Teased a scant few days ago during a TwitchTV stream, the norse goddess Freya has entered the battlefield. Hi-Rez Studios didn’t bother with any confusion for the goddess. Firmly declaring her as the Queen of the Valkyries. Scholars aren’t in complete agreement with such a title. We’ll save the lore discussion for the appropriate column and dive right into the latest patch that introduces Freya to SMITE.
Patch v0.1.1113.1 is relatively slim compared to numerous other patches. That being said, it introduces a new god, complete with a purchaseable skin. Ymir sees another awesome skin added to his closet, while Guan Yu player’s are awarded their first, although non-epic, skin to chose from.
The addition leaves Hel as the only character without a purchaseable skin.
In the quality of life department, key bindings are working as you would expect them to in most situations. Gameplay-wise, there are two changes to be aware of. First, the ward system has been addressed. Players are no longer able to easily detect wards with various abilities. Second, Hi-Rez has introduced a pair of new abilities – Structural Invulnerability and Intensify Defense – aimed at increasing tower survivability. They’ll dramatically alter tower diving and lane pushing.
The removal of slow on Cupid’s Heart Bomb is a pretty substantial nerf to the Goddess of Love. Otherwise, it was just Ares receiving a small mana buff thanks to a second shot of Shackles no longer consuming mana.
Hit the jump for the full patch notes.
New Skins:
- Freya – Northern Lights
- Guan Yu – Unstoppable Blade
- Ymir – Digi-MIR 9000
General Features:
- God abilities no longer detect enemy wards.
- Decline button has been removed from the match invitation.
Keybindings:
- Keybindings now save properly when configured during a match.
- Changing key bindings should no longer show the old bindings on the hud.
- First key press after changing key bindings should work all the time now.
- Can no longer bind the ESC key.
- Close button has been removed from the key binding popup.
- Your goodwill percentage is now visible in the bottom left corner of the game lobby.
- Spectator mode change to display abilities and consumables without the 3 dots on the icon.
- When player is falling the appropriate keybindings will now disable.
- The Minotaur now walks through player deployed walls. Future iterations may include him just 1 shotting anyone that tries to wall block him!
Hud
- Item slots on the hud now blink when you have enough gold to upgrade the item.
Items
Girdle of Might
- This item no longer stacks (was in hot fix last week).
Spear of the Magus
- Price increased from 1850g to 2050g.
NEW ABILITY – Structural Invulnerability
- Using this item makes all allied structures invulnerable for 6 seconds. This item shares a teamwide cooldown of 5 minutes. Usable when dead.
NEW ABILITY – Intensify Defenses
- Using this item gives the structure within the radius increased attack speed and damage, while also forcing the structure to target enemy gods for 6 seconds.
Gods:
Arachne
- Broodlings
- Broodling sac’s no longer detect enemy wards.
Ares
- Bolster Defenses
- This ability no longer affects the Minotaur.
- Shackles
- If Ares hits an enemy god with Shackles, the next chain now doesn’t consume mana, as was originally intended.
Artemis
- Transgressors Fate
- The traps no longer detect enemy wards.
Cupid
- Heart Bomb
- This ability no longer slows the target.
Hel
- Cleanse
- This now properly protects from knockback as intended.
Sun Wukong
- Furious Monkey
- Range of the bounces for rank 1 of this ability was shorter than the other ranks. This is now fixed.