Heroes of Might and Magic Olden Era's Patch #11 Reworks Necromancy From the Ground Up; Rebalances Factions

Unfrozen isn't slowing down on post-launch support. Patch #11 for Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era is live now, and it's a massive one: a complete overhaul of Necromancy's core mechanics, a Battle Magic and Summon Avatar rebalance aimed squarely at reining in Mage dominance, new competitive Tournament map templates, and a long list of faction, spell, and creature tuning across all six playable factions. Just as promised, Unfrozen is keeping true to its full Early Access roadmap released in June, with a steady stream of balance passes and bug fixes running in parallel with the four major content stages still to come.

Necromancy Gets Rebuilt From the Ground Up

The headline change is a full rework of how Necromancy raises undead after combat. Previously, raising a fallen enemy into undead required the hero's own army to already contain creatures of that exact tier. Patch #11 removes that restriction entirely: you can now raise enemy units into undead even without a matching tier present in your own army. Unfrozen was candid about the reasoning in the patch notes, calling the old system "powerful enough, but overly complex to grasp."

The new logic works like this: fallen enemies default to their base undead form (Tier-1 units become Skeletons, Tier-2 units become Wights, and so on), unless your army already contains undead of that tier, in which case the raised unit matches your existing composition. To balance the increased flexibility, Necromantic Energy costs to raise creatures have gone up substantially across every tier, in some cases by 4-5x, while base Necromantic Energy capacity has roughly tripled (1000/1250/1500 to 3000/4000/5000). The net effect, per Unfrozen, is that the total number of units raised per battle actually goes down, even though the system is far more flexible about which units you're allowed to raise.

The UI overhaul supporting this rework might matter just as much as the mechanical changes. Players can now see exactly which creature type will be raised directly in map tooltips, and the combat results window lets you cancel a summon decision entirely and manually recycle fallen enemies into Necromantic Energy instead. That's some clarity for the game's more opaque mechanics, which is much appreciated.

Mages Get Reined In, Again

Battle Magic and Summon Avatar both get significant attention this patch, and the through-line is Unfrozen trying to walk back a Mage-hero power spike that emerged after recent Might hero nerfs. Battle Magic's base Creature Attack and Defense scaling from Spell Power and Knowledge is being partially reverted (15/25/35% down to 15/20/25%), while its sub-skills also see targeted reductions.

Summon Avatar gets the more dramatic treatment. The base summoned Avatar is meaningfully weaker: it now survives strictly 3 hits regardless of skill level (and that number can no longer be boosted by HP-increasing effects), base damage drops from 12-12 to 10-10, and the spell moves to Tier 4 with a 5-round cooldown. In exchange, the sub-skill tree opens up considerably, with "Avatar of Fury" and "Avatar of Celerity" both getting stronger bonuses, and a brand-new sub-skill, "Summon Destruction," replacing "Fields of Mana" entirely (granting +50% damage against all summoned creatures). The overall intent is clear: a weaker default Avatar that rewards actually building around it.

Two Other Faction Skills Get Retuned

Schism's Abyssal Communion now applies its effect to non-Schism faction units as well, not just Schism's own creatures, though the numerical bonuses (max level, summon percentage per level) are being trimmed to compensate. Unfrozen's framing is that Schism "still performs under expectations in Classic Mode while remaining dominant in Single Hero Mode," so this is a broadening-but-weakening adjustment aimed at smoothing that gap between modes.

Hive's larvae mechanics are shifting focus toward their explosive potential rather than raw stat-check power. Larvae HP is doubling (8 to 16), and both "Unstable Concoction" and the "Fiery Embrace"/"Blow Up" combo are getting sizable damage increases, while other summoned or temporary stacks no longer count toward how many larvae get summoned in the first place. That's a redesign aimed at Hive's notoriously hard-to-counter late-game larvae swarm.

New Tournament Templates for Competitive Play

Four new templates land in the random map generator this patch: Jebus Tournament and Outcast Tournament, both built around uninterrupted simultaneous turns and structured tournament-style combat (best-of-5 for Jebus Tournament, best-of-3 for Outcast Tournament), plus two hybrid templates called Mix and Galaxy for Single Hero Mode. Jebus Tournament is being tested as a direct replacement for Sand Clover in Classic Mode's rotation, while Single Hero Mode's rotation swaps in Outcast Tournament and temporarily removes Exodus from the mandatory pool to give players room to try the new options. Combat timers were also trimmed across the board, from 120 to 90 seconds in Classic Mode, with league-specific reductions in Single Hero Mode ranging from 60 to 80 seconds per battle.

The pick-and-ban order between players has also changed, moving from Ban-Ban-Pick2-Pick1 to Ban-Ban-Pick1-Pick2, with Player 1 and Player 2 assignments now determined randomly instead of by matchmaking queue duration.

The Exploit Fix You Can't Abuse Anymore

Buried in the bug fix list is an exploit that lets Temple players infinitely gain resources on the Global Map. Alongside it, the patch fixes a Dungeon dragon alternative-attack damage bug, several multiplayer save-loading errors, and a laundry list of smaller combat and UI issues. Unfrozen also included a pointed reminder in the patch notes that intentionally exploiting bugs in competitive play can result in temporary or permanent multiplayer bans, worth flagging for anyone who'd been leaning on the Temple exploit.

Full Patch Notes On The Dev Blog

Beyond what's summarized above, Patch #11 touches hero specializations and starting skills across all six factions, dozens of individual creature stat adjustments (Temple's Griffins, Necropolis's Dread Knights and Liches, Dungeon's Hydras and Dragons, and more), city building costs, faction laws, spell tuning across all five magic schools, artifact effects, Pandora's Box creature pools, and Arena Mode's starting army sizes. Trying to summarize every individual number change here would be a monumental task that would obfuscate the more important bits, so if you're deep into ranked play or a specific faction, the full patch notes on Steam are worth reading in detail, and the official Community Wiki Unfrozen highlighted in the notes is a useful resource for digging into unit stats and spell tiers.

Olden Era launched into Early Access on April 30 riding real momentum, hitting the #1 best-selling spot on Steam Charts on day one off the back of 1.5 million wishlists. We were cautiously optimistic back in our original preview that Unfrozen could deliver "balanced factions, meaningful innovation, and a lively community," and patches like this one are the actual proof of that commitment. Necromancy specifically has been one of the most-discussed faction mechanics since launch, and a full rework this early into Early Access signals Unfrozen is genuinely listening to community feedback and statistics rather than treating balance as a set-and-forget system.

Combined with the Teamplay Mode, Observer Mode, and Underground Layer content still on the roadmap, Patch #11 is a strong signal that Unfrozen is treating the gap between now and 1.0 seriously. Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era is available now in Early Access on Steam and Xbox Game Pass.

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This story was originally published July 7, 2026 at 10:57 PM.