Sheltem the Dark
Unfrozen has released Patch #13: The Mysterious Island for Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era — version 0.80.45. The headline items: an official remake of an iconic map, a substantial Arena Mode overhaul, and balance changes across six factions.
New single-player map: "The Mysterious Island"
Map designer Papyjama, creator of one of the most popular custom maps for Heroes of Might and Magic III, returns with its official remake, rebuilt on Olden Era's mechanics: a large-scale map featuring six playable factions and taking narrative inspiration from Jules Verne's novel. The story is only getting started — it will be expanded in future updates as essential mechanics such as the underground level are introduced.
Arena Mode
- Reroll system. Offered artifacts, spells and creatures can now be refreshed during the draft phases: 4 reroll points by default, plus 1 more during both the artifact and creature drafts.
- Hero starting bonus. Depending on their current performance metrics in Arena Mode, certain heroes now receive an additional bonus to their primary attributes.
- Heroes with creature specializations now guarantee that units of their Tier appear for both players.
Balance
- Temple buffed. Law adoption costs drop sharply ("Architect's Mastery" 6 → 2, "Training: Scouting" 4 → 2), and every law in the "Temple Elite Creatures" tree gains a third level.
- Necropolis nerfed. The Pestilent Lich's "Death's Embrace" now deals only half of its over-time damage, with cooldown up from 1 to 2 rounds.
- Hive rebalanced. Parasites lose 1 Speed and Waurms 1 Initiative, while Scorpions become markedly faster (Initiative 3 → 5 and 4 → 6).
- Grove nerfed. All three Tier-6 Qilins: HP 135 → 130, Luck 3 → 2.
- Dungeon's early game strengthened. "Triumvirate's Agents" now applies to all heroes and costs 5/5 → 4/4, and a new law, "Arcane Knowledge", adds 15 to every hero's maximum mana.
Interface and templates
- The Shift+U hotkey for hiding the user interface is back, and in-game notifications have moved to the top of the screen where the block can now be hidden.
- Fixes for issues that caused asymmetrical map generation on competitive templates; the Galaxy template shrinks from 128 × 128 to 112 × 112.
- Fixed a crash when casting "Back to Town!" while owning no towns.
The full changelog is in the original Steam announcement.