The biggest update of the beta. Everything below is live right now. Streamers: right-click your Stream Siege browser source in OBS and choose Refresh once, so your stream picks up the new screens.
One world, ten zones, every channel fighting over them
Stream Siege now has a world map: ten zones, one for each battlefield in the game, shared by every channel that plays. Win a battle at a zone and your stream takes control of it. Your name and your Twitch profile picture sit on that zone, on every stream and on the website, until another channel comes and takes it from you.
The world map replaces the old Play versus AI and Auto Mode buttons with a single choice. Between matches the stream shows the map: who holds what, how hard each zone currently is, and which zone is up next. The game rotates through the zones on its own, and the streamer can click any zone to fight there next instead. Quick Match and Challenge are unchanged: live stream against stream is still the main event.
Zone battles: twenty waves, one boss, no imaginary opponent
A zone battle is the game you know with no fake rival on the other side. Every zone has its own fixed set of twenty enemy waves, always the same at that zone, so zones have personalities you can learn. After wave twenty comes a single boss. Kill it and the zone is yours. If the boss reaches your barracks, the battle is lost, whatever your remaining health.
Taking a zone you do not control captures it. Winning at a zone you already control defends it, which pays honor and makes the zone harder to steal.
Honor: the new score
Honor is earned by a channel and never goes away. You gain it by:
- Capturing a zone. The reward equals the number of zones the previous holder controls, counting the one you just took, so dethroning the channel that holds six zones pays six honor at once. An unclaimed zone pays one.
- Defending a zone you hold: one honor per successful defense.
- Holding zones overnight: at midnight US Eastern, every channel earns one honor per zone it controls.
- Beating another stream in Quick Match or a Challenge: one honor per win.
The leaderboard now ranks channels by honor, with wins and games beside it.
Zones get harder as they are won
Each zone carries a difficulty number everyone can see. Every win at a zone raises it by one, and at midnight every zone’s difficulty drops by one, so hard-fought zones cool off over time. Each difficulty level either makes every enemy 5 percent stronger or turns one of the zone’s waves into a siege wave that arrives at half again its normal strength, alternating as the levels climb. Boss included: a high-difficulty zone is a real siege.
The Garrison: spare mana becomes a rear guard
In zone battles the Siege button has a new job. Mana spent on it builds a Garrison, a guard that stands at the end of the path and kills enemies just before they reach your barracks. The guard is spent in proportion to how much health each leaking enemy has left, so a near-dead runner barely dents it and a full-health troll eats a chunk. It even works on the final boss, though bosses grind through it four times faster, so a low-health boss can be stopped at the gate for a dramatic last-second win. The rule of thumb: mana you would have wasted is worth banking in the Garrison; mana you need for spells is still better spent on spells. Against another live stream, Siege works exactly as it always has.
Viewers start every battle
Autoplay is gone. The game no longer runs matches with nobody aboard: between battles the stream shows the world map and waits, and the moment one viewer picks a class in the panel below the stream, the battle begins and everyone who picks a class joins in. AI teammates still fill out small teams, and joining stays open for the whole match.
On the website
- The world map is live on the site: every zone, its holder, and its difficulty, updating as zones change hands.
- The leaderboard leads with honor.
Smaller notes
- Zone battles no longer show the old training-opponent readouts (their boss meter, their team panel). In their place: the zone’s name, who holds it, and its difficulty, on screen for the whole battle.
- The end-of-match board now announces ZONE CAPTURED or ZONE DEFENDED with the honor earned.
- Streamer profile pictures appear on the world map automatically. If a picture cannot be loaded, the channel name is shown instead.
See a bug or have a balance take? Bring it to the Discord: beta feedback drives these notes.