WatcherOfSky

I also have questions 😛 

What's with people and my 5 year old pizza lel

Greetings Skylords!

It's been three weeks since our last community update so it's time to bring you up to speed with everything going on in Skylords Reborn!

Adding new voice-lines into the game
In our last Community Update we made our new Sounds Converter open source in the hopes of improving the sound quality for adding new voice-lines and sounds into the game. 
We are happy to tell you we discovered a different, albeit non-optimal, conversion method. Using this new method, we are able to convert certain files in the mp3 format into the snr format required by the game. This allows us to improve the sound quality to a state where we start to feel confident in adding new voice-lines into the game, especially for our upcoming new cards.
There are still a few things to figure out, for example the fact that some sounds are hardcoded into unit models, or how some special voice-lines are triggered. For the former, we are still in need for volunteers for the "3D Tool Developer" role.
However, in the following weeks you can expect a post asking for volunteer voice actors. If you want to make your mark on the Skylords Reborn legacy, this is definitely one way to do so! We will be in need of both male and female voice actors, and will share more info on how to apply soon.  
 
Open Sourcing effect editor
After our success with open sourcing the Sound Converter, we will now also be open sourcing the Special Effect Editor. As mentioned in a previous Community Update, with this tool we are able to edit the special effects of BattleForge and create new ones from scratch. This is particularly useful for spells, since they are for the majority special effects. Many units also have special effects on their models though, like the flames of Batariel or the frosty cold effect emitted from Frost Mage.
If you want to give it a try or contribute, you can find detailed instructions how you can get started here. You can compile the tool yourself, or just download it here.
If you feel like you got some cool results, please reach out to us. We are looking for some volenteers to help us out with the effects for new cards. 

 
An update on Defence RPvE
As we mentioned in a previous Community Update, multiple game modes are currently in development. One of them is Defence RPvE. Instead of the normal RPvE where you attack to clear the map of enemies within the time limit, here you have to defend waves of enemies. 
We are not ready to release this game mode, since there is still a lot of work to be done.  However, since a lot of people are curious about how it will work, we figured to give you a glimpse of what the mode will look like. Keep in mind these features and mechanics might still change in the future. 
DRPvE will be playable by 1 to 4 players. It's a co-op scenario where you will all work towards the same goal. If you play alone or with 2 players, the other spots will not get enemy waves. 
You play against one of the 8 enemy factions, randomly chosen. Each of those factions has one custom final boss. For each phase, 3 out of 5 units are randomly chosen from the available options for that faction. This means that even if you play against the same faction twice, you might have a different experience on both runs.  
There are 4 phases of enemy attackers, with each phase being concluded by a mini-boss. At this point the current wall will be destroyed and you will unlock the next tech-tier. During the small break you can advance to the next wall and build up new defences. 
Each player will also have a switch that can be activated as soon as the mini-boss of the current phase has been spawned. If all players press it, the new phase starts immediately, allowing different timings of RPvE runs. 
Each position/lane (see the picture) gets a free unit or units at phase 2. 
Optional objectives
- There are 2 guarded shrines that cast spells to defend themselves. Destroying those will reward you with global buffs and energy.
- There are 4 bases, one for each of the dual color factions. Defeating those will reward you a free unit of the corresponding faction. 
Below you can see the map. You spawn at the bottom, and slowly make your way to higher placed defence positions. 

As mentioned before, we are still hard at work on this game mode. We are currently working on the bosses for this mode and are in need of a Map Artist to work on the look and feel of the map. If you want to help, please reach out to us!
We are curious what you think so far, so please let us know in the comments. 
 
Tournaments & Events
• FINISHED: Skylords Open #11
Last week marked the return of the Skylords Open, with its 11th edition. This was the first 1vs1 tournament since the big balance patch, so if you are interested in PvP (or want to see tier 4 in a pvp tournament!) be sure to rewatch the stream. 
• NEW: Upcoming tournament
Our event manager is currently planning the next tournament but details were not finished in time for this community update. Please keep an eye on our forums in the coming days for the announcement. 
• Host your own event / tournament
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our Event Organizer Hiko to have your event prizes sponsored by us. 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. 
 
New Team Members / Open Positions
We are developing exciting new cards and game modes, but we would love to speed up the progress. If you want to help, we would love to have you on our team.  
Below are three roles highlighted, but you can find more information, desired traits and all our open positions here. If you are unsure if you qualify, please reach out and have a talk!
 
Open Position - Global Moderator
As a Global Moderator, you are at the highest level of moderation and responsible to moderate and help players on multiple platforms. In this position you are expected to have a good grasp of how moderation works and how to handle sensitive data that you will receive access to in order to perform required moderation tasks. You will be responsible to moderate the forums, process Discord tickets from our Discord bot, answer moderation questions that come to us via e-mail and handle in-game reports. To support you with this, you will work closely with several of our internal moderation tools. Next to this, you will have the chance to shape our moderation tool that is being developed by our web developers by discussing workflow and feature improvements with them.


Open Position - Map Developer
As a map developer you are responsible to script new official maps or alter scripts of existing maps as a cause of map balance updates. BattleForge maps are created using the BattleForge map editor and the scripts are written in LUA.


Open Position - Map Designer
As a map designer you are responsible to design the gameplay experience of a map from start to finish. This includes make a rough proposal for the layout and feeling of a map, design the story and goals of the map etc.
 

In Conclusion
We hope you liked this Community Update, thanks for reading! 

Here is a scratch code you can redeem in-game for a mini booster: COMM-UNIT-YNEW-S012
The code is valid till October 23rd. 
We will update you again on October 23rd.
As always, we are open to feedback so please let us know! 
Archive
Community Update #9
Community Update #10
Community Update #11

Greetings Skylords!

It's been two weeks already since our last community update so it's time to bring you up to speed with everything going on in Skylords Reborn!

A big thank you
We want to start this update with a big thank you to the community. When we posted our feedback survey two weeks ago, we expected maybe 100 of you would take time out of your day to give us some feedback. But you completely blew us away, with over 1150 responses so far!  We will close the survey this weekend, so if you still want to provide us with some feedback (and get a booster) make sure to do so before Monday. 
So far the survey has already provided helpful insights and feedback, and many kind comments. We are glad that overall you seem to be happy with the state of the game and the changes we are making. Everyone is working very hard on this game we all love, so we are glad you are here for the ride.
On a personal note, I am very grateful to be the community manager of such an awesome community. Every single one of you makes this game tick. Whether you are a casual PvE player, climbing the ranks of PvP, helping newer players out with some cards, finding new speedrun tactics, discussing balancing changes with us, or just enjoying the game; thank you for being part of our awesome community!
I would also like to thank everyone from the team who put hours upon hours into the project. It's an honor to work alongside you on making Skylords Reborn the best it could be. 
So thank you, all of you!
 
New Patch + Reveal Stream
Our newest patch has released! After months of balancing, testing, fixing bugs (some even from the days of EA that only now come to light) we have released our biggest balancing patch yet. To celebrate the occasion, we teamed up with Toggy for a reveal stream, where he went over the patch notes, played PvP games and gave away some boosters. You can rewatch the stream here.
This patch has a lot to love, including suggestions from the community that we got as feedback on our community updates or through our social media channels. Suggestions like adding a power well and monument to the forge for testing, or being able to look at lobbies while players are in a ranked queue; we are happy to work alongside you and make this game better. 
This patch also contains many requested balancing changes to cards. Ravenheart finally has its new design, and combining it with the changes to Jorne now allows players to play a viable legendary-themed deck. A lot of effort was put into making Pure Frost more rewarding to play, with many new tools focused on shields and freeze. Speaking of Freeze, the new Warlock allows interesting new fire/frost builds as well. We hope you will enjoy playing with these cards and experiment with new deckbuilds. 
You can read the full patch notes here. Alongside a 15 page document for the balancing changes, there have been so many changes that we decided to post the rest of the minor changes to the Wiki. Among those are description and class fixes, animation changes (for example Brannoc and Backlash) and all kinds of Quality of Life changes. A special thank you to our Skylord of Honour LEBOVIN for helping us with this patch and updating the wiki!
Two things that are notably missing from this patch are the upgrades to our free PvP decks (as mentioned here), and the changes to Avatar of Frost (as mentioned in our Deep Dive for Pure Frost). We expect the changes to the free PvP decks to be implemented in the coming weeks. Because of some unforeseen bugs, the Avatar of Frost changes did not make it into this patch, but we still intend to bring some changes to him. We will continue to work on this card and share our status on the balancing discord. 

Survey data
Here are a few fun insights and pie-charts (who doesn't like pie charts?) from the survey. We will spend the coming weeks going through all the data once we close the survey. 
• Did you play the original BattleForge from EA (2009 - 2013)?
• How long have you been playing Skylords Reborn?
• How do you feel about the economy of Skylords Reborn? 
• How do you feel about the odds of getting promo cards in Skylords Reborn?
• Are you aware that you can adjust the contents of the free PvP decks? For example, swapping a free card for a card in your own collection?
The following questions were regarding your opinion on new content
• Lore / Backstories
• New voice-lines / Sounds
• Adding voice lines to current units that lack them (for example, Amii Phantom, Dryad, Brannoc, etc.)
• New campaign maps 
• Adding pure factions for rPvE (for example, mono Fire as enemies)
• Defence rpve (defend against waves of enemies)
 
Community Updates will move to a 3-week schedule
For the past ~3 months we have been giving you an biweekly insight of the things going on behind the scenes with Skylords Reborn through these community updates. While the feedback has been very positive (thank you!) we feel it would be better for both our workflow and the quality of the community updates to move them to once every three weeks. Time zone differences between team members, fulltime jobs and us wanting to provide good quality content and updates, has resulted in some last minute stress spikes to get the updates done in time and have something worthwhile to share. We feel that by moving to a 3-week schedule, we can keep up the quality and content of these updates. In between updates you can of course always find us on our social media and in the game. Rest assured that our team will keep working just as hard on getting you new features, better balance, and the long awaited new cards!

Open Sourcing of New Sounds Converter
We are excited to announce that we have made great progress in decoding BattleForge's format for sound files. BattleForge uses a special format called "snr" to encode any sounds, and so far we were only been able to convert these sounds from snr to conventional formats like mp3 and wav. Our developers have built a converter from wav to snr, which will allow us to add new sounds or voice lines to the game!
Unfortunately, our converter is not yet perfect, and during conversion a lot of quality is lost, making them currently unfit to be used in the game.
We are open-sourcing this application in the hope that the community can help us solve this problem. We would appreciate contributions to help improve the conversion! Some additional info can be found in the application link above, and this old forum topic. 
 
New Team Members / Open Positions
Some team changes since the last community update. DutchyDutchy has been promoted to Global Moderator, and Madgadget has joined the team as a discord moderator. Their help is much appreciated, as Ultrakool and Bradley left the team as Global Moderators. We want to thank everyone for their contributions! 
We could definitely need some more help with the Skylords Reborn project however.
Below are two roles highlighted, but you can find more information, desired traits and all our open positions here. If you are unsure if you qualify, please reach out and have a talk!
 
Open Position - 3D tool developer
As a 3D tool developer you are responsible to solve one of our biggest technical challenges that will boost the project to the next level: the ability to modify existing 3D models. We already have an internal tool capable of adding new cards using existing re-textured models, but we have no way to meaningfully modify the geometry, animations and special effects. You will be responsible for researching the way BattleForge represents their 3D models and develop tools and a workflow capable of modifying different aspects of those models. The ultimate goal is to be able to add new models with animations and effects never seen before. There have already been very good community efforts and already a lot is known.

Open Position - Backend web developer
As a backend web developer you are responsible to maintain and extend the backend of our current and future web applications. The primary project you will contribute to is a feature rich platform which aims to provide various extensions and integrations for Skylords Reborn. As of now, this platform is for internal use only as the focus currently lies on creating internal moderation tools. However, after the moderation tools reach a satisfactory state, we plan to make this platform public and expand it with features like a new and improved cardbase, leaderboards, a system to download, manage and share your replays, and various other useful extensions. There is a lot of room to contribute in, as this platform is still in its early stages of development! 

We are also in need of French and Russian translators. If you speak this language in combination with good English language skills, please help us out!

In Conclusion
Thanks for reading! 
We will update you again on the 2nd of October! In the meantime, we would love to hear your opinion on the latest patch.
s always, we are open to feedback so please let us know!
Here is a scratch code you can redeem in-game for 100bfp: COMM-UNIT-YNEW-S011
The code is valid till October 2nd. Please note you can also get a booster by filling in our survey. 
Archive
Community Update #8
Community Update #9
Community Update #10

Greetings Skylords!

It's been two weeks already since our last community update so it's time to bring you up to speed with everything going on in Skylords Reborn!

Share your feedback, get a booster!
You are currently reading the 10th Community Update! We hope you find these updates interesting, whether you are an active player or someone who wants to keep an eye on the project.
Time for some reflection and feedback. Last month we asked for your feedback regarding the Official PvE contests, but this time we want to know your opinion about Skylords Reborn in general. What do you like? What could be better? We want to keep improving the game and growing our playerbase, and your feedback is crucial for us. 
Please give us your feedback here. As a thank you there will be a booster for everyone who fills in the survey. Your feedback will be anonymous.
 

Next Patch Soontm
Our next patch is finally nearing completion! We expect the full patch to hit the test server at the end of this weekend. Once we are sure no bugs are within these changes, we plan to patch to live as soon as possible. There are truly a ton of changes in this patch, resulting in the patch notes already being 12 pages long, excluding bug and description changes! 
We will post the patch notes on our Patreon first, but of course we will share the full notes with everyone when the patch goes live on our main servers. And for those who are wondering; yes, Ravenheart will finally get its rework this patch. 
 
A discussion of upcoming map changes
The Skylords Reborn team recently discussed changes to PvE campaign maps. The goal of these changes would be to maintain the identity of the map as closely as possible while improving aspects such as major exploits, unused sections of maps, and problem areas where players feel forced to "break" the map to play it. 
It is important to note that all of these changes are proposals, none of them are guaranteed to be implemented! We do not want to make changes to something as fundamental as campaign maps without input from the community and what they want to see or not see change-wise. 
Please discuss what you think of the proposed changes and share your ideas in this topic or the discord. 
You can find all of the proposed changes in the attached PDF. 
Proposed Upcoming PvE Map Changes.pdf

PvP Improvements in development

We are also looking at ways to make it easier to find matches in PvP. One of the low-hanging fruits here is better rewards. Currently, the reward system is heavily favoring playing PvE over PvP. The low number of players currently playing PvP also isn't helping with completing Daily PvP Quests, and can cause for a lot of idle time for players. To counter this and reward players for playing PvP, we are currently looking into options like draining the BFP-reserve while being in the ranked queue.
Another nice feature we are working on are PvP Happy Hours. During specific time periods, players will receive additional rewards playing PvP. We notice the current PvP is quite scattered, with a lot of players wanting to play, but going offline again when they cant find opponents. We hope that by clustering those players together during certain time frames, we can encourage the PvP scene. As mentioned in a previous Community Update, it will soon also be possible to still see sparring lobbies while being in the ranked queue, without having to cancel your matchmaking. We also expect the next balance patch to cause a breath of fresh air.
Currently we are planning to offer Happy Hours for both 1vs1 and 2vs2. During Happy Hours, there will be an in-game announcement and the icon on the world map will indicate Happy Hours are active. When we have fleshed out our ideas a bit more, we will announce more details. 


 
Tournaments & Events
• Finished: Community Tournament: Toggy's Tome Tournament - August 22th
Last weekend Toggy hosted another Tome tournament, meaning players had to build a deck from a selection of random cards and play PvP matches with them. You can rewatch the stream here in case you missed it. 

• Host your own event / tournament
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our Event Organizer Hiko to have your event prizes sponsored by us. 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. 
 
New Team Members / Open Positions
We have a new Map Tester! We are very happy to welcome Rawne!
At the same time we are sad to see our balance developer Razeroc go. We want to thank him again for all the hard work he put into the project, and we hope to still see you in the forge from time to time!

We could definitely need some more help with the Skylords Reborn project however.
Below are three roles highlighted, but you can find more information, desired traits and all our open positions here. 
If you are unsure if you qualify, please reach out and have a talk!
 
Open Position - Balance Developer
As a balance developer you are responsible to implement design changes to in-game cards using our internal balancing tool. In other words, you are responsible to implement new cards and changes to existing cards. These implementation requests can come from balance updates and content patches from our Faction Designers but also from the official Skylords Reborn map making team (for example, new bosses for a new map). An integral part of this role is learning our internal balancing tool, as that is the tool that allows us to perform all these changes. You are by no means required to have any programming experience.

Open Position - Map Artist
As a map artist you are responsible to polish the aesthetics of a map. This includes texture the map, add decorations and add different effects and sounds. In other words, responsible for making the map look and feel good.

Open Position - Client Developer
As a game client developer you are responsible to maintain and develop the game client. This mostly includes add new pre-game features (content outside of matches, so no game mechanics) through .pak files used by the game. You will be responsible to create and design in-game interfaces for new features, add networking support for new features that require it, solve bugs etc. using LUA, XML and little bit of Rust. BattleForge uses LUA and XML in their .pak files which are loaded by the client. Communication with the server happens through a proxy written in Rust.
 

In Conclusion
Thanks for reading! 
This marks the 10th Community Update already. Is there anything you wish us to cover in upcoming community updates? How do you feel about the structure of the updates? As always, we are open to feedback so please let us know!
Here is a scratch code you can redeem in-game for 100bfp: COMM-UNIT-YNEW-S010
The code is valid till September 11th. Please note you can also get a booster by filling in our survey. 
Archive
Community Update #7
Community Update #8
Community Update #9
 

Greetings Skylords!

It's been two weeks already since our last community update so it's time to bring you up to speed with everything going on in Skylords Reborn!
 

Deep Dive: Rarities
As our development of new cards continues, a frequently asked question is the upcoming rarities. These will be the first brand new cards for Skylords Reborn, so we want to have a system in place to provide insights on what makes a card common, uncommon, rare or ultra rare. We have explored this in a document, providing a deep dive into the rarities EA used in their first edition for the game: the Twilight Edition. Even though these are not always consistent, and expansions have not made things any easier, we still can take some lessons from the current distribution and apply it going forward. 
If you are interested in the thought process behind card rarities and how we will decide them for our new cards, you can read the full document here: Designing_for_Card_Rarity.pdf
And in case you missed them, here are the rarity icons for our new cards:

 
Test Server Patch Notes
Iteration 17 of our test server is here! Check out the patch notes. This patch mainly finalizes the PvP changes which will soon hit the live server. Please keep in mind that these changes are all relative to the previous iteration. The final PvE changes will go live in the next iteration. 
There are also some noteworthy requested general changes in this iteration. We fixed the inventory sorting, which should now properly sort the cards as specified. We also added a power well and a monument for each player in the forge. You can now test out all your damage combo's without the need to find a building that has exactly the same amount of health as these buildings. 
We also made another change to the game that will certainly be the topic of many conversations in the future. We added a preliminary fix so units in PvE maps always have correct orb and power costs. This means that certain abilities, like e.g. Nightguard Swap or Mindcontrol cannot ignore the orb requirements anymore. Please note these changes will not be included in the next live server patch. We want to test and gather feedback before making a change like this, but first had to figure out if it was even possible. You can discuss these and other changes on our balance discord.

Next Live Patch Delayed
Because of a delay of the Test Server Patch we sadly also have to delay the Live Patch we were hoping to release this week. Since this is going to be a big one, we need a little more time to make sure all the bugs (not you Scythe Fiend) are taken care of before we patch to live. Please be patient a bit longer, we are still hoping for a release in August. 



Special Effect Tool
Last Community Update we gave you a sneak peek at our new special effect tool. With the this tool we will be able to create fancy new spells and effects. Even though we are currently not able to add new models to the game, this is a great step in allowing us to create new visually appealing content. 
We are looking for players who are interested in learning how to create special effects and give feedback on how to improve the tool. If you are interested in this, please reach out to Ladadoos on Discord for a quick explanation. We have plans to open source the editor in the future.

Tournaments & Events
• NEW: Feedback official PvE events
Now that we have hosted two official events, we are looking for some feedback regarding both the events and the stream to improve upon them where possible. Feedback is anonymous and can be provided here. Please keep the feedback constructive and understand we do this in our free time. 

• Finished: Community Tournament: Toggy's Tome Invitational
If you played BattleForge back in the day you might remember Tomes. In this gamemode you get a selection of boosters that you have to use to build your deck with, after which you play PvP matches. While Tomes got discontinued around the end of BattleForge and are not available in Skylords Reborn, Toggy hosted a limited-access event last weekend to relive the experience. It was a great success, with crazy off-meta plays and is bound to return. For now you can rewatch the stream in case you missed it. 

• NEW : Community Tournament: Toggy's Tome Tournament - August 22th
A new tome tournament has been announced! This one is open for everyone, but you need to sign up in advance by contacting Toggy. This will be another Tome tournament, meaning you will build a deck with a selection of random cards and play PvP matches with them. Sign up and read the details about it here. 

• Host your own event / tournament
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our Event Organizer Hiko to have your event prizes sponsored by us. 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. 

New Team Members / Open Positions
We are happy to welcome a new member to the team: Kerkk has joined us as a web developer! 
We could definitely need some more help with the Skylords Reborn project however.
Below are three roles highlighted, but you can find more information, desired traits and all our open positions here. 
Open Position - Map Tester 
As a map tester you get early access to new maps and gamemodes and are responsible to playtest them and provide feedback to the other map developers about possible issues or improvements. This includes check how balanced the map is, how fun it is to play, if there are any exploits, if areas on the map need to be prettified etc. Map developers/designers/artists should be able to rely on you to make sure maps that are released or changed are done so properly.

Open Position - Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator
As a Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator you are responsible to spread the word and create awareness about Skylords Reborn and to attract veteran and new players alike. This includes actively researching and reaching out to potentially interested streamers, youtubers, Discord channels, game magazines, among others. You will be responsible for the communication to and from interested parties and for any promotion deals (for example involving scratch codes). Please note that Skylords Reborn cannot do any paid promotions.

Open Position - Artist
As an artist you are responsible to create the visuals required for new content. This is a broad position and there are many areas where you could help in, depending on your skills and interests. Think of loading screen artwork for new maps, card artwork for new cards, visual UI elements for new features that involve adding UI to the game, banners for events/tournaments/community challenges/large game updates etc. Our current artist Tweeto is hard at work on new cards, but he can only do so much. If you have the skills and want to speed up the progress, please reach out to us. 
 

In Conclusion
Thanks for reading! 
Is there anything you wish us to cover in upcoming community updates? As always, we are open to feedback so please let us know!
Here is a scratch code you can redeem in-game for 100bfp. COMM-UNIT-YUPD-ATE9
The code is valid till August 28th. 
Archive
Community Update #6
Community Update #7
Community Update #8

Greetings Skylords!

It's been two weeks already since our last community update so it's time to bring you up to speed with everything going on in Skylords Reborn!

This community update is a bit shorter than you have come to expect from us. Every area of development is progressing nicely, but we are currently not in a position where we can share the results just yet. Rest assured new cards are still actively in development, and so are our new game modes. Skylords Reborn is being developed alongside our jobs and studies, and real life can get in the way sometimes. We also don't make any money from the game, since all our Patreon income goes directly toward server upkeep. Some of our team members also struggled with the flood from two weeks ago. We know you are all excited for new content, and we try to provide you with a steady stream of information in these Community Updates, but some tasks might take a bit longer than expected. 

Upcoming Patch
We are still hard at work on our upcoming balance patch to the live servers. Sadly, we are running into some delays because of all the changes that accumulated on the test server and now have to move to the live server. We are now looking at an expected release of mid-august. In our next community update we should be able to provide the patch notes, but you can expect some changes to pure frost (check our deep dive if you haven't already!) and a lot of cool changes for both PvE and PvP. 


Free PvP Decks Adjustments
When Skylords Reborn released in 2020, we introduced our free PvP decks. Every week you can select up to two decks that are fully upgraded and can compete in the PvP meta. For our new players, here is a quick recap:

- Select the sword on the top right of the menu to select your 2 free PvP decks.
- Free PvP decks are fully upgraded decks, that can only be used in PvP. 
- You can select two new decks every week, if you want to switch things up.
- You can freely swap around cards in those decks with cards in your collection to customize the decks to your liking. You can do this by clicking the tab in your inventory on the top left (see the image).

The meta of Skylords Reborn has seen a lot of changes ever since release, with multiple balance patches hitting the live servers. The contents of the free PvP decks did not change with them however. We plan to change that with the next patch*, and will continue to adjust them when new patches hit the server. Below you can find a list of all the changes coming to the free PvP decks. As mentioned above, if you don't want to alter your deck, you can still use your own cards to adjust your list to your liking. Keep in mind some cards might increase in price however, since they will no longer be available in some, or all, of the free PvP decks. 
Tainted Darkness (Pure Shadow)
+ Satanael (red) 
+ Blood Healing
-  Evocators Woe
-  Phasetower
Gifted Darkness (Shadow Nature)
+ Mo
-  Evocators Woe
Blessed Darkness (Shadow Frost)
+ Lost Reaver (red) 
-  Mountaineer
Infused Darkness (Shadow Fire) 
+ Bandit Stalker (green) 
-  Phasetower
Tainted Flora (Nature Shadow)
+ Spearmen
+ Unstable Demon
-  Treespirit
-  Evocators Woe
Gifted Flora (Pure Nature)
No changes
Blessed Flora (Nature Frost)
+ Razorshard (red) 
-  Crystal Fiend
Infused Flora (Nature Fire)
+ Magma Hurler
+ Mutating Maniac (red) 
-  Brannoc
-  Disenchant (purple)
Tainted Ice (Frost Shadow)
+ Lost Reaver
-  Mountaineer
Gifted Ice (Frost Nature)
+ Lightblade (purple)
-  Lightblade (red)
Blessed Ice (Pure Frost)
+ Icefang Raptor
+ Mountain Rowdy
+ White Ranger
-  Frostmage 
-  Skyelf Templar
-  Lyrish Knight
Infused Ice (Frost Fire)
+ Glyph of Frost
+ Icefang Raptor (blue) 
+ Gladiatrix (green) 
+ Warlock (blue)
+ Eruption
-  Frost Mage
-  Mountaineer
-  Scythe Fiends
-  Skyelf Templar
-  Virtuoso
Tainted Flame (Fire Shadow)
+ Wrecker
+ Bandit Stalker (green) 
-  Mortar Tower
-  Ashbone Pyro
Gifted Flame (Fire Nature)
+ Mutating Maniac
-  Mortar Tower
Blessed Flame (Fire Frost)
+ Icefang Raptor (blue) 
+ Warlock (blue)
+ Wrecker
-  Mortar Tower
-  Scythe Fiends
-  Mountaineer
Infused Flame (Pure Toggy)
+ Sun Reaver
-  Mortar Tower

Those changes to the Free PvP decks are planned alongside our new balance patch, planned for release mid-August*. This might give you a bit of a sneak peek at some cards receiving buffs this iteration. We hope you are looking forward to a fresh new meta! 
*We do want to make sure changing those decks will not break the game, so they might release a bit later.

Special Effect Editor
We have made some great progress in the project in a different area: the special effect editor. With this tool we are able to edit the special effects of BattleForge and create new ones from scratch. This is particularly useful for spells, since they are for the majority special effects. Many units also have special effects on their models though, like the flames of Batariel or the frosty cold effect emitted from Frost Mage. We can create complex new effects like Fire Sphere or meteors that leave ice shards on impact. Even though we are currently not able to add new models to the game, this is a great step in allowing us to create new visually appealing content. 
The tool is currently still work in progress. After it matures a little and we gain experience creating new special effects, we should barely be limited anymore for creating new special effects. 

Upcoming Tournaments
• FINISHED Official PvE Contest#2 Slave Master 
The second official PvE contest for the map Slave Master has ended. Thanks to everyone for participating! The winners will be announced on a stream on Monday 19:00 CEST on our official twitch channel.  
We will also do some giveaways, so even if you did not participate; we invite you all to join us for a night of Skylords Reborn fun! 

• FINISHED Skylords Open #10
Last week marked the return of the Skylords Open, with its 10th edition since release already. Joining Toggy as co-caster was RadicalX, so if you are interested in PvP, be sure to rewatch the stream.

• Host your own event / tournament
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our Event Organiser Hiko to have your event prizes sponsored by us. 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. 
 
New Team Members / Team Changes
Another new member has joined the Skylords Reborn team. A frequent contender in the Skylords Open, and traumatized for life by Harvesters; we are happy to welcome DutchyDutchy as a Discord Moderator! 
As always; if you want to help the project, please take a look at these open positions in our team!

In conclusion
Thanks for reading! 
Is there anything you wish us to cover in upcoming community updates? As always, we are open to feedback so please let us know!
Here is a scratch code you can redeem in-game for 100bfp. COMM-UNIT-YUPD-ATE8
The code is valid till August 14th. 
Archive
Community Update #5
Community Update #6
Community Update #7

Greetings Skylords!

It's been two weeks already since our last community update so it's time to bring you up to speed with everything going on in Skylords Reborn!

Test Server Patch
A new patch has hit the test server, including another batch of balance changes and adjustments. This patch contains many balancing changes and experimental changes for both PvE and PvP, with Frost specifically getting some love this time. We have also sent the first reworked versions of the 2vs2 maps to the test server!
Please take a look at the patch notes, test them out on the test server and take part in the discussion.
A detailed list of changes with images will become available in the wiki in the upcoming days.
There have now been a couple of patches to the test server, resulting in a big difference between the current state of the game on the live server and the card adjustments on the test server. Which brings us to:

Upcoming Patch
We are now preparing the next patch for the live servers. It has been a while since our last patch, so expect this to be a big one with tons of balance changes for both PvP and PvE. Because of this, we have quite a bit of work ahead of us and we expect this patch to release in the beginning of August. We hope you are looking forward to a new meta with new strategies to play with. 
We will share more information about the specific changes in our next community update on the 31st of July. 

New Cards development update
To manage expectations: we will not release new cards in this upcoming patch. As mentioned in a previous community update, we are currently creating new cards for Bandits (Fire/Shadow), Amii (Nature/Shadow) and Pure Frost.
New card development is going well, but we are treading new territory here and want to take our time to make sure our first new cards are the best they could be. This still could take quite a while, but please rest assured we are working hard to give you some cool new cards to play with!
Meanwhile we are continuing rolling out balance patches to give underplayed cards some love, and offer you new strategies and options for all the factions in the game. New cards can be tools to help fill these specific roles, but we are also looking at adjusting existing cards to reach the desired result. 
We are also taking a deep dive into each faction separately, spending a lot of time figuring out what makes the faction tick, its strengths and weaknesses and where it could need some help to allow for a more diverse play style. 
 

Deep Dive: Pure Frost
Frost has been our primary focus for the past several months and our team is excited to finally get to share our work with the community. Attached you will find a document exploring the Frost faction in detail, including upcoming changes and a tease of our first new card!
While Frost has been the first faction on our list, in the future other factions will also be receiving major changes. As our focus shifts from one faction to another we will continue to provide insights into our thinking through future documents like this one.
We hope this look into Frost has helped you to understand both the faction better and our reasoning behind the upcoming changes.
Pure Frost Deep Dive.pdf
Upcoming Tournaments
• NEW: Official PvE Contest#2 Slave Master
Our second official PvE contest is running! Play Slave Master on Advanced but with a twist! Go back to the roots and put in your best time using only cards from the first edition (Twilight Edition). The contest is running until the 28th of July and you can win multiple prizes. Check out the full rules here. 

• NEW: Skylords Open #10
Next week (25th of July) the 10th edition of the Skylords Open will take place! Battle it out in a 1vs1 community tournament hosted by Toggy, open for everyone, and with prizes! If you want to participate, it helps a lot if you sign-up in advance.
Last tournament had some great matches on all skill levels, so whether you are a new player or looking to break the win streak of RadicalX; join us for a day of PvP-fun!
 
New Team Members / Team Changes
Another new member has joined the Skylords Reborn team. We are happy to welcome ddrazard as a Discord Moderator.
As always; if you want to see Skylords Reborn succeed, please take a look at how you can help. There are still some open positions in our team.

In conclusion
Thanks for reading! 
Is there anything you wish us to cover in upcoming community updates? As always, we are open to feedback so please let us know!
Here is a scratch code you can redeem in-game for 100bfp. COMM-UNIT-YUPD-ATE7
The code is valid till July 31th. 
Archive
Community Update #4
Community Update #5
Community Update #6

Greetings Skylords!

It's been two weeks already since our last community update so it's time to bring you up to speed with everything going on in Skylords Reborn!
State of the Project
It has been a while since we have released an update to the live server. We'd like to take this opportunity to mention a lot of work is going on behind the scenes to bring you some cool stuff in the future. New card development is going well, although it will still take quite a while for them to be ready. We are also making great progress on our balancing patch on the test-server and hope to bring this to live servers soon, resulting in a ton of changes for both PvP and PvE. Our new game modes are also steadily progressing; we are currently working on bosses for our new Defence rPvE mode, and are still working on adding the mono-factions to rPvE. The BattleArena fun PvP mode is currently being fine-tuned and will probably be the first of those to be complete. We are not able to give you release dates on any of these features yet, but we do want you to know we are still working on them for many hours each week and Skylords Reborn is still going strong.

Here are some other things we are working on:
 
Map Editor: clean-up
We are doing a big clean-up in the Map Editor that will make it easier to work with.
All the units have been organized in a way that if you use these squads or buildings for making your own maps, you can be sure that your map won't be broken by future balance changes. All the upgrade levels are now also available in the map editor.
We will give a more detailed explanation of all the changes when they go live. We expect to release this in August.
Interested in making maps yourself? Please check out these tutorials! 

 
Map Editor: new extended map settings
In our next test server patch, we will add more options which map makers can use for their custom PvP maps.
This can affect the predefined goals for PvP maps. So far this feature is only useful if you want to define non-standard win conditions for your fun PvP maps. However, we do plan to expand this configuration with more options in the future!
Please note that this new feature is only on the test server so far, and will hit the live servers within the next months! This is an experimental feature, and might break the game in some rare cases.
So far it seems to work, however, please inform us if you encounter any issues after playing a map which uses these new options. Please also let us know if there any other variables we should add to this new configuration!
 
Community Maps User Interface
A common complaint for the community maps is the map section UI. Currently, it's hard to find a specific map and it does not really invite you to look for cool maps. We are interested in working on this, but are currently a bit understaffed for the job. If you are interested in helping out with this and similar tasks (progression on worldmap, marketplace rework, etc.), please apply as a client developer and help out the project!
 

PvP QoL feature: view lobbies while in a ranked queue
PvP players will know this scenario all too well: you see players in the PvP lobby and queue up for ranked. After a while of searching you start to wonder if there are perhaps unranked games being hosted instead. You cancel the queue to look. At that very moment, the host probably had the same idea and cancelled their game to start the ranked queue.
No more we say! We have developed the option to allow a queuing player to browse the lobbies while waiting for an opponent. Change your mind and want to join that Bad Harvest game that just got hosted instead? Well soon you can!
The feature seems to work, but we want to do some final testing to prevent it from breaking games if you cancel and find an opponent at the very same moment. You can expect this feature to hit the live server soon though! 
 
Upcoming Tournaments
Last week we announced the winners of our official PvE contest on Twitch. If you missed the fun, you can still rewatch the stream there. 
We definitely plan to do more events like this, and will take your feedback into account for the next one. Please look forward to announcements on a later date. 
• NEW: Skylords Open #9
Next week (11th of July) marks the return of the Skylords Open! Battle it out in the Skylords Open #9, a 1vs1 community tournament hosted by Toggy, open for everyone, and with prizes! If you want to participate, it helps a lot if you sign-up in advance!
 
New Team Members / Team Changes
We are happy to announce Carofex has joined the team as a Balance Developer. He will be helping out the project by implementing balance changes, new cards, new enemies in PvE maps, bug fixes for cards, etc. 
We are currently in need of a Russian translator. If you can help, please reach out to us!
And as always; if you want to see Skylords Reborn succeed, please take a look at how you can help. There are still some open positions in our team.
 

In conclusion
Thanks for reading! 
Is there anything you wish us to cover in upcoming community updates? As always, we are open to feedback so please let us know!
Here is a scratch code you can redeem in-game for 100bfp. COMM-UNIT-YUPD-ATE6
The code is valid till July 17th. 
Archive
Community Update #3
Community Update #4
Community Update #5

Greetings Skylords!

It's been two weeks already since our last community update so it's time to bring you up to speed with everything going on in Skylords Reborn!
Some exciting news to start off this community update: 

New cards development: starting soon

We have reached a great milestone: we are ready to create some new cards! We will release these new cards in batches, instead of a full expansion. Our plan for the first batch is to create new cards for 3 different factions, with up to 9 cards added in total. We are also planning to add affinities to some, if not all, of these cards.
As a thank you to our (Moon and higher) patrons, they will have a chance to vote on the 3 factions which we will create cards for. The two most picked factions will receive new cards. The Skylords Reborn team will then pick the last faction to create new cards for, resulting in a total of up to 9 brand new cards (excluding affinities) for the game! 
Don't worry, we plan to add new cards to each faction over time, the current voting only impacts the order of our release.
A few things to note:
• The poll will be open for one week, until the 11th of June.
• Voting happens on Patreon. Moon tier and higher Patrons will be able to vote. 
• The factions to vote for are: Fire • Frost • Shadow • Nature • Bandits • Stonekin • Lost Souls • Twilight • Amii (Nature/Shadow).
• We are currently not able to add Fire/Frost cards.
• We have not commited to a 3-3-3 split, some factions might get more or less cards, depending on their needs or design space. 
• People vote for the faction, not the actual cards. Our balance and development teams will look at what cards to add, and what role they will play.
• Since this is new territory for us, we are currently not able to say when new cards will be ready, and when the vote for the next batch will be. We will be actively working on this, but we don't want to rush out new cards.

Changes to Patreon benefits
From now on, being subscribed on Patreon with at least the Moon tier will give you a vote for the next poll. Once a new poll is here and you unsubscribed in between, we will reach out to you to ask for your vote. After a poll is done, you will only be allowed to vote in the next poll if you subscribe for at least one month again.
We hope this new flexibility will make it easier to support the project in a way you feel comfortable with.

Fire/Frost cards 
Let's talk about the elephant in the room: Fire/Frost cards. As most of you are aware, EA never released a single Fire/Frost card before the servers got shut down. Because of this, there is no cardframe for a Fire/Frost card in the game, and because of the way the game is written, it's currently not possible to add new cards for this faction.
We are however hard at work to make this possible in the future.

More factions for rPvE (on the test server)
We rolled out a change on the test server which unlocks more factions in rPvE. For example, its now possible to play against Lost Souls in 1 player rPvE. You can read the patch notes that includes this change and how to join the test server here. This is currently still being tested, so please let us know on our rPvE Discord server if you run into anything weird.
Prior to this change you could only receive:
• Luminousland, Jungleland, Winterland and Lavaland in 4 player rPvE
• Bushland, Ghostland and Twilightland in 2 player rPvE
• Greenland, Frostland and Cactusland in 1 player rPvE
We also have plans to add Shadow, Nature, Fire and Frost as enemies in the future, resulting in four more factions you might fight your way through rPvE. It's already possible to test these out in the community map section on both the test and live server. 

We hope you will enjoy this new content on the test server and we hope to bring it to the live servers soon.

New PvE Taskforce


In the last community update we shared our design philosophy. In an effort to gather good PvE feedback for the future, we are happy to announce our newly constituted PvE Taskforce! For now, we have decided to include 5 initial members:

1. Lebovim – Mapmaker, Skylord of Honor, Master of the Skylords Reborn wiki, and one of the game’s top speedrunners.
2. Keksmonsta – Top PvE player with a wide and deep knowledge of the game who has shown his ability to constructively represent the interests of the competitive PvE and speedrunner communities.
3. Volin – Very active and helpful top RPvE player. Volin’s knowledge of PvE and RPvE will help us to have the knowledge to make informed design decisions.
4. Chibiterasu – Our own beloved balancing developer, Chibi has already been partially playing this role in the background, we now want to formalize and expand it.
5. Bini Inibitor – Bini has previously proven himself full of good suggestions, the initial idea to allow heal/rejuvenation stacking should be credited to him, the further development of the idea to Chibi.
As you might have noticed, we tried to include representatives of the different segments of the Skylords community, from average players up to the game’s top speedrunners. In the future, we would like to rotate in guest members as well.
Additionally, in the near future we will be releasing a document detailing our new balancing process. While we are happy with the progress we have made recently, we also think that a more defined process with set deadlines will help us to increase our pace of development, especially as we begin adding new cards to the game. This will also come with larger changes to the balancing discord.

Upcoming Tournaments
As we mentioned in our first community update, you can also check out the new tournaments and events happening in-game. Just click the scroll on the menu and check out the event tab for the upcoming events you can participate in. 
• Official PvE Contest#1 Siege of Hope 
Our first official PvE contest is running! Play Siege of Hope Expert with a twist! Our Event Organizer has created a point system that allows multiple strategies and hopefully rewards for thinking outside of the box. Speedrunning still gets you points, but speedrunning alone won't be enough to win this one! A promo of your choice is one of the prizes, so make sure to check it out!
• Finished: Community Challenge #3: King's Ridge
The King's Ridge PvE contest has finished! Check out the winners here.
 
New Team Members
We mentioned earlier that we are looking into making Fire/Frost cards possible. A key member in this task is Kubik, who has returned to the project as Client/Reverse Engineer Developer.
We are also planning to add more server developers in the very near future to speed up progress. We are still looking for new team members however! If you want to see Skylords Reborn succeed, please take a look at how you can help. 

In conclusion
We are very excited to be at a point where we can actively start working towards adding new cards into Skylords Reborn. We hope you will continue to join us on the ride!
Thanks for reading! Here is a scratch code you can redeem in-game for 100bfp. The code is valid till June 19th.
COMM-UNIT-YUPD-ATE4
Archive
Community Update #1
Community Update #2
Community Update #3

Greetings Skylords!

It's been two weeks already since our second community update so it's time to bring you up to speed with everything going on in Skylords Reborn!
Promo Snapjaws
Collectors rejoice! Promo Snapjaws will be trade-able after the next maintenance update. This promo was handed out through a scratch code that was only valid around the time of the game release. If you missed out on this one, you can now trade or buy them in the AH from other players. If they are willing to part from it of course!
There are currently no plans to distribute the Snapjaw Promo through boosters.

New Patch on the Test Server
A new patch has hit the test server with quite a lot of changes in all kind of categories. Full notes can be found attached to this post, but here are some things that are currently being tested. Please note: none of those are final, and they will not necessarily make their way to the live server in this state! Please give us feedback regarding those changes on the balance discord!
Global Changes
Various tier 3 units (Swamp Drake, Bandit Lancer, Fallen Skyelf, etc.) have had their charges increased. 
PvE Changes
Thugs have received a new ability to compensate for the nerfs they received with the removal of looter. There is also some love for pure frost. 
PvP Changes
After some necessary nerfs in the last few patches, we are now in a position where we can also buff some cards to provide more options and playstyles. Various tier 3 units (Drones, Unstable Demon, Magma Hurler, etc.) are seeing some buffs, while counter units like Lyrish Knight and Gladiatrix are also being looked at. 
Bug Fixes
A couple of bug fixes and a change that makes Bloodthirst and Unity stackable with every other regeneration ability in the game (others will follow).
Class Fixes
Some units have had their class changed or fixed. This can mean the correct melee or ranged class, but also creature class (Deathglider is now a Demon for all you Eliminator lovers out there!). 
QoL description changes
Some nice Quality of Life changes in descriptions have been made to make cards easier to understand or consistent. Please note this is not the big description changes mentioned in an earlier update yet; that is still in the works. Noteworthy would be the Mountaineer: It now shows the hidden ammo generation used for its attack and ice shield, so one can better use the card. Additionally U0 now also has the Glacier Shield for consistency with the shown ammo system.

As mentioned before, those changes are still on the test server and you can find the full list of changes in the document attached to this post. Please note that for the changes to be implemented, we had to clear the test server accounts. So don't be startled if you have to create a new account. 

Skylords Reborn Design Philosophy
Now that Skylords Reborn has been released fully, we are looking at the future of the game for the next couple of years. Over the past months there have been a lot of discussions and feedback regarding the state of the game and the changes to make (or not make) moving forward. In the attached document, we go extensively into this topic. We understand not everyone will be interested in reading 12 pages, but we did want to take the time to clarify our vision for the future as much as possible.
As unique as Battleforge is, it also has some unique concerns in regards to balance. Where most RTS games only provide a limited number of factions to play, the number of decks in Battleforge is virtually uncountable. And while most other RTS games limit their balancing concerns to either competitive or cooperative play, Battleforge has to serve them both. Fortunately, this is mitigated by the fact that PvE and PvP are often build around different core-cards. However, some overlap between cards is inevitable and some changes will have ripple effects in other formats.
In this document we have striven to detail the thought process behind how we will be balancing the game moving forward. We have broken the document into three parts: Introduction, PvE Balance, and Fundamental Game Principles.
The reason we have written this document is to give you, the community, a clear view into our philosophy and stance on certain topics. We will use the topics described here as guidelines for the changes we will make in the coming months.
This is just a start that covers our fundamentals for faction design and more concrete documents will follow. We want to analyze and discuss each faction in particular and shed light into our roadmap.
As always, we are open to constructive feedback. 
Upcoming Tournaments

• NEW: Skylords Open #8
Next week (30th of May) you can again battle it out in the Skylords Open #8. A 1vs1 community tournament hosted by Toggy, open for everyone, and with prizes! 
If you want to participate, it helps a lot if you sign-up in advance!

• Community Challenge #3: King's Ridge
The King's Ridge PvE contest is still going on until the 31th of May. Try to complete the community map King's Ridge as fast as you can in the Community Challange #3 for a chance to win some prizes!

• NEW: Official PvE Contest#1 Siege of Hope 
Our first official PvE contest is here! play Siege of Hope Expert with a twist! Our Event Organizer has created a point system that allows multiple strategies and hopefully rewards thinking outside of the box. Speedrunning still gets you points, but speedrunning alone won't be enough to win this one! A promo of your choice is one of the prizes, so make sure to check it out!

New Team Members / Team Changes
Another new member, HardwareHeinz, has joined the Skylords Reborn team. We are happy to have him as our new Global Moderator.
We would also like to take this time to thank MrXLink for all the work he put in Skylords Reborn over the years. After many years and many roles, he has decided to step down as a member of the Skylords Reborn team. You can read his full explanation here. We wish him all the best and are grateful for all his hard work. 
We are still looking for new team members! If you want to see Skylords Reborn succeed, please take a look at how you can help. We recently added these new positions: backend web developer, frontend web developer and C# developer.

In conclusion
And that's it for this Community Update! We hope we were able to share something you like. See you again in 2 weeks!
What do you guys think of this biweekly status update? Is there something you would want to see covered more? We are open to feedback so please let us know. 
Thanks for reading! Here is a scratch code you can redeem in-game for 100bfp. The code is valid till June 5th.
COMM-UNIT-YUPD-ATE3
Archive
Community Update #1
Community Update #2
Attachments
Balance_Philosophy_Skylords_Reborn.pdfTest_Server_Patch_Skylords_Reborn.pdf

You did so much work, it is an absolute feat. We'll be missing you and I hope all works out for you irl.
So long and good luck!

Dear Skylords, Skyladies, and other skyfolk,
As you may know I've been here a long, long time. 12 years ago on the official forums, and pretty much ever since this project started. Over those years a lot has changed, for better and for worse. Both myself and some of the veterans around here have seen the game and its dev team rise and fall more often than we'd all like to admit, but we prevailed and we held on to Nyn and the wonders of this unique RTS/TCG hybrid. BattleForge has always been a great passion of mine, as a player and as a developer.
But times change, and life changes, and as Skylords Reborn grew to the size and state that it is now, my own time had to be more and more divided. Graduation, running a full-time job, major changes in my personal life and thought processes, and the ongoing pandemic have greatly jumbled up my day-to-day life, my mind, and my available time and energy. This has had quite an impact on how well I can contribute to this project right now, and so I've come to the conclusion that it doesn't feel appropriate to be a part of the SR team for as little work as I'm able to get myself to contribute. 
It's with a heavy heart I'm saying I am, on my own accord, stepping down from the SR team for the time being, but I feel that it's necessary. This is purely personal and has nothing to do with the current team, community, or the game itself; after all, we've accomplished so much, all of us! Thanks to all of you we've actually succeeded in what many thought to be utterly impossible; to revive an entire game purely out of passion, figuring out its inner workings, and altering it to make it a 100% free, enjoyable, non-profit game to keep enjoying despite the studio having long been disbanded. I've had the pleasure of working with an already fantastic community and team on a passion project others would dream of, and over time the team's grown so much.
It's been fantastic working on Skylords for so long and the game and project still are very dear to me. Throughout the years I've learnt tremendously much and have helped to keep things afloat in both bright and darker times for the project; it's been a rollercoaster for all of us. But we got there! We got to a fantastic release and have a whole revitalised and excited team ready to support all of you for a long time to come! This project is now in better hands than I could ever have anticipated, and I am happy and confident to leave Skylords Reborn to some of the most capable people I've had the pleasure of meeting.
I'll be stepping down after having been a long-time admin, CM, moderator and designer, and though I will keep providing some advice and help in the background, I will stop being a dev and remain a player. Perhaps I'll return if my personal life allows for it in the future, but as of right now I simply don't think I can contribute enough. 
It's been an absolute honour being a part of BattleForge's development throughout well over a decade, and I want to thank everybody for their continued work, support and belief in the amazing things we've ended up accomplishing. That includes you, no matter how long you're here or if you even know me. We did it! I'm still so proud of all of us, and I am happy to know the project's in great hands. Keep up the amazing work and let the hype train rage ever onward.
Thanks for everything, until next time, and may the Forge be ever with you!
~MrXLink

Hello everyone,
I am excited to announce that I will join the Skylords Reborn team as Community Manager!
As Community Manager I will be responsible for the communications between the Skylords Reborn team and the community. This will allow the team to focus more on their own positions, bringing you content and balancing patches faster, where I will be keeping you up to date about everything Skylords Reborn. This also includes on our social media channels, such as Twitter and Facebook.
One of the ways you can expect this to work is with biweekly status updates, highlighting things you might have missed and giving you sneak previews on what is being worked on.
I will also be making notes on frequently asked questions and the hot topics that are being discussed in the forums, discord or in-game. If you have any questions or ideas, feel free to post them in the forum or discord page, just as you are doing now. I will make sure to forward your ideas and questions to the team.
I'm happy and honored to join the team, being a Battleforge fan from the very first hour and I look forward in helping the project. If you also want to help, please take a look at the open staff positions here.
For now, please give me a bit of time to get up to date with the things happening behind the scenes. After that you can expect the very first biweekly status update, which I hope will result in a positive tradition.
I hope you are as excited as I am about the future of Skylords Reborn, and I look forward to working (and playing!) alongside all of you!

So this will be my first real post in quite a while, so I do wonder if anyone remembers me.
Anyways, I always remember everyone trying to come up with ideas on how to properly mix Fire and Frost as a dual faction, but with no real resolution or agreements. I just recently realized last week that I could actually play the limited beta of BF and I have been playing religiously since then. I then remembered about the dilemna that concerned this debate for years, and decided that I might give it more thought. And give it more thought I did! I'm very confident in my idea mostly because it just sounds fun to me.
There has never been a "spell slinging" strategy in this game yet compared to many other TCG games, and when I realized this, inspiration hit me like a brick. What if we made Frost and Fire a spells matter faction? So my logic begins from here, everyone who has thought of the idea of making this Fire/Frost faction has always battled with the fact that offense and defense do not combine very well in a way that doesn't make it a little more on the broken side, so I said, what does the heat and cold create? Storms and even tornados if the conditions are right. So from there, I came up with a theme. So I combined the storm idea with spells, and obviously enough, their main mechanic could be "Spellstorm".
Before I go through what Spellstorm is, I also thought about the lore of this Fire/Frost faction. I deemed them the "Apostles of the Storm". They just want to see the world churn (in a storm). They attack as fast as lightning and can ride the oncoming winds to victory. This faction could easily set up for another part of the campaign where you have to save the world again again from these guys. 
So what is this new mechanic called Spellstorm. Well, my idea is that it activates whenever you cast a spell (be it a normal or arcane), to add buffs or create additional effects. Here's an example card I came up with (Keep in mind these are first drafts, so numbers might be a little scewed to powerful or weak):

So here, Spellstorm would read in the sense, "Whenever you play a spell, Storm Raptor gains 15% damage for 10 seconds; this effect and stack up to three times". That means if you were to play a Homesoil or Eruption with this guy on the field, he would basically gain 67.5 damage not including homesoil, and if you add other spells, it will buff up to three times which makes its attack a wopping 652.5 for a couple seconds, which is pretty decent.
Spellstorm needn't only apply stat buffs, it could even do other things like this guys:
--> He should probably be a rare yeah?
So his Spellstorm would read, "Whenever you play a spell, this unit gains an Ice Shield that absorbs up to 120 damage for 10 seconds; this effect can stack up to 3 times". I would compare him to a mini Avatar of Frost, only now you have access to cards like ravage and disenchant (ooh scary). I don't think there is much more to say about this guy. But how do we play so many spells when the more important ones have large costs and cooldowns. Well I've thought about that too, and here are some neat enablers:

Refresh reads, "Reduces the cooldown of all other spells in your deck by 20 seconds. Additionally, all spells you play for the next 10 seconds require 15% less of the usual power cost". Now that's a spell enabler if I ever saw one. Here would be a great way to be able to spam more spells to get those Spellstorm procs off. Though what if you just want to play a spell for cheap?

Invigorate reads, "Invigorates targeted friendly unit with a newfound strength: it gains swift speed for 20 seconds and takes 15% less damage for 10 seconds". Something cheap and simple. Can be useful as a way to let a unit get past some obstacles, or just let's you get in a very cheap Spellstorm proc. Though I don't want to think of a Construct with swift .
So we've gone past some of the basic synergies for the faction, but what do the big spells do? Where's the "wow" factor? I've even thought of some cool cards for that too, so let's start of with an interesting shrine that could be:

Storm the World reads, ""Activate (costs 50 power) to cause all of your spells played in the next 10 seconds to immediately refund 50% of their power cost and then they are immediately reusable ". I'll let you guys think about that one. So many possibilities. >:D
Now we go on the Magnum Opus of the Apostles of the Storm, the big spell to end all other spells:

So let's go through what the ability does, shall we? "Casts a massive spell storm that deals 150 damage per second to enemy units and buildings in a 30m radius, up to 600 in total, for 10 seconds. If another spell is played within this radius, the duration is extended by 5 seconds, and the damage dealt is increased by 50, up to 200 in total. This can only be extended a total of 10 times. Additionally, enemy units can only move at walk speed inside the radius". Here is what will be able to kill everything, especially when there are more players . I'm sure the spectacle will be more than worth the cost.
 
So that's what my idea for the Fire/Frost faction would be. You can definately point out whats overwhelmingly op, but I'd like to think I made things decently fair. What do you guys think about the name "Apostles of the Storm"? What about the Spellstorm mechanic? I do eagerly await your thoughts on the faction, have a good day!
 
Edit: Before we go on, there is still a lot of things to consider about Spellstorm. I was thinking of it being a spellspam deck, but perhaps it can be left to only 1 instance of the proc at a time, but with more powerful buffs added, then casting another spell after the first would just refresh the timer on the proc. Which sounds better? Also, should it also count buildings played? (Ice Barrier?)
Edit 2: it just occurred to me that it might be possible for Spellstorm to count your opponents' spells too. How would that sound?
Edit 3: I think I might need to clarify, but this thread is more to showcase what might be possible with this mechanic and cards that can synergize with it. The specific cards don't matter too much.

A summary of this announcement is written at the bottom.

Greetings Skylords, Skyladies and other Skyfolk!

Over the past two months project progression has considerably slowed down and it has become apparent that the community is in need of a status update. This announcement aims to provide said status update, where we discuss what has happened the past few months, what the current status of the project is, what some of the roadblocks are and how we plan to alleviate them, what we are currently focusing on and what our plans and expectations are to move forward. We also take a more in-depth look at the current roadmap for new cards and card balancing, and newly added staff members.
General project state and current plans
Let us start by going back more or less 1 year. At that moment @Ladadoos and @Zyna were still only client developers and the only server developer, Kubik, had just left us. With no foreseeable new server developer and the server being in a very unstable state, Ladadoos and Zyna decided to step up and become server and client developers. For the next few months they worked many hours per day to fix as many game related issues as possible and bring the gaming experience to an enjoyable state so that Skylords Reborn could finally release. This lead to the project reaching an unsustainably high update throughput, likely giving false expectations for parts of the community for the future. Just before the project released the only two administrators, InsaneHawk and MrXLink, also stepped down from their role. The lack of a leading role started to show and considering Ladadoos and Zyna had the most involvement in the project at the time they stepped up to also become administrators. As a step in the process of re-structuring the team and improving work efficiency, we noticed that there was a clear need for extra designers. Game design has always been behind and with release coming, we needed to finish design decisions quickly. That is when @ImaginaryNumb3r joined which helped immensely and, alongside other designers, we were able to get game design to an acceptable state for release. 
On December 18th, 2020 Skylords Reborn released. With this milestone achieved we decided to shift more of our attention to ensuring our servers properly handle the hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of concurrent players and to start implementing our first ever card balance changes! With the help of ImaginaryNumb3r, Zyna and the discord balancing server we released our first big card balance change on 1st of January, 2021. This was followed by a couple of extra updates, after which the project progression greatly decreased. ImaginaryNumb3r had to spontaneously spend a lot more time at his real-life job and Zyna and Ladadoos had to catch up with university duties like bachelor and master thesis. In the meantime other staff members have also had it busier than usual.
This leads us to where we are now. Two months without game updates and a community without a clear idea of the current state of the project. In the past few weeks we have internally discussed project health and team structure and decided to use the little time we currently still have into adding more team members to the project and improving code and workflow documentations. This process takes a lot of time which unfortunately comes at the cost of even slower game progression. Ever since we made our open staff applications page we have had many new applications come in and a lot of time has been spent processing them. Our goal is to expand the team such that we try to minimize the chances the project hits a complete halt again and as a result you can expect the team to grow in the upcoming weeks/months. We recently also added three new roles (discord moderators, community manager and event organizer) alongside the existing ones, which should improve the current project state. Feel free to have a look!
Faction design and new staff members
That being said, today we are most happy to announce the future for card balancing and potential new cards in Skylords Reborn. To us, card balance is of critical importance to provide new experiences and allow for greater deck building freedom in the game. To accelerate this process we are proud to announce that we have established a team of 5 people which are dedicated to improve the overall gameplay and deckbuilding experience.
With the introduction of this new team, we have created 2 new official titles:
 - Faction Designer: They explore the design space for card changes and create specifications which will be implemented.
 - Balance Developer: They implement features which were designed by Faction Designers or fix bugs of different sorts. They will also help map making in the future by adding new map specific units like bosses.
In other words: faction designers design the cards and balance developers implement them.
The team consists of the following members:
- @RadicalX: Faction Designer with PvP focus
- @WindHunter: Faction Designer with PvE focus
- @Chibiterasu: Balance Developer
- @Razeroc: Balance Developer
- @ImaginaryNumb3r: Lead Faction Designer
Expectations and steps moving forward
Experience has shown that working on balance and faction design is too work intense for just one developer at a time. As such, it goes without saying that you can expect more frequent balance iterations with card changes which won't only address balance, but also bugfixes and quality-of-life changes. Furthermore, we want to use our new resources for improved communication and greater transparency in terms of card and faction design.
Card changes are important steps to make the game more fun, but because there are so many ways one can adjust cards good design is everything. For PvE in particular our ultimate goal is to strengthen the identity of each faction (pure elements and hybrid factions) and give them their own signature playstyles. But for now, our efforts are best spend on cards which don't require a mechanical rework to make viable (like the Mutating Maniac buff). And for PvP, our new development resources allow our expert group (a group of hand-picked community members that help with design) to make faster progress and make more tests. In the future you can expect more detailed short and long-term goals for card balancing.
That is it for now. Thanks for your continued support the past few months and we look forward to what the future brings us!

Summary
Developers and designers are very busy with real-life jobs and university. New open staff roles were made here as an attempt to keep the project progressing. These rules include discord moderators, community manager, event organizer, developers, designers etc. A lot of time is currently spent reviewing applications and making it easier to integrate new staff members. @Chibiterasu and @Razeroc were recently added to staff and are responsible to implement card changes designed by the new faction designers @RadicalX and @WindHunter. This should greatly speed up card/faction balancing.

Should also disable purchasing card upgrades with gold. Force people to only be able to unlock them from their specific campaign loot. That's sounds pretty hard-core too.

The numbers settled down, which is normal for all games, but are still around 500-800, mostly. So good enough to find people for all maps during reasonable hours.
Rare and sought after cards keep getting more expensive. There are frequent spikes for cards when their stock gets bought up. Usually they dip down after a couple of days again but sometimes it leads to a more permanent price increase.
More common mid-tier cards and below are pretty worthless. More common high-tier cards seem to slowly decline.
Overall, I'd say the value for cards is slowly shifting towards the top end, leaving the mid- and low-end less valuable.
Development has come to a near halt again, the team needs more members. There was one big patch that fixed and balanced a lot of cards though.
 
I think the game is in its best state it ever was. Progression is alright, servers are very stable, I haven't had any crashes, group play works pretty well. I encounter very few issues, I'd say fewer when the game was still under EA even. Anything that is yet to come is just a bonus.

Hello @Practys,
The reason you can't buy BFP is because we do not own the game, it is owned by EA who closed it down in October 2013 but they still own the rights and IP if the project were to sell BFP or anything else in the game it would be against the law and also means the project would be closed down.
We are just a group of people who have all worked and continue to work in our spare time with no connection to EA and for free on this project with the sole purpose of bringing back a game we loved and so others could play it as well, this was sucessfully achieved on December 18th 2020 when full release occurred.
If you are looking to support us you can on our Patreon here where all the money raised there goes towards Forums and Server upkeep.

Wtf? A little too hard on the gas there. Also I don't even know what SSF means even after looking it up. 

Should also disable purchasing card upgrades with gold. Force people to only be able to unlock them from their specific campaign loot. That's sounds pretty hard-core too.

Should also disable purchasing card upgrades with gold. Force people to only be able to unlock them from their specific campaign loot. That's sounds pretty hard-core too.

Should also disable purchasing card upgrades with gold. Force people to only be able to unlock them from their specific campaign loot. That's sounds pretty hard-core too.

The card functionality has not been changed. As the building has been build very often by players without achieving a benefit (especially in RPVE), the tooltip has been updated to make it clearer that the potential gains of this building only kick in after the power well would normally have been depleted. 
Old text:
Own power wells in a 20m radius consume 40% / 45% / 50% / 55% less power, thus producing more.
New text:
Within a 20m radius the remaining capacity of own power wells takes 40 / 45 / 50 / 55% longer to deplete. Production per time increment remains the same.

Best strategy for countering Willzapper is to avoid it altogether, just skip any level with twilight