Smite catches disco fever, releases huge patch

Hi-Rez Studios has just dropped a doozy of a patch for Smite .

. New skins, new items, and a laundry list of Conquest map changes are accompanied by the star of the update: Afro-dite. Not your standard pun-wielding skin, Afro-dite gets a disco ball-topped staff, a snazzy pink outfit, and a disco floor that follows her around the map.

Jungling hasn't really taken off within the Smite community as much as it has in League of Legends, but Hi-Rez is looking to fix that by changing the Conquest map to encourage more mayhem in the jungle. The map as a whole has gotten slimmer to get more people into the widened jungle lanes, and travel time between the lanes is shorter, which should encourage more movement between them and into the new jungle, with its two extra minion camps and a redesigned layout.

Fog of war now extends into the jungle which makes the addition of sound insulation to the jungle camps even more significant—you should no longer be able to hear someone at a jungle camp from far out in a lane. Walking through the jungle is a lot more dangerous, although it's a bit more rewarding than it used to be.

League of Legends isn't the only inspiration for Smite's changes with the introduction of a consumable Teleport item similar to the Town Portal Scroll in Dota 2.

This patch should make matches a lot more hectic, although some of the comments on the patch reveal video embedded above seem to indicate that many of the changes aren't well received.

There's also quite a few balance changes and other additions which you can read about in the complete patch notes.