This post is where you can find the latest patch notes and important news about the map.

Changelog:

Changes

Update 2
- Level cap raised to 15, all bosses now at max level.
- All bosses now have Chaos damage, have new abilities, can use all their skills, their stats are buffed, and they have
resistant skin. Have fun, whimps!
- Every main boss is now equipped with their own powerful artifact that drops on their death. Wield these powerful
items to gain great stat boosts and abilities.
- Enemies now have more disruption based powers based on silencing your spells and hurting summoned units
- Inquisitors can no longer be possessed, and now have flame strike
- Several miscellaneous changes to item names and descriptions
- Crypt Flyers are now undead
- Preview map no longer hidden
- When the map starts, the camera will focus on the player's hero
- Summoning ability hotkeys all mapped to "S"
- Necromancer's ultimate ability now hotkeyed to "R" instead of "D" and now works properly.
- Grand Inquisitors have been buffed and can now summon demonic reinforcements
- Added a new secret boss! A little easter egg for Diablo fans. He's got beefy stats and attacks really, really fast.
Don't open up his lair unless you're sure you're ready for a fight.
- Gold coin descriptions fixed
- Terrain and Doodad alterations
- New Ultimate Skill for the Witch Doctor: Loa Spirit.
Update 1
-Hotkeys of heroes abilities readjusted. An oversight caused them to not be QWER compatible initially.
-Corpses of the Eredar Witch can now spawn minions
-Gold and EXP gain nerfed
-Several Bosses buffed for added challenge
-Human Shipyards no longer sell transport ships
-Oppressor now has proper abilities
-Necromancer has new skill, a custom version of Animate Dead
-Troll buildings are now owned by the Sekawan clan, while Murloc Huts are Neutral Passive
-Cooldown of Cannoneer's cluster rockets has been doubled
-Worgen Darkweavers now cast Shadowbolt instead of Death Coil
-Mana Regen upgrade nerfed. Now provides a x2 bonus instead of a x25 bonus.
-Custom loading screen and preview image added

Coming soon: AI, Skills Rehaul

 

Hello! Playing the map solo right now as the Void Witch (red), I've came up with a bug report, as well as general observations and suggestions.

Spoiler

1. Hotkeys... Most of them aren't QWER (which isn't an inherent problem), but most importantly there are A LOT of hotkey-collisions. I'll list some of the Void Witch's and charmed units hotkey problems for you:
1.1 Banish is [B], when it's advertised to be something like [W]
1.2 Forked lightning [E] <-- tooltip looks like this (F is yellow, E is white)
1.3 Raise Specter doesn't have a hotkey in the tooltip. I've found out that it's [C], which collides with [C]harm which is expected to have [R] hotkey. I suggest making the innate abilities (like Raise Specter) have [D] hotkey, if you're going for the QWER layout.
1.4 Many-many charmed creeps along with the mercenaries have hotkey-collisions. Troll Healer has H[e]al and H[e]aling Wave, for example. Grand Inquisitor (who is definitely too powerful to be charmed, but oh well) has D[r]ain and Cha[r]m. There are more examples, but you'd really have to check it yourself.
1.5 Please make the hotkeys colored (|cffffcc00 hotkey |r) for the visual consistency.

2. You cannot raise your summons from the corpse of Eredar Witch, but her corpse is still there (can be fixed in can decay/be revived field).

3. Charmed units consume supply. Since you mentioned that there are up to 3 mercenaries to have, it's better to set food used by all the other units to 0.

4. A limit of 10 summoned units at the start is too large. When I started the game, I've gathered max army and steamrolled until the center of the city. Even then it wasn't that hard hence the powerful charmed units.
4.1 I'd suggest making the limit scale with Hero level. The easiest example would be 1-10, equal to the hero level. It will set up a power curve and make the early game a little more challenging. It can be made with a simple trigger that increases the level of Raise Specter (and similar abilities on other heroes) each time a hero levels up.

4. Gold is too abundant (edit: I've gathered 55k gold by the end of the game).
4.1 There is an option to buy a Transport Ship, however there isn't any lumber on the map.
4.2 Graveyards having 10 max corpses looks a little dirty visually. The quick corpse respawn prevents the Graveyard from 'drying out' anyway.

5. I guess it's fine that most of the city buildings are neutral to players (even Frost Towers and Battleships), but villagers walking around like it's nothing is a little off.

6. Maybe some Quests would be helpful to describe some of what is going on and the objective. Although it's kinda obvious to kill all enemies in sight, there's little to no story to guide the players through the game. And the boss dialogues are hard to pay attention to during battle.

7. The progression stops as soon as you hit level 10 and get some decent items. I'm trying to charm some fancy units into the army, but that's it. Since there are tons of enemies, you could slow the Exp gain to make the progression feel more earned.

Overall, you've made a quite nice necromancer-fantasy map! I dig it, although the power curve is relatively flat.

EDIT: Found more bugs.

Spoiler

8. Oppressor has Hardened Skin and Resistant skin locked by an upgrade (like a Mountain Giant) and thus able to be charmed.
8.1 Also, he has a Life Drain ability, but no mana to use it.

9. Some obelisks (near skull Shrine) in the city are neutral, unlike all the other ones.

10. Hero's mana regen is way too high. I think it's an upgrade from Acheron Nexus giving +2500% (editor-value 25.00) mana regen instead of +25% (editor-value .025). However +25% mana regen is kinda low as a standalone upgrade. Maybe 25% per level with 4 levels it would be in line with the other upgrades.

11. I think it would be cool for Specters to have magic attack type in order to be able to attack banished units. But in the current balance of things it isn't really needed.

12. Some troll buildings belong to Sekawan Troll Clan while others are neutral. Murloc Huts belong to the Troll Clan as well.

13. Apparently, Worgen Darkweavers have Death Coil, but it's hotkey is [Q] unlike what the tooltip suggests.

14. Cannoneer's Cluster Rockets ability wanted to kill my soundcard. Consider reducing rocket spawn frequency or something, since it may result in loud irritating noises when cast.

15. The final boss seems underwhelming, having just 1.6k health and a healing ability. Also I don't get the Free Play mode, maybe it involves some FFA PvP, but I don't know, been playing it solo.
15.1 Wouldn't it be better to move the final boss to the end of his island, warn the players that the final boss is ahead while crossing the bridge, and actually finish the game after the ending cinematic?

 

That was some awesome critique, Kerael! Extremely helpful. A couple points:

1. Charm consuming supply is a drawback I left in to make it more balanced. You can choose to Charm a big army, but if your food supply gets too high you'll lose the benefit of getting new auras unless you actively hunt out the monsters that have them. There's an element of choice and strategy there. The fact that they also have conflicting hotkeys is also something that you had to deal with in vanilla Warcraft. Again, there have to be some drawbacks to charm or people would only ever wanna play the void witch.

2. Technically, there is no "final" boss. Once you kill the four main bosses, you trigger the win condition. I originally planned for a hidden boss to be revealed when the other bosses were dead, but this felt too much like my previous map, Finest Hour, so I left it out. In a later update, I may add a final boss. But that's icing on the cake to me.

3. Worgen Darkweavers are supposed to have a custom ability called "Shadowbolt." Having Death Coil is a bug.

I'll start sorting out all these issues, I've already fixed a ton of them, including nerfing gold and XP gain. I also plan on giving the Necromancer hero his own custom version of Animate Dead that permanently raises a single unit.

Also, the map description needs polished a bit. I didn't write a description for the bug queen, and I forgot one of the main bosses.

 

Wait I thought his father was murdered by the Scarlet Crusade?

 

Cambria's father was, indeed, murdered by the Scarlet Crusade. If I made you think otherwise it was a miscommunication and I'll clear that up asap if needed.

 

Hello! It's cool to see a quick update! Testing the new version and gathered a bit of info:

1. The thumbnail looks a little squished. I wonder if it can be cropped without 'chopping' the skeleton heads too much while still centering on the necromancers.
1.1 I see that you've hidden the map preview image in Warcraft. You can import the thumbnail image into the map with the name "war3mapPreview.tga".
1.2 The loading screen text is a little bit lost now on the bright background. I'd suggest coloring it with a darker shade. By the way, the text amount doesn't fit in the screen and it stops with "prepare to assault the".

2. When the game starts, the camera is focused on the players' Acheron Nexus, rather than their hero. While I understand that those buildings can be overlooked by the players, I still think that it's better to focus on the hero and also select it at the start, so the UI isn't empty. For example, blue player doesn't even have his hero on the screen at the start of the game due to the Nexus being far away.
2.1 In my opinion, Apothecary's selection circle is too large while Witch Doctor's selection circle is too small.
2.2 For some reason, Acheron Nexus has the option to set a Rally Point, unable to train any units.

3. The innate summoning ability still doesn't have it's hotkey in the tooltip.
3.1 It could be nitpicking, but it seems that the color you use to highlight hotkeys is yellow (ffff00) and not golden (ffcc00), judging by the color difference of 'hotkey' and 'level 1' in the learn-tooltip.
3.2 Necromancer's ultimate hotkey appears to be [D].
3.3 Apothecary's Slow Poison [E] hotkey isn't colored in the learn-menu and is simply absent in the normal tooltip.

4. I feel like there is a need for a main and an optional quest, tracking the Bosses you've killed. Some of the story can also be displayed in their descriptions. You see, I knew that there were several main bosses, but still got tricked that the one I killed last was the final boss.

5. It's good that the Bosses are less squishy now, but for additional challenge, I'd recommend revisiting their abilities. There is no necessity in custom abilities really, just a fitting combination of default abilities (with modified values and maybe visual effects) will do.
5.1 Disabling effects usually imply increasing difficulty, when the raw stats are already formidable. A simple silence/soul burn, roots, banish, strong mana-drain would boost the attention paid to the boss fight.
5.2 You can also have some non-boss units channel a disarming field ability (modified Dragonhawk's Fog ability) since players rely heavily on their armies. EDIT: It would also be great to see more Purge/Dispel/Disenchant being used by the enemies. During my gameplay it was used rarely on my units, but felt as if the enemies 'have an answer' to my endeavors. Also reverse-Charm was quite fun!
5.3 Oh and by the way, the Necromancers do not count as Undead (can be healed by Holy Light but not by Death Coil)!

EDIT: I see that my previous post has become a Review, which is quite fun! I'll give a rating then.

 

'Hi playing the game on Solo and the one confusing thing I found is that there is no way to play the other heroes. Either I'm not doing something right or there isn't a feature for that yet. If so please let me know.

 

Well, you can play one of the other heroes by switching players. To do that, select "Team 1" again and it'll move you down. If you want to control all four heroes, you can type "-SoloMode" if you're Player 1 and gain control of all four at once.

 

I misunderstood at first, because it said Every innocent person he killed staring at him, among them his own father, implying he killed him with them

 

I'll edit that to make it a little more clear.

 

I see what you did there with my salia the merciless... it's awesome XD

 

I'm glad you appreciated it! I was worried you might be uncomfortable with me using your character but I really liked her and wanted to use her in this world. I'm glad I made her firmly canon.

 

Well hey, she is already better than the one I put together.

 

This is not a campaign. That tag has o place here. It's not Strategy/Risk either. It's more of an RPG.

Spoiler: comments

1. Generally, Warcraft III material: spells, items, units. You could use some custom spells or make/edit them with triggers: Spells | HIVE
2. Creeps sleeping in the middle of the road.
3. Finding Serathil on normal creeps few paces outside the base? This map should have its own thematic items.
4. Even though spells seem to have QWERT hotkeys, the yellowed letters are still the ones in the original game.
5. Intended for Salia's story scroll to be a Scroll of Restoration? OK, so all story bit items follow this trend.
   
6. Linear gameplay.
7. Random creep types. Things should make sense.
8. All you do is kill units on the map.
9. What after level 10? Some hero customization wouldn't hurt.
10. There's no objectives in the quest log, no information at all. How about some optional quests, something.
11. Make your own map. Using a melee one is a bad choice, leaves little gameplay design perspectives.
12. Mask of Death is usually a bad idea especially with such a high percentage.
13. Most of the items found on enemies, you can buy. No originality in that.
14. Too bad upgrades don't apply on charmed enemies.
15. The worgen hero is too weak. Most enemy heroes are in fact. Imagine all 4 player heroes using spells on them at once.
    
16. Alazard has no hero glow. The worgen hero might too. You can simply add it: How to add Hero Glow without Modeling
17. Scepter of Healing+Unholy Aura+Scourge Bone Chimes+Mask of Death=well, you can figure it out yourself.
18. Some buildings are neutral (for example Demon Gates) others belonging to the enemy.
19. The AI should train troops when players are in their base for more dynamic fighting. You could learn from altered melee maps how to create better techtrees. These also help:
    How to: Create a Full-working Custom Race
    Custom Race Creation: Advanced Mechanics
20. Fountain of Health/Mana near enemy bases is not a good idea. Makes things too easy for players.
21. Crypt Fiends are undead but flyers not?
22. You can finish this map solo with Salia's permanent 10 Void Walker army+charmed units.
23. Many spam-copy shops around.
24. It's weird for villagers to stand idly in the midst of battle.
25. Not sure if Charm should work on the Grand Inquisitor.
26. Gordragonn has piercing attack type. It's weak against most armour types, especially hero.
27. Free mode activated and an empty quest log?

What this needs is difficulty settings, more things to do than move forward attack+ground. Some nice boss fights with triggered mechanics, not just stronger units.

Awaiting Update.

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Hey @deepstrasz ! Great review, very detailed. Tell me, what are the most pressing issues you think need to be addressed before the map can become up to Hive standard? I want to hit the biggest points first and foremost and slowly work my way from there.

 

Most, the big deal is the gameplay, it's just killing units on the map waiting for the players. They can take their time, regenerate, chat, before they even decide to attack an enemy and they can just kill units few by few until bosses might remain alone. It's too old school, feels like playing a Warcraft II map.