Orcs Must Die! Unchained is set in the familiar world of its humorous fantasy predecessors, years after the finale of Orcs Must Die! 2. With the discovery of dozens of new rifts and magical worlds beyond them, heroes have come from far and wide to wage all-out war for control of these valuable gateways. In the years since Orcs Must Die! 2, the War Mage and Sorceress have rebuilt the once-mighty Order. Their new enemy, the Unchained, is not the mindless horde defeated twice before, but instead an organized army led by powerful heroes.

Orcs Must Die! Unchained finds players joining forces, charging in with teams of heroes that battle head-to-head to attack and defend ancient strongholds. For the first time in Orcs Must Die!, teams of players will be responsible for both sides of the battle, building traps to stop enemy assaults while summoning their own armies to lead in siege against the enemy defense.

White-knuckle Fortress Siege action puts you into the thick of competitive siege warfare. Unleash your minions and charge into the heart of the enemy stronghold and build an impenetrable gauntlet of traps to hack, grind, flatten, gibletize and incinerate your foes. Your team must master both tactics to triumph.

Dozens of unique and powerful heroes offer deep gameplay options at all skill levels. Old friends the War Mage and Sorceress return to face new enemy heroes like Blackpaw, Midnight, Stinkeye, and Bloodspike. Whether players prefer might and majesty or scum and villainy, there’s a hero for everyone.

Collect and upgrade powerful heroes, over-the-top weapons, devious traps and fiendish minions. Build an arsenal from an enormous variety of options, and customize a strategy for every match. New heroes, weapons, traps, and minions are continuously added, and your collection will never stop evolving!

Since launching Open Beta, we've heard it again and again - you want more power and control over your game experience. And we've made plenty of promises to listen to your feedback and make changes based on it. It's time to prove it. Release 1.2 is our biggest community feedback-driven update ever. There’s a mountain of new content and feature updates in this release, but here’s a look at some of the biggest changes that address your questions and concerns about the state of the Open Beta.

Bloodspike, the Brutal, is a venerated general in the Unchained Army. While a successful warrior, his success is overshadowed by his incredible cruelty. His enemies and allies fear him, wary of succumbing to his horrible appetite.

It is because of this appetite that his mother, Bionka, the Queen Momma, sent him on a mission from which she believed he would not return: an assault on Eventide Fortress. And she was right; Bloodspike was captured by Tundra and his grizzly warriors at Eventide Fortress.

And now, after months of brooding in the bitterly cold dungeon of Frostbite Fortress, Bloodspike is finally UNCHAINED!

Abilities:

• With an axe in both hands and murder in his eyes, Bloodspike will stop at nothing to win--even if winning means sacrificing his own minions to gain strength.
• Brutal Axe: Bloodspike swings his axe. For each allied or enemy minion it hits, the cooldown of Maiming Blow is reduced by 5s.

Crafting has been beaten into submission. The number of materials has been sliced in half and recipes were thrown into the blade walls to make the entire crafting system bow to your every whim. No more hoping for the best from random drops. Choose the materials you want to pursue for the cards you want to craft, then go earn them on the battlefield! Target the rewards you need and craft new traps, traits, heroes, and minions with reckless abandon. What are you going to craft first?

With every new update, Survival mode feels more and more like the classic Orcs Must Die! gameplay you fell in love with. Now, minions move faster and take more damage from your assaults. Hero damage bonuses make your weapons hit harder and your magic pack more punch. Minion waves on all Survival battlegrounds are rebalanced to be more exciting for new players and to give high-level players greater challenges to overcome. And to top it all off, the new Banquet Hall Survival battleground is the most compact OMD2-like map we're ever released. Think you can keep up?

New Survival Map - Banquet Hall

Every trap in the game now has seven upgrade tiers instead of four, so you can upgrade your traps more frequently. Build your highly-customized Survival mode deck of dastardly murder contraptions to inflict pain on unsuspecting enemy minions just the way you like. You'll also start upgrading your traps even sooner than before, with upgrades unlocking now at level 10 instead of 25. When you put it all together, that means that there are no safe words allowed in your killbox - only pain.

New Guardian: The Quartermaster Guardian keeps new Order Army recruits fit and well-equipped and has sworn to protect them and their home rift from the forces of evil. He is at home in the barracks, and earns twice as much XP and deals twice as much damage when placed there.

New Bosses:

• Lyzander, a disciple of the Cult of Death, practices one of the arts of necromancy: resurrection. On the battlefield, Lyzander resurrects allied minions.
• Grenwalde, the Nature Lord, blesses those who respect the sanctity of nature by using his powers to heal his allies and steal life from his foes.

Full Patch Notes:

New Hero: Bloodspike

With an axe in both hands and murder in his eyes, Bloodspike will stop at nothing to win--even if winning means sacrificing his own minions to gain strength.

• Passive – Bloodhungry : Bloodspike's skills and abilities can damage and kill friendly minions. When friendly minions die near Bloodspike, they occasionally drop Delicious Meals which restore Bloodspike's HPs.
• Primary Attack – Brutal Axe : Bloodspike swings his axe. For each allied or enemy minion it hits, the cooldown of Maiming Blow is reduced by 5s.
• Secondary Attack – Bloodbath : A melee attack that grants a Bloodbath stack for each allied or enemy minion hit. Each stack buffs Bloodspike's attacks with +8% damage.
• Stunning Execution : Executes an allied minion who then drops a Delicious Meal. Enemies in a radius around the execution are stunned.
• Maiming Blow : A double-axe melee attack that deals damage and slows proportional to enemy hero HPs. Low HP heroes are dealt high damage but slightly slowed. High HP heroes are dealt low damage and significantly slowed.
• Inspiring Frenzy : A battle cry buffs Bloodspike and allied minions with increased attack and movement speed, and temp HPs. More powerful on minions.
• Glyph of Physical Armor : Increases the physical armor of minions by 20.
• Weaver Upgrades:

RISE TO THE CHALLENGE	FINER DINING	BLOOD IN THEIR EYES
Guardians hit with Bloodbath yield triple Bloodbath stacks.	+50% drop rate for Delicious Meals.	Increases the duration of Stunning Execution by 33%.
PULLED PUNCHES	FORTIFIED MEALS	SUSTAINED FRENZY
-50% damage dealt to friendly minions.	Each Delicious Meal eaten increases Bloodspike's max health by +4 for the match's duration.	+50% duration to Inspiring Frenzy.
BLOOD-SOAKED ARMOR	ENERGY SNACK	UNQUENCHABLE BLOODTHIRST
Adds +2 physical and magic armor for each stack of Bloodbath.	Adds a +20%, 3s movement speed increase to Delicious Meal.	+40% max Bloodbath stacks.
SHOCKING EXECUTION	SERRATED EDGES	DEVASTATING ASSAULT
Adds lightning damage to enemies within the stun area of Stunning Execution.	Adds a 5s, damage over time Bleed debuff to Brutal Axe during Inspiring Frenzy.	Killing a Hero with Maiming Blow instantly refreshes its cooldown.

 New Map: Banquet Hall

• A battleground with a simple layout reminiscent of OMD 1 and 2 levels.

 New Bosses Art

• Our artists have worked to bring you two new, beautiful bosses: Grenwalde and Lyzander. Patterned after the siege versions of Tiklik and Vitality, these new bosses are there to help crush your enemies in siege matches. Many of you will already have access to these bosses with the patch; If you previously owned either Tiklik or Vitality, you will now own either Grenwalde or Lyzander respectively.

 Razer Chroma Support

• Razer Chroma gear will now dynamically change color based on what players are experiencing while playing OMDU.

 General

• The survival practice game has been removed from the new player introduction (the Survival Tutorial is still required).
• The siege tutorial is now mandatory before playing siege.
• We have significantly updated and improved low-end graphical effects.

 11 New Traits Have Been Added

• Execution Advantage: Grants a shield worth 10% of the hero's HP for 3s upon a kill or assist.
• Guardian Vandalism: When attacking an enemy guardian, gain 10% damage reduction for 3 seconds.
• I’m Not Touching You: -15% damage taken from guardians.
• It's Mine: +10% damage for 10s when a cache is destroyed.
• Setting an Example: Increases nearby allied minion speed by +25% for 5 seconds on enemy hero kills.
• Like You Stole it: Grants +10% movement speed for 5 seconds after destroying a cache.
• Oh, Wow! Bandages!: Regenerates +3.5% health after destroying a cache.
• Oh, Wow! Potions!: Regenerates +3.5% mana after destroying a cache.
• Large and in Charge: Grants +15% control effect resistance to nearby large minions.
• Making It Rain: +15% more coin from combos.
• Mob Mentality: When more than 12 friendly minions are nearby, their speed is increased by 5%.

 UI

• New tab score screen: Now also displays player damage dealt, minion damage dealt, guardian damage dealt, minion portal XP earned, and coin earned.
• New post-game stats: Now displays all of the factors that are used in calculating a player's match rating. New icons in the report show the bonuses that were active during the match.
• The workshop now highlights upgradable traps in blue, rather than orange.
• Players can now add friends directly from the chat window.

Meta Game Updates

IMPORTANT: The Meta Game has been COMPLETELY reworked. Here are the basics, but for a more detailed look, click here.

• Crafting materials reduced: There are now only 10 crafting materials (there were 20).
• Recipes simplified: Everything you can craft now has a recipe that involves one crafting material and skulls. Every category also shares the same crafting material. For example, all traps are crafted with dwarven blueprints and skulls.
• We have increased the total number of trap tiers to 7 from 4.
• The total power granted by a level 7 trap is equivalent to the power currently granted by a level 4 trap.
• Trap upgrades are now available much earlier, starting at account level 10, and the cost of upgrading has been reduced.
• We have exponentially increased, improved, and overhauled future level-up rewards. If you've already leveled up, you will be retroactively granted the increased, improved rewards--AND keep your old ones. You'll be SWIMMING in loot.
• Trap parts are no longer destroyed when replaced.
• Players can now select a crafting material they wish to target during hero select. Selecting this material will cause you to receive an associated bonus reward at the end of a match.
• Consumables are no longer dropped in chests.
• Materials are no longer dropped by enemies during survival matches. However, players can now scavenge rewards after the match, which is similar to siege mode's system.
• The first dye for a hero is now unlocked at rank 20, down from rank 50.

Designer Comment: We heard you--progression is too slow, it's too easy to fall behind in survival, and there are too many materials to keep track of. We also realized that forcing players to pick up materials in the middle of a match is frustrating, so we have removed this.

 Survival Mode Rebalance

Survival mode has been COMPLETELY rebalanced:

• Small minions now have 40% less health while large minions now have 12% more health.
• In games with less than 5 players, player damage is now scaled up significantly (rather than scaling minion HPs down).
• Enemy heroes are now significantly more powerful and have far more health and damage.
• When a hero dies in survival, minions nearby become frenzied, gaining a speed boost and ignoring players for 10 seconds. This causes the minions to become rift-rushing maniacs that must be dealt with swiftly.
• Rift lightning damage has been reduced by 50%.
• Many heroes now receive a damage bonus to their primary attack while in survival mode.
• Unchained now provides less bonus damage and is now harder to obtain.
• Dynamite Archers, Kamikaze Kobolds, Gnomish Destroyers, Firelings, and Grenadiers have all had their damage against barricades reduced to 30 from 50-100.
• Barricade destroying minions now have a yellow minimap icon.
• All maps that previously had more than 16 waves have been reduced to 16 waves or less.
• All maps have had their wave compositions significantly adjusted.
• Waves now provide more consistent battle level XP.
• Unchained Fortress, Cliffside Clash, Avalanche, and Surrounded have been added as level 100 maps.

Designer Comment: Before these changes, we felt like the player felt very weak in survival while the content was simultaneously too easy (assuming traps were matching the content level). The current changes are designed to make the player and their traps feel more powerful while simultaneously making survival mode more challenging. Note that the meta changes also make it easier to stay in line with the level of the content.

 Ring of Last Stand

• Cooldown increased to 210 from 180.

Designer Comment: Ring of Last Stand is currently available too often. Players are able to use it as a "get out of jail free" card whenever they need it.

 Dobbin

• Dobbin's tunnel now goes on a 90 second cooldown when killed.
• Dobbin's tunnel can now only be seen on the minimap within 1500 range, down from 3000.

Designer Comment: Currently, when a tunnel is destroyed, Dobbin can immediately rebuild it, making destroying the tunnel feel meaningless and providing no option for players to counter it. By making the tunnel go on cooldown when destroyed, enemy players now have options to counter Dobbin's tunnel. However, when we made Dobbin's tunnel visible on the minimap, we went too far. He lost the fun capability to hide a tunnel in the enemy base and make sneaky plays. These changes should help amplify the fun of his tunnel, while reducing the frustration of playing against Dobbin.

 Hogarth

• Helping Friends! and Helping Minions! Weaver upgrades have been updated to properly provide 50% damage reduction (was unintentionally giving 35%).

 Ivy

• Base health regen increased to 4.0 from 2.5.

Designer Comment: The change to Ring of Last Stand nerfed Ivy's survivability. While we could buff her health, we like the fact that Ivy feels like she needs to be near her teammates to survive, and we want to maintain her weakness to burst damage. This change will allow her to stick around in fights longer and allow her to enter fights with more health. We are excited to see Ivy become less dependent on Ring of Last Stand.

 Midnight

• Glyph of Speed is now properly granting its bonus.

 Smolder

• Fixed a bug causing Freedom Trinket to not remove Incinerate’s Weaver slow.

 Gabriella

• Power From Control Weaver upgrade duration increased to 8 seconds, from 6.
• Hit bloom expansion rate lowered by 20%.

 Zoey

• Chaos Blast width has been reduced.
• Chaos Blast height has been increased.
• Book Club now knocks enemies higher.
• Chapter 2: Find Your Inner Strength Weaver upgrade now properly increases Book Club knockback distance by 30%. It was incorrectly giving nearly 80% increase to knockback distance.
• Chapter 2: Find Your Inner Strength Weaver upgrade now also decreases the cooldown of Book Club by 2 seconds.
• Epilogue: Pulling It All Together Weaver upgrade now applies a 2 second 60% slow, rather than a 1.25 second stun.
• Feebee’s Wrath can no longer freeze enemies.
• Feebee’s Wrath damage reduced by 20%.

Designer Comment: These changes are designed to allow players more options to counter Zoey's attacks by allowing enemies to more easily avoid her abilities. However, we are being very careful to not take her changes too far.

 Traps

• We have made a pass on all trap trigger times to make them behave more logically.
• Fixed a bug causing fire traps to occasionally stack when they shouldn’t.

 Shield Powerup

• Damage blocked reduced to 60 base from 70.

 Hobgoblin Healers

• Health reduced to 225 from 300.

 Battlegrounds

Unchained Fortress (Siege Map)

• Neutral objective reworked
  • Crogon damage increased by 30%.
  • When the steak is picked up, it now becomes bound to that team.
  • When the steak is dropped, it can now only be picked up by the team it is bound to.
  • Picking up the steak now has a 2 second cast time but can be cast while taking damage.
  •  If the steak is not picked up within 10 seconds after being dropped, it will disappear and cause the Crogon to respawn on the map.
• Layout Changes
  • The outer lane minion portal has been moved forward significantly.
  • There is now an escape path on the side of the map for players leading minions in the outer lane.
  • The first killbox on the inner lane has had its size reduced.
  • The number and placement of caches has been adjusted. In general, caches are more difficult to obtain. These changes were made to counteract the map changes which make the offense more powerful.

Designer Comment: Unchained Fortress previously made it difficult to stop a team that got ahead. This was for several reasons:

1. The first killbox in the inner lane was so large that defense could continuously amplify their advantage by stacking traps in a single location, making this killbox impenetrable.
2. The outer lane had only one escape path which made it difficult for offense to push that lane without getting killed.
3. The difference in lane length gave defense players plenty of time to double defend one lane and then move over to the other lane. Conversely, offense could lead minions for an extended period of time on the outer lane.
4. The large number of caches allowed offense to exercise map control too aggressively.
5. The neutral objective was too risky and thus ignore

Experience

• Traps now only grant an assist on minions when another player is not involved.

Designer Comment: Players were able to gain assists on both waves easily, leading to some counterintuitive strategies with trap placement.

• Caches grant 25% less battle level XP.

Designer Comment: This is a result of the larger XP changes (see below).

Previously:

• Killing minions and leading waves provided 100% experience with 1 player and 200% experience with 2 or more players (evenly distributed to all players involved).

Now:

• We changed this so that waves now always provide 150% experience, regardless of the number of players.
• When 1 player is involved in leading or killing minions, 75% of the experience will go to that player while the other 25% will be distributed to the team (including the player).
• When 2 or more players are involved, all the experience will be distributed evenly.

Designer Comment: These changes are pretty complex, but there are several reasons for these changes:

1. This slows down leveling for all players before the second minion portal is opened, which helps the guardian in the main lane more easily fall in later waves.
2. This discourages placing many people on offense or defense simultaneously, helping with early game rushing and late game turtling.
3. This makes each lane a single resource, rather than lanes secretly supporting two players before receiving a battle level XP penalty.
4. This reduces extreme level differences without dramatically affecting average level spread.

Key Features

• Killin’ Orcs and Smashin’ Dorks – Orcs Must Die!’s classic white-knuckle witch’s brew of action and strategy returns, letting you team up with your friends to lay waste to millions of invading monsters!  Build an impenetrable gauntlet of traps to hack, grind, flatten, gibletize and incinerate your foes, and unleash your own minions to charge into the heart of the enemy rift!
• Minions that Matter – Cannon fodder need not apply. Minions put points on the scoreboard in Orcs Must Die! Unchained. If you plan to emerge from the giblet pile victorious, your team will need to masterfully wield your traps, weapons, and abilities in a frantic game of minion tug-of-war. Any minions that slip by unscathed will teleport through the rifts and on to victory!
• It’s Definitely a Trap – The only thing better than building traps for murdering minions is building more traps! Play to unlock traps or collect components and craft your own. Cover your fortress keeps in gleeful torture devices and engineer a variety of hilarious and violent ends for invading minions. Customize your strategy for every battle. The hordes are no match for the powers of elements and physics!
• Real Action Heroes – Are you mage enough to defend the rifts? Dozens of unique and powerful heroes with deep gameplay options offer a plethora of painfully creative ways to stop orcs in their grimy tracks. Old friends the War Mage and Sorceress return to fight alongside a cast of new heroes like Blackpaw, Hogarth, Stinkeye, and Bloodspike. Whether you prefer might and majesty or scum and villainy, there’s a hero for every type of orc-slayer around.
• More Ways to Slay – Every Orcs Must Die! game introduces new ways to bust skulls. Everyone’s favorite Endless mode has returned in Orcs Must Die! Unchained along with expanded 5-player co-op. For the first time in the series, War Mages can also now team up with four friends to compete in 5v5 multiplayer rift siege warfare!