Oh well,

it's gone quiet around here.

Originally, I've had planned to release 0.4 seperately with some design changes and new units for Bloodelves and Fel Orcs before introducing Naga in 0.5. However, there was a lack of ideas for replacing some "underused" abilities/heroes/units, and some unfitting stuff which didn't play out too well gameplay wise. So, the whole design progress was halted, and it took some time to get some ideas for new features to imrpove the overall game (afterall, it's still an early alpha.)

So, the thing is up running again and I'm here to give you some news about the upcoming 0.4 release of TBC.

First thing: Both Fel Orcs and Bloodelves receive some (more or less) general overhaul regarding their unit pools. Also,
there are various new upgrades which replace some old upgrades to work more in line like I originally intended them to work.

Point 1: Base defense mechanics.

As you know every race uses its own form of early base defense. Humans have militia, Undead have ghouls/early towers, nightelves got their punching trees and Orcs have their burrows. And well... Bloodelves have nothing apart from building early towers. At least nothing until now!



For a small investment in gold and lumber you can activate a mana shield ability for your workers, making them immune against damage taken from enemy attacks. At least as long as they have mana ;)

Point 2: Pyromancers

The second larger revamp revolves around the Pyromancer. In the current build 0.3 his abilities are pretty standard and do not really fit a magician adept at using flames. However, this will change with 0.4! The Pyromancer receives a new kit which better reflects his role as main spellcaster (just like human sorceresses and nightelf druid of the claw for example).

Now he'll be able to use different abilities:

Firebolt (autocast) - deal bonus splash damage with auto attacks while draining mana with each attack.
Sunstrike - the Pyromancer channels magical flames around an enemy unit, dealing damage and making it unable to move or attack.
Warmth (autocast) - Warmth increases a friendly unit's mana regeneration significantly.

Sunstrike and Warmth require Adept/Master training of course.

So, here's how that stuff looks like ingame:


Point 3: Fel Orc Heroes

Oh boy, here we go... Fel Orc heroes. Overall the Fel Orc heroes already had a unique touch in certain areas, but in others they simply lacked originality. That's why I decided to revamp the heroes. Some more, others less. This topic isn't 100% finished, so there might be changes in the near future. But for now, this is the state of the art:

The Wicked Blademaster is gone. But don't be sad, he got a better replacement:

The Black Valkyrie:



This new hero is a mobile, ranged assassin utilizing fel magic to cripple enemy units. She's very good when combined with Mosher armies earlygame, as her cripple helps out a lot in reaching and killing those pesky archer units that usually slaughter them. Also, because of being a ranged hero it's easier to kill off enemy units in general.

The former Kodo Beastmaster has been reworked also. He is now known as Warchief . So, What does that mean?

instead of being the usual one-trick-pony, he now is a true battle leader for all Fel Orcs. He can send them into battle with 'Killing Command', has 'Battle Drums' to put all allies in a bloodfrenzy like he used to. He also still has Barbed Skin to protect himself from damage. His ultimate is now 'The Hand of the Warchief', which summons two Ravagers into combat. They deal very high amounts of damage and are immune to spells.

The former Outrider is now known as 'Enforcer'. Apart from some changes to the way his ultimate works there are no changes to him.

There are plenty of other, more subtle changes to the existing races which I'll cover in a videocast in the nearer future.

Also, the Naga are still being worked on, I'm currently working on the unit compositions for each tier building and tweaking hero abilities aswell as fixing bugs. Stay tuned, as soon as I think the Naga are ready enough to show off something, I'll create a small gameplay video.

For now, these screens will have to be enough for you:



Greetings
DarcReaver