The Road to Edain 4.6: WotR-Umbar Map Rework news

After showing you our rework of the Last Homely House in Middle-Earth - Rivendell - last week, we are continuing with a completely new fortress map for 4.6: Umbar. In the War of the Ring gamemode, Umbar is going to be a fortress and thus a fortress version of the already familiar Umbar map was needed.

Similar to the Rivendell rework, we wanted to preserve the characteristics of the original map and further expand on its unique features.

To start off, we decided to place the fortress next to the main harbour area on top of the plateau. We increased the elevation of this plateau compared to the original map; this way, it towers over and secures the entire harbour area. Tall sentry towers shape its silhouette and can be seen far from the sea, while sharp cornered walls scare off any intruder who tries to engage it from land. After all, Umbar was constructed as a a landing site and fortress of the Numenoreans, establishing control over the surrounding lands.

The harbour itself, including civilian houses and the well known taverns of Umbar, lies at the foot of the fortress. It is further secured by a large sea-bridge connecting to one of the bay islands. A signal tower is located here, which approaching ships first have to pass.

Our new map utilizes a lot of unique props, which were created by Radagast the Musical specifically to make this map stand out from its peers and improve the overall feeling.

The main buildings inside the fortress clearly show their Numenorean heritage, while the influence of Umbar can be seen as well.

The difference between the Numenorean stone structures, which you can find inside the fortress walls, and the wooden Umbar buildings from the harbour area is clearly visible. Sadly, it wasn't possible to utilize all of the amazing new props, but we are sure other mappers will gladly use these newly available tools.

The harbour itself also got a lot of new props, including a custom model for the shipwright.

The fortress itself is rather small compared to other fortress maps. Nonetheless, it still is a mighty castle, offering a gate with sturdy walls and lots of defensive towers, which will allow the player to easily defend it when playing War of the Ring. The harbour just outside the fortress and a settlement at the end of the sea-bridge also offer interesting and valuable locations to hold for the defending player.

However, the normal skirmish mode won't feature this map, making it the first map limited to the War of the Rings gamemode. In our last article we explained a lot of important factors that define a good fortress map, and while this map looks great and is defendable, it doesn't fulfill our criterias for a good fortress map as well as the others do. First of all, it only has a single attack point, which is the main gate. And once this gate has fallen, the attacker is already in the center of the fortress.
Adding to that, the layout of the map keeps multiple attackers from effectively cooperating, because the fortress is located between them.

And while those problems are not unsolvable, it would require much more than a simple rework of the map, which is out of scope for this project. However, if this map is well received in War of the Ring, we might consider revisiting it in the future.

We hope you like the War of the Ring exclusive Umbar fortress map and are, as always, looking forward to your feedback.

Your Edain Team