Ahoy, Looney Pirates!

We’ve been hard at work refreshing Alliance Wars and ushering in the next Pirate Era. We have big aspirations for what we consider a fundamental part of the World of Mayhem experience, and our roadmap reflects that. 

When thinking about where we would like to take Alliance Wars, we took a step back to analyze the state of the game in 2022, as well as interviewed alliance leaders and avid war players to understand their primary concerns and motivations. 

Three areas of focus became clear quickly:

  • Modernize the gameplay to spark strategic interest, and better accommodate the ever-growing LT character collection
  • Introduce meaningful progression in the form of Alliance Leagues that set aspiring goals and a sense of achievement for new and long-time alliances alike
  • Update management tools to make it easier to organize alliances for War

This large set of changes comprises an aspirational roadmap that will be delivered in parts. 

Today, we will be talking about the first part: War Gameplay Refresh, which is arriving in the World of Mayhem with update 40.0 the first week of November:

War Gameplay Refresh

Design Goals

  • Increase strategic and collaboration options
  • Make it easier for more alliance members to contribute
  • Deploy more of the ever-growing LT character collection
  • Stepping stone towards Alliance Leagues

Outside -> In

The first change is an intuitive one – a piece of feedback we heard as soon as the first-ever war was played in alpha back in 2018. Organize the map so that players attack Cannons first and gradually make their way inwards towards the Ship. 

In the new war, the Defense buffs will flow from Cannon -> Tower -> Ship. 

Weaken the Towers by taking out the Cannons protecting them, which in turn weakens the Ship. Take out every Tower to leave the Ship unprotected. 

A shield around the Ship serves as visual feedback of how strong the Ship is.

To go along with this change, Structures will now reward bonus bombs when fully destroyed. Towers reward +10 bombs, while the Ship will reward +50! 

Tip:

Alliances will have a lot more strategic options: Take out as many Towers as you can or focus on a single path and risk attacking the Ship earlier.

Multiple teams to defend a Structure

The second set of changes adds more value to having larger character collections while making attacking the same Structure more interesting. 

Each Structure will require multiple teams to defend it, one for each of its Hit Points. For example, the Cannon has 3 HP, meaning you must set 3 teams to defend it.

During Invasion, players will attack the first team on the Structure. As soon as that team is defeated, your alliance will earn 1 bomb, the structure will lose a Hit Point, and the next attack against this Structure will be against the second team. And so on.

As always, each Structure can be defended by a single player, and the characters you use to defend will not be available to attack during Invasion.

Tip:

Order your defending teams to surprise your enemy. Teams on slot 3+ are hidden until previous teams are beaten.

Health persists between attacks

Any HP you remove from enemies will persist, taking a page from Endurance Tower! This change is aimed to make more attacks more useful, as you can now still damage your enemies and help your alliance, even if you don’t fully defeat an enemy team. 

Since any attack can now inflict damage, in order to retain balance, toons used to attack will become exhausted for the remainder of the Invasion. 

Tip:

Collaborate with your alliance to take down Structures together. Take out a key defender with your first attack and have your alliance mates finish off the remaining 3. 

New Maps

New Medium Map

Two brand new Maps will be available at launch: Medium (20-30 active members) and Large (31-50). We are deprecating the Small map size, so the minimum number of active members needed to participate in War will be 20.

A departure from our legacy War design, both map sizes will feature identical rewards; just pick the size your alliance would like to play in. 

Map regions will have no character restrictions – use any toon to defend any Structure slot. 

New Large Map

Finally, the new maps will start with Max Level Defense Buffs. You will no longer need to invest your War Coins to level them up. 

Instead, you can keep your war coins and use them to max the Attack Buffs. The Plunder Campaign has moved in Campaigns, along Marvin’s Invasion and Gadget Campaign.

Updated Rewards

Updated Pirate Wheel

We are very excited to update increase the rewards earned from Alliance Wars. The War Gameplay Refresh will be more strategic, and we hope more fun for every alliance war player, but we also want to make the added effort worth it for you. At the same time, we wanted to ensure that AW rewards remain exciting for a long time. 

Here’s what’s changing:

  • Special Boost Cubes increased by 2x for all rank rewards (War Multipliers from Alliance R&D still apply)
  • Increased Medium map rewards to match Large Map rewards
  • Updated Alliance War Milestone rewards to reward brand new Common and Rare Gadget sets
  • Updated Pirate Wheel
    • Replaced legacy Pirate Wheel toon rewards with all 4 Epic Pirate toons
    • Added brand-new Gadget sets
    • Use your existing Pirate Wheel Tickets to spin
    • Added a small chance to earn additional Pirate Tickets from the Plunder Campaign

The Pirate Wheel will become a reliable source for Gadgets, including Squeaky Cleaner. To tidy up, we will be deprecating the Gadget Wheel when the new Pirate Wheel will be released. Use up your remaining Gadget Tickets.

Rapid Fire QoL Improvements

The following changes are too small to mention elsewhere, but hopefully an exciting addition:

  • You can now see the number of attempts made by your alliance team members in the War Leaderboard
  • Updated TEAMS tab in Collection to improve performance and increased the number of saved team slots to 50 (from 35)
  • Preview the current Invasion score and your available War Energy from the Home Screen
Your Ship will dynamically update to reflect your Invasion Score

When? November 2nd

War Gameplay Refresh will be live with update 40.0, which is right around the corner! 

Enlist your alliance in the first refreshed war starting November 2nd!

As we prepare the grounds for these changes, there will be no war until November 2nd. Not to worry, we will be sending out Special Boost Cubes as compensation for the break to everyone.

Thank you!

We would like to take an extra moment to thank every LT:WoM player for your patience while we’ve been developing this major update. A special call-out goes to all Alpha testers that participated in multiple Alpha wars, giving us valuable feedback, playing through buggy early builds, and participating in interviews, all to help shape this experience.

If you are also interested in participating in future Alpha tests, we invite active players randomly. The more active you are, the higher your chances to be selected.