Cocofang

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!

Click below to view our April Fools joke for 2024. 
    • Upcoming Patch - April

While we continue working on our significant Summer patch (which will include our new campaign missions), we are nearly ready to release another patch to bridge the gap until you can get your hands on the Echoes of the Amii patch. In this smaller patch, planned for release in April, we will introduce two new cards, Map-of-the-Day, our new Rebirth booster, as well as some minor balance changes. Stay tuned for the full patch notes later this month.
The two new cards included in this patch will be the long-awaited Stonekin turtle, Bedrock, and a new build-around tool for Lost Souls players in Gate of Akylos.

As you can see, these cards will mark the introduction of the first new Ultra Rare cards to the game. If you're curious about the basis for our rarities, please check out our rarity design philosophy.
While maintaining a consistent logic for rarities is important to us, we also want to ensure that players can actually experience our newly created content. These new cards will be obtainable in their respective boosters as usual, but introducing an Ultra Rare without additional measures would likely make them unattainable for the majority of the player base.
We have received feedback from the community regarding the availability of the new cards in the Rebirth Edition in general, and set out to find a solution. Introducing: the Rebirth booster.

This booster will differ from the other boosters currently in the game. It will not be available in the store and can only be obtained through special events and a new reoccurring achievement. This new achievement rewards you for interacting with our new Map-of-the-Day feature. Every day, a random multiplayer Campaign Map will be selected for the Map-of-the-Day. They will be easy to spot, with an effect around their icon on the world map similar to the PvP-happy hour. For every completed Map-of-the-Day on a different day, players will receive 50 BFP. Additionally, for every 10th map, they will receive a Rebirth booster.
Each Rebirth booster contains 3 cards, all from the Rebirth Edition. Additionally, there will be an increased chance for cards of a higher rarity to drop.
We hope that Map-of-the-Day will encourage players to play both fan-favorite and lesser-played campaign maps. This should also help in assisting new players who are seeking to complete the full campaign. We will be monitoring the prices of our new cards and the impact the Rebirth booster is having on the economy, and might adjust accordingly in the future. We are also planning to distribute some Rebirth boosters through various events.
 
While we are unable to announce a specific release date yet, we feel quite comfortable announcing that this patch will go live in April. We hope you look forward to it!
 
• New Card Reveal - Skydancer

During our Anniversary Stream we announced there would be three new Amii units coming to Skylords Reborn in 2024. We will be revealing those cards in the upcoming Community Updates. Last month we revealed Amii Sentinel. Today we are ready to reveal Skydancer!
Please note: We are still testing the card. While we are generally happy with it, numbers and effects might still change before release. 


 
Spirit Blade
Every 1.6 seconds, unit casts a lance of elemental power that deals 222 damage to enemies in a 5m radius around its target, up to 333 in total.

 
Spirit of Anguish - Mode Change, Cost: 50p
Activate to call forth an ancient Shadow spirit draining the enemy’s will to fight. While an enemy unit is within 40m of Sky Dancer, it deals 20% less damage. After being affected for 10 seconds, the debuff increases, causing enemies to deal 50% less damage. Effect lasts for 10 seconds after an enemy leaves range. Lasts until deactivated. Reusable every 30 seconds.
 
Spirit of Hope - Mode Change, Cost: 50p
Activate to call forth an ancient Nature spirit that bolsters the life of allies. While an allied unit is within 30m of Sky Dancer, its maximum life points are increased by 20% and it regenerates 1% of its life points every second. Effect lasts for 10 seconds after units leave the area of effect. Lasts until deactivated. Reusable every 30 seconds.
 
Elusive
Units with Elusive have the duration of the immobilizing effects of Freeze and Paralyze reduced by 10%.
 
 
Design notes: Last month, we revealed Amii Sentinel. The card itself was well received and its design led to a lively discussion in our card balancing discord about potential synergizes and the types of strategies people thought it would create. The design of Amii Sentinel, while interesting in itself, becomes more so when considered alongside its intended support unit, Skydancer. Skydancer is an L-sized flying unit with two powerful support abilities. The first is Spirit of Anguish, a kind of anti-rage effect which scales in strength as the enemy remains in range. The other is Spirit of Hope, which introduces a new mechanic allowing for players to increase the maximum life points of their own units. This second ability is the one intended to directly synergize with Amii Sentinel. Amii Sentinel can turn health into damage through its reflect mechanic, and by adding more total life points to its pool of health, the total damage available through reflection also increases. 
Our goal for Skydancer goes beyond being a summon-once support for Amii Sentinel. In general, XL-sized melee units rule T4, particularly in random PvE, with there being a lot of structural reasons why this is true. While we love XL-units as much as everyone else, we as a team want to start diversifying the unit experience by bolstering other types of strategies. With a solid damage-to-power ratio, a large amount of survivability via both Spirit abilities, and a natural synergy with Transcendence, we hope to see flying armies of Skydancers become a viable strategy in T4, both with and without Amii Sentinel. 
Skydancer is currently planned to release alongside our next major content patch in the summer, including brand-new campaign maps. We are not yet able to announce an exact release date. Please stay tuned for more information, and check in next month for another Amii card reveal!
 
• Input requested: Elemental Mastery

Skylords Reborn can be a daunting game, given the large variety of cards and mechanics. With so many options to explore, there is always more to learn. We want players to get a sense of which faction they play the most, what kind of interactions they have with the faction, and to complete tasks that give them a sense of having achieved mastery with said faction. To support both the learning and mastering process for each faction, we would like to introduce a new category of mini-achievements known as Elemental Masteries. These achievements will be tailored to each faction and divided into two categories:
Individual - these will track specific card actions, such as the number of spawns erupted to death.
General - these will will track player progress with the overall faction, such as how many maps a player has completed with Pure Fire.
Each category will reward minor rewards along the way, mostly in the form of faction-specific cosmetics.
The goal is for each faction to track 5 interactions per tier, as well as 5-10 general faction progress trackers. We are interested in the community's ideas for what types of card actions they would like to track, with focus on things which are commonly repeatable. Focus can be either PvP or PvE, though the final choices will be a mix of both.
 
Examples of Trackable Actions
Due to recent advancements in our understanding of the game, we can track most internal and external card interactions. Below are a list of some of these trackable events, all of which have been taken from Fire cards.  
• Number of units charged by Enforcer
• Enemy spawn buildings erupted to death
• Buildings suppressed (Sunstriders + Suppression)
• Enemies knocked back with Lava Field
• Total time Batariel has spent in his stage 3 burning phase
• Total damage dealt by Fire Dragons
• Void returned with Shrine of War
 
Join our brainstorm
You can share your idea's in this thread on the Forum. Brainstorming is also taking place in our official discord dedicated to discussion of card balancing in Skylords Reborn. Please join us there if you would like to see more elemental mastery suggestions or if you would like to participate in discussions relating to proposed changes to the game before they happen.

 
• 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 - Returning Easter Event
Complete any match during the Easter season to collect a free Promo Easter Egg. Additionally, you can collect a special Easter-themed border by completing the community map "The Easter Tree". 
 
 • SECOND PHASE STARTED - PvP AI programming contest
We are gathering players for a new type of event. Get ready for an AI Programming Tournament, where the submitted programs will face off in an epic showdown to find the ultimate AI strategist! More information.
 
• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our Event Organizer @Metagross31. 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 happy to announce that both a new and a returning member have formally joined the Skylords Reborn team. ElementG is our new 3D artist, assisting the art team with model adjustments. His latest work, Skydancer, has turned out very nicely, so stay tuned for that. Additionally, Chibiterasu has re-joined the team as a Card Implementor. We are delighted to have him return, as his experience with the tools is a welcome addition to our work output.
Minashigo Hiko has concluded his role as an Event Manager. We would like to thank him for his contributions over the years.
As our team continues to grow, Dutchy has taken on the role of HR Coordinator alongside his Lead Moderator duties. Are you interested in helping out with the project but not sure how? Feel free to send him a message!
 
• Contribute to Skylords Reborn

Skylords Reborn is a community-driven project fueled by the passion and dedication of over 50 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!

We are especially looking for some more proofreaders (English), to read over stuff like the Community Update and Event posts before they go live. We are also looking for translators (French, Russian) to help with our new campaign maps and more. 
Don't have time to formally join the staff, but still would like to help out? Please check out this guide on how to support Skylords Reborn as a community member.
 
• 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: SKYL-ORDS-REBO-RNVR
The code is valid until May 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 March 2024
 

Lost Evocation R is insanely strong for your pure LS T4. It doubles unit damage output for up to 45 seconds and can be used as Blood Healing fodder. Lost Dragon P gets boosted to 7430 DP20 and cuts enemy damage output in half at the same time.
Blood Healing also pairs well with Winter Witch. Not only do the shields reduce the damage your units take in the first place. But Blood Healing also first eats through the shield to heal everything around for health.
Lost Warlord B is of course great for that exact reason. Not only is it a disposable Revenant but it even has a shield. So it's great to use as healing.
An alternative is Overlord. Its healing ability is quite strong as well.

major update, version 0.2.4:
- updated cards data with correct upgrade maps for new cards
- updated personal pages titles
- added Booster Simulator page, Personal Booster History page and made Personal Collection page available
- added api image endpoint option for simple card images with only artwork, border and name, it's available at "/api/images/fullCard/[smj or official card ID]?simple"
 
Boosters Page: (https://smj.cards/boosters)
- removed Booster Simulator from page and separated it into it's own page
- reworked boosters table values to provide better information of what return values to expect:
removed recent column due to becoming obsolete with new calculation method median average (correct rarity distribution with the median card value for each rarity based on the 2 weeks median price for the possible cards) mean average (correct rarity distribution with the mean card value for each rarity based on the 2 weeks median price for the possible cards) [practically the same as the previous median column] min average (correct rarity distribution with the min card value for each rarity based on the 2 weeks median price for the possible cards) max average (correct rarity distribution with the max card value for each rarity based on the 2 weeks median price for the possible cards) lowest possible (worst possible value from booster) highest possible (best possible value from booster) - added tooltips to give a bit of information of how the values were generated
 
Booster Simulator Page: (https://smj.cards/simulator)
- added separate Booster Simulator page
- added values of what the cards from the booster may be worth
- option to enable the storage of simulated boosters in your browser for deeper analysis on the personal boosters page
 

 
Parsonal Boosters History Page: (https://smj.cards/personal/boosters)
- added new page to analyse your booster history in a more detailed fashion (simulated boosters only for now):
see actual 2 weeks median total value of the obtained cards, total sum of mean and median value of the opened boosters see rarity, color and edition distributions for the diferent boosters with color and edition also being reliant of the rarity distribution distributions represent: "actually obtainedtotal (expected total) difference percentage of actual compared to expected" - booster history table similar to the in-game version but with price info of the contained cards
- OPTION TO EXPORT YOUR BOOSTER HISTORY IS NOT YET AVAILABLE IN-GAME.
 


 
Personal Collection Page: (https://smj.cards/personal/collection)
- view your card collection and set collection condition and goal and show rarity distribution and worth of fitting/missing cards and upgrades
- table to see what cards make sense to sell depending on your set condition and which to buy depending on your goal
- table of maps to play to obtain the most relevant updrades or most average gold (might need a rework based on the updrades rework in-game)
- show completed/not completed cards based on your set condition/goal.
- OPTION TO EXPORT YOUR COLLECTION IS NOT YET AVAILABLE IN-GAME.
 


 
The Personal Collection page was already showcased in the Masters of the Forge stream in early December:
 
 
Enjoy. 🙂

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!

• February Hotfix Patches

Over the course of February, we released several hotfix patches for our most recent major content update. If you are still experiencing any issues, please contact our technical support team and/or use the 'report a bug'-feature on our Discord.
One of these hotfix patches also includes an often-requested feature: spawnable bosses in the Forge. We have added a new 'Leader' tab to the Forge Menu, allowing you to spawn bosses from randomly generated scenarios. 
 
• Upcoming Feature - Map of the Day 

In our last patch, we increased the rewards for playing campaign maps to bring them more in line with rPvE, which players could feel forced to play due to its better rewards. In our continued effort to allow players to enjoy each different game mode, we are working on multiple additional incentives to play the campaign; one being Map of the Day. 
Map of the Day is a feature that highlights a particular multi-player map each day and rewards players additional rewards for completing that map, similar to the PvP Happy Hour. This map is randomly selected each day, and picks from the pool of existing multi-player campaign maps. Our new campaign maps, once released, will also be added to the pool. 

Playing on the Map of the Day rewards players with an additional upgrade on all 2-player and 4-player maps. Players will also receive additional gold for completing the 12-player maps Passage to Darkness and Ascension on Advanced (1200g), and Expert (2400g) difficulties.
Our goal for Map of the Day is to give players an incentive to get together and play one of the various campaign maps, including less popular ones. The Map of the Day will highlight in a similar way to Happy Hours on the World Map, so people know which map is active for additional rewards. 

We are currently working on finalizing the feature, and hope to release it in the near future. 
Disclaimer: text, layout and colors are subject to change.
 
• Skylords Reborn Classic - Legacy Server

BattleForge shut down its servers on October 31, 2013, following its release in March 2009. Our unofficial revival of the game opened its servers on December 18, 2020 as Skylords Reborn. Over the past 3 years since its release, we have added a ton of new content, quality of life changes and balance changes to the game. While we don't have a video covering the last year, our 2-year recap video should give you an idea of what we've added to the game. 
It is not uncommon for communities to provide mod support for older titles. However, those titles are typically still available for purchase or playable offline post-official support. This is not the case for BattleForge. If you want to play BattleForge in 2024, your only option is through Skylords Reborn.  
Our dedicated team, now comprising over 50 volunteers, has always taken this project very seriously, striving to make it the best it can possibly be. We're committed to continually introducing new content and delivering fresh experiences to keep our players engaged. Whether it's through new campaign maps, additional cards, new systems (such as Reforging), or balance adjustments (discussed on our balance discord), we feel a responsibility to keep the legacy of BattleForge in place, while also wanting to prevent the same fate of its downfall. 
However, we acknowledge that some of our past and future changes, while essential for the health of the game, may impact players' nostalgic sentiments. Considering that numerous cards have already undergone modifications compared to the original game, the differences between Skylords Reborn and BattleForge is increasing with each patch. Thus, the concept of a Legacy server has been a topic of discussion within our team over the years.
Yet, implementing a Legacy server isn't as straightforward as reverting to the version of BattleForge at the time of its shutdown. The game simply wouldn't work. Significant overhauls to the game's economy, rectification of critical bugs, and resolution of other technical issues were needed. Now, as we enter the fourth year of Skylords Reborn, we felt it was time to revisit this idea and have devised a way to introduce a Legacy server without impeding Skylords Reborn's ongoing development.
Here is what you can expect of the Legacy server:
• Original cards, maps and balancing
• All cards are available to the player right away
• No progression system
• No new cards
• No balance patches
• No additional rPvE factions (Fire, Nature) or campaign maps
• No technical or moderation support
We have to set up the server this way to prevent additional workload that would impact our actual patch releases for Skylords Reborn, which will continue to be our top priority. Additionally, there may be certain features on the Legacy server that deviate from a true "legacy" experience. For instance, Reforging will be available (though redundant given the complete card collection), and while Achievements and Quests may also be accessible, some may be unattainable due to outdated balance, game systems, or maps. 
The server will work similar to our current test server, you'll log into the Legacy server with a new account, and there will be no interaction between players on this server and the primary SR-server. The SR-server will remain the default server for both new players discovering the game and seasoned veterans seeking fresh content. All our major content patches will be releasing exclusively on the SR-server, including new campaign maps and new cards. Because of this, we don't expect a big split in our player base.      
Nevertheless, we anticipate that the Legacy server will offer a nostalgic journey for Skylords keen on revisiting the original BattleForge gameplay, as well as for players interested in witnessing the evolution of Skylords Reborn.
While we're still finalizing certain details, and things might change before its release. The Legacy server is scheduled to launch alongside our next major content patch.
 
• New Card Reveal - Amii Sentinel

During our Anniversary Stream we announced there would be three new Amii units coming to Skylords Reborn in 2024. We will be revealing those cards in the upcoming Community Updates, the first being revealed today! Here is Amii Sentinel!
Please note: We are still testing the card. While we are generally happy with it, numbers and effects might still change before release. 


 
Grasp of the Earth - 60 power
Activate to reach Amii Golem's fist into the ground, emerging within the target area of 15m and dealing 1800 damage to enemies, up to 5400 in total. Reusable every 20 seconds.
 
Volatile Body
100% of all damage done to the unit will additionally also be distributed among all units within a 20m radius. This damage cannot be warded off with the help of damage reducing abilities because it is able to circumvent every buff or protective shield.
 
Siege
Deals 50% more damage against structures.
 
 
Elusive
Units with Elusive have the duration of the immobilizing effects of Freeze and Paralyze reduced by 10%.
 
 
Design notes: Our goal for Amii's T4 is to create a micro-intensive deck where most of the damage is unit-based. With Amii Sentinel in particular, our goal is to create a frontline tank that functions as a perfect conduit for Shadow's single-target buff cards. Volatile Body's 100% reflect turns Sentinel's health into a damage resource, which synergizes perfectly with cards like Regrowth, Transcendence, and Lifeweaving.
The active ability "Grasp of the Earth" is designed to one-shot problematic buildings when buffed, which is important because both Shadow and Nature lack fast acting anti-building tools.
Amii Sentinel is currently planned to release alongside our next major content patch, including brand-new campaign maps. We are not yet able to announce a release date. Please stay tuned for more information, and check in next month for another Amii card reveal!
 
• Art Spotlight - Amii Sentinel

It has been a while since we have done an Art Spotlight; diving into the process of our artists coming up with a new card artwork. Amii Sentinel was always part of a combination of three Amii units, combined into a single landscape image. We asked our artist Tweeto to share some work-in-progress artwork and sketches, as well as his workflow. As always, a big thanks to our Art Critiques to offer valuable feedback during the process.

Initial Sketch: I started off with a loose sketch to block in the basic stance and proportions of the character. Keeping the lines dynamic and rough, I focused on the silhouette to ensure a strong, impactful presence that conveys power and stability.
Values Blocking: Next, I moved into grayscale, blocking my values to develop the form and give the character a sense of volume. This is a critical step in figuring how light interacts with the different materials and shapes of the character. To speed up this process, I employed AI generation tools, which allowed me to quickly iterate on different lighting scenarios and value compositions
Color Blocking: After nailing down the values, I started laying in broad strokes of color. Using a muted palette, I began to block in the main hues, thinking about the overall temperature balance and how it will complement the character's environment.

Detailing and Texture: With the base colors in place, I zoomed in to start rendering the finer details. Here, I focused on the texture of the stone, adding cracks and variations to make the surface look realistic. I also added golden ornate details to give it a more intricate look, and connect the character to the Amii aesthetics.

Lighting and Atmosphere: Then, I intensified the lighting effects to emphasize the magical core and the dramatic ambient light of the scene. I worked on the specular highlights on the metal parts, as well as the soft glow emanating from the core, to suggest a powerful energy source within.

Final Adjustments: In the final stage, I made subtle adjustments to the composition and the pose, fine-tuning the contrast and saturation to make certain elements pop. I also added a more pronounced rim light to enhance the character's form against the background, and adjusted the overall color balance for visual harmony.
Polishing: To finish off, I polished the image by sharpening key areas to draw focus, such as the face, the core, and the hand. I also rendered the background elements, ensuring the character look integrated with the environment and reflect the character's influence on its surroundings.

We are very happy with how the Amii faction is now finally coming together, and hope you appreciate all the thoughts and passion that went into creating them! 
 
• PvP Bots

Right now, Skylords Reborn doesn't have a mode where players can practice against computer-controlled opponents before jumping into ranked matches. This missing feature can make it tough for new players to get into PvP (Player versus Player). To help players ease into PvP, we're looking to add bots to the game in the future, and we're asking the community for their support to make it happen.
Below you can see a short video showcasing bots playing against each other:
 
ai_contest_announcement.webm
If you are interested in helping out, be sure to check the PvP AI programming contest below!
 
• 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 - Battle of Tactics #6 - Rainbow Road - February 23rd until March 3rd
Try to conquer a modified version of Dwarven Riddle in this crazy colorful contest hosted by Ultralord. In this one player map, you don't build orbs, but have a Rainbow crystal granting you different elements. More information.
 
• FINISHED - Faction Fusion: Embrace the Shift
Skylords were tasked to play the newly redesigned rPvE difficulties to have a chance at receiving one of the new cards, Lost Manabeast and Tectonic Shift. More information.
 
 • SECOND PHASE STARTED - PvP AI programming contest
We are gathering players for a new type of event. Get ready for an AI Programming Tournament, where the submitted programs will face off in an epic showdown to find the ultimate AI strategist! More information.
 
• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our other Event Organizers, @Metagross31or @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 50 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!

We are especially looking for some more proofreaders (English), to read over stuff like the Community Update and Event posts before they go live. We are also looking for translators (French, Russian) to help with our new campaign maps and more. 
Don't have time to formally join the staff, but still would like to help out? Please check out this guide on how to support Skylords Reborn as a community member.
 
• 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: AFTE-RALL-THIS-TIME
The code is valid until April 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 February 2024
 

XL units are very popular as they represent the peak of the power fantasy in Skylords. Seeing how the game is set up from the ground up to reuse assets I have been wondering how M units would fare if they were repurposed as XL units. There are many surprisingly good models! Especially with some great texture work there could be all sorts of new XL units. So I went through all M units and scaled them up to see how they hold up.
This is just a little personal project I did out of curiosity and I figured I might as well share. Enjoy the show and maybe some people get inspired to come up with fun concepts for these entities if they were actual L or XL units for specific factions and with different textures.
Amazon-Types
Amazon, Amii Phantom, Gladiatrix, Stormsinger, Nightguard
Overall decent models and variations. Could serve as ranged XL units, skewering things with spears the size of tree trunks. And would allow the exploration of the existence of giantess warriors. Or half giants in L format.
Big Gun-Types
Bandit Sniper, Nox Trooper, Firesworn
Rough to say the least. They start looking janky in L format already. Low poly count and odd proportions make these a hard sell as XL or even L units. They also highlight a problem with animations when scaling up. The giant-model of Dreadnought or the Warlord-type XL units sell the weight of their weapons and armor very well when walking. These guys swing their weapons around like they weight very little, so they aren't spectacular in that department either.
Dancer-Types
Bandit Sorceress, Firedancer, Frost Sorceress, Lost Dancer, Dryad, Winter Witch, Moon, Viridya
Another tough sell. Especially the dancers and dryads have problems when scaled up. If you look closely at them in-game you can see that the fluid motion of their hands is actually them wobbling their fingers up and down as if they were made of rubber. These sort of visual tricks work when they are small but fall apart when scaled up and it just looks weird. They don't have a lot going on either, the models are relatively plain.
Dino-Types
Bandit Stalker, Icefang Raptor, Firestalker, Razorshard, Swiftclaw, Scavenger
Now here is something! How about giant war dinosaurs? Swiftclaw is pretty ugly but the other guys have lots of details to work with on their models and could look even better with a detailed texture.
Flyer-Types
Crystal Fiend, Magma Spore, Mana Wing, Energy Parasite, Deathglider
Of the bunch I think Energy Parasite actually has the most promise. Very unique and detailed model that could serve as the template for lots of things when re-textured.
Insect-Types
Scythe Fiends, Witchclaws, Twilight Crawlers, Drones, Burrower, Nightcrawler, Shadow Insect
My favorite models. They look and move amazing when scaled up! Pretty much all of them are prime stuff to serve as crazy new XL and L units. Especially Witchclaws look rad. Re-textures could open up even more possibilities.
Ogre-Types
Eliminator, Enforcer, Slaver, Executor, Knight of Chaos, Lightblade, Mauler, Twilight Brute, Mountain Rowdy, Shaman, Warlock
A big but very weak group. Most ogres are just blobs. But Lightblade looks slick, like a living tank. And even Mauler isn't half bad. Textures would definitely have to carry here but there is some potential at least.
Popsicle-Types
Earthkeeper, Ice Guardian, Lost Wanderer, Wrecker, Giant Slayer, Rogan Kayle
These start falling apart in L size. Put something like the Earthkeeper next to Avatar of Frost and it's just unconscionable.
Rider-Types
Dreadcharger, Lyrish Knight, Nomad, Silverwind Lancers, Bandit Lancer
On top of pretty low-poly models and plain riders, this is another category that has issues with communicating the weight of that scale. And they would imply the existence of giant horses.
Torso-Types
Frost Mage, Grove Spirit, Shadow Mage, Twilight Hag
Pretty fun, I think. Although a bit fragile looking so definitely nothing you'd see on the frontline. The models are kind of plain but compensate with the fluid and mesmerizing animations.
Wormpeople-Types
Cultist Master, Lost Priest, Timeless One, Timeshifter Spirit
Those are so cool. Enough details to do some great magic with textures and just a very interesting design to look at in general. Also three very distinct looking models.
Which ones do you think could work well?
For which faction?
What abilities and playstyle could they have?
And how could their theme change entirely with clever texture work?
I think there is a lot of potential here, many of these could become some amazing additions to the L and XL roster, leading to even more variety.

Cultist Master is also a great way to feed Altar of Chaos as it can continuously spawn Nightcrawlers as a sacrifice. Upgrading Cultist Master makes it spawn more Nightcrawlers at once.
And as you discovered, it also generates a lot of corpses, so something like Furnace of Flesh built next to it will result in very fast void return rates.

Final Hotfix - 11 February 2024

General Changes
Added a new "Leader" tab to the Forge Menu. It allows spawning bosses from randomly generated scenarios.
Card Fixes
Resolved an issue with Altar of Chaos not using its stored lifepoints for damage calculations.  

Here are some old Battleforge Wallpapers and Magazines.
Kind regards
 
r-Hagon-BF-1.pdf r-Hagon-BF-2.pdf fire_cardoverview_en.pdf frost_cardoverview_en.pdf nature_cardoverview_en.pdf shadow_cardoverview_en.pdf battleforge-magazin_en.pdf battleforge-magazin_de.pdf
r-Hagon-BF-3.pdf

Will be resolved in the next hotfix.

Dear @S1ndicate,
welcome to the game. To solve your issue you could contact the Skylords-Team and ask them to unban your account because your are a new player and you don´t know why you got banned. After the moderation team checks your account, they will be able to unban your account. Luckily the moderation-team is writing you. 😉
So: Thank you for reaching out to the Skylords-Team and raising your issue.
We´ve checked and unbanned your account. Please try to login and confirm if your issue is solved.
 
Enjoy the game.
 
Best regards,
Vultagx

NOTE: The issue is solved. Account unbanned.

Card Balance Changes
 

Global Balance Changes
Neutral Units are now limited on a per-player basis: 
   - Each player will now be able to play one copy of each neutral units. Neutral buildings are still limited on a per-team basis.
We have been increasing neutral unit synergies and releasing new neutral cards, but an issue is that if one player is running a neutral archetype, say Ravenheart & Raven Archwalker, the other members of the team are also restricted in their deckbuilding choices. We think this is contrary to the spirit of the game, and since there are no balance considerations preventing a change, we are loosening the restriction while keeping the uniqueness of neutral units intact.

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 ]
 Envenom:
1. Base damage: Restored one missing tick on both affinities
2. Infused Intoxication: Scaling damage: Each time the 80 dmg threshold is reached, the poison damage increases by 10, stacking up to 6 times up to a maximum of 95 damage per second, and refreshing the spell duration.
This change should allow the card to remain near its current state in PvP by allowing the player to micro their unit away before the poison stacks out of control, while providing a powerful new tool for Nature T1 in PvE as powerful singular units steadily kill themselves by stacking the poison damage higher and higher.
 Mumbo Jumbo:
1. Power cost: 40p ➜ 50p
2. Targeting: Units only ➜ Units and buildings
3. Debuff strength (both affinities): 25% ➜ 35%
Improve Mumbo Jumbo's usability in PvE by allowing it to target buildings. This will be especially useful with the infused affinity (r) which increases damage taken by 35%. This should help Nature T1 focus down troublesome towers and spawners.
[ Tier 2 ]
 Earthkeeper:
1. Damage: 540 dp20 ➜ 660 dp20
2. Back Up, power cost: 25p ➜ 0p
Improve use cases for Back Up by removing activation cost and give the card slightly more in-combat power by giving it a 22% damage boost.
 Lost Reaver:
1. Mob:
   A. Targets: Hostile and friendly units ➜ Hostile units
   B. Corpse cost: 1500 ➜ 2000
   C. Crawler health: 310 ➜ 440 life points
2. Corpse Gathering maximum amount: 1500 ➜ 2000
Lost Reaver's ability seems made for PvE, but it has anti-synergy because it damages other friendly units and even its fellow crawlers. We have increased the corpse cost to make it slightly harder to use in PvP, while increase crawler health for better survivability. Additionally, and most importantly, we have removed the ability's friendly fire, which will allow players to spawn multiple crawler groups at a time without worrying about them killing each other instead of the enemy.
 Lost Shade(p):
1. Tainted Union
   A. Remove existing reflect effect.
   B. New effect, "When surrounded by at least 2 other Lost Shades, each individual unit will deal 61/61/61/68 damage per second and take 15% more damage."
Lost Shade(p)'s reflection effect has never quite worked, the more shades are in the union, the less damage is actually reflected. Instead of attempting to salvage an affinity effect we think is unfitting to the unit, we have instead decided to make the tainted affinity the true opposite of its frosty counterpart. Tainted Shades will receive more damage but deal more in turn, making them a high risk-high reward option.
 Vileblood(g):
1. Gifted Liquids (g) healing per wave: 300 life points equally spread ➜ 160 life points, up to 800 in total
Now works similar to Forest Elder's healing ability, with a separated single-target and multi-target healing amount. There are 6 total healing waves, meaning this changes the spell from 1800 total healing to 960 single-target healing to up to 5 targets. 
[ Tier 3 ]
 Ethereal Storm:
1. Charges: 8 ➜ 16
2. Power: 150p ➜ 130p
3. Duration: 21 / 21 / 21 / 26 ➜ 25 seconds on all upgrade levels
4. Now only damages hostile units.
5. Blessed affinity (b): All enemies in range take full damage, even when frozen (everything does full damage).
6. Infused affinity (r): Enemy units take 20% more damage.
7. Remove all stages except 1:
   A. Only one stage, baseline (0 Revenants) and stage 1 (1 Revenant).
   B. Baseline: 40 damage / Stage 1: 100 damage
The existing scaling effect is bugged, so we are simplifying the mechanic. There is now a base effect and an improved effect if one Revenant is present. This gives LS a consistent damage spell for itself but with reduced effectiveness in helping allies due to a lack of Revenants unless the player also casts Lost Evocation. The affinity effects provide missing things in the faction, such as the ability to ignore freeze's damage reduction.
 Lost Banestone:
1. Underworld Gate:
   A. Remove existing effect
   B. Add affinities, Tainted and Blessed
   C. Now spawns an own Lost Shade Revenant of the respective affinity
   D. Duration: Infinite ➜ 20 seconds
   E. Cooldown: 60 seconds ➜ 40 seconds
2. Tainted Underworld Gate (p):
   A. New effect: "Activate to curse the targeted enemy unit. Every second, the targeted unit will lose 40 life points. Additionally, if the target dies, it explodes dealing 300 damage to every enemy in a 10m radius and a Lost Shade revenant with an affinity toward Shadow will spawn out of its corpse with a lifetime of 25 seconds."
3. Blessed Underworld Gate (b):
   A. New effect: "Activate to curse the targeted enemy unit. Every second, the targeted unit will lose 40 life points. Additionally, if the target dies, Lost Banestone is fully repaired and a Lost Shade revenant with an affinity toward Frost will spawn out of its corpse with a lifetime of 25 seconds."
4. Glacial ➜ Everlasting
   A. Remove affinities, now one effect
   B. Radius: 25m ➜ 30m
   C. Now suspends the duration of any friendly revenants in the area.
With its new aura and the ability to generate unbound defenders, Lost Banestone will allow players to transition their T2 offensive units into T3 defenders. This fits in line with the new Revenant-based playstyle we envision for the faction. This will also remove the exploit where Banestone can permanently stop enemies on some cPvE maps from spawning, such as Bad Harvest and Siege of Hope. While this exploit is well known and used, these maps are perfectly completable without them, and they trivialize defending by functionally turning the map off.
 Promise of Life:
1. Affected units can no longer be healed.
2. Blessed Revive (b):
   A. Spawn delay: 15 seconds ➜ 10 seconds
   B. Ice Shield strength: 800 ➜ 1500
Improve blue affinity without impacting the current workaround to spawn extra legendary units. Additionally, add a new effect to both affinities preventing units affected by Promise of Life from being healed. This should especially help in multiplayer, where well-intentioned allies heal units you want to die. 
 Stone Launcher:
1. Orb cost: 1 Nature, 1 Frost, 1 Hybrid (T3) ➜ 1 Nature, 1 Frost, 1 Neutral (T3)
 Twilight Slayers:
1. Orb cost: 1 Nature, 1 Fire, 1 Hybrid (T3) ➜ 1 Nature, 1 Fire, 1 Neutral (T3)
[ Tier 4 ]
 Green Peace:
1. Protect the Environment! allied buff duration: 20 seconds ➜ 30 seconds
2. Protect the Environment! (r) damage buff: 50% ➜ 60%
 Infernal Chain:
1. Orb cost: 2 Shadow, 2 Neutral (T4) ➜ 4 Shadow (T4)
2. Power cost: 150p ➜ 100p
   A. Spell now costs 50p to cast once applied to the unit.
3. Ability Rework:
   A. Target: Single-target ➜ Up to 5 enemy units
   B. Bugfix: Allow Infernal Chain's healing to regenerate squad members
3. Blessed Bond (b) ➜ Tainted Bond (p):
   A. Remove 50% damage reduction for caster ➜ Add healing effect (55 per second) for each bond established
   B. Affected enemies now return 12% of current void power as power from the void
4. Gifted Bond (g): 
   A. Healing: 75 per second ➜ 55 per second per bond
   B. Stuns affected targets after 5 seconds for 15 seconds.
Two dedicated Shadow orb decks already have a lot going for them, 3 dedicated Shadow orb decks have both Death Ray and Plague, and Shadow Worm fails to provide a sufficient reason to go Pure Shadow on its own. The changes allow multiple bonds, with healing occurring per bond. This is intended to synergize with Shadow Worm's life loss from Mass Disintegration. Each affinity has a different role: the shadow affinity provides in the field void return, and the nature affinity grants a crowd control effect. 
 Lost Evocation:
1. Power cost: 150p ➜ 140p
 Lost Spirit Ship:
1. Torpedo Changes:
   A. Splash Radius: 15m ➜ 10m
   B. Knockback: Remove S & M-knockback
2. Life points:  3930 ➜ 3630
3. Power cost: 240p ➜ 230p
4. Recycling:
   A. Target: Own buildings ➜ Own buildings and Revenants
   B. Cooldown: 10 seconds ➜ 5 seconds
   C. Ability description simplified
5. Crystal Rework:
   A. Gifted Crystal (g): Damage effect removed, it now only heals
   B. Infused Crystal (r): Grants a +40% movement speed increase to friendly Lost Souls units
   C. Ability description simplified
Lost Spirit Ship (LSS) is the major damage dealer for Lost Souls, which relies on units to deal damage. Therefore, we would be unable to remove its high damage without providing heavy compensation in other places. Instead of doing a full stat realignment of Lost Souls units, we are focusing on LSS.
While the changes might look like LSS was significantly nerfed, this is less true than it first appears. First off, the card has the same stat efficiency as previously due to the cost decrease. The splash reduction is a direct nerf, but the removal of S & M-knockback is actually a buff. LSS would frequently knock back units, particularly S-squads, so far that it and other splash cards could no longer damage them. Additionally, there is a hitbox bug with flying S-units which makes it so that when they are knocked back their "click-box" extends over a massive radius. This issue was a major problem for LSS which is supposed to move around the camp to stay safe and to damage enough targets, as the player could no longer click a location to move, but now only press "attack" on the displaced S-unit."
The crystal is being changed to either heal or increase movement speed, with the pointless spawn zone effect being removed. By allowing it to vacuum up Revenants, we add strong synergy with both Lost Warlord's new ability and Lost Evocation. This means that LSS will scale in strength the more a player invests into Lost Souls.
 Lost Warlord:
1. New passive, "Undying": 
   A. Blessed Undying (b): The unit's revenant form spawns with an Ice Shield that absorbs up to 3000 damage. The Ice Shield refreshes every 25 seconds. 
   B. Infused Undying (r): The unit's revenant form deals 50% more damage.
2. Onslaught rework:
   A. Remove affinity
   B. Provides ground presence.
   C. New effect - "Activate for Lost Warlord to project a revenant of himself to a destination within a 40m range. This revenant provides ground presence, has no abilities, and lasts for 25 seconds. Reusable every 30/25/25/25 40/35/35/35 seconds."
With these changes, we hope to make Lost Warlord into the ultimate Lost Souls card, with a heavy focus on Revenants that synergizes with Nether Warp for quick movement of armies. We view this violation of fundamental game principles to be justified by the card's high orb restrictions and the recognition that by T4, the exploits enabled by teleporting ground presence are largely moot. The blue affinity is being buffed to have a refreshing Ice Shield for when players use cards like Lost Banestone and Revenant's Blessing to extend Revenant life times. This should help to equalize the two affinities.
 Overlord:
1. Blood Share:
   A. Life point cost: 1000 life points ➜ 1500 life points
   B. Healing: 1500 life points ➜ 1500 life points, up to 7500 in total
   C. Cooldown: 5 seconds ➜ 30 seconds
   D. Ability cost: 0p ➜ 20p
This change makes Overlord's "Blood Share" work similar to Forest Elder's "Forest Charm" in that it heals the group and the individual in different amounts. The goal here is to allow Overlord to function more fully as a sustain tank for the units it is protecting, as it already does for itself. This will help it to support army-based Shadow compositions, such as Shadow Worms, which is important because Overlord is the only melee Shadow unit in T4.
 Twilight Pestilence:
1. Power cost: 150p ➜ 120p

Miscellaneous Changes
Added Nature faction classes to generic NPC Nature buildings: Mark of the Keeper, Primal Defender, Stranglehold, Healing Well, Living Tower, Root Nexus, Healing Gardens, Howling Shrine, Mindweaver, Gateway of Nature, Temple of Nature, Wheel of Resilience, Wheel of Juvenescence, Wheel of Strength, Earth Crystal, and Fortress of Nature. Added Fire faction classes to generic NPC Fire buildings: Makeshift Tower, Rocket Tower, Blaster Cannon, Pyromaniac, Volcano, Tower of Flames, Gateway of Fire, Temple of Fire, Flame Crystal Added over 20 new Shadow NPC enemies for use in community maps. Includes units, towers, and spawn buildings. Units - Dreadcharger, Forsaken, Skeleton Warriors, Wrath Blades, Nox Trooper, Harvester, Shadow Mage, Mutating Frenzy, Cultist Master, Rifle Cultists, Necrofury, Unstable Demon, Ashbone Pyro, and Grim Bahir. Buildings - Stone of Torment, Lifestealer, Soul Splicer, Time Vortex, Necroblaster, Church of Negation, Embalmer's Shrine, Incubator (small spawner), and Shrine of Greed (large spawner)  Worldbreaker Gun: Fixed animations not playing on U3. Fixed the normal maps of several map objects to correct their interaction with light. Nomad: Improved upgrade description to be more consistent.

Foreword
Content:
Cost Tier progression Alternative Cards to use Upgrade priorities Replay My other Guides This guide aims to put together a pure fire deck on a budget.
As always in Skylords, any suggestion is merely that. It’s all about experimenting. If you don’t like something, just change it.
Want to give something a try? Just slot it in!
Pulled an interesting card that you want to see in action? Build a deck around it, make it work!
Struggle with a specific map? Try different cards, there might be more suitable ones for different situations.
Create something else entirely from the ground up? The card pool is your oyster.
With that being said my goals here are:
Focus on cards of mostly lower rarity Use cheap cards Introduce cards (in the deck itself or as alternatives) that have at least some interesting synergies and are more involved Be flexible, so many cards can be changed Be a generalist, usable in both rPvE and cPvE Cost
Since the introduction of the Card Reforging, the prices have changed drastically. Generally, this means that the cost for this deck is much lower. But it's still wild out there, so consider this section outdated. I will adjust it once I feel like the economy has settled in and prices are more stable again.
The pricetag isn’t excessive but it will inevitably be higher than a budget mixed deck, because the pool of available cards is restricted.
Rough price chart:
Very cheap - <10 BFP
Nomad G Sunstriders Fire Stalker Magma Hurler Banner of Glory Eruption Ravage Lava Field Unity G Unity B Fire Sphere Cheap - <80 BFP
Skyfire Drake Fire Dragon Pyromaniac R Bloodthirst Suppression Comet Catcher Moderate - <150 BFP
Firesworn R Batariel P Inferno The estimated total to get at least one copy of each card should be no more than 700 BFP, which is achievable within a mere two days of play. Buy your discounted daily booster, resell it to someone for more and there you go. To get to a more comfortable level of play, which means a few good charge upgrades, you are probably looking at roughly 1100 BFP investment. It's also a good idea to immediately invest some gold on high value upgrades.
AH (Auction House) prices seem to be pretty consistent, if big outliers appear they usually settle again after a few days.
Playing rPvE 9 is possible without any upgrades at all but lacking charges and upgrades can make it a bit tight and I wouldn't necessarily advise it. Especially the harder enemy types and map layouts will be a big challenge and probably not always work out. It's better to stick to solo until you got a good feeling for the deck. Play one round of 6 or 7 at first. Then try an 8, then 9.
You will notice my use of singular letters next to card names, which are referring to the cards affinity. G = Green, P = Purple, B = Blue, R = Red. Cards with affinities have two different versions and they vary in effect, depending on their affinity. Affinities are represented by a small dot on the card in their respective color. They have nothing to do with what Orbs you need to play that card though.
Here is the deck:

Nomad G - Firesworn R - Sunstriders - Fire Stalker - Skyfire Drake - Magma Hurler - Batariel P - Fire Dragon - Banner of Glory - Pyromaniac R – Comet Catcher - Suppression - Eruption - Ravage - Lava Field - Unity G - Unity B – Inferno - Fire Sphere - Bloodthirst
Tier progression
Tier 1
The backbone of this T1 is Nomad G. You have to summon three of them at the very least so their passive healing activates, which makes them durable fighters, especially if you micro them a bit and pull back the most wounded Nomad so that enemies instead focus on a healthier one. Once upgraded, they can even deal damage to airborne targets with an active ability.
Firesworn R has exceptional damage and specialize in dispatching of L units. Their S knockback is very valuable too. Unfortunately they cannot hit airborne targets.
For these you will need Sunstriders. It can also be a good idea to have one squad ready to suppress buildings and finish off S squads.
Your main way of managing your energy economy througout the game is Banner of Glory. Whenever you upgrade tiers on a large scale make sure to kill your own units in its aura to get some energy back for immediate use. Build it during combat so you get some energy right away when your units happen to die. And that’s not all, it can quickly be built between encounters so your army can naturally regenerate around it while out of combat.
Eruption is as straight forward as it is versatile. It will help a lot against airborne units, can be used in quick succession to destroy high priority buildings, such as enemy spawns, and disrupt combat. Or quickly finish off an important target that’s barely hanging on.
On T1 Suppression is kind of superfluous because you already have Sunstriders here. But it will serve you well throughout the entire game whenever you have to disable a dangerous building.
Feel free to fall back on these two spells at any stage of the game.
Tier 2
Nomads can still serve as your primary frontline and Firesworn remain invaluable against dangerous L enemies.
While they fight in melee combat Fire Stalkers also boast regular L bonus damage. Switched to Unstable Ember they can be used as artillery pieces and disrupt combat with S knockback. Use them to destroy buildings from afar and lure enemies out to fight them in the open.
Skyfire Drake is very fragile but deals devastating damage. Use their high mobility to keep them out of danger and hit the enemy where it hurts.
With Pyromaniac R you get a surprisingly deadly tower. Although it cannot hit airborne targets its fire melts through multiple units at once. If you expect a lot of dangerous airborne enemies you can switch to the B affinity.
As for spells you get some rudimentary healing in Ravage to keep a unit from dying mid combat.
Lava Field is expensive, so use it wisely. It can give you some time to breath by knocking back S and M units.
Tier 3
Any remaining T1 units should get recycled with Banner of Glory now. Fire Stalkers will rarely be worth it now but Skyfire Drakes can still be of help because of their high mobility. Hardly in direct confrontations through.
Other than that Magma Hurler is the sole star of the show. Summon as many as you can and focus fire anything dangerous.
Leave some energy for spells though because you will now have access to one of the most vital fire spells: Unity. So vital in fact that you can use both affinities in a deck. G has a decent healing attached to it. Use it on your Magma Hurlers to turn them into a deathball. B will find its main use on T4, where its damage reduction helps protect your valuable units. The two affinities even stack with one another, which units affected by G and B both bond together.
If you have lots of energy to spare use Inferno to decimate enemies.
Tier 4
If you still have any T2 units at this point, kill them. You will want to keep your Magma Hurlers through unless you have enough charges on your other T4 units.
Speaking of which, we have Batariel P here. Broadly underestimated and underappreciated, its aura makes enemy entities take a whole lot more damage from all sources. Its active ability can be used to initiate combat to immediately fire it up.
Fire Dragons are a quintessential fire unit as they enrage in combat and end up dealing absurd damage, which gets further amplified by Batariels aura. This combination leads to tremendous damage outputs.
Comet Catcher has both offensive and defensive use. It takes some time for the comet to fall down but it can wipe out entire armies in an instant. The presence of another building or unit is required at the target location though. In defensive scenarios you can pair them with Pyromaniac which finishes off any stragglers.
Similar to Comet Catcher, Fire Sphere also has a delay but anything that remains in its explosion will sustain massive damage.
An extremely important spell is Bloodthirst as it lets your units heal up during combat. This is especially potent when combined with Unity B. Using these two spells in conjunction is crucial in keeping your units alive.
Alternative Cards to use
With each Tier explained, let's look at some alternatives, upgrades or additions.
Rough price chart:
Very cheap - <10
Cheap - <80
Moderate - <150
Expensive - <250
Very expensive - <600
Top end - 600+
Tier 1 Options
Sunderer – The only T1 L unit in the game and very beefy for a fire unit. Can destroy buildings with ease. Expensive to very expensive.
Thugs – Several of them link together and share their health pool, as if affected by Unity, making them very durable. Very Cheap.
Blaster Cannon P/R – Whenever you find yourself in a situation where you are facing dangerous airborne units early on, consider using Blaster Cannon. Lure flying units into them. Very cheap.
Makeshift Tower – Low damage output but its S knockback can buy a lot of time early on. Its Accelerated Construction can even make it useful offensively. Cheap.
Mine – The iconic and ridiculously strong fire opener. It has ludicrous damage potential with up to 3600. Top end.
Tier 2 Options
Gladiatrix G – Strong and agile with good utility. Cheap.
Firedancer – Artillery range and extremely high damage to buildings. Top end.
Morklay Trap – Build them defensively to annihilate incoming attacks or lure enemies into them. Very cheap.
Pyromaniac B – If you need solid anti-air. Very cheap.
Disenchant P/G – Counteract disabling effects on your units, which is especially important in fire because most units don’t have a lot of health and can therefore die quickly if they are unable to retaliate. Very expensive to top end.
Viridya – Passive healing for your army. But makes you feel dirty for diluting your pure fire deck. Expensive to very expensive.
Tier 3 Options
Vulcan – Very strong AoE clear but cannot hit air. Very cheap.
Juggernaut – Another iconic card that can devastate buildings and packs a punch. Expensive to very expensive.
Spitfire – Has relatively low damage and life but is very versatile. The only airborne unit with artillery range and siege. Very expensive to top end.
Shrine of War – Probably the first card you want to add if you like to play rPvE. Drastically increases void return, speeding up the game a whole lot. Very expensive.
Tier 4 Options
Boom Brothers – A very involved and surprisingly powerful playstyle but it relies on fast void return with Shrine of War. The active ability is incredibly strong and with their damage bonus, they tear through any XL enemy, making them helpless with their knockback to boot. Very cheap.
Emberstrike – A good addition to Boom Brothers as these cannot hit air. Strong combat stats but unfortunately worthless damage bonus against M. The ability is very strong as well. Very cheap.
Moloch – Slow but close to immortal. A good combination with Unity. Expensive.
Magma Fiend – If you are already going slow with Moloch, why not commit further? Cheap.
Volcano G/R – If you are looking to fortify one position, this card can get the job done. Can deal a lot of damage but will take some in return. Moderate.
Earthshaker – An extremely useful card. It has good CC against units but most importantly destroys buildings quickly. Very expensive.
Cluster Explosion – Stupidly powerful spell that can destroy clumped up enemies on its own. Very expensive to top end.
Upgrade priorities
Some advice on what to invest in once you start gathering Gold for card upgrades and BFP for more charges. If you have some excess gold, it's a good idea to invest some into vital upgrades right away. It's very cheap to upgrade Commons To U2 and Uncommons to U1.
Vital upgrades AND charges
Skyfire Drake - More life and lower energy cost makes this card much more forgiving.
Fire Dragon - More base damage means much higher damage cap.
Magma Hurler - As the only T3 unit, these should be as strong as possible. They only gain some life, but that's very good when combined with Unity.
Eruption - As a bread and butter spell, this needs to deal as much damage as possible. And the reduced cost adds up quickly if you cast it a lot.
Unity G/B - Longer duration and lower cost makes this much easier to juggle.
Bloodthirst - Your most powerful heal should do its job often and properly.
Vital upgrades
Nomad G - Very important to unlock its active ability and make it even tankier.
Firesworn R - Its bonus damage to L units scales A LOT. It's a more expensive upgrade but go for it if you find yourself using them often.
Batariel P - More damage means its aura will proc and ramp up faster.
Banner of Glory - More void return means a smoother transition between tiers and shorter recovery time when units die in combat.
Ravage - Stronger heal.
Lava Field - More bang for your buck.
Important upgrades
Suppression - If you feel like you can't destroy the disabled buildings in time.
Inferno - As one of the most energy-intensive spells in the game, you want it to do some work. But it depends on how frequently you like using it.
Decent upgrades
Sunstriders - A cheap upgrade that will help if you find yourself manning a lot of walls and just generally want to have an easier time with airborne targets and suppressing buildings.
Fire Stalker - Just a bit more life.
Pyromaniac R - Also merely a bit more tankiness.
Comet Catcher - Much more damage but it's expensive so it depends on how much you like it.
Fire Sphere - If you like using this spell.
Replay
A replay on rPvE 9 without upgrades. To watch it you have to download the file and add it to: C:\Users\<user name>\Documents\BattleForge\replays
Budget Fire rPvE9.pmv
I try to rush the spawner on the third orb but don’t quite manage so it drags on for a moment. Building one Pyromaniac on each base just to defend it. Could've also just built them at the intersection, but it's fine.
The Magma Hurlers serve me well even on T4. I build Banner to regenerate my army between fights. Unfortunately my Batariels aggro on the last base and get killed but it's a minor setback at this point.
My other Guides
HOW TO: PvE Deckbuilding Guide - If you are unsure how to start building your own decks and what to consider.
CHEAP and powerful BEGINNER Deck - If you are rather interested in a very cheap and flexible mixed deck.
CHEAP Pure-Shadow Deck - If you are rather interested in a cheap and flexible shadow deck.

Foreword
Content:
Cost Tier progression Alternative cards to use Upgrade priorities Replays My other Guides Reading time is maybe 15 to 20 minutes.
For some people the first thing they ask in the game is "can sb show me a good beginner deck?"
Unfortunately some of the answers they receive won't consider the cost. Both when it comes to the cards themselves but also for the upgrades, which cost gold.
This deck here is meant as a baseline to get going. Present some various, different concepts to give pointers and grant access to gold flow. But Skylords is all about experimenting! Don't like something? Change it!
Want to give something a try? Just slot it in!
Pulled an interesting card that you want to see in action? Build a deck around it, make it work!
Struggle with a specific map? Try different cards, there might be more suitable ones for different situations.
Create something else entirely from the ground up? The card pool is your oyster.
With that being said my goals here are:
Use almost exclusively Common cards to keep upgrading costs to a minimum Use cheap cards Introduce cards (in the deck itself or as alternatives) that have at least some interesting synergies and are more involved Be forgiving Be flexible, so many cards can be changed Be rPvE 9 ready right out of the box, so it also packs a punch Cost
The total to put this deck together is much less than 300 BFP! That means you can literally have this whole deck up and running within 45 minutes after first starting the game. You get 150 from your two dailies. 200 from your daily boost and you are set already. If you want a bit more buy your discounted daily booster for 350, resell it to someone. Netting you a total of at least 420 BFP, which you can use to buy everything you need and more.
I played a few rounds of rPvE 9 without any upgrades myself. I'd advise you to stick to solo until you got a good feeling for the deck. Play one round of 6 or 7 at first. Then try 8, then 9.
This deck contains almost exclusively super cheap Commons or ones that are even included as starter cards. You can also ask around in trade, people might be willing to sell in bulk for even less than in the AH.

Windweavers 20 (starter card) Burrower 30 Razorshard G 20 Swamp Drake 20 (starter card)  Lost Horror G 20 Grimvine 80  Giant Wyrm 20 (starter card)  Primal Defender 10 (starter card)  Fountain of Rebirth 40  Breeding Grounds 15 (starter card)  Healing Gardens 30  Necroblaster G 10 (starter card)  Surge of Light 20 (starter card)  Curse of Oink 25 (starter card)  Stone Shell G 20  Equilibrium G 15  Regrowth 15 (starter card)  Unholy Hero 10 (starter card)  Rifle Cultists 10 (starter card)  Offering G 10 (starter card) So minus starter cards it totals roughly 255 BFP. Even less if you take the time to ask people in trade chat. A bit more if you buy during price spikes in the AH.
Alternatives to Grimvine (note the comments under "Alternative cards to use"):
Gemeye P or G - 50 AH (Auction House) prices seem to be pretty consistent, if big outliers appear they usually settle again after a few days. You could get away without using Grimvine or Gemeye, slightly reducing the total cost of the deck, but a T4 with only Lost Horror G and Giant Wyrm lacks a beefy frontline. You could also spam Emberstrike and Boom Brothers, as presented as alternatives below.
You will notice my use of singular letters next to card names, which are referring to the cards affinity. G = Green, P = Purple, B = Blue, R = Red. Cards with affinities have two different versions and they vary in effect, depending on their affinity. Affinities are represented by a small dot on the card in their respective color. They have nothing to do with what Orbs you need to play that card though.
Tier progression
Tier 1 - Nature
Build two Fountains of Rebirth so you can have their buff permanently running. They even affect allies, which is a massive boon for all other factions that usually have no or little sustain on T1. In the long run, it will also reduce how often you have to use Surge of Light. What is more, it will make you accustomed to managing timed, global buffs. A mechanic that many decks utilize (Shrine of War being the most prominent example). To make things easier, assign the two fountains to one group each as a shortcut, just as you do with your units.
Spam WWs (Windweavers). Because of their ability they can hit two targets at once. Which means, as long as there is more than one target, their effective DP20 (Damage Per 20 Seconds, which is the average damage value that is printed on cards) is actually 960. As soon as a squad of WWs goes down to about 50% HP, pull them behind other squads. Enemies will switch to attacking one of the closer squads, at which point you can reengage with the wounded WWs. This distribution of damage will make the Fountains more effective and also make it more likely you don't overheal with Surge.
If you want a tower at T1, the Primal Defender is your building. Two of them can be a big help to defend your initial base on solo rPvE 9 so you can go on the offensive with your WWs.
Tier 2 - Nature -> Frost
Razorshard G is the backbone of this T2. The main reason for this is its healing aura, which does not require card upgrades to be powerful. Spawn two of them so they can heal one another. It might feel a bit clunky to play at first but its worth it. You will get accustomed to active abilities, positioning and effective use of units which have immobility. Also, while WWs have no preferred target (see the star next to their damage value), Razorshard G will deal 1.5x damage against S size enemies (if the target has an S next to their life value). So have your Razorshard focus on those targets to take them off the field earlier. Very important to note though, that this damage bonus only applies to their melee attacks. Their Bombing Raid ability does not benefit.
Keep using your Fountains and you will have very nice passive healing.
Burrowers are meant to do one thing only: Charge at the enemy (spawn) buildings and destroy them asap. Support them with Curse of Oink and heals. Curse of Oink is temporarily CC (crowd control, so hindering enemy units in some form). Careful though, if they take damage, the spell ends much sooner.
Keep using Surge of Light if needed.
Breeding Grounds is an exceptionally powerful building that reduces the power cost of all own and allied units spawned within its AoE (area of effect). You still need to have the default amount of energy available though, you simply spend less on spawn. This is a building that you can keep using for your T3 and your T4 units. However, do remember that the building itself costs 70 energy. So just to break even on the investment you have to then spawn units for a total of just about 470 energy next to it! This gets more generous once Breeding Grounds are upgraded.
Tier 3 - Nature -> Frost -> Shadow
If you still have WWs at this point, kill them.
Lost Horror G is the main star here. Just like WWs he has no damage bonus against any particular unit size. But he shoots THREE attacks at once. This means that his damage potential is 5610, which is comparable to a T4 unit, Absolutely devastating as long as there are at least three targets to aim at.
Unfortunately, against big single targets Lost Horror G doesn't pack a good punch. Swamp Drake does though! Not only is it very mobile, being airborne, but it has an XL damage bonus, which are usually the tankiest foes. Their ability is CC like Curse of Oink, disabling enemy units for some time but it ends sooner if they take damage.
Stone Shell G is a damage reduction that becomes more effective if more allied units are within its AoE. In case of emergency, use Equilibrium G for a heal that becomes more potent, the more allied max HP is within its AoE.
You only need one Lost Horror G card to start! Use Offering G on one of your Swamp Drakes. This kills it but returns 90% of its energy cost to void and refreshes one charge for all T3 cards in your deck.
After you have your T3 army going build two Healing Gardens somewhere safe. Their active effect will increase any healing effects on your units by 85%, making them much more efficient. It's not the most powerful regeneration at this point because your units will start having much more HP but you can even continue using your Fountains together with Gardens. It's not much passive healing but it's something. Otherwise you can destroy your Fountains at this point or on T4.
The Necroblaster G is an exceedingly powerful tower. But it requires HP gathered from any corpses to fire its shot. If you use them, build maybe two of them together and either protect them until they have a bit of HP stored or kill your own units near them if necessary. Affinity doesn't matter that much, but feel free to experiment with it.
Tier 4 - Nature -> Frost -> Shadow -> any
If you still have any T2 units at this point, kill them. Lost Horror G can stay because its AoE damage is phenomenal. Swamp Drakes will probably naturally start dying in battle.
Since not a single card in the deck requires two identical Orbs, it doesn't really matter what you build as your last one. I'd go with Nature, because should you somehow lose your one Nature Orb, it's going to be far more devastating than losing the Shadow or Frost one. But you can also change cards in the deck so that your last orb has to be something specific.
Giant Wyrm is a go-to powerhouse. It's just a very mobile, huge ball of stats.
Grimvine is a tanky frontliner that destroys buildings and soaks damage. The ability is just alright but luckily also very cheap. It also serves as ground presence, which is important to spawn more units or use spells that are not Arcane (which can be used anywhere).
When you hit your unit cap of 120 you can start replacing any remaining Lost Horrors G with T4 units. This becomes even better once your Giant Wyrms are upgraded a bit.
You can continue using Equilibrium G here while on the move. But in more stationary battles Regrowth is superior. Make sure that you currently have the effect from Healing Gardens running when you cast a healing spell. The increase in effectiveness is huge. Unholy Hero makes the buffed unit really deadly. But beware of the drawback. To be safe, use it on a unit, like a Giant Wyrm, that is out of reach for enemies.
Once again, charge upgrades for Grimvine, Giant Wyrm and even Regrowth aren't necessary because you also have Rifle Cultists. If you Offer them, you get one charge for each T4 card back. However this also means that once your big T4 cards are upgraded with sufficient charges, you can take out both Offering G and Rifle Cultists, which frees up two valuable slots in your deck.
But don't think they are just there to recharge your XL T4 units. Their ability is very powerful. Especially once you upgrade them to charge it quicker and use Unholy Hero on them. Use it carefully, since it also damages your own units, and it can severely cripple enemy forces before the fight even begins.
Alternative Cards to use
With each Tier explained, let's look at some alternatives, upgrades or additions. I am not trying to mess with the Orb sequence though as that can require extensive remodelling of the deck.
Rough price chart:
Very cheap - <20
Cheap - <80
Moderate - <150
Expensive - <250
Very expensive - <500
Tier 1 Options
Dryad B - Her aura makes your units (even past T1) sturdier and therefore also makes every heal on them more effective. Expensive.
Shaman - You can replace Fountain of Rebirth with it. Don't get slowed down too much though. Each Shaman healing is equivalent to one WW not dealing damage. Expensive.
Ensnaring Roots/Hurricane - Great with WWs. The former lets you kill melee units before they reach you and the latter knocks around S units for a long time. Cheap to moderate.
Tunnel - Get around the map quickly. Very cheap.
Tier 2 Options
Stormsinger G - Good, mobile ranged unit with strong AA (anti-air). Moderate.
Defenders - Extremely powerful unit once upgraded. 2025 EHP (effective health points) when they hunker down, which makes any healing effect very potent. Notice their ability has two circling arrows. Usually, when you use abilities and spells or units/buildings get destroyed 90% of the invested power will return to your void pool to slowly trickle back into your usable power. However, a switch-ability puts 100% of its power cost into the void pool! So use it liberally. Very cheap.
Stone Tempest - Lots of damage and knockback. Cheap.
Ghostspears - If you want to add some melee prowess. Very cheap.
Crystal Fiend B - Has good healing that also makes affected units take less damage. Very good with Defenders. Moderate.
Aggressors - Support unit that knocks back even L units. Damage is low for their cost so they need something else to actually kill stuff. Especially S squads can sometimes become impervious against Aggressor attacks if they are spread out too much from the knockback. Cheap.
Ray of Light - If you feel like, even with Razorshard G, Surge of Light and Fountain of Rebirth, you need more heal. Very cheap.
Coldsnap - Very powerful CC to disable troublesome foes. Consider that frozen enemies only take 50% damage, so you'll kill them much slower. Be mindful with freezes so you don't mess up your allies' plan. Moderate.
Northern Keep/Cannon Tower - Cannon Tower is a very strong building against ground units. Northern Keep R has an extremely powerful ability that makes friendly S and M units invulnerable in its AoE. Especially with Defenders this is a defensive barrier that can withstand almost anything. Very cheap.
Juice Tanks - If you are uncertain how long a map will take or if you are sure it might drag on a bit. For a small power investment your wells will run dry much, much slower. This will net you a safety net for drawn out maps so you can spend power liberally. Don't build them in rPvE though since the time limit will end the match before Juice Tanks really benefit you. Cheap.
Tier 3 Options
Ashbone Pyro - Destructive unit and potent synergy with heals. Only really gets good after a few upgrades though. Moderate to expensive.
Deepcoil Worm - Good ranged unit and you can combine it with Tunnel. Very expensive.
Silverwind Lancers - Disposable, cheap and mobile fighters. Another unit to Offer if you want to spawn a different T3 unit more frequently. Very cheap.
Revenge - Both an offensive and defensive spell. It even splashes the self-damage from Ashbone Pyro onto enemies! Expensive.
Thunderstorm - Purely offensive spell to make quick work of big packs of weaker enemies. Not necessary when your Lost Horror is nearby but good to clean up a sudden surprise attack. Cheap.
Tier 4 Options
Gemeye P/G - Artillery range and powerful passive abilities, P dealing more damage overall because of the DoT (damage over time) and G paralyzing units, which disables them for a set time, even if you keep attacking them. However, if you use them instead of Grimvine, their long range will make them stay behind your Giant Wyrms, which makes those take the brunt of enemy fire. Not ideal at all, so you should specifically manage them to stay in front and serve as your tanks. The 15% damage reduction from Adamant Skin makes them very resilient. Could even use both affinity variants simultaneously. Cheap.
LSS (Lost Spirit Ship) - Instead of Giant Wyrm or even in addition. Deals damage on the move, hits a lot of targets simultaneously and become a tide of destruction once you have multiple of them. Cheap to moderate.
Boom Brothers/Emberstrike - A more active playstyle as you have a lot of powerful abilities to spam. Boom Brothers annihilate ground presence, units and buildings alike, and their XL bonus damage even applies to their ability. Their knockback keeps everything that survives at bay. Emberstrikes ability can also hit airborne targets and they can be summoned on the fly (they don't suffer temporarily reduced max HP and damage if summoned away from Power Wells/Orbs) but their damage bonus is M, which generally isn't very good on T4. Spamming their abilities can become an issue if you don't have a way to quickly regain void energy. Very cheap.
Bloodhorn - Once upgraded its Stampede ability tears down multiple buildings. Has XL counter. A very powerful card and one of the best T4 alternatives you could go for. Its ability varies: R makes it immune to debuffs and CC, which makes it very reliable. P makes it deal much more damage, which makes it incredibly destructive. Expensive to very expensive.
Earthshaker - Destroys enemy buildings quickly. Expensive.
Maelstrom - Huge AoE and good damage while eventually freezing enemy units. Again, frozen units only take 50% damage. Cheap.
Ice Tornado - High damage. Doesn't need to travel, you can cast it on a single spot for high single-target damage. Moderate.
Noxious Cloud - Slow burn which deals massively high damage overall but has to ramp up. Cheap.
Other upgrades
Quickly recovering your void energy into actually usable energy pool is very powerful as it speeds up your game a lot. To enable this, you can pick from a few good options. They all affect your Orb choices.
Cultist Master + Furnace of Flesh - Spawn crawlers near the Furnace and kill them. Only becomes good once those cards are upgraded. It's fine if you only get your second shadow orb on T4. Expensive.
Shrine of Martyrs - Bit tricky to use. You will need to add some ways to freeze enemies. Moderate.
Shrine of Memory - Makes you regain void energy much faster. No bursts of power regained but it's consistent. Moderate.
Upgrade priorities
Some advice on what to invest in once you start gathering Gold for card upgrades and BFP for more charges:
Vital upgrades AND charges
WWs - Your T1 start needs to pack a punch
Surge of Light - See above
Regrowth - More usage and more energy efficient
Necroblaster G - Higher damage means more opportunity to recharge HP from corpses. Only vital if you find yourself using these a lot
Vital upgrades
Fountain of Rebirth - More expensive to upgrade but you will notice the increase in regen
Breeding Grounds - Even cheaper units
Curse of Oink - More CC and cheaper
Giant Wyrm - Much more damage for this power expensive unit
Primal Defender - If you use them frequently
(Gemeye G/P - More bang for your buck on those as well, if you use them)
Important upgrades
Equilibrium G - Better heal
Burrower - More life is useful since it has to run past enemies
Grimvine - Even tankier
Swamp Drake - Increased HP makes them more forgiving and more CC
Unholy Hero - A risky spell, so it has to be worth it if you use it, right?
Offering G - Cheaper and more frequent use
Decent upgrades
Stone Shell - Cheaper and longer duration
Lost Horror - More life
Razorshard G - More life
Healing Gardens - Even more heal effectiveness
Rifle Cultists - If you find yourself enjoying their ability, upgrade them as soon as you like
Replays
Some replays with this deck on rPvE. To watch them you have to download the file and add it to: C:\Users\<user name>\Documents\BattleForge\replays
None of the cards are upgraded, this is as bare bones as it gets. Difficulty 7 and 8 are very easy and already net a big payout in gold that lets you upgrade a lot of cards. Difficulty 9 can get a bit messy at times but is also consistently doable.
Beginner Deck - Solo rPvE 7.pmv 2200 gold payout.
Very easy with this deck.
Beginner Deck - Solo rPvE 8.pmv 3250 gold payout.
While defending my T2 I was too greedy and spawned one too many WWs. Which lead to me not having enough energy to heal my army and losing 5 squads. Would've probably lost only 2 had I healed instead. Not the cleanest T4 finish either but good enough.
Beginner Deck - Solo rPvE 9 (T2 skip).pmv 4200 gold payout.
Here I skipped T2 because the opportunity to attack T3 presented itself after the entire camp got pulled. I knew the camp was empty now and charged in. Not the most representative replay because of that but it happens. After getting T3 I suicide rushed a base with my remaining WWs just to take out a spawn and ease the pressure. By the way, every time a Swamp Drake just randomly dies, it's because I Offered it to get a charge back for a Lost Horror G. Notice how I destroy the enemy spawn buildings asap, because if another batch of enemies spawns mid fight it just draws things out.
My other Guides
HOW TO: PvE Deckbuilding Guide - If you are unsure how to start building your own decks and what to consider.
CHEAP Pure-Fire Deck - If you are rather interested in a cheap and flexible fire deck.
CHEAP Pure-Shadow Deck - If you are rather interested in a cheap and flexible shadow deck.

Foreword
Content:
Cost Tier progression Alternative Cards to use Upgrade priorities My other Guides This guide aims to put together a pure shadow deck on a budget.
As always in Skylords, any suggestion is merely that. It’s all about experimenting. If you don’t like something, just change it.
Want to give something a try? Just slot it in!
Pulled an interesting card that you want to see in action? Build a deck around it, make it work!
Struggle with a specific map? Try different cards, there might be more suitable ones for different situations.
Create something else entirely from the ground up? The card pool is your oyster.
With that being said my goals here are:
Focus on cards of mostly lower rarity Use mostly cheap cards Introduce cards (in the deck itself or as alternatives) that have at least some interesting synergies and are more involved Be flexible, so many cards can be changed Be a generalist, usable in both rPvE and cPvE You will notice my use of singular letters next to card names, which are referring to the cards affinity. G = Green, P = Purple, B = Blue, R = Red. Cards with affinities have two different versions and they vary in effect, depending on their affinity. Affinities are represented by a small dot on the card in their respective color. They have nothing to do with what Orbs you need to play that card though.
Cost
The pricetag isn’t excessive but it will inevitably be higher than a budget mixed deck, because the pool of available cards is restricted. Also, because of the nature of Shadow, we have to use at least one or two more expensive cards.

Forsaken - 10 (starter card) Snapjaws R - 10 Knight of Chaos - 10 Shadow Phoenix - 50 Shadow Insect - 10 (starter card) Cultist Master - 150 Necrofury - 50 Overlord - 400 to 500 Embalmer’s Shrine - 150 Soulsplicer G - 150 Furnace of Flesh - 40 Time Vortex B - 30 Necroblaster G - 10 (starter card) Life Weaving - 30 Undead Army - 10 Blood Healing - 40 Frenetic Assault R - 130 Plague - 130 Rifle Cultists - 10 (starter card) Offering G - 10 (starter card) So right away I have to say that it is really hard to make a pure shadow deck work at all without using Rare or Ultra Rare cards. Some cards are also in dire need of upgrades or even charges to become decent. If you are trying to put together a pure shadow deck without at least some investment, you are in for a bad time. So we have to assess the trade-off between budget and usability.
Make sure you have BFP and gold saved up to cover the absolute necessities. Your gold reserves will also be especially strained to get the Rare cards up to speed.
The estimated total to get the aforementioned cards should be around 1500 BFP, which is achievable within about three days of play. Buy your discounted daily booster, resell it to someone for more and there you go. The expensive cards don’t need charges though, which makes charge upgrades cheap at least. AH (Auction House) prices seem to be pretty consistent, if big outliers appear they usually settle again after a few days.
What is more, you want to have around 15000 gold to immediately upgrade the cards that benefit from it the most. Less is workable but you'd have to cut corners.
Shadow is generally a bit harder to play than other factions and trying to make working under budget restraints makes that especially true.
Playing rPvE 9 is possible with the baseline version but it can be very tough. Especially the harder enemy types will be a big challenge. You’ll probably end up waiting around a whole lot in order to stack up your army. I'd advise you to stick to solo until you got a good feeling for the deck. Play one round of 6 or 7 at first. Then try 8 and 9.
Tier progression
Tier 1
Forsaken are our main guys, we stack as many of them as we can. One Snapjaw R is enough to serve as our support unit. We have to actively micro manage our army if we want to make the most of it. Snapjaw R applies a 50% damage taken debuff to the enemy it attacks and we want all our Forsaken to focus that target as well. This makes it possible to pick off one target after another in quick succession. Their ability Frenzy is hardly worth using until they are at least U2. Be careful with it, as it carries a high risk. If we don’t manage to use the immense damage boost to kill all opposition, we will be left with nothing.
Embalmer’s Shrine is a very important building for this deck because a lot of cards have Corpse Gathering and therefore use corpse HP as a resource. While Pick over the bones is active Corpse Gathering will be much more efficient. We can build two Shrines and cycle their buffs, so we have permanent up-time if necessary.
Soulsplicer G is used both offensively and defensively. We can build it just outside an enemy base and then pull their units into its AoE for Corpse Gathering. While it has some stored up, it will heal our army with Gifted Necromancy. This also makes it great to fortify a position together with units. We use it on U1 to gain access to Soul Suction, which effectively increases the area it can gather corpses from.
On T1 specifically, we can use Pick over the bones to boost Soul Splicer G if absolutely necessary.
Life Weaving probably won’t find much use in this tier yet. It’s actually a T1 card we pick up for later. Having it at least on U2 makes it work much better.
Same for Offering G, it will see use in T3 and T4. Something to keep in mind about Offering is that it even resets a cards cooldown. So whenever we want to use a card in quick succession we can circumvent its cooldown, either internal or through a lack of charges, by offering a unit of the same tier as the desired card.
Tier 2
Here things get interesting. Knight of Chaos is a pretty strong card but tricky to play and it depends on which affinity is used. Basically, we pre-cast Chaos and take care to not tag our own units. Then we run in before our own units, positioning the knight as deep as possible within the enemy army. Which affinity we use is completely up for preference though. Tainted Chaos has pretty big damage potential as enemies attack one another. But it's also riskier because you have to take care to not affect your own units. Blessed Chaos lets you use Forsaken to kill a few units before the enemy can react so it's safer. We can also use several knights to easily cycle the effect. This is seamlessly possible once it's U2.
Imagine Shadow Phoenix as a spell. They deal massive AoE damage to ground targets and multiple at once can instantly kill high priority buildings like spawners. We take care to always have Embalmer’s Shrine running to ensure they make full use of Reincarnation. What’s even better is that when they use Crashdive once, they count as having died. Which means we get the usual 90% energy refund to your void pool. Considering the whole package, they are probably the strongest unit we can have on T2 hands down. There is also a fun interaction with Knight of Chaos. While Blessed Chaos prevents the Phoenix from suicide bombing Tainted Chaos lets them attack (albeit randomly) but since Crashdive isn't technically an attack the knight doesn't get damaged.
Furnace of Flesh is this decks energy manipulation building. Whenever we have units we no longer need or have identified a spot where enemies tend to die regularly, we build a Furnace to speed up our void return. Having it on U1 will make it a bit more efficient. This is a vital building and will see use throughout the game.
At this point we can also consider that, instead of simply destroying a left over Soul Splicer, we build a Furnace next to it and use Corpse Sharing to fuel a bit of void return until it runs dry.
Time Vortex B deals a lot of damage and has strong knockback. It also shoots faster and faster the less void we have. So they have natural synergy with Furnace.
Undead Army is another very important part of the deck that relies on corpses. It summons up to four Skeleton Warriors with Unholy Armor active, which means they take less damage but die after some time. Embalmer’s Shrine makes it much easier to summon the maximum amount of squads. The Skeletons upgrade level is the same as the spell, so it should be at least U2. They make great meat shields to soak up damage that would’ve been dealt to our main army otherwise. If the situation presents itself, letting the Skeletons die near a Furnace will make use of their corpses for void return.
Tier 3
Cultist Master is one of the core cards in every shadow deck but it requires upgrades to gain exponentially more power. That's expensive, considering it's a rare, but it's well worth it. On its own it doesn't pack a big punch but with Call Horros it summons Nightcrawlers with Frenzy. Using these it can swamp enemies with murderous insects for a life cost. With Soulsplicer G it can push on the offensive repeatedly. But even more important is the interaction with Furnace of Flesh. This is the quintessential way to cycle void power for the rest of the game. Let a few (usually 3) Cultist Masters sit in your base around a Furnace and cast Call Horror whenever available. The Nightcrawlers will die automatically and fuel the Furnace so it gives back void power. No new power is created by this, you just get your old power back much quicker. This makes Cultist Master probably the highest value card we can pick up.
Shadow Insect supplements T3. Once again, we encounter Corpse Gathering, this time to enable Soul Shock, which is a strong, spammable ranged nuke. U2 makes its usage much more rewarding. Embalmer’s Shrine helps sustaining frequent use. It can be tough to manage though, since their low health makes them impractical as frontliners. Cultist Masters can feed Shadow Insects with Nightcrawlers before you engage.
Necroblaster G is one of the strongest T3 towers but it requires corpses. U2 is rather important as it makes it deal even more damage, which in turn kills enemies quicker and helps with corpse sustain.
The real power of this stage lies in the spells. Blood Healing is very important to keep your units healthy, so U2 is recommended. We can use it on Nightcrawlers summoned by Cultist Master or Skeletons summoned by Undead Army. These make ideal targets since they will die anyway but their Unholy Armor reduces the health cost. This becomes an even stronger interaction once Undead Army is upgraded.
Some numbers to think about:
Skeleton Warriors
U0 – 3 ticks of Blood Healing U1 and U2 – 5 ticks U3 – 7 ticks Blood Healing amount per tick
U0 - 860 U1 - 900 U2 - 1000 U3 – 1100 This means if we have U0 Undead Army and U2 Blood Healing, we are only getting 3000 healing out of sacrificing one Skeleton. U1 Undead Army and U1 Blood Healing gives 4500, so it’s a much better investment. U3 Undead Army/U0 Blood Healing gives 6020 even. Having both on U3 will give the maximum output for this combo at 7700 healing.
But that’s not all. Coming back to our T1 spells, we can use both Life Weaving and Blood Healing on the same unit, drastically reducing the health cost. Of course part of the self-damage will be spread out to surrounding units, which is vastly off-set by the healing though. However, the damage splash applies BEFORE the healing. Units that are close to death might just die from the effect of Life Weaving before Blood Healing heals them. But this combo makes it feasible to use Blood Healing on our own, permanent units without having to fear their death.
Frenetic Assault G is one of the strongest spells in the game. It makes enemy units attack each other, so not only does it have huge damage potential, it makes our own units less likely to be attacked. The red affinity, which we use, can even be used on buildings, to make enemies destroy them. If the affected target dies quickly enough the spell even procs a second time.
Offering G makes its first major appearance here as it can be used to sacrifice a Cultist Master in order to refresh the long cooldown on Frenetic Assault G or recharge your T3 cards in general.
Tier 4
Unfortunately we have to spend big to get a decent T4 army going, since the cheap options pure shadow has to offer don’t work very well together.
Which means we opt for an extremely powerful frontline in Overlord. U1 is very important here since it doubles the proc rate of Flesh Feast. This passive ability makes Overlord gather corpses to constantly heal himself. So despite only having 4000 HP, he can take a lot of punishment in prolonged skirmishes. Blood Share can be used to quickly heal some units, but a combination of Life Weaving with Blood Healing will be better in most situations. Take note though, that on the targeted unit Blood Healing prevents healing by any means other than inherent leech like Life Stealer.
Necrofury cannot attack airborne targets but they wreak some real havoc. Positioning them in reasonable safety we can use Bone Shards, which is a devastating nuke that costs a lot of life points but deals even more damage. Using it early can take out big parts of the opposition before the fight even heats up. Much better to first upgrade the card though.
Rifle Cultists are mainly there to fuel all your other T4 card charges with Offering G.
Plague has ridiculous damage potential and is just too strong to pass on. Enemies that die while under the effect of the 5 original parasites will spread it even further. Some chain reactions later and we can have dozens of Plague instances. And they can even stack up! So if we are lucky we can have several stacks of Plague eating through a boss.
Undead Army is still as useful as it was on T3, if not more so because of Blood Healing. Frenetic Assault G will also continue to serve us well. As will Furnace of Flesh with Cultist Masters.
Alternative Cards to use
With each Tier explained, let's look at some alternatives, upgrades or additions.
Rough price chart:
Very cheap - <20
Cheap - <80
Moderate - <150
Expensive - <250
Very expensive - <500
Top end - 500+
Tier 1 Options
Nox Trooper – Sidegrade to Forsaken. Overload provides a lot of burst damage and they are less susceptible to knockback by virtue of being M. Cheap.
Dreadcharger – Swift with The Reaping being a very strong if niche ability once upgraded. Moderate to expensive.
Skeleton Warriors – Beefy frontline with Unholy Armor once upgraded. Very cheap.
Phase Tower – Even after Relocation, it still has more raw stats than any unit for its cost. Cheap.
Decomposer – A way to drastically speed up T2 acquisition but Furnace of Flesh quickly replaces it. Very cheap.
Motivate – Useful throughout the entire game, assuming you have ways to replace the sacrifice. Moderate.
Tier 2 Options
Harvester – Possibly the most iconic shadow card. Extremely fun to play and an absolute powerhouse once upgraded. Top end.
Darkelf Assassins – Their ability can make short work of enemies. Very risky to use though. Cheap.
Shadow Mage – Difficult to use but can be very fun. Enormous damage output but they require a lot of care for sustain, like Soul Splicer G or Undead Army. Moderate.
Resource Booster – If you are confident a round will be over quickly, this will speed it up further. Always a boon in rPvE where the timer guarantees that you will benefit. Very cheap to cheap.
Stone of Torment – Very situational but used in clusters it can deal with most attacks. Very cheap.
Unholy Power – Great synergy with centerpiece units like Harvester. Very cheap to cheap.
Nether Warp B/G – An amazing utility card if used right. Don’t inconvenience your allies though, you don’t know if they want to come along for the ride. Blue affinity is better suited to CC enemies, green is more beneficial for your own units. Very expensive to top end.
Tier 3 Options
Ashbone Pyro – Once upgraded this card can carry T3 and even work on T4. Moderate.
Fallen Skyelf – Visions of Despair can annihilate tanky enemies, even bosses, if sufficient damage output is present. A classic combo is Necrofury buffed by Unholy Hero using Bone Shards. Moderate.
Unstable Demon – Quite difficult to pilot but a very engaging card once upgraded. Cheap.
Infect – A whole lot of meat shields with damage potential to boot. Top end.
Frenetic Assault P - The spell is so powerful that it can even be justified having both affinities in a deck. Moderate.
Soulshatter – Smart usage can wipe out bunched up units. Moderate to expensive.
Tier 4 Options
Death Ray – Requires U3 to get faster. Leech Guns gives them immense damage output but it’s hard to sustain them in pure shadow. Moderate.
Grim Bahir – Supportive unit that summons lots of meatshields. The Nether Crawlers can even be Offered to recharge T4 cards. Expensive to very expensive.
Shadow Worm – Very powerful and versatile card. Self sufficient backline, Earth Diving disruptor or mobile Disintigrator. Life Stealer works through Blood Healing and the damage reduction while moving reduces its damage. Very expensive.
Void Maw – Enabling a lot of damage potential and offers some guaranteed burst damage on bosses. Cheap.
Altar of Chaos – Together with Cultist Master summons the bombs can deal ludicrous damage. Moderate.
Unholy Hero – Makes a single unit deadly both to enemies and allies. Especially potent with already high offensive capabilities, like Death Ray, Necrofury or even Rifle Cultists. Very cheap.
Upgrade priorities
Some advice on what to invest in once you start gathering Gold for card upgrades and BFP for more charges.
There are some mandatory upgrades and charges as a baseline and I wouldn't advise running this deck without them. These are extra highlighted.
Vital upgrades AND charges
Forsaken – Stronger T1 is always a priority. U2 and C2 Recommended.
Shadow Insect – Better ability and more charges to Offer for Satanael. U2 and C2 Recommended.
Necroblaster – More damage means better corpse sustain. U2 and C2 Recommended.
Undead Army – Always have this spell ready and tankier Skeleton Warriors not only mean better meatshields but also more efficient Blood Healing. U1 and C1 Recommended.
Blood Healing – Your major way of sustain, every tick needs to be worth as much as possible. U1 and C1 Recommended.

Vital upgrades
Cultist Master – More Nightcrawlers summoned. U2 Recommended.
Overlord – Much stronger heal and damage. U1 Recommended.
Furnace of Flesh – More void return. U1 Recommended.
Life Weaving – Better synergy with Blood Healing. U2 Recommended.
Soulsplicer G – U1 is very strong. U1 Recommended.
Important upgrades
Shadow Phoenix – More consistent survival and greater damage output.
Knight of Chaos – Ability lasts longer, which allows chaining it and of course longer uptime.
Necrofury – Much stronger ability and health.
Embalmer’s Shrine – Makes any corpse reliant ability easier to use.
Time Vortex B – If you use them often treat yourself to more damage.
Offering G – If you use it very frequently, upgrade asap.
Frenetic Assault G – Too powerful to ignore. More charges won't do anything though, because of the long innate CD.
Decent upgrades
Snapjaws R – Just a bit more life.
Rifle Cultist – A very powerful ability but mostly used for Offering G.
Plague – Much cheaper to use.
My other Guides
HOW TO: PvE Deckbuilding Guide - If you are unsure how to start building your own decks and what to consider.
CHEAP and powerful BEGINNER Deck - If you are rather interested in a very cheap and flexible mixed deck.
CHEAP Pure-Fire Deck - If you are rather interested in a cheap and flexible fire deck.

The dream!

I could see an Abyssal Warder-style Phoenix mechanic. Every revive makes the next Phoenix progressively smaller and weaker until it can't revive anymore.

I could see an Abyssal Warder-style Phoenix mechanic. Every revive makes the next Phoenix progressively smaller and weaker until it can't revive anymore.

The dream!

The dream!

The idea was to convey the feeling of the stone plates colliding and ricocheting off of one another. Similar to how the wall-gates in the game have a slight bounce to them when you open and close them.

The idea was to convey the feeling of the stone plates colliding and ricocheting off of one another. Similar to how the wall-gates in the game have a slight bounce to them when you open and close them.

The idea was to convey the feeling of the stone plates colliding and ricocheting off of one another. Similar to how the wall-gates in the game have a slight bounce to them when you open and close them.

How long ago was it that you last played? There was an account reset when the project released into 1.0 back in December 2020. If it was newer you could use the contact-staff channel on our Discord to clear things up.

Unity B + Bloodthirst is very strong sustain and tankiness. Even crazier when paired with a Moloch.
Bloodthirst was already buffed multiple times and I would even argue that it's totally overloaded right now. Then again, it carries fire sustain on its back. And it even synergizes with Unity because the damage distribution can trigger the heal.
The only think pure fire lacks is out-of-combat healing. But during combat a fire army can top itself off very quickly.