HoMM: Olden Era – Early Access Roadmap

Author: Liso1 May 28, 2026 1 Comment

The first four weeks of Early Access for Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era have been an incredible start for the team at Unfrozen. Thousands of players have embarked on expeditions and traveled through portals to Jadame, exploring the world and sharing valuable feedback along the way. The studio has been extremely grateful for the passion and insights provided by the community during these first weeks of Early Access.

While the main priority remains ensuring a smooth experience in Olden Era and resolving any urgent issues that may arise, resulting in regular patches throughout the Early Access period — the studio also wants to share its long-term vision for the game’s development.

Now that the team has heard clearly which features the community considers the most important, Unfrozen is ready to reveal what players have been waiting for: the Early Access Roadmap for Olden Era.

Regular updates:

Throughout the Early Access stage, we plan to, besides fixing bugs, balancing and improving UI and Quality of Life — regularly add fresh content. New neutral creatures, heroes, artifacts, spells, map objects, scenarios and so on — everything is on its way.

Stage 1 (Q3 2026):

• Teamplay Mode: a highly requested co-op play feature. You will be able to play together as a team versus AI-opponents or another team of players.
• Advanced features for the Random Map Generator : Changing the map size, setting the amount of players and adjusting other significant options directly in the game.
• Hero skills rebalance: Hero skills’ will be changed according to your feedback.
• Emote wheel update: the emoji wheel will become more comfortable to use and feature more responses.

Stage 2 (Q4 2026):

• Matchmaking system rework: Advanced options and features for matchmaking system.
• Epic classes (also known as Subclass system) rework.
• Observer Mode & Replays: Highly anticipated — already announced previously — features that allow you to watch other players’ matches or recap the most exciting moments of your own match!
• Alternative Creature Upgrades rebalance.

Stage 3 (the road to patch 1.0, before the full release):

This stage includes all the time left in Early Access — we will share more details on this content as we get closer to the end of Stage 2.

Throughout this lengthy Stage we plan to add or change the following things:

• Underground Layer: The classic HOMM-series feature, it will allow you to venture into another map level, which exists simultaneously with the main map. It will include special terrain, its own set of objects, brand new music theme and much more.
• Thieves’ Guild: Yet another highly anticipated classic feature, which allows players to get more info on their enemies and the overall game situation.
• New neutral Tier 8 Creatures: Lich Dragons will get some company!
• Map Editor improvements: Map editor will become much more user-friendly, stable and clear.
• Ironman mode for the Campaign: Those who crave a challenge will get a chance to try their best in order to beat the story without an opportunity to save the game regularly. One save to rule them all!
• Match statistics: Behold the post-match charts and numbers in their full glory.
• The max level for spells will be increased from 4 to 5, with some additional improvements that will be revealed in the future.
• Major hero specialization rework.
• Cities’ models changing on a global map with upgrades.
• New win conditions in PVP.

HoMM: Olden Era – Early Access Roadmap Stage 4 (1.0, full release):

During this Stage we aim to exit the Early Access and fully release Olden Era (more details about that in the future). What does it mean exactly? It means:

• Campaign acts 2 & 3: Fully fleshed out campaign with a completed story.
• PVE Roguelike Mode: We know it’s intriguing and we cannot wait to share more with you!.. Yet a bit later.
• Map Sharing support.
• Alternatives to Pick & Ban for PVP.
• More achievements.
• More Steam perks (Steam only: sorry, we cannot add Steam perks outside the Steam…)!

One more notice: last week we mentioned there would be a balance patch coming. However, it needs just a tiny bit more time and will arrive early next week.