Minion Masters!


It's been a shorter season than planned, as you've no doubt noticed by now, but there's still been plenty of time for us to gather information on what balance changes to make! Here's just a few of the changes you can expect to see in the update:

Restless Dead

• Undying Corpses now spawn randomnly within your arena
  
• Developer Comments
  
• Restless Dead has been quite a powerful card due to the exceptional value you receive from the Skeletons alone, allowing you to create formidable pushes. However, it also proved too strong when combined with Corpse Explosion, allowing you to create high damaging blasts that came with the added benefit of giving you some strong bodies down the line to push with. This change aims to hit both aspects of the card at once, while still providing you with the card's original efficiency.

Combustion

• Max Explosions 5 -> 4
  
• Developer Comments
  
• Simply put, Combustion was proving to be too good when comboed with units like Divine Warrior, as we observed in the recent Shadow Gaming Tournament. We are still fairly confident that the maximum damage of 200 will still be strong enough for the card to be worth playing.

Lone Wolf & Lone Scout

• Now only considers units under your control
  
• Developer Comments
  
• This change is more of a "Quality of Life" alteration to enable the cards to be played effectively in 2v2, but we felt it was long overdue for making the cards viable in that mode.

Lady Infray the Spire Warden

• Piercing Shot Delay 2 -> 1
  
• Developer Comments
  
• Lady Infray has just felt too sluggish with her special ability even with Mana Surge. Often times she'd miss the intended target due to how long it would take the shot to go off, while in other instances we've noted that she died in a situation where her regular attacks would have saved her simply due to how slow it was.

As always, there's more changes to come, so stay tuned!


We wanted to take the time to address a change to the upcoming Season Pass. As you're aware, the recent changes to this expansion cycle were primarily due to the game being "too free" and not sustainable in the long term.

The new system was a good improvement but we erred on the side of caution in some respects, trying and hoping this balance could work. Unfortunately we aren't quite where we need to be, so we have to make some difficult decisions to ensure that the game can be financially sustainable. We’ve tried many things through the years; focus on cosmetics, features like gifting, the shop and more. They’ve always been with the goal of creating a fair free to play model, but some work and some don’t. In the end it’s about one important thing; The game must be offering options to purchase that players want and are happy about buying. The oft discussed cosmetics unfortunately aren’t that, as they appeal to a rather small part of players. They’re really only balanced out if you have a large player base, and marketing is one of the hardest problems to solve, so it’s not a viable path.

We believe the best place to find this synergy is in new content for two reasons; Firstly: If we were to monetize other elements, we would have to spend our resources on that instead of focusing on more of the game’s strengths. Secondly; It’s the next most valuable thing that players want in the game, right after power - and we’re not willing to cross that line.

The key to this is:

• Cards are power-balanced - meaning you can’t buy your way to something that’s intended to be more powerful, both for old and new content.This starts with the existing foundation of cards not having upgradable stats like many other games in the genre, and continues with a commitment to be diligent about balance through continued efforts of improvement and a willingness to quickly fix major issues.
  
• New content is valuable - which means the benefit you can pay for is that you get to play with it earlier and longer than others. This has to be an ongoing model, as we can’t rely on new influxes of users, or the game will quickly become unsustainable regardless of how many are staying in the game.

Despite all that it offers, we don't feel the factor that pulls you towards buying the Premium pass is strong enough at the moment.

Currently we're opting to move the Legendary card from each Season Pass to be only available on the Premium path, at tier 6, and have tier 49 in the Free Pass replaced with copies of a random Legendary card. It will still be craftable once the Season Pass ends as usual.

We’re still dedicated to avoiding “pay to win” elements with new cards, as we want to remain as the most fair “Free to Play” game on the market. We’ve had a lot of discussions internally about this decision and are aware of the dangers that come with it in regards to that, and as such we’re willing to carefully monitor and consider potential changes to new content releases to preserve this state - such as what we’ve seen with the Unholy Ground hotfix during Version 1.15. To this end we still want to hear your feedback about these matters and the new cards, as it’s more valuable than ever to us.

We understand this is a contentious matter, but unless we make these decisions for the game, it would be likely we reach a scenario where we have to scale back in various areas - We could be forced to reduce the development team for the game, reduce our ability to support Minion Masters E-Sports, and perhaps most significantly we wouldn’t be able to commit as much resources as we want into the generation of new content. First we focus on making the game financially stable, then we can expand even more on what makes Minion Masters the awesome game you’ve stuck around to play for all these years, with more Quality of Life improvements and extra features that are being suggested.

We wanted to be as open as possible about this change and the reasons behind it so that there can be a better understanding regarding these changes, and we hope we've been able to offer at least some insight into this decision. From everyone here at BetaDwarf, we sincerely thank you for all of your support so far and your willingness to communicate with us about the things you’re passionate about.



A new Expansion means a new Developer Stream, Masters! Community Manager That Sprite will be live on our Twitch Stream this Monday the 17th at 1900 CEST to show you through everything that Version 1.16 has to offer, including an exclusive reveal of our new Legendary Card! Make sure to stop on by and interact with the awesome Minion Masters Community!

And while you're here, why not submit a question for the Dev Stream? Send in your questions here and we'll select some to be discussed live with the community.

Cheers from BetaDwarf!

Minion Masters!



We've been working on finding a way to help you with your Season Passes for this system due to the unexpected decrease in the time between patches. We talked about this in a previous public post that you can read here, but the main reason this occurred was due to specific windows where we can secure promotional opportunities for Minion Masters, which is needed for the game to grow.

However, there were rightful concerns that this would make the Guild Conquest and Season Pass much more difficult for the average user to complete. We've already pushed a Conquest change that decreases all of the tier requirements by 25%, but starting with this Friday's shop offers we're including a Free Battle Pass Tier every day until the release of Version 1.16. We hope this can make up for the shorter season time, and thank you for your patience!



The Outlanders are a faction that's been a bit of a hot topic for a while in the Minion Masters community. There's been a lot of questions as to why they haven't received new units in a long time, and while we've communicated informally on places such as our Discord about it, we hadn't addressed the issue in a more public manner so that we can definitively set the record as to their status.

As it stands, our main issue with the Outlander faction is that they simply don't fit in with the direction we've been trying to take our in-game universe since we began to consolidate and improve the lore of our projects to be a more consistent fantasy world. The Outlanders were originally added to Minion Masters before this happened and were re-used assets from Forced Showdown's DLC, which gave us a good opportunity to flesh out the number of cards we had in the game during the early stages due to their strong visual identity lending to specific card roles well.

But as time went on, the Outlanders have seemed more and more out of place with our creative vision and didn't make sense in the world we were creating. We originally replaced Drone Force One with the Harbinger unit, but since then we've instead opted to halt working on the faction. Our primary focus is on creating updated and new models that fall within the aforementioned vision that we can continue to utilize moving forward in our projects, and creating brand new Outlander units would unfortunately not fit in with these goals as we don't have plans to use them again.

If we had the resources available, our plan would be to reconsider a rework to all of the units, but that's not on our plan at the moment as we work on more high priority tasks. For the time being, the Outlanders are not being changed, but we hope this can offer some insight as to why we aren't developing the faction further going forwards.

Those of you who have been in our community for a while will remember TheConcepteur's Minion Masters Deckbuilding site, that allowed you to create and share your decks with other users. It's just been updated to include all of the new cards up to this Season Pass, so now's a great time to get back into using the site!

Alternatively, radies_chen has been creating a new Minion Masters Manager site, which includes information on just about everything there is to know in the game! It comes with small community-submitted guides for cards, as well as advice for everywhere else in the game such as Adventures! It's a great compendium for brushing up on your game knowledge.

ShadowGaming are back with a brand new Competitive Minion Masters scene! They're starting off with a new Knight's Duel series:

Only 4 days left until the Shadow Gaming Minion Masters Knight's Duel #1, with a $400 USD Prize Pool!

Registration is open to EVERYONE, but space is limited! Pre-register NOW to make sure you have a chance to compete for a shot at the CASH! https://www.toornament.com/en_US/tournaments/3765793701422817280/information

Source: Twitter

Cheers from BetaDwarf!

Minion Masters!

• A new Season Pass has arrived to Minion Masters!
  
• Tons of new rewards, including 3 cards, a Legendary Skin, bonus cards, and more!
  
• Three new cards have been added to the game. They are as follows:
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Galaxy Apep has also been added to the game!
  
  
  
  
• The Season Pass will end on August 20th, bringing an end to the Charging Into Darkness expansion.

Haste

• Buff % 50 -> 33

Slow

• Debuff % 25 -> 20

Developer Comments
Refer to our Blog Post for our reasoning regarding the Haste change. Thanks to everyone for their great feedback, and we’ll continue to monitor this change going forward.

Armored Scrats

• Barrel Shield Health 60 -> 50
  
• Developer Comments
  
• Armored Scrats were a little too durable with their current HP values, making them quite annoying to pick off for many units. This new HP threshold also falls in with our rework to Combustion, listed further below.

Battle Shi-Hou

• Health 450 -> 420
  
• Special Note: In this patch, we’ve fixed Battle Shi-Hou’s description stating an incorrect value for its Bonus Attack Speed. The actual gameplay value for this has not been changed, as it is merely a description fix.

Jadespark Watchers

• Generic Shi-Hou Health 450 -> 420
  
• (Health change also affects Windwalker Shi-Hou)
  
• Mana Cost 10 -> 9

Developer Comments
We felt that Battle Shi-Hou was a little too strong, and Jadespark Watchers was underpowered since its nerfs during Saving Jadespark Jungle, so we wanted to take this opportunity to unify their health values with Tranquil Shi-Hou and Shen Stormstrike as it represented a good opportunity to hit all of these needs at once.


Black Hole

• Cast Delay 0.5 -> 0.2
  
• Duration 1.5 -> 1.8
  
• Developer Comments
  
• Black Hole has been difficult to utilize since the nerf, so we're aiming to make it easier to use on reaction against spells to better protect units with.

Blastmancer

• Soul Detonate damage 20 -> 25

Blood Imps

• Damage 15 -> 17

Combustion

• Reworked: Now deals 50 damage to the target and nearby enemy minions up to 5 times. (0.2 second delay between each explosion)
  
• Units under the Combustion debuff are no longer stunned
  
• Developer Comments
  
• Combustion was still proving to be a problematic card in terms of just how efficient it was combined with swarm at removing... Pretty much anything. This was especially the case with Armored Scrats who would either survive the explosion and thus remain as bodies on the field, or more significantly, be almost impossible to remove on reaction. This change means that swarm units will still be quite efficient when utilized with the card, but toned down to more reasonable levels. It also gave us an opportunity to increase the spell's effectiveness when utilized on larger minions such as Colossus or Living Statue.

Defenso Chopper

• Health 450 -> 500

Grasping Thorns

• Damage 170 -> 200

Haunting Hugger

• Progress 1 towards Accursed Ascension for each killed target
  
• Attack Cooldown 2 -> 2.5 sec
  
• Developer Comments
  
• We wanted to re-introduce the effect of using some Accursed cards to speed up Accursed Ascension, and Haunting Hugger seemed a natural fit for the task as it had lost some of its purpose since the re-work. We also opted to give it a rebalance in its attack cooldown as well to compensate for this buff, making it a bit easier to get rid of.

Jungle Jumble

• Mana Cost 7 -> 6

Milloween

• Arcane Golem has been rescaled:
  
• Mana Cost 3 -> 2
  
• Health 300 -> 250
  
• Damage 40 -> 30
  
• Health Gain per Level 40 -> 30
  
• Damage Gain per Level 6 -> 5
  
• Developer Comments
  
• As with Haste, refer to our Blog Post here.

Mythic

• Mythic Units affected by Destroy instead take 50% of their Maximum Health as damage, instead of 1000 damage.
  
• Developer Comments
  
• We wanted Destroy effects to still feel powerful on Mythic units, but allow us to open up some design space for minions to have Mythic but not colossal amounts of Health. Effectively, this does not change Destroy’s interaction against Nyrvir, while it does less damage to Jahun.

Ratbo

• More Dakka! Mana Cost 0 -> 1
  
• Developer Comments
  
• Ratbo has been exceptionally powerful since the rebalances to 1 drops, so we feel he needed a change on top of the adjustment to Armored Scrats for him to fall more in line with the other Masters in terms of power level.

Ravager

• Feeding Frenzy Threshhold 50% -> 66%
  
• Brutus and TERROR BRUTUS now have Mythic
  
• Developer Comments
  
• Ravager is the Master hit hardest by the change to Haste, so we wanted to increase his perk 2’s threshold to retain its usefulness, while also giving his special summons resilience to Destroy effects and being pushed around by other minions.

Red Golem

• Damage 300 -> 350
  
• Health 1200 -> 1400

Shen Stormstrike

• Damage 200 -> 175

Slitherbound Lancer

• Attack Delay 1.0 -> 0.5 seconds
  
• Developer Comments
  
• Slitherbound Lancer was the clear worse result of the two Slitherbound units due to how long its attack would take to go off despite being in melee range, meaning it often just got picked off before it could apply any poision. By shifting his Attack Delay, his attacks will come out much faster without increasing his overall Attack Speed.

Spirit Infusion

• Time per Spirit 3 -> 2
  
• Developer Comments
  
• This also affects Morellia’s perk 1 and 2 as they function similarly, but the impact of this buff should be significantly lesser for her due to the lower number of spirits.

Stormy

• Zen-Chi Flow Health Increase changed from Doubling Stormy’s health -> +100 Health
  
• Developer Comments
  
• The goal with this change is to make Stormy easier to whittle down with chip damage by narrowing the threshholds required to make him "lose" an attack, as well as less durable in general when combined with effects such as healing by making him easier to burst down. Notably, it's now much easier to time a Fireball to kill Stormy while he's being healed, and a non-healed Stormy can be killed by a 130 damage spell after his first attack.

• Magma Cannon has received a visual update, and its faction has been changed to Voidborne.
  
• Swarmers, Elite Swarmers, Morgrul’s Ragers and Morgrul the Swarmer King have all received a visual update.
  
• Dragon Whelp and Rammer have received updated Card Art.

• Fixed Mordar’s Tombstone description not noting that it can summon allied Mordar units. It implied only your Minions could be resurrected, when in actuality another Mordar’s summons counted too. We apologize for this error.
  
• Fixed Nyrvir Slumbers not stating that units killed by it would grant 1 progress towards Accursed Ascension.
  
• Fixed Jungle Jumble’s tooltip still stating that it grants Mana Reduction.
  
• Fixed the Campfire text in Adventures being too small.
  
• Fixed Battle Shi-Hou’s description using the incorrect number for its bonus attack speed.
  
• Fixed Tombstone not working in Adventures.
  
• Fixed the Undying Skeleton boss in the Charging Into Darkness adventure spawning his Undying Skeletons off the map.
  
• Fixed the Haunting Hugger boss in Adventures producing a massive amount of smoke when first attacked.
  
• Fixed Emerald and Crystal Stormbringer’s eyes popping out of his skull.
  
• Fixed Skeleton Horde’s placement being too close together - Thanks Steven!
  
• Fixed free Accursed cards from Apep’s perks counting towards Accursed Ascension as if they cost the full amount - Thanks Steven!
  
• Fixed Ardent Aegis units being resurrected by Mordar when he wasn’t the one that cast the spell - Thanks LeilaFox!
  
• Fixed a rare occurrence where Dormant Defenders would never wake up - Thanks Jimi D Night!
  
• Fixed an occurrence where Harbinger retargeted off of the Master Tower despite not being stunned - Thanks Cole420!

Cheers from BetaDwarf!

Minion Masters!

We've got another set of balance changes coming up in the next update, and we have a couple we'd like to share with you today. But first, we have some followup news regarding the public Poll of Arcane Golem and Haste's changes.

Firstly, we want to give a huge thanks to the fantastic amount of participation from you all, Masters! We got a ton of useful data and feedback from your submissions, and we're definitely open to doing that sort of thing again in the future as a result.

Secondly, we've opted as a result of the poll to go ahead with the planned changes to Arcane Golem and Haste as most of the responses supported the idea. Some were worried that they would be too weak following the changes, so we're planning to keep a close eye on them - Make sure to let us know how you feel about them once the changes hit the live servers in Version 1.15!

Black Hole

• Cast Delay 0.5 -> 0.2
  
• Duration 1.5 -> 1.8
  
• Developer Comments
  
• Black Hole has been difficult to utilize since the nerf, so we're aiming to make it easier to use on reaction against spells to better protect units with.

Stormy

• Zen-Chi Flow changed: Now grants +100 Health instead of doubling health
  
• Effectively, this means an activated Stormy has 225 health now, instead of 250
  
• Developer Comments
  
• The goal with this change is to make Stormy easier to whittle down with chip damage by narrowing the threshholds required to make him "lose" an attack, as well as less durable in general when combined with effects such as healing by making him easier to burst down. Notably, it's now much easier to time a Fireball to kill Stormy while he's being healed, and a non-healed Stormy can be killed by a 130 damage spell after his first attack.

Combustion

• Reworked: Now deals 50 damage to the target and nearby enemy minions up to 5 times. (0.2 second delay between each explosion)
  
• No longer stuns units with the Combustion debuff

Armored Scrats

• Barrel Shield Health 60 -> 50

• Developer Comments
  
• Combustion was still proving to be a problematic card in terms of just how efficient it was combined with swarm at removing... Pretty much anything. This was especially the case with Armored Scrats who would either survive the explosion and thus remain as bodies on the field, or more significantly, be almost impossible to remove on reaction. This change means that swarm units will still be quite efficient when utilized with the card, but toned down to more reasonable levels. It also gave us an opportunity to increase the spell's effectiveness when utilized on larger minions such as Colossus or Living Statue.

There's plenty more changes on the way, naturally, so stay tuned for the patch next week!

(We had an exclusive reveal for a visual update for Laser Turret on our social media earlier this week, did you check it out yet?)

We've got news of another update coming to one of our older cards coming in Version 1.15, and that's Magma Cannon! We felt that the card lacked a proper visual identity, and didn't really fit in with any of the existing factions as well as needing a model update for a while, so we've given it this fearsome new look, as well as a Faction Change to Voidborne:



As always, let us know what you think!

Are you looking to get more involved with competitive Minion Masters? Sinobii from Team Mana Frenzy is looking for volunteers to help with his future tournaments! Currently, they're looking for;

2-3 Shoutcasters (Commentators)
1-2 Tournament Administrators ("To work with players via discord in resolving any issues during the event, most particularly helping/making sure everyone gets into lobbies with their paired opponent and start their matches timely, and by extension identifying any tardy or absent players to adjudicate game/match losses, and otherwise minimize any tournament delays.")

Currently tournaments are scheduled to have 1 Xbox tournament per month, and 1-3 PC events. Contact {LINK REMOVED}Sinobii_twitch.tv#0976 on Discord if you're interested!




Got some time on your hands and a reliable friend? Want to get a chance at winning some money by playing 2v2 matches? Then BadAsAFish's next tournament is the place to be - A $100 prize pool multi-day tournament! Check it out here and sign up with your partner:

https://www.toornament.com/en_GB/tournaments/3556412245006991360/information

Cheers from BetaDwarf!

Minion Masters!

Our artists have been hard at work again, creating new, even more vicious looking models for some of Minion Masters' oldest units - The Swarmers! Our primary reason for updating the units is due to the age of them - The models date back to the early days of Forced, making them over 7 years old now.

We're looking to update quite a few models back from those days as a result to ensure they fulfill our new quality levels that we wish to maintain going forwards with our art assets, as well as help define them better within the universe we're working to establish. You've already seen quite a few of them already, and the Swarmer units were next in line to get a touch up - Check them out below!





They also come with brand new, updated Card Art:



Swarmers might be blind, but they'll always smell your fear.

The new Swarmer models will be making their way to the arenas in Version 1.15. We've also got an updated model for Laser Turret in the works - Tune in to our Social Media next Monday for an exclusive reveal!


Just a couple of weeks ago, we've finally got back to the offices following the extended quarantine, and we're still working on our exciting future projects all the same. We're still taking serious precautions, though - You can't walk five feet without finding disinfectant bottles!

All in all though, despite out rock solid remote working solutions, we're happy to be back at the office with the rest of the BetaDwarf family. Personally speaking, I'm glad we can start doing our monthly Tabletop RPG sessions again after an unfortunately long hiatus. We hope you've all been managing well during this time, too - If you got up to anything interesting while you were stuck at home, get in touch with us at thatsprite@betadwarf.com - We'd love to hear about it!




BadAsAFish is back with his excellent Minion Masters competitive tournaments! Making a comeback with a $100 prize pool and tons of in-game rewards, the tournament also functions as a qualifier for the prestigious Sinobii's Battleground Invitational run by TEAM MANA FRENZY!

Check out their Toornament page here and sign up today! https://www.toornament.com/en_GB/tournaments/3556399228476727296/information

Cheers from BetaDwarf!

Minion Masters!

We've got quite a lot to talk about this week - We need your input regarding some upcoming Balance Changes, and we're opening up PTR Signups again. Let's not waste any time and get into it:



With the upcoming Balance Changes coming in Version 1.15, we've been giving heavy consideration towards changes to Milloween's Arcane Golem and the Haste mechanic in particular. While we're decently confident in our changes, we wanted to give the opportunity to get more input from you all about them which we can take into account, as they are likely to significantly affect the metagame. Here are the changes we're currently thinking of:

Arcane Golem

• Mana Cost 3 -> 2
  
• Health 300 -> 250
  
• Damage 40 -> 30
  
• Health Gain Per Level 40 -> 30
  
• Damage Gain Per Level 6 -> 5

The main reason we're seeking to alter Arcane Golem is to rebalance Milloween's general gameplay. Currently Milloween is very frustrating to play against at Perk 3 due to how high its stats end up at from the Level 5 Boost. We're hoping with this change that the Arcane Golem, while still strong and forming the core of Milloween's kit, feels much less oppressive to fight against in the lategame and overall smoothes out her power curve.

Haste

• Bonus 50% -> 33%
  
• (Slow will also have its debuff changed from 25% -> 20% to match this)

Haste has been a fairly problematic buff for quite a while, as some of our veteran players can no doubt testify to. We've traditionally had to hide the explosive potential of the effect behind specific conditions, or remove them from cards that proved far too powerful with it - Examples of this would be Rabid Prowler and Woodsman. By reigning in the power of Haste we want to make it a more fair mechanic to play against, and open up more design space for us to utilise it when designing new cards.

This Haste change will also come with a buff to Ravager's perk 2 as he would be significantly impacted. This change will likely come in form of altering the threshhold required for his units to gain Haste in proportion to the change. Changes to other cards affected are also likely to be considered.

We've prepared a short survey that we would like you to answer so you can give us your feedback on this adjustments: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdsX1IRLy-TNoWBHZCq9wKsJWBkx2OVIdWlQkh9nDTzSTatyg/viewform?usp=pp_url

Thanks a ton in advance for your time, Masters!



We're swiftly approaching that time again, Masters - The Season Pass #3 reveals are due to start this Friday! Join us for another round of exciting card reveals that will expand upon your Accursed collection as Mordar makes his counteroffensive, on our Update Site!


We're looking for willing PTR Testers and are opening signups once again, to help us test upcoming content for Minion Masters! Things are a little different, this time - We're offering you the option to reference another user when signing up to the PTR that you'd like to partner with that is also filling in the application for membership. If the two of you are selected, we'll ensure you're in the same group, meaning there'll always be someone you're familiar with to play against, or with for 2v2 testing. Signing up with another player is not a requirement to be accepted for the PTR.

As a PTR tester, you will test new content on the PTR and provide feedback for the Minion Masters design team through questionnaires and discuss feedback with the team directly in the Discord channel. Responses from the PTR testing group is an extremely important part of creating new content for the game.

To join, you must be able to write in English, be open-minded, and have time to test and discuss new cards, masters and other content with us. It is a requirement that you are open to testing new cards/masters through rigorous playtesting. You must also have a Steam account and be able to play the game on PC (you will have the full collection of cards at your disposal).

There is a minimum expectation of activity while you are a member of the PTR. If you do not participate in several PTRs in a row without contacting a developer as to why, you will be removed from the group.

To sign up, answer this questionnaire here and we'll contact you via your Discord account if you're accepted: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd2q6WF0xfushgM8ZYI-xYEeTQgBijulnA1tsINAvjpPoIuZg/viewform?usp=pp_url



The ninth SBI is happening this weekend! Like previous SBIs, the tournament competition consists of active players that have performed exceptionally well in previous Team Mana Frenzy tournaments or are ranked at the very top of the Minion Masters Leaderboards - Meaning you can be certain there'll be some excellent quality gameplay on display! It's your traditional no-holds-barred double elimination tournament and will be livestreamed on Sinobii's Twitch channel.

If you want to find out more about the competition, check out their Toornament page here, and drop by their Discord!

Cheers from BetaDwarf!

Minion Masters!




It's time to put your Draft skills to the test, Masters - Today we're announcing the start of the 100 in 10 Draft Challenge! Inspired by community contests in other events, the challenge is to Stream yourself getting 100 wins over the course of 10 Draft runs - If you win and have your results verified by BetaDwarf, you'll receive the Cosmic Cleaver avatar! Here's a graphic with the full rules below:



You can find the logo mentioned in the rules at the top of this section.

All submissions must include working links to the Livestreams in which the challenge was done. All conditions described must be met in order to be eligible for the prize. Runs will be reviewed manually, so please be patient in waiting for a response and receiving your Avatar. There is currently no formal end date for this Challenge. If you have any further questions, email thatsprite@betadwarf.com.

Good luck, Masters!




This week, we have a special interview with Youtube Content Creator Last_Elf!

Can you give us a brief introduction of what you do?
I am doing fun Minion Masters gameplay videos. I try to come up with new ideas and strategies, something you are not facing on the ladder and mostly just crazy decks. Not tier 1, but definitely fun. I publish 3 new videos every week with more than 300 videos already on my channel.

How long have you been playing Minion Masters for?
I've been playing for 2,5 years now and creating YouTube videos for 1,5 years.

What made you get into creating Minion Masters content?
This might sound greedy, but I wanted to earn money. When my son was born, I've realized, that if I want to have time on games, I need to make it a living. After 2 years, I am nowhere near my goal and it's still not worth the time, I put into it. But I really enjoy it, I love the game and the community around the game.

What do you think is the best video you've made so far?
My personal favourite is for sure Solo Priestesses. I managed to have 7 Priestesses on board and watching how desperately your opponent tries to kill them is just hilarious. We've recreated it on premade with 11 Priestesses on board in the video called Holy Army and in a friendly coordinated battle called Healing Hell. I think this title doesn't need an explanation :D



Where can people follow you?
I have my own Discord server, Facebook page and Twitter.
For my most loyal fans I even have a Patreon page, where they can support me.
You can visit my website http://www.lastelf.net, where you can find all the links ;)

You can find Last_Elf's Youtube channel right here - He makes tons of entertaining gameplay videos featuring all kinds of oddball strategies, so he's definitely worth checking out!

Cheers from BetaDwarf!

Minion Masters!

• A new Season Pass has arrived to Minion Masters!
  
• Tons of new rewards, including 3 cards, a Legendary Skin, bonus cards, and more!
  
• Three new cards have been added to the game. They are as follows:
  
  
  
  
• Galaxy Diona has also been added to the game!
  
  
  
  
• The Season Pass will last one month and end on Thursday the 30th of July.

Ardent Aegis

• Heal 200 -> 250

Bounty Sniper

• New Effect: If you’re behind on XP, gain Shield
  
• Developer Comments
  
• Bounty Sniper was a card that was difficult to justify in most decks. While the effect is strong the mana premium made it very punishing when removed, and the risk of losing board control for the sake of maximising the XP was too high. By giving it a unique Shield condition, we want to help it have an identity of a comeback card while hopefully not impacting the “win more” element of such mechanics.

Call to Arms

• Mana Cost 4 -> 5

Disruptor Puff

• Teleport Cooldown 5 -> 6

Hypnotize

• REWORK: Hypnotise now applies a debuff that causes enemy minions to prioritize attacking their allies. They cannot target the Master Tower, and will still target enemies if there are no valid allies to attack.
  
• Duration 5 -> 6
  
• Developer Comments
  
• Hypnotize has been a fairly problematic card design wise for a while now, particularly in 2v2 game modes, and we've gone through multiple iterations of different designs to create an effect that is more fair to the opponent while retaining the core identity of the spell inflicting chaos in the middle of a fight. In particular, we took issue with it being implemented in cheese strategies such as those with Rock Rivals that offered very little interactivity from the opponent.

Lord Fanriel the Stormcharger

• Damage 100 -> 120

Magma Storm

• Damage per Rock 200 -> 170

Mordar

• Tombstones can now only resurrect minions belonging to Mordar
  
• Tombstone Activation Time 10 -> 8 seconds

Morellia

• Number of Skeletons from Book of the Dead 4/8 -> 3/6

Netherstep

• Cast Delay 0.5 -> 0 seconds

Poison (Mechanic)

• Ticks per Second 1 -> 2
  
• Damage per Tick 20 -> 10
  
• Developer Comments
  
• This solves an issue we had with Poison where we could only make units deal Poison damage in units of 20. By increasing the ticks it allows us to hit much more specific ranges, and also has the side effect of having better visual feedback and being more effective against Shield.

Poison Strike

• Duration 6 -> 6.5 seconds
  
• Total Poison Damage 120 -> 130

Resonating Blast Crystal

• Damage 120 -> 130

Scratillery

• Damage per Rocket 40 -> 50

Shielded Crossbow Dudes

• New Effect: If you control no bridges, summon an extra Crossbow Dude.

Skeleton Horde

• Skeleton Count 8 -> 9

Styxi

• Health 90 -> 140

Swarmer Totem

• Production Speed 6 -> 7 Seconds

Troubadour

• New: Highland Revelry: Give nearby enemy minions Slow

• Blue Golem has received a big visual rework. Red Golem will stay with its old model for now, but we intend to give it a new look as well in the future.
  
• New Card art has been added for Scrat Pack, Bridge Buddies, Tranquil Shi-Hou and Blue Golem.
  
• Improved the error message that appears when starting a game that isn’t on the same version as the server.
  
• Everyone who completed the Charging Into Darkness Adventure will receive 3 copies of a Supreme card as an apology for the error with the rewards in the near future.

• Fixed Illusory Cleaver not activating Voidborne Wound.
  
• Fixed being able to use skins you don’t own.
  
• Fixed Arcane Ring hitting Masters and Buildings.
  
• Fixed Jade Flingers having a small freeze at the end of their attack animations.
  
• Fixed Battlepass references not working on “Available in the current Battlepass” buttons.
  
• Fixed Season Pass Premium still referring to itself as Battle Pass.
  
• Fixed More Dakka not hitting Werewolves.
  
• Fixed a minor visual bug with Galaxy Morellia.
  
• Fixed an animation bug where Warrior would attempt to swing her sword even though she was out of range.
  
• Fixed some inconsistencies with Call to Arms transforming Dormant Defenders.
  
• Fixed a visual bug with Ratbo’s Minigun still spinning at max speed after using More Dakka.
  
• Fixed Jungle Jumble using the wrong card buff tooltip.
  
• Fixed the Charging Into Darkness Adventure granting the wrong rewards. Anyone who completed the Adventure will receive 3 copies of a Supreme card in the near future.
  
• Fixed the Italian Translation for Squire Puff and Arcane Bolt not being displayed.
  
• Fixed the “Puff Sorry” emote having lost its localization.
  
• Fixed Master Skins not having the Master Tips - Thanks LordJulius!

Cheers from BetaDwarf!

Minion Masters!


If you've been keeping up with out Charging Into Darkness reveals, then that means you're aware that the second Season Pass of this Expansion is right around the corner!

Next week on the 25th of June, Version 1.14 will be releasing with a whole host of brand new content, including new cards Sugilite Shield, Lady Infray the Spire Warden, and Skeleton Crew!

Check out our Update Site for all the juicy details. Which of the two currently revealed cards is your favourite? And don't forget to let us know what you think of Skeleton Crew once it comes out!

Today we've got a preview of some of the balance changes coming with Version 1.14! As always, these aren't all of them, but should highlight some of the larger changes we're planning to make:

Hypnotize Rework

• NEW EFFECT: Enemy minions within the AoE will start attacking, and prioritise, friendly units for the duration. Cannot attack the Master Tower.
  
• Duration 5 -> 6
  
• Call Slitherbound Count 1 -> 2
  
• Dev Comments: Hypnotize has been a fairly problematic card design wise for a while now, particularly in 2v2 game modes, and we've gone through multiple iterations of different designs to create an effect that is more fair to the opponent while retaining the core identity of the spell inflicting chaos in the middle of a fight. In particular, we took issue with it being implemented in cheese strategies such as those with Rock Rivals that offered very little interactivity from the opponent.

Call to Arms

• Mana Cost 4 -> 5

Swarmer Totem

• Production Speed 6 seconds -> 7 seconds

Troubadour

• NEW: Highland Revelry: Give Slow to nearby enemy Minions

Shielded Crossbow Dudes

• NEW: If you don't control any bridges, summon an extra Crossbow Dude.

Some of you have noticed, and admired, a lot of visual reworks that have been coming to Minion Masters recently, be it card art updates, or entirely new models (as seen with Dragon Nest). We're just as excited to see what the Art team comes up with as you are, so we're going to be making more of an effort to feature their creations in the blog going forward.

Most of the time when art or models get updated, it's to fit with an updated or revised visual identity we have for their faction. Alternatively, it could be that the models are too old to properly work with going forward or don't meet the level of quality we'd like for the game - Some of the models in the game are still dating back to our very first game, after all!

This Update will be bringing some relatively simple changes - Brand new Card Art for the Scrat Pack and Bridge Buddies cards. Bridge Buddies' art was starting to look fairly unfitting when lined up with the other Scrat cards in its visual style, particularly due to the extensive referencing of the 3d model when creating it. So we've given it an entirely new card art! For Scrat Pack, we're still fond of the original identity of the card art, but wanted to give it a fresh coat of paint to reflect the updated Scrat designs. Check them out below:






This weekend, Shadow Gaming TV are hosting their Minion Masters Summer International Tournament, where the winner receives a massive prize of $1000!

The 1v1 event will be taking place this Sunday the 21st at 11 AM PST on their Twitch Channel, with signups closing shortly before the event starts. It's promising to be an exciting event with a ton of players already signed up!

Check out the full rules of the Tournament and signup on their Battlefy link!

Cheers from BetaDwarf!

Minion Masters!




It's been a while, but we're back with another Minion Masters Emote Contest! The Emote Contest is a community competition that allows your custom Minion Masters emotes to be immortalized on the Minion Masters Discord Server! Here's how to enter:

• Make a cool Minion Masters emote! They don't have to be just puffs, but the general guideline for an emote is a 1:1 ratio emoticon, like the ones you'd see in-game. Make sure that it looks nice as a downscaled emote, too, as that may affect your chances.
  
• Head over to the official Minion Masters discord at http://discord.gg/minionmasters and post your entry in the #emote-contest-3 channel.
  
• Once the Contest ends on the 18th of June, 5 candidates and their emotes will be presented to the community for voting. The three emotes that receive the most votes will be declared the winners!
  
• The winners will have their emotes added to the Minion Masters Discord for everyone to use, as well as a special credit in the FAQ!
  
• Emotes must be Minion Masters related and not use copyrighted material that isn't from BetaDwarf.
  
• Entries must be your own original works. Any medium can be used to create them.
  
• Entries must be new. Emotes from the previous contests are not eligible.
  
• Entries must not violate the server rules.

Entries will close on the 18th of June at 0800 UTC. Good luck, Masters!



There's a big boost to Twitch Drops coming to compensate for the issues we had during 1.12. From June 11th to June 18th, you can get triple value from your Twitch Drops, making them worth 300 Gold each! Make sure to stop on by your favourite Twitch Stream while the event is ongoing and get your rewards!

Or, if you want to start streaming during this event and share the love, make sure to connect your Minion Masters account to Twitch to earn rewards while streaming - Learn more here!

Cheers from BetaDwarf!