Release 1.9

# Release 1.9 – Home on the Range - Patch Notes

## Robot Entertainment to Publish in EU

Our European publisher, Gameforge, has been a valuable and supportive partner
over the last 3+ years. After careful consideration, we have made the joint
decision to combine our European and North American players solely under the
Robot Entertainment banner. This means that Robot Entertainment will be taking
over the publishing and support for all of our players, and that we can finally
give our community one of their biggest requests: a single account system. With
this system in place, players can play with their friends from anywhere in North
America and Europe.

Starting March 21st, 2017, Gameforge will be emailing each of its OMD!U players a unique
migration code. After receiving the code, players will be able to click the link
in their email and use that unique code to migrate their Gameforge account data
to a Robot Entertainment account.

We look forward to getting to know the EU community and making sure that they
are as close to us here at Robot Entertainment as the rest of the community has
become.

## Update: Terminology Changes

In preparation for OMD!U's PS4 release, terminology relating to skills has
changed. Because using terms like "E ability" could cause confusion across
platforms, the following global naming scheme has been devised for attacks and
abilities. Some of them players may recognize, others are new:

* Left-Mouse Button (LMB) = Primary Attack
* Right-Mouse Button (RMB) = Secondary Attack
* Q Ability (Q) = Unique Ability
* E Ability (E) = Epic Ability
* Shift Ability (Shift) = Support Ability

All new communication about abilities will use this new terminology. We
apologize for any confusion this causes and appreciate players' patience as we
prepare to launch on PS4.

## Update: Guardian System

* Guardians now receive their at-home benefits regardless of their
 location, except for bonus health and damage.
* Guardians now receive +35% health and damage when placed at home.
* All guardians have had their base health and damage increased by 50%.
* Guardians no longer have mana.
* The cooldown on Guardian area attacks has been increased to 14 seconds
 (from 7).

>
>  Developer Comment: We have been listening to feedback from the community on
>
>
>
>  guardians for a while. We decided to make these changes for a few reasons:
>
>
> 1. We don’t like that the cool unique benefits of guardians are not always
>  available.
> 2. The “At-Home” benefit is currently so significant that
>  there is less choice available to the player. We want this benefit to affect
>  players' decision but not force them.
> 3. Placing guardians away from home
>  was a common poor decision made by newer players.
> 4. Mana for guardians does
>  not fit the current incarnation of the game.
> 5. Because of the mana
>  system, there is not a significant benefit to performing well and keeping
>  guardians alive. These changes reward players for keeping their guardian
>  alive.
>

## New Guardians

* **Ranch Hand:** This minotaur guardian attacks stun
 enemies. In addition, players near the guardian are granted a buff that adds
 a slow to their primary attacks.
* **Headhunter:** The Headhunter's attacks cause enemies to
 take 100% increased damage for several seconds. In addition, players near
 the guardian will reflect 30% of damage taken.

## UI:

* The  navigation panel within the dashboard has been redesigned.
* The loadout editor has been moved underneath the profile tab (as
 "loadouts").
* The matchmaking and party status panel is now available at the top of
 every screen.
* Players can now adjust the volume of videos in the dashboard.
* Master volume control is now available within the dashboard.
* Players can now slot non-matching traits in the pre-game deck builder.
* A crash reporting tool has been added to the game.

## Battleground Additions:

* Gates of Thuricvod has been added to war mage challenge level.
* Temple Graveyard has been added to war mage challenge level.

## Achievements/Quests:

* Many new achievements have been added to the game.
* Many new quests have been added to the game.
* Many quests have been made significantly easier.
* Many highly specific quests have been removed.  Players that had
 begun one of the removed quests are still able to complete it, but they will
 not obtain them again in the future.

## Matchmaking:

* Matchmaking will now consider a wider array of battlegrounds, repeating
 the same battlegrounds less often.

## Chests:

* Chests from any difficulty can now be purchased in the store.

## Consumables:

* **Scroll of Invulnerability:** Duration decreased to 30s
 (from 60s).
* **Scroll of Slow:** Duration decreased to 30s (from 60s).

## General Difficulty:

* **Firelings** now deal more damage when not killed, but
 less damage when killed.
* **Firelings** now have a 1 second activation delay before
 detonating.
* Damage of **Orc Archers** and **Gnoll Hunters**
 slightly increased.
* Damage of **Human Archers** and **Pride Hunters**
 slightly decreased.
* **Docks at Eventide** (Master) and **Orcatraz** (Master) are
 now significantly more difficult.
* **Baths** (appentice and rift lord), **Throne Room**
 (apprentice), **Cliffside Clash** (apprentice), **Eventide Ramparts** (apprentice and war mage),  and **Orcri-La**
 (master) are now slightly more difficult.
* **Gates of Thuricvod** (rift lord) and **Restricted
 Section** (war mage) are now slightly easier.
* Par times adjusted for **Docks at Eventide** (master),
 **Orcatraz** (master), **Avalanche** (rift lord),
 and **Banquet Hall** (apprentice).

## Traps:

* **Boulder Chute and Icicle Drop:**
	+ Now drops 3 volleys of boulders/ icicles, up from 1. Each wave
	 deals 1/3 the trap's total damage. This makes the trap much easier to
	 time.
* **Trip Wire:**
	+ Can now be placed on top of other traps.
	+ Trigger radius lowered significantly.
	+ Cost reduced to 1,000 (from 1,500).
* **Physics Traps:**
	+ Collision damage now scales with trap tier.
* **Big Game Hunter Traps:**
	+ Can now hit unstable rifts.

## Hero Design:

* **Temper:**
	+ Bull Rush: Rage cost and cooldown increased by 20%.
	+ Hammer Slam: Rage cost and cooldown increased by 20%.
	+ Set Off Weaver: Now only activates floor traps.
	+ Blow His Top Weaver: Now causes Temper to keep 20% of his rage after
	 exploding.
	>
	>  **Developer Comment:** We heard your feedback. Temper
	>  is a little bit on the powerful side.  However, we would like
	>  to improve Rage of the Forge builds, so we have reworked one of his
	>
	>
	>
	>  Weavers.
	>
	>
* **Bionka:**
	+ Damage reduced by 6%.
* **Zoey:**
	+ Chaos Tome: Damage increased by 25%.
	+ Chaos Blast: Cooldown lowered to 10 seconds (from 12).
	+ Chaos Blast: Mana cost lowered to 45 (from 55).
	+ Feebee’s Wrath now makes Zoey invulnerable immediately.
* **Stinkeye:**
	+ Tears of Oasis now fills only half as much of the Unchained meter.
* **Tundra:**
	+ Wall of Frost now has much more health.
	+ Wall of Frost cooldown lowered to 30 (from 35).
	+ Wall of Frost duration lowered by 1 second.
	+ Icicle Burst damage increased by 50%.
	+ Shattering Icicles Weaver now only provides 50% bonus damage in an
	 area (from 100%).
	+ Flash Freeze duration increased by 50%.
	+ Flash Freeze cooldown lowered to 25 seconds (from 35).
	>
	>  **Developer Comment:** Many of Tundra’s abilities were
	>  more useful in earlier versions of the game. We have buffed the
	>  baseline utility of many of these skills so that the skills no
	>
	>
	>
	>  longer require Weavers to be useful.
	>
	>

## Traits:

* **Over-Reacting** (formerly Doesn’t Play Well with Others):
	+ Redesigned to now grant +1 mana regeneration when below 50% health.

## Additional Bug Fixes:

* Fixed a bug causing chat to not properly scroll.
* Fixed an issue where **Wall Charger** and **Wall
 Blades** sometimes trigger too late.
* Fixed a bug with **Overprotective** causing it to block
 more damage than intended.
* Fixed a bug with **Capacitance Attuner**, which caused it
 to not decay.
* Fixed a bug that could cause arrow buttons to disappear in the
 dashboard.
* Fixed a bug where players who skipped the prologue did not get the
 achievement credit.
* Fixed a bug where multiple doors opening would cause multiple
 announcements.
* Fixed an issue where the icon for **Feline Fugitive** and
 **Feeling Frisky** were backwards.
* Fixed an issue where duplicate spawn sounds could play when hunters
 spawned.
* Fixed an issue where projectile attacks did not cause minions to flinch.
* Fixed an issue where minions could spawn during go-breaks.
* Fixed an issue where certain abilities would deactivate certain traits.
* Fixed an issue where dyes for Dobbin’s **Santa’s Little Helper**
 skin would not update the color of his shovel.
* Fixed an issue where the “Report a Player” button was not functioning.
* Fixed a bug where a player could not return to the skins screen after
 clicking on a skin card.
* Fixed a bug where the text for Oziel's **Spiritual Connection**
 Weaver said it worked for all abilities when it in fact only worked on
 **Vampiric Slash**. The original intent was for it to work for
 all abilities, but in the end our designers liked the way it worked and the
 text was changed to match its behavior.
* Fixed a bug where the tiering information for **tar traps**
 incorrectly said it also improved its slow duration.
* Fixed a bug where Smolder's **Incinerate** included numeric
 values. Generic ability descriptions do not tend to include this
 information, so it was removed.
* Fixed a bug where **Bull Rush** was knocking enemy hero
 bots through walls. To fix this, **Bull Rush** no longer causes
 enemy hero bots to ragdoll.
* Fixed a bug that caused some quest text to be smaller than intended.