Rise of the Witch King

Greetings People of Middle-earth!

We're happy to announce the long awaited release of v.9.1.0! After many months of experimenting, beta testing and fine-tuning we're confident to say that this patch offers the biggest improvements in gameplay and variety so far.
Thanks to the team behind the BFME All-in-one Launcher we are now able to provide an easy installation and updates of all the BFME games on their amazing app. Make sure to download it for the full BFME experience!

Most Notable Changes


Stuck Fix

The battalion system is essential to the BFME series. Unfortunately the concept of horde collision and body-blocking was implemented in a rather flawed manner that caused battalions to get stuck with eachother through the slightest bit of contact at the edges, preventing you from moving for unreasonably long times. The stuck fix in v.9.1 removes this and allows hordes to pass eachother smoothly. Of course this has several balance and gameplay implications, most notably armies being easier to surround with large hordes of Goblins or Orcs, but also certain instances of bodyblocking requiring more precision and better timing.

New Well System

So far in RotWK you could stack up to three wells in order to speed up the process of respawning hordes both during and outside of battles. This resulted in a rather unrealistic and silly looking dynamic which granted Forces of Light unreasonable cost-efficiency. In v9.1 we have removed the ability of wells to stack and to function during combat and introduced new respawn tiers that take into account a unit's strength and horde size.

New Hero Revival System

Another flawed system that has finally been improved is how the revival time and cost for heroes is calculated. While on all previous versions heroes used one set value for each hero tier, in v9.1 both revival time and cost will be determined by the hero's level. This will make it less punishing to lose heroes on a low level and less forgiving to lose them on a high level.

New Game Modes

Since the tab for chosing the command point limit in a skirmish offered more options than anyone really needed, we decided to use that space for choosing alternative game modes instead! These modes are:

• Random team mode (chooses teams and respective spots on the map for you)
• Limited Power Point mode (limits the amount of total PP to ?)
• Chaos mode (Gives the players builders from two random faction and a random fortress)
  
  

Weather Ability Changes

One of the most unfortunate dynamics in RotWK has always been that of weather powers cancelling eachother out completely. This resulted in neither player using them once they knew their opponent had it ready aswell. Now we made it so that one player cannot use his weather power for one minute if the opponent has activated theirs!

Untamed Allegiance

Because of its rather niche original design, making this spell useful while maintaining its vanilla function has given us many headaches. The trouble was worth it though, as the new version of this spell is able to rebuild once destroyed lairs on location and provides the player with an appropriate amount of units from the respective lair instantly. More units can then be bought as always.

Tooltip Overhaul and Voicelines

By hovering over units, abilities and spells players now get an extensive info card containing all their major statistics! We've also added over 350 new voicefiles and sounds, aswell as improved graphics and FXs

Maps

We've added 79 new maps and also edited and improved several existing ones! We have set a new standard map zoom value of 540 and introduced several new shrub and tree assets to the World Builder for mappers.

Gameplay Changes


The biggest task of 2.02 is to try and find the most enjoyable and thematically fitting ways to play for each faction by giving utility to all of their units. Here's a few examples of the type of changes that are meant to achieve this:

• The buildtime of both Lorien Warriors and Guardians has been decreased to 25s and their horde size restored to their original BFME2 version. This allows these factions to rely more freely on their basic swordsmen and shifts the emphasis from teching up early to solid tier 1 unit gameplay
• Splash damage for almost all heroes and certain units was nerfed to deal only a certain percentage of their main target damage. This makes these heroes less oppressive against unit focused playstyles and tones down the strength of hero spam
• Mumakil and Trolls were buffed in several ways and Black Riders nerfed in order to more evenly distribute the power between Mordor's tech-up options
• Orc Warriors and Archers received build time reductions in order to keep Mordor's most characteristic style viable. Addationally Gothmog recieved his new Whip ability to train Orcs to create even more synergy with this style
• Many experiments were made in order to also shift the emphasis in Goblin gameplay to their tier 1 units. The most notable changes towards this goal are cheaper warriors, higher range archers, a cheaper level 1 Fissure with Marauders that deal splash damage to cavalry and tankier Spiderlings
• One big theme of this patch that has already announced itself in v9.0 through the implications of the Delay Fix are several nerfs to the harassment strength of fast units. Cavalry and several monsters have been nerfed against structures and in their movement speed in return for more hp. Simultaneously farms have been reverted to their old amount of HP and received buffs in cavalry and specialist armor in order to shift away emphasis from hit and run-harassment playstyles.
• Several spells and hero abilities have been nerfed or redesigned in a way that makes them less abusive, be it on their own or in combination with other spells, heroes or abilities. Fellwind for example no longer sucks units towards its center but throws them away from it. Arwen's Flood no longer knocks back heroes, Elrond's Restoration is now on level 10 and Athelas doesnt instantly heal heroes anymore. Karsh no longer slows down heroes and terror from abilities like Screech is a lot shorter and debuffs units in return.

In order to get the full picture and the details behind all these changes make sure to have a read through the entire changelog of v9.1.0 on the All-in-one Launcher !

Special Thanks
Shout out to the people who have helped shape Patch 2.02 v9.1.0!

• Excelsior
• Nameless
• Danetta
• Solas
• Barking
• Eternal
• Miraak
• GitGut
• Talos
• All beta patch/RotWK 2.02 testers

If you have any questions, need assistance, or would just like to get involved with the community, feel free to reach out to us on our discord server!
~ The RotWK 2.02 Team



Discuss the release here!