Attack Time 2 -> 1 second
• Developer Comments
• Lady Infray has just felt too sluggish with her special ability even with Mana Surge. Often times she'd miss the intended target due to how long it would take the shot to go off, while in other instances we've noted that she died in a situation where her regular attacks would have saved her simply due to how slow it was.

Lone Scout / Lone Wolf

• Now only considers Minions under your control
• Developer Comments
• This change is more of a "Quality of Life" alteration to enable the cards to be played effectively in 2v2, but we felt it was long overdue for making the cards viable in that mode.

Mountainshaper

• Stack Time 6 -> 5 Seconds
• Developer Comments
• The big issue with Mountainshaper was that it was very ineffective when you first drew it from your deck, meaning it was often a “dead card” in games where you needed access to powerful removal often.

Resonating Blast Crystal

• Mana Cost 4 -> 3
• Now has Mana Freeze (1)

Restless Dead

• Undying Corpses spawn randomly in your Arena
• Developer Comments
• Restless Dead has been quite a powerful card due to the exceptional value you receive from the Skeletons alone, allowing you to create formidable pushes. However, it also proved too strong when combined with Corpse Explosion, allowing you to create high damaging blasts that came with the added benefit of giving you some strong bodies down the line to push with. This change aims to hit both aspects of the card at once, while still providing you with the card's original efficiency.

Scrat Launcher

• Attack Delay 0.4 -> 2.6
• Overall Attack Cooldown is not affected
• Developer Comments
• An increase to its Attack Delay should make it easier to react to with counter units like Bazooka Scrat and Wall.

Screaming Scrat

• Damage 100 -> 130

Shielded Crossbow Dudes / Tantrum Throwers

• Condition now requires opponent to own both bridges
• Developer Comments
• Both cards were exceptionally powerful in their role of regaining Bridge control, and being able to quickly play them as a reaction when bridges were only contested, or as a very strong opening move, made them a bit too strong.

Soul Stealer

• Attack Speed Bonus per stack 20% -> 15%

Stun Blast

• Delay 0.5 -> 1 second
• Radius 5 -> 4

Misc

• Chapter 1 of The Quest for Mountainshaper and Saving Jadespark Jungle are no longer free. If you played the chapters before this update, you’ll still keep them. If you haven’t purchased the remaining chapters of those Adventures but own the free chapters, you can buy them at a significant discount.
• Fire Imp has received updated card art.

Bugs

• [KNOWN] There is currently no Italian localization for this Update. We are working with the translator and will add it soon.
• Fixed some Death prediction issues regarding Musketeer - Thanks W Q and Sitrax!
• Fixed unowned Battle Pass cards not appearing in the collection.
• Fixed Caeleth Dawnhammer's Divine Shield tooltip using the wrong variable for its Duration.
• Fixed Red Golem not being summoned from Ritual of Servitude correctly.
• Fixed the opponent not seeing the Red Golem model when summoned via its card.
• Fixed Stormy not showing Shield visual effects - Thanks videogamer77!
• Fixed Marksmanship being invisible with the new Magma Cannon model - Thanks Xiniu!
• Fixed Hauting Hugger’s preview in the card collection having an extra bracket - Thanks Jackeea!
• Fixed Herald Ah’Mun and Hypnotize using different Call Sitherbound tooltips.
• Fixed Nyrvir’s Breath visuals not lasting as long as the actual spell - Thanks Hope Estheim!

Cheers from BetaDwarf!

Balance Changes, 1.16 Season Pass, & Dev Stream Incoming

Minion Masters!

Balance Changes coming in Version 1.16

It's been a shorter season than planned, as you've no doubt noticed by now, but there's still been plenty of time for us to gather information on what balance changes to make! Here's just a few of the changes you can expect to see in the update:

Restless Dead

• Undying Corpses now spawn randomnly within your arena
• Developer Comments
• Restless Dead has been quite a powerful card due to the exceptional value you receive from the Skeletons alone, allowing you to create formidable pushes. However, it also proved too strong when combined with Corpse Explosion, allowing you to create high damaging blasts that came with the added benefit of giving you some strong bodies down the line to push with. This change aims to hit both aspects of the card at once, while still providing you with the card's original efficiency.

Combustion

• Max Explosions 5 -> 4
• Developer Comments
• Simply put, Combustion was proving to be too good when comboed with units like Divine Warrior, as we observed in the recent Shadow Gaming Tournament. We are still fairly confident that the maximum damage of 200 will still be strong enough for the card to be worth playing.

Lone Wolf & Lone Scout

• Now only considers units under your control
• Developer Comments
• This change is more of a "Quality of Life" alteration to enable the cards to be played effectively in 2v2, but we felt it was long overdue for making the cards viable in that mode.

Lady Infray the Spire Warden

• Piercing Shot Delay 2 -> 1
• Developer Comments
• Lady Infray has just felt too sluggish with her special ability even with Mana Surge. Often times she'd miss the intended target due to how long it would take the shot to go off, while in other instances we've noted that she died in a situation where her regular attacks would have saved her simply due to how slow it was.

Season Pass Change for Version 1.16

We wanted to take the time to address a change to the upcoming Season Pass. As you're aware, the recent changes to this expansion cycle were primarily due to the game being "too free" and not sustainable in the long term.

The new system was a good improvement but we erred on the side of caution in some respects, trying and hoping this balance could work. Unfortunately we aren't quite where we need to be, so we have to make some difficult decisions to ensure that the game can be financially sustainable. We’ve tried many things through the years; focus on cosmetics, features like gifting, the shop and more. They’ve always been with the goal of creating a fair free to play model, but some work and some don’t. In the end it’s about one important thing; The game must be offering options to purchase that players want and are happy about buying. The oft discussed cosmetics unfortunately aren’t that, as they appeal to a rather small part of players. They’re really only balanced out if you have a large player base, and marketing is one of the hardest problems to solve, so it’s not a viable path. 

We believe the best place to find this synergy is in new content for two reasons; Firstly: If we were to monetize other elements, we would have to spend our resources on that instead of focusing on more of the game’s strengths. Secondly; It’s the next most valuable thing that players want in the game, right after power - and we’re not willing to cross that line.

The key to this is:

1. Cards are power-balanced - meaning you can’t buy your way to something that’s intended to be more powerful, both for old and new content.This starts with the existing foundation of cards not having upgradable stats like many other games in the genre, and continues with a commitment to be diligent about balance through continued efforts of improvement and a willingness to quickly fix major issues.
2. New content is valuable - which means the benefit you can pay for is that you get to play with it earlier and longer than others. This has to be an ongoing model, as we can’t rely on new influxes of users, or the game will quickly become unsustainable regardless of how many are staying in the game.

Despite all that it offers, we don't feel the factor that pulls you towards buying the Premium pass is strong enough at the moment.

Currently we're opting to move the Legendary card from each Season Pass to be only available on the Premium path, at tier 6, and have tier 49 in the Free Pass replaced with copies of a random Legendary card. It will still be craftable once the Season Pass ends as usual.

We’re still dedicated to avoiding “pay to win” elements with new cards, as we want to remain as the most fair “Free to Play” game on the market. We’ve had a lot of discussions internally about this decision and are aware of the dangers that come with it in regards to that, and as such we’re willing to carefully monitor and consider potential changes to new content releases to preserve this state - such as what we’ve seen with the Unholy Ground hotfix during Version 1.15. To this end we still want to hear your feedback about these matters and the new cards, as it’s more valuable than ever to us.

We understand this is a contentious matter, but unless we make these decisions for the game, it would be likely we reach a scenario where we have to scale back in various areas - We could be forced to reduce the development team for the game, reduce our ability to support Minion Masters E-Sports, and perhaps most significantly we wouldn’t be able to commit as much resources as we want into the generation of new content. First we focus on making the game financially stable, then we can expand even more on what makes Minion Masters the awesome game you’ve stuck around to play for all these years, with more Quality of Life improvements and extra features that are being suggested.

We wanted to be as open as possible about this change and the reasons behind it so that there can be a better understanding regarding these changes, and we hope we've been able to offer at least some insight into this decision. From everyone here at BetaDwarf, we sincerely thank you for all of your support so far and your willingness to communicate with us about the things you’re passionate about.

Developer Stream Incoming!

A new Expansion means a new Developer Stream, Masters! Community Manager That Sprite will be live on our Twitch Stream this Monday the 17th at 1900 CEST to show you through everything that Version 1.16 has to offer, including an exclusive reveal of our new Legendary Card! Make sure to stop on by and interact with the awesome Minion Masters Community!

And while you're here, why not submit a question for the Dev Stream? Send in your questions here and we'll select some to be discussed live with the community.

The Harbinger Challenge Season 3

Xbox Masters, The Harbinger Challenge is back for their third Season! With multiple weekly challenges with special rules kicking off on August 30th, it's the best place to be for competitive Minion Masters action on your console! Check them out and sign up here:

https://www.toornament.com/en_GB/tournaments/3782335603298222080/information

Cheers from BetaDwarf!

Free Battle Pass Tiers & The State of Outlanders

Minion Masters!

Free Battle Pass Tiers In Shop

We've been working on finding a way to help you with your Season Passes for this system due to the unexpected decrease in the time between patches. We talked about this in a previous public post that you can read here, but the main reason this occurred was due to specific windows where we can secure promotional opportunities for Minion Masters, which is needed for the game to grow. 

However, there were rightful concerns that this would make the Guild Conquest and Season Pass much more difficult for the average user to complete. We've already pushed a Conquest change that decreases all of the tier requirements by 25%, but starting with this Friday's shop offers we're including a Free Battle Pass Tier every day until the release of Version 1.16. We hope this can make up for the shorter season time, and thank you for your patience!

Regarding Outlanders in future expansions

The Outlanders are a faction that's been a bit of a hot topic for a while in the Minion Masters community. There's been a lot of questions as to why they haven't received new units in a long time, and while we've communicated informally on places such as our Discord about it, we hadn't addressed the issue in a more public manner so that we can definitively set the record as to their status.

As it stands, our main issue with the Outlander faction is that they simply don't fit in with the direction we've been trying to take our in-game universe since we began to consolidate and improve the lore of our projects to be a more consistent fantasy world. The Outlanders were originally added to Minion Masters before this happened and were re-used assets from Forced Showdown's DLC, which gave us a good opportunity to flesh out the number of cards we had in the game during the early stages due to their strong visual identity lending to specific card roles well.

But as time went on, the Outlanders have seemed more and more out of place with our creative vision and didn't make sense in the world we were creating. We originally replaced Drone Force One with the Harbinger unit, but since then we've instead opted to halt working on the faction. Our primary focus is on creating updated and new models that fall within the aforementioned vision that we can continue to utilize moving forward in our projects, and creating brand new Outlander units would unfortunately not fit in with these goals as we don't have plans to use them again.

If we had the resources available, our plan would be to reconsider a rework to all of the units, but that's not on our plan at the moment as we work on more high priority tasks. For the time being, the Outlanders are not being changed, but we hope this can offer some insight as to why we aren't developing the faction further going forwards.

Deckbuilder Sites!

Those of you who have been in our community for a while will remember TheConcepteur's Minion Masters Deckbuilding site, that allowed you to create and share your decks with other users. It's just been updated to include all of the new cards up to this Season Pass, so now's a great time to get back into using the site!

Alternatively, radies_chen has been creating a new Minion Masters Manager site, which includes information on just about everything there is to know in the game! It comes with small community-submitted guides for cards, as well as advice for everywhere else in the game such as Adventures! It's a great compendium for brushing up on your game knowledge.

ShadowGaming's $400 1v1 Tournament

ShadowGaming are back with a brand new Competitive Minion Masters scene! They're starting off with a new Knight's Duel series which you can read about here:

Only 4 days left until the Shadow Gaming Minion Masters Knight's Duel #1, with a $400 USD Prize Pool!

Registration is open to EVERYONE, but space is limited! Pre-register NOW to make sure you have a chance to compete for a shot at the CASH! https://t.co/YYcNJm5kvP pic.twitter.com/utylXPMiTe

— Shadow Gaming (@shadowgamingtn) August 5, 2020

Cheers from BetaDwarf!