Friday, February 19, 2021

Regarding Outlanders.... we need to talk

Hello masters!

It’s a little tough writing today’s blog post. There are times as developers that you say things with the best intentions, but you later find out that you can’t live up to what was promised. You may have seen our recent tweets about the possibility of adding a new Outlander card. In case you missed them:

 

With these tweets, I was merely sharpening the sword that I must now fall upon.

My idea was outlandish; the other dwarves weren’t going to add a single Outlander card to the game when they had a whole operation set up and dedicated to creating content for the next expansion. Mine was an outlandish suggestion, but theirs was an Outlandish Operation…..

At this point, I really hope you clicked on that link above… if not you should do it now ;)

Ok, time to get serious! I hope you’ve stuck around this far. This is where things get good!

Today we are announcing our next expansion, Outlandish Operations, and yes, it is an expansion focused on Outlanders!

But wait, you say, didn’t I read in the blog that the Outlanders were a dead faction?

Yes, we previously wrote a piece on Outlanders in a previous blog. I’ll highlight the important bit here:

“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.”

What we said here still remains true. We don’t believe that creating new Outlander assets fits our creative vision.

That being said, we know that the faction is a community favorite, and we are constantly fielding questions about it. We know that you guys want more Outlander cards, and we saw an opportunity to do this for you.

This pass will be unique in that it will rely heavily upon pre-existing assets. This means some old favorites may be returning to the game, and we may have a long-awaited arrival coming to the Minion Masters tower soon ;)

With this expansion we seek not only to increase the amount of Outlander cards, but also to give them purpose. Many of you have noted that they are the only faction with no special mechanics attached. We intend to rectify this with the introduction of the "Outlander Tech" mechanic. With this we will also bring reworks to certain old cards in order to strengthen and solidify the faction further.

Keep an eye out for some spoilers over the next week... if you want to see everything that will be added in the first season pass, make sure to check out our update site on the 26th!

So, that’s it, what do you think? Hop in our Discord or let us know on Twitter! We hope you are excited that the Outlanders are getting some love finally!

Thursday, February 4, 2021

Version 1.21 Patch Notes

Minion Masters!

We hope you have been enjoying the Uprising expansion! 1.21 adds the last two cards of the expansion into the game: Lash of Ah’Mun and Shroom Puff.


As you know, this means we will soon release info on our next expansion coming out in March! We can honestly say that we are super excited to share what the team has come up with for the next expansion; it’s really out there.


But for now, for 1.21 we have some balance changes, two new cards, and a variety of bug fixes coming your way.


On to the changes!


Uprising - Season Pass #3

  • A new Season Pass has arrived to Minion Masters!
  • Tons of new rewards, including 2 cards, a Legendary Skin, bonus cards, and more!
  • Two new cards have been added to the game:



  • Dark Fury Dryad Morellia has also been added to the game!


  • The Season Pass will end on the 4th of March.

Card Balance

Arcane Bolt

  • Mana Freeze 3 -> 2
  • Threshold 500 -> 450

Boom Buggy

  • Cooldown 5 -> 4.5
  • Delay 2 -> 1.5

Bridge Shrine

  • Health 350 -> 400

Crossbow Dudes

  • Attack Cooldown 1.8 -> 2

Dragon Ball

  • Summon a flightless dragon if not activated

Empowered Soul Stealer

  • On spawn gain 2 stacks and +1 for each sacrifice
  • Remove Call Slitherbound

Grasping Thorns

  • Cost 3 -> 2
  • Damage 200 -> 170 

Lord Fanriel The Stormcharger

  • Damage 120 -> 100
  • Charge Damage 150 -> 100
  • All damage is now true damage

This introduces a new damage type, True Damage which is essentially just armor piercing. Certain things like Pincer of Dread already has this, though this is the first Minion to get this. Fanriel's design was always to force you to defend with big minions. This removes Shielded Crossbow Dudes and Armored Scrats as value answers to his charge. 

 

Nether Bat

  • Nethersteps forward on spawn

These are attempts at making more 2 mana cards feel valuable to play, it may or may not workout, in which case we will keep working on them 

 

Sewer Scrat

  • Basic attacks inflict 2 seconds of poison
  • Poison on hit duration 3 -> 2

These are attempts at making more 2 mana cards feel valuable to play, it may or may not workout, in which case we will keep working on them 

 

Shen Stormstrike

  • Attack Stun Duration 2.5 -> 2
  • Zen Chi Flow Stun Duration 3 -> 2
  • Zen Chi Flow Stun Radius 4.5 -> 6

This is to unify the stuns a bit more so that they work the same. Also in the case of Zap shrine we wanted less of it's value to be in that first Zen-Chi Flow stun, but instead make the building provide slightly more reliable value afterwards. 

 

Shield-Captain Avea

  • Shield Range 6 -> 8
  • Now counts toward the quest even if the target unit already has a shield.

Ting Teng Tung

  • Health 300 -> 270

Void Altar

  • Cost 9 -> 8

Zap Shrine

  • Zen Chi FLow Stun Duration 3 -> 2
  • Health 75 -> 100

This is to unify the stuns a bit more so that they work the same. Also in the case of Zap shrine we wanted less of it's value to be in that first Zen-Chi Flow stun, but instead make the building provide slightly more reliable value afterwards

 

Healing Balance

  • Flying minions have healing reduced by half

 Last patch we tried this with Valorian's perk 1 only, and we feel it worked out nicely. Now we're trying it to all healing on flying Minions, mostly to keep things consistent and hopefully easier to keep track of. 

 

Master Balance

Volco

  • Perk 2 - Embers of Flame changed to all minions gain rage
  • Perk 3 - Embers changed to melee minions gain berserkers rage instead   

This change gives him more diversity for his deckbuilding while still retaining incentive to go for aggression. In longer games Melee will still prevail for him, but now ranged minions should feel like less of a compromise to bring along to balance out the deck. 

 

Bugs

  • Fixed Jing Long’s shock entry radius size being visible in preview
  • Fixed Jing Long’s card status icons referring to Xiao Long. Thanks me
  • Added the indicator for blood pact to Brutish Betrayer
  • Fixed Avea’s shields reacting fast enough to fireball to block the fireball’s damage on units around her
  • Fixed blood imp sound and animations. Thanks hinkyt25
  • Fixed the indicator for Pincer of Dread showing that it damages buildings
  • Fixed the master selection interface breaking in draft
  • Fixed a bug causing Sugilite Shield to block melee damage
  • Fixed Avea’s drop rates from tokens being too high. Thanks Huffchux, Brit Churchill and all the other people who reported this and got us to actually check the values.
  • Fixed the hitboxes for Laser Turret and Magma cannon to match their new models. Thanks Coconut Commander

Misc

  • Puff cards have been removed from Jungle Rumble

Edits - Added missing dev comments, missing grasping thorns change, and missing healing change for flying minions.