Ahoy, Looney Pirates!

After a visit back to the drawing board, we are excited to share the refreshed Alliance Wars 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. 

This part remains true: 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. 

And this is new: We then used this information to build a new version of Alliance Wars and playtested with hundreds of Alpha testers. We took the feedback to heart and used it to build a better version.

Three Four 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
  • NEW: Honor the fundamental aspects of Alliance Wars, what we’ve all grown to love

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 43.0 the first week of February:

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
  • NEW: Gradually increase team requirements

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.

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 characters. 

New Maps

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

Pictured: Medium Map

CHANGE #1: Island regions have character restrictions.

Each island can only be defended by characters from a list of themes. Structures in Pond and the Ship will continue to have no character restrictions.

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. 

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.

Pictured: Large Map

New War Buffs

Each Structure generates buffs, increasing the stats on all teams on this Structure and all behind it.

CHANGE #2: In addition, each Structure generates mechanical Buffs. The Buffs are different for each Island.

Updated War Buffs increase stats and mechanical effects! Here’s 4 of the 6 new Buffs

Since all the buffs flow inwards, this means that when War starts, the Ship will be buffed by all 4 Islands, granting its teams huge stat increases and all mechanical buffs.

Tip:

Clearing Islands will fully remove the corresponding mechanical buff from the Ship, weakening it significantly. Prioritize which Islands to attack first wisely!

War Escalation

This change adds more value to having larger character collections while making attacking the same Structure more interesting. 

CHANGE #3: At launch, each Structure will require 1 team to defend it. Over time, the teams needed to defend a structure will gradually go up. For example, during the first refreshed War all structures will require 1 team to defend. Every 3rd refreshed War, however, the Pond Towers and Ship will need more than 1 team to defend.

Every 3rd war will have higher requirements. This is what we call War Escalation.

During a War Escalation, key structures will need more than 1 team to defend. During Invasion, players will attack the first team on the Structure. Each win will reward your alliance 1 bomb and the structure will lose a Hit Point. Each defending team has a certain amount of times it needs to be defeated. As soon as your alliance defeats the team that many times, the next team will become available to attack. 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 2+ are hidden until previous teams are beaten.

Updated Rewards

We are very excited to 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. An exchange from Gadget Tickets to Pirate Wheel Tickets will be provided if you don’t use up all your Gadget Tickets in time.

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? February 8th

War Gameplay Refresh will be live with update 43.0, which is right around the corner! 

Enlist your alliance in the first refreshed war starting February 8th!

As we prepare the grounds for these changes, there will be no war between January 25 and February 7th. 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.