Patch 2.8

**Patch 2.8**, known as **stay Out of the Water,** is one of the Patches of Orcs Must Die! Unchained. This patch was released on March 17, 2016.

## Patch notes

### Overview

* New Map - Shark Island
* Survival Battlegrounds Difficulty Rebalance
* Daily Login Rewards
* New Player Walkthrough Improvements

### General

* Players now receive increasing rewards for up to 20 daily logins per month.
* We have increased account experience earned by players for long games.
* Players now receive bonus experience for beating a survival level. This does not apply to rifts, which reward players with a different chest tier based on their performance.
* Placement abilities now intelligently prevent invalid placement. In addition, these skills now display a preview of where they can spawn.
* Players can now walk over barricades

### Survival Matchmaking

* If a party of players with both low and high account levels enters the matchmaker, they are placed in a game alone instead of paired with other players.
* Survival matchmaking will now more likely match players with similar account levels.

* Designer Comment: We are making these changes to prevent a party that has both high and low account levels from hurting the experience of other players.

### Dashboard

* You can now view card details within the store.
* The play screen’s aesthetics have been significantly improved
* Players can now see the level of the battleground they are playing during hero select
* Players are now introduced to the dashboard UI when using it for the first time and rewarded for completing the siege tutorial.
* When browsing siege cards, their card art will always show their tier 1 variation and not their survival tier.
* We have polished the post-game rewards screen to better convey leveling bonuses and account level.
* Players can now see their hero ranks during hero select.
* Players can now see the account level of party members.
* We have updated or added many sounds in the game and the dashboard.
* Crafting or tiering an item now triggers a new fanfare.
* Players no longer see upgrade notifications within the deck editor.
* There is a new sound for when the matchmaker finds a game. This sound will play even when the dashboard is not currently the selected window.
* We have improved the tooltips for materials.
* We added a "Craft Now" button to hero card backs to make the option to craft them more obvious.
* We have also made many additional refinements.

### Survival

* New map: Shark Isle
* We have changed the progression curves for survival to exponential scaling from linear scaling. However, power at level 100 remains the same. This also affects trap tiering. For more information, see below.
* There is now a damage penalty for playing levels above your own.

* Designer Comment: Playing above your level became easier at higher levels. We did not like the fact that as players became more experienced, it became harder for them to find a challenge. Furthermore, this makes playing above your level less lethal overall, which was leading to the feeling of instantly dying when fighting high-level minions.

* All traps now have a visual progression for when they are tiered.
* Many heroes now receive a damage buff in survival mode.
* Fixed some bugs where players were occasionally gaining far more battle level experience than intended.
* We have adjusted coin gain across all levels. In general, earlier levels have more coin and later levels have less.
* Lower tier levels now slowly introduce minions and require fewer waves to complete.
* We have added new fire and frost variants of minions. These minions are resistant to frost and fire and weak against the opposite.
* It is now slightly more difficult to become Unchained after consecutive uses.

### Decoy

* Now has Max's face on it.

* Designer Comment: Max was upset.

* Fixed bug that caused him to have explosive decoys at level 1 without the Weaver upgrade.

### Ice Vent

* Redesigned: Now continuously damages enemies on top of the trap until it runs out of charges

* Designer Comment: This trap was previously counter-intuitive; it only damaged minions when they first walked onto the Ice Vent. As a result, keeping minions on top of the trap did not increase its damage, nor did it freeze minions easily. The trap now behaves the way it appears to function, according to its visuals.

### Frost Boulder Chute

* We renamed to "Icicle Impaler."
* It now also has new art.

### General Hero Changes

* Hero health lowered by 5% (except Cygnus who had his survivability lowered differently; see below).

* Designer Comment: Increasing movement speed and adding hit bloom caused the number of kills per game to drop slightly. We preferred the previous lethality, so we are taking a small step back towards that by adjusting player health downwards.

* We have reduced the amount of VO chatter between heroes.

* Designer Comment: We get it, Max. You’re “Absolutely Stunning”.

### Cygnus

* We rebalanced his mana shield. It now provides up to 65% damage reduction at 75% mana. Previously, it provided up to 75% damage reduction at 50% mana.
* Cygnus health increased to 130 from 100.

* Designer Comment: Previously, Master did not take any increased damage until he fell below 50% mana. This made managing the mana easy for people who understood this rule, but very punishing for those who did not. By making his shield more analog (it has a smoother curve), the mechanic is both easier to understand and harder to "master." Yeah, I made that joke.

### Oziel

* No longer gains souls from allied hero deaths.

* Designer Comment: While this was originally what we intended, we did not like the fact that Oziel gets stronger from mistakes. We are considering additional changes to Oziel for future patches.

### Zoey

* We reduced her collision size significantly.
* We reworked Zoey's “Death and Chaos” Weaver upgrade. Now, it only causes Zoey to change schools when she kills a minion with her primary attack.

* Designer Comment: We made this change to prevent Zoey from changing schools multiple times from a single ability use.

### Archers and Mages

* We increased their minimum range from 500 to 1000.

* Designer Comment: Their minimum range was shorter than a melee hero’s attack range. As a result, a melee hero could be attacking an archer while the archer fires back. This causes ranged minions to behave as intended.

### Kamikaze Kobolds

* We lowered their health from 100 to 65.

* Designer Comment: It was very difficult to counter these minions. This should make it easier for players to react and counter kamikaze kobolds waves. We will consider additional changes if necessary.

### Bug Fixes

* Fixed several parts that were not functioning.
* Fixed several cards that were flagged incorrectly.
* Fixed several bugs pertaining to custom games.
* Fixed several bugs pertaining to parties.
* Fixed a bug where secondary trait bonuses were not applied in survival.
* Fixed a bug that caused barricades to explode randomly.
* Fixed a bug that caused the game to stutter when an enemy hero spawned in Survival
* Fixed several instances where the play button disappeared.
* Fixed a major issue where heroes would sometimes fail to play an animation.
* Fixed a major issue where heroes would sometimes play their animations but nothing would occur.
* Environmental traps and unique hero traps now properly scale with account level in survival.
* Dialogue for elite players now shows properly for the highest skill player within a match.