Warcraft Club

Castle fight 1.14 changelog

noreply@blogger.com (BladeMaster) — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 09:51:00 +0000

v1.14b(10.8.2009)
Fixing the mess from v1.14...

BUGFIXES:
-Tech mode should work like intended now and should not be on by default
-Assassins are no longer controllable. This was a bug related to the new native functions blizzard included into the patch...
-Specials should work properly again
-The game shouldn't lag that fast anymore. This lag was caused by the bugs mentioned before
-Druid uses its skill properly
-Energy tower should use chainlightning again
-Dragon Hawks uses their ability again
-Chilling Mushroom damage increased by 100. The damage was calculated wrong before
-Corrupted Ancient of Battle is now Tech Level 0

BALANCE:
-Repriced tech levels (cheaper now)

v1.14(9.8.2009)
This patch fixes the map for v1.24 and introduces a new intersting game mode "Tech Mode" where you have to tech before you can buy higher tier buildings. This could get an often played gamemode, it is kind of interesting. However, note that AI fails in this gamemode since it doesn't tech.

NEW FEATURES:
-The game now works with v1.24
-Balance is now enabled by default
-New gamemode: Income Timer (-itXXX): You can set the income timer to an amount between 2 and 120 seconds (standard is 10). Note that altering the income timer will seriously shift the balance between unit bounty and income.
-Reworked chilling mushroom. It is now a direct damage + stun spell against air only. It's more expensive now, but should be a good option for northern spending its wood
-The map now uses one hashing spell handler instead of one for each spell type. This should speed up the map in lategame.
-New gamemode: Tech Mode (-te): Buildings are divided into tier0,1,2,3. You need to buy a tech in your worker build buildings of higher techs.
-The ugly forest in the middle was replaced by a more beautiful one.
-Map uses a more sophisticated protection now. Will avoid some fakes hopefully

BUGFIXES:
-Fill will now fill only 5 players instead of six
-mp mode is no longer able to give 6 players which leaded to bugs
-Hydra is immune and has spell reduction like other legendaries now
-Silver Glade should no longer target buildings hit by a frost launcher
-Fixed the "Not enough food" message
-Infernal's immolation is now able to now hit mechanical units
-Corrupted builder now has the same sight range like all other builders
-Starfall will now make the area visible in FoW making it do damage to enemies
-Lightning orb is no longer undroppable when in cooldown
-Incubus should no longer be able to overtake legendary units
-Observers should no longer give gold to other players when leaving the game
-Fixed that not every unit was trained with hotkey 'Q' leading to some collisions with building upgrades
-Legendary buildings have the legend text now displayed in their tooltip again
-Rewrote the unit storage and random picking system which should fix some errors like erasor not erasing all enemies

BALANCE:
-Increased splashdamage and range on ancient hydra and its splash now also targets air units
-Anti Air tower's air attack was buffed
-Human tower buffed
-Red Dragon's splash damage was reduced from 66%,33% to 50%, 25%
-Reduced starting mana of nether and shadow drake by 25
-Increased range of Marksman and made it a bit slower, increased damage against air
-Increased Rocket Tank's rocket damage by 10
-Decreased Volcano's damage to buildings by 33% (the damage reduction to buildings is now stated in its tooltip)
-Buffed Veteran Grunt's and Axemaster's HP slightly
-Increased OoW's spell damage reduction by 5%
-Reduced Frost Launcher's lumber cost by 75 but increased Greater Frost Launcher's lumbercost by the same amount
-Reduced Banshee's hitpoints by 10
-Domination income gain was reduced to 15%. Maybe it is playable now. There could be better fixes, but I didn't have time to think of something better.
-Reduced legendary spell reduction by 5%
-Trippled the lifetime of repair goblins
-Legendary unit buildings now need (accumulated price / 2) lumber
-Fixed the button positions of some buildings
-Increased Blast Staff's lumbercost by 100 to make it compareable to towers

Footmen frenzy download (v6.5e and 6.4b)

noreply@blogger.com (BladeMaster) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 09:38:00 +0000

Download Footmen frenzy 6.4b
Download Footmen frenzy 6.5e

Footmen frenzy 6.5 changelog

noreply@blogger.com (BladeMaster) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 09:36:00 +0000

-Fixed crash bug
-Fixed Sheep/Ava Inventory
-Fixed Issues with mirror images
-Fixed some tooltips
-Devotion to 2/4/6/9/12/15
-Magic Frenzy to 15/20/25
-Tornado cd to 120/100/90
-AoE of shadow wave explosion to 150/175/200/225/250/275
Heal to 100/150/225/300/375/500
-Holy grace hero duration to 10/12/15/18/21/25
-ghost hp to 400/600/800
-Implosion range to 250/300/375/450/550/700
-bounties adjusted. Ranged units give higher bounties proportionately than melee units now.
-melee now has higher armor than ranged
-Appropriation to 50%, 75%, 125%
-Dudey cost to 350
-Initial TP's have no resale value
-Force of Nature buffed
-Shock range increased
-dispel force summon dmg to 40/80/120/200/300/550
-dispel force can now manually target invulnerable summons
-buffed Great Fishing Harvest
-healing ward bug fixed

Update for 6.5d

-bug with invulnerables being undispelable fixed
-crashes are (hopefully) fixed
-drake nest stock time increased and leash distance decreased
-creep camp symbols should no longer appear on map
-nerfed range of implosion and made the buff more visible
-nerfed the damage output of frost sphere
-Mirror Images have inventories again
-Ghosts from Curse of the Banshee are no longer spell immune
-Shift increased a bit

Updates for 6.5c
-Rod works correctly
-Curser and Tortured Soul added back - some spells are different.
-bug should be fixed where game ended if a player left during load.
- Slave cost to 50 gold
- Penguins armor increased
- Three bears are tougher to kill
- bug where some heroes only had one item slot has been fixed.
- GW choppers no longer get mana regen from middle
- Golem can once again be repaired by peasant
- Mine barrier cd to 8/9/10/11/13/15
- Flamestrike fixed
- Sharon attack speed increased
- pathing fixed (falcon cant knock anything off the map)
- soulburn and silence no longer disable item use
- attempting to repick without full health no longer counts as a repick attempt
- some tooltips have additional info
- Holy grace levels correctly
- Shift buffed
- Shadow wave buffed

- There is a known issue where healing wards will not heal a players second hero.

6.5

Note
The map size is 1.7 MB. Everyone asked for a prettier loading screen, new icons, new spells, new everything, and a lot was added. So the map is much bigger… however, it is also optimized much better and you should not notice an increase in load time or lag. My load time actually decreased from 45 seconds to 31 seconds due to the increased optimization.

Heroes
-tooltip issues should all be fixed
-Shift works correctly now
-Jungle Stalker level 1 Command Aura corrected
-Gargoyle duration fixed to what it was meant to be
-Ohboy creep now gains mana from the middle
- Awe aura now affects heroes
- Three Bears are harder to kill
- Issues with units dying as they spawn has been fixed. (I think)
- Falcon punch shouldn’t knock into the bases
- Tortured Soul and Curser have been removed just until issues with the new WC patch can be settled.
- A new HCL library was added for the bots. It allows bots to choose game mode. If you don’t know what this is, don’t worry about it.
- There is a known bug about the position of lich’s spells. However the hotkeys should still be exactly the same even though they are not in those positions.

Dark Ranger
Black Arrow - summons reworked. Number of units changed from 1/2/3/4/5/1 to 1/2/2/3/3/1. Stats changed on units. Level 4/5/6 gain attack and defense ups.

Jaood - has hero damage.

PotM -
Owls - level 4/5/6 are now ethereal
Owl Scout now summons two owls at levels 5 and 6.

Falcon - RoF changed to Falcon Punch!
Transmute replaced with The Three Bears
Hex replaced with Cripple

Countermage
Shock - cd to 10/9/8/8/7/6
Aura – Still 5/10/15/20/25/30 percent reduction on heroes.
Now 10/20/30/40/50/60 on units.
Lightning Storm – damage to 175/225/475. Cooldown to 150/130/110

Avalanche - Omnistrike - cd to 250/200/120

Roar- Jungle Stalkers - all levels of stalkers now have command aura - bonuses increase with level. level 3-6 now have blink - cd decreased from 30 to 15.
Increased slam dmg on Jungle Stalkers.
Stalkers now have fortified armor
Roar – AoE increased at all levels and unit duration increased
Increased cast range of ‘Hurl Boulder’

Assassin - Frost bolt dmg to 100/175/250/350/450/600
duration to 1.5/2/2.5/3/3.5/4

Goblin Warfare - mine barrier cd to 8/8/12/12/15/15.

Archmage - Mass tp - units to 12/25/40

TheBigGame - unholy aura move speed to 10/15/20/30/40/50... renamed to Haste Aura

Dino - Renamed unholy aura 'Vigor Aura'

Death Knight - unholy changed to 2/3/4/6/8/10 regeneration

Metal.Bark - slam attack speed reduction to 30/35/40/45/50/60
AoE to 200/250/300/350/400/475

Protoss Warship - Hallucination now lasts 30/40/50/60/70/90 seconds on heroes
Cooldown is 40/35/30/30/25/20
Interceptor numbers now 2/4/6/8/10/15
Interceptor skill was reworked to be more effective

Firelord - Lava spawns 4/5/6 has a small splash radius... dmg % gets higher with levels.

Curser
Forced Taunt - Forces units in an AoE to attack the targetted unit.
Implode - Does damage to a target unit before the buff explodes and does damage to surrounding units.
Mind Rot - Targets an enemy hero and drains mana as the hero moves. The more the hero moves, the more mana is drained.
Mass hex - turns all enemy units in an AoE into critters

Holy Guardian
Holy grace - Regens a unit or heroes health and adds armor to the unit/hero
Frost tower - Summons a frost tower that does splash cold damage.
Divine Touch - A healing chain that bounces to several friendly units. At each bounce location, small AoE damage is done around the unit.
Shift - Increases friendly units armor and decreases enemy armor over time.

Tortured Soul
Wail of the Banshee- A scream that causes units in an AoE to have a % chance to miss.
Frost Orb - The banshee sends out an orb of frost toward a target location. Shards intermittently break off, damaging and slowing nearby units.
Summon gargoyles - Self explanatory.
Curse of the banshee - The banshee sends out a spirit to possess a target unit. The targetted unit is damaged over time. The spirit is able to split off after possession and possess nearby units as well. Damage and # of possessions increase with level.

Sharon
Summon penguins - Sharon summons cute penguins to fight with her.
Awe Aura - Nearby units are in awe of Sharon's beauty. Their movement speed is slowed.
Bloodrage - There are certain times when Sharon is very angry and irritable. While in effect, her attack speed is increased.
Appropriation - Sharon loves money. When activated, she cleans the pockets of enemies, making an extra % of each units gold cost.

Bill K –
Changed model to Admiral Proudmoore in an attempt to make items stop disappearing. Post in bug section if this is still happening.

Death Sheep –
Random sheep now has 4 items slots; Picked sheep has 3.

Units

Reworked damage to heroes. Melee units will all do full damage to heroes... ranged units will be slightly less depending on range distance, etc.

Undead
Flying meatwagons no longer fly. Collision size changed. and splash damage tweaked.

Human
Militia and Knights buffed slightly.
Steam Tanks base dmg, attack speed and blink range increased

Night Elf

Chimera's are now glaives. Range/Damage increased, splash removed.

Orc
Crit Strike racial dmg multiplier to 1.5/1.75/2/2.25/2.5
Wyverns to Kodo Beasts.

Items

Socks cd from 900 to 450
Changed cd of some lategame items.
Scroll of Saeki – units transported from 12 to 18
Drake Nest and Shinigami's Aura gold cost reduced to 4000
Drake’s Nest buffed
AoE of auto-salve increased. Now effects you and allied units (so you can get near any allied base for auto-salve)
Ring +30 replaced with Plate of the Stormlord - + 12 armor and 15% chance to purge attackers.
Added Staff of Revocation – Removes all buffs in an AoE. Contains 3 charges.
Added Circlet of Nobility - + 2 to all stats
Moved berserker mask to armor shop

Creeps

Item carrying creep added.
Demo now level 6 creep
Changed faerie range from 900 to 750
K-Rose Invisibility decreased
Demolisher AoE increased slightly and are raisable.
Ohboy creep added – Has mana charge and Replicate.
Mana charge restores a unit or heroes mana by 200 over 5 seconds.
Replicate creates a single illusion of any target hero or unit. The illusion does no damage and takes double damage.

Other Changes

New loading screen.
Removed cross teams and reverse heroes.
Many new icons
Pocket Factory bounty from 20 to 20/40/60/80/150/150
Chimera of Wind bounty to 50/100/150
Avatar of Nature bounty 50/80/100
Keldyn’s skeletons bounty reduced
Reduced restock and pathing of wisps a tad.
Reduced collision size of some units.
Random heroes get ‘Ring of Courage’ (+1 to all stats)
Added additional Tavern Protection – you should not be able to get up there with any spell.
Any stray units of a defeated player should be removed immediately. There is no delay like before.
Added a Quest Log with basic a gameplay guide and a small changelog.
Heroes now start with 20% mana at the beginning of the game.
The game starts with 6 spawned footmen at each base.
-Repick command added. You can repick one time and it will replace your current hero with another random hero. You can only repick a hero if you have full health.

-Swap command added. You can swap heroes with an ally hero. Both commands are only available for the first 3 minutes.

Tales of Monkey Island Episode 101 Launch of the Screaming Narwhal v1.0.0.15-TE

noreply@blogger.com (BladeMaster) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:09:00 +0000

Woooooooohooooooo! Ive been waiting for this since it was first announced at E3 since i was a huge fan of the original Monkey Island games, I just hope they dont stuff this up. Tales of Monkey Island is an upcoming adventure game being developed by Telltale Games (Who was founded by a group of ex Lucas Arts employees to focus more on adventure style games) in collaboration with LucasArts. It takes place after an imaginary fifth game in the Monkey Island series. Players take control of Guybrush Threepwood who accidentally releases a voodoo pox that spreads throughout the Caribbean. He must save the Caribbean from this voodoo pox whilst at the same time rescue his love Elaine Marley from his nemesis LeChuck. The game will be episodic, with the adventure being split into 5 parts. From July 7th they will be released on a monthly basis.

Telltale’s Tales of Monkey Island brings the adventures of pirate Guybrush Threepwood into a new era with an explosive storyline that becomes deeper and more entangled during the course of the five-episode saga. While battling his nemesis, the evil pirate LeChuck, Guybrush accidentally unleashes an insidious voodoo pox that threatens to transform the buccaneers of the Caribbean into unruly pirate monsters. Players will experience the humor, romance, and swashbuckling action the Monkey Island games are famous for and unravel an insidious plot which is revealed across the course of the series.

General Features

A five-part saga with an intriguing storyline that becomes deeper and more entangled as it unfolds
Series favorites Guybrush, LeChuck, Elaine, and the Voodoo Lady are joined by a new cast of characters
Streamlined adventure gameplay with all the humor, romance, and swashbuckling excitement that made the franchise famous

System Requirements:

Operating system: Windows XP / Vista
Processor: 2.0 GHz + (3 GHz Pentium 4 or equivalent rec.)
Memory: 512MB (1GB rec.) Sound: DirectX 8.1 sound device
Video: 64MB DirectX 8.1-compliant video card (128MB rec.)
DirectX®: Version 9.0c or better

Element Tower Defense Tips N' Tricks

noreply@blogger.com (BladeMaster) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:53:00 +0000

General

-VH Arrow opening reference (s=super, n=normal, a=advanced, e=element):

1 S
2 SN
3 SA
4 SS
5 SS
6 SS
7 E
8 E
9 EN
10 ES
11 EE
12 EE
13 EE

-Remember that for undead waves, cannon AoE always works better.

-Round 2 and 3 (and simliar rounds) are easy to get wrong, I struggle with them a lot myself. The problem is getting both arrow towers to always shoot at the same creep. Usually I select both of them and spam the (S)top command until the creeps are in range. This seems to work a good percentage of the time, for me at least. Remember that you can use temporary towers as a safety net in case you screw up. For round 4/5/6 the problem isn't so bad since you can just manually target half-dead creeps with a temporary tower placed at 5.

-My style of play is to never sit around waiting for a creep wave. Just after interest hits it is -always- beneficial to build temporary towers (although in AP you are limited to element arrow towers). The exception is if you are too busy doing other things, in which case you must always prioritize your main tower setup over temporary towers. Even if you can kill a creep wave entirely with only the towers you have on the field, it is still beneficial to build temporary towers, because it will lead to finishing the wave faster (more useful in multiplayer than singleplayer) or it will lead to more creeps being dead when interest hits.

-The maximum Speed Reduction allowed on creeps is 66%. Creeps cannot be slowed to any less than 33% of their normal speed.
-Pures always always deserve to be buffed by well/blacksmith when it's available. This might mandate manual casting in some cases.

-Impulse tower micro is always very important, but Laser tower micro can help too (clicking on the closest creep). However, it's not quite as important as Impulse, so if you have something else to build/etc, that should take precedence.

-Drowning/Life towers should ideally be placed as the last line of defense since they help the most when they fire at creeps after everything else. If you are placing towers along 3/6/9, for example, life towers and drowning towers should go at 9. If building at 4/5 exclusively, life/drowning would probably work best at 4.

-Impulse towers and other long-range towers are also very deadly to elementals.

-Blacksmith/Well towers can often be placed on otherwise undesirable positions (such as -) to make room for other towers.

-LWN and EFD are very good element combos because they cover each others' weaknesses. Of the two I prefer EFD as Quaker, Zealot, and Muck are all very strong towers that can be used as primary sources of damage. In addition, Quaker and Zealot can be "chainmorphed" (see random mode section).

-For 2-pass placements, Magic/Mushroom/Hail/etc towers are better at 9 than 3 since they need time to recharge their abilities. On the other hand, Zealot is often better at 3 because it does best when there is minimal time between passes.

-In singleplayer, F11 will display the message log, which pauses the game. If you've used tower query anytime in the past few minutes (and I tend to use it a LOT) you can look at your available towers here as well. Some may consider this "cheating" but if you need time to plan, this is your chance to do it.

-Along the same lines, you can use the - and + keys to speed up and slow down the game as needed (or you can go into the options menu). Again this is a bit shady, but only usable in single-player, so you should be the judge over what you want for your own EleTD experience.

-Know where to place the windstorm tower, and more importantly, the tornado it makes.

-Hotkeys can help you micro more effectively. In general I like to have hotkeys for each of the following if I have them:

-Builder
-Impulse
-Tidal
-Windstorm tornado
-Laser

-The builder only moves at a certain rate. Therefore try to avoid situations where you need to wait for him to move a long distance. If you are expecting to have to catch leaks, for example, move your builder there beforehand.

-Catching leaks is always nice, but in general it is more important to be prepared for the next wave. This is especially true in multiplayer where creep waves come at you nonstop without any chance for pause or respite.

-If possible, it's better to make a LOT of super arrow/cannon towers vs composite waves than a bunch of element arrows/cannons, simply because composite armor reduces elemental damage. However, you may not have the time to set up so many towers. Use your best judgment.

-For waves like 14/15 where you can't one-shot a creep with 2 element arrow towers, it's better to spread your damage out more, either by using cannons or by reverting back to a bunch of super arrows. This is because using 3 element arrow towers will be inefficient--2 shots will almost kill a creep, so the third shot is mostly wasted.

-Always be prepared for fast waves. Knights won't wait for you.

-Never underestimate Mechanical waves. Fear the shredders.

-Never underestimate Healing waves. Fear the Murlocs.

-Of course, on chaos mode you must be prepared for anything! Playing random chaos mode requires you to be very quick at thinking and adapting your tower build...

-Gold from your reserves gets subtracted when you issue the build command, not when the tower is actually constructed. Minor difference, but can be important when trying to, for example, squeeze in interest before building a periodic. Also, this is another reason to favor B click B click over shift-click rallying in order to build towers, since with shift-click ALL of the gold needed for the towers is subtracted at once, before any of them are even built!

-Waves with special properties are always stronger than other waves. So if you just managed to squeak by a wave that was a normal Fire wave, be prepared to build significantly more if the next wave is Composite Undead or something.

-Not all towers are created equal! In the current build some towers are underpowered and should be avoided in general. It is also true that some towers are good, but tricky to use and may not fit your playstyle. In general I would recommend sticking with something that you are comfortable with as opposed to trying out "weird" towers like summon, trickery, disease, jinx and not knowing how to use them properly.

-For interest abuse, it becomes more and more important to "prebuild" as the game goes on. During early game you should generally wait until the interest hits before even building a new tower, but as the game goes on, the price of normal arrow towers becomes insignificant compared to your gold reserves, so it is more efficient to build 12 normal arrow towers before interest hits, then upgrade them afterward. Later on you may even build 12 super arrow towers before interest hits, then upgrade them to element arrows once interest hits. Upgrading takes time, and you can't always afford to sit there and wait for towers to upgrade 4 times.

-Learning hotkeys for tower upgrading and building is essential for quick tower build and micro technique. "U" will always upgrade a tower to its next level, and in all cases that I can think of, you can upgrade a tower by pressing the first letter of the upgrade (ex: Gunpowder -> (M)uck). X is the hotkey for sell.
-As in Warcraft, Ctrl+click (or double-click) will select all towers of the same type. Very useful for rapid upgrading.
-TFT 1.22 introduced a new feature that permanently enables health bars over units and buildings so you won't have to hold alt down all the time. I don't see why you would ever NOT use this for EleTD.

-Always know how to prioritize. For example, microing the impulse tower is usually very important, but if it's an Earth wave that will be easily killed without any micro anyways, and the next wave is a fire wave and you have insufficient defense set up, you should concentrate on preparing for the next wave instead of microing one tower. Of course if you are good at multitasking, you can do a little bit of both at once...but you must know your own limits.

-During the last few levels (~55 and above) and even before that, most towers that would have served you well in earlier levels become almost completely obsolete. While supporting towers are ALWAYS effective no matter what level, damaging towers such as zealot, quaker, gunpowder, etc. no longer have that much of an effect when you consider the insanely high amounts of HP that creeps have at this point. Thus, it is important to have lvl 2 duals, lvl 3 triples, or preferably pure element towers as the backbone of your defense at this point. This holds even more true during the Ronald round, where only the strongest towers will do significant amounts of damage.

-Well towers and Blacksmith towers in general can be left on autocast if you have enough, but sometimes it becomes necessary or preferable to activate their abilities manually. This is especially true if you have certain towers which are much stronger than others--for example your first lvl 2 triple tower probably deserves the buffs more than your lvl 1 triples, and pure element towers always have priority over everything else.

-Although for normal situations it is only beneficial to slow creeps down as or before they go into tower range, during the Ronald round it is usually beneficial to slow the Ronalds down =everywhere= on the map. This is because the Ronalds come at a constant and neverending stream, so it's better to have more time to deal with them as they come. Of course, this is dependent on your tower setup, but the general principle usually holds.

Pick

-In general towers that require micro (impulse, tidal) are a little stronger in All pick since the emphasis is not so much on selling/rebuilding.

-Past midgame ~round 30 or so, sell/rebuild tactics with element arrows/cannons become essentially useless, so it's better to devote micro time to something else (e.g. the aforementioned towers).

-Always attempt to plan for lategame towers. Not always possible, but try to place your towers where you would want then at the end. This isn't SR so you can't just sell and rebuild things to replace them! Know before you place a tower whether it's going to be permanent or just serving as an upgrade to another tower (i.e. "this kindle here will eventually become a windstorm...").

-In the early game arrows and cannons deal roughly comparable amounts of damage. Later on, cannon towers become more effective since slowing comes into effect, making creeps bunch up.

Random

-Blacksmith/Zealot/Quaker towers and Well/Drowning towers can be "chainmorphed" somewhat akin to chainmorphing destroyers in WC3. Assuming you have the ability to build both blacksmith and zealot, ideally for each wave you want to have a bunch of zealot towers that are all buffed. One solution is to build a bunch of zealot towers and then build a bunch of blacksmith towers to keep them all buffed. If you're quick you can sell/rebuild the zealot towers in between rounds, or you can sell/rebuild the blacksmith towers between interests. But it's very very hard to build all of it at once. My solution requires very active micro but with a little bit of practice it isn't too hard. This needs to be done before the wave actually hits because otherwise blacksmith towers will autocast and that ruins everything. The idea is that you build a bunch (like 10) fire towers, upgrade to amp fire, then upgrade ALL to blacksmith. Then, when the timing is right (ideally right after interest and about 10 seconds before the creeps hit) you do the following:

-Tower 1 -> zealot
-Tower 2 buffs tower 1, Tower 2 -> zealot
-Tower 3 buffs tower 2, Tower 3 -> zealot
-etc etc

-This allows you to have all except one of your zealot towers buffed, and in the end you have no blacksmith towers sitting around doing nothing! Note that this is strictly an interest abuse tactic and not recommended if you aren't experienced with timing sell/rebuild tactics.

-In late game when you finally receive an element that hasn't come into play before, it is often advisable to just spam a lot of amplified towers of that element if you don't know what to build. You only have 3 seconds in between waves in VH, so waiting for Element Query to tell you all of your new options can leave you with too little time. You can get to every new tower from an amplified tower of the new element, so it can be better just to start from there.

-In early-mid game, always build arrow towers before the next element comes.

-If the random element is an interest pick or a pure element, sell as much as possible. Since you are given a long period of time before the next wave and there's no elemental to deal with, you should be able to sell/rebuild a lot. Judge how much depending on your own build speed and the current status of the interest timer.

-Sells can't be quite as last-minute on battle.net. Aim to sell towers ~1 second earlier than you would offline to make sure that you sell in time.

-Pures are the most expensive towers in the game, and as such always deserve to be sold/rebuilt unless you absolutely need them to always be firing in order to survive a particular wave. This should probably take priority over all other sell/rebuild tactics. However, pures also take a prohibitively long time to build from scratch (except for periodics which are imba ^^;). As such, you should concentrate on maintaining two groups and alternating between the two in time with interest. For example, assuming you are building pure earth towers and can build at most 2, you build a group of 2 pure earth, but at the same time have another group of 2 focused/refined earth towers. Before interest hits you sell the pures and upgrade the focused/refined to pures, then build 2 more focused/refined towers. Selling and rebuilding pures works better with longer ranged pures (light, dark) and might not be quite as applicable with water/fire.

-Towers that require constant micro (impulse) are not good for random because they prohibit you from selling/rebuilding tactics. (unless you are REALLY good and can do both simultaneously! Possible, but very stressful...believe me, I've tried) Tidal, Laser, Trickery etc is still alright as long as you are confident enough in your multitasking ability but mainly this is a problem with Impulse.

-Know how much you can sell/rebuild, and what types of towers are better to do it with. It's a LOT easier to sell/rebuild 10 of the same tower, than it is to sell/rebuild 10 completely different towers. Thus, I usually keep most of my support towers as permanent towers which I never sell, then I have a bunch of damage towers which keep on being constantly sold/rebuilt between waves/interest timings.

-If you are just starting out and don't know what to sell/rebuild, the best advice is to make sure your main damage towers always fit the next wave. That means obviously use strong elements vs waves if you have the right towers, but it also means things like having AoE damage vs Undead.
-Building towers is most efficient using a zigzag pattern since the builder has to travel the least distance that way.

-Using Shift-click to rally your builder is not efficient since doing b-[x]-click repeatedly will cancel his "summoning" animation and allow him to build faster. However, shift-click is useful if you need to divert your attention to other things. For example if you wish to build towers but you're also timing an interest sell, you can use shift-click in that instance (then go back to manual building once you've done the sell).

-Arrow towers take up a relatively minimal amount of gold later on so you can always feel free to build a mass of them before elementals come, and your interest won't be hurt significantly at all.

-Selling/Rebuilding more than 12 towers becomes a little harder since you can't select them all at once. But it's still possible.

-When you click-drag a rectangle over a bunch of towers, the unupgraded ones are selected by default. Can be useful when trying to upgrade a bunch of towers as fast as possible.

-Magic/Mushroom/Summoning/Disease/Hail towers cannot be sold/rebuilt as aggressively as other towers since they all require time to charge their abilities.

-As the game progresses when you are selling/rebuilding you will have to start rebuilding sooner, since towers take longer to get up.
-Generally the fastest and easiest way to rebuild towers is to build all the base towers first as fast as you can, then once the final tower is complete, ctrl+click/double click and upgrade them all at the same time.

-The more interest picks there are in play, the more powerful and worthwhile interest abuse becomes. however, you will have to build more than usual since your towers will not be as efficient as if you had stronger elemental picks.

Element TD 4.1 is out !

noreply@blogger.com (BladeMaster) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:23:00 +0000

Download Element TD 4.1

Changelog:

-Fixed the multiple builder bug
-Fixed Ronald crash bug
-Fixed healing heals upon leak

-Major improvements to creep pathing (they stay on path and don't cut corners anymore)
-Improvements in performance for Radius, Poison, Roots, Electricity, Gunpowder, Ice, Hydro, and Flesh Golem

-Ronald tweaked (see below)
-Terrain for area 4 (Purple) and 5 (Yellow) remade
-Builder now has a custom skin and voice (not so boring anymore!)
-Ronald's custom skin was improved, notice the hair, belt, and shoes

-Elemental trophy terrain visibility fixes
-Fixed misplaced pure essence trophy
-Fixed SW (Super Weapons) Life Boost/Waygate hotkey conflict
-Fixed extra investment tooltip error

-Renamed some of the dialog boxes to make the mode less ambiguous
-Buildable areas behind portals removed, accessibility to random/extreme forbidden
-Contributor builder added for MagicalHacker, cohadar, and Isin (Void)
-Added race mode message to announce first clear

**Ronald**
-Each upgrade now boosts both movespeed by 15 and hp by 15%, as opposed to just hp by 15%
-There are now only 15 levels of upgrade as opposed to 20
-New upgrade rates are: 10/20/30/50/75/100/150/200/300/400/500/750/1000/1250/1500
-Performance optimized, a lot

Castle Fight Strategies: guide to Massive AOE

noreply@blogger.com (BladeMaster) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 11:33:00 +0000

I guarantee that this tactic has the greatest AOE attack power at this time in CF, which means there is no way to face this kind of unit formation in front.

The race you'll need is:

Corrupt
Chaos
Elf (union)
Northern

======================

Stage 1:

Corrupt builds Neither Ancient
Chaos builds Chaos Citadel
Elf builds Dragon hawk Portal
Northern builds Azure Nest

Note:

In the end when Elf builds Dragon hawk Portal, Chaos will have enough money to upgrade Chaos Citadel to Greater Chaos Citadel.

What can you expect?

Basically you will notice this formation has 3 air units formation and only 1 ground unit, so opponent's who haven't prepared with sufficient anti-air will suffer.

Because elf has rushed to Dragon Hawk, this tactic also sufficiently counters enemy air.

There is another advantage I noticed recently, Chaos Champion's attack type is normal, and it is good to kill Troll, Blood thirster, Suumpnolk and Marksman (This one is weird. Effects seem good even though Sniper is light armor), so if your opponents don't build a good meat shield in front of their anti air units, you can massacre their units with Chaos Champion.

What if this doesn't work?

Option 1:
Corrupt buys a blast staff and passes it to Northern.

Option 2:
After Corrupt gets its first Shadow Drake, re-synchronize all units, wait for them to spawn, and then stike with Northern.

How does one re-synchronize all units?

1. reset Shadow Drake
2. 2 seconds later reset Chaos Champion
3. 2 seconds later reset Dragon hawk
4. 2 seconds later reset Azure Drake

The math that justifies the above is as follows:

Shadow Drake 400 => 15 + 400/20 = 35 (seconds)
Chaos Champion 350 => 15 + 350/20 = 32.5
Dragon hawk 310 => 15 + 310/20 = 30.5
Azure Drake 280 => 15+ 280/20 = 29

So it shows you just need to count down approximately 2 seconds for each units then you'll get your re-synchronization.

Re-synchronization is extremely useful before any sides use their strike. When you re-synchronize before you strike you get an overpowered push wave after you strike, and if you are lucky enough to have guessed the right timing on your re-synchronization before they use a strike, they'll find they wasted a strike and will have to use another one.

Being good at micro-management is really important in stages 1-2 because it allows you to re-synchronize well.
By stages 2-3, re-synchronization becomes less effective because there are too many units on the field.

What you can do sync trick?

Indeed, synchronizing is a part of the core strategy that everyone should know. Here I listed what units are good for doing sync.

350$:
Chaos Champion
(But this one seems only 1 from start to end game)
Red Dragon
Ballista

400$:
Shadow Drake
Ice Queen

These five units are core AOE damage output units, so you must sync them for best the battle result. (Uless you are facing frost luncher.)

======================

Stage 2:

Corrupt builds Shadow Ancient until there are totally 3 (so it means 2 more after the first one). And lastly, one more unit in this stage (I prefer Felhound for this one). This aims for 1350 wood.

Chaos

Now I have better route to build creeps.
Satyr x3 to form cage on the corner(don't upgrade), Red Dragon x2 and one last unit depending on how much you need for a SoD. If you are receiving very little pressure then try an Infernal, otherwise get a Red Dragon.

This one is better because you will already be prepared for opponent's specials, and at the same time I found that waiting for red dragon is just too long to wait. Waiting for a red dragon will slow down your income rate.

Elf builds Blood elf War Academy, if opponents have more land units, especially mass casters, build High elf Siege Factory x2, then more Dragon hawk Portal (don't build School of Wizardry unless there is a eraser).This aims for 1800 woods

Northern builds Crystal Palace x2, one last unit that depends on the situation. It's usually safe to get even a third Crystal Palace. This aims for 1350 woods

Note:

In the stage 2 opponents WILL be abusing specials, The key to survival is farming to weaken their usage of specials and still be able to aim for enough wood.

Here is a good guide:
farming guide by monk

Good farming ration usually goes about 1:3. It means like opponents built a Obelisk of light, and we need corrupted ent 125x1, 2 satyr 120 x2 to form a cage. It will most likely not be frost wolf. I'll wait for queen, This is just an illustration to show you what a cage looks like.

and what unit is still good to do farming in 1.12?

Any cheap units you can find !!

For example,Corrupt has Corrupted Ancient of Battle (125$), Chaos has lesser Demon Cage (120$), Northern has Snowy Rocks (115$).

Caging them will result in weak units surviving longer on the battle field. And don't forget the building cost is the production rate: 15+ building costs/20, the lower the cost, the faster the production rate, therefore, this is an easy calculation between their special and how many weak units we need. The ratio is about 1 : 3, this means when they have 1 Obelisk of Light, Well of Pain, City of Magic, Death Pit,...etc. In this situation, sufficient farming will be 3 cheap caged units versus 1 special.

The two things you'll need to find a different way to deal with are Volcanoes and Forgotten Ones.

(Well, maybe Starfall Obelisk should be included as well, but since it is nerfed, I think most people will choose Amazon.)

When you face Volcanoes it's hard to sustain your cage, but fortunately most of your units are AIR units, so it won't be a good counter to your formation. Just stop producing those cheap units. BTW, if opponents try to mix Volcano with other specials, just try TOP LANE. Building cheap units without a cage on the top lane is the answer. It will waste and drain their power.

When you face Forgotten Ones it is also hard to sustain your cage, but fortunately Icy Tower from Northern is a good counter to mass Forgotten Ones (Corrupt Protector is also a good counter, but northern has less wood requirements). Building only 1 Icy Tower near your cage will make you free money. (Try RP that versus 5 AI one)

When you face Forgotten One it is also hard to sustain your cage, but fortunately Icy Tower from is a good counter to mass Forgotten One, build only 1 Icy Tower near your cage will make you free money. (Try RP that versus 5 AI one)

======================

Stage 3:

Corrupt builds Eye of Corruption

Then build 1 void keeper. After that it depends. I usually save for items. However, the alternative option is to build more Shadow Dragons and Wells of Pain. This is still a good option.

*Forgotten One in the end game stage doesn't seem good when there is a lots of AOE damage on the field.

Chaos builds Shine of Destruction

If you're finding that your opponent is overwhelming you with more meat shields then balance the situation with more Infernals. Otherwise, try more Red Dragons. And don't forget Magic Tower Ruin or Volcano!

Elf builds Shrine of Justice

The only good unit for Elf in the end game is still Dragon Hawk. I find, for the most part, that you can abuse this, but if you're finding that your opponent's long siege units are beating your Ice Queens, you should try more ballistas. And don't forget Obelisk of Light.

*City of Magic in any game stage is totally a waste of money, so don't build it!

Northern builds World Freezer

Afterward Build 1 Wandigoo. I usually prefer Ice Queens for the rest of the units. But If you're finding that the power of your air isn't sufficient, for instance if your opponents built too many Dragon Hawks and are forcing a tie with your air, then try to mass Azure Drakes. It will be the deciding factor. And don't forget Greater Frost Launcher.

Note:

Stage 3 is almost 15 minutes into the game. After this stage it's totally chaos. What you need to do is mass those AOE units similar to what you did in stages 1 and 2. The difference is you'll buy an orb, drum and bass, mass specials, change single lane tactic to both lane, etc. There's too much to be explained, but after the end of stage 3 there is nothing that can stop this formation because there is too much AOE damage in the front.

What forms AOE attack?

There are 4 main resources:

Spell Damages from Queen and Dragon hawk.
Splash Damages from AIR unit.
Long Range Siege.
World Freezer.

Maybe nobody noticed that this game was designed with higher armor values for high-end units. And what does armors value mean? It means your units are stronger than the HP values you see on your screen would suggest.

Unit takes damage = damage / (1+ Armor*6%)

SO

Unit maximum HP = Unit equal HP / (1+ Armor*6%)

Unit equal HP = Unit maximum HP * (1+ Armor*6%) (when armor > 0)

At the first glance, everyone will think to nerf a unit by reducing it's armor or picking a good damage type. In fact this is WRONG! There are other ways to totally ignore armor.

They are spell, splash, and cleaving damage (I don't know how the line damage from ballistas will act). Reducing armor to make huge damage is totally a waste of time!

So, I combine these 3 kinds of effects to form the maximum AOE attack. Your unit number will increase with time, and most of the units without enough HP or magic resistance will be instantly killed in the later game stages. For now even several infernals still get killed in a second (1500 HP! and 7 armor = 42% equals HP = 630 is ignored!) , I think only legendary Hydra will be stronger than infernal, but it is not possible to use a meat shield protecting units behind it since there are AOE effects everywhere and 0 armor effects on them.

Focus on Damage

However, I didn't feel satisfied with only massive AOE. I also abused reduced armor effects and increasing both attack speed and damage at the same time.

reduce armor effects from:

Single target from Blood thirster
650 range Aura from Void Keeper
850 range AOE from Wandigoo
Whole map from Eye of Corruption

Increasing attack speed:
Felhound

Increasing attack damage:
525 range AOE from Chaos Champion

It is already overkill without AOE attack.

Strength and Weakness

Strength

This tactic has overkill power on units pushing, once it completed Nothing is capable to withstand this tactic.

This tactic also has better income growing rates since it doesn't use any specials before legendary buildings. Dealing with opponent's specials by farming will also make sure you have more units than they do.

Weakness

Lack of Healing power and too unit focused. This is not a good rush tactic.

AOE attacks grow with Time, and therefore it is not very strong at first. Focusing on units means that this tactic doesn't murder units with killer specials. Players must know HOW TO PLAY WITHOUT SPECIALS until the 1st legendary building for each race is built. This will be hard for newbies because farming and single lane strategies aren't popular in public games.

Tactics over tactics, this isn't ready for newbies.

Castle Fight Strategies: guide to farming

noreply@blogger.com (BladeMaster) — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 12:27:00 +0000

Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. History
3. Rational
4. In practice: how to farm
5. Farming counters what?
6. Specific ways to farm versus specific special buildings
7. Farming units other than murlocs
8. Ramifications
9. Conclusion

1. Introduction
“Farming,” the official term coined by the Koreans, refers to the strategy of trapping units in a box in your own base, so they remain stationary and do not engage in combat. Other terms it may be referred to include boxing and caging.

2. History
A few months ago, the strategy of mass special buildings seemed unstoppable. No matter how hard you tried, no ordinary strategy could be used to combat the combination of obelisks, wells of pain, magic tower ruins, and/or death pits. No matter what kinds of units you made, just a few of these special killer buildings would decimate all the units on the field. Many forumers who have not played against competent people who use this strategy will disagree, but I can assure you this is true. No responses to this post should be about mass specials vs mass unit producing buildings, as this guide is about farming.
The problem with this metagame was that it led people to turn off unit production to avoid feeding your opponent bounty. Then a long war of mass treasure boxes could ensue, until one courageous team would sync and release all their units. The combination of mass wizards and silver glades, at the time, seemed to be the only option that could overcome mass specials, until the farming strategy was discovered and employed.
The farming technique was developed long ago by Koreans to counter special buildings in any amount. As one of the first non-Koreans to play castle fight on the Asia server, farming seemed awkward to me at first as well. The Koreans would still always lose to us, because of their unfamiliarity of mass special strategies and our better timing. However, after they started adapting, we started to lose a few rounds. After examining and analyzing the replays, we began to suspect there was great validity in the farming strategy.

3. Rational
If you have never played the farming strategy, at first it may seem silly. Many people who simply hear about it do not the grasp the concept of why it works. I will try my best to explain the reasoning behind it. All killing special buildings work in a similar way:
1. Randomly select a unit out of all of your opponent’s units.
2. Apply a single targeted effect to that unit.
or
2. Apply an aoe effect centered around that unit.
Keep this in mind as I go on.

Normally on the battlefield, there are x units belonging to your team. Let’s say your opponent builds a death pit. Then, every 12 seconds, a unit on your team will die. To counter this, many people simply spam weak units. This is an effective counter, because you’re adding the number of units on your team, reducing the chance that your important big units are hit with the death pit. However, there are a few problems with this strategy. The cheapest spamable units are never good for actual fighting and they usually feed your opponent bounty instead of contributing to the battle. Once your opponent starts getting the good aoe damage units that are the best units for winning late game, these weak units will serve little to no use in actual combat. In addition, once these units die to either your opponent’s units/buildings or a rescue strike, the number of units you have on the battlefield goes down drastically and special buildings instantly become more powerful. To reiterate, the three problems are:
1. Spam units don’t add much to combat
2. Spam units feed your opponent bounty
3. Spam units lose some effectiveness once your opponent strikes them.
To alleviate these three problems, we come to the solution of farming.
When we farm units, we have them boxed in, unable to move or fight at all. In this way, they will take absolutely no damage from conventional units. There is no possible cost effective way to get rid of these units. The units will slowly build up, giving you a pretty much permanent source of spam, shielding you from unit killing buildings or unit damage buildings.
The one big disadvantage of farming is that the obelisk of the wild, the orc totem, and the silver glade become less effective, especially the first two. A buff to any of your farm units is practically useless, and with a big farm, these buff specials will almost exclusively buff units in the farm.

4. In practice: how to farm
What is the best race to farm with? The clear solution is the naga race. Murlocs are by far the best unit to farm with. One obvious reason they are good is that they spawn 2 units every few seconds at a very fast rate. They have, by far, the best cost per unit in the game. One murloc has 170hp, allowing it to barely survive one hit from the obelisk of light. The murlocs can also be upgraded for more hp, in case you have specials that do more than 170 damage at a time, ie tidal wave or well of pain. An overlooked advantage of murlocs is their small collision size. You can easily fit many many murlocs into a single 2x2 space, while you can only fit 4 grunts into that same space. In addition to murlocs, naga has the coral statue, which allows for cheap easy healing, healing damage from the obelisk of light, well of pain, and especially aoe damage like volcanoes.
I will talk about how to farm on the west side of the map. The east side is exactly the same, except everything is reversed. The best places to start your farm is at a corner, because you will only need 2 buildings to block off an area. The four best places for the west side are the top left and bottom left corners of the map and the top and bottom parts of the map directly to the left of the walls.
One misconception behind farming is that it is wildly expensive. This is completely false, as it only costs a mere 120 gold to farm and I sometimes find that a 120 gold farm is all I need. Simply have your ally build any random building for you in the appropriate place, and then build your murloc hut to close off the box. There is a specific way to do this. For example, the correct way to farm on the bottom left corner is:

Correct Way
_____
|____|<-murloc hut |____|_____ ||||||||____| <-ally building ||||||||____| ^farm area In this way, you rally the murloc hut to spawn units all the way to the bottom left of the map. If your ally building is a unit producing building instead of a special, rally it to the top right, so units that spawn from that building will not get trapped. Wrong Way _____ |____|<-ally building |____|_____ ||||||||____| <-murloc hut ||||||||____| ^farm area You cannot switch the ally building with the murloc hut, as shown in the wrong way diagram. As murlocs spawn, they will bunch up to the right, because they want to travel to the right towards the eastern castle. If the area directly to the left of the murloc hut is completely occupied, new spawning murlocs will not be able to be spawned inside the box. This is the standard one box farm. You can make your starting farm bigger if you have more buildings to farm with. As the game goes on, you can make significant changes to your farm. You may also add onto a one box farm with more buildings as the game goes on. When your opponent gets a well of pain, you may upgrade your murlocs to level 2, and when your opponent gets volcanoes, you should get a coral statue to counter. Other Hints: 1. There is a coral statue bug where you do not need the coral statue to finish for it to heal life. Say, for example, you are saving to a naga siren. You can build an unfinished coral statue next to your farm, or anywhere else for it to heal your units during the time you have between 250 and 350 gold. Keep in mind, you only get the full gold refund back if you building does not get damaged. 2. As the game starts, I do not recommend farming or even placing buildings to get ready to build a farm. If you build too low and the main battle is near your castle, your ground units will run past this battle, probably causing you to lose your push. Flying units are even worse, directly flying past any battle in the lane going straight for the enemy base. 3. One point I want to stress is not to uselessly waste gold on huge amounts of murloc buildings, especially if your opponent stops building specials because of your farm (which most good people do). You will still need good units to push your lane, as farming is not an offense, it’s a simple defense verses their offense. 5. Farming counters what?
Farming totally counters:
Obelisk of light, City of magic, Well of pain, Magic tower ruin, Volcano, Oracle, Death pit, Chilling mushroom
Farming somewhat counters:
Tentacles(late game), Ancient Pyramid, Serpent ward, Starfall obelisk, Assassins
Farming affects in some way(positively or negatively):
Eraser, Skull Pile, City of Decay, Tidal wave, Frost launcher, Artillery
Farming does not affect in a noticeable way:
Eye of destruction, Shrine of Destruction, World Freezer, Stun ward

6. Specific ways to farm vs specific special buildings
1. Obelisk of light
Murlocs are perfect farm units vs obelisk of the light. In 1.11 obelisks do 165 damage instead of 175 in 1.10. Since murlocs have 170 hp, this allows them to barely survive one hit.

2. City of magic
Getting your farmed murlocs turned into sheep is not a very big deal.

3. Well of pain
Upgrade level one murlocs to level 2 murlocs, as level one murlocs can die to one cast from the well of pain. Farming is extremely effective versus wells of pain, because they cannot save mana on their wells when they are pushing and release the mana once you strike, killing all of your first units. Instead, there will always be a buffer of units protecting your main pushing units.

4. Forgotten Ones(tentacles)
Forgotten ones can give early murloc farms trouble. However, when the farms fill up, then tentacles will actually spawn outside the farm, and will only damage your buildings. Later on, mass sycned tentacles can mess you up, but you can trap in royal guard if you’d like, which almost instantly kill tentacles.

5. Eye of destruction
The eye is a global effect and is not countered by farming.

6. Magic Tower Ruin
The only effect you may have to worry about is the mutation effect, but a few murlocs do pretty well versus a mutation.

7. Volcano
The beauty of the farm is that volcanoes become completely useless once you have enough murlocs and a coral statue. In addition, volcanoes don’t stack with each other in the same area, so massing volcanoes will not work.

8. Eraser
You opponent won’t get an eraser until late game, at which point, your murlocs will probably get erased. This isn’t as bad as it sounds, because your mass expensive units will be safe from destruction.

9. Shrine of Destruction
It’s not a big deal if you let some units out because a blocking building was destroyed; just rebuild. Also, you really want your murloc producing buildings to be destroyed, as they’re one of the cheapest buildings in the game.

10. Starfall Obelisk
This building can actually do some damage. However, with enough coral statues, you will survive the stars falling down on you, as the 400 damage is not in a single instant, but rather over 8 seconds. As with volcanoes, starfall does not stack in an area.

11. Oracle
You want your opponent to steal murlocs; it’s a free one gold for you.

12. Ancient Pyramid
An aoe stomp is no big deal for these murlocs.

13. Tidal Wave
You must upgrade your murlocs to level 2 once your opponent builds a tidal guardian. The first wave will probably kill all your murlocs, but they can rebuild quickly. The beauty of the farm is that if you build the farm at the corners, as I suggested, the tidal wave will never go straight down a lane, killing all the units in the lane.

14. Skull pile
A skeleton spawning in your farm is not a bid deal, even if it is a general. You probably have unit production buildings around the farm whose units can kill these rouge skeletons. Later on, you can trap some big units in order to combat threats like this. Also, never underestimate the dps of 12 murlocs hitting one target.

15. Death pit
Spam perfectly counters death pits, rendering them pretty useless.

16. City of Decay
2 Coral statues prevents the effects of the city of decay on your farm.

17. Chilling mushroom
These things prefer air to ground, but if one hits a farmed unit, the world is not over.

18. Frost launcher
Will only freeze production and freeze murlocs in place. Not a big deal.

19. World freezer
Farming doesn’t counter world freezer, but world freezer doesn’t counter farming either.

20. Serpent ward
Again, aoe is not a big deal.

21. Stun ward
Farming is neither good or bad versus a stun ward.

22. Artillery
You already have coral statues to counteract the artillery.

23. Assassins
Although technically not a special building, farming somewhat counters assassins. Sometimes, because of the shear number of units trapped, enemy assassins target one of the murlocs. However, most of the time, the assassins are blocked off from reaching the murlocs and run around aimlessly until they die from a random cause.

7. Farming units other than murlocs
In addition to naga, other races can trap units. There are 4 types of units commonly trapped: spam units, magic resist units, damage units, and heal units.

Spam units: These units include grunts, footmen, trees, satyrs, frost wolves, zombies.
These spam units may be trapped in the absence of a naga or when you are playing a public game. Keep in mind that without a naga, you simple way to heal your trapped units, and they will give some bounty. A special note with grunts is that their collision size is huge; only 4 may fit in a box.

Magic resist units: These units include defenders, banshee, and spellbreaker kodo.
One may care to trap these units for their magic resist properties. This counters damaging specials, but not single kill specials like magic tower ruin, death pit, or oracle. Another problem is that these don't spawn nearly as fast as spam units and cost a lot more. A benefit is that defenders and banshee are very good units in battle. You can rally them in or outside a farm with some practice. Rally them in when you're either a. winning a push so hard you don't need the extra units or b. losing a push so hard, extra units won't help. An extra note about the spellbreaker kodo is that their collision size is one of the biggest in the game and is extremely difficult to farm. Also, farming with an orc on your team is generally a bad idea, because the only saving grace of the orc race is their totems. With many units in traps, totems become a lot less useful.

Damage units: Units with good aoe damage may be trapped
Units with high splash damage such as Royal guards, incubus, chaos champion, infernal maybe be trapped in the extremely late game when mass synced tentacles become an issue. 4 synced tentacles all hitting the same building for the complete duration of the tentacles can kill that building, even with coral statues healing. This is a problem for farms, because all the tentacles will probably target around the same area and your opponent can use the tentacles to focus one building(yes, you can control what tentacles attack). Splash units kill these tentacles almost instantly.
In addition, I've seen amazons being trapped close to the front lines. In addition to being almost magic immune, these amazons can use used as somewhat of a tower. However, in my opinion, amazons should be used whenever you can in a push, as they are such a great unit. Smart rallying can, as with magic resist units, be used to determine which amazons are trapped and which ones go into battle.

Heal units: Currently the only healing unit in the game you can trap are wizards.
Wizards can be trapped for their heal properties. You can either use them to heal in the absence of coral statues or in conjunction corals statues. Again, you can rally them either in or outside your farm depending on when you need them in your push. They also do good damage, especially with a good chain lighting.

8. Ramifications
The introduction of farming brings about a huge changes in the metagame. The first change I would like to directly address is that this strategy is EXTREMELY effective versus special buildings, so effective that a small farm of 120 gold will counter many specials. Once your farm builds up, the following special are made almost completely useless and not at all cost effective to the other team: Obelisk of light, city of magic, well of pain, magic tower ruin, volcano, oracle, ancient pyramid, death pit, serpant ward. To a lesser but still great extent, tidal waves and starfall obelisks are made weaker. Yes, 120 gold can counter all these buildings.
The downside to farming is that your own special buildings with become less effective: These buildings include obelisk of the wild, silver glade, and totem. If farming become prevalent, we should see a huge decrease in the use of special buildings, both killer and buff varieties. As a result, castle fight will become more unit dominated, the way it was intended.

The balance of races is extremely disturbed by the advent of this new strategy. No longer does the combination of elf, chaos, corrupted, and night elf dominate every single other strategy. Elf, corrupted, and chaos have gotten worse, because their best buildings, obelisk of light and well of pain, will be drastically reduced in power. While elf still has the extremely good units to stay a top race, corrupted unfortunately does not and is relegated to the bottom of the race balance ladder. Chaos also got the short end of the stick, as their best building, the magic tower ruin cannot be spammed anymore. Naga is now obviously a lot better because it is the best farming race. Although undead's pits are less useful now, undead never really relied on their pits to be useful. The combination of skeletons and banshee still allow undead to be a useful race. Night elf loses their 2 specials, but I argue that they are still a good race. The 2 night elf specials it lost were both meant to counter of specials to some extent, and now that the use of specials has decreased, OotW and silver glade are not in as high demand anyways. In addition, night elf still has the extremely good units that can dominate at all stages of the game. Farrie dragons are extremely good in the early game, assassins run rampant throughout the whole game, and Amazons are a game changer, defeating whole pushes with ease. Ice/northern didn't directly become anymore powerful, but now that other races are worse and killing buildings don't kill everything in sight, ice got an direct buff. Maybe now we will be able to see frost queens owning up lanes. Orc is really hurt by this new technique. Even though it wasn't spectacular before, Orc's best building, the totem, is completely incompatible with farming. In addition, orc units are on average, terrible. Human has the most interesting change because of farming. Human now possess the only unit-affecting special that isnt' affected by farm: the horn. Now that units can actually survive combat, the horn, adding 60% to attack speed is huge. Although defenders and knights are human's only good buildings currently, spamming them is still a decent option and your teammates can make up for the lack of diversity.

Without further ado, I present an approximate new race tier list
High Tier
Elf
Naga
Mid Tier
Human
Undead
Night Elf
Low Tier
Ice
Chaos
Bottom Tier
Orc
Corrupted

9. Conclusion
Farming is such a useful technique that everyone attempting to get decent at this game should learn it. It is revolutionary and metagame-changing. Most specials are near useless now, almost as if they were taken out of the game. In the next version, there should be some type of fix to balance specials: make them less powerful without farming, but more powerful with farming. The only change I can think of is a change to how specials target, similar to how the chilling mushroom prefers to target air.

I worry that once again, the game will be centralized on one concept, as it had before with mass specials. More specifically, people will start to build unit producing buildings that are hard to counter, such as dragonhawks or wizards. Clearly, some races are better than other and will probably see more use in pro-private games. But castle fight is once again turned into a new and better game, even without a new update. I see more games won on timing, syncing, and strikes, rather than who can mass the most specials.

So, in conclusion: farming is extremely powerful; it counters specials very well; massing units can work now

Castle Fight Strategies: terminology guide

noreply@blogger.com (BladeMaster) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 11:30:00 +0000

Imo it is important to talk the same language while playing in a team. This language should be as short as possible, because you need a lot of time for other things in castle fight. If you play with a lot of ppl who are new to the map you dont always want to explain things, so I thought about a terminology guide. Ppl playing with more serious players for the first time often have problems with little commands which are often used and I want to make it easier for those ppl. They can play, hear a command, look it up hear and do it. Ofc I listed the commands I use and it is possible that I forgot some, too. Pls pm me if you think I forgot a command, write the command and the meaning.

RACES AND BUILDINGS

eu (elven union)

bm (blade master, 220 gold)
thirster (blood thirster, 275 gold)
hawk (dragon hawk, 310 gold)
wiz (wizard, 475 gold)

ool (obelisk of light, 235 gold)
hex (city of magic, 240 gold)

ne (night elf)

ama (amazone, archer 150 gold -> master archer 200 gold -> amazone 400 gold)
asa (asassin, 200 gold)

oow (obelisk of wilderness, 220 gold)
glade (silver glade, 235 gold)

naga

murcs (murloc hut, 120 gold)
suump (suumpmolk, 175 gold)

ap (ancient pyramide, 360 gold)

hu (human)

pala (paladin, crusader 280 gold -> paladin 245 gold)

horn (gjallar horn, 225 gold)

ud (undead)

pile (skull pile, 160 gold)
lich (lich king, necromancer -> mighty necromancer -> lich)

dp (death pit, 360 gold)
cod (city of decay, 750 gold)

chaos

succi (succubus, 230 gold)
fiend (blood fiend, 280 gold)

mtr (magic tower ruin 200 gold)
sod (shrine of desruction 850 gold)

corrupted

nether (nether drake, 235 gold)

wop (well of pain 275 gold)

northern

hrim (hrimthrusa, 160 gold)
azure (azure drake 280 gold)
magna (magnataur, wolf 115 gold -> bear 125 gold -> magnataur 280 gold)

fl (frost launcher, 210 gold)
shroom (mushroom, 130 gold)

orc

wyv (wyvern, 220 gold)
shami (shaman, 170 gold)
trapper (troll hut 200 gold + upgrade 80 gold)

rock (serpent rock 350 gold)
statis (statis totem 475 gold)

If you want one to build siege you just say "X" build siege. The same works for legendaries.

TACTICAL COMMANDS

coin "X" - this means that you take the builder of player "X" and look with his/her builder for coins.

"X" field farm up/down - this means you should build a farm on the upper or lower lane. "X" fields means that you have leave a certain place from the edge of the map. Every building has a radius of 2 fields, so 4 field farm means that you have to leave 2 buildings space, 2 fields means you have to leave 1 buildings space etc.

sync - one of the most important commands. The best thing is when your units come out at same time with the tank in front. Therefore sync means that your unit have to spawn right after the tank. Ofc it depends, air units are much faster than ground units so they have to spawn later.

"X" micro "X" - this means that player "X" has to use special building "X". It is mostly used in combination with the horn. One player takes care of the horn so it buffs the units when they are near to it.

dont cluster - this command means that one opponent took northern and you have to leave 4 fields among the buildings, because the great fl has a radius of 4 fields.

share - this means that every player has to give control over his/her builder.

orb - this means that one player has to buy the orb and USE it (mostly on the wizards).

stop prod - this means that you have to stop the production of your buildings.

I'm sure I forgot some, so just pm me pls so I can add missing commands.

Castle Fight Strategies: guide to coin

noreply@blogger.com (BladeMaster) — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 11:29:00 +0000

As everybody knows there is always a discussion about coins and the one magical question is: "Do we play with or without coins?" I don't want to say why I love coins, I just want to help people who have problems, because of delay or other reasons.

1. When do coins spawn?

The first coin spawns at 44 seconds, the next at 1:24 min, the next at 2:04 ... You can see every 40s spawns a coin and is available for ca. 5-6 seconds. You can use either the table in the right upper corner to look for the game time (which is the best solution I think, because of other in formations) or you can wait for the "bounty incoming" message which stands under your income 4 seconds before the coin spawns.

2. How to collect the coin?

You should always use sound and a headset, because you can hear where the coin spawns. Ca. 1s before the coin spawns you should start scrolling your screen from lefter upper corner to right upper corner, while your mates are looking for other positions, this has a huge advantage: You hear the coin and spawning sound becomes more quiet if scroll away, so you can hear the coin much better. If you have a low delay because you play with list checker you should blink to the coin, then run a bit, because after every blink is a little pause if you have low ping and then blink again. If you have a higher ping you can blink twice in a row, but you have to test the periods and train it. Double blink is an advantage because you can get the coin fast although you play with high delay. You also can triple blink and 4 times blink, its just a question of training. I always use the big card and don't scroll with mini map, but you can try it if you want to. But in the end there are 3 different possibilities:

A
Everybody does his own stuff and runs for the coins when one spawns (bad idea if the coin is needed for a strategy).

B
You divide the field into 4 parts, every player has one part and stands in the middle of his "turf". If a coin spawns in his area he gets the coin (also bad for a strategy).

C
Everybody gives control of his builder to other players. The one momentarily needing the coin stands in the middle of the map before the coin is spawning. Every player without any tasks (like microing horn or repairing with the other builders) looks for the coin in another area. If he sees it he blinks to the coin with the builder needing the coin.

The dividing of the field is up to you.

3. Who gets the coin?

This is up to your strategy, but in the beginning the builder with the most expensive building should get the coin.

Later on (about 15 min) it is luck to get a coin, because the battle makes too much noise, but until 12 min it should be possible to get at least 95% of the coins.

Castle Fight Strategies: guide to rally point

noreply@blogger.com (BladeMaster) — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 11:27:00 +0000

There are four directions to rally point, up, down, left, and right. Keep in mind that the castle fight map goes sideways, so towards your opponents is either left or right. Now, pick one of those that you want the unit to go. For each direction, there are two different ways to place the rally point. Consider rallying right. You can rally from the top right corner directly to the right, or from the bottom right corner also directly to the right. All rally points should be in a straight line from a corner of the building, not in the middle, but which corner is correct?

The answer is very simple: start in the middle of the side you are rallying to, between the two corners, and go *clockwise*. On the right side, clockwise will take us to the bottom right corner. Rally directly to the right of the bottom right corner.

For the top, rally straight up from the right side.

For left, rally straight left from the top corner.

For bottom, rally straight down from the left side.

Q: How far away should i put the rally point?

A: 80% of the length of a building works.

Q: What if I want to rally left, but the left side is blocked by units?

A: It won't work. Design your farms to avoid this problem. Know which area of the farm will fill up first, and therefore which buildings will no longer be possible to rally into the farm. Then put buildings there that you didn't want to rally into the farm anyway, like obelisk of light.

Q: What if another building is blocking *half* of the left side? Say the top half of the left is blocked.

A: The bottom corner of the left stays the same. The top corner of the left is blocked, so use the first open space towards the top, which is the middle and treat that as the top left corner for rallying left.

Q: How did you figure this out?

A: There's only two places to consider putting the rally point per side. Just try both and see which works. The original rule I worked out was: go in a circle *counter-clockwise* and when you first hit the open area you want to rally into, rally there. You could equally well go clockwise and rally to the last part of the open area where you want the units to go.

What will be new in Footmen Frenzy 6.5

noreply@blogger.com (BladeMaster) — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 11:20:00 +0000

The only real holdup is the new heroes. Triggering some of this stuff is difficult =p. Here are the changes so far...

Falcon - RoF changed to Falcon Punch!

New loading screen.

Item carrying creep added.

DR's summons reworked. Number of units changed from 1/2/3/4/5/1 to 1/2/2/3/3/1. Stats changed on units. Level 4/5/6 gain attack and defense ups.

Jaood now has hero damage.

Owls - level 4/5/6 are now ethereal

Socks cd from 900 to 450

New Heroes - 4 of em (curser, holy guardian, tortured soul, sharon)

pocket factory bounty from 20 to 20/40/60/80/100/100

chim bounty to 50/100/150

roar ult bounty 50/80/100

Demo now level 6 creep

CM aura buffed

K-Rose invis changed from 30 seconds to 15.

shock cd to 10/9/8/8/7/6

lightstorm to 200/350/500

Reworked damage to heroes. Melee units will all do full damage to heroes... ranged units will be slightly less depending on range distance, etc.

Changed cd of some lategame items.

Castle Fight Strategies: guide to banshee

noreply@blogger.com (BladeMaster) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 11:09:00 +0000

Banshees are one of the most controversial units in castle fight. Some think they're way too strong, while others think they're lots of counters for them. I'm going to shed some light and share my experience.

As a disclaimer before i say anything further: I'm talking about private -pr3 -lm games between good people. None of this applies in public games.

The First Banshee
The first banshee is the most important banshee you get and it might be the most important single building in the whole round. To build a banshee, it is imperative that you collect the first coin, which nets you an easy 11 gold. Bansheeing in -nc games isn't viable. It's important to note that the banshee is the single best unit you can build with one coin.

Early game
In fact, I'm going to say this now: In a 4v4 private game, there is NO good unit counter to an early banshee push. (ie. the first banshee you build).
Why is this?
In 4v4 private games, both teams build in one lane and sync their first units into combat based on build time, movement speed, and in what order you want units to arrive to battle. Usually you want your most durable unit(tank) to get to the fight first, because all 4 of your opponent's units will be focusing whatever unit engages them first. This allows for low hp but high damage units to survive and do their job (ie. archers, bloodthristers, druids). The possible tanks include: banshees, defenders, kodo windigo). Usually whichever tank falls first loses the push for its team. This is the scenario for a starting push in castle fight.

Ok, this next part gets a little difficult to understand. The problem here is that no tank can outlast a banshee under normal circumstances. Why? When most teams see an Undead worker picked on the other team, they intelligently assume banshees will be built. Then, they assign one person to make a chaos-damage unit so their push consists of 3 regular-damage-type units + one chaos damage unit. The other push will consist of probably 4 regular-damage-type units. Your team will be doing 25% damage with 3 units and 100% with one unit to the banshee tank. Your opponent will be doing 70% to 175% to your team's tank. Even though banshees probably have much less hp than your tank, your team’s tank will almost definitely fall first. In addition banshees are usually paired with farrie dragons will heals banshees for almost 4x effectiveness in comparison to a regular unit. The point: banshees seldom lose.

So what if your team gets 2 or 3 chaos damage units? Well, the first foreseeable problem is that you’re limiting the types of units you get and many chaos-damage units aren’t especially good early pushers. Also, if your opponent’s team can simply sync so another unit is in the front to tank or better yet, build another undead unit that’s not banshees.

The most popular choices for countering banshees early game and the reasons they don't work include:
Bloodfiend: Unless you get lucky, this unit isn't very durable.
Zombies: These things don’t' have very good stats and again aren't very durable.
Frost dragons: Very hard to sync, because they are so fast and fly. Also, they're not very durable especially vs banshees. On an unrelated note, banshees actually beat these 1v1.
Naga siren: You have to save for an insanely long time and you will have lost the first push by the time you get these plus you'll be behind a lot on income.
Druid: Theoretically this COULD work, but druids extremely flimsy as well and if your team has banshees, you’re probably better off with a fairy dragon.

In my opinion, the best counter to banshees is super early building. If your opponent is making banshees, they will probably wait and sync on the banshee. If you get 2 waves pushing together before their first wave can come out, you will probably win the push. However, your units won’t be the best possible early game units (all under 255 gold or 275 if your unit has an upgrade like defenders). If the other team is extremely quick, they can adapt and counter your strat with quicker buildings.

Mid Game
During the mid game, units with chaos do pretty well, because there are no (or less) complex tanking mechanics going on. Naga sirens especially work wonders versus banshee. Also, tentacles become a viable option, because one group of tents can kill a
banshee.

Late Game
Remember that to win the game, you’re not trying to counter banshees; banshees aren’t the only units your opponent is making.
You must counter the combo of units and specials your opponent’s team is making. When the late game comes around, another strength of banshees is shown: They are highly resistant to spells and can be healed with extreme efficiency by wizards and glades. Late game is all about large presences on the battle field. Many games see 30 units on each side battling it out with reinforcement rates almost equaling death rates. This is the reason why long range siege units are effective late game (They build up because they never get hit by conventional attacks and don’t die). Banshees are a key part of this equation, because aoe spells are not very effective against banshees. These include: frost nova, chain lighting, warlock explosion, tidal wave, starfall. Wizards heal all the damage from these aoe spells very well and in fact, in many games, late game pushes consist of almost entire banshees and wizards.
Ironically, banshees plus wizards counter chain lighting from wizards, frost nova from ice queens, and the explosion from warlocks. I would go so far as to say they counter these units even though the units all have chaos damage. (Actually banshees definitely are good vs warlocks because warlocks don’t even attack enough with their regular attack for it to really matter.)
Units with regular chaos also don’t work very well, because they hardly ever attack banshees (same principle with early game where all units focus one unit on the other team). In addition, generally late game is all about aoe spells and specials(which are spells). Units are too busy dying to aoe spells to actually be effective in battle. The only things that are effective versus(notice how I didn’t save counters to) late game banshee are units with chaos splash. These units include azure dragons, red dragons, incubus and infernal. All of these are effective against both regular units and banshees.

A fun analogy
A good analogy from Warcraft melee concerning with countering a strategy: Nothing the orc army has really counters mass druids of the talon.
Theoretically, raiders counter dotts, because they do extra damage to them and take less damage from them.
Theoretically, spirit walkers counter dotts, because they can dispel all of the dotts’ spells and also redistribute the damage from dott focus fire.
Theoretically, the tauren chieftain counters dotts, because it does aoe damage to lots of units
Theoretically, the blademaster counters dotts, because it rips up low hp units.
So many newbies get all 4 of these things and fight a dott army and lose horribly. Why?
They’re too worried about countering dotts and not the whole overall strategy. The elf can position his army so none of your units can hit dotts. It is extremely hard to maneuver around 3 heroes, 2 quillbeasts, and a pocket factory that your opponent gets. Position is often more important than army size or composition. Therefore, raiders will have a hard time actually attacking dotts. In addition, although dotts do reduced damage all the units and heroes I named, the elf heroes will also be throwing out extremely high dps. Although spirit walkers can dispel, they’ll never have enough mana to dispel every single cyclone, because you can never have more walkers than they have dotts. The TC is negated by mana burn and scrolls of healing. The blade is kept constantly in the air. Although you can dispel the cyclone, it is very hard to react immediately, so the blade will always be in the air for a few seconds.
You’ll be surprised to find out that orcs actually do get this combo of units versus mass dotts. The key is timing. You can harass the night elf and attack him during very small windows where the elf is vulnerable. Also, you must avoid fights, many times trading tps. While doing this, you must slowly level up the tauren chieftain so that his shockwave will overwhelm the number of scrolls of healing the elf has. During a fight you must ensnare the dh out of range of the TC and keep the dh away from the TC as much as possible. In addition, you must alternate between focus firing heroes and dotts, because if you mass focus heroes, your opponent will just try to soak the damage will doing constant dps to your army, but if you mass focus units, the elf heroes won’t die and level up extremely fast, overwhelming you. None of this is very intuitive, but this is how it works.

Miscellaneous
On a completely different note, banshees counter the early orb of lighting + scroll of stone combo strategy after a strike, which often forces a team to use 2 strikes one immediately after the other, because they don’t die to orb of lighting.

Conclusion
My point? Banshees are strong at all points of the game.

Castle Fight Strategies: guide to human

noreply@blogger.com (BladeMaster) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 10:47:00 +0000

Ok, before i start with the actual guide...i want to make somethings clear. CF is a Team game - especially with human. You cant play alone - u got no good chaos damage for banshee rush, no good anti special stuff, no good unit killing specials. What you do have, is good tanks, anti air units, cheap spammable artillery (both units and specials) good supports and most of all...Unit Spam. So yeah, play as a team.

Another thing - this isnt a Strict guide - u cant join a game and alt tab here to see what to build in what order and what to buy etc. You need to adopt your own strategy. This here is just as a guide to help you around how to counter, make combinations with ur mates, and all around following the game.

with that said, the guide starts now :
First thing to mention is the pros and cons of the race.
Pros :
-Good massing units
-Specialized units
-Good supporting abilities
-Really powerful artillery (when used right)
Cons :
-Many tactics can counter them
-Massing units may often cause to lose so careful what units u mass
-Their specialized units can easily be countered, so you need to micro well and sync ur units
-Lousy tower

All in all, u see that human is an easily counterable race. So, until late game comes in and u have 12 warlocks, 24 gryphons, shrine and other units, u are easy to be countered, so if u are, get your friends to help you.

Now, the units :
1.Footman - 100g
250 hp
18 DPS (normal dmg type)
4 armor (heavy)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It can be easily seen that the unit itself is pretty weak. However, its DPS/Gold ratio is pretty high. This means that if massed, it can pose some threat (but careful - if u are facing avatars of vengeance, dont even THINK about massing these, and that is just an example)

2. Defender - 275g
575 hp
38 DPS (normal)
7 armor (heavy)
has evasion and defend (reflect ranged attacks)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

One of the best tanks around (considering the price) . Most of the time, footman is built just so you can upgrade to defender. And he is pretty worth it.

3. Sniper - 140g
270 hp
22 dps (pierce, 500 range)
0 armor (medium)
Has critical strike
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Another good massing unit. This unit is best massed vs light armored units. However, with the recent 1.13b version, its main purpose is to either sit around like that to see if u can counter both land and air units, or specialize it into anti-ground or anti-air unit

4. Marksman - 300g
450 hp
61 dps (pierce 500 range) to air
28 dps (pierce 500 range) to buildings
1 armor (medium)
Has critical strike vs air (its pretty devastating )
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Personnally, i hate this unit but...oh well . It is a pretty good anti air unit, and i've often seen it one hit some air units with critical. I'd not recommend it for massing unless opponents go all air

5. Heavy Gunner - 320 g
53 dps (pierce 550 range)
525 hp
5 armor (medium)
Has splash
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A really good anti-ground unit. When backed up with some tanks, it can be a really good unit. When massed, its even better - it can easily kill an entire wave if u have a strong tanking line.

6. Mortar - 210 g
280 hp
21 dps (siege 1000 range)
0 armor (light)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

One of my favorite artillery units. No, not because of the lousy dps and hp. But because of the easy spammable price - in most games i often find myself having like 10 mortar buildings and not into late game. So when we push, the buildings fall really easy. Needs a strong tanking line tho. And no assasins.

7. Gryphon - 250 g
500 hp
23 dps (magic 450 range)
2 armor (medium)
Has Bash and chain lighting on attack
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Another great unit to mass. Actually, unless your opponents start with ground non-air-attacking units, this unit is only capable of doing something if massed. 6 gryphons often cast chain lighting like crazy and have an easy push. If u have gjallarhorn, its even better.

8. Crusader - 280 g
600 hp
42 dps (hero)
6 armor (heavy)
Has devotion aura, cleaving strikes and inner fire
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Another may-be tank. Tho he is much better as a supporter, especially with inner fire which is more or less a heal.

9. Paladin - 525 g
850 hp
67 dps (heal)
9 armor (heavy)
Has devotion aura, cleaving attacks, bash, inner fire and ressurection
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Even better than crusader (ofc ) . His ressurection makes him an awesome supporter and spamming unit - have a group of 8 paladins and they never die especially with an ice queen around.Paladin may also act as a tank because of his high armor, however even tho his buff buffs good, he likes to cast it to other units, so in some situations, paladin is better than defender in tanking

10. Warlock - 300g
350 hp
17 dps (chaos 160 range)
1 armor (Unarmored)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Probably the best unit to spam in whole castle fight. 10 warlocks usually give the same results as a rescue strike, which by late game is easily achievable.

Those are all the units. Now, about the specials. The lumber costs remain a mystery but i will figure it out soon

Artillery - 200 g
Shoots at random places in the opponent's base, dealing 400-500 siege dmg.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is probably the best late game special ever. Having multiple of these (and by that i mean 10-15) will easily win the game for you. THIS is the reason why human are becoming really lousy when playing -na. Artillery is their best thing.

Gjallarhorn - 225 g
Increases nearby units' attack speed by 66%. Casts it every 6 seconds. Buff lasts for 1 minute.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Although it is pretty good set on autocast, the best thing to do is cast it manually - turn off autocast and when ur units come around cast it. Thx to gjallarhorn, i often see gryphons killing red dragons in 1v1 situations.

Heroic Shrine (still not sure i got the name right ) 725 g
Gives a 22% chance to spawn 2 units instead of one. Doesnt work on legendary units.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There it is, the shrine of all massing. If u ask me, it is a must-have for all human builders. Shrine first, artillery second, safety third. Awesome for turning 10 warlocks into 15 or even 20

Now, we're done with almost all buildings (im not gonna mention towers and treasure boxes yet, but with the recent balance changes, im gonna look up to them). What we have left is strategies. But as i said before, DO NOT STRICTLY FOLLOW THEM. Most of the time, u need to adapt to your opponents. For example, if the elf makes OoL and stops production, u need to do so too. Or else u will get ownd.

1. Defend da DPS
Human have 2 effective tanks - Defenders with their relative low price and good anti-piercing abilities, and Paladins with good armor and healing abilities. Use them ! Try to make a synced wave of tanks, gunners and snipers/marksman.
Something similar to the "imagined strategy of orc" (which is - mass grunts/axemasters which cut off esnared range units while being buffed), this strategy, if managed ok, might be the human strategy. In most games i know, human are about protection and holy stuff. Here, their protection is made by defender, and the holy stuff is in paladin. They can easily be countered by air, which is countered by ur ranged units. Which means, that human units help each other. Syncing them can make this strategy a winner. However, take care. You must rely on your mates to help you out with specials and divine units. Also, this strategy isn't recommended vs splash and other strategies which will damage your ranged units without killing the tanks.

2. AllYourBaseIsDestroyedByArtillery
Simply, counter your opponents, support your friends until u have enough money and lumber to make lots of artillery. A reminder - artillery is more or less useless if u have low numbers and opponents don't have lots of buildings. What artillery is good at is killing buildings which gives u money which gives you ability to make more artillery.
That is pretty simple, nothing else to say .

3.I beleive i can fly!
The only unit of human that can fly - gryphons. Not only do they fly, they can bash and chain lighting ur opponents, and they use no fossil fuel! Give them a ghallarhorn, and a shrine (just a shrine ) and they will hammer their way to the opponent's castle. Take care tho - if opponents use anti air units, it will pay off to make ground units too.
Again, not much to say except that if ur enemies make roflcopters, marksmen, dhawks or other anti air units, abandon strategy! You cannot rely on friends to take out some units. Exceptions are marksmen and possibly copters, which wont fight back vs most units, and your mates can counter them while u are massing your army.

4. Unlimited rescue strikes.
Yes human can do that . What did i say before about warlocks? Have a good mass or them and their nukes will kill the opponents to death. AND , they became smarter, so that once they unleash their nukes, they go back so not everything is lost.
One thing to say - if opponents make assassins, abandon strategy! At least until it is late game and assassins don't do much.

Conclusion : Now you know what human units do and what they can do to opponents. Yes, i know i posted strategies, but u need to adopt them to your game - the warlock strategy should NOT be used if opponents have assassin. Sure it might sound attractive - "hey look at me no0bs , i have rescue strike! Oh noes cheater killed my warlocks! " But yeah, the strategies were a bit emphasized . They arent godlike strategies and u need to collaborate.

Countering
A very important thing, not only for human, but also in all castle fight. In the beginning (pros&cons) u (probably) saw that humans are pretty specialized. The good side of that is that u have some way of countering almost every unit around (except banshee and specials). But the bad side is that if u don't sync ur units, the marksmen will go hunting air without a tank so melee units will kill it, then the air will attack the helpless paladin/defender leaving the warlock with no protection. So to avoid this, you need to sync your units.
About countering, there are 3 most important unit types :
Melee ground
Ranged ground
Ranged air (no melee yet)
now, humans pretty much have all they need to counter most of the units here. For melee ground they have gryphons. Ranged in a lot cases is pierce or magic, both reflected by defender. And air is obvious - marksmen.
however, there is a big problem about humans - assassins. They love to target and kill your gunners, mortars and warlocks. The most common solution is paladin, he has mana which means he will attract some of the assassins, and he can revive units.
Special Cases
In most cases, human are equipped with the right unit to counter opponents. But there are cases when things are deceiving. For example Dhawks. Often newbs dont know their capabilities and they "counter" them with gryphon's magic damage. But that is a newb mistake so we put it aside . Decent players have an instinct that makes them counter any air with marksmen. In most cases it is a good idea, but not in this case. Dhawks have heavy armor, which means low dmg from marksmen. So, even if a lucky marksman may kill a Dhawk, it is not good for u cause opponents can use ground units to kill them.
So, what is a good solution?
Well, ive often see this done by newbs who dont know what air and what ground units are . But they effectively countered Dhawks with...Defenders! Yes, defenders. But why? Well, simply - they wont attack them, but they will reflect almost all their attacks, and evade the rest, taking almost no damage. Eventually, the defender is going to kill them.

Other special cases are : Plague bearers (often people counter them with air, and are really surprised to see their units die to plague cloud), Wyverns (counter them with marksman, and u will barely attack. U can only hope to crit on the first attack.) and others
oh, and one more thing. Often you may be tempted into countering ground melee piercing units (such as wandigoo, naga guard, corrupted hound and others) with defender. Well, it isnt a bad choice, but remember - u will not take any damage if u build air units. Be carefull tho, if opponents can build anti-air units, then defender is the way to go

Supporting
I dont remember how many times i said it before but i need to say it again...CF is a TEAM game. And human's specialization enables easy supporting and combining with allies. For instance, ur friend makes a void keeper and opponent's naga counters with naga guard. Your best thing to do is a defender - it will protect the opponent and the void walker will attack air units in case opponents build them.
Then again, the situation is often in reverse - u build the mortars when opponents have a tower, and ur mates will protect your siege. Or u make gryphons and opponents make trolls. If u are going for the gryph strategy, allies will have to help u out until ur army of gryphons can take out copters or even Dhawks.

Out of the 6 different types (not including upgrades) units human can build, 3 are units which ur mates benefit from. Those are Paladin for the heal and ress, Defender for good tanking capabilities and Mortars for taking down towers. And of the 3 specials they have, 2 of them are supportive! Use them!
Another important thing - i know that through the guide, i made mortars look really good units. Not that they aren't, but do not overrate them. Siege dmg is probably the easiest dmg type to counter. AND, mortars don't attack air! So yeah, use them when needed but take care of how you use them!

Credits :
Kiraice for numerous tactics that helped me get better
Gex for the awesome game
ZliElektronicar and monk for their units stats file which helped me out with units stats
oh almost forgot, FlorWarrior for making the file compatible with excell 2003

Update 1 :
-added countering strats
-added supporting
-added credits
Update 2 :
-added colors! (eye cookies ftw!)
-further explained some strategies, and fixed typos
-started hoping for the rep icon
Update 3 :
-added special cases at the countering place
-started preparing for videos/replays

MONKEY ISLAND® IS BACK THIS SUMMER!

noreply@blogger.com (BladeMaster) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 12:51:00 +0000

The long awaited game Monkey Island has been announced to be released this summer, exactly on 7th of July. Ahoy there !

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif – June 1, 2009 – LucasArts today announced that the original hilarious pirate adventure is back, with two new projects underway based on the classic Monkey Island franchise. First, Telltale will premiere the Tales of Monkey Island™ game series, delivering a completely new epic storyline and swashbuckling flair that will unfold across five monthly episodes on PC and WiiWare™ beginning with the season premiere episode on July 7. The Monkey Island celebration continues later in the summer when LucasArts publishes The Secret of Monkey Island™: Special Edition, a completely re-imagined version of the first game in the series that adds updated high definition graphics, a re-mastered musical score, and full voiceover to the classic adventure game originally launched in 1990. The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition will be made available on Xbox LIVE® Arcade for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, and PC.

Castle Fight game modes and chat commands

noreply@blogger.com (BladeMaster) — Thu, 21 May 2009 11:36:00 +0000

Here is a list of all gamemodes/modifications & chat commands that can be used in Castle Fight:

Host commands (Player 1 only):

Gamemode input system:

Gamemode can be entered by player 1 in the first 20 seconds of gametime before round 1 starts. It is entered like this:

-Modename[newRace? numVictories]

Modename can be:
r : random race:
Each player gets a random race.
p : pick race:
Each player may pick a race.
d : draft race:
Races are drafted in a 12211221 system. So first one player of team 1 may choose his race, then 2 players from team 2, then 2 players from team 1 again and so on.
m : mirror mode:
Each player gets a random race, but both teams get the same random races.

newRace? can be:
r : new race each round
g : one race for whole game

numVictories can be:
a number between 1 and 6 determining the win limit.

Examples:

-mg5 will make a mirror mode game with one race for whole game and 5 wins.

-rr2 will make a random race game with new races each round and 2 wins.

This may seem complex but once you see this commands more often you will get used to em fast. And as natac suggested, if you don't type a valid command between the first 15 seconds you will still be able to choose modes via dialogues.
You can enter as many modes as you want in this 15 seconds, only the last one will be taken. So if you typed the wrong gametype, just retype it.

If you want to play single round games (here, also newRace? doesn't matter) you can simply type only the mode, example

-m will make a 1 round mirror mode game

Game modifications:

Game modifications can be entered by player 1 in the first 15 seconds of gametime before round 1 starts (like gamemodes).

Coins (-co): Coins will appear every 40 seconds randomly in the castle area. The player who picks them will receive some extra money.

Units Only (-uo): This modification disables all non creep producing buildings except for treasure box. Also siege creep buildings are disabled because they are mainly to kill towers, which don't exist at this game mode.

No Artillery (-na): This modification disables all Structures that damage enemy's buildings directly. (Artillery, Frost Launcher & Shrine of Destruction)

No Air (-nai): Players cannot build any structures that produce flying creeps.

No Treasue Box(-ntb): You can't build Treasure Boxes when this modification has been chosen.

No Unit Bounty (-nb): When no unit bounty is chosen, killed creeps & structures don't give bounty to the killing player.

No Taxes (-nt): You don't have to pay taxes on your income when No Taxes is chosen.

High Taxes (-ht): Tax rate increases 10% each 12.5 income (25 is normal) if high taxes are chosen.

No Specials (-ns): At this mode, you can't build any special buildings that consume food. The only foodcost buildings that you can build is the Treasure Box and Towers.
The difference between this mode and -uo is that you can buy towers and siege weapons at -ns.

No Items (-ni): The main castle doesn't sell any items if this mode is chosen.

Dual Races (-dr): A race can be chosen/randomed more than once per team.

Domination (-dom): If a team dominates both lanes it gets 50% bonus income

No Legendaries (-nl): Players don't have food to build legendary buildings.

No Rescue Strike (-nrs): Builders don't have a Rescue Strike

Lumber Limit (-llX): Sets the lumber limit to X. X can be any number between 0 and 99999. Players can't get more lumber than this limit.

Single Lane (-sl / -slt / -slb): Units can only move / fly over one lane. -sl picks a random lane while -slt picks the top lane and -slb the bottom lane

Stable Mode (-sm): You can't choose / random lately introduced races. This is for competitive play if new races still contain major imbalances

Fog of War (-fowX): There will be Fog of War at the beginning of each round for X seconds. If you just write -fow without a number, you will have indefinite fog of war.

Ban Races (-banX): Before races get picked/randomed the leader of each team bans X races which cannot be picked/randomed then

Multiple Players (-mpX): Each human player controls X players. You can use this mode to make a 4on4 with only 2on2 players or test things with multiple races while playing 1on1 or alone versus bots

Caging (-ca): You are able to block units by building buildings around them in this gamemode. You can use this to build farms like in earlier versions

No AFK (-nafk): Players can't use the "-afk" command and the AI will also not take control over an afk player after some time.

Unique Races (-ur): A race can be chosen only once per round (even across the teams).

Fixed income (-fi): All players start with 100 gold and 30 gold income. However, only treasure boxes increase income. All other buildings grant no income. This is an experimental mode for another income model in CF.

League Mode(-lm): This mode is intended for wars & leagues. It contains following things:
-No AFK is on
-Balance can't be turned on
-Individual Races is on
-High Taxes is on

Fun modes:

Crazy Coins (-cc): Ten coins will spawn instead of one.

Nuke Mode (-nuke): The Main Castle sells Nuke Launchers.

Environments:

These commands will completely alter the environment. Only one enviroment can be chosen.

Icy Environment (-envice): A snowy winter environment where piles of ice are your walls.

Lava Environment (-envlava): A lava environment with mushrooms instead of trees.

Other host commands:
These commands can be entered by player 1 at all times.

Fill teams (-fill[Number]): This command fills both Teams with Bots until the given Number is reached at the beginning of the next round. If you want to turn off auto fill, type "-nobalance".
If you just type "-fill" without a number, teams get filled up to 6 players.
"-fill3" would fill both teams up to 3 players for example.

Balance teams (-balance): Activates auto team balance. When auto team balance is on at the beginning of a new round, the team with less players will get bots to even the teams. Note that if you are fast, you can type this command even before the first round, to even the teams from the start on(if somebody leaves at countdown). If you are not fast enough use pause game to get more typing time. Auto team balance can be turned off again by typing "-nobalance"

No balance (-nobalance): Type this, to turn off auto fill or auto team balance. Note that if a bot has already joined, there is no command to kick him yet. So use this command before the next turn's beginning if you want no balance.

Extra Rounds Vote (-xrX): Increases the number of wins for overall victory by X. All players must agree to this change by typing -agree

Boon reminder (-boons): If you think that there are some players that are new to Castle Fight in your game, type this to turn on the "boon reminder". If it is on, there will be a global message every minute, telling players useful hints about the game. The boon reminder can be turned off by typing "-noboons"

Boon reminder off (-noboons): Turns off the boon reminder.

Skip choosing time (-pause): If you want to type many gamemodes and the starting time is too short for you, type -pause. The game will then not start until you write -skip, so you have got enough time to enter all modes you like

Skip choosing time (-skip): Write this during the first 20 seconds to start round1 immediately (if you have already chosen gamemodes and can't wait ;) )

Player commands (all players):

Go AFK/ come back (-afk/-re): If you write -afk the AI will take control over your worker until you write -re. If you don't move your worker for a longer periode of time the AI will also take control over your worker automatically. Type -re to gain control back then.

Vote for draw (-draw): Type -draw to vote for drawing the round. As soon as ALL human players have typed -draw, the round will be counted as a draw and thus restarted. This is to solve some situations where no team can win and the game lasts infinite or starts to lag like hell.

Show armor table (-armor): Shows which damage type is good against which type of armor, so that you can build the right units. I know that this list isn't very concise at the moment.

Show income (-income): Shows some details about your current income, like your base income your Treasure Box multiplier and the Taxes you pay.

Show stats (-stats): Shows your current statistics (Things like how many kills you have, how much income you have gained, etc.).
Source

Castle fight 1.13 changelog

noreply@blogger.com (BladeMaster) — Wed, 20 May 2009 09:28:00 +0000

This is mainly a bugfix and balance patch. However, some additions were made: The fixed income, unique races and permanent fog of war modes offer new strategies and are experiments how the game can be improved with new ideas. Bots are now better mates since they build behind the castle and don't crash if they are undead. However, keep in mind that the castle was weakened and thus doesn't have such big tanking capabilities anymore. Most known bugs were fixed and most balance issues were addressed. Read the full changelog or just try out the new version.

NEW FEATURES:
-New modification: Fixed Income (-fi): Players start with 100 gold and 30 income.
Income is only increased by Treasure Boxes, nothing else
-New modification: Unique Races (-ur): Each race can only be picked / randomized / drafted once. (Even across the teams)
-The maximum player count was reduced to 5on5 to allow spectators (and because 6on6 truly sucked)
-Legendary units now have a 75% spell damage reduction and most negative effects last less time on them:
-->stun: 50% duration
-->other negative buffs (freeze, curse...): 25% duration
-Bots now build behind the Main Castle
-Reduced the hitpoints of the Main Castle to 5000
-fog of war can now last as long as you wish, or event indefinitely if you use -fow without any number
-Redesigned marksman, he is now only able to attack air
-Added Gunner's Hall as a new upgrade to the Sniper Nest (Gunner's can attack only ground)

BUG FIXES:
-special buildings now work in fog of war
-The undead bot no longer crashes after some time
-Fixed erasor's upgrade lumber cost
-Warlock is no longer doesn't use his spell on mechanical units
-Shredders no longer damage allied buildings when they die
-Nuke Launcher's wood cost was replaced by foodcost
-Fixed the insane repair time on Gyrocopters, however, they can still be repaired very fast
-You no longer get two workers in the next round when somebody -draws immediatly after the Castle goes down
-When -nafk is chosen, all players that went afk before it will be re'd automatically
-World Freezer orbs now stun units as stated in its tooltip
-In -mr mode, -afk had a strange behavior. This is fixed

BALANCE:
-Increased Flesh Golem's hitpoints by 200 and its armor by 1
-Increased the woodcost of Oracle of Sirens, Obelisk of Light and Death Pit
-Increased Naga Guardian's hitpoints by 25
-Increased Naga Royal Guard's hitpoints by 100 and its armor by 1
-Increased the heal ratio of Avatar of Vengeance / Avenging Spirit by 5% / 2% and increased their hitpoints by 50 / 25
-Reduced the income gain of support / killer buildings to 1.2% / 0.9%
-Taxes in -ht (High Taxes) were raised from 15 to 12.5 (so taxes increase by 10% for each 12.5 gold income you have)
-The maximum tax rate was raised from 70% to 80%
-High Taxes mode is now enabled in league mode
-Tower Balance changes:
--> Towers can be repaired around 22% faster
--> Increased build time of towers to 20 seconds (that you really build them BEFORE you get pushed, not during the push)
--> Increased hitpoints to 1500
--> Increased hitpoint regen to 2.0
--> Increased armor to 8
--> Reduced lumber cost to 300
--> Increased tower income gain by 0.1%
--> Blast Staff now costs 200 lumber
-slightly increased minedamage and radius
-slightly increased lunatic goblin's damage, radius and damage against buildings
-changed flamegunner's armor type to light and increased its armor value
-changed iron golem's armor to medium
-reduced Bloodthirster's number of bounces by 1
-Increased Energy Tower's range by 50
-Increased Adamant Golem's hitpoints by 150
-Increased Assault Tank's dps by around 5
-Reduced cost of Aircraft Factory by 10
-Increased bash damage from Rotherothopter/Gyrocopter by 15/20 and increased stun duration by 0.2 seconds
-Solar Strike is no longer able to target mechanical units (will make gyrocopters more useful against Dhawks)
-Powerplant now has an aura that has a chance to purge negative buffs from buildings it empowers
-Volcano is now restricted to 6 victims max
-Incubus is no longer able to overtake legendary units
-Heavy Tank Factory cost was reduced from 270 to 250
-Reduced Ice Queen nove area damage by 25 and freeze trigger chance by 5%
-Increased Magnataur's dps by 7, its stun duration by 0.5 seconds and its stun damage by 25
-Increased Ancient Wandigoo's hitpoints by 150
-Increased Infernal's hitpoints by 100
-Increased Wandigoo's hitpoints by 50
-Increased Axemasters dps by 10 its pulverize damage by 30, its armor by 3 and its hitpoints by 25
-Increased Hydra's splash radius slightly
-Increased Dragon Turtle's dps by 6
-Increased the hitpoints of all murlocs slightly
-Reduced Ballista's dps by 3
-Increased Paladin's armor by 1 and its hitpoins by 50
-Increased Goblin Shredder's armor by 1
-Reduced Murloc's collision size
-Increased cost of treasure box to 350 gold/500 lumber

TYPOS:
-Removed the additional % sign in the domination message in -dom mode
-Fixed typo on the undead builder's description
-Fixed wrong dps display of catapult's burning ammo
-Fixed mistakes in the boon tips
-You no longer get the message "Build additional unit producing structures" when you are out of food
-Nether drakes no longer got a fake 0AoE splash in their tooltip

OTHER STUFF:
-Caged unit now explode instead of walking through buildings
-Added a hint to OoL's tooltip that its damage goes through most magic immunity and cannot hit invisible units

Footmenfrenzy 6.4 changelog

noreply@blogger.com (BladeMaster) — Sun, 03 May 2009 19:57:00 +0000

Heroes
GoblinWarfare
- Removed "etheral" tag from Mine Barrier mines
- Changed choppers attack to hero damage
Keldyn
- Replaced Keldyn's Meteor Strike with another ability
Shadow Hunter
- Serpent Wards have nerfed early/buffed late.
Mountain King
- Avatar duration increased
Counter Mage
- Magic Armor Aura now works on units.
Roaaaarrrr
- Increased armor for Roaaaarrrr's stalkers to 3/3/4/5/6/8 from 3/3/4/4/5/5. Higher level stalkers have additional abilities.
- New ultimate
Archmage
- Mass TP cast time decreased
KotG
- Forces of Nature hotkey changed
Bloodmage
- Flamestrike buffed
PotM
- starfall dmg increased at level1
Demon Hunter
- Meta cooldown lvl 3 increased
Warden
- FoK nerfed

- All Unholy aura's buffed to 1.5/2/2.5/3/4/6

Units
- Reduced cost of tier 5 to 16k gold from 35k gold.
- stats for meatwagons changed to 125 base dmg w/ 2.75 cd
- stats for chimaeras changed to 160 base w/ 3.5 cd
- stats for steam tanks changed to 110 base w/ 2.5 cd
- stats for wyverns changed to 280 base w/ 6 cd
- hp upgrade improved.
- racial cost lowered
- Changed unit models for Militia and Peons.
- Breaker base damage increased to 23 from 20.
- Changed splash damage for Flying Meatwagons and Chimaeras to hit only enemy units.
- Increased gold bounty of tier 5 units to 65 + 8d3.
- Changed Orc damage against heroes to 75% from 100%

Items
- Reduced cost of Scepter of Destruction from 1750 to 1500.
- Reduced cast time of Scepter of Destruction from 5 seconds to 3.
- Reduced cooldown of Scepter of Destruction from 45 seconds to 15 seconds.
- Reduced duration of Healing Salve from 60 seconds to 45; the Healing Salve still heals 1500 health.
- Reduced duration of Base Healing from 60 seconds to 25; the Base Healing still heals 1500 health.
- The Rod of Envy is now very persistent.
- Scroll of Town Portal! has a gold cost of 250 from 150.
- Reduced delay time for Ankh of Reincarnation to 1 second from 7 seconds.
- Increased damage reduction value of Berserker Mask to 7 from 5.
- Changed Bark's Clutch so that it cannot target mechanical units.
- Removed Mashiba's Eyebrows, Levias Nets, and Digit's Staff.
- Moved some items around.
- Added Healing Ward of the Gods to the Legendary Shop.
- Added Drake Nest to the Legendary Shop.
- Added the Searing Sniper Bow.

Creeps
- Increased cost of chunsang, durant, and k-rose to 350.
- Increased cost of goatzilla to 325
- increased gold cost for dudey to 300
- Increased range of Mana Flare from 600 to 900.
- Increased maximum damage of Mana Flare against heroes from 50 to 150.
- Increased maximum damage of Mana Flare against creeps from 150 to 450.
- Increased base damage of Faerie Dragon attack to 6.
- Granite Golems now has Absorb Mana, which drains 200 mana from one unit under your direct control and restores that much mana to the Granite Golem. Absorb Mana has a cooldown of 40 seconds.
- Penguins have Hero damage type so that they deal less damage to buildings.
- Reduce the duration of Penguins to 90 seconds from 120 seconds.

Random Things
- Fixed the issue which caused the Phoenix to enter and stay in the Tavern area.
- Fixed the issue which allowed Arch Magi to Mass Teleport into the Tavern area.
- Fixed the issue which allowed Wardens and Edges to Blink into the Tavern area.
- Changed 6v6 to be cross teams (top left team and bottom right team vs top right team and bottom left team).
- Added a function that supposedly stores the team number of the winning team at the end of the game.
- Added code to preload tier 1 buildings.
- Added a gold distribution trigger for players that have their base killed (also includes players who leave the game).
- Changed 6v6 to be cross teams
- several spells now have casting animations
- several tooltips fixed
- added pathing blockers around all walls.
- removed the silly 'reverse hero' mode

Footmen Frenzy 6.3 changes

noreply@blogger.com (BladeMaster) — Tue, 27 May 2008 08:28:00 +0000

So here are the major changes made in 6.3.

1) Crow Throw - The main problem is at earlier levels. My thought would be to just reduce damage done from levels 1-3. Other ideas have been to increase the cast time (so you can move units out of the way) or increase cooldown/mana cost.

2) Scroll of saeki. It seems like all you have to do to win is get a scroll and tp into a base with mages. We could also just drastically reduce the number (maybe to one unit group) so it can be used for surrounds and such.

3) Mages - Probably the biggest imbalance right now. Damage needs to be balanced and the racial needs to be fixed.

4) Racials - Undead is really the only one worth getting. It needs to be weakened and the others need to be increased.

5) Berserker mask - Way too strong early game. Makes units do basically no damage to a hero. I would say either increase cost (maybe to 750) or decrease damage reduction (to 5?). I would prefer the latter.

6) Defense upgrades - Honestly I don't really care about this - there is no point in getting them now, but Im okay with that. Unless there are good ideas on what to do here, there will probably be nothing changed.

Those are the main things I can think of right now. I'm sure there are some others. I'm also sure that there will be the usual flood of "imba jaood" and "no dispel" but good players don't really seem to have any problem with these things. Feel free to add anything else you think needs to be changed....

Footmen frenzy heroes:General Tips

noreply@blogger.com (BladeMaster) — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 07:49:00 +0000

The most important thing that new players of frenzy tend to miss, is using healing salves. They are free and are very powerful. They turn off if you are attacked, however, they are your best option considering base healing was removed in 5.0.

Heroes are the wildcard in a game of Frenzy. Heroes can reach a max level of 18, and have three six level skills with a three level ultimate. Though many people neglect their hero and pump money into army upgrades, a well chosen hero can make or break your game. There are over 30 heroes to choose from, including all of the heroes from the standard Warcraft game. These regular heroes have the same skillsets as they always have, though a few like Farsight have been replaced by a more useful skill. Level 6 skills are so overpowered that they're ridiculous, until you consider that there are millions of units on the screen and everyone else has the same options as you.

The third tavern is composed of custom heroes, named for people in the NoHunters community. These heroes are not always better than the normal ones, but they are fun to play and some have powerful skills. There are two special heroes in this tavern, Avalanche and Death Sheep. It is much harder to win with these heroes, so give them a try if you want an extra challenge. The two special heroes disappear after two minutes, so if you want one you must decide immediately.

If you have trouble choosing a hero, you can also go Random. This gives you a random hero from any of the three taverns (remember that you can only choose or random Avalanche or Death Sheep in the first two minutes of the game). As of 5.1, the random heroes no longer come with free items, Jaood's Amulet of Power (which gives you bonus health and mana), and Boots of Speed (which increase movement speed). Going random makes the game much more interesting for everyone. You will never become an expert at Frenzy unless you random. The only way to learn all the strengths and counters for heroes is to play them yourself and see what other people beat you with. As another incentive, there is a secret hero that can ONLY be played when you pick the Random option.

Don't forget that you can save your skill points for later levels. Many heroes have two dominant skills that you would want to maximize as soon as possible. Say, for example, you have a Keeper and you don't like Entangle. You can get Thorns at Level 1 and Force of Nature at Level 2. When Level 3 hits, you are not eligible to add anymore points to those skills. Most novices will spend their 3rd point on Entangle because it's the only one available. However, if you wait until Level 4, you will have 2 points saved up which you CAN use on your favourite two skills. Here is a sample plan for a hero where you want to maximize two skills and your ultimate:

Skill A
Skill B
Wait
Skill A & Skill B
Wait
Ultimate
Skill A & Skill B
Skill C
Wait
Skill A & Skill B
Ultimate
Wait
Skill A & Skill B
Wait
Wait
Skill A, Skill B, & Ultimate
Skill C
Skill C

Note: Unless otherwise mentioned in the guides, durations on single-target spells that affect both heroes and units are listed for heroes, since you are more likely to cast the spells on heroes.

In Frenzy, as in the real game, you gain the most experience by being near the battle where you and your allies are killing other units. You will often see teams choose only two heroes while the third player techs. The logic is that three armies will generate lots of experience, and the two heroes will level up much faster, since they don't have to split experience with a third hero. Keep in mind that there are experience-cap rules built into Frenzy which are intended to make all strategies (tri-hero, 2 hero + tech, 1 hero + 2 tech, 3 tech) reasonably viable.

Footmen frenzy heroes: Cattle Bruiser

noreply@blogger.com (BladeMaster) — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 07:43:00 +0000

CattleBruiser's main purpose is to kill enemy Heros. Except for Contract of Death, all his spells damage a single target. The most important thing to remember when playing CattleBruiser is to keep his mana up and keep him out of danger.

Spells

Death Strike

Death Strike is a variation of the Death Knight's Death Coil spell. The spell is used to damage an enemy non-Undead unit, and is best used in combination with Cold Strike. It is advisable to learn this spell first due to its low mana cost. During the early part of the game, use Death Strike to finish off footmen with low health. As with Death Coil, Death Strike can also be used to heal an allied Undead Hero or unit, making CattleBruiser a part-time healer in some games.

Level	DMG / Heal	Range	Cooldown	Mana
1	100 HP / 200 HP	800	6 seconds	75
2	200 HP / 400 HP	825	6 seconds	75
3	300 HP / 600 HP	850	6 seconds	75
4	400 HP / 800 HP	875	7 seconds	100
5	550 HP / 1100 HP	900	8 seconds	100
6	750 HP / 1500 HP	925	9 seconds	125

Cold Strike

Cold Strike is just like Frost Nova without the Nova. The target will take damage from the spell and be slowed down for a short duration, but nearby units will be unaffected. When planning to use Cold Strike and Death Strike in succession, it is better to use Cold Strike first to slow down the enemy Hero. Cold Strike always has an 8 second cooldown.

Level	Damage	Range	Slow Duration (Hero/Unit)	Mana
1	175	800	2 / 4	125
2	250	825	3 / 6	125
3	325	850	4 / 8	125
4	400	875	5 / 10	125
5	475	900	6 / 12	125
6	750	950	8 / 16	150

Contract of Death

Contract of Death is a spell that sacrifices an Undead unit to heal CattleBruiser by an amount relative to the unit's hit points. This spell is generally only learned to level 3 because at that point you can use it on an Abomination and CattleBruiser will have maximum (or near maximum) hit points. Note that you will not make much use on this ability unless you tech Undead Tier.

Level	% Life to Life	Range
1	50	800
2	100	825
3	150	850
4	200	875
5	250	900
6	400	950

Camato Yannon

Camato Yannon deals more damage to a single target than any other spell in the game. This spell is best used to finish off a Hero with realtively high hit points. Due to the high mana cost and cooldown, you have to be careful when using this spell. An enemy Hero weakened by this spell could easily escape or another team could steal your kill. It must be therefore noted that in almost all cases this spell should only be used if it would kill a target Hero. Since Heroes have some natural immunity to spell damage, Camato Yannon only deals 70% of its advertised damage to them.

Level	Damage (Units)	Damage (Heros)	Range	Cooldown	Mana
1	1000	700	400	330 seconds	300
2	2000	1400	600	300 seconds	400
3	3000	2100	800	270 seconds	500

Strategy

CattleBruiser generally needs to use both Death Strike and Frost Nova back-to-back to score hero kills and Camato Yannon also requires a lot of mana. Unfortunately, CattleBruiser is a strength-based hero and therefore has low maximum mana and mana regeneration capabilities. Buying items that increase CattleBruiser's maximum mana and/or mana regeneration (such as Precept of Mana, Sobi Mask, or Robes of Magi) help counter this problem. It is not essential to tech Undead Tier, but is advisable if you want to to make use of Contract of Death.

TheBigGame interview

noreply@blogger.com (BladeMaster) — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 19:39:00 +0000

Quite frankly, if you play Frenzy and you don’t know who he is, then you’re rather clueless . He is of course, the creator of our favourite WC3 custom game – Footmen Frenzy.

It doesn’t get any better than this, folks. I’m really looking forward to this one, and I’m sure you are too. So go to the toilet, grab a snack, tuck your chair in, sit back and relax, for you’re about to undergo the ultimate (and somewhat lengthy) interview viewing experience.

Good morning, TBG. First off, let me just say that I’m thrilled you let me conduct this interview with you. I don’t know about other people, but as a passionate Footmen Frenzy disciple who used to play the game religiously, I couldn’t help but become curious about the life of the guy who made it all happen. As blatantly homosexual as that may sound, it’s the truth. And luckily enough, I now get the opportunity to have all of my questions answered. Let’s start off simple, and work our way into the juicy stuff.

Q: What’s your real name?
Bill Kazmaier.

Q: How old are you?
28.

Q: What physique do you have (height, weight)?
6'3", 240 lbs.

Q: What is your nationality?
I’m from Guam.

Q: What is your ethnicity?
I’m an islander.

Q: Everyone knows you’re hot for The Hulk, but I’ll ask anyway. What is your sexual orientation?
Hetero’.

Q: What is your occupation?
I work in IT.

Q: Do you have a girlfriend / wife / family? If so, please briefly elaborate.
Yes, I have a wife and family.

Q: Do you have any pets? If so, please tell us what.
Two dogs: Labradors.

Q: Share some of your PC specifications (processor, video card, ram, etc).
Dual core processor, 1 gigabyte RAM, Raedon 9800 graphics card.

Q: What internet connection do you have?
Cable.

Q: Are you a sports enthusiast / do you play sport?
Yes and yes. I enjoy all sports, and I play like to play all sports recreationally. I play basketball and ping pong hardcore.

Q: What kind of car do you have?
Saturn.

Q: What is your music taste?
Rap / R&B mostly, but I like anything really.

Q: Apart from gaming, do you have any particular hobbies or talents you’d like to share?
Hmm… I’m a movie buff, and I like to cook. But I don’t have infinite time to do random things.

Q: While we’re still on the subject, is there anything else you’d like to tell us about your personal life?
Heck no. I hate talking about personal life with people I don't know .
SLB: I hope that explains your reluctance to elaborate .
TBG: Of course, last thing I need is Ohboy breaking into my house to iron my clothes.

Alright, that was enlightening. But enough about your personal life, let’s delve into the topic of games.
Sure, games are fun.

Q: At what age did you first start gaming?
Like as far back as I can remember… 7? 6?

Q: What were some of the first computer games you played?
I played this submarine game for the apple. And of course, Oregan Trail.

Q: What was it that drew you to the gaming scene?
Mostly the competition. It's always hard to make new friends so I didn't really stay in one place until I was 13. Before that I just had video games to really pass the time and be my hobby.

Q: I hear that you were quite the Starcraft player back in the day. Amongst the best in the US? Please tell us how you became such a good player, and what it is that you love so much about this game.
Again the competition is a reason I played it. The ability to pit your skills vs another human was always fun. I got really good mostly because I played the game way too much and I became friends with a lot of top players and they helped me improve. I do consider myself a top USA zerg when I was in my prime. Which isn't saying much really. USA players beyond a small handful were overrated.

Q: You performed quite well competitively at local Starcraft tournaments, I believe?
Local tournaments? Give me a break, I could beat everyone in random if I played locally. Nationally I had beaten everyone who was considered a top player, but that again isn't saying much. We've only had a very small amount of world class players.

Q: What do some of your favourite Starcraft strategies involve?
Hmm well my best race is Zerg, and my favourite build was probably 9 pool speedlings. It's an aggressive strat and against people who aren't top top level they really don't know how to deal with it and it's an easy victory. With protoss probably sair/dt was my favorite overall strat. It was only for anti zerg though. But I enjoyed it nonetheless. After that my favorite matchuup is t vs p as terran. I really enjoy using metal and pushing people. It's very fun and very challenging. Even if I lose this match-up, I totally will play it 100 times over. Back in the day that match-up was unwinnable unless you were like the Jesus of Starcraft so it's always fun playing it even though today it's more of a balanced match-up.

Q: Is there anything else you’d like to mention about this game, which was obviously a great and memorable era in your gaming career?
Nothing major really. It's a game that I don't intend on focusing as hard anymore. But for those who are playing now guys like sphere, bark, congo, etc. They all really enjoy the game and want to get better.

The easiest way to get better is to always keep your money at 0. Also people think that expanding is the key. Sure expanding is great, but the best way to practice is to never expand and instead just pressure your opponent from 1 base. If you macro better hen him and keep him pressured you can win 100% of the time. People try to get 3 bases and they can't even begin to spend that money effectively... sometimes people watch these replays and try to emulate it. This isn't War3.

Q: How did you stumble across Warcraft III and World of Warcraft?
Well, both are Blizzard games. I mean what more can I say beyond that. Blizzard makes another RTS? Okay sure, I’ll play that. I'll play anything Blizzard. I'm very devoted to them.

Q: Tell us a little about the World of Warcraft guild, Nohunters.
I don't really play with them anymore, but they are a bunch of sexy men whose sole guild goal is to come up with hilarious catchphrases which I’ll hear whenever I talk to them, and then I end up using them in front of bark for like 2 weeks. Gaytown comes to mind.

Q: What was the inspiration for the name “Nohunters”?
Nohunters is an old Starcraft guild (which I think is explained already in our FAQ tsk tsk SLB)
SLB: Meh, no one reads it.
TBG: In Starcraft there is his horrifically gay but fun map called Big Game Hunters. So this channel hated on that map, making the channel Nohunters.

Q: What are all the gaming aliases you’ve used in the past? How did you come up with such names? And finally, why couldn’t you stick with the one name?
Fox^1 is my original name. My RL nickname is Fox, but couldn’t get Fox on the large battle.net, so I went with Fox^1. My AIM name and MSN as you know are foxisquick. My War3 name was HatoUP created from an article I read about a Magic the Gathering player that I respected. He named his new deck "HatoUP" which was basically the most dominant deck at that time. After a while somehow the account was taken by someone else. Because of this I used the name TheBigGame. Which is partly from the wrestler HHH who had the nick The Game. I instead put the BIG game and it just stuck.

Q: How did you get your HatoUP account stolen on battle net?
No clue, I just didn't have it one day

Interesting. Okay, time to talk about all things Footmen Frenzy!
Sure, sure.

Q: I’m very interested to know about the origins of Footmen Frenzy. Please explain how this map came into being.
Well I tried out some war3 games and there was this map called Footman Wars that was a lot like Zergling Madness (Hydra Rancher is also like it, but I played mostly Zergling Madness) and I realized how fun it was with heroes and units flying around, and killing 100 units with one swoop of your hand. But there was a problem. All the maps I played were horrible and imbalanced and just gay. So I decided to make one myself.

At first I called it Advanced Footmen Wars. But then Jaood came up with the idea to call it Footmen Frenzy. We started the map balance in www.halpmeh.com but that has since gone under

And that's when I also created nh.com. Halpmeh, CattleBruiser, Jaood, Ravage (Bark), Edge, Dino Din, and all the other custom heroes, were helpers / fans of the map from Nohunters. So that's how it started.

Q: How many years have you worked on Footmen Frenzy for? What support did you have to assist in its creation?
I’ve worked on it forever, and I did it by myself really, and just had other people help me test it. Not until the past year or so have I brought in the public really.
Currently balance is done by the balance staff as you know it. A group of good frenzy players and vets of the game. I'm currently more interested in new additions, which is a reason I wanted to create mine in the first place, so I can just make it as I see fit.
I played FF because I like the game. So I like to change it based on how I like the map to play out. People sometimes don't like that (3.8 fags unite!) but I don't really care. But I do enjoy that there are people who support our vision and follow us whatever path we decide to go down. For those people I thank you.

Q: Did you have any specific aim or goal for Frenzy when you first started working on it; and did you predict it would become as massively popular as it is today?
Yeah I had no idea it would get popular. I like made 1.3 and left it for like a year. Then Bark is telling me that everyone plays it and I need to update it because it sucks.
Finally I said "okay", and we are basically where we are now.

Q: What do you attribute Footmen Frenzy’s colossal success to?
Well probably because there are a lot of people who want to believe they are good at a game. That they are not abusing obvious flaws and that their own skill is allowing them to win.

It's a great thing to your ego to know you beat the other guy not because you abused some random thing that he didn't know about, but more that you're a better player then him. I think that Frenzy gave people that feeling. Because of our preaching of balance. Other maps had no balance and ours preached it as the primary reason to play.

Q: Through years of grueling balance changes and countless additions to the map, Footmen Frenzy has come a long way, and is still improving. Are you happy with the direction it’s heading in?
Not really, because it’s difficult to get it to where I want to go. There are problems with the map that cannot be circumvented because they are just impossible unless we completely were to change the map around. The biggest one is the 4 team concept.
Having 4 teams makes it very hard to keep everyone in it. Usually what happens is you get one team with a better advantage than the bottom team. So much, that the bottom team will have it very hard to come back. The top 2 teams isn't a big deal, itis that if you're the last placed team you're fucked...

Which is where the 12 footmen rule comes into play. Things like that. AOE being too dominating, etc. It would seriously be much easier to just make it a 5 vs 5 game. That would be so much easier to balance for competitive play. Which is why when people compare it to DotA it’s kinda annoying. DotA has more resources, and is a much easier game to balance. It's a great game because of those two HUGE factors.

Basically we'd almost have to scrap the entire game and build from the ground up again. Bark and I are already talking about doing a few things along those lines for 6.0 but until we are able to achieve it, I won’t be happy.

Q: Where do you see the game in 12 months from now?
Hopefully we will have 6.x out and I’m hoping to see major improvements mostly in flow of game and ability to come back. The thing about frenzy is that if I attack first with footman, I basically lose unless I'm 10x better than everyone in the game.

When skills are equal, there are so many gay tactics to be able to gain an advantage as opposed to just fighting someone and winning. Like think about DotA or ladder. If my hero dies, they do not get a HUGE advantage. But if you lose your hero early game in FF? Or are the 1st to attack and get all your footmen flanked? You're fucked . You'll be like level 1 and someone else will be level 4?

Q: How do you feel about being responsible for the immense amount of joy you’ve caused for literally tens of thousands of individuals all across the world?
I’m glad people like the map, but I don’t really think about it. I’m the type of online person who has his online life and his RL. When I'm doing RL stuff I totally do not even think about online at all. Bark is probably the same way.
Online is fun for us, it's never serious and we never take it serious. But on the flipside our RL are very serious so it's like 2 different worlds for us. But I'm glad people like the map but I don’t really think about them.... unless it's you SLB... and while I’m having an erotic dream.

Q: How long has your Footmen Frenzy forum been online for; and just how much have your loyal forum goers influenced you in the balancing of and creating new ideas for the game?
In the past year, the forum people have been my major influence. This is why I rarely lock threads. I listen to everything and ideas are very useful. There is a reason this is the best footmen map (imo) is that we use the best ideas. Some guy says "you should do this" then even if he’s a fag or whatever… if it's good I’m going to use it!

I just want to enjoy my map and anything I can do to increase the enjoyment is great. Right now bark and I are basically going to scrap the tiers and build them from the ground up.

Q: How many hits does your website get weekly? Is this number growing?
We get a huge number of hits. Let me find the number for the past month.
…
For October we got 4 926 010 hits.

Q: What does it cost to run NoHunters.com?
It’s pretty cheap for the site itself. Like around $30 a month.

Q: Approximately, what is the total value of monetary donations you’ve received through the site?
Hmm… probably $1 000? That’s about 75 cents per day since the site went up. It’s not as high as you think .

Q: What do the badonkadonks (site advertisements) earn you?
Oh god, like nothing. Last month we got like $10 I think.

Q: How long do you believe it will be before the sad day arrives when you decide to “retire” from Footmen Frenzy?
Retire? I'll never really retire from nh.com. Will I ever pass the map on to someone else to have them be the head of it? Yes. But I will probably always be on this site; I enjoy it and its fun to talk to random people about gaming. Or at least be able to give people a place to come and talk about it.

Q: I’m sure that people who play the game, particularly in previous versions, wonder how many of the custom heroes and creeps attained their name. Care to tell us who they’re named after?
Just people who have helped with the map.

Q: Do any of these people occupy a special place in your heart?
Hahahaha honestly... CB / Jaood / Bark are very good friends to me. They know things about my personal life and they are cool. Also other people like Halpmeh or Avalanche, they are good friends but I don’t think they are as close as to me as CB / Jaood / Bark.

Q: You have been criticized in the past for your rather controversial balancing techniques. This involves over-nerfing the overpowered subject, and then increasing its power in subsequent versions in “baby-steps” until it’s just right. You must realize that rendering these subjects practically useless, if only for a temporary period of time, is extremely frustrating when players are trying to cope with using them. What do you have to say about that?
It’s fine, learn2play. Haha but honestly, the major example to people is probably the Shadow Hunter. I’ve gotten tons of e-mail about him. And there isn't much you can do that about that. I mean we can try to tweak him over and over again to get him right. The thing was he was so incredibly strong that if you want to tone him down enough so that he's "just right” it’s really gay because even then you'll have people who say "okay he's still too strong, you didn't do anything to him". You can't please everyone. So for me I rather just make sure he's not overpowered and if he's underpowered then that's okay, I’ll be able to find what heroes are too strong since he's out of the way and fix them. People need to look at versions 2.0-3.0 and oh my god, they had some super isnane heroes.

Also realize that recently we've had all these tournaments; more resources for us to figure out issues with the map. That has helped a GREAT amount. Big props to teams like Rainfall and German teams who use their godly frenzy skill (lol) to help us learn what's imbalanced or not. E-mailing me "Jaood kills heroes too fast; remove his chaos damage" doesn't help. But when Tek tells me "X hero's Y ability is too strong and here're the numbers to back it" then I’m going to listen and I thank him for that.

I'm really looking for 6.0 to HOPEFULLY make 80% of the heroes mainstream usable. Unfortunately, not even ladder can boast that number. No one ever starts with TC in ladder, same with Paladin, Pit Lord, and others. Even ladder with all its balance and high level play, they still can't do it. I don't expect us to do the same. But we can make an effort and hopefully with the publics’ help we can get it down to the point where you can again random and still be ok.

Q: I’d bet many new newbies wonder why your website says that there are approximately 5000 members, and yet they get branded a member number in the 11k’s. Care to clear up this confusion?
Yes. I blame Congo. He’s up to something. I don’t know what it is, but I’ll find out. It could also mean we have a bunch of members banned, unverified, etc.

Q: How long ago did the great Forum Crash occur, and what are the reasons for it happening?
Omnis.com didn’t back up their SQL database. I do so now once in a while, because of their gayness.

Q: How frequently do you play Footmen Frenzy?
Every fucking day, and it's annoying sometimes to play it everyday. 50% of it is for research, which gets old.

Okay well what is annoying is that someone e-mails me that hero X sucks. So what do I do? I login and play that hero 50 times that week and see how bad he really is. Then from there try to balance him to make him better. Like some guy told me that Naga sucks. So I played her like 25 times in a week, and she's such a boring hero to me and after all of that I was so glad to be done with it

Q: Do your children play Footmen Frenzy?
Hell no.

Q: What are the prerequisites for one to join Clan HALP?
If you’re cool and enjoy gaming, that’s it.

Q: Why are there so few custom spells in Footmen Frenzy?
Mostly because I haven’t gotten to that point yet. The standard was just to keep it simple, so balance was simple. I think soon we'll have a good overall hero balance, and we can start adding more fun custom ability heroes, but the problem is this: who the heck wants to use a custom ability hero when you have PALADIN... see where I’m going? Paladin is boring... but a hero who can cast ice Flame Strikes that lock the hero in place and also make a wall of ice in that area so it's not easy to get by. I mean in DotA, all the heroes are custom. We have ladder heroes, to thrust custom abilities in there would be "bleh?".

Q: What are your ladder and Frenzy APMs?
Like nothing. Barely 80? Heck probably lower. 50. My ladder APM is like 25 and I still beat Bark in ladder. It doesn’t require a high APM . if you need more than 125 APM to play frenzy, you're wasting clicks. Heck 100 should be enough .

APM is so overrated it's retarded. In Starcraft I had like a 125-175 APM and I still beat people who had like 250 APM who were Korean players. There are like only a handful of people really can effectively use high APM. In War3 there are a few guys that use it effectively. Grubby / Moon / Sky / Fov - there you go. You seriously should destroy 95% of battle.net in frenzy if you have a 75 APM.

Q: Do you play DotA, and what’s your opinion on the game?
DotA is a great game for what it is. It’s easily the best game of its type hands down, no question. The problem is, it's like me saying "This is hands down the greatest fork I’ve EVER SEEN" Wtf does that mean? It’s a fucking FORK who cares if it's the most ELITE FORK OF ALL TIME. DotA is a great game but requires 0 skill to play. It’s ONE hero... ONE... Wtf ONE?!?!???!?!?! That game should be won on coop ability alone, and that's the big reason why it's played at a high level. Is because it's coop… like CS is. The big reason it's so popular is it gives people a false sense of skill and also it's fun getting L33t ITEMS. Halpmeh is like the best DOTA Player in the US. He loves the game which is cool. I like it as well, I just don't also believe that it's some super skill based game. Because it's not .
I mean the most skill based game on the internet overall is Caravan Assault. But no one in the world even cares about that map. Even though it's probably the most brilliant map EVER MADE OF ALL TIME. And I’m somewhat joking. It's probably the best UMS on War3 .

Q: Why does Jaood have chaos damage?
Because he’s so overpowered. The RL Jaood is even more overpowered.

Q: Is Jaood black in RL (lol)?
Yes, and he’s large. Bark and I have confirmed he’s at least 11”. These are the reasons why we felt he should do chaos damage.

Q: Why are you so bad at writing tooltips ?
Oh because I’m lazy. That’s about it really. I should put someone else in charge like you to do all the tooltips for me.

Q: The Footmen Frenzy hero, TheBigGame, is quite popular amongst intermediate and advanced players alike. Could you please tell us why you chose to create “your main hero” in the fashion you did?
I threw dice and found 4 random skills.
SLB: Oh so like Falcon?
TBG: Yes.

Q: What was the inspiration for the Death Sheep? Care to shed some light on its history with regard to balance?
Death Sheep comes from Advanced Hero Arena. The 1st map that War3 Nohunters players fell in love with. It was such a great game, and basically games of that type were one of the founding fathers to a game like DotA (imo). Death Sheep in hero arena had the biggest damage skill in the game, but he was so fragile and died all the time. Like our own guy!

Q: Reworking the Naga Sea Witch’s Tornado so that it sported a powerful Immolation was an ingenious idea. Who came up with that?
A random guy, forgot who it was. But it wasn’t me!!!

Q: Planning on naming any future heroes after forum members who have contributed significantly to the community ?
SLB: I know ohboy is itching for one.
TBG: Yeah sure totally. With new heroes I’m very much inclined to reward people for their efforts.

Q: Why Hulk? There’re plenty of other handsome bachelors out there.
Because when it comes to strength and power, there is no one cooler.
SLB: Or greener .

Q: You are bankrupt at Tier Zero with a stacked Pit Lord, a Dark Troll High Priest, a Sorceress, a Shaman, and a shitload of footmen. You are about to get attacked by an army consisting of 50 Tauren and a stacked TBG with a spell shield, itching to Stampede your base. What do you do?
Cast doom on his building and make him call me a hacker.

What do you think of Kristin Kreuk ?
She’s pretty cute.

Q: Why so pro?
I can’t help it if I was born this way. You can’t act non pro; it’s just wrong to do so.

Thanks for taking the time out to do this interview with me, TBG. I’m sure the fan base shall enjoy it.

Q: Any last things you’d like to say?
Yeah sure. Thanks to everyone who support us. While the forum can be abrasive to your ideas, that doesn't mean they aren't heard! Footmen Frenzy rocks, and I'm really pumped about 6.0. Hopefully it's as good as I want it to be.

A Quick Footmen Frenzy Creep Guide

noreply@blogger.com (BladeMaster) — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 20:00:00 +0000

Creeps are a very important part of Footmen frenzy, particularly in the first few minutes. Often your usage of creeps will determine whether you level or not. Hence learning to choose and use them effectively is a great help in learning to play frenzy, on several different levels.
This effect upon leveling is amplified by good teamwork, since each player can only buy 3 creeps. Picking which ones to get in what situation is an important skill for teams hoping to enter and do well in the weekly tournaments. You should plan your strategy around what creeps each person is going to use and choose these based on what heroes and techs they are getting - thus you have clearly defined what each person is doing and you can ensure you don't fall behind because you're missing something.
You should try to keep your creeps within the range of the fountain of mana since the extra regeneration amplifies their abilities a lot. Creeps without mana can be killed to make way for new ones if you're out of food.

A list of each creep and their suggested usage follows. These are intended as guidelines in using each creep and give situations when they are good - putting them together with your own techs and hero combos is up to you.

Sorceress:

Cost:200g
Spells: Slow, Invisibility, Polymorph

The Sorceress is an excellent mid game creep. The main usage for her is invisibility - using this spell it is possible to sneak up on armies and heroes and get into position without being detected. Invisibility is usually used as a surprise - it's high mana cost prevents it from being spammed early game without a couple of sorceresses. However, remember good players will use dust spam and witch doctor wards to nullify your advantage. Invisibility also allows you to dodge projectiles such as bolt, coil, and shadow strike - this is most effective if you have very little lag or if you just need to prevent a hero from killing you until your allies can drive it away.

Slow is semi-useful against high tier non ranged armies, however since you can only have 3 creeps it is difficult to get the mana to cast it enough to make a difference. You should always turn off autocast when you get sorceress until you want to use slow. Using it to slow heroes can help you to finish them off, but counters like speed scrolls and teleport scrolls usually prevent this, and it can be hard to know when to cast.

Polymorph is good for shutting down other creeps if you can get in close, but it is not generally used.

Priest:

Cost:200g
Spells: Heal, Dispel Magic, Inner Fire

The Priest is a specialty spellcaster who mostly exists to counter other creeps and summon heroes. He is good as a specific counter against heroes such as Beastmaster, Firelord, and Dark Ranger. I would recommend getting one fast at the start if you don't have the ability to focus wards much since they all die in 1 dispel. Whenever you see summons, even late game, get priests to dispel them and make heaps of gold. This is especially good against Scroll of Necromancy and Animate Dead. You can also counter spells like silence and drunken haze.

Heal is useful if manually cast (turn off autocast - it's a waste of mana) on a weak hero, as it allows you to sit around in the field while being healed and doesn't force you to back away from the action to get or use salves. Inner Fire is a mediocre companion to this which raises your armour and gives just a little extra survivability to your hero. Unfortunately you need to cast it often as it has a low duration.

Witch Doctor:

Cost:200g
Spells: Sentry Ward, Stasis Ward, Healing Ward

The Witch doctor is a very powerful frenzy creep as his main abilities are AOE instead of single target. He only has the mana for one Heal Ward at the start, which you should use judiciously. Stasis Ward is possibly more useful in footmen battles, as when well placed it allows you plenty of free hits and a chance to cast channeling AOE. Witch Doctor is pretty much essential at the start; ideally get your allies to pool you so you can get one right away. Keep 2-3 around for the first part of the game and keep him near the mana fountain to make sure you can cast as much healing and stun as possible. His wards should be placed behind your lines (slightly in the case of stasis, as far as possible while affecting footmen in the case of heal) to prevent the enemy from killing them before they have an effect.
Make sure before you cast that you're in a location where you'll be fighting for a while.
Sentry ward is an underused but useful counter to invisibility and wind walk.

Shaman:

Cost:300g
Spells: Purge, Lightning Shield, Bloodlust

The Shaman is a footmen battle specialist since he has the only damaging AOE amongst creeps. This is balanced out by his relatively high cost. Use lightning shield to gain extra XP and gold at the start, although you will not get your investment back fast but rather need to rely on slightly faster leveling.

Against good players who micro out the shielded unit this combines well with stasis wards. Target a footman with high health so that your spell lasts the full duration.

Purge is a good companion spell that can be used to slow enemy heroes or to save your own heroes from single target dispelables such as entangling roots. It costs a lot of mana however and the range is not great. It can also dispel summons in a pinch, although priest's dispel is far superior.

Bloodlust is a specialty spell which helps heroes which rely on attack (Assassin, Priestess, Blade,
Pitlord) to do more damage. You have to keep casting it though as the duration is low. Combine this with Unholy Frenzy to get the equivalent effect to ~4000 gold worth of items. It can also be used on demolisher, to speed up slow heroes like Dreadlord and Panda, and to bloodlust Tauren for extra pulverize.

Don't leave it on autocast.

Druid of the Claw:

Cost:200g
Spells: Roar, Rejuvenation

This creep is useful throughout the game if you can keep it alive. It is melee so it doesn't tend to work well in a control group with other creeps. Roar is marginally useful for footmen, use it at the start if you have the micro to keep the druid hold positioned near the fountain. Rejuvenation is less useful in frenzy because heroes quickly get far more than 400 hp, however it can be used to save heroes and creeps from small amounts of damage if necessary.

Banshee:

Cost:200g
Spells: Curse, Anti Magic Shell

Banshee is a rarely used creep which is a specific counter to hero killers, both physical and magical.

Anti Magic Shell protects you from a certain amount of magic damage; note that it does not prevent side effects like stun and slow. This is great mid game, especially against the Death Knight who cannot target the banshee instead. Curse weakens physical hero killers like Blade/Jaood/Avalanche so that they hit you less often and you have more chance to escape. In this case it's a good idea to use it in combination with invisibility and possibly slow since it only causes the hero to miss 33% of the time unlike the old pocky's 66%. Always turn off autocast.

Troll Priest:

Cost:250g
Spells: Sleep, Heal

An underused but powerful custom creep (the only one left ), the Troll Priest is great for preventing powerful heroes from bothering you and for getting cheap surrounds with melee. Sleep costs quite a bit of mana, but it is still spammable and allows you something like the old creeps where you can put a lone hero out of action for a while. It also allows a team without disable to cancel channeling spells like Blizzard and Death and Decay. Heal is the same as priest's, and has the same usefulness, however as before remember to turn of autocast so you have mana for the more important sleep.

Necromancer:

Cost:200g
Spells: Raise Dead, Unholy Frenzy, Cripple

Necromancer is a combination creep best used with heroes which can shut down the inevitable dispel counter. His main spell as normally used, Raise Dead, produces heavily armoured but low hp skeletons which give you quite a bit of extra bulk and DPS on the battlefield. If used in conjunction with a hero like DR or DK that can shut down opponent's creeps, or used in a situation where this isn't a problem (eg a rush), raise dead can be very effective - but it's free gold if your opponent can get a priest out and begin dispelling.

Unholy frenzy is much like bloodlust and is best used in conjunction with it. The small damage taken by the target is fairly irrelevant in frenzy.

Cripple is much like slow with a high mana cost and can be used on heroes if needed. I rarely find a use for it since Necromancers mostly need all their mana for Raise Dead.

Demolisher:

Cost:400g
Spells: None

The demolisher is a legacy creep - once overpowered and essential it is now hardly ever used as it does a fraction of the damage and also takes up valuable food. You can try using it with unholy frenzy and bloodlust to boost it's effectiveness, but be aware that it is vulnerable to enemy spells as it doesn't have the mechanical classification in frenzy. Perhaps with the cooldown decrease and hp increase we will see more of it in the future.

Peasant:

Cost:300g
Spells: Repair, Blink

Essential if your base is damaged or being attacked, fairly useless if not. Does not take up food, so you can safely mass a couple if you're afraid your base is going to die. When under attack, walk the peasant into blink range of your building and then blink to a free space so that you get there as fast as possible.

Zeppelin:

Cost:450g
Spells: Load/Unload

The zeppelin is a semi-useful utility creep. Often used to protect and speed up sheep on a battlefield, the zeppelin can protect your weak units and heroes while allowing you to use them when it's safe or just to gain experience. Be aware that it is very obvious when a zeppelin is in use and that counters such as ranged units, orbs, and phoenix can quickly bring it down and leave anything inside paralyzed. You can also use it with mass teleport to transport allied heroes and units.

Creep Related things:

Superlanboy's Staff of Sanctuary:

Cost:200g

Rarely used, this item allows you to instantly save creeps (and other units) from being killed. One good use is to charm an enemy creep and instantly staff it to prevent it from being killed by your enemy before it can escape. Try it out when you have low lag and are facing creep killers such as DK and Alchemist whose missiles can be prevented by its use.

Special thanks to nipp0523 and goron- who helped me with screenshots; images by bark so if they dont make sense dont blame tek -bark

Text copyright Nohunters.com. Permission is granted to reproduce this article so long as the authorship and copyright notice are preserved.

The first official FOOTMEN FRENZY 6.1 TOURNAMENT

noreply@blogger.com (BladeMaster) — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 18:02:00 +0000

This week's (and hopefully subsequent weeks) tourney is going to by hosted by keldyn and roaaaarrrr at 5PM Bnet time, Saturday September 1st.

If you don't know your time in reference with Bnet, log in and type /time. It will give you your time and Bnet time.

Now I know everyone's been waiting a long time for tournaments to start up again. so this time around we're gonna keep it real simple and not overcomplicate things with a ridiculous amount of rules so hopefully everyone will enjoy themselves.

Your rules!

1) No base suiciding. Period.
2) No leaving the game if your or an ally's base is under attack.
3) Gamehosts will be determined by ping, or selected by the tournament organizers. This may mean trying until everyone can agree on a host. However if a tournament organizer selects the game host, that will be the game host regardless.
4) If you have a concern or need to report a rule infraction, message keldyn or roaaaarrrr at any time. This means actual infractions, not complaints about imbalance.
5) Failure to comply with the suiciding or leaving rule will result in a ban from the following weeks tournament.

The winning team of each game needs to save the replay and send it to nhtourney@gmail.com

If you are unable to get a spot in one of the brackets sign up your team as alternates and show up at tourney time. There's usually at least one or two teams that can't make it and need replacements. This goes for people without teams as well!

And one last time, the tourney will be on Saturday, September 1st, 5PM Bnet time.

Good luck everyone!!

Footmen Frenzy Download (v 6.1)

noreply@blogger.com (BladeMaster) — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 17:59:00 +0000

Footmenfrenzy 6.1 has been released.
You can download it here.

Here are the changes:

- Attack/Life Upgrades now located on racial circle instead of main building.

- Racial upgrades now available at tier 1

- Ethereal bug fixed

- Animate Dead bug fixed

- Tank Token damage type fixed

- Penguins damage type fixed

- Statue autocast trigger area will be looked at/fixed

- TheBigGame Stampede now has a casting animation

- Falcon Rain of Fire now has a casting animation

- Acid Bomb armor reduction reduced to 3/4/5/5/5/5 (previously 3/6/9/12/18/25)

- Secret hero abilities fixed

- Bill item loss not fixed (no idea what causes it)

- Warden Shadowmeld hotkey fixed

- Flying Meatwagons now have 25 mana (previously 0)

- Faerie Fire hero duration reduced to 20 seconds (previously 60)

- Demon Hunter Metamorphosis level 3 cooldown/duration reduced to 45/45 (previously 75/75)

- Rejuvenation can no longer heal flying units

- Blank base damage reduced to 25 (previously 45)

- Demolisher now unit lvl 5 (previously 2); base damaged lowered to 50 (previously 81)

- Obsidian Statue Healing Touch range increased to 200, mana cost increased to 10 (previously 2)

- Obsidian Statue Spirit Touch mana cost increased to 10 (previously 2); no longer affects self

- Human War Training damage reduction improved to 3/7/12/16/22 (previously 3/4/6/8/10)

- Tooltip errors fixed on Gamera turtles, Falcon Hex

- Shops spaced apart more