Stachino

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

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



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

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

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

Sadge, but sadly it's difficult to find people with skills in such a small community, probably would need to have some marketing thingy but who knows.

The coolest feature in my opinion would be the Map Modifiers.

You could introduce a new line of Achievements (e.g. all maps on expert with full modifiers) for really challenging gameplay.

Hopefully this post spreads awareness and the team gets bolstered with the most needed position(s)!

Nice a resin 3d printer 🙂 for game models thats the best!

Print from last Weekend: Comet Catcher
 
 
Comet Catcher.obj

I was checking out the Wallpapers from the Community Update #18.
AND DAMM, THEY ARE AWESOME!
I made a slightly animated version of the Crusader Wallpaper.
Here is the Link: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2759994387

BF1.mp4 PS: @SLR Team, I don’t have the rights to the image, so if you don’t want it  shared, let me know and I will take it out of the Workshop.

Hello Skylords, Skyladies and other Skybeings; and welcome to CCC #4 – the fourth Crappy Community Contest!


THE CONTEST HAS ENDED.
To see the winners, click here. If you are just here to grab the booster code, there you go:  CCC4-MOMO-MOMO-MOMO

     

     
What are “Crappy Community Contests”?
This and future CCC's are meant to be small-scale contests with weird challenges, hopefully luring you away from well-trodden paths. They are small-scale on the organizers side too: there will be no stream, video or event announcing the winners. What's special about these contests is a participation price for the whole community.
 
What, when, where, how?
As mentioned above, the idea of the CCC's is to present you with new and fresh challenges. This one will not be about speed, but about map and card knowledge, strategy/creativity and maybe also tenacity to work through an expert map under harsh conditions:
Mo Card Count
 

While the Masters of the Forge are improving the power of all Skylords, the fire of the Forge burns low.
You are asked to use as little of its power as possible. 

For this challenge, win the 1-player-map “Mo” on Expert difficulty
with as few cards of as low rarity as possible.

For each card you use, you will get points depending on the rarity: 
Common: 1 Point Uncommon: 2 Points Rare: 3 Points Ultra Rare: 4 points  Note: It does not matter how often you play out a card, only the cards in the deck are used to determine your points.

The Skylord with the lowest number of points will win this challenge. In the case of a tie, the run that has been submitted earlier gets the higher placement in the ranks. Replays with more than 15 cards are not eligible for this challenge (cards used, not points) – so you can't submit just your usual Mo Expert run.
Submit your replay together with the following information:
In game Name: <your name> Deck: <screenshot or names of the cards used>    Points total: <number of points scored> You can find your replays here: Documents => Battleforge => replays
The contest has already started – submit your entry through Discord (DM to Kapo#0116) or the Skylords Forum (DM to @Kapo) until 11. 05. 2022 23:59:59  (= 8 days time total). 
You can submit multiple times, but only the one with the lowest points will count. Please note that the Top 5 Replays will be posted here in the forums. To reduce my workload, you may rename your file to CCC4_Points_<IGN>.pmv (e.g. CCC4_12_Kapo.pmv).

Example Deck
 
Basic Expert Help
 
 
What is the prize pool?
Since this is not just a Crappy Contest, but a Crappy Community Contest, you may help with your participation to earn a price for the whole Community. If we reach more than 15 participants (unique players, not entries), we will unlock a Mini-Booster code for the entire Skylords Community. If more than 25 participants enter, the code will be upgraded to a Booster instead of a Mini-Booster. So tell your fellow Skylords to try this challenge – it may take some time, but it's an occasion to try something completely new, and it raises our chances to hand out a code for everybody. 
Of course, the Skylords with the lowest points will get prices too, sponsored by the SR Team, the Community and me:
1st place               5 Bandit Boosters + Mo + Promo Swamp Drake
2nd place              4 Bandit Boosters + Mo + Promo Rogan Kayle
3rd place              3 Bandit Boosters + Mo + Promo Lyrish Knight
4th place              2 Bandit Boosters + Mo
5th place              1 Bandit Boosters + Mo
6th place              Wheel of Gifts
7th place              Worldbreaker Gun
8th place              Mine
9th place              Overlord
10th place            Jorne

Last place            Juice Tank (x4)

Special Bounty   Be the first to win the Map with only one card to earn 8 Banzai Lords (G)!
 
For participation, there is a random chance to win one of the following cards:
Random Draws          5x1 Bandit Booster, Enlightenment, Infect, Avatar of Frost, Disenchant (G), Amii Monument
 
Sponsors
If one or more mighty Skylord(s) decides to sponsor this event, please contact me. I would be more than happy to beef up or expand the prize pool, add additional random draws, or any other upgrades to the prize pool. 
The following prices have been sponsored so far:
Skylords Team        Bandit Boosters (x20), Community Booster Code
Kapo                      Promo Swamp Drake, Promo Rogan Kayle, Promo Lyrish Knight
Simplifying *           Enlightenment, Infect, Avatar of Frost, Disenchant (G), Amii Monument, Wheel of Gifts, Worldbreaker Gun, Mine, Overlord, Jorne
Odessa                  Mo (x5)
Donaar                  Juice Tank (x4)
Kemek1                 Enlightenment
Bozzah                   Banzai Lord (G) x8 (as a Bounty, see above)

* Simplifying, a player who stopped playing, donated his complete account. This is the second contest his collection is sponsoring - he expressed how nice the community is, and he wanted to give something back through the CCC.

In conclusion
I know this contest is somewhat harder and might be a little more time-consuming than the previous CCCs – be assured there are plans for CCC #5 to be easier again. My hope is that you still like this new kind of challenge as something worthwhile to explore. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.
Good luck and best regards,
Kapo
 
Future Contests - get involved!
If you are interested in helping with these (or better) kinds of events for the community, or want to host one yourself, don't be afraid and simply reach out! Contact our beloved Event Managers Minashigo Hiko and Metagross31 on the forums or discord. They are happy to assist you with upcoming events and with sponsoring your prize pool!
If you especially like this small-scale-format, and you have an idea for it, you may also contact me directly to discuss your idea and host your own Crappy Community Contest.
 

See you all in the Forge people 

Hi all,
I would like to thank you for all the  and encouragement you have given us, it has been a pleasure seeing the popularity of this open beta. Unfortunately, like Link mentioned, unforeseen bugs prevent us from keeping to the release date, and for that I am personally really sorry and seek your forgiveness. We all, and Fiki especially, have been working countless hours everyday to try to keep to this promise, but unfortunately in development, the Murphy’s Law often applies and in this case it sadly did. I hope you can find it in your hearts to support us through this, and we will come out of this stronger than  ever together as a community.
Ultrakool

I just want to add, thank you for all the recent support, this really means a lot to us, and even if we're not answering every message (which is kinda impossible now) that doesn't mean we're not reading them! We're reading every message you guys are sending us, so as we already, sorry for that, but we're all humans, and we're and will continue to do the best we can for this project, don't lose faith, the end is close ♥

Yes, we are very sorry, we need just a bit more of your patience until we can see you in the Forge.

I'm so sorry guys I hope you all understand and aren't too mad!

Dearest Skylords, Skyladies, Skyfolks,
I'm sure most of you have an idea what this announcement is going to be about, given the latest status on Open Beta. As you all have realised, we haven't quite made our promised release goal of week 8. This mainly has to do with PvE breaking way more badly than we expected and fixing taking a lot more time than anticipated. How much time will this take? Well, please allow me a bit more space to explain. 
The Skylords community has grown bigger and better than ever before, for almost 3 years now. We are growing closer to the public beta release of the game, and we're growing more hyped and enthusiastic with every development update Fiki posts. This is a fantastic thing; the BattleForge community has always been my favourite community around, where everyone is relatively friendly and inviting, has fun together and creates a warm, comforting atmosphere. However, as with most hyped projects, enthusiasm can rapidly take over and make both community and developer overexcited. This is generally a great thing, except when it concerns voluntary development as is the case with Skylords Reborn. Don't get me wrong, it's great that you are all so excited about the game; it's really mostly on our side that causes issues. 
The programming team is just as excited about this as you are, and they are working tirelessly to make Open Beta a reality as soon as possible. However, with great hype and little experiences with such projects and group communities, comes great positivity. As you may know from the past, we have always been quite generous with our milestone and deadline estimations, striving every single day to make you all as happy and enthusiastic as possible, pushing our limits to satisfy you, the community, as well as we can. In our combined enthusiasm and desire to bring back a great game to you all, we have been blind to the risks of game development, and made completion date estimates very positively; but game development doesn't work like that. Something will always break, and several things have broken and put us back, changed things up, turned our schedule around. Real life has interfered, servers have been crashed, and the programming team has generally just been looking at the development cycle way too positively and have given themselves way too little time to work with in case things wouldn't go as planned. This has created a lot of frustration on the team and we have been rushing while we shouldn't rush.
Especially in this week of hype, the entire team has experienced the results of massive hype. Tonnes of repeated questions, lots of enthusiasm, but also lots of doubt, lots of impatience, and foremost, intense amounts of pressure on all of our shoulders. The drive and need to meet our target time got so emphasised, and the expectations were unfathomably high. And sadly I have to say that it is taking its toll on some of our team members, even outside of the programming department; we're being hit very hard, but we remain steadfast, for all of you!. We are doing our utmost best to keep you all informed, engaged, and excited about the project, and the last thing we want to do is to disappoint you; and every single time that we may have to, every single time that things go wrong and Open Beta ETA's have proven to be just a little too generous, we disappoint you. And I am certain that I can speak for the entire team if I say that it sometimes genuinely does feel like we fail you all with these hopes we work up for you and end up being forced to shatter. Please be aware that this was never our intention, and unforeseen consequences have resulted in many delays. This has driven the team to a very important and hard decision.
We are not going to give you any exact Open Beta completion times anymore. We will be more broad in our approach, and development timeframes will be larger.
I regret to announce that this is something that really must happen; but I truly care about you all as a community and it breaks my heart every single time we awaken hopes in you that turn out to be false, disappoint and fail you with declaring that we haven't met our terms... needless to say it hurts all of us, the SR team. We're done making unrealistic promises to you guys, and we are sick, tired, and exhausted of disappointing this amazing community over and over. You don't deserve that, and so we will broaden our estimations widely. 
This means that any development estimated times will be longer, but also more uncertain.
This does by no means imply that we are slowing down development. On the contrary! We are working and progressing harder than ever, as many Closed Beta testers can actively tell you. We understand you may be doubting us at this point, we understand you feel like the project isn't progressing enough, and we truly do understand you all want to play; but just short of a hundred testers can tell you that we are making massive progress every day. This project is happening right now as we speak, and those who doubted we would ever get the game online have been proven wrong, and we strive to keep proving doubters wrong as we progress daily. With this new way of announcing progression, it would mean less stress on the team, hopefully no heavy disappointment to the community, and the more exciting and enjoyable the moment is if we finish way ahead of schedule (which is now also way more likely). Hopefully this will give you all a better impression and allow for more realistic expectations.
Game development can take a lot of time, and especially for SR, it is extremely unpredictable. Things can suddenly go wrong, or we can suddenly make huge surges of progress. The most important thing remains that we don't want to rush things. When we release Open Beta we want stable servers, and the best experience for every single one of you. Coding under pressure will only create more bugs, flaws, crashes, and mental problems for our programmers, so we are giving them the time they need. We hope that you can understand this.
That being said, with some of the issues persisting, we will have to give Fiki and his majestic team of programmers some additional time to iron out the remaining bugs, memory leaks, and other annoyances before we allow you all in. Trust us when we say that we don't want you to get hyped, enter the servers, and have an uncomfortable experience or have the servers crash. That would be awful, and we don't want to kill off your enjoyment like that.

------TL;DR? Start here-------
The programming department has stated that they will need some more time to fix these issues. Although we consider this to be able to be completed sooner rather than later, we need to take risks and possible further delays into account. If we do end up knowing when we're releasing Open Beta with absolute certainty, you bet we'll have you know when!  -- Remember, we could be done way sooner or later than expected! Check the devplatform for the most up-to-date status of the game and/or release predictions: http://dev.skylords.eu/

Another very important note: There has been some false information that has been spread through the community on several different platforms, causing a lot of unnecessary havoc and stress for both community and staff. We would like to remind you that you can find all relevant and correct news and announcements on our official social media, but most importantly forum posts that keep you up to date. Please do not blindly trust any dates or information given to you by community members that you don't know, especially if it sounds groundbreaking or impactful; if you can't find it on the forums, it's probably not true. Remember, content written by any member with a coloured name are staff posts; official announcements made by them are to be considered as true. Confused as to who is part of the team? Follow this link for a list: https://forum.skylords.eu/index.php?/staff/

But there's some positive news too!
> The launcher is coming along nicely, and has been worked on separately from the server. That means that once server work is done, we won't also have to start making the launcher from scratch, which will save a lot of time!
> Many of you have expressed that they missed the original Booster Simulator. Now, the simulator is back in action and better than ever, integrated in our new cardbase, accurately supporting the booster ratios that will be in-game. Find it here: https://allcards.skylords.eu/booster.html
> Additionally, we have noticed a huge amount of questions for when Open Beta starts. Trust me when I say there will be a giant thread when Open Beta is released that will explain everything to you! Please be patient with your Open Beta questions until it starts; it will all be revealed.
> Feeling like you may have been too enthusiastic about Closed Beta giveaways? We will assure you that if you have been blacklisted on our Discord server and prevented from entering Closed Beta, your bans will be revoked and you will be given a second chance for Open Beta. Please don't break anything
> We have upgraded the forums to handle more traffic. You should all have a way smoother experience than before; our server was running at 220% CPU capacity, ouch! We're now running more smoothly, so you should experience faster loading times and a better overall connection to this website.
> During this upgrade, however, we almost lost the forum database because of all the problems linked to our server. We managed to save it just in time!
> The next big announcement we will make will be the Open Beta Announcement, which we will stream on our Twitch channel (https://www.twitch.tv/skylordsreborn). In the meantime, it is possible that we will stream some BattleForge on the official channel to give you an idea of how everything runs while we work on getting a good Open Beta working for you.
We would like to once again apologise for yet another delay and future vagueness on estimated times, and we would like to reassure you that it's healthier for the game's development, safety, stability, and enjoyability, as well as it is better for the health of the team, as we can take things easier on the moderation team, and allow the programmers to prioritise quality over time. We will do our utmost best to bring Open Beta to you as soon as we can, without the pains and frustrations and disappointment of further delays. We hope that you can understand and respect this decision, have the courage and determination to be patient for just a little longer, and that we may stand strong as a community, and that we may remain the most welcoming, friendly and comfortable community out there. Together we will soon reclaim the Forge and protect the lands of Nyn once again!
Sincerely, and on behalf of the entire Skylords Reborn Team,
MrXLink, your Community Manager

"Wasn't there a date in here?" Yes, that is correct, and we removed it for good reason. Refer to this post for details.