Heroes of Newerth fans rejoice! Not only is it time for HoN‘s 2nd anniversary, but it’s also Friday! Friday is patch day, and we’re getting a new hero and game mode!
The newest hero to enter Newerth will be Riftwalker, a ranged intelligence hero. In addition, Mid Wars, based on the popular custom game, is now an official map and matchmaking option. We’ll be sure to give our impressions this weekend.
Finally, there’s a ton of patch notes from:
Version 2.6.0
- Free Hero Pool has been updated and increased to 16 heroes! The list is as follows:
- Silhouette
- The Madman
- Tremble
- Chronos
- Dampeer
- Succubus
- Tempest
- Engineer
- Pyromancer
- Monarch
- Rhapsody
- The Gladiator
- Armadon
- Drunken Master
- Tundra
- Flux
== Shop & Courier Changes ==
- Intelligent Item Combining added
- When you buy a recipe item via right-clicking on it or the “purchase remaining components” button, it will now intelligently combine as it’s being purchased
- Example: Your inventory has 5 Minor Totems and Marchers. You right click on Ghost Marchers and now have Ghost Marchers in your inventory. Before, you would still have Marchers in your inventory and now have 2 Punchdagger in your stash
- When you buy a Frostwolf Skull or Geometer’s Bane via right-clicking on it or the “purchase remaining components” button and have a Frostburn, it won’t buy the Icebrand/ Firebrand anymore
- This was done because Frostburn can be disassembled and the Icebrand/ Firebrand modifiers do not stack
- Items now combine across both your inventory and stash
- When you buy a recipe item via right-clicking on it or the “purchase remaining components” button, it will now look for recipe combinations in both your inventory and stash (if you have access to it)
- Example: Your inventory has 5 Minor Totems and Marchers with one Punchdagger in your stash. You right click on Ghost Marchers and now have Ghost Marchers in your inventory. Before, you would still have Marchers in your inventory and 2 Punchdaggers in your stash
- Courier Item Combining improved significantly
- When a courier delivers items, it now intelligently combines them as they’re being delivered
- Example: Your inventory has 5 Minor Totems and Marchers. The courier delivers you 2 Punchdaggers and you now have Ghost Marchers in your inventory. Before, you would still have Marchers in your inventory and the courier would still have the 2 Punchdaggers
- Item sellback enabled for newly purchased recipe items
- When a recipe item combines, it inherits the oldest purchase time of its components, so that you can still sell it for full value after combining. As with other items, the “recently purchased” flag goes away if the owner dies or if the item is used
- Example: If you buy Ghost Marchers all at once, you can sell it back in full for 15 seconds
- Example: If you have Marchers in your inventory for 30 seconds, then upgrade to Ghost Marchers, you cannot sell it back for full since the Marchers are the oldest component and they passed the 15 second window
== New Map & Mode: Mid Wars ==
- Introducing the new risk-free way to play Heroes of Newerth — Mid Wars! The direct result of feedback and input from the HoN community, Mid Wars takes the most exciting pieces of the HoN experience and distills them into pure unadulterated fun. Featuring its own standardized rule-set, exclusive Matchmaking system, and an all new map, Mid Wars brings you everything that you know and love about HoN and improves the formula with a casual, arcade style experience second to none. Make no mistake, we think Mid Wars is one of the best maps we have ever made and we’re honored to unleash it today for all of Newerth to enjoy
- Hand-crafted Map that keeps the action centralized. Map features include:
- New art and style! Welcome to the Jungle!
- New paths created
- Bases redesigned
- Fountains moved away from the bases
- Teleporters added to quickly drop you back into the action!
- One Neutral Spawn
- One Powerup Spawn
- Kongor removed
- Custom made ruleset designed around fast paced action. New rules include:
- Base bounty for killing a hero increased from 200 to 400 gold
- Bounty per level and bounty per streak increased from 5 to 10 gold and 50 to 100 gold respectively
- Respawn time lowered from 4 seconds per level to 600 milliseconds per level
- Gold loss on death removed
- Fountain regeneration increased from 4% to 10% of your max health a second
- Lingering fountain regeneration removed
- Experience table changed so leveling happens faster
- Experience range increased from 1000 to 1300
- Grave Locket and Sacrificial Stone do not reduce your death time on this map
- Creeps will upgrade themselves every 3 minutes instead of every 7
- Siege creeps will spawn every 3 waves instead of every 5
- Both teams start with a Flying Courier
- Duplicate Heroes disabled
- Buybacks disabled
- New picking mode to match the quick action ingame. How the mode works:
- 10 seconds of wait time when the game starts
- 20 seconds for 3 Blind Bans per team
- Blind Ban: Blue and Pink players pick 3 heroes that they want to ban. These bans are hidden from the enemy team until the time is up or all bans are used, whichever comes first. Then all bans are revealed. Both teams can ban the same heroes and ‘stack’ bans. Choose Wisely!
- 10 seconds of wait time before Picks
- 40 seconds of normal All-Pick
- Main Base structures rescaled and redesigned for the Mode
- Regen increased from 3 to 105. Regen is disabled for 10 seconds when damage is taken
- Health lowered from 4250 to 3500
- Zorgath and his creation Transmutanstein return to the map
- Both have had their stats and damage increased significantly. They should pose much more of a challenge now!
- Both now have correct sounds when they attack or die
- Zorgath now drops a new Tablet: The Tablet of Power
- Tablet of Power grants the powers of all 5 other Tablets combined!
- You get 2 Illusions, then all 3 get Double Damage, Haste, Regeneration, and Invisibility.
- Tablet of Power can be bottled
- Transmutanstein now drops two redesigned Tokens of Sight
- Only the team that kills Transmutanstein can see the Tokens of Sight
- When used, grants you a buff that gives 900 radius Clearvision and Truevision
- Clearvision lets you see over trees and cliffs
- Truevision lets you see invisible units such as wards or heroes like Night Hound
- Mid Wars added to Matchmaking
- Can only play Normal mode with Blind Ban in Matchmaking
- Victory will be rewarded with 8 Silver Coins. Defeat gets 6 Silver Coins.
- Bonuses such as Wards Placed, Total Assists, Social Bonus, or Consecutive Bonus are not enabled for Mid Wars
- Stats are not recorded for this mode other than the “Games Played” and “Leaves”
- Mid Wars Match Awards have been added!
- Hosting a Public Game of Mid Wars has a number of options automatically disabled to preserve the hand crafted Mid Wars experience
== Interface Updated Significantly ==
- The Background has been completely redone with 3D animated models and better effects!
- New HoNiversary logo added — Happy 2 Year Anniversary!
- Improved resource unloading across the whole UI
- Reduced RAM usage slightly through sound and texture improvements
- Improved match stats screen reliability and performance
- Improved create game screen reliability and performance
- Switching languages now prompts you to restart
- Fixed the ingame shop so if you have it open and move into range of the Outpost or Observatory, it switches to those shops
- Fixed some clicking and highlighting issues on the news panel
- Fixed hero and avatar lists in the Goblin Store to scroll to the most recent item by default
- Fixed bottom center mana/health bars lerping behaviour
- Fixed health/mana regen formatting across all health bars
- Fixed Game Menu Options selection sometimes not opening the Options panel
- Fixed weather dropdown not displaying anything until an option was selected
- Fixed chain sparks not always working (Thanks to Elkano)
- Fixed a rare issue where the matchmaking loading screen could persist ingame
- Fixed loading percent when reconnecting to a game
- Fixed the portait glow showing at wrong time
- Fixed alt avatar previews vanishing when opening them a second time
- Fixed many console errors (and what caused them)
== Chatserver & Website Updated ==
- You will have to patch to reconnect to the chatserver
- Increased the max players per channel from 200 to 250
- Numerous enhancements to improve stability and reduce outages
- Fixed a bug that was causing players to receive notifications that HoNTV streams were active even though the stream wasn’t active
- The “Heroes” section of the Heroes of Newerth website has been completely redone from the ground up, check it out!
== New Content ==
- Added new Early Access Hero: Riftwalker
- Added new Early Access Alt Avatar: Elder Riftwalker
- The Riftwalker is a unique hero that can initiate on an enemy team without the assistance of a Portal Key. Both inside and outside of a teamfight, the rest of Riftwalker’s abilities give her great utility in a supporting role.
- Added new Electrician Alt Avatar: Steampunk Electrician
- Added new Taunt: Kongor Taunt
- Added new Courier: Kongor Courier
- Artillery is no longer an Early Access hero
- The sun now moves across the skies of Forests of Caldavar, changing the shadows, water reflection, and lighting angles
- The water flowing through the Forests of Caldavar has been updated and remodeled
== Optimizations & Bug Fixes ==
- Optimizations for rendering of many ground sprites and 3D animated models
- Optimized the announcer pack sounds to use less memory
- Fixed many missing strings for Alt Avatars
- The following items were fixed so toggling them will no longer break stealth:
- Abyssal Skull
- Mock of Brilliance
- Nome’s Wisdom
- Refreshing Ornament
- Ring of the Teacher
- Steamboots
Plated Greaves – Now applies to Booboo correctly
- Arachna : Spider fixed so it no longer loses sight of the target
- Artillery : Artillery Barrage state hidden while being pushed back
- Blitz : Lightning Shackles now has an AoE indicator when you hover over an enemy unit with it
- Berzerker : Chain Spike effects fixed when he stands still after using it
- Woolly Cthulhuphant : Attack Animation smoothed out
- Draconis: Blazing Flight fixed to always do the proper damage
- Electrician : Electric Shield fixed so its visual effects does not proc off of allied spells
- Geomancer : Dig stutter bug fixed
- Gunblade : Demonic Shield fixed so its visual effects does not proc off of allied spells
- War Beast : Hellhounds’ attack point lowered from 0.75 seconds to 0.75/0.7/0.65/0.6 seconds so the enemy can’t outrun a mid-swing attack
