We will have a server maintenance to deploy improvements, balance, bug fixes and so on. The maintenance is expected to last 2 hours, and starts at:
01:00 PDT July 06
08:00 GMT July 06
16:00 GMT+8 July 06
The key improvements this time are related to the changes in battle mechanics, including new neutral units and resource acquisition. Unit balance, Mass Production as well as other critical adjustments and improvements are also in our plan.
The improvements serve for the following design goals:
- Enable smarter play and encourage more changeable strategies in the battle.
- Commander who did perform much better than others in a battle should get bonus reward.
It is unavoidable that these improvements and adjustments will cause some influence to you. So, to give you time to familiarize yourselves with the new mechanics, the Season Zero which is supposed to start on July 6th will be postponed to July 20th or an even later date.
We will always keep a close eye on how these improvements work, and implement further adjustments at any time if necessary. Again, we are grateful for your support!
New Neutral Unit
1. The Forest of Soul Essence: Dragon
- The soul essence crates in wave 1 will be replaced by the soul essence eggs laid by the dragon. Destroy them and you will still be rewarded with soul essence.
- After the larger egg in the center is broken, a dragon cub will get out from it to assist the player who broke the egg. It has 70 attack damage and 28 attack range.
- The Dragon of Soul Essence flying to the battlefield in wave 25 is an air unit, thus can only be affected by anti-air attacks.
- For each attack the Dragon of Soul Essence takes, the attacker(s) will be rewarded with some soul essence based on the HP the Dragon is reduced. After it dies, all teammates of the team who killed the Dragon of Soul Essence will be rewarded with a large amount of soul essence.
- After the Dragon of Soul Essence dies, its body will generates a cloud of mist around it. Units passing the mist will get a buff: after they are destroyed, the commander who produced these units will get a refund of some soul essence.
2. Black Mine: Mechanohound
- Destroy the neutral crates in the early stage and you and your teammates will be rewarded with gold.
- The crates float in the air and can only be affected by anti-air attacks.
- The neutral unit comes to the battlefield in wave 25 is a Mechanohound. It can largely reduce the ranged damage on it, and won’t be targeted by anti-air attacks. Ground melee units are recommended.
- For each attack the Mechanohound takes, the attacker(s) will be rewarded with some gold based on the HP the Mechanohound is reduced. After it dies, all teammates of the team who killed the Mechanohound will be rewarded with a large amount of gold.
- After being killed, the Mechanohound will come to life again to assist the team who killed it.
- We are still testing the difficulty of this new unit. Commanders below a certain level may have no access to this map.
Adjustments
1. XP and tech point
- You can acquire up to 12 tech points instead of 10.
- Kill any neutral unit and the killer will be rewarded with bonus XP.
- Changed the XP needed for each tech point for a gentle upgrading curve.
- Added special effect for the tech point ring at the bottom of the battle screen when players acquired a lot of XP at a time.
2. Notifications in battle
- Raised the amount of rewarded soul essence after players routed/annihilated/smashed/conquered/revenged the enemy troops.
- After a player manages to destroy a wave of enemy troops, s/he will acquire bonus XP whose amount is positively correlated with the total cost of the enemy troops s/he killed.
- If the troops survive more than 54 seconds, though they are then annihilated by a player, the player won’t receive killing notification nor any reward.
Terrans
Units
HP increased from 200 to 220, attack speed increased from 1.4s to 1.2s, the range of the energy beam increased from 22 to 24, and the description of Particle Cannon changed from “…4 energy beams…dealing 20 damage” to “…2 energy beams…dealing 40 damage”; before upgrade, the plasma it spits can attack the target with more enemy units around.
Upgrade Adjustments:
Lv.2: Active ability deals 250% damage to biological units
Commander Skill
Flare
“…reduce the attack damage of all units in the target area by 5” changed to “…reduce the attack damage of all units in the target area by 30%”.
Atlac
Units
Attack range increased from 6 to 8, and attack speed increased from 1.6s to 1.2s.
Upgrade Adjustments:
Lv.1: Attack range increased to 10
Lv.2: Lightning bounces 4 times, attacking a single target each time
Lv.3: Attack damage +20%
Upgrade Adjustments:
Lv.1: Attack damage +10%
Lv.2: Max. shield +100%
Lv.3: Damage to mechanical units increased to 250%
HP increased from 100 to 140
Maximum damage on ground units decreased from 215 to 155
Yaoguai
Units
HP decreased from 40 to 35, attack damage decreased from 15 to 14, and attack speed decreased from 1s to 1.3s.
Upgrade Adjustments:
Lv.2: Attack speed +30%
HP decreased from 90 to 80, and it no longer deals 125% damage to biological units.
Chi Orb cannot attack air units.
Upgrade Adjustments:
Lv.2: Chi Orb's damage increased by 20% and attack range enlarged
Lv.3: Chi Orb still exists after the Chan Master dies
Friendly units upon its blanket will have their attack damage increased by 5% per second. Such increase can overlay up to 10s. After they leave the blanket, the effect will last as long as 10s.
Armor decreased from 10 to 8. It can no longer deal extra damage to mechanical units.
Upgrade Adjustments:
Lv.1: Armor +25%
Lv.2: Max. HP +15%
Lv.3: Deal 250% damage to mechanical units
Commander Skill
Sacrifice
Sacrifice now can only be released within the revealed area.
- Changed the mining rate of the soul essence mine in different levels respectively from 25/s, 50/s and 100/s to 25/s, 40/s and 80/s.
- Players can now acquire 100% gold if they killed enemy units survived longer than 30s.
- Unit A.I.
- The Yaoguai unit Bloodfeather’s Descend to the Ground now can be activated even there’s no enemy air units (only enemy ground units) on the battlefield.
- Melee units such as the Regular Paviser, the Regular Flamethrower, the HEF Flamethrower, the Shield Slave and the Sawblade Shield Slave will attack the direction with most enemy units around to improve attack efficiency.
- The Medic, the Medivac, the Maintenance Engineer and other units alike will first heal units being attacked, and they will choose their targets smarter.
- The Asterion, the Bowcat and other units alike will attack enemy air units first.
- Fixed the occasional game crash caused by players’ changing avatars.
- Fixed the occasional game crash caused by players’ purchasing eternium ingots in store.
- Fixed the bug of players still being able to send friend requests when the number of friends reached maximum.
- Fixed the bug of the Atlac Commander Skill Essence Recycler being unable to collect extra soul essence from the dead units.
- Fixed the bug of being unable to switch to Ranked 1V1 mode after being refused by friend(s) on Ranked 3V3 invitation.
- Fixed the bug of the Atlac Lightning Ray’s attack not inflicting damage.
- Corrected the description of the Yaoguai unit Blazefury Deer’s ability. It can actually deal 200% damage to buildings.
- Players can directly check the kills of a team or an individual commander in battle screen.
- Players can press Tab button to check the total soul essence they acquire from kills.
- Optimized matchmaking so that players are more likely to be matched with opponents of the similar level.
- Optimized verification methods on AFKers. The verification methods and rules will be stricter and more reasonable.
Commanders, thanks for your support. The faster you can offer feedback, the quicker we can respond to various bugs and problems. We will continue to collect your opinions and advice, so again, please don’t hesitate to share them with us below!
See you on the battlefield,
The Art of War: Red Tides Team