SpiritAlpha

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!

• Huge Announcement

Today, we have a very special surprise for you! Many have requested Skylords to be available on other platforms besides PC. After years of hard work, we are super excited to bring Skylords to the palm of your hand!
 
• Upcoming Lost Souls Changes

Recently, we shared our Stonekin Deep Dive, giving you a sneak peek at the changes coming to the faction. It is only fitting for the Lost Souls faction to mess with the timeline, resulting in their balance changes actually releasing before our Stonekin rework.
Over the past few months, we have been hard at work on the Lost Souls faction, tackling many of their issues and finding design space to improve the feel of the faction as a whole. 
We have enlisted the help of @Volin and @T1421 (Ultralord) to give you an overview video of some of the changes coming to the faction. Please take a look!
We hope you are excited about these changes! Here are some of the concrete changes coming to the faction:
Lost Banestone - Lost Banestone is receiving one of the largest reworks. The building's aura have been reworked and now indefinitely extend the lifespan of friendly revenant's in a 30m radius. This makes it ideal for turning your leftover T2 units into a free defensive force. Additionally, its ability no longer prevents enemy spawns. It now damages a target enemy, and if that enemy dies during the duration, a Lost Shade revenant spawns out of its remains under the player's control. This allows Banestone to slowly grow its revenant defensive force over time. 
 
Lost Warlord - Lost Warlord's Onslaught ability and affinities have received major changes. Onslaught no longer teleports Lost Warlord. Instead, it spawns a revenant of Lost Warlord within a 40m radius. Additionally, the Fire affinity now provides all revenants spawned from Lost Warlord a +50% damage bonus, while the Frost affinity provides the unit's revenants a strong 3000 strength Ice Shield that refreshes every 25 seconds. 
 
Lost Spirit Ship - Lost Spirit Ship has received a number of changes to its stats, alongside a cost reduction to 230p. Most importantly, its Recycling ability is now capable of working on revenants and buildings. This synergizes strongly with revenant generating abilities such as Lost Warlord's new Onslaught ability, as well as Lost Banestone and Lost Evocation. These changes will help Lost Spirit Ship to better fulfil its role as a hybrid damage dealer and supporter in pure Lost Souls decks, while remaining useful on its own. 
 
Ethereal Storm - In its unchanged state, Ethereal Storm remains one of the worst cards in the game with poor payoff, high requirements, and bug-riddled functionality. We are reducing the spell's requirements so that only one revenant is required in the area to achieve its full effect, doubling its charges from 8 to 16, and reducing the power costs. The spell's damage has also been substantially buffed to 100 damage/sec with new affinity effects. The Fire affinity causes enemies to receive 20% more damage, while the Frost affinity removes the damage reduction from frozen enemies in the area. 
 
General Changes - In addition to these major reworks, we have several other buffs. Lost Priest's debuff has been increased, and it can now affect up to 10 targets with a larger cast range. Revenant's Blessing has received numerous buffs, including to its radius, affinity effects, and charges. Lost Evocation's Fire affinity now increases allied unit damage by +100%, up from +50%. Finally, the power cost of Revenant's Doom now scales by tier. The ability now costs 75% of the power cost of Tier 2 units, 65% of the power cost of Tier 3 units, and only 50% of the power cost of Tier 4 units.
Envisioned Playstyles:
Tier 2: Lost Shades will be the primary PvE unit, which will be supported by buffs to Lost Priest and Revenant's Blessing.
Tier 3: Lost Banestone will allow the player to maintain their revenant army of Lost Shades from as a static defensive army, as well as replace losses through its new Underworld Gate ability. For easy maps, players can continue with their army of Lost Shades, but otherwise they can transition into using Lost Horrors like currently. Ethereal Storm is being buffed to work with only 1 Revenant and will provide a good AoE damage spell which is currently lacking in Lost Souls. The red affinity will amplify damage, while the blue affinity will allow the player to bypass freeze's damage reduction.
Tier 4: Lost Evocation(r) will be buffed to enable the unit-based damage playstyle of Lost Souls while the blue affinity will continue to provide strong sustain through damage reduction. Evocation and Lost Warlord's new ability will be able to be combined with Lost Spirit Ship, which can now recycle Revenants as well as buildings. This gives the player the choice between extending Revenant lifetimes or utilizing their remaining life points as fodder for LSS's Crystal ability. Lost Dragon will be useful as a support unit. We are also working to add @UltDragon's Lost Obelisk card from the card creation contest into the game, more on that later!
 
• New Card Reveal: Sleet Storm

While we have shifted our focus to map-related content, there are still new cards in development, one of which we can reveal today! Take a look at the upcoming new card Sleet Storm.
Please note: We are still testing the card. While we are generally happy with it, numbers and effects might still change before release. 
 

Sleet Storm is a new tier 3 frost spell that can fit into multiple decks, requiring only 1 frost orb. The card will be Uncommon and will not have different affinities. The effect is as follows: 

Heavy Rain
Covers an area of 15m radius in freezing rain that fetters enemies to the ground. Enemy ground units which stay in the area for 5 seconds are rooted for 15 seconds, while flying units are enchained to the ground and can no longer move. Ground units will be able to attack it while it is bound. After the effect ends, targets are immune to root and Gravity Surge respectively for 10 seconds. Lasts for 10 seconds. Reusable every 20 seconds.
While our changes to Pure Frost over a year ago have proven to be a success, one of the persistent issues we have faced is making it worthwhile to invest in only one or two Frost orbs. This card is intended to provide a reason for players to splash into a single Frost orb in exchange for receiving access to an area of effect Gravity Surge spell. In order to make the card effective even in cases where enemy flies might be lacking, we also attached a rooting effect for ground units. The effect itself synergizes perfectly with Frost's Construct, which also only requires one Frost orb. Overall, this card should provide a boost to archetypes which struggle with flying units, even ground melee decks which we have been trying to improve for more general usage in PvE.
Sleet Storm is planned to release in our next patch. 
 
• Art Spotlight: Sleet Storm 

For the artwork of Sleet Storm, we used ArtRhino's old wallpaper as a base. You can see his wallpaper for Cold Snap below.

To utilize this base, our artist @Tweeto first aligned it in a 1:1 ratio required for card artwork. Then, he auto-filled the empty areas, corrected the colours, added hue shifts in the background, and multiple missiles to accurately depict raining, more in line with the spell's description. (1)
Afterward, Tweeto added more details to the foreground by covering it with Smokey Snow (2).
   
Although we liked the direction it was taking, there were still some aspects to address. Version 2 depicted the units completely frozen, which was not entirely accurate. Also, it was not clear enough that it was raining in the artwork, rather showing the impact of a spell in the distance. To address these issues, Tweeto made some additional changes, resulting in version 3. Here, only the legs of the units were frozen, indicating that the affected units could still fight.
However, the artwork still did not adequately depict the effect of the spell on flying units, a crucial element of the spell. With Gravity Surge already depicting a dragon being pulled to the ground, we thought it would be interesting to show a different model falling to its presumed doom. The final artwork version shows Spitfire caught in the rain.

 
• Tournaments / 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!

 FINISHED  – The Stonekin Hunt
Over a year has passed since the successful bandit hunt. This time, players had to fight the Stonekin faction. The results are in: check out the winner reveal stream, hosted by Ultralord and Volin: More information.
 
  COMING SOON - Official Event: Easter Hunt – 08.04.2023 until 16.04.2023
An Easter Egg has been stolen, and only the legendary Easter Bunny can return the missing pieces. Will you come to his aid? Maybe there will be a reward! More information soon!
 
COMING SOON - Through Ice and Flames - 21.04.2023 until 14.05.2023
We bring to you not one but TWO new community maps courtesy of @Damo and @Hrdina_Imperia! Look out for this three week event starting later this month.
 
• 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 happy to announce two new members joining our team. After they contributed so much to the game already, we decided to create a proper staff role for both @Titan and @CrazyCockerell, who have joind our team as Tech-Artist! 
Both will help us out with spell animations, adjustments to models, and other visuals that come with adding and changing cards. You will already have seen some of their work in action, f.e. Wasteland Terror (CrazyCockerell) and the raven effect from the ability of Raven Archwalker (Titan). We are looking forward to their creations!
 
• Contribute

We have made a name change to one of our critical roles in the project. We noticed a lot of people were not applying for the role of Balance Developer because they thought they had to have development experience, which is not the case. Additionally, players thought balance developers are the ones who adjust the balance of the game. While that is technically true, because they are the ones who adjust the card values for implementation, the Game Designers are the ones who make the actual balance decisions. To more clearly communicate what the role is about, we have changed it to "Card Implementer". 
As a Card Implementer, you will be able to help out Skylords Reborn by making the needed adjustments to cards, either for balance purposes or completely new cards. This is a very important role that can really make a difference in our patching schedule, so if you are interested, please check out the position. 

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 take a look at our open positions!
 

• Newsletter

While we aim to keep our community in the loop with monthly news through our Community Updates, we understand that sometimes these updates might not reach you. That's why we offer a newsletter that will notify you when a new patch or update is released. Don't worry, we respect your privacy and promise not to send spam or use your data in any other way. Click here to sign up.
 

 
If you provided your email address during our summer survey to stay up to date, then you are automatically subscribed to our newsletter. We recently sent out our first newsletter, which announced the release of our latest patch.
• 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-HAND-HELD

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.

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

Hotfix - 14 January 2023

General Fixes
Allowed players to add [GM] as a prefix in mails again. Fixed incorrect banner alignments in leader boards and trade. Fixed missing portrait name for card avatars bought with BFP in cosmetics section. Added missing name of map requirement for the quests "A Lone Skywolf", "A Dynamic Duo" and "A Tough Tetrad" again. Fixed an issue with rPvE matches not granting players any rewards .  

Card Balance Changes
 

Global Balance Changes
Ranged attack delays standardized: 
   - Towers and ranged units are now assigned a standard 0.5 second delay on spawn instead of a semi-randomized number between 0.1-1 second in 0.1 second increments. This only modifies cards affected by the bug, many ranged units and towers will be unaffected by the change. 
If a tower or ranged unit's attack has a longer resolve timer than its attack speed, a number is assigned to said tower or unit on spawn between 0.1-1 seconds, which is permanently added to its attack speed. For examples, this means that while a certain tower might be capable of attacking every 2 seconds, if it is affected by this mechanic any particular instance of this tower spawned has an actual attack speed of between 2.1 seconds and 3 seconds. This means all affected towers are not created equal, even among towers of the same kind, and can have widely varying performances. Ranged cards with high attack speeds are impacted more strongly than ranged cards with low attack speeds, but all affected towers and units are inconsistent. Given that we have already begun to balance around the average attack speed of each ranged attack after we previously discovered the discrepancy, we did not want to simply remove the attack delay as it would potentially require us to once again rebalance all affected cards. Instead, we have opted to standardize the delay timer to 0.5 seconds, which is on average a slight buff to all affected cards, and which will henceforward make all ranged cards consistent with themselves. 
Card attack speed descriptions do not currently reflect the change. We will work to slowly remedy this over time as we continue our work to fix existing descriptive issues.

PvE Balance Changes
While changes are split here between PvE and PvP sections, many of the changes have important consequences for both game modes. Our PvE and PvP balance teams work closely together to ensure that the impact of all changes are evaluated for both game modes. Below, we have listed both the changes and our reasoning behind them. 
[ Tier 1 ]
 Nightguard:
1. Damage: 60 damage (450 dp20)  ➜ 90 damage (675 dp20)
2. Add "Swift" ability to both affinities.
3. Gifted affinity ➜ Infused affinity:
   A.  Add "Infused Fury" - Deals 50% more damage against elementals. 
Give swift to both affinities and make their difference be in species damage type. Substantially increased combat stats to make the unit more valuable when unable to immediately swap, but still primarily useful for swapping.
 Amazon (g):
1. Wildlife Protection healing amplification: 50% ➜ 65%
Minor buff intended to make combinations like Amazon(g) + Werebeasts more rewarding.
 Strikers:
1. Remove "Looter" ability
2. Add new passive "Gang Up!": When being surrounded by at least 3 friendly orcs in a 25m radius, all incoming damage will be spread among all gang members relative to each unit's current life points. Additionally, affected units take 15% less damage.
3. Add new passive "Group Pressure": Unit is immune to Unity and its effects.
We are giving Thugs' "Gang Up!" passive to Strikers and changing both Strikers and Thugs' abilities to work based on friendly orcs instead of just friendly Thugs. This will allow Strikers and Thugs to form a gang together, creating a new Fire T1 combo. Additionally, we are fully removing "Looter" from Strikers. 
Our balance team is currently in the beginning stages of reintroducing a rebalanced Looter ability to the game for higher tier units as part of a project to allow each faction to have a power acceleration mechanic. Shadow's Resource Booster is the most obvious example of such an acceleration mechanic. Nature also has existing acceleration tools in the Breeding Grounds effect (unit cost reduction) and Promise of Life (unbinding units). We think Looter could be a good tool to enable a unique acceleration mechanic for Fire. More details will be announced on this topic when proposals become more concrete.
[ Tier 2 ]
 Earthkeeper:
1. Back Up ability rework:
   A. Can now be knocked back while ability is active.
   B. Duration: 30 seconds ➜ Until interrupted
   C. Power cost: 0p ➜ 25p
Earthkeeper has a very powerful ability, particularly the blessed (b) affinity. By making it last indefinitely absent interruption, Earthkeeper can be used by Stonekin decks to set up incredibly durable defenses that do not need to be constantly maintained. We removed immobile to allow Earthkeeper to be knocked back, requiring good positioning, and added a 25p cost to increase initial set up cost in exchange for the indefinite duration.
[ Tier 3 ]
 Abyssal Warder:
1. Power cost: 250p ➜ 240p
2. Crystal Spikes ability damage: 725, up to 2175 in total ➜ 800, up to 4800 in total
3. Class change: Giant Destroyer ➜ Ancient Destroyer
Abyssal Warder has been much more viable since the buff to Promise of Life. Players can send Abyssal Warder on a suicide mission, cast Promise of Life just before death, and be rewarded with 2 L-sized warders and a new XL-sized one. This same Promise of Life can then be used in T4 to quickly unbind the player's initial Forest Elder. Even so, Abyssal Warder remains a weak option, and it struggles greatly against masses of weaker enemies. We are over doubling the total damage of its Crystal Spikes ability to allow it to clear crowds of weak enemies quickly and slightly decreasing its power cost to make it more efficient. 
 Deepfang:
1. Damage: 150 damage per second (3000 dp20) ➜ 165 damage per second (3300 dp20)
2. Life points: 3200 ➜ 3500
3. Stonekin Critter (unit):
   A. Damage: 60, up to 90 in total (500 dp20) ➜ 72, up to 108 in total (600 dp20)
   B. Life points: 550 ➜ 750
Deepfang is currently underwhelming, particularly as a good portion of its strength relies on the continued existence of two weak support units. Once they die, Deepfang has worse stat efficiency than the almost pure support unit Rageflame. We are giving a general buff to the damage and life points of both Deepfang and its Stonekin Critters. In the future, we also intend to rework the unit's summoning mechanic and to allow Deepfang to cast Union even if its Critters have died.  
 Rageflame:
1. Frostshower (both affinities):
   A. Now able to target air units.
   B. Freeze duration: 10 seconds ➜ 15 seconds
2. Blessed Frostshower (b) new affinity effect: Units frozen by this ability will receive full damage when attacked. 
3. New passive, "Shatter Ice" (both affinities): The unit is able to ignore the usual damage reduction of frozen targets.
Rageflame is meant to be a hybrid damage and support unit, but it does neither well. We are leaning more into its support aspects, while also removing the card's built-in anti-synergy by allowing it to always deal full damage to frozen targets. The unit's freeze duration has been increased, and it can now target air units, removing one of its major weaknesses. Additionally, the blue affinity's freeze allows all units to continue dealing full damage, giving players a choice between ignoring freeze's damage reduction or disabling buildings when choosing between affinities. 
 Unity:
1. Gifted Sharing (g) regeneration: 40 life points every 2 seconds ➜ 50 life points every 2 seconds
2. Blessed Sharing (b) damage reduction: 25% ➜ 20%
After the recent Fire changes, Unity(b) has proven too strong. The damage reduction double stacks (once when the initial unit is attacked, once when the remaining damage is transferred). This means that the actual damage reduction granted by the blue affinity is often substantially more than 25%. On the other hand, the green affinity has been the weaker of the two since the beginning. We are giving it a slight boost to hopefully make the decision between which affinity to bring more meaningful. 
 Ward of the North:
1. Units under the effect of this spell can no longer be knocked back.
Minor buff to the card to give players a reason to use it over its competitors Revenge and Stone Shell.
[ Tier 4 ]
 Batariel:
1. Stage Duration (both affinities):
   A. Stage 1: 4 sec ➜ 5 sec
   B Stage 2: 4 sec ➜ 5 sec
2. Stage Threshold Value (both affinities): 
   A. Stage 1: 1200 damage ➜ 800 damage 
3. Damage per Stage Batariel (fire affinity):
   A. Stage 1: unchanged (100 dmg)
   B. Stage 2: 150 dmg ➜ 200 dmg
   C. Stage 3: 200 dmg ➜ 300 dmg
Follow-up on previous changes which left Batariel's fire affinity too weak.
 Death Ray:
1. Leech Guns ability:
   A. Damage buff: 100% more damage ➜ 150% more damage
   B. Stored life point cost: 1 additional damage per 1 stored life point ➜ 1 additional damage per 0.66 stored life points
Death Ray is a well-designed card which currently demands a substantial amount of deckbuilding cost and in-game micromanagement to make it work. While decent, Death Ray should give more to justify its high investment costs. This change increases Death Ray's damage buff while charged with life points, without otherwise increasing the amount of life points required to be harvested via Leech Guns. This should leave the current experience of the deck unchanged, except that it is now stronger. 
 Fire Sphere:
1. Cooldown: 10 seconds ➜ 20 seconds
The last round of buffs left Fire Sphere too strong. Instead of taking away from the aspects of the card that have quickly made it a top tier option, we are reverting a previous change to its cooldown. This should reduce the ability to spam the card, making its initial 10 second wind-up a more important factor to account for when using the spell.
 Forest Elder:
1. Pest Plants is now a basic ability that exists on both affinities of Forest Elder.
   A. Radius: 30m ➜ 20m
   B. Damage: 30 damage per second ➜ 40 damage per second
2. Forest Charm ability rework:
   A. No longer applies an effect to allies. Now functions more like a mobile Regrowth.
   B. New ability description: "Activate to release the power of the forest, creating a regenerative zone of 30m radius. Every 2 seconds, friendly units within restore up to 300 life points, up to 3000 in total. Also affects the caster. Lasts for 30 seconds. Reusable every 60 seconds." 
3. Gifted Flower Power: The +25% damage buff now also applies to Forest Elder itself. Also affects Pest Plants.
4. Shadow Affinity (p) ➜ Frost Affinity (b): 
   A. Blessed Flower Power effect: Friendly units now ignore slow caused by unit collision in a 30m range. Also applies to Forest Elder itself. 
5. Class change: Beast Dominator ➜ Beast Commander
Our testing found that Pest Plants was an essential component of Forest Elder's ability to clear early T4 camps and for all melee army compositions to succeed. As such, we added it to both affinities as a basic ability and adjusted its power level accordingly. To enable the all melee deck styles that arose during our testing, we added the ability for the new blue affinity Forest Elder to enable its allies and itself to ignore unit collision based slows. This makes melee armies substantially more dynamic. In general, the green affinity Forest Elder works best combined with Primeval Watcher, while the blue affinity Forest Elder works best when combined with Colossus and Grimvine. Finally, we reworked the Forest Charm healing ability. It is now substantially stronger than previously, as well as much more consistent in terms of expected healing. With these changes, the changes to Mind Control, and the release of Sanctuary, Pure Nature should be comparable in strength to other pure deck archetypes. 
 Gemeye:
1. Damage: 550, up to 825 in total (2750 dp20) ➜ 650, up to 975 in total (3250 dp20)
2. Tainted Spit (p):
   A. All damage is now piercing
   B. Contamination damage: 55, up to 165 in total every second ➜ 50, up to 150 in total every second
3. Gifted Spit (g):
   A. Paralyze targets: 4 ➜ 5
   B. Paralyze duration: 10 seconds ➜ 15 seconds
Minor buff to Gemeye in general. Gemeye's two affinities widely vary in usefulness. The purple affinity can deal up to 3300 additional damage over 20 seconds, increasing its actual attack value to 5450 dp20. This damage also stacks if there are multiple Gemeyes. By contrast, the green affinity can paralyze up to 4 targets after a 5 second wait period for up to 10 seconds. 10 seconds is already a short duration for crowd control in T4 and the 5 second wait timer makes it even worse, as it is actually much longer when accounting for Gemeye's attack animation and projectile travel time. Additionally, paralyze effects cannot stack, and they quickly run afoul of crowd control's diminishing returns penalty if the player casts spells such as Curse of Oink or a freeze effect. Overall, this leads to the situation where in the vast majority of situations the purple affinity is far superior. 
The goal here is to break the two affinities into two different deck paths. By allowing the purple affinity to always pierce through damage reduction, it means that its damage will not be reduced when attacking frozen targets. On the other hand, the green affinity's built-in crowd control will synergize with splash options lacking CC and Noxious Cloud which deals a lot of damage but needs time to work. The changes should also allow the green affinity to do a better job when utilized as part of static defenses for its built-in crowd control.
 Grimvine:
1. Strangling Vines ability radius: 20m ➜ 25m
Quality of Life change intended to make Grimvine's ability slightly better. 
 Mind Control: 
1. Power cost: 300p ➜ 250p
2. Charges: 4 ➜ 8
3. Takeover limit: 300p ➜ 350p
4. Allow to be used past population limit
5. Now cleanses all debuffs and makes mind controlled unit immune to all major debuffs for 15 seconds after cast. 
Mind Control is one of those cards which initially seems awesome because it enables you to take over your favorite enemy units, but soon after results in frustration. NPC enemies mostly lack abilities making them no more than stat sticks, charges are extremely limited, the card becomes useless when you hit population cap, your ally's Incredible Mo permanently debuffs the unit even when it becomes yours, and taking over major threats inside a camp usually results in almost instant crowd control into death. We have tried to address all of these issues at once. After the changes, Mind Control should provide a strong incentive to use 3 Nature orbs as well as provide a means by which Nature can bolster its unit-based strategy without binding power in the process. 
 Shadow Worm:
1. Damage: 400, up to 600 in total (4000 dp20) ➜ 440, up to 660 in total (4400 dp20)
2. Life points: 3500 ➜ 4400
3. Mass Disintegration ability targets: May only disintegrate units ➜ May now disintegrate units and buildings
4. Earth Dive ability damage: 250, up to 1000 in total ➜ 325, up to 1300 in total
Shadow Worm is the only T4 Pure Shadow unit in the game. While the previous buffs helped the card a lot, Shadow Worm remains by itself an insufficient payoff to give up a splash orb. It also, despite the buffs and its high orb restrictions, remained one of the lowest stat efficiency units in T4. With these changes, we are both giving a general buff to Shadow Worm's stats and making some changes to enable the two unique aspects of the card, its Mass Disintegration and its Earth Dive mechanic. 
Mass Disintegration will now be able to target buildings (but not spawns which have building immunity), giving the ability much needed flexibility. Shadow Worm's life points increase will also allow the unit to survive 5 seconds longer when disintegrating the maximum number of targets simultaneously. Additionally, the 30% damage increase to Earth Dive damage will enable a particularly unique playstyle given that Life Stealer also affects Earth Dive. 
 Thunder Wagon:
1. Remove "Tainted Death" from shadow affinity
2. Change Shadow affinity (p) ➜ Frost affinity (b)
   A. Blessed Flamethrower (b): Now able to target air units.
[ Building Changes ]
It is the general principle of the faction design team not to change abilities or introduce complex mechanics needlessly. Cards should generally perform a single function and perform that function well. A lot of the buildings in the game are already well-designed, but lack sufficient stats or possess too strict of requirements. As such, we have opted wherever possible to introduce simple changes to bring the tower to the appropriate power level. If you would like to learn more about our thought process behind the tower changes, please head to Skylords Reborn Documents to read our design Deep Dive on Towers, as well as other design documents. 
 Artillery:
1. Range: 50m ➜ 60m
2. Increased turret turn speed.
Allow Artillery to damage siege units even when placed behind a wall.
 Bandit Launcher:
1. Flame Arrow splash radius: 5m ➜ 8m 
2. Life points: 1500 ➜ 800
3. Add "Fast Construction" - Construction time is reduced by 50%.
4. Firebug:
   A. Radius: 20m ➜ 25m
   B. Power cost: 20 ➜ 25 Energy
   C. Infused Firebug damage: 400, up to 1200 in total ➜ 600, up to 1800 in total
   D. Tainted Firebug damage: 600, up to 1800 in total ➜ 800, up to 2400 in total
Differentiate Bandit Launcher from its more defensive oriented brother Rioter's Retreat by focusing it around attacking and using its suicide ability to quickly and cheaply clear enemies.  
 Deepgorge:
1. Cold Clutch radius: 25m ➜ 30m.
Deepgorge has substantially increased in strength since the most recent changes, particularly in connection with North Star(b) with which it naturally synergizes. Unfortunately, due to the tower's large size, its ability radius is still too small when the tower is placed behind a wall making it difficult even for a well-placed Deepgorge to hit all melee attackers on long walls. 
 Fire Bomb:
1. Damage: 715 up to 1650 in total ➜ 720, up to 1800 in total
2. Add "Fast Construction" - Construction time is reduced by 50%.
3. Allow to hit air units & enable splash overflow fix.
Small buff to Fire Bomb that should allow it to be used more aggressively. 
 Hammerfall:
1. Increase turret turn speed.
2. Breeze of Life (g) / Breeze of Strength (b):
   A. Maximum capacity: 1500 ➜ 3000
   B. Recharge rate: 15 per second ➜ 40 per second
   C. Radius: 20m ➜ 25m
3. Breeze of Strength, Ice Shield cost: 495 capacity ➜ 600 capacity
Increased turret turn speed should increase damage output due to faster target tracking. Change to affinity effects: Higher maximum capacity should make both affinity effects better, but especially Hammerfall (g) which is only drained as required. Higher recharge rate means that a new Ice Shield can be bestowed every 15 seconds instead of every 33 seconds, even with the higher cost. Radius increase will make it easier to place units around it. Total charge time is now 90 seconds. Additionally, Hammerfall's shields do not decay while within the aura. This makes them a stable source of extra health for allied units. Hammerfall's recharge and healing is still less than Healing Well's, a T2 60p card, with the same maximum capacity.
 Howling Shrine:
1. Essence Bolts damage: 600, up to 900 in total (3000 dp20) ➜ 750, up to 1125 in total (3750 dp20)
2. Crowd control duration (both affinities): 10 sec ➜ 15 seconds
Howling Shrine is feeling better after the buffs both to itself and to the root network in general. When the initial changes were proposed, some people suggested larger buffs to the card, but we urged caution due to the difficulty to account for how things would change once the full set of root network changes came through. Now that we can evaluate the changes more fully, it appears that Howling Shrine is still on the weak side. To remedy this, we are giving it a +25% damage increase and increasing the duration of both its root and paralyze to help it keep dangerous melee units at a safe distance. 
 Infected Tower:
1. Damage: 114, up to 172 in total (1215 dp20) ➜ 138, up to 207 in total. (1466 dp20)
2. Splash Radius: 5m ➜ 8m
A +20% damage increase and small splash radius increase. Changes to Infected Tower's ability have been postponed until we can properly rework it.
 Lost Converter:
1. Add Soul Splicer's "Soul Suction" ability to the card, allowing it to gather corpses outside its passive range.
2. Corpse cost to freeze: 200 ➜ 250 stored life points
All corpse support buildings should have a way to gather corpses from further away. As such, we are adding Soul Splicer's Soul Suction ability to both Lost Converter and Waystation, as well as any future buildings of this type. 
 Morklay Trap:
1. Enable splash overflow fix
2. Explosion Blast total damage: 2640 in total ➜ 4400 in total
Increase total targets from 3 to 5 and enable splash damage properly transferred even when units die. This should make Morklay Trap a viable option to clear T3 camps or defend against incoming waves. 
 Stone Hurler:
1. Damage: 100 damage, up to 150 in total (834 dp20) ➜ 120 up to 180 in total (1000 dp20)
Align actual damage with stated damage on the card through an approximately +20% damage increase.
 Twilight Bombard:
1. Remove "Siege" from Infused affinity
2. Add "Rage" to Infused affinity. 
   A. Stage 1: +25%; Stage 2: +50% damage
   B. Attacks per stage: 3
   C. Reset timer: 10 seconds
3. Increase turret turn speed. 
The red affinity of Twilight Bombard has Siege as its affinity effect, which is largely useless. By changing it to Rage instead, we make the choice between the two affinities one of increased damage versus crowd control.
 Waystation:
1. Add Soul Splicer's "Soul Suction" ability to the card, allowing it to gather corpses outside its passive range.
2. New passive, Fast Construction: Construction time is reduced by 50%.
3. Infused damage buff: 30% ➜ 40%
4. Tainted poison damage: 30 life points every second ➜ 40 life points every second
5. Corpse storage: 2500 total ➜ 4500 total
6. Corpse cost per potion/poison (both affinities): 180 ➜ 400 stored life points will be used up.
7. Radius: 25m ➜ 30m
The first step in what will eventually be a full rework of Waystation. For now, the addition of fast construction means it can be set up offensively as its name suggests and the addition of Soul Suction means it should be able to easily gather corpses to fuel itself. Gave a small boost to both affinity effects and increased the radius to require ranged units to enter its effective radius to damage it.
 Worldbreaker Gun:
1. Life points: 4500 ➜ 5400
2. Descriptive: Add "Has a long range of 50m" to its Ground Attack description.
WBG is the best defense in the entire game, but that is achieved primarily through its Heavy Snowball ability augmented by Skyelf Sage. In terms of functions as a tower, it is still good, but has uncharacteristically low life points for its cost and tier. We are giving it a slight bump in total health, which should help it when functioning as a tower, while leaving it unchanged as a long range artillery piece. 

PvP Balance Changes
[ Twilight Follow-up ]
After the first round of Twilight buffs and the new introduction of Twilight Crawlers, the faction did not reach the level of performance for which we had hoped. Making good use of Twilight cards and transformation mechanics in a dynamic environment turned out to be too difficult. We will buff some cards to add further incentive of mastering Twilight decks. This might not be the last Twilight iteration as we will continue to monitor the situation moving forward.
 Slaver:
1. Life points: 780 ➜ 820
Increased durability to make Slaver better when used on open ground, where the unit is prone to kiting.
 Twilight Brute:
1. Life points: 780 ➜ 820
2. Bloodlust ability duration: 20 seconds ➜ 25 seconds
Increased stat efficiency and also extended buff duration upon Transforming, making it a little easier to utilize.
 Twilight Crawlers:
1. Damage: 940 dp20 ➜ 1000 dp20
2. Chitin Shell ability damage reduction: 20% ➜ 30%
Whereas Twilight Crawlers scale decently well into high energy game stages, they don’t provide enough stability in early game. They had problems dueling some units they were supposed to counter making it incredibly difficult to play from behind. Increased stat efficiency and higher absorption rate on their passive should settle this and make Twilight Crawlers a worthy S-counter.
 Twilight Minions:
1. Incentive ability duration (both affinities): 20 seconds ➜ 25 seconds
Extended buff duration upon Transforming, making it easier to make use of the effect.
 Vileblood:
1. Power cost: 130p ➜ 120p
2. Damage: 1400 dp20 ➜ 1250 dp20
3. Life points: 1350 ➜ 1250
4. Transformation ability cost: 111p ➜ 102p
5. Infused Liquids (r) ability: 130 damage per wave (520 total) ➜ 150 damage per wave (960 total)
6. Gifted Liquids (g) ability: 250 healing per wave ➜ 300 healing per wave
Reduced unit cost and adjusted stat efficiency to reward multi-unit set-ups and transformation effects. The decreased damage ratio will limit the impact Vileblood has on its own, but with less bound power, there are many more options to combine it with other cards and abilities.
[ Tier 1 ]
 Executor:
1. Burnout ability:
   A. Damage buff: 60% more damage ➜ 80% more damage
   B. Damage debuff: Now 60% less damage on all upgrades
   C. Damage buff duration: 20 seconds ➜ 30 seconds
   D. Damage debuff duration: 30 seconds ➜ 20 seconds on all upgrades
After Nightguard received nerfs, Executor's performance as a compensation tool has been a bit underwhelming. These changes should address early L-counter issues and diversify Shadow’s defensive options in T1.
 Forsaken:
1. Frenzy ability initial cooldown: 0 seconds ➜ 7 seconds
With this patch, we intend to distribute the power of Shadow T1 more evenly and improve faction design overall. Shadow T1 is very Forsaken centric against Fire T1 and in the mirror matchup. The Frenzy ability allows them to be good in skirmishes, defense, and siege at the same time. While this can’t be changed fundamentally for slot reasons and due to available design options, we can shift a bit of Shadows' defensive strength from Forsaken to Wrathblades and Executor. This should add a bit more depth to the mentioned matchups and goes more in line with what would be expected from the counter system. 
 Thugs:
1. Damage: 720 dp20 ➜ 750 dp20
2. Gang Up! ability: Now works based on nearby friendly orcs, not just friendly Thugs.
As newly buffed Wrathblades will have a certain impact on skirmishing against Fire T1, Thugs will receive a slight damage increase as well.
 Warden's Sigil (g):
1. Gifted Sigil Ice Shield regeneration: 25 strength per second ➜ 35 strength per second
Providing clear identities to both Sigil affinities and granting more reasons to pick anything besides the frost one.
 Wrathblades:
1. Burnout ability:
   A. Damage buff: 60% more damage ➜ 80% more damage
   B. Damage debuff: Now 60% less damage on all upgrades
   C. Damage buff duration: 20 seconds ➜ 30 seconds
   D. Damage debuff duration: 30 seconds ➜ 20 seconds on all upgrades
[ Tier 2 ]
 Moon:
1. Necroshade ability cost: 50p ➜ 40p
Moon has access to fairly strong abilities, but very high upfront costs put her into a very niche position, especially for a legendary card. Necroshade cost being reduced should add more room for skill expressive gameplay and reinforce her identity as an assassin type unit.
 Ripper:
1. Cannibalize ability regeneration: 25 life points per second ➜ 35 life points per second
Buffed the corpse interaction for increased card value in extended combat and better survivability of dazed summons. This change will also affect the Rippers spawning from Nox Carriers.
 Viridya:
1. Damage: 90, up to 135 in total (750 dp20) ➜ 108, up to 162 in total (900 dp20)
2. Unit's attack radius now applied around the unit hit instead of the squad's center.
Viridya’s autocast is nothing but frustrating to use. Attacks apply such a widespread knockback against squad units, to the point where she stops dealing any damage to them after a single attack. These changes should alleviate the mentioned issue and add a fair reward for utilizing her as an S-counter overall.
[ Tier 3 ]
 Amii Ritual:
1. Power cost: 150p ➜ 80p
2. Duration: 20 seconds ➜ 25 seconds
3. Cooldown: 60 seconds ➜ 100 seconds
In the past, Amii Ritual has been underwhelming as its high cost made it fairly difficult to use the spell when needed the most. With this change the drawbacks of the card will be shifted to a long cooldown instead. This puts more emphasis on good strategic usage. Payoff can be significantly higher, but additional time between activations makes it easier to punish a mistimed use.
 Mo:
1. Mo's Better Blues ability:
   A. Duration: 20 seconds ➜ 30 seconds
2. Group Hug ability:
   A. Minimum healing: 500 life points ➜ 1000 life points
   B. Maximum healing: 3000 life points ➜ 4000 life points 
Whenever Mo sees occasional play, it is due to Stampede being one of the most valuable abilities in the game. More often than not, the cost and cast animation of his remaining abilities make it better to just not use them at all. These buffs should address this without reinforcing his base-nuke oriented play pattern.
 Nox Carrier:
1. Power cost: 180p ➜ 80p
2. Charges: 8 ➜ 16
3. Life points: 1500 ➜ 1050
4. Necro Strike ability (both affinities):
   A. Initial cooldown: 10 seconds ➜ 15 seconds
   B. Damage: 3400 damage ➜ 900 damage
5. Tainted Necro Strike (p) poison duration: 15 seconds ➜ 10 seconds 
Nox-Carrier has been fairly problematic due to its one-dimensional design. The ability to destroy full health orbs turned the unit into a raw stat check, especially when combined with cards that can remove the downside of heavily reduced movement speed. In order to buff this card to a viable state, we needed to get rid of this pattern. As a result, we strictly nerfed the siege ability followed by a drastic cost reduction. This puts higher emphasis on Ripper spawns instead of ability damage. With Rippers also getting buffed, this should add a lot of room for creative card usage and remind everyone that Nox Carrier is actually carrying something.
 Queek Queek:
1. Damage per attack: 76 (610 dp20) ➜ 80 (640 dp20)
2. Attack range of normal Queek Queek: Now always 9m
3. Superpig ability damage buff: 120% (1340 dp20) ➜ 150% (1600 dp20)
Pushing unit stats to at least match other flying units in T3. The opportunity has also been used to clean up damage numbers.
 Shadow Insect:
1. Soul Shock ability damage: 500 ➜ 600
Shadow Insect is a strong unit with a rather unique ability design, but often requires too much micromanagement to outweigh the cons of having weaker stats compared to most other T3 units. We will strengthen the ability a little for that reason.
 Vulcan:
1. Conflagrate ability cost: 50p ➜ 30p
With buffs to many T3 units across the board, Vulcan was left somewhat behind in comparison. With lowered ability cost, it should be easier to make use of his strong damage spikes.

Time is up!
In total, I have received 140 entries from 88 different participants.
The next step is to compile all the data and present it to the jurors, they will (understandably) need some time to judge all the entries and to discuss edge cases. After the jury has made their decision, I will post the results here.
Please note that 140 entries is A LOT, so this might take a while.
Thanks for all the cool submissions and the awesome energy so many of you brought to this contest! 

I'm so excited to see what everyone send in! 

Hi 🙂
I've already sent my take to Kapo on Discord but after people started sharing their ideas on here, I could'nt resist the urgue to post mine too! I honestly have no idea on how to balance a card, I just think the idea of this unit would be badass. It's kinda special from the looks, kinda like Bloodhorn, with nothing similar looking as a T4 unit to it (excapt Swiftclaws and the other medium Dinosaur units haha).
 
 
Name: Amii Revenger
Ingame model based on a resized Swiftclaw
Tier & Orbs: T4, Nature Nature Shadow Shadow
Type: Unit
Power: 260
Hit points and Size: 5820 XL
Attack value and Type: 6350, melee, XL
Passive Abilities: Elusive - 10% less effected with crowd control / Rage - longer fights, more damage
Active Abilities: Fearsome Roar - 100 Energy - Enemy Units deal 20% less damage 

Explanation of idea behind the card: I've always adored the small dinosaur units in Battleforge so I thought why not resize them for a badass Amii T4 unit? For me, Amii is the oldest fraction in Nyn, maybe they have these giant dinosaurs to protect their cities.
 
 

Hi fellow Skylords! Im kinda new to this, but I was thinking, if we have Wheel of Gifts then why not we have Wheel of Curses. It would still give some buffs to ally units, but would also buff enemy units in some way, to give a bit more challenge for those Rpve lovers out there. (Also would work in campaign)
Name: Wheel of Curses
Tier & Orbs: T3 shadow, frost, frost/shadow
Type: Building
Power: 180
Hit points: 2000
Passive Abilities:
The Cursed Shrine - If Wheel of Curses is present in game then buffs from Wheel of Gifts will be ignored and wont be given to ally units. 
Curse of Leech - Once activated, enemy units will gain 10% leech of their max attack damage, but your own units will also gain leech 10% of their max health instead of attack, in addition your own units will leech friendly or unfriendly unit once per 15 seconds.
Curse of Shield - Once activated, friendly ally shielding will last only 60% of the original duration, but will be 40% stronger, in addition enemy unit shields will last 30% longer, but will take 20% more damage from all sources.
Curse of Bravery - Once activated, friendly units that are on their own will gain Bravery curse. Effected unit will gain 60% damage buff of their max attack and also will gain 30% increased damage taken in addition if unfriendly unit is alone it will gain 40% buff to damage dealt and also decreases damage taken by 30%.
Explanation of idea behind the card:
I always wondered why there isnt a different kind of wheel, that would not only benefit your own units, but also enemy units a bit, to make gameplay more challenging and interesting, there for I created this card.
Its a T3 Lost souls building type card (since I dont see a lot of use in Lost souls building cards) that would benefit both sides of the game. I also though if this card would be present with Wheel of Gifts then that would be too strong, there for I gave the card that passive that wont allow play the Wheels of Gift.  
Each curse is different and plays around healing, shielding and those one unit decks decks, so you would have to improvise and and think which curse is better and which one to keep active and which you wont want to keep active since players run different decks and it might benefit you, but might now benefit your allies. Since I have seen that you can almost permanently keep up your shields on units, but with healing its not that strong so maybe like a passive leech on units that drain life from nearby units would be cool and interesting,
And since the Batarial nerfs (he is still strong, but not that strong), I though maybe it would give some love also to him with that Bravery.

Hey everyone,
Today is the second anniversary for Skylords Reborn! Join us tonight 20:00 CET (about 5 hours from this post) at https://www.twitch.tv/skylordsreborn for a celebration stream, where we look back on 2 years of this revival project, share info about the upcoming patch, host a Q&A, and more.
To manage expectations, please note; while we are hard at work on our upcoming patch, it will not be released on the 18th.
We hope to see you there!

My dream card, a flying turtle 🤭

Welcome to the Official Anniversary Card Design Contest!

 
 
THE CONTEST HAS ENDED.
To see all winning entries, CLICK HERE
 
 
 
 
Anniversaries are special opportunities – and we like to take this head-on and really show that Skylords Reborn is for the Community, by the Community! A contest like this has often been suggested, now is the time to ask you for your card development ideas.
 
In this contest, you are called to submit your idea for a new card,
which will be presented to high-ranking jurors for judgement.


The jurors for this will be the designers @Hirooo, @RadicalX and @WindHunter – for those who don't know, these are the guys who are calling the shots in the SR Team about what makes the cut for new content.
Important note: Of course, there is no obligation for the SR Team to make any entry into a real card. But, a good idea that really fits into the game has a lot of power, and your idea will be heard, seen and judged anonymously and without any barrier of entry.
The contest starts with the reveal of this post and ends on the 1st of January 2023, 23:59 CET. Submit your entry through Discord (DM to Kapo#0116) or the Skylords Forum (DM to @Kapo). I will anonymize the entries, present them to the jury, and after a voting phase the winners will be revealed.
 

Rules:
Your idea must be a new card (NOT a rework of an already existing card or a Promo card) Units and buildings must be fitting for an already existing model (this is a technical limitation, but re-texturing can do wonders) Unfortunately, we also can't allow for Fire/Frost or Rainbow-cards (or any other outside the known factions, due to technical limitations) You are asked to create the fully upgraded version (see below: Things you don't need to add) By entering, you are giving away your card idea with permission to modify it  – the final design may differ from your submission here You are limited to a maximum of TWO entries - if you win on both, you will recieve the higher price You are asked to use the following template:
 
Things you don't need to add:
Rarity Upgrade Levels (submit a fully upgraded design) Number of Charges Artwork for the card At the end of the contest, we may make a compilation of the entries – by participating, you automatically agree to be included in that.
 
Suggestions:
In preparation for this contest, we asked the jurors to drop some hints on what is needed for a good design.
You might not want to create a new super-powerful card, but a card that's interesting. Maybe it fills a special niche case in a faction (like Burning Spears), or it is special, or meme-worthy (like Easter Egg). Balance is important! The best cards are useful, fill essential roles, and are not overpowered. If you design a T1 or T2 card, think about PvP implications. Fit the card to the faction: Think about the intentional strengths and weaknesses of each faction. Potentially, you see an extremely missing card in an arsenal, but that could be part of that faction's design. Also, breaking core rules of the game requires a very, very, very good reason. For both topics, see: Design Philosophy Document. You are allowed to submit a legendary (neutral) card, but please note those are much harder to design and balance properly. You may present some optical aid to the jurors: On https://smj.cards/creator you can easily create your own card-mockup:
 



Voting and Prize Tiers:
PLATINUM TIER
Platinum tier are creations that REALLY could be considered to be added to the game. They must not be all-around perfect, since someone who is not on the SR team cannot know about every problem faced when implementing cards. Platinum entries are cool, captivating and would be a great addition to the game.
Platinum tier winners will win a low-grade promo of choice (e.g., Fallen Skyelf, Lyrish Knight or Rogan Kayle) or Ultra-Rare of choice of similar value (Infect, Forest Elder etc.). Should your card some day make it into the game, you will get it for your own collection.
 
GOLD TIER
Gold tier suggestions are cool and interesting suggestions, but are lacking significantly in ONE (but only one!) way:
Unbalanced design with no way to repair that Clearly impossible to implement  Too niche to be worth the implementation Not fitting for any faction or into the game Not really a fitting, existing model in the game etc. Gold tier winners will win a Booster, accompanied by an (good) Rare or (medium) Ultra Rare card.
 
SILVER TIER
Silver Tier suggestions are solid suggestions, but are lacking in more than one way to make it into the game. For examples of what could cause issues, see the mentioned list above.
Silver tier winners will win a Booster.
          

We are looking forward to your designs! If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.

Best regards,
Skylords Reborn Team

 

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!

• 2nd Anniversary Stream

The second anniversary of Skylords Reborn is coming up! Two years ago, on the 18th of December 2020, the world of Nyn opened its doors again, allowing more than 100.000 Skylords to re-experience this one-of-a-kind game. Since then, we have been hard at work to bring you even more content, bugfixes, new cards and other features. Skylords Reborn is truly by the fans, for the fans, and we are glad we can celebrate this second anniversary with you. 
On Sunday the 18th of December at 20:00 CEST*, we will be hosting an anniversary stream on our official Twitch channel. We will look back on another year of Skylords Reborn, show off what will be included in our latest patch, and answer questions from the community. 
We hope you will be joining us! 

*Due to the busy December month, this time slot is pending, we will share the final streaming time closer to the anniversary. 
 
• Upcoming Content Patch

We are also hard at work to bring you a new content patch, aimed for release in December. It will include various balance changes, new cards, new achievements and a new feature.
Last year we focused on improving the economy and introduced Reforging; a way to make use of spare cards lying around and to adjust the prices of cards, giving even worthless cards a set minimum value and a creating a soft cap on card prices to prevent runaway inflation among the best ultra rares. We also added more achievements, increasing the number of boosters players can earn to help newer players get started on their collection.
Achievements are a great way to naturally introduce players to more cards, but also to keep players engaged with fun challenges. However, by rewarding items that interact with the economy (boosters, cards) we see some players get frustrated with achievements that provide challenges they don't enjoy or find too hard, yet feel forced to do because of the rewards.
So we started to work on an additional reward layer, and we are proud to reveal the new upcoming feature: Cosmetics.
With our new patch, we are introducing a bunch of new achievements focused on providing fun new challenges for players, while not having to worry about impacting the economy with their rewards. Instead, players will be able to earn special borders, banners and titles, allowing for more expression and fancy bling! Here is a little teaser:  

Cosmetics will be part of our upcoming patch, and we will share more about it and their connected achievements in the anniversary stream. 


• New Card Reveal: Sanctuary

In our Nature Deep Dive back in April, we already mentioned Sanctuary, a card that has been in development ever since. Sanctuary is a new tool for Pure Nature players that provides an effect similar to Mark of the Keeper to a select number of units. 
Please note: We are still testing the card. While we are generally happy with it, numbers and effects might still change before release. 

Sanctuary is a new tier 4 spell for pure Nature decks, requiring four Nature orbs. The card will be Rare, and will come in two affinities. The effect of the non-upgraded version is as follows:
 
Blessed Spellbane
Up to 4 friendly units in a 25m radius will be wrapped in a countermagical aura. Affected units are surrounded by a spellblocking zone of 20m where enemies can neither use ranged attacks nor special abilities. Hostile players cannot play out cards within that zone. Additionally, affected units take 25% less damage. Lasts for 20 seconds. Reusable every 40 seconds.

Gifted Spellbane
Up to 4 friendly units in a 25m radius will be wrapped in a countermagical aura. Affected units are surrounded by a spellblocking zone of 20m where enemies can neither use ranged attacks nor special abilities. Hostile players cannot play out cards within that zone. Additionally, the duration of the immobilizing effects of Freeze and Paralyze is reduced by 75% on all affected targets. Lasts for 20 seconds. Reusable every 40 seconds.

Sanctuary continues our work on the Nature faction, alongside various balance changes coming to the faction in our upcoming patch. Sanctuary aims to provide Nature players with a reward for playing Pure Nature decks, instead of Enlightenment decks. It is a powerful effect that covers some weaknesses with which the faction struggles.
Sanctuary is planned to release in our next patch. 
 
• Art Spotlight

Work on Sanctuary started back in July, with SpiritAlpha coming up with a few sketches to explore directions. At this point, we weren't sure what the focus point would be of the spell. During design there were versions with non-nature units like the Overlord at the center of the spell. We thought it would be fun to show these very early concepts.


The art feedback channel was home to many a discussion during the progress, with as many as eight different takes up for discussion. We had versions with the focus on a village (1, 2), a focus on a single unit (Swamp Drake 3, Giant Wyrm 4, Abyssal Warder 6) to Twilight investation around the borders, being held back by the sanctuary (8).

After voting, the version with two dragons in the sky (5) was used to come to the final design. A big thanks to our artists SpiritAlpha and Tweeto for working on this piece and to our Art Critiques for providing feedback. As you can see, we always put a lot of thought and effort into our artworks, we hope it shows!

 
• Tournaments / Events

Since Community Updates are posted on a monthly schedule, events might come and go in between them. Be sure to keep a close eye on the ingame event-tab and the forum calendar to not miss any events! 

• CLOSING SOON – Official PvE Contest #7: Harvest season – until 02.12.2022
For this challenge, we want to see you succeed in playing the map Bad Harvest, while accomplishing several goals of varying difficulty.
The more objectives your team accomplishes, the more points you get, which will lead to greater rewards! More information. 

• NEW – CCC #9 – The Archer's Tournament – Until 10.12.2022
Once the official PvE contest is finished, a new CCC run by Kapo goes live the day. Click here for details.
 
• FINISHED – Official Halloween Event
While our Halloween event is now over, you can still play this new take on a familiar map. Instead of Encountering Twilight, Rogan Kayle finds himself in the face of new horrors. Click here for how to access the map.  

• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event yourself? Please reach out to our Event Organizer, Metagross! 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

Sadly, Chibiterasu has decided to quit his role of balance developer. While sad to see him go, we respect his decision and would like to thank him for all his work.
 
• Contribute to the Project

As always, we hope you will consider helping out the project. Please take a look at all our open positions on how you can do so. 
There are also a variety of contributor roles, like translator, that don't require you to join the staff, but still allow you to help out now and then. Please take a look. 
 

• In Conclusion

And that's it for this Community Update, thanks for reading! 
As is tradition, this community update comes with a scratch code. 
The code will reward you with a General-booster: HAPP-YANN-IVER-SARY

The code is valid until January 1st, when we will bring you another Community Update. 
As always, we are open to feedback, so please let us know if you have any questions, suggestions, or comments! 

Archive
• Skylords Reborn Documents (Deep Dives, Behind the Scenes, PvP Guide)  
• Overview Community Updates
• Community Update #29

Finally got around to get a simple enough run.
I went pure twilight without aid of fire/nature cards (except for sunstriders at the start) to spice it up. It was fun! Using Hags to keep the hulks from getting annoying early on, finally getting to using the Protector's seal, exploiting the new traits of Mutating Maniac to just pour into a location in hopes of overwhelming the brutally short respawn timer on the Hulks. All while constantly having that little temptation to just bring the Amii Monument/Enlightenment to trivialize it all in the back.

I play since Stress Test and in my eyes i don't know why it is such a problem having bug fixes, balance changes and else, the game has reformed pretty good, new content is what thrived me to have more fun with this game, since if you completed everything theres not much to do then farming gold and bfp. New content with the recent card changes and the new cards itself bring in more farming and more enjoyment to work and test out new deck combinations and as we know the game is actually being worked on, instead of keeping it on one spot all the time. It may be extensions but its still a so called DLC content which gets added to the game. Custom Events or Season Events also give it a nice touch which i really liked already just like as the Special Halloween Event which was very fun to play! It was something new and challenging and i hope you guys never stop,

Additionally i would like to know what kind of playerbase is leaving and not liking the changes are people from PVE so mad or PVP people? Since i know theres always this huge problem of nerfing/buffing cards since affects PVP and PVE matches.

Nostalgia is fleeting. A coherent, solid game is forever. The game is in a better state than it ever was at any point in time, among other things because of various fixes and nerfs, few as they were.
With that being said though, I myself am strongly in favor of providing a Legacy BF version. Although there would have to be a strict hands-off policy because when you would get into talking about which things to fix and which additions to implement it's another can of worms. So no popularity voting like "X was disliked by most, that should be fixed. Change Y was liked by most, that should be implemented". It has to be an as-is version of the game from a pre-release point. Simply a time capsule. Straight performance/stability fixes are of course fine but absolutely no additions and changes that affect gameplay in any way.
And the patch the legacy version would get pulled from has to be decided on as well. Simply the very last official version is the most straight forward. And would probably make the most sense too. But maybe an even older version would be more desirable? Although I wonder how accessible these older versions even are.
I doubt it would split the playerbase in any meaningful way as people really interested in such a version of the game and those that want the current, changed version seem to be somewhat different audiences in the first place. Logging into this Legacy BF could function similarly to how logging into the testserver functions.

Yeah but buying promos is boring, getting a promo out of a booster, now that's living, imagine the dopamine. 

Funny how you spell Moloch 🙂

@KserSke
This is what we came up with in the stream
Again after the tier definition:
S - Absolute powercreeps that you can almost not pick if playing pure shadow (or sometimes mix related)
A - Obvious picks in their decks and strong first choices
B - More niche, but very good cards that are usefull in many situations
C - Alternative picks that are weaker as B+ but still viable sometimes + halfway viable Fun-tier
D - Either cards that are rarely playable or that have very, very few niche use-cases
F - just plain useless (in pve)



 
The VoD can be found here:
 

For me playing for nostalgica and enjoying new balance/cards not exclude each other

The question is: Do you want this game to succeed or not? The old EA-version was utterly broken, and yes, a few people are having fun with it in this state for nostalgic reasons. If you think the SR team can just flick on a switch and there is a second, old version of the game available, you are mistaken. You need to pour resources into such an undertaking – manpower better spent on making the current (objectively better!) version even more awesome.
It's a fool's quest to make the same 20-30 people happy, and not develop the potential for this game to make 1000 happy – or much, much more. Yes, maybe those "would have played it for many more years", but the game will never have any appeal to new players.

I think the reason for this is so the soulhunter can use its minefield immeadiatly. Normally the soulhunter will attack you until he sucked up a certain amount of corpses, after which he will place his minefield. If you go to him, you will notice him using his minefield immediatly, which is supposed to make this part a little more difficult.

Something more of a bug. Left side of the map (as if anyone bothers taking that route LUL) has two Soulhunters next to a spawn building. However one dies the moment the map starts.
Doubt it has any gameplay implications, but I thought it worth mentioning.

Wind traps would be okay if they didn't permanently knockback units in some areas with 2 of them.
There should be enough time to pass through after they finish their activation.

Since some of the discord user asked me directly if I can share my … “unique card drawings”,
I though why not make a post in the forum where people can fine all at one place.
Also, the newer ones have a speed drawing video on Youtube.
(If you want an image of the unit without the card around and in a better resolution, just PM me)
Promo Juggernaut
 
Promo Harvester
 
Promo Razorleaf
Speed Drawing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm-gbnl7d2Y
 
Promo Lyrish Knight
Speed Drawing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7ePLaWtQiM
 
Promo Swamp Drake
Speed Drawing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIqbTFv0yxA
 
Promo Rogan Kayle
Speed Drawing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1pSzZryvxg
 
Promo Firedancer
Speed Drawing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLCA-knvuT0
 
Promo Grinder
Speed Drawing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeVJRF6eDP0
 
Promo Worldbreaker Gun
Speed Drawing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcDg5c8y7h8
 
Promo Viridya
First of April Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kIP6QhVM9g
The gif version can be found: here
 
 Promo Fallen Skyelf
Speed Drawing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oZKyvGrR-Q
 
Promo Ravenheart
Speed Drawing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJaxHDE2MrI
 (Promo) Moon
The gif version can be found: here
 

Love to transform Eye into Eye to refill Cluster Explosion charges. Not sure if it’s exploit lol.

I instaltly opened 8 twilight and 7 normal boosters when it came out. No luck 😞
Luckily my man @n3tax got 3 eyes out of like 12 boosters and shared some with me ❤️
Tested it out and works great for rpve, not the fastest deck but definitly super fun and very reliable. My strat: enlighten a forest elder then spam the eyes (and some skycatchers since the eye is not fully charged yet)