Shotbow

What is happening?
This event in particular will have a lot of cool, new stuff, which is listed below. However, not everything is announced here: some things will be revealed later on this month!

Network in General

• Network-wide +1.0x XP Multiplier from October 27th to November 1st
• Two new exclusive spooky pets going on sale, both of which will stay a mystery. However, here's a small teaser for one of them!

Hub

• Brand new spooky Halloween theme.

Annihilation
Updates:

• The Annihilation Nexus Update is now out. Be sure to check out its awesome new features and play enjoy it a ton throughout the event!

Halloween Changes:

• Spooky Halloween themed lobby
• Re-added Ghostal (spooky-themed Coastal)

MineZ

• Custom spooky Halloween themed builds for the MineZ map
• MineZ has its own Spook-Fest with daily treat chests, unique events, and more! Be sure to enjoy the hard work that is put in by the admins each day by participating!
• As listed in the thread above, MineZ will be hosting a "Haunted Head Hunt" on the first day of Shotbow Spookfest at 7:00 CST, so go join them for some fun.

SMASH

• Custom SMASH Halloween themed lobby
• 2 spooky Halloween SMASH maps made exclusively for Shotbow Spookfest!
• One new Halloween themed gameplay item, only playable during Shotbow Spookfest!
• Custom Halloween music in game. Do /music to toggle!

Civ-War
Tons of new features inbound, such as:

• City-state Status
• Units
• Strategic goods
• Lots of lag fixes!

Halloween Changes:

• Civ-War items are 25% off in the shop
• Spooky Halloween themed spawn
• Halloween particles are purchaseable in the shop

Death By Void
Death By Void is getting an update to fix a gamebreaking bug! This includes:

• Fixed XP
• Repurposed 2nd Leaderboard

Halloween Changes:

• New Halloween themed lobby
• Special Halloween themed color scheme for tracks

Mine Theft Auto

• Halloween themed map and lobby, with matching textures!
• Other spooky stuff to be announced!

GG

• New Halloween themed lobby

One More Thing...
Mark your calendar for one more stunning announcement this Friday the 13th.

When is it?
Shotbow Spookfest will be starting on Friday, October 20th and ending on Friday, November 3rd. As mentioned previously, there will be a network-wide +1.0x XP Multiplier from October 27th to November 1st.

Giveaway
Throughout these two weeks, be sure to have fun and take screenshots to capture your best moments. Shotbow will retweet any good Halloween pictures if posted on Twitter. Simply tag #ShotbowSpookfest and mention @ShotbowNetwork with your favorite Halloween memories! The person who sends the best Halloween tweet by the end of Spookfest will receive a free Shotbow Gold premium package!

I hope you guys enjoy this event, because tons of effort has gone into it. Stay tuned for more, and until then, don't get haunted! Thanks for flying Shotbow.

Reworked
Removed double damage.
Added Nexus bleed.

This is the biggest change we’ve made to the gamemode to date and we feel this will help resolve a number of game-flow issues.

Before, the only time there was an incentive to attack a nexus was Phase 2 or Phase 5.

Phase 2 - as an unorganised enemy would still be gathering resources and gearing up, a perfect time to attack.

Phase 3 - you would try to control the middle of the map for diamonds to get better tier gear to further control and dominate the match.

Phase 4 - the wither spawns for more powerful potions and equipment, plus you only had to wait 10 minutes or less until double damage in Phase 5 - why rush then?

The new nexus bleed incentivises and rewards teams for dealing ANY damage to an enemy nexus at ANY time of the game - how?

At the beginning of Phase 5, all Nexuses will bleed 1 health every 45 seconds. This will continue until one team bleeds down to 5 health. At this point, the bleed will stop and only resume when that team has been taken out.

An example:

Red - 50
Blue - 30
Yellow - 20
Green - 10

Would bleed to:

Red - 45
Blue - 25
Yellow - 15
Green - 5

If Green is taken out, then the bleed would continue until:

Red - 35
Blue - 15
Yellow - 5

And so on and so on. This means that no matter what damage you do at any phase you are ensuring your team has the edge in the long run.



Bonus Nexus Health XP

To further incentivise ending the game early (since your nexus will now bleed out at Phase 5) we’ve made it so the winning team’s nexus health will be converted into bonus SBXP (this is also affected by any active multipliers).





For those who don’t know, Firwen and Celariel are the original bosses of Annihilation who used to be in the main game world. We’ve given them both their own arenas as well as some unique abilities each. They certainly pack a punch, so beware!

You will find them in the boss realm during and after phase four, they’re on hand to give the wither a break every now and then.

The wither will remain as a boss mob to fight - all boss mobs are selected randomly during the game.


Ender Furnace

We’ve increased the smelting rate of the Ender Furnace by 20% - this will allow you to get geared up faster!


Engraved Items

When you craft tools, armour and more, your name will now appear on it! This will allow you to identify whose sword is whose if you wish to return an item to its owner - or to mercilessly mock your enemy!


Witch

We’ve all been there: you’re looking for that cackling old hag to get some gunpowder but for the life of you, you cannot find her; she’s wandered off into the Canyon or is pestering your teammates at mid. Well no more!

Witches will now teleport back to their spawn-point if they wander too far.

Witch spawn locations have been reviewed and altered accordingly.


Crafting

Right-clicking logs, when held in your hand, will automagically convert them into planks.


Boss Buff

Added
Bow of Aether - This bow will give levitation 3 for 3 seconds. It can only be fired every 5 seconds and only has 125 shots.

Tweaked
Sword of Flames - increased from Fire Aspect 1 to 3.
Armour items - increased Protection and Mending from 2 to 4.


Private Stands

We’ve added private brewing stands to the shop which replace the vanilla stands. These work in exactly the same way as the Alchemist stand - they cannot be broken or interacted with by your teammates, however, they can be broken by enemies! Stands can only be placed 40 blocks away from your nexus to prevent team griefing.


Stats command tweak

You can now see how much damage a player has done to each nexus during the game by using the /stats show <player> command and hovering over the “end portal block” item.


Weapon Shop

Added

• Milk - 5 Gold

Removed

• Recall stone
• Book
• Fishing rod

Tweaked

• Iron Helmet: 3 Gold
• Iron Chest: 6 Gold
• Iron Leggings: 4 Gold
• Iron Boots: 3 Gold
• Bow: 1 Gold
• Cake: 1 Gold
• 10 Steak (changed from raw): 5 Gold
• Cobweb: 3 Gold

Sword damage
We've reviewed and updated the sword damage values to be closer to 1.7


New Pre-Match lobby
A dragon burned down our old lobby and has taken up residence in the new one!





Alchemist

Added
Ability to brew “Enhanced” potions.

Tweaked
Changed class icon to brewing stand
Drop book no longer drops gunpowder before Phase 4.
Alchemist stand now brews 50% faster

You can now brew enhanced potions by throwing potions into a cauldron full of water, along with the base ingredient and right-clicking the cauldron. These potions are soulbound and classbound to Alchemist.

The potions you can upgrade are:




Assassin

Added
While leaping, assassins can no longer be harmed by arrows.

You’ll have to fight your foe sword to sword now...


Archer

Tweaked
Arrow drop increased to 32 arrows, cooldown reduced to 45 seconds.

With our changes to Robinhood below (spoiler alert!), Archer felt a little lacklustre so we increased the arrow drop amount.


Bard

Tweaked
Songs will no longer run out, they will now loop.
Cooldown between replaying songs reduced from 60 to 30 seconds.

Bard felt a little weak and annoying to play, so we made some quality of life balances.


Berserker

Removed
No Knockback Active

Tweaked
Damage done to higher geared opponents increased
Increased the amount of hearts that can be earned when killing.

Annihilation’s main tank class felt a bit lacklustre with only 15 hearts to play, so we’ve upped the limit to 20 hearts instead! The last 5 hearts, however, can only be earned with melee kills and will only grant 0.5 hearts for every kill.

We’ve also upped the damage that you do to higher geared opponents as we’ve removed the active that we felt was very situational and was a hindrance more than it was useful.


Bloodmage

Added
Particle effects to Corrupt ability.

Tweaked
Changed class icon to fermented spider eye
Increased range of Corrupt to 4.5 Blocks.
Increased potency of passive poison ability.

There was very little player feedback when using Corrupt so we added some visual indication, as well as slightly increasing the range to come inline with Pyro’s Firestorm ability. The passive poison was also incredibly weak so we made it more potent.


Builder

Removed
Obsidian from resource drop.

Added
Delaying Block - enemies who break a block within 5 blocks of a delaying block will receive mining fatigue 2 for 8 seconds. Engineers receive a reduced mining fatigue level. The delaying block will zap the mining fatigue onto the enemy along with a spooky sound.

Tweaked
Resource Drop book cooldown is now 90 seconds regardless of the phase.

We have removed obsidian as we felt obsidian swapper traps were unfair. We’ve added the delaying block as an alternative to allow players to combo builder's ability in order to make an effective swapper trap, as well as give them means to further enhance their defences.

You will start off with 2 delaying blocks on spawn and with a 30% chance to get one from each resource drop.

We’ve also added more building blocks to the resource drop - glass, iron bars, fences and stairs. These new blocks will allow you to build more intricate defences earlier on.


Civilian

Added
Stone shovel to spawnkit.


Engineer

Added
Evertool - This everlasting item will transform into the tool needed to break the block you interact with - nothing will stand in your way!

Reworked
Bunker buster now has 3 tiers, each with a varying level of fuse time and blast radius.

Dynamite - 1 second, small.
C4 - 6 seconds, medium.
Nuke - 10 seconds, INSANE!

Engineer’s bunker buster never felt effective at taking down larger structures and could be quickly disarmed when trying to break into bases. We’ve now added the option for different scenarios to use the bunker buster most effectively!

The Evertool will not transform into a Sword on hit, this is intentional!


Farmer

Added
Famine ability - this will drain all hunger of enemy players in a 13 block radius to 2.5 hunger bars and remove the hunger effect if inflicted.

We wanted to give Farmer a powerful effect that could be used offensively and defensively rather than be an “apple farming” class.


Handyman

Tweaked
Percentage chance to heal your nexus

Phase 2: 35% (was 20%)
Phase 3: 25% (was 15%)
Phase 4: 15% (was 10%)
Phase 5: 10% (was 7%)

Handyman needed a buff to scale with other classes and so we have increased the percentage chance of healing your team’s nexus.


Healer

Added
Ability to see teammate health.

This will allow healers to prioritise their healing abilities! Enemies will show as having 0 health.

Hunter

Tweaked
Traps are now permanent and will only be removed upon activation, death or placing the same trap again.
Traps now display particle effects to the Hunter and their teammates.
Traps can be moved by placing down a trap of the same type again.
Traps can now be placed on any size of area, ie 1x1 or 2x3. (Max size remains the same at 3x3).
Traps now blend into all blocks (removed camouflage block choosing).

Hunter traps were awkward to use with a restrictive set of blocks to camouflage the traps with, along with having to place traps on a 3x3 area, making it difficult to setup an ambush in a tight area. Combined with no player feedback with respects to where the traps were placed, having to reset traps after they had expired and with no way to relocate a trap playing Hunter took skill, patience and a lot of luck.

We hope that the above tweaks will make the class much easier and fun to play.



Iceman

Removed
Ice suffocation as this changed from 1.7

Added
10 Lily Pads.

It sucks when you fall off of your ice, so we added some Lily Pads to enable players to get back on their ice more quickly.


Lumberjack

Added
Sound and particle effect when Brute Force is activated and sound effect when attacking an enemy player with armour while Brute Force is active.

Tweaked
Cooldown increased to 45 seconds.
Active decreased to 10 seconds.

We added some feedback to the players so they know that their ability is working - and so that enemies can flee from you in terror! We also rebalanced the duration of the active as it was extremely powerful in groups.


Ninja

NEW CLASS

The ninja class allows you to stun and slow your enemies with your smoke bomb, and chase them down with your shurikens!

The ninja class is a unique addition to the roster - it is the only class that can fire projectiles on the move without slowing down! It can also blind and prevent players from sprinting away - a powerful offensive tool to ambush a group of players or enable your escape. Scouts cannot grapple when under its effects!

Did anyone else notice our wee hint during the Summer Festival? Senoc’s stall was selling the Shurikens!


Riftwalker

Added
Ability to rift to enemy land.

Riftwalker was always a cool concept but could be tricky to play as a solo player. With the ability to reach enemy land we are looking forward to seeing more gameplay and combinations, particularly with the transporter class.

You cannot rift to enemy land on the Skylands map due to its unique design.


Robinhood

Tweaked
Kills to level up:

Tier 1 : 2 Kills = Power 2, Unbreaking X
Tier 2 : 4 Kills = Power 2, Punch 1, Unbreaking X
Tier 3 : 8 Kills = Power 3, Punch 1, Unbreaking X
Tier 4 : 16 Kills = Power 3, Punch 2, Unbreaking X
Tier 5 : 21 Kills = Power 3, Punch 2, Flame 1, Unbreaking X
Tier 6 : 30 Kills = Power 4, Punch 2, Flame 1, Unbreaking X
Tier 7 : 40 Kills = Power 4, Punch 2, Flame 1, Infinity 1, Unbreaking X

Robinhood was designed to be the ultimate ranged killing machine, however, the balance of kills to tiers wasn’t perfect and the lower tiers weren’t scaled against other ranged classes and so we’ve made the above adjustments.


Scorpio

Tweaked
Hook targeting

Left click - hook will only activate when you hit a teammate
Right-click - hook will only activate when you hit an enemy

Currently trying to hook onto an enemy or teammate is down to pure luck what the hook hits first. This tweak changes this luck into a choice.


Scout

Tweaked
Grapple cannot be used in deep water.
Grapple cannot be used while inflicted with the slowness effect.
Grapple cooldown increased to 2.5 seconds.

Scout is an extremely powerful mobility class but we felt it being able to outplay Iceman, the water class, made no sense. As such you cannot now grapple in deep water (2+ blocks deep). You will still be able to grapple in shallower waters.

We also wanted to add further counterplay so it is now also affected by slowness which is utilised by many classes.

Finally, we reduced the availability of the grapple whilst keeping the potency. We hope this will bring additional balance to the class whilst still keeping it fun to play.


Spy

Added
Flee ability - will spawn an animated duplicate of yourself that attacks the nearest enemy player. Grants user invisibility for 6 seconds

Back in the day Assassin once had an ability called “Clone” instead of its powerful leap. We decided to bring this ability back to life, quite literally, with a twist which will give Spy that extra edge on the battlefield.


Succubus

Added
Ability to see enemy health.

Tweaked
Life drain ability only successful when the target is at 25% health.

Succubus has been an unappreciated class for a long time - it’s extremely high-risk ability could so easily backfire it meant using this class was near suicidal and only used by players with no gear. It sucked playing it so we decided to make this the ultimate duelling class!


Thor

Tweaked
Starting sword from Stone to Wooden

Thor as a tank class had a lot of damage output with his stone sword and lighting ability. We decided to reduce this slightly by replacing his starting kit with a wooden sword.


Wizard

Removed
Global cooldown of spells.

Added
Casting cooldown - a 5-second cooldown on all spells will apply after casting a spell.
Ability to change spells by left-clicking the wand.

We liked the versatility of Wizard’s spells but it sucked having to choose the “correct” spell for the moment and then be penalised waiting for a longer spell to cooldown before using a lesser spell. Therefore we decided to use only the individual spell cooldowns, adding a small cooldown after casting to ensure you cannot spam all spells at once.


Miscellaneous

Improved

• Many changes made to improve game performance and stability

Fixed

• Potion effects are no longer removed when changing class
• Double chat notification of invisibility effect being removed due to damage
• A bug where it was possible to spawn with the pre-game lobby items
• A bug resulting in players that reconnected to the game and would not receive their items back during phase one and two
• Combat-tag NPCs can no longer be killed by teammates however enemies can still kill them
• Breaking melons while holding items other than tools will no longer remove that item from your hand
• Spelling and grammatical errors in class descriptions.

We have made other small tweaks that do not impact game-play, all of which will not be mentioned in this changelog as to not overcrowd it. This includes superficial changes such as Builders resource drop now has a name.


Statistics

A while back we implemented a cooldown for gaining Shotbow XP on newly spawned players. This change was to remove Shotbow XP farming and to encourage players to play the objective instead.

In this update, we’ve also decided to tweak how kill statistics are earned. Killing freshly spawned players won’t grant you statistics anymore. We hope that this will also put an end to farming kill statistics.

To further clarify, our official policy on farming kill statistics is as follows:



It’s been 3 months of painstaking work but I hope that you’ll agree it has been worth the wait. We’ve seen many variants of Annihilation from classes to mechanics but we truly feel this update will make Annihilation the best it has ever been - fun and balanced for everyone, no matter your play-style.

There are many people to thank who have helped make this happen but special mentions must go to our wonderful developers (in alphabetical order) - Galap and Skillerfox3 who have spent many long nights and days on this. Another mention must go out to our FilmCrew Lead Catsage for the amazing trailer. A special thank you to Murgatron for his critical role in helping to shape the update and for all his hours of bug testing.

We shall be keeping an eye on the forums for future tweaks as well as the bug reports for anything game breaking over the coming weeks.

To celebrate this update we've also got a shiny XP code - NINJA


From everyone on the Annihilation Development Team - Enjoy!