Kayrie

I'd like to say a couple of things.
First of all, the animation for that new stoneskin speel is absolutely awesome! Whoever came up with this, great work!
Second, when it comes to events, i would simply like events that involve minor changes on the pve missions, for example a temporary new option when you go into a mission like encounters with twilight and you select the event option, something like "all your cards cost 100% more but you will get 100% more gold for completing it. I know some people also already mentioned mutations like in starcraft and i also believe its a cool idea, but probably tough to implement. But maybe something like the treasure goblins from Diablo would work here. That everyday you can find one, lets call it a thief, who randomly spawns on the map (except for boss and starting areas) he will be tough to kill cause he might be very fast in running away, but if you kill him you get a nice pile of gold.
Third, i really like the gameplay trailer, super well done. The only thing that i think was missing is that when he mentioned that there are also completely new cards here they should have shown one, like the Wasteland terror for example.
Fourth, I wish the new team members all the luck and fun in the world, hope you will have a great time! @Linkz @Vultagx @pierakor @lucas_ansei @Kayrie
Fifth, great community update as always, the survey overview was really nice, thanks everyone once again for this incredible accomplishment! Skylords Reborn is a f**king gem!!!

Looking Forward to Work with this awesome Team ♥️
 
PS: keep an eye on Future Maps, they will be very Impressive! 

Looking Forward to Work with this awesome Team ♥️
 
PS: keep an eye on Future Maps, they will be very Impressive! 

Looking Forward to Work with this awesome Team ♥️
 
PS: keep an eye on Future Maps, they will be very Impressive! 

Greetings Skylords!
A new month; a new Community Update! It's time to bring you up to speed with everything going on in Skylords Reborn!

• QoL Patch

Last week, we released the long-awaited quality of life patch, resolving various minor bugs and improving the Forge's performance to ensure smoother gameplay. Additionally, this update now allows you to watch outdated replays, although replays impacted by patches will still experience desync issues. Check out the full patch notes here.
We are also still hard at work on our next content patch. We apologize for announcing the Lost Souls changes too early. Our bottleneck in card descriptions has been underestimated, as all cards in Skylords Reborn require translation into English, German, French, and Russian. This translation process, especially for the changes made to cards, can significantly impact our progress when translators are occupied or inactive. If you would like to assist with this effort, please check the contributor roles available for translators.
 
• Cinematic Trailer

A few months ago, we released a video showcasing the significant changes and improvements made to Skylords Reborn compared to the original BattleForge over the past 2 years. As part of our ongoing effort to attract more new Skylords, we have now created a cinematic trailer designed for RTS players unfamiliar with the original game.
Please support the game by sharing it with your friends who might be interested in the game!
 
• Card Rework Spotlight - Stronghold

While new cards usually get the spotlight, reworking existing cards can be just as exciting and impactful. Skylords Reborn has a lot of unused and underpowered cards, which, if reworked, would functionally constitute an entirely new tool for players to use. Stronghold is one such card. The T3 Frost tower is beautiful and imposing, promising an unconquerable fortress, a powerful and immovable bastion able to hold off hordes of enemies by itself. Unfortunately, anyone who has used the card knows this description is fantasy. We have been working on Stronghold for a while now, and are happy to showcase our new design, which we think will make the card worthy of its name and image.
To help Stronghold become a fearsome fortress, we intend three major changes to its existing design. First, we are increasing Stronghold's single-target damage from 2420 dp20 to 4000 dp20. Second, we are giving Stronghold two new abilities. The active ability will allow the player to defend against 50m siege units like Lost Dancers without needing an additional unit or building, and “To the Last!” will make Stronghold more deadly as it loses life points. This will synergize well with Frost building supports like Glacier Shell and Shield Building, allowing the player to keep Stronghold at a lower health threshold without endangering their defenses. The idea of "To the Last!" is to tap into the image of Frost as a faction which does not easily give up. Instead of losing hope in difficult situations, the Lyrish defenders manning the Stronghold dig in their heels and fight even more tenaciously in the face of danger. 
 
Cannon Turrets
Every 3 seconds, turrets deal 164 damage each to enemies in 10m radius, up to 246 in total.
 
 
Bombardment - Active Ability 
Cost: 40p
Activate to shoot a mortar shell that deals 800 damage to enemies in a 15m radius around its target, up to 3200 in total. Knocks back small, medium, and large units.
 
To the Last! - Passive ability
If the fortress has equal to or less than 3000 life points left it will deal 25% more damage and take 25% less damage. 
 
 
To the Last! - Passive ability
If the fortress has equal to or less than 1500 life points left it will deal 50% more damage and take 50% less damage.
 
 
Slowed Construction - Passive ability
Construction time is increased by 50%.
 
 

We also added a new visual indicator to show the various states of "To the Last". Below, you can see the Bombardment ability in action:
 
 
We hope you are looking forward to these changes coming to Stronghold! They are planned for release alongside our new content patch. We are not able to share a release date yet, so stay tuned!

• Survey - Update

A big thank you to the 1500 Skylords who have already submitted their feedback in our yearly survey! The survey will close at the end of the week, so if you haven't shared your thoughts yet, please take a moment to do so. Your feedback will be anonymous.
As Skylords Reborn is a community project, we value knowing what our players like and what could be improved. Your feedback is crucial for our continuous game improvement and player base growth! As a token of appreciation, everyone who fills in the survey will receive two boosters.

• Voice Acting – Update

A quick update on our search for new voice actors: We're thrilled to announce that we've received 24 trial takes, offering a diverse selection of voices to choose from.
Now, our Audio Editor will carefully assess the sound quality of each file, followed by selecting the voices that best match the characters. We're excited to bring these unannounced characters to life and can't wait to share what we have in store for you!
 
• Fire-themed Forge

As we progress with the development of upcoming campaign maps, we have also been working on a new Fire-themed Forge skin as a side project. Although it is not officially a Summer Forge, players will soon have the option to select from the default Forge, the Winter Forge, the Spring Forge, and the upcoming Fire-themed Forge. Check out the teaser below:

Players automatically have access to the Winter and default Forge, while the Spring Forge is initially locked behind the "Outsourced Content" achievement, which requires completing 8 different community maps on Expert.
The Fire-themed Forge will also be associated with an achievement called "Never Thought of Him," which tasks the player with completing the Mo campaign using only Fire cards on the maps Convoy, Mo, Oracle, Ocean, Raven's End, and Slave Master. We have received feedback that the current reward for this achievement feels insufficient, and we plan to enhance it to provide a more appealing incentive for completion.
Players who have already completed this achievement will receive the additional reward once the Forge is released. Please note that the Forge is not yet available, but you are able to start working on the achievement in advance.

• Mapmaking fundamentals

We always strive to keep the playerbase informed about upcoming changes and the rationale behind them, whether it's through Community Updates, balance discord discussions, or Deep Dive documents detailing our design decisions. Originally intended as an internal guide for our current developers of new campaign maps, we decided to share the following guide with interested players, hoping it will also serve as a useful tool for aspiring community mapmakers. Don't forget, every Skylords Reborn download includes the Map Editor!
BattleForge campaign maps have a particular feel to them, and this feel is a fundamental component of the unique experience which is playing BattleForge. The goal of this design guide is to use existing campaign maps, particularly the best campaign maps, to understand and to categorize the distinct features of the camps in BattleForge’s campaign, such that we can better design future campaign maps. This guide is therefore intended to categorize the design choices of the original devs and to act as a reference for future development for both community and official map development.
Click here to check out the mapmaking fundamentals guide.
 
• Team Changes

Nukie has decided to step down from his role as Event Manager to allocate more time to his new job and personal life. Despite this change, he will continue to support the project with Moderation duties. We are grateful for his dedicated work during his time as Event Manager! 
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our other Event Organizers, @Metagross31 or @Minashigo Hiko. We can help you out with various topics and are glad to discuss potential ideas. We can also sponsor the prize pool for your event. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you.
 
• Contribute

Skylords Reborn is a community-driven project fueled by the passion and dedication of over 40 volunteers. We are always on the lookout for like-minded individuals. If you have a passion for gaming, programming, design, or marketing, we invite you to take a look at our open positions!
 

 
• In Conclusion

That's all for this Community Update! We appreciate you taking the time to read through it.
As is tradition, we're including a scratch code as a small token of our appreciation for your support.
The code will reward you with a General booster: THAN-KYOU-SKYL-ORDS

The code is valid until September 1st, when we will bring you another Community Update. 
We're always looking for ways to improve and value your feedback. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please don't hesitate to share them with us. We'll be back next month with more updates on our ongoing projects and upcoming features. You can also sign up to our e-mail newsletter here. 

Archive
• Skylords Reborn Documents (Deep Dives, Behind the Scenes, PvP Guide)  
• Overview Community Updates
• Community Update July 2023

Patch #400043 - 25 July 2023
Welcome to the long-awaited quality of life patch. After this update, the Forge will finally be running smoothly again. Amongst other minor bug fixes and improvements, this patch will also allow you to watch outdated replays. Keep in mind that replays with gameplay affected by patches will still desync.
 

General Changes
Enabled playback for outdated replays. However, replays may not accurately reflect the original gameplay if the replay contains actions that have since been affected by balancing patches.
General Fixes
Improved overall performance in the Forge and while within game creation lobbies.  Improved the remaining days display of auctions in German. Improved the RPvE Cosmetic Portrait Names to be more consistent. Improved the descriptions of various achievements to be more consistent: Codebreaker Lone Ranger The Nightmare's Nightmare Urban Planner
Card Fixes
Player Cards:
 Abyssal Warder (Fire) / Abyssal Warder (Frost):
1. Active ability Crystal Spikes: Improved description to be more accurate in German.
 Burning Spears:
1. Toggle ability Weapon Change: Ability display on the card visualization has been reordered.
 Fleshbender (Shadow):
1. Fixed tooltip to show correct English name in non-English languages on upgrade 3.
 Hammerfall (Frost):
1. Passive ability Breeze of Strength:
   A. Fixed ability tooltip to display 40 instead of only 15 shielding capacity regeneration.
   B. Improved description to be more consistent.
 Life Weaving:
1. Pain Link: Fixed the damage transfer to no longer target nearby structures but only units.
 Lord Cyrian:
1. Fixed the description of the upgrade card for upgrade 3 in German.
 Lyrish Knight / Lyrish Knight (Promo):
1. Passive ability Steadfast: Ability is now displayed as a 5th ability in the card tooltip (does not fit on the card visualization).
 Mind Control:
1. Infinite Domination: Added the missing origin name of the debuff immunity tooltip.
 Regrowth:
1. Emerald Blessing: Improved the translation of the Godspell name to be more accurate in German.
 Sleet Storm:
1. Heavy Rain: Improved the upgrade card visualization of upgrade 1.
 Stone Warrior (Frost):
1. Active ability Blessed Shatter Lance: Fixed the ability to properly work against some frozen conditions.
 Sunken Temple (Nature):
1. Autocast ability Gifted Plague: Fixed an issue that caused upgrade U0-U2 to not spawn Pest Creepers.
Non-Player Cards:
 Lost Crawler:
1. Passive ability Blowout: Improved the description to be more accurate.

[Disclaimer: The following is about the entities introduced by the nature battlegrounds preset.] 
 Caustic Sentinel:
1. Autocast ability Acid Spit: Added an impact visual effect to the projectile.
 Overmind:
1. Autocast ability Infinite Domination: Fixed a bug where the ability did not change the population count when mind-controlling a unit.
 Swamp Drake:
1. The general mind-control immunity that allowed power expenditure without actually granting the target has been removed.
 Wheel of Juvenescence:
1. Fixed a typo in the card's name.
2. Gift of Juvenescence: Improved description to be more consistent in non-English languages.

[Disclaimer: The following is about the testing entity, exclusively available on the test server.] 
 Teststrike:
1. Adjusted the internal classifications and removed the visualization of a Fire affinity.
2. Increased the unit's life points from 5,000 to 10,000.
3. Increased the average damage dealt over 20 seconds from 5,000 to 10,000.
4. Changed the size type from XL to L.
5. Decreased the visual model size scaling from 200% to 135%.
6. Added a German card name to search for it.
7. Active ability Fire Lance:
   A. Fixed incorrect handling of overkill damage.
   B. Removed M-sized counter damage bonus.
   C. Improved description to be more consistent.
8. Passive ability Fiery Birth:
   A. Increased damage from 10,000 (30,000 in total) to 30,000 (90,000 in total).
   B. Fixed incorrect handling of overkill damage.
   C. Removed M-sized counter damage bonus.
   D. Improved description to be more consistent.
 

That's all for this patch! See you in the Forge!

Hello Skylords, Skyladies and other Skybeings; and welcome to CCC #11 – the eleventh Crappy Community Contest!
 
What are “Crappy Community Contests”?
CCC's are meant to be small-scale contests with weird challenges, hopefully luring you away from well-trodden paths. They are small-scale on the organizers side too: there will be no stream, video, or event announcing the winners. What's special about these contests is a participation price for the whole Skylords community.
 
What, when, where, how?

While CCC's are now well known for varying gameplay contests, every once in a while it is time to do something for developing the community, like the Screenshot Contest, Contest-Contest or Card Idea contest (which even became official). And, to be honest, I have identified a real shame for our community – let's try to fix this together:
 
Meme-fy BattleForge

You see a barren land, void of any options.

This challenge is to submit an animated GIF
to get the community some BattleForge options for Discord.

On our Discord there is a wide range of memes used, but there is not a single BattleForge or Skylords Reborn option on the GIF-Keyboard to chose from – literally NOTHING. I hope many of you agree that our beloved game has some meme-worthy content. You are allowed to enter with up to two different ideas.
The only limitation placed on your ideas is that it must be an ANIMATION, so it fits the database (Tenor) that Discord is using. Here are some examples of what anyone could easily come up with (thanks to @Ultralord for helping with those!):
 
By entering, you are giving permission to upload and use your entry on Tenor, as well as the SR Team using it on Social Media. Your entries will be judged by a well-known three-person jury: @Dutchy, @Majora and @Ultralord. The jurors will receive the entries from me in an anonymized format.
If you submit two entries, you will receive only the highest tier prize. The contest has started with the release of this post – submit your entry through Discord (DM to Kapo#0116) or the Skylords Forum (DM to @Kapo) until 03.07.2023 23:59 CEST  (= 8 days time total). As already said, you may submit up to two entries.
 
Inspiration and tips
Some information that you might find helpful:
 
 
What's the price pool?
Since this is not just a Crappy Contest, but a Crappy Community Contest, you may help with your participation to earn a price for the whole Community. If we reach more than 15 participants (unique players, not entries), we will unlock a Mini-Booster code for the entire Skylords Community. So tell your fellow Skylords to submit and idea – it's an occasion to contribute to future events, and it raises our chances to hand out a code for everybody. 
Of course, the best ideas will get prices too, split up into a grand prize, as well as Gold and Silver tier winners.
Platinum Tier                  Swamp Drake Promo for the best entry
Gold Tier                         2 Boosters (limited to a maximum of 5 Gold tier winners)
Silver Tier                        1 Booster (limited to a maximum of 10 Silver tier winners)

Sponsors
If one or more mighty Skylord(s) decides to sponsor this event, please contact me. You can make a "Kapo's Choice" type of award and select an extra-winner yourself, or task the Jury to curate something like "best LOL meme" or "best angry meme", or whatever you like.
The following prices have been sponsored so far:
Skylords Team          General Boosters (up to x20), Community Booster Code
@Kapo                Swamp Drake Promo 
 
 
Conclusion
Skylords Reborn is a community project, so we as a community should be involved in the way we can – this is an opportunity for it. 
Good luck, I hope you enjoy spinning some ideas, and I'm hyped for what GIFs you guys will come up with!
Kapo
     
Future Events - get involved!
If you are interested in helping with these (or better) kinds of events for the community, or want to host one yourself, don't be afraid and simply reach out! Contact our Event Managers @nukie, @Minashigo Hiko and/or @Metagross31 on the forums or discord. They are happy to assist you with upcoming events and with sponsoring your prize pool!
If you especially like this small-scale-format, and you have an idea for it, you may also contact me directly to discuss your idea and host your own Crappy Community Contest.

Greetings Skylords!
A new month; a new Community Update! It's time to bring you up to speed with everything going on in Skylords Reborn!

• Patch Overview Video
Our latest patch, Nature's Awakening, has released! We have made a short overview video to celebrate the occasion, highlighting some of the changes we have made to the game. We hope you enjoy it, and be sure to share it with your friends!

If you want to read the full patch notes, you can find them here. 
 
• Patch Feedback Thread
As always, we highly value your feedback on the changes implemented in our latest patch. To facilitate this, we have once again created a dedicated feedback thread where you can express your thoughts about what you liked, disliked, and any other suggestions you may have.
We kindly request that you provide constructive feedback regarding aspects you would like to see improved, while also sharing the elements you enjoyed. Your input is invaluable to us!
 
• Voice Acting – Apply Now! 
Back in October 2021 we initiated the search for voice actors to enhance the game with new voice lines. The new cards Amii Paladin and Banzai Lord were voiced by community members, bringing these characters to life. At that time, we had plans to expand the range of voice lines in the game further. Unfortunately, due to the absence of an audio editor, we faced limitations in what we could achieve, resulting in the regrettable need to even reject fully recorded lines. Consequently, voice-acting was temporarily put on hold.
However, we are delighted to announce that we now have an Audio Editor on our team, and with our current focus on creating new campaign maps, we are once again actively seeking individuals who are interested in contributing their voices to Skylords Reborn!
We are looking for a variety of voices (both male and female), and encourage everyone who is interested (and has a decent microphone!) to apply. You are also welcome to apply if you did so in the original application round in 2021! 
To apply, fill in a brief survey to provide us with some information about yourself and select which characters you are interested in. We will be in touch with you for a trial script, and select our favourites from the provided recordings.  
 

 
Don't miss your chance to make a lasting impact on Skylords Reborn! Apply today and maybe your voice will be heard in the game!
 

 
• Art Spotlight – Bedrock
In our Stonekin Deep Dive, we previously mentioned our plans for a new tier 4 Stonekin unit based on the Moloch model. Today, we are excited to offer you a sneak peek of this unit by unveiling the artwork we have created for it. Additionally, we would like to share some insights into the process our artist, Spirit Alpha, went through to achieve the final result.
 
Sketch and Early Draft
Spirit Alpha initiates his artwork by creating a sketch or draft, outlining the general ideas to establish the artwork's direction. For this particular piece, we aimed to capture the essence of a formidable Stonekin creature emerging from the water.

It is important to consider the card frame when creating artwork. As you can see, while the left piece looks impressive on its own, the head partially falls off when placed within the card frame. This issue becomes even more apparent when displaying the creature type and charges in the game. This is why working with sketches and exploring various compositions is crucial before settling on a final design in Skylords Reborn.

Settling on a Design
Spirit Alpha explored several other options, some of which are highlighted below, while receiving feedback and suggestions from our art critiques along the way.

The design on the right showcased the most potential, and work continued with that version. 

Finalizing the Design
Although we were fond of the design, feedback indicated that the head of the creature should be tilted to the right instead of the left.

Throughout the process, Spirit Alpha also experimented with various designs for the creature's belly, ranging from a nearly fully closed appearance to a more open one.

Colour Scheme
Ultimately, we opted to retain a more closed design, and significant effort was invested in ensuring that the card followed the Stonekin colour scheme, preventing it from potentially resembling a Frost unit.


Final Adjustments
Spirit Alpha submitted his final design, and our lead artist, Tweeto, made some last minor adjustments to produce the final artwork. One of the modifications involved tilting the "volcano" slightly to ensure it remained within the card frame. Can you identify the other changes? 


Here are Tweeto's final adjustments: 
We are extremely pleased with the final outcome of Bedrock and sincerely hope that you can appreciate the dedication and effort that went into its creation. A heartfelt appreciation goes out to Spirit Alpha for his hard work!
 
• Tournaments and Events
In between our monthly Community Updates, we host various events and tournaments, so be sure to keep a close eye on the in-game event tab and the forum calendar to stay informed and not miss out on any exciting events!
 
• NEW - Community Run Event: Old School Efficiency
Fancy a challenge? Complete Encounters with Twilight on standard using as little power as you can! Please check in tomorrow for more information.
 
 • COMING UP - Official Event #9: Who Dares Wins! - June 17th until June 25th
Look out for our next official event later this month. Do you have what it takes to aid Rogan?
 

• COMING UP - Crappy Community Contest #11 - June 26th until July 3rd
The next CCC will be a creative contest held on the forum. Look out for the forum post on June 26th!



• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event yourself? Please reach out to our Event Organizers, @Metagross31, @Minashigo Hiko or @nukie! We can help you out with various topics and are glad to discuss potential ideas. We can also sponsor the prize pool for your event. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you.
 
• Team Changes
We are thrilled to announce that the creators behind the maps used in the previous community event Through Ice and Flames have officially joined our team as Map Designers! With the addition of both Damo and Hrdina Impéria, our team's focus on creating new campaign maps has been further strengthened, and we can't wait to release some exciting content in the future. Welcome both, and thank you for your contribution! 
More than a year after the position was first listed, we have found an Audio Editor in Discoheart! He will be able to help us out with the needed editing for adding new voice lines into the game, both for cards and upcoming campaign maps. We are glad to have him, and excited to continue adding new voice lines into the game. 
 
• Contribute
Interested in joining the team yourself? Skylords Reborn is a community-driven project fuelled by the passion and dedication of over 30 volunteers. We are always on the lookout for like-minded individuals. If you have a passion for gaming, programming, design, or marketing, we invite you to have a look at our open positions!
 

 
• In Conclusion
That's all for this Community Update! We appreciate you taking the time to read through it.
As is tradition, we're including a scratch code as a small token of our appreciation for your support.
The code will reward you with a General booster: APPL-YFOR-VOIC-ENOW
The code is valid until July 1st, when we will bring you another Community Update. 
We're always looking for ways to improve and value your feedback. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please don't hesitate to share them with us. We'll be back next month with more updates on our ongoing projects and upcoming features. You can also sign up to our e-mail newsletter here. 

Archive
• Skylords Reborn Documents (Deep Dives, Behind the Scenes, PvP Guide)  
• Overview Community Updates
• Community Update May 2023

Patch #400042 - Nature's Awakening
Welcome to our newest patch. This update contains our eighth balance patch for the game, a brand-new card, all kinds of quality of life features, and many other changes, enjoy!

Patch Preview
- One new card is now available! Jump in-game to collect Sleet Storm.
- Nature becomes the next faction to join the party in random PvE. 
- The first half of our two-part gold rework for PvE game modes and card upgrade costs.
- The Community Map menu has been completely reworked to increase usability. Also, gold rewards and a new achievement have been added for community maps. 
- Our third balance pass on towers, numerous buffs to well-designed but underperforming cards, and some of our first changes to NPC enemies.
- New quality of life features including a single-player pause feature, key down versus key up interactions, the ability to copy text from the in-game chat, the ability to immediately import a deck when a valid code is pasted in chat, and many more!

General Changes
The Community Map section has been completely revamped. Players can now better filter between maps, rank maps themselves, search for high-rated maps from other players, and receive overtime gold rewards while playing both featured and non-featured community maps. Cards played in featured community maps now also count towards daily quest rewards, and a new achievement to play and beat featured community maps will reward players with the Spring Forge skin. This rework will open up a lot of new content with which players can engage, and hopefully encourage more community members to bless their fellow Skylords with their map making talents. For more information, check out the February 2023 Community Update. Players can now pause PvE matches when they are the only active player in the game, including situations where multiple players were previously active in the match but have since left. The game automatically pauses whenever you open the options menu, showing a pause message while darkening the screen, and automatically unpauses when you close the options menu. Players will still be able to earn progress towards quests and achievements when pausing, but any game where a pause occurred will be removed from the leaderboard. Pausing solo matches can be disabled in the config file by changing the "allow_pausing_solo_games" option under the "application" section to false. The game now handles global key events on key down rather than on key up interactions. BattleForge is an outlier among modern games in that hotkeys are activated when a player releases a key, not when it is first pressed. By changing this, the game now feels much smoother and more responsive. Players can change back to using key up interactions by changing the line "global_key_events_on_key_down" in the config file to false. Gold rewards for rPvE have been changed. Random PvE now rewards players with overtime gold rewards based on map difficulty and whether they are playing 1p, 2p, or 4p. Gold earned from a 4p level 9 match will be roughly identical, while the gold reward for most other levels has been increased. 1p and 2p rPvE matches now reward significantly more gold than previously. Additionally, all rPvE matches now reward 15% of the expected rewards on-loss.  The gold cost to purchase and apply upgrades has been restructured. Previously, the application cost accounted for 28% of the total gold cost; it has now been increased to 40% while the cost to purchase upgrades has been decreased proportionately. Additionally, common and uncommon cards now have higher gold costs, while rare and ultra-rare cards have lower gold costs. The total cost to purchase and apply all upgrades, approximately 5.7 million gold for all cards, remains unchanged. This change is intended to make higher rarity cards easier to upgrade for newer players, while making lower rarity upgrades more valuable. More changes to upgrades and their procurement will be coming in a follow-up patch when we rework and increase the rewards for playing campaign maps.  Card upgrade drop locations are now provided in-game. When upgrading a card, it will now tell players where they can find the other upgrades they are missing. Additionally, each map now has a "Show Upgrades" button where players can filter and search for what upgrades the map provides at each difficulty level. For more information, see the March 2023 Community Update. All card upgrades have had their locations changed. Each map now has a roughly equal amount of commons, uncommons, rares, and ultra-rares. The 12p maps Passage to Darkness and Ascension are unchanged and will continue to only provide gold.  Players now have the ability to compare their profiles. Right now, this feature is limited to just comparing what achievements each player has completed, though it may be expanded to include more details in the future depending on community feedback. The feature is set to "Friends only" by default (meaning only people that you personally have added as a friend can see your profile), but it can be opened to the public or restricted completely in the settings.  Nature has been added as an enemy faction in rPvE. Face iconic Nature units, discover new bosses, battle through enemy root networks, and overcome the ultimate control faction in this newest addition to the random PvE game mode! For more information, and an interview with the designer, see the May 2023 Community Update. Shaman users rejoice, gold chests are now openable in-combat! Two new chat options have been added to the right-click context menu. Players can now copy messages directly from the chat and import decks from any message that contains a valid deck code automatically. Additionally, the context menu now only shows currently available actions instead of every possible action at all times.  Major changes have been made to the global effects system. More than 5 global effects are now shown at the top-left of the match window, with temporary effects, like Shrine of War, taking precedence over permanent effects, like Wheel of Gifts. Players should now be able to see all, or nearly all, global effects currently active in the game.  Twilight Transformation now counts as playing a card for the sake of achievements, meaning it can no longer be used to bypass achievement unit or card restrictions. Does not affect Not Even My Final Form.
New Cards
Sleet Storm  - 60p T3 Frost  
You will find the upgrades for this card on the map Defending Hope.
Two issues plague Frost in the higher tiers of PvE. The first is that the faction's only source of area CC is freeze. Given that a unit or building can only be frozen once, freeze application cards overlap in non-productive ways. The second issue is that while one orb of other factions gives the player powerful tools, the same is not true of one Frost orb. Most good Frost cards are locked behind 2 Frost orbs. We therefore wanted to address both issues at once by releasing a new Frost CC which was fully splashable. We made it an area Gravity Surge effect to synergize with Construct and to give other deck archetypes that lack anti-air easy access to it. For more information, check out the April 2023 Community Update.

Card Balance Changes

Global Balance Changes
Random PvE Boss Leader Immunity:
   - Added Steadfast to all rPvE bosses.
Ranged attack delays re-randomized:
   - Towers and ranged units are now assigned a randomized 0.3-0.7 second delay on a per-attack basis instead of a standardized 0.5 second delay on spawn. This only modifies cards affected by the bug, many ranged units and towers will be unaffected by the change. 
Last patch, we changed the randomized attack delay assigned on spawn from ranging between 0.1-1.1 seconds to a standardized delay of 0.5 seconds. While this successfully achieved our goal of making each unit and tower a player spawns equal, it introduced other problems. The chief concern reported by the playerbase was an aesthetic one. While previously battles in BattleForge felt very alive, with units and towers on each side attacking continuously, with the standardized delay combat started to feel more turn-based. Your units would attack, their units would attack, then your units would attack again. This also led to easy kiting of enemies, particularly NPC enemies, because you could play around the standard delay to unleash volleys of attacks then retreat until the next volley was ready. Given the widespread and consistent feedback we received that something unique to the BattleForge experience had been lost by this change, we decided to pursue a few alternative solutions that would fix both the old and the new problems. The solution we settled on was to re-add the attack delay with a smaller range and to make it apply on a per-attack instead of a per-spawn basis. This means each affected unit or tower will have a slightly different attack speed for each attack, but will on average have the same attack speed over a long enough period. The chaotic nature of combat should also return, with both sides continuously attacking instead of engaging in a semi turn-based encounter.
Revenant's Doom Costs Standardization:
   - Standardize Revenant's Doom costs by tier, with an increasing discount as the tiers progress: T2: 75%, T3: 65%, T4: 50% of unit's normal power cost
NPC Building Power and Orb Cost Fix:
   - All NPC buildings now have an assigned power and orb cost. 
Similar to how we fixed the missing power and orb costs for NPC units several patches ago, we have now given each NPC building its own power and orb cost. One motivation for this change is to allow us to add new cards and card abilities that can be limited in terms of which buildings they can and cannot be taken over, which would otherwise not be possible. A second motivation is to create consistency between NPC buildings. Prior to this change, buildings added with Fire rPvE had properly assigned costs, which is also true of the new Nature rPvE buildings, while the original buildings did not. This created a major inconsistency between and within game modes in regard to Matter Mastery, making it difficult or impossible to know when to bring one or the other affinity. A third motivation was to create a real distinction between the two existing affinities of Matter Mastery. Previously, before this change, the nature affinity could overtake every building in the game, meaning there was no real reason to use the tainted affinity or for it to exist. At the same time, we do not want to strongly nerf the nature affinity, which we do not view as inherently problematic. As such, as part of this change, we are also changing the nature affinity of Matter Mastery to work on T3 buildings, up to a power cost of 140p. Below, we have listed each building affected by this change and what will be its new tier and power cost.
Tier 2 - 100p
Bandit Launcher, Stonekin Hurler, Twilight Infected Tower, Lost Launcher
Tier 3 - 140p
Bandit Sky Defender, Bandit Waystation, Bandit Wizard Tower, Stonekin Deepgorge, Stonekin Launcher, Stonekin Shatterer, Twilight Fleshbender, Twilight Hatecaster, Twilight Skyscorcher, Lost Banestone, Lost Converter, Lost Disruptor
Tier 4 - 200p
Bandit Artillery, Stonekin Hammerfall, Stonekin Shredder, Twilight Bombard, Twilight Willsapper
XL-unit Turn Speed Increase:
   - Increased the turn speed of all player XL-units based on category.
Ground XL: 25% faster turn speed
Flying XL: 40% faster turn speed
Worm XL: 200% faster turn speed
Global Disenchant Hostile versus Friendly Root Distinction:
   - Disenchant's immunity no longer prevents the application of the Immobile, Immobileroot is still prevented.
BattleForge has two types of root effects, one called Immobile and the other Immobileroot. The distinction between them is that Immobile is only applied by friendly effects, while Immobileroot is applied by hostile effects. This change makes it so that a friendly effect which causes a unit to be rooted in place is no longer prevented by Disenchant's immunity effect. The primary reason behind this change is that effects which self-root a unit or its allies are baked into the balancing considerations of a card and its effects. The ability to bypass this downside, which has become easier as we have added, and likely will continue to add, more ways to apply Disenchant, has therefore become a constant balance consideration for both upcoming and existing cards. We are forced to ask ourselves if we can really buff Forest's Vim if we have to account for a Razorleaf that can walk around at normal speed, attacking the entire time. As we work on campaign maps with longer T4 sequences, we have to consider that a player can summon a Dreadnought and have it permanently stay in its Pledge of the Giants mode while walking around, trivializing vast portions of the map with ease. In such cases, do we nerf the Dreadnought and the Razorleaf, or do we nerf the mechanic which is causing the issue? Our decision was to nerf the Disenchant interaction.
Squad Position Fix:
   - Game now checks and updates the Squad position to the unit position if they are too far away from each other.
Any unit has two positions. A squad position and a unit position, which is equal to what we see on screen. This position tends to be close or equal to the units position itself but seems to behave slightly different for some actions. For example,. a Magma Hurler will shift his squad position slightly behind himself when attacking. This is not problematic. But some actions lead to only the unit position being updated while the squad position remained stationary. Prime candidates for this are hold position orders or rooting effects. The squad position can remain at the initial spot while the unit including its unit position can move to attack. Squad position is used by many abilities and spells to check if they should apply to the corresponding unit. Meaning, a unit with a squad position far away from its unit position would no longer be hit by things like CC or AoE attacks targeting the unit position. The fix going live now checks and updates the Squad position to the unit position if they are too far away from each other. Worms are not included here due to issues with worm movement.

PvE Balance Changes
While changes are split here between PvE and PvP sections, many of the changes have important consequences for both game modes. Our PvE and PvP balance teams work closely together to ensure that the impact of all changes are evaluated for both game modes. Below, we have listed both the changes and our reasoning behind them. 
[ Tier 1 ]
 Banner of Glory:
1. Life points: 500 ➜ 300
2. Void return percentage: 33% ➜ 40%
Higher percentage void return will allow more efficient cycling of lower tier units into real power. The life points were lowered to avoid situations in PvP where it becomes too strong, such as offensively inside an Aura of Corruption.
 Decomposer:
1. Void return percentage: 50% ➜ 60%
 Frost Mage:
1. Remove knock back from damage cone
2. Add non-damaging cone with reduced range, that applies knock back. A 33m knock back cone should result in Frost Mage consistently applying damage to squads she attacks, fixing the issue where units are knocked outside of her damage range, but she continues to attack them anyway.
 Imperials:
1. Add passive, "Protected Rush:" While under the effect of an Ice Shield, the unit gains significantly increased movement speed.
   A. Only works while Defensive Stance is active
   B. Movement speed while shielded = 4.8 m/s
Improve Frost Sorceress and Ice Shield Tower synergy with Imperials. 
 Scorched Earth (p):
1. Tainted Deconstruction (p):
   A. Damage debuff: 50% ➜ 75%
   B. Remove “The erection of buildings that are presently under construction will be interrupted and it will not be possible to repair anything.” from functionally and description.
The increase of Scorched Earth(p)'s debuff allows it to become a semi-suppression of buildings in a large area (20m) and to protect your fragile Fire units in PvE. We removed the construction-suppression effect to reduce double-scorched usage in PvP, which also gives each affinity a role in either PvE or PvP. 
 Snapjaws:
1. Remove Splash Damage: 5 damage, up to 9 in total ➜ 7 damage
Snapjaws have an abysmal splash radius of only 3m. This is so small it effectively does not exist and only serves to reduce the unit's damage against squad units. We are removing the splash and changing the unit's damage to single-target. This increases the unit's single-target damage from 138 to 193 dp20, a +40% increase in total effective damage. This will change the damage of Satanael's Snapjaws from 414 dp20 to 579 dp20.
 Tunnel:
1. Power cost: 40p ➜ 35p
2. Life points: 880 ➜ 600
Encourage Tunnel play by slightly lowering cost. HP reduction to prevent issues with an overly health efficient Tunnel.
 Witchclaws:
1. Power cost: 65 ➜ 70
2. Damage: 630 ➜ 680
3. Add passive, "Corpse Gathering:" Harvests energy from nearby corpses equal to their former maximum life points to enable more powerful explosions. A maximum of 3000 life points can be stored at once.
4. Infiltration Rework:
   A. Damage (both affinities): 330, up to 1650 in total damage + up to 600 damage per target, up to 5 targets in total based on the number of corpses gathered
   B. Enable splash overflow fix for ability.
   C. Both affinities now damage units and buildings.
   D. Explosion radius: 20m ➜ 15m
   E. Fire affinity: Additionally, when 3000 corpses have been gathered, Witchclaws deal 50% more damage after teleporting.
   F. Shadow affinity ➜ Frost Affinity: Additionally, when 3000 corpses have been gathered, Witchclaws take 50% less damage after teleporting.
[ Tier 2 ]
 Breeding Grounds:
1. Power cost: 70p ➜ 90p
Breeding Grounds is one of the stronger cards in the game and has some of the best scaling of any T2 card or building. At only 1 Nature orb and available as easy as T2, it grants a permanent -25% discount to all own and allied units. While the card is something of a third rail due to its popularity, now that we have significantly buffed nearly all parts of Nature, we believe it is time to give the card a minor nerf. When considering what to do with the card, we considered several options, such as making the discount scale upwards or downwards with tier (i.e. 15% discount if player is T2, 20% if T3, etc.) or just nerfing the -25% discount outright. In the end, we settled on a slap-on-the-wrist nerf, at least initially. The increased bound power will delay players initially in T2, but only cost them 2 extra permanent power if they destroy the building. At the same time, the increased bound power cost should encourage players to actually destroy Breeding Grounds made obsolete by map progression, and it will provide a much needed nerf in the PvP game mode as well. 
 Burrow Ritual:
1. Orb cost: 1 Nature, 1 Neutral (T2) ➜ 1 Nature (T1)
Reducing the card's tier should allow more synergy with Tunnel, allowing for more strategies to emerge and helping to better justify Burrow Ritual's inclusion in a deck.
 Defenders:
1. Crossbow Attack damage: 9 per shot (540 dp20) → 10 per shot (600 dp20)
2. Life points: 810 → 750
Stat realignment to make Defenders more viable offensively and a more attractive option. Life points are worth less than damage when considering stat efficiency, particularly amongst ranged units in PvE.
 Earthkeeper:
1. Fixed a bug which allowed Earthkeeper to make connected units immune to all damage while also not affecting Earthkeeper. 
 Lost Priest:
1. Exhaustion:
   A. Cast range: 30➜ 40m
   B. Total targets: 5 ➜ 10
   C. Debuff Timer: 20 sec ➜ 30s
   D. Jump speed increase
   E. Debuff strength: 30% ➜ 40%
Improvements to Lost Priest's support capacity will help its viability in PvE, particularly in combination with other units such as Lost Shade and Lost Dancer. 
 Matter Mastery (g):
1. Gifted Takeover (g): maximum of 2 orbs and 100 power costs ➜ maximum of 3 orbs and 140 power costs
See Global Balance Changes above for more details. We are also considering more substantial changes to the tainted affinity in a future update. 
 Revenant's Blessing:
1. Charges: 8 ➜ 12
2. Radius: 20m ➜ 25m
3. Gifted Immortal healing: 15 ➜ 30 life points per second
4. Infused Immortal damage: 25% ➜ 30% more damage
5. Bugfix: Allow overlapping Revenant's Blessings to reapply the effect without requiring the unit to exit and re-enter the area.
We are working towards improving the current use case of Revenant's Doom through direct buffs to it and through improving its support tools. With this change, Lost Shades are usable without needing Viridya and the spell scales better into the higher tiers for those you want to use revenants. More support to the faction and to revenants in particular will come in the next patch when we finish the rest of the upcoming Lost Souls rework. 
 Root Nexus:
1. Orb cost: 1 Nature, 1 Neutral (T2) ➜ 1 Nature (T1)
2. Life points: 850 ➜ 650
Moving Root Nexus to T1 gives Treespirit a much-needed support card. Life points reduced to prevent too health efficient blocking options in T1. 
 Spikeroot:
1. Waves per root attack: 2.5 spike waves ➜ 2 spike waves
2. Damage per wave: 100, up to 150 in total ➜ 125, up to 190 in total (+25% increase)
Overall damage remains identical. Spikeroot now always deals the same damage at each point in its attack, instead of having high and low points. 
 Sunken Temple:
1. Added Mode-change, "Hibernate:" Pest Creepers enter a state of dormancy and are no longer summoned.
2. Pest Creepers now aggro against enemies in an area around the Temple.
The new mode change will allow the player to temporarily turn off Pest Creepers. This will be especially helpful when using a large number of Sunken Temples, which quickly fill up the unit population limit, and you want to summon new non-Creeper units. The other change will make it so that Pest Creepers no longer stand around waiting for enemies to either attack them or move within a short distance. They will now actively aggro on enemies that come within a moderate radius around the Temple which spawned them. Overall, these changes should make the card function much more fluidly. 
 Unholy Power:
1. Stored Strength (ammo): 2000 ➜ 3000
2. Ammo is refreshed whenever Unholy Power is recast on a unit already affected by another instance of Unholy Power.
3. Bugfix: Unholy Power no longer decays all remaining ammo when a previous instance of the spell expires. 
Unholy Power is a highly inconsistent spell, and a lot of that regards bugs in its original implementation. By fixing the decay issue, new applications of Unholy Power existing concurrently with previous applications should no longer be removed by older instances expiring. Additionally, new applications, in addition to continuing to stack additively, now refresh the card's ammo pool back to full. On top of these important changes to the card's functioning, we also increased its total strength pool by 50% from 2000 to 3000 which should help it to scale better into T3. With all these changes, Unholy Power should become a significantly stronger and more consistent buff spell.  
 Viridya (normal and promo versions):
1. Viridya’s Blessing is now able to restore lost squad members
 Wallbreaker:
1. Orb cost: 1 Fire, 1 Neutral (T2) ➜ 1 Fire (T1)
Opens up several early use cases for the card on Titans, Dwarven Riddle, and Sunbridge. 
[ Tier 3 ]
 Abyssal Warder:
1. New Active ability for large and medium-sized golems, "Reassemble:" Bond with two other Abyssal Warders of the same size in a 20m radius to reform into an Abyssal Warder of a larger size.
2. Frost affinity effect, Ice Shield duration: 15s ➜ 30 seconds
There is a large disparity between the usefulness of the two Abyssal Warder affinities in terms of effects. The fire affinity (r) provides a permanent buff, while the blessed affinity (b) only grants an Ice Shield for 15 seconds. In an attempt to partially remedy this issue, we have doubled the length of the smaller Warders' Ice Shields to 30 seconds. Additionally, we have finally been able to add a new effect to the small and medium sized Warders which will allow them to rebuild themselves into a larger Warder. Reassemble requires 3 Warders to work, meaning that it is not inherently efficient, though it provides another strong synergy with Promise of Life and builds on the buffs to Abyssal Warder last patch. 
 Blood Healing:
1. Charges 12 ➜ 16
 Thornbark:
1. Melee damage: 1400 dp20 ➜ 1550 dp20
 Mutating Frenzy:
1. Sacrifice cooldown: 15 sec ➜ 5 sec
 Santa Claus:
1. Blue Gift, Red Gift, Christmas Peace cooldown: 60 seconds ➜ 40 seconds
 Satanael:
1. Fealty (both affinities):
   A. Cannot be activated if the player is at or above 125 population. 
   B. Summoned Snapjaws damage: 200% ➜ 120%
Removing all instances of infinite spawning in the game due to the attendant performance issues they cause. Buffing Snapjaws individually as compensation. Overall, the damage of each summoned Snapjaws squad is increased slightly. 
 Shrine of Martyrs:
1. Void return per frozen unit: 12% ➜ 18% of current void pool
2. Bugfix: Void return effect is no longer triggered multiple times per entity.
Regular users of Shrine of Martyrs know that the void return effect is often inconsistent. The same group of enemies could provide wildly different void return rates when frozen due to the fact that the effect would switch between applying once or multiple times per enemy. We fixed this inconsistency, but it left the shrine, which is likely already the weakest of the four standard options, even weaker. As such, we have given it a large +50% buff to its void return percentage in compensation for removing the existing bug. This change will allow players to develop an intuitive understanding of how much void is actually returned per frozen enemies. The percentage we chose is a bit of a guess and is subject to change based on the feedback we receive from player testing.  
 Shrine of War:
1. Orb cost: 1 Fire, 2 Neutral (T3) ➜ 2 Fire, 1 Neutral (T3)
When we first began nerfing cards, many people asked us when we were planning on touching Shrine of War. We previously delayed any changes to the card due to its importance to the rPvE game mode at all levels and because other factions, such as Frost and Nature, lacked sufficient methods of void return, an aspect we think is integral to the balance of all factions. Now that all factions have a viable method of void return, we have decided to give Shrine of War a nerf. We were between the two ideas of nerfing its void return percentage or increasing its orb restrictions. While Shrine of War has by far the most efficient void return when accounting for multiple players out of all the available options, we decided that we did not think its efficiency was outside the line of acceptability, but that the Shrine was too splashable compared to the other options. As such, we choose to leave Shrine of War as the best void return shrine in the game, but to require the player to invest into 2 Fire orbs to access it. 
[ Tier 4 ]
 Altar of Chaos:
1. Change Nether Bomb cast range to work like spells instead of like units & buildings. Still limited to own ground presence only.
This seemingly small change substantially increases the positioning capacities of the Nether Bomb and allows own units to be much farther away when placing bombs. 
 Battleship:
1. Barrage damage per shot: 550, up to 3300 in total ➜ 800, up to 2400 in total
Battleship's ability has a long range of 50m and can be used to snipe out enemies far into the enemy's backline while remaining safe itself. The ability has a very large amount of splash damage, able to fully damage up to 6 enemies in its target radius. At the same time, the target radius is only 12m making it very unlikely there are 6 enemies to damage. Additionally, despite its long animation and unleashing 5 shots, the single-target damage is not even able to destroy a large spawn building. We are reducing the total splash damage in favor of higher single-target damage, increasing the damage dealt to one target from 2750 to 4000 in total. 
 Cluster Explosion (p):
1. Tainted Burst radii per successive explosion: 25m / 20m / 15m / 10m / 5m ➜ 25m / 20m / 15m / 12m / 10m
Increased the radius of the explosion for the 3rd and 4th waves of Cluster Explosion (p). These radii were so small, they often failed to hit any enemies. By increasing them, we hope to give a slight buff to this affinity in ideal situations with a lot of closely clustered enemies. 
 Earthen Gift:
Earthen Gift Redesign
1. Charges: 4 ➜ 8
2. Infused Earth (r) ➜ Blessed Earth (b):
   A. Damage buff: 30% ➜ 50%
3. Tainted Earth (p) ➜ Gifted Earth (g):
   A. Affects Elemental units, not structures
   B. Remove "Every hostile building in the current game will deal 50% less damage."
   C. Damage buff: +50% more damage
   D. Healing per second: 10% ➜ 5%
Earthen Gift is one of the worst cards in the entire game. Before Reforging, its normal price was 3 BFP despite being a Rare spell. As Stonekin's Pure T4 spell, it ought to be one of the reasons why a player goes 2 Nature and 2 Frost orbs, but right now it is a waste of a card slot. The card's existing identity is as a combined buff and healing card, but it is restricted to only work on structures. Even on structures it is not useful.
Instead of completely rejecting the card's initial design, we are attempting to improve on it for the one affinity by increasing the damage buff where it may prove useful upon the release of defensive rPvE. For the other affinity, we are swapping its effect from structures to elemental units, which includes all Stonekin units, and modifying its heal and damage buff accordingly. The idea is to potentially allow the spell to replace Regrowth while also giving Stonekin access to a minor damage buff for itself and any other friendly elemental units. Between this and the Grinder buff, Stonekin's T4 should feel significantly stronger.
 Evil Eye:
1. Damage now ticks every 0.5 seconds instead of every 1 second. Rage still takes the same amount of time to activate.
2. Initial damage delay for Evil Eye's Searing Sight has been removed. Damage will now starts as soon as Evil Eye targets an enemy.
 Grinder:
1. Harmony: Added a yellow bar akin to Mountaineer showing when the healing effect will next occur.
2. Provoke (both affinities): Single target ➜ All enemies in a 15m radius
   A. Infused Provoke Buff: 50% more damage ➜ 75% more damage
Quality of life change to Grinder's harmony ability. Added some increased strength and flexibility to Grinder's taunt by allowing it to affect multiple targets in a small area. This will also allow Grinder (r) to taunt the empty air versus bosses, allowing it to still generate the personal damage buff, which has been increased to +75%, regards of whether or not any enemy units are actually taunted. Stonekin struggles against strong single target enemies such as bosses and this is one step in an attempt to remedy that without damaging the faction's existing identity.
 Lost Evocation:
1. Charges: 4 ➜ 8
2. Cast time reduction: 2 seconds ➜ 0.8 seconds
3. Infused Revenant damage buff: 50% ➜ 100%
The charge increase allows Lost Souls to get access to its primary support spell without having to use two deck slots on Rifle Cultists + Offering. The cast time reduction prevents the use of both Evocations simultaneously, while the buff to the fire affinity (r)'s damage buff makes it a more compelling option for a faction whose main damage dealing occurs through units.
 Shadow Worm:
1. Increase turn rate of disintegration turrets: 200 ➜ 260
 Tempest:
1. Whirlwind splash radius: 5m ➜ 8m
 Twilight Pestilence:
1. Damage: 44 ➜ 64 life points per second
2. Healing (both affinities): Both affinities now heal friendly Twilight units by equivalent damage as they deal to enemies.
3. Change Gifted Affinity (g) ➜ Infused Affinity (r)
   A. Add +30% damage buff for friendly Twilight units
Improvements in nearly all aspects of Twilight's marquee spell. Previously, the blessed affinity (b) was the only one worth using due to the damage reduction it provides. We decided to roll the healing effect of the gifted affinity (g) into the base spell and create an alternative damage buff variant instead. The goal with this change is to allow Twilight Pestilence to be a more flexible spell, one able to provide a supportive effect while also clearing minor enemies and recovering chip damage to player units that might otherwise prompt the player to cast an additional healing spell. 
 Void Maw:
1. Void Shear ability cost: 75p ➜ 60p
[ Tower Changes ]
It is the general principle of the faction design team not to change abilities or introduce complex mechanics needlessly. Cards should generally perform a single function and perform that function well. A lot of the buildings in the game are already well-designed, but lack sufficient stats or possess too strict of requirements. As such, we have opted wherever possible to introduce simple changes to bring towers up to the appropriate power level. If you would like to learn more about our thought process behind the tower changes, please head to Skylords Reborn Documents to read our design Deep Dive on Towers, as well as other design documents. 
Tower Targeting Fixes:
1. Changed the damage delay of the auto-attacks for a large range of towers to the standard delay of 0.1 sec. These towers should now have an easier time hitting moving targets, including swift units. 
   A. Affects the following towers, including both affinities when applicable: Artillery, Hammerfall, Defense Tower, Lifestealer, Northern Keep, Primal Defender, Twilight Bombard, Tower of Flames
 Blaster Cannon:
1. Splash radius: 5m ➜ 8m
2. Tainted Magma: 15m ➜ 20m
 Defense Tower:
1. Splash radius: 5m ➜ 8m
 Howling Shrine:
1. Essence Bolts firing arc: 90 degrees ➜ 135 degrees
2. New passive, “Restoration:” Regenerate 30 life points every second.
To truly fulfill its role as a fortress and to provide a meaningful choice between itself and Razorleaf, Howling Shrine must be a self-sufficient defender able to justify the massive amount of space it occupies. The restoration effect will allow the tower to persist even absent player attention or when facing continuous attack waves that prevent repair. The increase to the firing arc of its main weapon is a much needed change. Prior to this, Howling Shrine could only target most enemies with one turret at a time and XL units with two turrets only if the tower was positioned perfectly with respect to the XL unit's path. The tower should now be able to target units of all sizes with two turrets in most cases. 
 Lifestealer:
1. Splash radius: 5m ➜ 8m
2. Still alive regeneration: 5 life points per second ➜ 8 life points per second
3. Sacrifice cooldown: 15 seconds ➜ 3 seconds
 Lost Disruptor:
1. Damage: 300, up to 330 in total ➜ 300, up to 450 in total (3000 dp20)
2. Splash radius: 5m ➜ 10m
3. Disruption cost: 50p ➜ 20p
Increase Lost Disruptor's effectiveness against multiple enemies. Also, Lost Disruptor's ability is one of the better counters to Shrine of Memory in 2v2 PvP. By decreasing the cost, we better enable players to make use of the card simply for its ability effect.
 Northern Keep:
1. Splash radius: 5m ➜ 8m
 Primal Defender:
1. Earthstrike splash radius: 5m ➜ 8m
2. Cloudstrike:
   A. Damage (add splash): 225 ➜ 250, up to 375 in total (2030 dp20)
   B. Splash radius: 0m ➜ 8m
Buff to Primal Defender's anti-air capacity. This leaves it as a middle ground between a non-raged and a fully raged Blaster Cannon, and should hopefully allow the tower to better aid Nature T1 in dealing with anti-air threats, particularly those which can counter small and medium units.
 Rocket Tower
1. Orb cost: 2 Fire ➜ 1 Fire, 1 Neutral
2. Power cost: 80p ➜ 70p
3. Life points: 2000 ➜ 1480
4. Rocket Barrage:
   A. Total rockets: 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 ➜ 4 on all upgrade levels
   B. Attack speed: Every 5 seconds ➜ every 4 seconds
   C. Damage per rocket: 85 ➜ 90 (900 dp20)
Fire T2 currently lacks a splash tower, while Pure Fire T2 has 2 towers. We think Pyromaniac sufficiently fills the slot of T2 tower for Pure Fire, so we are transitioning Rocket Tower into a splash card. As part of this change, we will be cutting down on its large pool of life points while otherwise increasing the consistency of Rocket Tower, both in terms of knockback and damage dealing. Even with the cost decrease, this change will make Rocket Tower mildly less stat efficient against large groups in exchange for a lower start up cost and the ability to consistently knockback multiple enemies due to the fixed targeting and increased rate of fire. These changes should allow Rocket Tower to fulfill its role as a knockback-centric tower while its high damage allies provide the necessary fire power. 
 Skydefender:
1. Damage: 128 up to 192 in total ➜ 153 up to 230 (2300 dp20)
2. Life points: 1400 ➜ 1600
3. Range: 40m ➜ 50m
4. Splash Radius: 5m ➜ 8m
Substantial buff to Skydefender to give it more teeth against the T3 and T4 air threats it is designed to counter. The range increase will make it able to fight back against Raven Battleships, which are one of the most common flying enemies in the campaign. 
 Time Vortex (p):
1. Tainted Void Shock (p), attack speed increase void levels: Above 150, 300, 600, 1200 void ➜ Above 100, 200, 400, 800 void
Improve the efficiency of the tainted affinity (p) by decreasing the amount of void which is required to trigger each attack speed increase.  
 Volcano:
1. Power cost: 150p ➜ 200p
2. Damage: 581, up to 872 (3990 dp20) ➜ 766, up to 1149 (5270 dp20)
3. Life points: 4390 ➜ 5690
4. Infused Eruption (r) Rage:
   A. Rage scaling: 100% 1st stage, 200% 2nd stage ➜ 75% 1st stage, 150% 2nd stage
   B. Rage reset timer: 7 sec ➜ 10 seconds
5. Lava Sea:
   A. Radius: 25m ➜ 30m
   B. Bugfix - Lava Sea now works as described
   C. Added a new visual effect
The goal is to make Volcano more "dense" by increasing its power cost and then adjusting its stats accordingly. Making each Volcano more powerful helps to mitigate the tower's large size and also makes it a better target for building buff effects such as those provided by Frost's Skyelves. Total damage when enraged is slightly increased despite the Rage nerf (12,000 dp20 ➜ 13175 dp20). Overall, Volcano loses a very small amount of total stat efficiency, but gains in total strength by having an ability that actually works. The old Lava Sea provided zero value to the tower because it did not work. The new Lava Sea, which functions as described on the card, turns this Fire fortress into a terrifying strongpoint capable of wiping out hordes of enemy units.  

PvP Balance Changes
[ Tier 1 ]
 Life Weaving:
1. No longer affects buildings.
Life Weaving changes are made to weaken its scaling potential into higher tiers considering most shadow splashes tend to be fairly strong at later game stages anyway. Buffed single unit attacks with straight well focus are very easy to execute and fairly annoying to play against when any damage on the target also increases the damage against your Power Well.
 Sunstriders:
1. Suppression Fire ability cost: 25p ➜ 10p
In PvP, Suppression Fire's most relevant applications arise on higher tech levels, where a 50 energy investment for a fragile T1 unit is already enough of a restriction. As a result, there is room to buff the ability power cost for those niche cases.
[ Tier 2 ]
 Bandit Launcher:
1. Power cost: 60p ➜ 50p
2. Firebug ability cost: 40/35/30/25p ➜ 40p on all upgrade levels
The addition of a weaker building with reduced construction time led to some rather unique T2 strategies, but the high bound power requirements restrict its relevance. This change should open up some more room for creative usage of Bandit Launcher and the Fire Bug ability.
 Bandit Minefield:
1. Mine spawn speed reduced by 0.25 seconds per mine. 
Bandit Minefield has been a fairly controversial topic. The spell was very powerful and played an important role in every game mode. Based on play rates and general feedback, our PvP faction overhaul succeeded in making Bandits more viable and fun to play, but there was a lot of frustration when playing against the faction due to an overly dominant Minefield. After recent tweaks, play rates have dropped by about 20% and Bandits seems to be in a very healthy position based on global faction popularity and high ELO presence ever since. However, the experience of playing against Minefield continued to be perceived as frustrating by many of our players. The intended goal of this set of changes is to keep the faction at a similar level of strength, but distribute its power more evenly across Bandit T2 cards and strategies.
Mine spawn speed will be reduced to enable counter play without removing its zoning power and damage potential upon being ignored. The design direction of allowing placement under units is absolutely intended, crucial for the faction viability, and differentiates the card from basic trap card design. Due to a lack of crowd control and building protection, Bandits needs a tool to defend vs melee unit well focus consistently. A major issue in PvP is that outside of its intended design direction (melee unit zoning and S unit denial), Minefield generates too much trading value as its damage is almost guaranteed. The spell tends to trade up against anything except for swift unit micro. This should be addressed.
In return, we will buff Commandos, Sniper, and Bandit Launcher in compensation. As Warriors Death came up to the discussion for compensations: The card design is not healthy for PvP due to a lack of counterplay, as such we will just leave the card as is since its mechanic is also powerful in end game PvE content.
 Bandit Sniper:
1. Damage: 75 dmg per hit (750 dp20) ➜ 78 dmg per hit (780 dp20)
Slight damage increase to compensate for Bandit Minefield nerfs.
 Commandos:
1. Power cost: 75p ➜ 65p
2. Concentrate ability cost: 10p ➜ 20p
After some testing, we think it is safe to make Commandos a little stronger, as long as the upfront cost of mode-switching remains the same. This should be beneficial for the card in all game modes.
 Gravity Surge:
1. Cooldown: 20 seconds ➜ 15 seconds
Allow Gravity Surge to be more functional as a niche counter for air unit heavy strategies.
 Lyrish Knight:
1. Damage: 400 dp20 ➜ 800 dp20
2. Life points: 980 ➜ 900
3. Surge of Strength:
   A. No longer increases damage by 100%
   B. Now increases damage dealt to frozen targets by 50%
While we had the intentions to give Lyrish Knight a more meaningful role in the game, finding a healthy buff for the card just by tweaking the stats has not proven easy. The extraordinarily high health ratio makes the unit very powerful when combined with health scaling mechanics like Nasty Surprise. Furthermore, the card is easily spammable and can take over games. As a result, we will allow the card to interact more with Frost's spell arsenal rather than just adding value through raw stats.
 Mauler:
1. Power cost: 75p ➜ 70p
After Mountaineer fell out of the meta, Mauler lost its main purpose in PvP. A slight cost reduction should help him shine more in niche situations.
 Mountain Rowdy:
1. Tainted Ice Block damage (p): 25 dmg/sec ➜ 20 dmg/sec
2. Blessed Ice Block (b):
   A. Damage reduction: 25% ➜ 30%
   B. Now affects friendly air units.
With the previous changes, Mountain Rowdy (p) played a strong role in pure Frost due to its high damage potential, which made it a little too effortless to shut down T2 aggression. While Frost should be strong at deflecting attacks around own structures, we want to give players a fair chance to punish the faction when a player acquires a strong tempo lead. Mountain Rowdy (b), on the other hand, has been rather underwhelming, so we will buff the damage reduction percentage a bit.
 Shadow Mage:
1. Sacrifice range: 30m ➜ 40m
2. Foul Play:
   A. Damage percentage: 300% ➜ 400%
   B. Duration until explosion: 20 seconds ➜ 12 seconds
   C. Cast range: 30m ➜ 40m
   D. Now deals half damage to buildings
Despite her great stat efficiency, Shadow Mage's abilities have been rather underwhelming in relation to what the card is supposed to do with them. By adding a burst limit against structures, we open up a lot of room for Foul Play buffs in order to make this ability more rewarding in unit combat.
 Spirit Hunter (p):
1. Tainted Bow Attack poison damage: 20 dmg per second ➜ 25 dmg per second
The current damage loss compared to the green affinity does not get compensated by the additional piercing damage. This change should grant Spirit Hunters purple some better niche uses.
 Stone Shards (b):
1. Blessed Fury ➜ Shatter Ice
   A. No longer deals increased damage to demons and undead
   B. Now deals full damage to frozen targets
Stone Shards (b) are currently unused across all game modes. The affinity effect being effectively useless plays a big role here. This change is supposed to enable alternative strategies in Stonekin (Shards (b) + Spirit Hunters (p) + Coldsnap) without overbuffing the already powerful T2.
 Stone Tempest:
1. Stone Rest healing: 20 life points per second ➜ 40 life points per second
This change is supposed to give the self-heal ability a more meaningful role given that the self-cc almost always outweighs the benefits of using this mechanic. As many of the factions received more tools to counter the unit (i.e. Burning Spears release), we think it is safe to enable more ways to use the card without directly strengthening patterns that have been perceived as oppressive in the past.
 Twilight Curse:
1. Cooldown: 15 seconds ➜ 2 seconds
Allow Twilight Curse to scale into high energy T2s without increasing card efficiency.
 Warlock (r):
1. Infused Witchcraft damage buff: 15% ➜ 25%
We agree that the previous buff reduction was unnecessary when we reduced unit power cost. This has now been reverted.
[ Tier 3 ]
 Drones:
1. Life points: 1760 ➜ 1840
The recent changes for Drones did not help the card as much as we had hoped. Stat efficiency will be increased a bit further.
 Nox Carrier:
1. New passive, "Push the Cart:" Increase movement speed to 6.4 m/s when at least 3 friendly units are within a 25m radius
Based on some previous suggestions by the community in the balancing discord, we will add a conditional movement speed increase to Nox Carrier in order to make sure it actually reaches its destination.
 Sandstorm:
1. Charges: 8 ➜ 12
 Shield Building:
1. Cooldown: 20 seconds ➜ 30 seconds
Shield building has been very powerful for a long time, and a card nerf has been requested by the community rather frequently. We agree. 100% uptime on a shield, strong enough to outlast XL unit focus, is too much value even if you invest a full deck slot for a purely defensive spell.
 Timeshifter Spirit
1. Healing per jump: 275 / 220 / 165 / 110 / 55 life points ➜ 300 / 240 / 180 / 120 / 60
 Tremor:
1. Ground Slam:
   A. Ability cost: 30p ➜ 40p
   B. Cooldown: 15 seconds ➜ 20 seconds
2. Tremor's walk speed (2.4 m/s) is now half of its normal speed (4.8m/s), instead of being identical. 
Tremor is one of the most popular and most powerful siege units in T3. We will be making some minor changes to the ability in order to bring it more in line with other T3 options.
 Unstable Demon
1. Demonic Rage:
   A. Bonus movement speed: 25% ➜ 60%
   B. Cooldown: 20 seconds ➜ 15 seconds
After the initial round of changes, Unstable Demon is not being used as much as we had hoped. As the card is very difficult to use, we will strengthen it to reward good unit management a little bit more.

Map & NPC Changes

[ NPC Balance Changes ]
 Lost Reaver:
1. Reclassify Lost Reaver as a melee-unit instead of a ranged-unit.
Players are likely familiar with the fact that a Lost Reaver will spawn its Lost Crawlers and then stand off to the side while it and its allies are slaughtered. This has now been fixed. Lost Reaver will use its ability and move towards and engage enemies in melee combat. This should constitute a slight buff to the unit's strength as an enemy.
 Lost Wanderer (shield variant):
1. Ice Shield duration: Infinite ➜ 20 seconds
2. Targets: All available targets in a 20m radius ➜ 5 closest units in a 20m radius
3. New passive effect: The duration of friendly Ice Shields is extended indefinitely within a 20m radius around Lost Wanderer.
These changes aim to make the unit more fair through changing Lost Wanderer's Ice Shields to only be conditionally permanent and to have an upper limit on the number of allies that can be shielded at a time. This should enable more counter play on the player's end, as a player can now focus on Lost Wanderers to give the Ice Shields the possibility of wearing off.
 Twilight Evil Eye:
1. Remove passive Pain Link damage reflection ability
Twilight Evil Eye possessed the same Pain Link ability as the player version of Wrathgazer. Pain Link is only supposed to work on Evil Eye's allies, but there is a common bug with the ability which causes it to frequently enemies as well. This would lead to situations where a player would kill their own units by killing an Evil Eye, an issue which disproportionally affected melee unit compositions due to Pain Link's small radius. While this therefore constitutes a buff to players in niche situations, the removal of Pain Link will also make late game Twilight camps more durable by no longer distributing additional damage to Evil Eye's allies.
 Twilight Leech (Siege of Hope Mini-boss):
1. Enemies affected by the unit's teleport ability now have a 10-second immunity to further teleports to prevent infinite teleport ping-ponging of units around camps.
 Twilight Minions:
1. New passive ability: Increase damage of Twilight Minions by +20% for each friendly Twilight Minion nearby.
While Twilight Minions currently claim they deal more damage based on nearby allies, this is not actually true. We are therefore adding such an ability which scales based only on other nearby friendly Twilight Minions. The current numbers and effect are relatively small as we want to ensure we do not potentially over buff the unit in early campaign scenarios.
 Twilight Willsapper:
1. Rework Willsapper's auto-cast paralyze substantially.
   A. Every 4 seconds, up to 2 hostile units within a 40m radius will be paralyzed for 11 seconds upon inhaling it. After the effect wears off, targets are immune against Paralyze for a short time.
   B. Recast timer: 4 seconds
   C. Targets: Closest 2 hostile units not currently paralyzed or immune.
   D. Duration: 11 seconds
   E. Range: 40m
   F. Immunity: 5 seconds
Up to 6 units can now be paralyzed by Willzapper at once, each for 11 seconds. They then have a very short (5 second) immunity period. The effect targets the closest non-paralyzed hostile units because otherwise it would permanently target the 2 closest units and be ineffective. Willsapper should no longer paralyze enemies after its death, and enemies will now have a short window to respond before being re-paralyzed. This is in contrast to the previous implementation, which allowed Willsapper to permanently paralyze up to 5 enemy units at once. We hope these changes will make this iconic enemy building more fair while still providing a substantial challenge when facing the Twilight faction.
 The Red King (Empire Boss):
1. Now casts an Amok ability periodically, causing enemies to attack each other in a large radius around him.
 Bandit Lord (rPvE Boss):
1. Change Name: Bandit Lord ➜ Banzai Lord
2. Add boss immunity
3. Life points: 7000 ➜ 20000
4. New ability, "Bird Calling":
   A. Spawns Banzai Birds, identical to U3 player tainted affinity.
   B. Casts every 10 seconds
5. Add “Flesh Feast” ability from Overlord to description
It is well known that Bandits are the easiest enemies in rPvE by a good margin. One contributing factor to this is that the Bandit Lord enemy is counted as a boss when generating rPvE matches, despite being no more than a slightly beefier and reskinned Overlord. We have decided to change this mini-boss into a real boss, akin to the player and campaign versions of Banzai Lord. This boss will both regenerate life points based on nearby corpses and spawn powerful Banzai Birds to destroy the armies of players. We hope players enjoy this first step towards making Bandits a more fearsome and interesting faction to fight in rPvE. 
 Lost Crawler (Lost Souls rPvE)
1. The non-shielding variants of Lost Wanderer have been replaced by Lost Crawlers in the Lost Souls preset in random PvE.
These are M-sized units that explode on death, which many players have seen before in our Halloween event map Spooky Encounters. This should present a slight increase in the difficulty of early game Lost Souls compared to similar situations prior to the patch. 

[ Systematic Changes ]
Spring Forge has been added to the game. Available via an achievement to win several featured community maps. Random PvE factions have had their probabilities redistributed to account for the addition of Nature rPvE
[ Campaign Map Changes ]
 Behind Enemy Lines:
1. Auto-destroy top left wall if 50% of barrier modules are already destroyed.
2. Added a Flightblocking / Vision Block to the top left base to prevent the Twilight Dragon from aggroing onto units at the player's T2/T3 location.
3. Line of Sight improvements along the bottom middle Twilight Disciple path.
Blight:
1. Fixed a line of sight issue at the top right starting position, which prevented ranged units from attacking enemies without closing to almost melee range.
2. Added two new bridges connecting the left and right sections of the map on both the top and the bottom.
3. Updated minimap to reflect changes and to be more accurate in general.

 
 Convoy:
1. Command Walker spawn frequency (delay between the spawns of two Walkers) on expert difficulty: 120 seconds ➜ 180 seconds
2. Amii Spell Device effects:
   A. "Area Freeze" (Coldsnap):
      - Maximum number of targets: 7 ➜ 12
      - Fixed description to display correct info, improved the spell preview, and displayed maximum spell range while selecting target area.
   B. "Healing Radiance" (Ray of Light) maximum healing: 3600 ➜ 4400 life points
   C. "Meteor Shower" (Inferno)
      - Scatter radius of meteor impact area: 20 ➜ 15m radius
      - Fixed description to display correct info, improved the spell preview, and displayed maximum spell range while selecting target area.
Convoy on expert difficulty has an 18% successful completion rate, the lowest of any campaign map in the game by far. Part of this is the map's seemingly infinite scaling potential, where attack waves progressively get harder and harder, even very late into the game. Part of this is the unique mechanics of the map, which often confuse players. And part of this is that success or failure on this map, when not cheesing it with Rifle Cultists, Voodoo Shack, or Enlightenment, is RNG. A player can do identical actions from one game to the next, with one playthrough succeeding and the next failing. It all depends on how many units the Command Walker gets attacked by on its way north and how many of these units it fails to kill due to poor target selection. In several test runs, we found that the number of units which congregate to attack the Command Walker, while it itself is attacking the Power Shrine, can range from 7 to 13 without any player intervention. Enemy groups at the lower end of the range are beatable using only the map's mechanics, while enemy groups at the upper end of the range more can kill the Walker, which often led to failure even when the players executed perfectly.
Winning or losing a map due to the target selection of an AI controlled unit is not acceptable. If two players execute well, they should not lose because the map's core mechanic is poorly designed and poorly balanced. To fix this issue, we are increasing the time between Command Walker spawns by 30 seconds. This will increase the total available time for players to prepare by approximately a minute without effecting other portions of the map. We are also strongly buffing the spell effects available to the player when they capture nodes and gather Stonekin spell charges. The Coldsnap effect has had its target count increased to 12, allowing it to freeze all enemies around the Walker in the vast majority of cases, even if the Command Walker has the worst possible target selection. The Ray of Light effect has been buffed by 22%, while the Inferno effect's tightened scatter radius will allow the player to pick off priority targets with increased reliability. Overall, the goal is that a team which has captured and successfully defended 2 nodes, while also having gathered 20 Stonekin charges by the time the 3rd Walker reaches the Power Shrine, should be able to win the Command Walker mini-game with 100% reliability as long as they use the Amii Spell Device somewhat competently. 
 Nightmare Shard:
1. Replace the Twilight Deathglider spawned at the "Shadow Camp" on expert difficulty with Twilight Mindbenders.
Most veteran players approach this map by immediately rushing the spawn buildings of the Shadow Camps on both sides with either Nomad + Eruption or Mana Wings. They do this because it prevents the spawn of several camp defenders, the most notable of which is the Twilight Deathglider. Twilight Deathgliders have an AoE knockback of S and M-units. Additionally, the pathway into the Shadow Camp is incredibly narrow, meaning that a single Twilight Deathglider can, and often does, permanently CC an infinite amount of player units on this map. By changing this singular unit, we allow players to play the map in the normal way without facing an enemy that single-handedly counters every non-Fire faction at T1. At the same time, we do nothing to change the map for veterans and speedrunners.
Nightmare's End:
1. Decreased the pond size at the starting location on the left side of the map (see minimap image), allowing for enough space to build a second tower defending the southern wall.
2. Decreased blocking on the right side of the map (see minimap image).
3. Updated Minimap to reflect changes and to be more accurate in general.

 Sunbridge:
1. Fixed several terrain and water visual issues.
2. Moved the single Power Well on the right side down a bit.
3. Moved the 3 Power Wells and Monument on the right side down a bit.
4. Slightly improved blocking to allow better spawning of units at wells near terrain.
Minor quality of life improvements. The changes to the Wells and Monument on the right side of the map should hopefully prevent the player from aggroing the next camp simply by claiming the Wells and Monument. 

Hello Skyladies and Skylords,
Welcome to the Through Ice and Flames event!
Date:
21.04.2023 until 14.05.2023
Stream:
18.05.2023, 19:00 CEST
https://www.twitch.tv/ultralord_t1421
 
Map Infos:
 
Lyrish Uprising (made by @Hrdina_Imperia) :
 

When Rogan Kayle was crowned as the new king, there remained several factions in Lyr that refused to accept this state of affairs. Taking advantage of this discontent, the rogue Dreadnought incited a rebellion in the city of Mraz, quickly overwhelming those still loyal to the new king and his Skylord allies alike. Now he is free to fulfil his true plan - to steal the divine power of the Soulstone, which resides within the city walls. This cannot stand!
 
An Expedition South (made by @Damo) :
 

Mora is a god no more - The Sundbridge Shrine was cleansed of the twilight curse and Mora's minions have been defeated.
But the star trapped in the heart of the earth, which the shrine connected to its brother in the boundless void, had already been tainted with this very curse. The worst outgrowth of this new infestation has affected a fire tribe in a distant land in the south, a tribe that worships the planet's core. It was not long before the curse spread beyond the tribe's members and plunged the whole land into darkness. A group of brave lyrish volunteers undertook an expedition south to nip this new outbreak in the bud.
 

Rules, Goals & How to participate
Everyone with an ingame account can participate in the event, there is no need to sign up separately In this event, you will be offered not one, but two brand new community maps - both are 2-player maps The goal is to achieve the lowest time on both maps You could also enter by submitting a replay for only one of the two maps, but this would automatically disqualify you from winning any prizes in the joint leaderboard (more on that later) There is no restriction on the difficulty of the map, but please note that any time on expert will always beat a lower difficulty, so Expert > Advanced > Standard in example: 35:21 Expert > 28:15 Advanced > 19:34 Standard An Expedition South only offers two levels of difficulty (Advanced and Expert), so any Standard run will also count as Advanced. The deadline for submitting your replays is 14 May 2023, 23:59:59 CET Banned cards:
Amii Monument 😉  
How to play the maps:
Submitting your Replays:
To save your contest hosts some headaches, please follow these naming guidelines:  <"expedition"/"uprising">_<difficulty>_<Minutes>_<Seconds>_Players => in example "expedition_expert_25_09_Damo_Hrdina Imperia.pmv" Please send your best replay(s) to @Damo either directly via the forum or on Discord (Damo#7332)  

Leaderboards & Prizes
There are a total of three different leaderboards for this event - one separated leaderboard for each map and a joint leaderboard for the best time on both maps combined Also there's one addtional task for each map, which is unrelated to the leaderboard If you participate with more than one teammate, only your fastest replay will count for each individual leaderboard The prizes for the per map rankings are as follows:
1st Place:           5 boosters per player
2nd Place:          4 boosters per player
3rd Place:           3 boosters per player
4th-5th Place:     2 boosters per player
6th-10th Place:   1 booster per player
 
The joint leaderboard, however, holds the really big prizes:
1st Place:             5 boosters per player as well as one Promo Juggernaut and one Promo Construct
2nd Place:            6 boosters per player
3rd Place:             5 boosters per player
4th-5th place:      4 boosters per player
6th-10th place:    2 boosters per player
 
Example:
 
Gold Chest Bonus Task:
The team that opens all 6 gold chests in the shortest time wins an additional 2 boosters per player Due to the fact that players tend to hate gold chest related event objectives, it is not necessary to open the chests to win boosters from any of the previous leaderboards Since only your fastest replay with a given partner will be included in the leaderboard, only that replay will be used to determine the fastest opened gold boxes Random Booster Draws:
For each map ranking, 8 boosters will be randomly awarded to players below 10th place on the leaderboard  

Special Thanks
@Dutchy handling social media stuff 
@T1421 creating the promo video
@Titan creating the thumbnail
@nukie, @Metagross31 & @Majora great help organizing this event 
Also, many thanks to all the map developers active on the discord server who helped us solve the problems we both encountered along the way!
 

Future Events
If you are interested in helping with these kinds of events for the community, or want to host one yourself as I do it here, don't be afraid and simply reach out!
Send @nukie, @Metagross31, or @Minashigo Hiko a PM on the forum, or direct message via Discord (nukie#9354, Metagross31#1103, Minashigo Hiko#1126).
They are happy to assist you with upcoming events and with sponsoring towards your prize pool!
 
We hope you have a lot of fun with this event and are looking forward to seeing all your replays!
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.

Hello again Skylords, Skyladies and other Skybeings; it's time to announce the winners!  
First of all, I’d like to thank everyone for making the Crappy Community Contest #10 happen – no matter in what way: developing the idea, making and helping with the map, participation, sponsoring prizes, spreading the word or helping me to organize it.
In total, we reached a total number of 83 participants – thanks to the Skylords Team for sponsoring the code: CCCA-SHBO-NEHU-RLER
 

 
Here are the top ranked Skylords of the CCC #10:
1st place      A     06:58        RadicalX            
2nd place     A      07:37        Ducarev      
3rd place      A      08:04        Vornskr
4th place      A      08:13        Liorans
5th place      M     08:34        Trando
6th place      M     08:48        Juntti
7th place      M     09:07        Dailysenpai
8th place      M     09:13        Hydroksybutan         
9th place      M     09:19        KeyNeR           
10th place    M     09:25.6     Anske
Seems like Ashbone Pyro has taken the trophy, being the stronger unit under these conditions. 🏆
BUT! Though Pyro took the win, it has already been decided by the winner that the Hurler Emoticon will be added to the Discord server:
 
           
Congratulations to all winners! I will send out all prizes as soon as possible. If you are interested, see below for the top replays, and separate time-lists for Ashbone Pyro and Magma Hurler.
 
Winners of the Random Draws
The dice gods have determined the fate of the following cards:
 
 
Of the 83 participants, 22 were of Silver or Bronze rank, who will all receive multiple cards from the newcomer card pool. If I have missed out on one of you, please drop me a note!
I will send you all prizes as soon as possible through in-game mail. I'm also reserving the right to make corrections on rankings and prizes, since the huge number of names and cards makes it very likely that I made a mistake.

Time list of entries and replays

Behind the spoiler tags, you find a total list of times for all entries, followed by Ashbone only and Hurler only. In total, of the 83 entries 80 were eligible, of which 12 were done with Ashbone and 68 were entries with Hurler:

Total list of entry times:
Ashbone Pyro:
Magma Hurler:
Here are the Replays of the top three runs, plus the best Magma Hurler run:
1st place: CCC10_06.58_RadicalX.pmv
2nd place: CCC10_07.37_Ducarev.pmv
3rd place: CCC10_08.04_Vornskr.pmv
5th place - fastest Hurler run: CCC10_08.34_Trando.pmv
 
In conclusion
First and foremost, I'd like to thank again all those who helped with this event, Of course, I'd like to thank the very generous sponsors for all the prizes they gave: @Dolewan, @Trando, @Xanatoss, @THE_BIG_WET, @T1421, @CrazyCockerell, @Hrdina_Imperia and the Skylords Reborn Team.
From the feedback and the vibes on the Discord, it seems like many enjoy this "Versus"-format very much - so I'd like to remind everyone that all CCC-content is public domain, and everybody is welcome to use the idea(s) and run something similar in a new event. Additionally, we will most likely see this return in a future CCC as well.

If you have a crappy idea for a future CCC you may share and discuss that with me, I can host your idea, or you can host your own Crappy Contest! Feel free to contact me anytime. If you want to discuss or host a non-crappy contest, contact our Event Managers @Metagross31, @Minashigo Hiko and/or @nukie. They are super supportive and will help you to organize your event!

Exuse me, but Hurler is waaaay better with his "what did you saiiiiiii" expression

Hello Skylords, Skyladies, and other Skybeings; Welcome to CCC #10 – the tenth Crappy Community Contest!
 

THE CONTEST HAS ENDED.
If you want to check out the winners, CLICK HERE. If you are just here to grab the code, there you go: CCCA-SHBO-NEHU-RLER
 
 
What are “Crappy Community Contests”?
CCC's are meant to be small-scale contests with weird challenges, hopefully luring you away from well-trodden paths. They are small-scale on the organizers side too: usually there will be no stream, video, or event announcing the winners. What's special about these contests is a participation prize for the whole Skylords community.

What, when, where, how?
Ashbone Pyro vs. Magma Hurler

Both strong and revered - but which of them is the stronger card?

This challenge is to win
the custom map "CCC#10 - Ash vs. Hurler"
on expert difficulty in the fastest time
under severe deck limitations.

In this challenge, you are sent to win a copy of the campaign map "Crusade", using either Ashbone Pyro OR Magma Hurlers to destroy your enemies. The map provides instant access to those units and enough energy to get going right from the start.
Additionally, to said units, you are allowed to use Regrowth in your deck to quickly heal up your army. So in total, you are only using Magma Hurler + Regrowth _OR_ Ashbone Pyro + Regrowth.

 Ashbone and Hurler fill a very similar role with comparable orb requirements, and we will settle once and for all what's the card better fulfilling its role. As a special feature, the winner of this challenge will get the special honour of deciding if the Official Skylords Discord will get an Ashbone or Hurler emoticon (CLICK HERE) provided by the talented @Titan. The winner may decide freely, you don't need to use Hurler in your contest entry if you want to decide for Hurler.

 
How to enter:
Battleforge automatically saves a replay file of the last match you play, named autosave.pmv.  After playing the map, rename this file, so it doesn't get overwritten. You can find your replays here: Documents => Battleforge => replays.

The contest has started with the release of this post – submit your replay through Discord (DM to Kapo#0116) or the Skylords Forum (DM to @Kapo) until 12.03.2023 23:59 CET  (= 11 days time total). You can submit multiple times, but only your last entry will count. Please note that any submitted replays may be posted here in the forums.

To lessen my workload, please rename your replay to the following format: CCC10_<your-time>_<your-name>.pmv  (e.g. CCC10_5_11.23_Kapo.pmv)
 
How to access the map:
 
What's the prize pool?
Since this is not just a crappy contest, but a Crappy Community Contest, you may help with your participation to earn a prize for the whole community. If we reach more than 25 participants (unique players, not entries), we will unlock a Mini-Booster code for the entire Skylords community. If more than 40 participants enter, the code will be upgraded to a Booster instead of a Mini-Booster. So tell your fellow Skylords to try this challenge – it's an occasion to try something completely new, and it raises our chances to hand out a code for everybody. 
Of course, the top ranking Skylords will get prizes too, sponsored by myself, the Community and the Skylords Reborn Team:
1st place               5 General Boosters + Promo Rogan Kayle + Discord Emoticon Choice (see above)
2nd place              4 General Boosters + Nether Warp (G) + Ashbone Pyro
3rd place              3 General Boosters + Spitfire + Sunderer + Magma Hurler (x2)
4th place              2 General Boosters + Frost Shard + War Eagle
5th place              1 General Booster + Frenetic Assault (P) 
6th place              Church of Negation + Nightshade Plant (P),
7th place              Stronghold + Deepcoil Worm 
8th place              Grim Bahir (G) + Banzai Lord (P)
9th place              Cluster Explosion (P) + Viridya
10th place            Wrathgazer + Shrine of Memory

For participation, there is a random chance to win one of the following cards out of a large pool:
Random Draws          5x1 General Booster, Infect, Amii Monument, Spitfire, Mine, Shrine of War, Shrine of Martyrs, Nightshade Plant (P), Lost Grigori (B), War Eagle, Brannoc Sunderer, Amok (P), Revenge, Nightguard (R), Soul Splicer (R), Mortar Tower, Gladiatrix (G), Crystal Fiend (B), Twilight Curse (R), Mark of the Keeper, Banzai Lord (P), Abomination (P), Abomination (B), Frenetic Assault (R), Lost Grigori (P), Lost Shade (P), Nightshade Plant (G), Shrine of Memory, Twilight Creeper (R), Core Dredge (R), Abyssal Warder (R), Mindweaver (x2), Tortugun (R), Twilight Warfare (P), Protectors Seal (TL) (x2), Rageflame (R), Amazon (G) (x2), Core Dredge (B), Wrathgazer, Volcano (R), Tranquility, Transcendence, Fathom Lord, Ice Guardian, Rocket Tower, 
Bonus Hurler: Every participant will receive one copy of Magma Hurler.

Newcomer Card Pool: 
If you are of Bronze or Silver Rank, you will additionally receive one guaranteed copy of Ensnaring Roots, and a random draw of some of the following cards:



Sponsors
If one or more mighty Skylord(s) decides to sponsor this event, please contact me - community contest prizes are ment to be from the community, for the community. I would be more than happy to beef up or even expand the prize pool to more ranks, add additional random draws, add cards for newcomers, set special bounties or any other upgrades to the prize pool you can think of. 
The following prizes have been sponsored so far:
Skylords Team          General Boosters (x20), Community Booster Code
@Kapo                  Promo Rogan Kayle, Wrathgazer, Grim Bahir (G), Core Dredge (R), Abyssal Warder (R), Mindweaver, Tortugun (R), Twilight Warfare (P), Protectors Seal (TL), Rageflame (R)
@Dolewan            Amok (P), Revenge, Nightguard (R), Soul Splicer (R), Mortar Tower, Gladiatrix (G), Nightshade Plant (P) (x2), Crystal Fiend (B), Twilight Curse (R), Deepcoil Worm, Magma Hurler (x2)
@Trando               Infect, Frost Shard, Amii Monument, Nether Warp (G), Stronghold, Mark of the Keeper, Shrine of War, Shrine of Martyrs, Newcomer Ensnaring Roots
@Xanatoss            Mine, Deepcoil Worm
@THE_BIG_WET     Cluster Explosion (P), Church of Negation, Spitfire, War Eagle (x2), Banzai Lord (P) (x2), Brannoc, Sunderer (x2), Viridya, Abomination (P), Abomination (B), Ashbone Pyro (x2), Frenetic Assault (R), Lost Grigori (B), Lost Grigori (P), Lost Shade (P), Nightshade Plant (G), Shrine of Memory (x2), Twilight Creeper (R)
@T1421                Spitfire
@CrazyCockerell    Wrecker, Sun Reaver (R) x4, Nomad (G), Nomad (R), Banner of Glory, Unity (B), Eruption, Blaster Cannon (R), Fire Sphere, Fire Stalker, Forsaken, Executor (x2), Knight of Chaos (P) (x3), Knight of Chaos (B) (x3), Snapjaws (R), Lifestealer, Offering (G), Offering (B), Unholy Power (x3), Void Maw, Unstable Demon (x2), Necroblaster (P) (x2), Necroblaster (G) (x2), Unholy Hero, Second Chance (G), Juice Tank, Wardens Sigil (B) (x2), Infernal Chain (G) (x2), Silverwind Lancers, Cannon Tower, Retreating Circle, Northland Drake (B) (x3), Northland Drake (R), Frontier Keep (R), Armored Tower (x2), Construct, Mumbo Jumbo (R) (x2), Mumbo Jumbo (P), Fountain of Rebirth, Shaman, Mauler (x3), Spirit Hunters (G), Drones (x3), Curse of Oink, Equilibrium (G) (x4), Giant Wyrm, Equlibrium (B) (x2), Regrowth, Earth Crystal (x4), Dark Crystal, Amazon (G) (x2), 
@Hrdina_Imperia    One Magma Hurler for every participant! Also: Mindweaver, Core Dredge (B), Wrathgazer, Volcano (R), Tranquility, Transcendence, Fathom Lord, Ice Guardian, Rocket Tower, Protectors Seal (TL)
Thanks to the sponsors that support the contest! ❤️
 
Conclusion
I hope you have fun with this challenge, and I hope ... that Hurler wins ! 🔥
Kapo
     
Future Events – get involved!
If you are interested in helping with these (or better) kinds of events for the community, or want to host one yourself, don't be afraid and simply reach out! Contact our Event Manager @Metagross31, @Minashigo Hiko or @nukie on the forums or discord. They are happy to assist you with upcoming events and with sponsoring your prize pool!
If you especially like this small-scale-format, and you have an idea for it, you may also contact me directly to discuss your idea and host your own Crappy Community Contest.

Finaly some non Wheel Nature Decks xD

Hello Skyladies, Skylords and other Skybeings,

Over a year has passed since our successful bandit hunt, but unfortunately we have to ask for your help once again.
It seems that some of the unopened gold chests have been taken away by some Stonekin scum, it is of utmost importance to secure them as quickly as possible.
 

 
So What is the Task?
It is almost like the bandit hunt – it was simple, it was fun – let’s do that once again:
play rPvE/Battlegrounds 4player, Map of the Month, difficulty 9 only pure color decks are allowed every player has to play a different color open every gold chest on the map be as fast as possible (map completion) no legendary/neutral cards allowed this time your replay must be a victory  
How Can I Participate?
The contest is running from now on until the 26.03.2023 - 23:59 CET

You just have to send in your best replay, including the player names and the time, to @Volin either via PM or preferably via Discord (Volin#8101).

Please name your Replay in the format: Mins_seconds_Player1_Player2_Player3_Player4.pmv (Example: "13_37_Ultralord_nukie_Kapo_Volin.pmv")
If your team has a name for meme, or whatever reason, just let me know via PM. It is important that all members of the team agree!
It is enough that one player of the group sends me the replay!
 
How to find the replay on your PC
 
Sounds Fun, What Are the Prizes?
The prizes are per person, only your highest place will be rewarded:

1st Place:            8 general Boosters
2nd Place:          7 general Boosters
3rd Place:           6 general Boosters
4th-5th Place:    5 general Boosters
6th-10th Place:  3 general Boosters
11th-50%:          1 general Booster
All remaining boosters from the ranking rewards will go to a random draw, those ranked below the top 50% will be entered into the draw first! Once every player below the top 50% has won a booster EVERY participant will be entered into a booster draw for any remaining boosters.
@Bengel Sponsored 2.500 BFP. Those will be split into 5*500 BFP that will be drawn in the lower 50%.

In addition I will reward any contest related meme that is send to me with an additional booster if we think it is good enough to share it in the stream!
When Will The Winners Be Announced?

The winners will be announced via a Twitch stream co-hosted by Ultralord and me! The stream will include at least the fastest three runs, quiz questions (with prizes!) and some interesting data from the event.
Location: https://www.twitch.tv/ultralord_t1421
Date: 31.03.2023 19:00 CET
 
Future Events
If you are interested in helping with these kinds of events for the community, or want to host one yourself as I do it here, don't be afraid and simply reach out!
Send @nukie, @Metagross31, or @Minashigo Hiko a PM on the forum, or direct message via Discord (nukie#9354, Metagross31#1103, Minashigo Hiko#1126).
They are happy to assist you with upcoming events and with sponsoring towards your prize pool!
 
We hope you have a lot of fun with this event and are looking forward to seeing all your replays!
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.

FAQ:
- Can we also participate with a team of less then 4 players?   -> Yes, of course you can, just stick to the rules as they are and you are fine!

Patch #400040
We're excited to bring you a new update that addresses some recent issues. Specifically, we've tackled some bugs related to our leaderboard achievements, which now properly use the current month's data. Any rewards you may not have received were rolled out retroactively. Additionally, we've fixed the forge lags that were causing performance issues for some players. Thank you for your patience, and we hope you enjoy this update!

General Changes
Added an option for players to re-roll the same quest multiple times. The minimum quest reward after re-rolls is now 50 BFP. If a player has excess quests, the quest with the most re-rolls will be reset to zero. The achievements "A Need For Speed" and "Gotta Go Fast" now display the seconds for best time in their tooltips. A new type filter for achievements has been added, with options "All", "One Time", and "Endless". The "Endless" checkbox has been replaced with this new filter.
 
General Fixes
Leaderboard achievements now use the current month's data, rather than last month's. Last month's rewards will be granted retroactively on March 1st. The leaderboard reward period now starts at 00:00 UTC on the 1st of each month, instead of the 31st of each month. The achievement for completing rPvE quickly now completes correctly after reaching the last milestone. The context menu now appears when right-clicking on all areas of a player banner. The name tooltip for players in the leaderboard now updates correctly when changing pages. The achievement "Too Heavy to Carry" now has a description in Russian. Fixed lag in the Forge that was causing performance issues.
 
Post-Patch Fixes - 31 March 2023
The promo version of Worldbreaker Gun now also counts for the "The Tools of Ultimate Destruction" achievement.

Hi kann sein das ich hier falsch bin aber ich kenn mich hier noch nicht aus 😄
 
In der Karte Zwielicht-Kriegskunst befindet sich der Satz "Außerdem fügt jede verbündete Entität in ihr ihren Lebenspunkten 25% mehr Schaden hinzu"
Richtig: "Außerdem fügt jede verbündete Entität 25% ihres Schadens ihren Lebenspunkten hinzu."
 
Lg
Kayrie