SunWu

Though remember that since Radical has written those, there have been a few changes. Good news is that all these changes improved nature T1's performance. For example, in the nature T1 guide there's an emphasis on how dangerous shadow's phasetower is in this matchup. This tower has since been nerfed and people don't play it anymore. Most of the mentioned strategic approaches are still relevant, though. Shadow T1 still excels in splitattacks/ is strong early, nature can still try to build up an unstoppable ball of death /is strong late.

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

When it's your first day at a new job, and you have no idea what you are doing. So you just stand there, menacingly. 

They wanted to twilight-transform it and had to find out phenomic didn't have a twilight skin for this model.

Love it! My favourite is the equestrian nerf - made me kill my own perfectly fine units for years when they were attacked and i had no disenchant.
 
It's only 15%, war eagles will destroy them... vs the other frost splashes they might do slightly better than scythes i guess.
 
Edit: I change my mind, the ,,search in marketplace'' is new best friend now!

Love it! My favourite is the equestrian nerf - made me kill my own perfectly fine units for years when they were attacked and i had no disenchant.
 
It's only 15%, war eagles will destroy them... vs the other frost splashes they might do slightly better than scythes i guess.
 
Edit: I change my mind, the ,,search in marketplace'' is new best friend now!

Map Balance Changes

PvE Map Changes
Bad Harvest, Defending Hope, & The Soultree: Replaced player variant of Defense Tower with NPC variant.
All player variants of cards on campaign maps are being swapped out for NPC variants to prevent balance changes to player cards affecting the cards used by NPCs in campaign and random PVE maps. Crusade: Players should be able to fulfil the victory condition immediately now when both paths are cleared early.
Speedrunners can now compete for top times without having to wait a fixed period of time, therefore removing the existing set minimum time on Crusade. Defending Hope: Rogan will now also move if a player's building is in the vicinity.
This will allow the achievement "A City Strongly Compact" to be completed entirely with building cards.  Mo: Change blocking at the cliff next to the Command Walker to no longer allow units to walk through the cliff.
Raven's End: 2 Stonekin units; 1 in the center and 1 in the camp in the right side, are no longer assigned to the Bandits.
The Dwarven Riddle: The 2 inner monuments that were added in Patch 400033 will now be observable in the fog of war like the other inner monuments.
The Insane God: Replaced a Twilight Horror with a Twilight Devastator on expert difficulty at Position 1's Tier 3 location and added an additional Slaver to the camp on all difficulties. Replaced all 4 player variant Living Towers with a custom NPC variant. Increased script trigger range around temples to prevent the player from entering the center undetected. Player controlled Urzach's Seeker (transformed Priest) now have the Burrower Acid Spit active ability.
Slight change to The Insane God to continue to allow use of Nightguard on the map. The addition of a new Slaver to the camp ensures that Position 1's T3 remains similar in difficulty to capture as before for non-Nightguard or Parasite Swarm users. Fixed a bug that allowed a player to sneak into the center without triggering the defense conditions, as well as gave the transformed Priest of Urzach an active ability to make it more worthwhile to engage in the Priest mini-game for the player. The NPC version will not use the Acid Spit ability.  Titans: Replaced 3 Fathom Lords in the Northern camps of Position 4 with Custom Deep Ones (1650 damage, 1650 life points). Expert difficulty only.
Position 4 is one of the hardest positions on a multiplayer expert map and most players get through it by using Nightguards. This change allows the player to continue using Nightguards, but since Deep Ones are weaker than Fathom Lords, it will increase the difficulty of the map when using this strategy. At the same time, it will minorly decrease the difficulty of Position 4 for non-Nightguard strategies. 
Bugfixes
Emberstrike, Tempest, and Fire Worm now properly ignore the 50% damage reduction of dazed units, as their passives suggest. Amii Paladins and Amii Phantom no longer have the "human" class. They now properly only have the "Amii" class. The Tunneling ability of Burrower and Drones no longer grants paralyze immunity during the cast time of the ability. The overkill splash damage bug has been fixed on the following cards: Banzai Lord (p)'s Banzai Birds, Comet Catcher, Death Ray, Fire Dragon, Gemeye, Giant Wyrm, Skycatcher, Rifle Cultist's Dark Grenade, and Worldbreaker Gun. This should constitute a minor buff for each of these cards. Fixed several instances of Revenants' displayed damage being misaligned with the regular unit. Mountain Rowdy's Tainted Ice Block no longer affects flying units on U0-U2. Missing Twilight class was added to the Twilight bug summoned by Twilight Curse. Vulcan now specifies it can only target ground units. Fixed a bug, that caused newly uploaded maps to show an error message as their map name. Fixed a bug that allowed units to clip through terrain with buildings.  Fixed a bug that prevented the use of Twilight Transformation when switching to the other side in the Forge. Community maps should no longer claim to be 2-player maps when they are actually 1-player maps. 

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!

• Survey Results

Once more, a big thank you to everyone who provided feedback in our 2022 Survey. 2.227 of you provided feedback regarding various topics, from general opinions regarding the project, to balance and upcoming features. We have collected the answers and provided them in a short presentation. 


• Upcoming Patch 

Last month we promised more information about our upcoming new content patch. We are almost ready to bring you a new patch that will include a ton of balance changes, map changes, bug fixes and new cards! While we sadly can't give you a concrete date on the patch yet, we are aiming for a release around mid-September. We are also planning to release some additional achievements in a small follow-up patch soon after. 
As for the upcoming content patch; we have added new Transformation effects to T2 and T3 Twilight cards, aimed at making Twilight's Transformation ability worth using. We have also made substantial changes to Fire T4 cards, while continuing our work on Nature. At the same time, we are making some much-needed changes for the health and future of the game. This patch will implement changes to Batariel, Decomposer, Frenetic Assault and mindcontrol-effects like Nightguard and Parasite Swarm. These cards have been the topic of many heated discussions over the years, which is why we would like to take some time to explain why we are making these changes. 
 
• Why Nerf Cards?

It has been the conscious choice of the Skylords Reborn Team since we began balancing the game nearly 2 years ago to avoid any PvE specific nerfs. The reasoning was twofold:
(1) Nerfs feel bad and continued nerfs of popular cards can be demoralizing to players, and
(2) There did not exist a sufficient number of strategies such that nerfing top performers would actually lead to more diverse gameplay. The top performing strategies were sometimes the only viable strategies in the game, and removing them would have just lead to an ever decreasing set of viable archetypes. 
Instead of nerfing cards, we in the faction design and balancing team have endeavored to create an increasingly large set of viable strategies, both between and within factions. Within factions, Bandits has been our greatest success, with several top tier Bandit deck archetypes being viable across all maps and game modes. Across factions, we have also steadily been succeeding in our original goal. Pure Frost and Pure Fire do not have as much intra-faction deck diversity as something like Bandits, but both do have viable archetypes capable of succeeding at all levels of play. Slowly, but steadily, we have also been working towards this same goal with Pure Nature, Pure Shadow, and their non-pure derivatives such as Shadow's Death Ray archetype. In the next few patch cycles we are hoping to touch the Stonekin, Lost Souls, and Twilight factions as well, simultaneously adding new unique strategies while also fleshing out their existing viable archetypes. All in all, we think we have come a very long way in creating both fun and viable strategies for the majority of factions, and we will labor every patch to continue this work. 
Unfortunately, despite the work that has been done, there is still a perception among much of the playerbase that decks like Pure Frost are not strong, despite Pure Frost being viable against all factions even in RPvE 10. This is because, with the exception of the addition of Banzai Lord and Plague, the top decks have remained nearly identical from release until now. This is unsurprising. In T4, Batariel-Enlightenment and Bloodhorn decks are so strong that if we attempted to make all archetypes compete with them, we would thereby trivialize the game through power creep. In T1, we have made substantial changes to ensure that every faction has a viable opening for all maps and game modes, but by and large a majority of players still progress through the campaign using Nightguard in at least a plurality if not a majority of maps. This situation of having a large set of viable playstyles but a few select ones that outshine all others, creates the impression that Skylords Reborn lacks gameplay diversity and leads to players defaulting to the same few decks over and over again. This is not a recipe for long term success. Even after the most recent patch, you can still see messages in global chat to the effect of "I wish there were other strategies than Batariel or Nightguard." There are many more strategies, it is just that some strategies are so strong that everything else seems paltry in comparison. 
Given the current state of the game, we as a balancing team have determined that it is finally time to nerf some of the game's top performers and that by doing so we will actually be expanding the set of strategies players view as viable, thereby hopefully leading to increased in-game deck diversity. Yet, our goal is not to remove the existing top strategies from the game. We want them to remain top strategies, but to be closer to the strength of other archetypes which have proven themselves to be viable alternatives. We are truly convinced this is the best course of action for the long term health of Skylords Reborn. The other options are increasing the strength of all cards to the level of these very few cards, thereby trivializing existing content, or accepting a perpetually stagnate meta where the same few strategies continue to dominate forever. 
As a final note, we want to assuage any fears that we will be going through and nerfing any and every strong card in the game. We are convinced that there are less than 10 total cards problematic enough to justify large changes. Balancing is more music than algebra. There is a band of viability within which cards sit. It is okay if some cards are better than other ones, as long as those cards are neither too powerful nor too weak. As long as a strategy is not so dominant across multiple game modes that it warps the game around itself and adversely affects the playerbase's perception of what is acceptably strong, we can and will happily turn a blind eye to it and allow it to continue unchanged. 
Our upcoming patch notes will dive into what exactly will be changed about these cards. These will be posted alongside the patch release.

• New Card Reveal: Tranquility

The results from our feedback survey shows you really like new cards, so we are excited to reveal our new Amii spell: Tranquility!

This card holds the record for longest development cycle, going all the way back to November 2021. Having changed names, effects, art and visuals multiple times during its long process since then. We are very happy with the end result though, and we hope you look forward to playing it.
Please note: We are still testing the card. While we are generally happy about it, numbers and effects might still change before release.
Let's break down the card: 

Tranquility is a tier 2 spell for Nature/Shadow. Upgrading the card increases its effect and reduces its Power Cost. It will be a rare and won't have an affinity. As with the card Transcendence, the effect of this new Amii spell changes depending on if you cast it on an enemy or friendly unit:
 
Soothing Whispers
Empowers a friendly unit to fight more joyfully. Target friendly unit will deal 20/30/30/30% more damage and regenerate 50 life points every 2 seconds if the unit deals at least 80 damage every 5 seconds. Lasts 20 seconds. Reusable every 25 seconds.

Foreboding Whispers
Weakens an enemy unit and makes it unable to fight. Target hostile unit cannot attack or use special abilities and takes 20/20/30/30% more damage for 10 seconds. Reusable every 25 seconds.
 
Tranquility offers Skylords a flexible early game Amii spell that can be used in both PvE and PvP.
For its buff/debuff visual, we have created a completely new flower model, another milestone in our development for Skylords Reborn! 

 
• Phone Wallpaper

The artwork for Tranquility was created by Tweeto, and went through many iterations (as tends to happen with our team full of perfectionists). The final artwork goes beyond the size of what we can show on a card, which is why we decided to release the full artwork as a Phone Wallpaper. We hope you like it!  

• Skylords Reborn Instagram


Want to see more art, exclusive content and giveaways? Be sure to follow us on our new Instagram! Rumors say you might even catch a glimpse of a new and not yet revealed card in the upcoming days! Follow us now to join our upcoming giveaway for a chance to win some Twilight boosters.
 
• Tournaments / Events

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

• NEW - Community PvE League Season 1
In this Community-hosted PvE league, you will compete against other players of similar abilities and ranks in a series of challenges, consisting of campaign, community and rPVE maps. There are exciting prizes to be won, so be sure to click here for more information! 

• NEW- Crappy Community Contest #8
The contest-idea-contest (CCC#7) has brought some excellent ideas to light, and the yet unannounced winner will be presented tomorrow as a new contest. As always, if enough Skylords participate, there will be a booster code as prize for the whole community!

• FINISHED - Community event #4: Onslaught on the Ground
Can you finish King of the Giants Solo under 13 minutes - without using flying units? The winner of 'Onslaught on the Ground' was able to pull this off, check out his replay here.
 
• FINISHED - Battle of Tactics #1: Your actions count
How many clicks do you need to finish Encounters with Twilight? See a super-cut of how the participants tried to be as efficient as possible: watch the video. 


• 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 

A lot has happened in the team behind Skylords Reborn in the past month. 
Sadly nkmol, who worked with Freund and Maze on the web-interface, has left the team due to personal circumstances. We are grateful for his work and wish him all the best.
Luckily, we also have some good news to share! 

Ult has recently joined the team as a client and server developer. He has been working on something exciting we can't wait to show you on in a future community update! 
Katchau also joined the team as a client developer. He will be helping out in adding new features into the game that were previously blocked due to a lack of UI developers.  
Lebovim (one of our Skylords of Honor) has done a ton for the project already, but always worked alongside the team, not in it. He has now formally joined the team, and will be helping out with implementing map and card changes, among other things. 
Maxxxel is also new to the team and working on creating tools and workflows capable of editing and adding new 3D models. We hope we will be able to add new models to the game at some point, but no promises yet. 
Lastly, Dallarian will move from a Global Moderator role into the Map Department. Our survey showed loud and clear that you want more campaign maps, so he is currently exploring the map editor to make that happen.
Welcome, and we are grateful for all of you who spend their free time helping out with Skylords Reborn! 

• Contribute to the Project

As always, we hope you will also consider helping out the project. Please take a look at all our open positions on how you can do so. 
We have also opened the position of Global Moderator, and are currently in need of more Russian Translators.

 
• 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 Amii-booster: REAL-SOON-THIS-TIME

The code is valid until October 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 #26

As I am being bored in work, I decided to lurk around the BF/SLR card wiki for a bit. Gathering up some insight, interesting statistics, and more of such, I decided to create a thread for such information. Enjoy reading these, or feel free to add your own. I will update the list with all the new additions.
There is no Ultra-Rare Tier 1 card Fire has the most Ultra-Rare cards - 16 (different affinities count as different cards). Least amount (excluding Amii) has the Stonekin and Bandit factions - only 2 each Until recently, there were no T1 promo cards. The first one is SLR exclusive promo Mana Wing* *I forgot that promo Snapjaws existed. RIP thread* Out of all the factions/elements, Nature and Shadow have the most promo cards, standing currently and 3 pieces each. (If we count Neutral cards as a group of it's own, it it has the most promos - 5). Other way around, Twilight, Bandits, Lost Souls and Amii factions have no promo cards When the original BattleForge closed, there was only single Amii faction card - Amii Phantom Most used enemy faction in PvE is Twilight (14 campaigns and can appear in rPVE), least used is Frost (never used as enemy in campaign, cannot appear in rPVE) and Amii. Frost has the most playable cards - 92. Least amount has the Amii faction, currently sitting at 3 (+1 new announced recently) There is only single T4 unit, that has the S-size: Rifle Cultists. Interestingly enough, there is currently no S-size T3 unit (but there are announced Twilight Slayers, which will fill this hole) By Metagross: The twilight edition, each faction had exactly one Ultrarare spell, one UR building and 3 UR units, with the Units being split as one on T2, 3 and 4 respectively. Out of those, only Mountaineer and Primeval Watcher were the only splashable, i.e. non pure, units. The buildings except Mindweaver were all T3 and required 2 faction orbs and 1 neutral orb, same for all spells except Backlash. That's it for today, folks. 

For some while I pondered, which enemy factions are most common in BF campaigns, or more specifically, in general PVE. So, I decided the create that list.
Consider this as a bit of pointless info, OR as a possible motivation for future mapmakers as to whether to use some other factions than Twilight or Bandits in their creations *wink wink*.
Enemy factions ranked from most common to least (never) used:
Twilight – 14 campaigns – CAN appear in rPVE
(Encounters with Twilight; Siege of Hope; Defending Hope; The Soultree; Crusade; Sunbridge; The Treasure Fleet; Guns of Lyr; Nightmare Shard; Nightmare’s End; Ocean*; Slave Master; Insane God; Behind Enemy Lines) (not counting Introduction)
Bandits – 10 campaigns – CAN appear in rPVE
(Bad Harvest; The Dwarven Riddle; Passage of Darkness; Mo; Ocean; Slave Master; Convoy; Blight; Raven’s End; Oracle)
Stonekin – 7 campaigns – CAN appear in rPVE
(Bad Harvest; The Dwarven Riddle; King of the Giants; Convoy; Raven’s End; Ascension*; Empire*)
Fire – 3 campaigns – CAN appear in rPVE
(The Dwarven Riddle; Titans; Ascension*)
Lost Souls – 2 campaign – CAN appear in rPVE
(Empire, Passage of Darkness*)
Nature – 3 campaigns – CANNOT appear in rPVE
(Titans; Ascension; The Soultree*)
Shadow – 2 campaigns – CANOT appear in rPVE
(The Dwarven Riddle; Ascension*)
Frost – 0 campaigns - CANNOT appear in rPVE
Amii – 0 campaigns - CANNOT appear in rPVE (obviously, lack of units)
*minor appearances
 
There is high chance I missed some map and/or faction. Feel free to point out any mistakes.
Edit:
Some obvious insights:
Frost is not once used as an enemy, probably thanks to it's identity as an 'ally' faction within the campaigns. Amii is unusued as well, logically due to being the newest faction created shortly before the original BF shut down, so due to lack of units/cards. Most ignored actual faction seems to be Shadow, which is surprising, as it could provide lot of interesting enemies to fight. 
Lost Souls also got pretty shafted, though I personally feel it is for the best (I am staunch believer that the LS NPC units quite the unbalanced mess). 

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!

• Recent (and upcoming) Patch 

On the 16h of July we released a small Quality of Life patch, containing some bugfixes, and updating the Free PvP decks to adjust to the new meta. You can check out the patch-notes here. 
We are also working on a new content patch, which will bring more balance changes and two new cards into the game. We will share more information on this patch in the next community update, but we will reveal one of the new cards today! 
 
• Survey

First things first: a massive thank you to everyone who filled in our Feedback Survey for 2022! You completely shattered our expectations with over 2000 responses! 
Especially since this project is run completely on a voluntary basis with no profits (which 12% of you were not aware of by the way!) we couldn't be more proud of your praise for the state the game is currently in:

We will need some time to go over all the comments, but the data and individual responses are very helpful to us, and your kind words are a motivation to continue trying to make this project the best it can be! 
We will share more insight in community feedback on a later date. Thank you for being part of this great community!
 
• Introducing: Hybrid Orbs

Before we reveal our new card, we have to talk about a new orb requirement coming to Skylords Reborn: Hybrid orbs. 
A Hybrid orb allows you to meet its requirements with one of its two colors. For example, a  card can be played with  or .
Hybrid orbs are a nice in-between of heavy and loose orb restrictions. Restricting a Twilight card to require double Fire or double Nature, would cause it to be unplayable for half of the Twilight decks. Opening up the card by having the 3rd orb be a neutral orb, would however cause unintended synergies with other factions. For example; access to Nature's heal for a Bandit card, or Shadow's Motivate for a Twilight card. By going for a Hybrid orb, we reward playing a faction deck in tier 3, without locking the other color combination of that faction out. 
 

 
We will use this new flexibility to make adjustments to some older cards. We are planning to make use of Hybrid orbs for Treefiend, Twilight Hag, Deepfang and our upcoming new Nightshade Plant design. While we could also make use of this for tier 2 and tier 4 cards in the future, we currently only have plans for using it on tier 3 cards. We won't use Hybrid orbs for Tier 1 cards either, one of the reasons being the first card played decides what orb you get, running into all kind of weird issues with hybrid T1 cards and orbs. 
Hybrid orbs have been the topic of many conversations in the past, and we are very happy to finally introduce them into the game! 
 
 
 
 
 



• New Card: Twilight Slayers

Our first new card to make use of Hybrid orbs is a card that has been requested quite a bit over the years: a new tier 3 archer unit: the Twilight Slayers! The card will be a common and come in two affinities, impacting the damage output towards certain factions. Let's break down the card. 
Please note: We are still testing the card. While we are generally happy about it and feel comfortable revealing it, numbers and effects might still change before release.

 
Bow Attack
Every 2 seconds, unit fires arrows at enemies that deal 19 / 20 / 22 / 25 damage. Deals 50% reduced damage if a hostile unit is within an 8m radius, unless Twilight Slayers are mounted on a wall segment. Has a range of 30m.

Infused Fury
Deals 50% more damage against elemental units

Tainted Fury
Deals 50% more damage against Human and Ogre units. 

Like all Twilight units, Twilight Slayers will come with the faction's ability "Transformation". While transforming Twilight Slayers does not trigger any additional effects, we are working on a shift towards more impactful transformation effects for other Twilight units, making transforming your units more worthwhile.

In our Force of Nature patch, we already changed the power cost reduction for Transform effects, and we will also make adjustments to the transformation speed in our next patch. On our balance discord, you can find out more about our future Twilight plans, such as our intention to change the card Nightshade Plant to be an exciting tier 3 Twilight pay-off card.
We hope you are looking forward to this new card and the changes coming to the Twilight faction.
 
• Artwork Spotlight

The artwork for Twilight Slayers has been created by SpiritedAlpha. As always, there were multiple iterations and feedback sessions to reach the final artwork. Here are some earlier versions, where you can notice a slightly different color scheme and background, alongside other ideas that were improved upon, adjusted, or removed to better fit the piece (sorry Twilight Negator!). A big thanks to SpiritAlpha and everyone who gave feedback during the process. 
    
Twilight Slayers are a recreation of the original NPC enemy, but we found the artwork (especially for a playable card) below the standard we have set for our Skylords Reborn additions. Looking at the artwork side by side shows the drastic difference in quality between them. 
     
2009 / 2022
• Adjustments to Reforging

It has now been 8 months since the advent of the Reforging system. Back in January, we gave the community an update on the health of the economy, and we would like to do the same again today. 
Some important information on the data: When it says "Fire Pool" it includes every card in the game which includes a Fire Orb. The data was collected and presented in this manner because this is how Reforging works when it tells you that the output card has an X% chance of containing a Fire Orb. Additionally, all price information presented is an average of actual sales in the auction house over a given period. While some extreme outliers were removed from the data set, such as 5 bfp Harvesters and 400 bfp Northguards, in 99% of instances the data was accepted as-is without tampering from our side.
Data Set: (Click to pop-out and expand)

Updated Analysis of Data Set:
At first glance, you can quickly see that after the update the following changes occurred (Neutral Cards are excluded from the analysis as they are the control set):
The average, median, minimum, and maximum prices of Common cards increased across the board.  With two exceptions, the average, minimum, and median prices of Uncommon cards increased across the board, while the maximum decreased. The decrease in average Frost prices can be attributed to 3 outlier cards in the Frost Pool, (Coldsnap, Frost Mage, and Lost Spirit Ship) which pre-reforging were very expensive for Uncommon cards. The increase in maximum Uncommon prices in the Fire Pool is caused by Wasteland Terror, which as a new card is still quite expensive for its rarity. Wasteland Terror is in general causing an inflation of the maximum Uncommon card costs in the Fire, Shadow, and All Card Pools.  The same thing happened to Rare cards as happened to Uncommon cards. Average, median, and max price of Ultra-rare cards decreased across the board while minimum price increased. The one exception is the Nature Pool, where the median price of Ultra-rare cards actually decreased. If you look closely, you can see that the median prices for cards in the Fire Pool and among All Cards are almost identical before and after Reforging. The average prices of All Cards is also only slightly negative and has been steadily trending upwards in recent months.  General booster worth increased from 378 bfp to 420 bfp. This means Reforging has made it more worthwhile to open boosters after the update than it was before. Promos have been excluded from the data set, making this even more true. On average, the daily discounted booster will profit a player 70 bfp post-update versus 28 bfp pre-update. The data is at this point fairly stable. Reforging established a minimum base worth for all cards dependent on rarity that did not exist prior. This seems to have stabilized around: Common: 5-6 bfp Uncommon: 22-23 bfp Rare: 100-102 bfp Ultra-rare: 200-220 bfp 
Fun Facts about Reforging:
- To date, 2.35 million cards have been Reforged. 64.4% of the cards were Common, 27.2% were Uncommon, 8.1% were Rare, and 1.3% were Ultra-rare.
- Only 0.87% of all Reforges produce Forge Shards (FYI, it usually is not worth it to produce Forge Shards)

Changes to Reforging:
The introduction of Reforging has accomplished many of our goals for the economy. At the same time, we have noticed the total amount of Reforges has steadily decreased as time has progressed, which is expected, but it has also come coupled with a slow increase in the prices of Ultra-rare cards. While prices for the most expensive Ultra-rare cards are down substantially, the average and median prices of Ultra-rare cards are steadily moving towards parity with the old prices. This is an issue, because the average price of all cards has risen due to Reforging, making it harder for new players to collect and charge cards. The introduction of many new beginner achievements last patch has helped to slightly alleviate this issue, but it still exists, even in reduced form. As such, we have made the following changes to incentivize Reforging and to make it easier for all players, not only those with large gold and card stockpiles, to interact with the system. We intend for these to be the last changes we make to Reforging.
 
Gold Cost to Reforge into the Following Rarities:
Common = 125 gold --> 50 gold
Uncommon = 300 gold --> 150 gold
Rare = 750 gold --> 400 gold
Ultra-rare = 1500 gold --> 800 gold
 
Reforging Rates:
We have made it easier to produce an Ultra-rare card when Reforging. For example, 4 identical Rare cards will now guarantee an Ultra-rare card. 
 
The changes to Reforging have been implemented today, and are now live on the server. 

• Tournaments / Events

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

There are currently two gameplay events planned by Dutchy and Ultralord, which can be found on the calendar already. More info about them soon!

• NEW - CCC #7 - Contest-ception
A new CCC is now live: a contest to come up with... a contest! Share your wildest ideas and get rewarded for it! We hope to see many cool ideas that we might use in future contest, so be sure to brainstorm cool stuff and join the contest! More information.
 
• FINISHED - CCC #6 - Back to the Roots
Kapo hosted another successful Crappy Community Contest, this time on a very special map. This custom map is a copy of the Introduction map with a few new jumps and turns, where you play with a Shadow/Nature deck instead. As with all CCC, the more players attended, the better the prizes became, resulting in a free booster for the whole community! View the event and the code.
 
• FINISHED - Skylords Bounty Spring Forge
It has been a while since we have closed this bounty and players have been wondering what happened to the Spring Forge. While we had a clear winner (congratulations Wanky!), the entry was not fully ready for release yet, and working on it took more time from the team than we had anticipated for a community bounty. Since spring is long gone, we will move this Forge over to next year. 

• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our Event Organizers Hiko and/or Metagross 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. 

• Contribute to the Project

In our last Community Update, we went over various features that could be added to the game if we get the right people to work on them, please take a look if you haven't done so already.

We have also added a new contributor (non-staff) role: Internal Tester. 
As an Internal Tester, you will be testing and exploring in-game mechanics with additional information that is normally hidden from players. Your contribution will allow us to fix bugs and create new designs. 
 
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. 

• 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 Twilight-booster: MORE-PLAY-WITH-ORBS

The code is valid until September 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 #25

I think it was always cheaper than infect, used to be around 1000BFP for some time and now 600BFP, probably due to reforging.
Another situation where wheels are really wasted: If there's lots of stonekin units; the devensive wheel buff only adds another 5% onto the 15% adamantium skin. For grinders the regeneration buff is redundant, too.

Wait, isn't Wheel an external buff and Adamant Skin an internal one, meaning they should stack?

I think it was always cheaper than infect, used to be around 1000BFP for some time and now 600BFP, probably due to reforging.
Another situation where wheels are really wasted: If there's lots of stonekin units; the devensive wheel buff only adds another 5% onto the 15% adamantium skin. For grinders the regeneration buff is redundant, too.

The bug was fixed during the original run of the game.
You could only stack wheel buffs by activating them at the same time, doing as many as you could/wanted. After that, no other instance of the buff could be added because the icon got grayed out. It specifically had a condition implemented that prevented further activations.
If stacking was intended, it would've been easy to instead make it so you can add another instance of the buff at any time and have them stack up.
They originally probably thought that the condition that prevents additional activations is enough to prevent stacking. What they didn't account for was that during the activation-animation the buff wasn't technically active yet, so you could activate more until the condition kicked in and restricted it. At which point they had to go back and, in addition to the preexisting condition, made it so the buffs don't stack.
Also, there are some old patchnotes left that read:
So considering that this change was called a "bug fix" and the mechanics behind it, it was definitely not on purpose.

You could play something like:
T1
Windweavers  / shaman / ensnaring roots / surge of light
T2
Stormsinger / cannon tower / breeding grounds / cystal fiend / curse of oink / maulers
T3
shrine of memory / equilibrium / revenge / thunderstorm / enlightenment
T4
Lost spirit ship / grimvine / regrowth / maelstrom
Just some basic cards wich do a good job most fo the time. You can also play offering and rifle cultists to get more charges for T4 units without a cooldown. For expert you will often need to make changes (more defensive towers or a stronger focus on different tiers). If you didn't know: you can test all cards by clicking on them in the auction house. Have fun!
Edit: forgot maulers!

I love you all for everything you did to ranked pvp!

I love you all for everything you did to ranked pvp!

As someone who didn't know as much about this enemy, most confusing thing for me is: ,,shares pain inflicted to him with his nearby allies.'' So that's wrong because the reflect dmg is delt to enemies and not allies?

As someone who didn't know as much about this enemy, most confusing thing for me is: ,,shares pain inflicted to him with his nearby allies.'' So that's wrong because the reflect dmg is delt to enemies and not allies?

Card Balance Changes

Global Balance Changes
Each unit size has a defined limit of how many melee units of a given category can attack it at once. This limit directly affects the viability of melee units in a way that is not true for ranged units. As part of how balancing efforts, we have decided to increase the amount of melee units which can attack a given unit at a time. This should prove especially helpful for early strategies utilizing S-units or when fighting against boss units in RPvE with a primarily melee army.
Numbers of melee attackers for creatures of different sizes:
A single S creature can be attacked by at most 4 Normal, 6 Reach and 2 Huge attackers ➜ at most 6 Normal, 9 Reach and 4 Huge attackers
A single M creature can be attacked by at most 6 Normal, 10 Reach and 2 Huge attackers ➜ at most 9 Normal, 15 Reach and 4 Huge attackers
A single L creature can be attacked by at most 8 Normal, 12 Reach and 4 Huge attackers ➜ at most 12 Normal, 18 Reach and 6 Huge attackers
A single XL creature can be attacked by at most 12 Normal, 14 Reach and 6 Huge attackers ➜ at most 18 Normal, 21 Reach and 8 Huge attackers
Normal = S & M-units.
Reach = Units with extended range. Ghostspears is a good example.
Huge = L and XL-units.
S-units count as 1 normal (or reach) attacker.
M-units count as 2 normal (or reach) attackers.
L-units count as 1 Huge attacker.
XL-units count as 2 Huge attackers.
Fortification walls: increased the gate's toggle cooldown from 1.4 seconds to 3.4 seconds. 
Some units were unable to attack or pass through a gate when it was rapidly toggled between closed and open.
Twilight's Transformation ability: added scaling to the transformation cost based on tier.
Tier 2 units remain at 85%
Tier 3 units from 85% ➜ 80%
Tier 4 units from 85% ➜ 75%
Twilight Transformation is now as efficient as Breeding Grounds at T4. 
Changed all cone-attacker splash radii to 38m (ie. Frost Mage). This would reduce out-of-range issues faced by cards of this type.

PvE Balance Changes
The focus this patch for both PvE and PvP has been on the Nature faction. For more information on our vision for Nature, check out our Nature Deep Dive.
While changes are split here between PvE and PvP sections, many of the changes, such as Parasite, Shrine of Memory, and Spikeroot, 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 ]
 Amazon (Nature):
   - Wildlife Protection radius increase: 20m ➜ 30m
Quality of life change to make it easier to use Amazon(g) with Werebeasts in T1.
 Fountain of Rebirth
   - Ritual of Rebirth healing: 15 / 18 / 21 / 25 life points regenerated ➜ 20 / 23 / 26 / 30 life points regenerated globally
A small buff to enable the Fountain to be used in more scenarios, particularly when supporting non-Nature players in multiplayer.  
 Treespirit:
   - Unit cost decrease: 60p ➜ 50p
   - Life points reduction: 680 / 720 / 800 / 880 ➜ 560 / 600 / 660 / 730
   - Thorns damage reduction: 100, up to 150 total ➜ 75, up to 115 total
These changes to Treespirit were initially intended to turn the unit solely into a Root Network battery, but testing has shown increased viability in all game modes due to the ability to spam them out quickly, a trait that Nature T1 otherwise lacks. The cost reduction means a net benefit for Root Network decks, allowing them to set-up more quickly while binding significantly less power.
[ Tier 2 ]
 Healing Well:
   - Water of Life:
      - Added initial healing capacity of 1500 life points.
      - Recharge rate increase: 20 life points per second ➜ 50 life points per second
Purely support buildings typically need to provide a lot of benefit to be considered for inclusion in a player's deck. Currently, Healing Well takes 2 minutes and 30 seconds, or 150 seconds total, to fill its healing capacity of 3000. This is a recharge rate of 20 life points per second. Given that the building starts with 0 initial capacity, this means that the player must not only wait for the building to construct, but also well over a minute before the building becomes usable, and then only for a few seconds before they will need to wait again. In some sense, this mimics an initial and recurring ability cooldown timer, but we do not think this state of affairs is proper to this card. These changes should allow Healing Well to fulfill its purpose as a stable source of sustain in a localized area.  
 Sunken Temple:
   - Orb requirements changed: 2 Nature ➜ 1 Nature, 1 Neutral
   - Building cost reduction: 120p ➜ 110p
   - Swapped Shadow and Nature affinities of the card.
   - Plague:
      - Changed from active ability to passive auto-cast ability with a cooldown of 30 seconds.
      - Now displays a respawn status bar indicator.
   - Summoned Pest Creepers:
      - Unit now dies after 40 / 60 / 60 / 60 seconds.
      - Added immunity against reviving effects.
      - Can no longer be infected with the Twilight Curse.
      - No longer grants ground presence.
      - Green affinity poison duration increase: 4 ➜ 5 seconds
Sunken Temple is a spawner building with has a high upfront cost of 120 bound power and a continually high cost of 80p for each ability activation. Given that the units it spawns are unbound units, the building will eventually pay itself off. This payoff comes in the form of melee S-units, which already begin to struggle in T2, particularly in PvE. Additionally, while the building eventually pays itself off, the time it takes for this to occur is quite long, both in terms of power cost and in-game time. This is not helped by Nature's newfound lack of void manipulation in T2. In nearly all scenarios, it would be better to push for T3 with a different strategy than using Sunken Temples.
One of the holes that currently exists in Nature's T2 is the lack of a splashable defensive tower. Even Pure Nature's tower, Living Tower, is often lacking when not supported by other root network entities. The idea with this change is to turn Sunken Temple into a shrine which continually spawns short-lived defensive units. These units can then be paired with cards like Infected Tower to create permanent Twilight bugs or Furnace of Flesh for some minor void manipulation. 
[ Tier 3 ]
 Northland Drake:
   - Unit cost increase: 240p ➜ 300p
   - Life points increase: 2435 / 2560 / 2820 / 3100 ➜ 3235 / 3360 / 3620 / 3900
   - Frost Breath (auto-cast) damage increase: 265, up to 398 total (2370 dp20) ➜ 400, up to 600 total (3570 dp20)
   - Active ability Blizzard:
      - Duration increase: 10 seconds ➜ 15 seconds
      - Ability cost increase: 60p ➜ 70p
      - Infused(r) Blizzard's flat damage bonus to frozen units is now consistently dealt against all frozen targets damaged by the storm.
We have done a lot to buff Pure Frost, but have thus far neglected Northland Drake. We wanted to give the card a substantial buff, but needed to sharply increase its power cost to avoid any potential issues with PvP. Overall, this constitutes a 20% total increase in stat efficiency and a much improved ability. 
 Oracle Mask:
   - Mysticism:
      - Increased duration of the internal buff from 8 / 8 / 10 / 10 seconds ➜ 12 / 15 / 15 /15 seconds to match the external buff.
      - Changed the buff effect of the aura around friendly buildings from granting units invisibility ➜ units take 100% less damage.
      - The granted buff of the aura will now reapply to existing units in range.
      - Changed the displayed status bar icon on affected units and buildings from the card artwork icon to the ability's activation icon.
      - Added a proper global status bar description.
      - The visual effect of the activation no longer lasts an unlimited time on Oracle Mask.
The old Oracle Mask was incredibly bugged and allowed the player to unbind their entire army and generate free units. This is a stopgap measure while we work on redesigning Oracle Mask entirely. 
 Shrine of Martyrs:
   - Power cost increase: 125p ➜ 220p
   - Blessing of the Martyr: Now a permanent, passive effect. Only one Blessing of the Martyr can be active at a time per team.
We have envisioned Pure Frost as a macro-based faction oriented around good preparation and diverse unit compositions. The recent changes have given Frost players a lot to do in terms of micromanagement, and the newly buffed Shrine of Martyrs has only added to that by requiring the player to check back every 30 seconds. Given Frost's nature as a faction, which we discussed at length in our Deep Dive into Pure Frost, we would like to test out a version of Shrine of Martyrs which applies a permanent global buff. By doing so, we hope to cut out some of the micromanagement we have added to Frost in recent patches. 
 Shrine of Memory:
   - Orb requirements increased: 2 Nature (T2) ➜ 2 Nature, 1 Neutral (T3)
   - Power cost increased: 100p ➜ 120p
   - Echoes of the Past:
      - Void return percentage increase: 100% / 150% / 200% / 200% ➜ 150% / 175% / 225% / 300%
      - Maximum void return increased: 20 power per 2 seconds ➜ 80 power per 2 seconds
      - Also affects allies now, also only one Echoes of the Past can be active per team.
      - Decreased duration: 30 / 30 / 30 / 35 seconds ➜ 30 seconds on all upgrades.
As a T2 building, Shrine of Memory sees play in PvP scenarios regularly, but falls behind in PvE compared to other void return mechanics. Its current effect is most efficient with medium amounts of void power, but actually loses efficiency beyond a certain threshold (333) and only works for the player which owns the structure. This means that Pure Nature as a faction has very poor void return tools, which is a major reason it is currently so weak.
Turning SoM into a tier 3 buildings opens up significant space for buffs. Shrine of Memory now affects allies again, an ability which was originally taken away due to its strength in 2v2 PvP. Additionally, we have increased the void return percentage and allowed it to overcome the natural void return cap to allow it to compete with other void return options in T3. The goal is that after this change, all four factions will have competitive void return options which are thematically appropriate to the faction itself. 
 Stone Warrior:
   - Damage increase: 1700 dp20 ➜ 1850 dp20
   - Life points reduction: 1950 / 2020 / 2170 / 2360 ➜ 1750 / 1820 / 1970 / 2160
   - Shatter Lance activation cost reduction: 100p ➜ 80p
      - Gifted(g) Shatter Lance: Can now target structures. Deals 50% damage against structures.
The blue affinity was recently given the ability to damage frozen buildings. The green affinity's description suggests it can do the same, and we don't see anything wrong with the interaction, so we have modified them to be consistent. We also reduced the ability cost to buff both affinities slightly. Stat realignment is for PvP viability which leaves unit with identical stat efficiency, which is the same as Mutating Maniac, better than Mutating Frenzy, and slightly worse than Fathom Lord. 
 Sylvan Gate:
   - Power cost reduction: 110p ➜ 80p
   - Add "Accelerated Construction" - Construction time is reduced by 50%.
   - Change Linked Fire ➜ Repeater
      - Range: 25m ➜ 100m
      - Sylvan Gate no longer provides support itself
   - Move affinities to their own passive:
      - Change Blessed(b) affinity to Tainted(p) affinity - Friendly entities connected to the root network within a 25m radius around Sylvan Gate will deal piercing damage
      - Infused(r) affinity - Friendly entities connected to the root network within a 25m radius around Sylvan Gate will deal 25% more damage.
Sylvan Gate is in a prime place for a redesign. We would like to turn Sylvan Gate into a long-distance Root Network repeater, a role that fits perfectly with its existing tunnel ability. With these changes, a single Sylvan Gate will cover 200m and be able to connect support from every root entity within 100m in every direction. This means that Sylvan Gate can bridge massive distances, allowing the player to easily move their frontline root network unit while leaving their root network battery far away from the battlefield. 
 Thornbark:
   - Linked Fire, out-of-combat support provided increase: 1 ➜ 3.
One of the aspects of root networks that has always been a little weird is the fact that every unit provides the same amount of support. There is no scaling, so it is always best to use the cheapest option in terms of power and population limit. With this change, Thornbarks used as root network batteries will provide significantly more support. Now only 2 Thornbarks will be needed to max-out another root network unit with full support. 
[ Tier 4 ]
 Banzai Lord:
   - Counter added: Banzai Lord now has an S-counter
   - Bird Calling summon amount: 3 birds ➜ 2 birds summoned in total
   - Banzai Birds:
      - Damage (p): 1000, up to 3000 ➜ 1500, up to 4500
      - Healing (g): 1000 life points ➜ 3000 life points restored
      - Life points increased: 800 ➜ 1200 
      - Explosion radius decreased: 25m ➜ 20m
Banzai Lord has causing performance issues by spawning massive amounts of birds at once. To mitigate this issue, we reduced the birds from 3 to 2, but increased the damage and health of each bird proportionally. This means that Banzai Lord (p) will continue to deal the same total damage. At the same time, we reduced the explosion radius slightly to give the purple affinity a minor nerf. The green affinity was severely underperforming and each green affinity Bird now provides 3000 life points worth of healing, which should allow it to properly fulfill its healing role. 
Fire Sphere & Shatter Ice
   - Fixed incorrect handling of overkill damage.
This is the first instance of us changing the way overkill damage works. It should provide a substantial buff for both cards by allowing them to always deal their full potential damage when a sufficient number of enemies are present.
 Forest Elder:
   - Flower Power / Pest Plants aura radius: 20m ➜ 30m.
   - New passive Ability, "Magic Link": Unit is surrounded by a magical zone of 30m radius where summoning friendly units requires 30% less of the usual power costs.
Forest Elder is meant to be the apex Pure Nature unit, but currently is a walking Regrowth on steroids and a slightly improved Wheel of Gifts. Pure Nature is a unit-centric deck, and a major part of being a unit-centric deck is needing to summon units. Many players who splash Nature want to summon units in base, next to a Breeding Grounds. It thus feels unsatisfying when you have to summon a unit in the field and miss out on the major cost refund. We wanted to let Nature players stay in the field without waiting for other units to catch-up, as well as decrease the faction's bound power cost. As such, we thought it fitting to give Forest Elder a slightly improved mobile Breeding Grounds effect. More changes will be coming to Forest Elder in the future.
 Lifestream: 
   - Life Link:
      - Damage absorption limit increased: 10000 ➜ 20000 damage
      - Removed maximum ability duration.
      - Range increased: 200m ➜ 300m
      - Implemented a new visual effect to prevent confusion with Regrowth.
Lifestream is Nature's superweapon equivalent and is a sustain option in a faction overflowing with sustain. In order to be used, it needs to either out compete Regrowth and Forest Elder or possess its own niche use. We have striven for the second option. To do so, we doubled the absorption limit and made the effect last permanently until the limit is reached. This will both increase Lifestream's strength in existing situations, as well as allow it to be used with less active input required from the player's end. Overall, it should fit in better as a part of a fixed defense and compliment Nature's healing in more offensive scenarios. To achieve this second aspect, we also decided to increase its range to 300m to match our recent buff to Comet Catcher.
 Necrofury:
   - Unit's default attack: Melee ➜ Ranged.
      - Damage: 1100 dp20 ➜ 4160 dp20
      - Range: 40m attack range
      - Needs to face enemies in order to target them.
      - Only affects ground units
   - Movement speed increase: 4.8 m/s ➜ 6.4 m/s
   - Nether Bomb is unchanged when switched into this mode.
Necrofury is a card with a good concept that doesn't see play outside using its powerful Bone Shards ability to one-shot bosses with Unholy Hero and Fallen Skyelf. We are wanting to leave its current boss killing identity intact while opening it up for general usage. The goal is to allow Necrofury to function as a backline archer without the need to constantly micromanage her. Given Necrofury requires only 1 Shadow orb, it will be flexible enough to be used in a wide variety of decks and provide a reason to single splash a Shadow orb. 
 Overlord:
   - Blood Share:
      - Effect radius increase: 15m ➜ 20m
      - Healing increase: 1000 ➜ 1500 life points
      - Self-inflicted damage remains at 1000
The ability is currently very thematic and fitting for Overlord but also quite lackluster, so we are giving it a small boost.
 Primeval Watcher:
   - Stasis Field targeting: Self-targeting ➜ Targeted area within a 30m radius
Primeval Watcher is the primary backline damage dealer for Pure Nature. We want to increase its overall strength and the flexibility of Primeval Watcher's paralyze ability to allow for more offensive application. More changes will be coming to Primeval Watcher in the future.
 Promise of Life:
   - Orb requirements changed: 3 Nature, 1 Neutral (T4) ➜ 3 Nature orbs (T3)
Allows Promise of Life to combo with Abyssal Warder and Pure Nature in T3, but otherwise has the same restriction for other decks, given it will still require 3 Nature orbs. This combo has proven to be quite powerful in testing and opens up a unique style of play, though one that can feel foreign to Nature. The idea is to attack a location with Abyssal Warder, purposefully allow it to die, and cast Promise of Life just before its death. This causes both a fully restored XL-warder and 2 L-warders to spawn, both of which are unbound. Promise of Life and Abyssal Warder will allow the player to quickly accumulate a large army of unbound units, while the new Shrine of Memory will grant fast void return, resulting into quicker transitions into T4.   

PvP Balance Changes
 [ New Card Design Spotlight  - Burning Spears ]
Burning Spears were designed as a new tool to increase deck building options in pure Fire. The faction currently has a limited pool of pure cards in PvP leading to a very M-unit centric deck design with a limited amount of deck building options and balancing levers to change specific matchup behaviors. The addition of Burning Spears will add a versatile small sized unit into the faction, that is supposed to help with some of the factions counter issues against L and XL units in T2, while demanding a deck slot investment in return. The passive ability enables very high back loaded damage potential to punish players that try to ignore them, whereas the slow and steadfast ability allows Burning Spears to stick to their priority targets while enabling further spell synergies with cards like Wildfire.
[ Nature Rework ]
Pure Nature has been struggling to find its place in PvP for a long time. The faction features some tools prone to snowballing games once a lead is established. This can be frustrating to play against. While these tools offer great snowball potential, the faction lacks ways to actually get ahead through more conventional means. At higher levels of play the deck could be considered the weakest, since it was possible to shut down the strenght points it has while abusing its weaknesses.  
To address these issues, we want to increase Nature’s pool of options in open field trades while increasing its capacities of defending structures more consistently. At the same time, we are toning down the snowball mechanics to avoid creating an overly strong faction, which can’t be dealt with at some point in the game. This should lead to a more enjoyable experience for all players involved. Considering some of these changes are quite drastic, follow-up tweaks might be necessary to reach the desired goal.
 Burrowing Ritual:
  - Cost reduction: 50p ➜ 40p
Our previous plan of slightly buffing Tunnel in PvP didn’t work out for various reasons. As a result, we decided to add a bit of power to one of its combo pieces, making slot investments for Tunneling strategies a little bit more worthwhile.
 Creeping Paralysis:
   - Cost reduction: 60p ➜ 50p
   - Paralyze duration increase: 15s ➜ 20s
   - Target limit increase: 7 ➜ 10 total targets
Adding more crowd control and open field trading options for pure Nature allows the deck to compete with nature splash factions. The listed buffs are supposed to enable its role at defending power wells against melee units by preventing them from focusing down power wells. The spell also excels at disrupting immobile army stacking strategies.
 Deep One:
   - Life points reduction: 1650 ➜ 1450
   - Catch ability cost reduction: 25p ➜ 10p
Deep One happened to be the most stat efficient T2 L-unit. Combined with Surge of Light, this led to very powerful snowball potential, allowing straight focus onto power wells ignoring any counter units. We reduce the overall health ratio to impact the effectiveness of Surge of Light support. On the other hand, we want to maintain Deep One’s ability during more defensive trades and are reducing its ability cost as a result. Deep One’s performance will be highly impacted by the upcoming Nightguard nerf as well.
 Energy Parasite:
   - Counter type change: S-counter ➜ M-counter
   - Power Drain: added 30s initial cooldown
Any tool capable of generating maximum energy leads can snowball out of control very quickly. Therefore, preventing Energy Parasites from connecting to power wells at any given state is an absolute must if you want to beat pure Nature consistently. This necessary zoning of Energy Parasites often lead to a tempo loss by default, leading to heavily restricted gameplay options when playing against them. While this power level was necessary to keep pure Nature viable in the past, it did not leave a lot of room to buff the faction. This change is supposed to bring up more counter play options to Energy Parasites while keeping the unit strong and viable. The initial power investment can’t provide fast payoff, as counter unit spawns can be delayed. As nature often struggles with attacks based on M units, we also change the counter type from S to M. This might allow Energy Parasites to be utilized in combat before the initial cooldown goes off.
 Ghostspears:
   - Orb requirements changed: 1 Nature, 1 Neutral ➜ 2 Nature orbs
   - Weapon Change ability cost removed: 10p ➜ 0p
   - Damage increase: 900 dp20 -> 990 dp20
With the introduction of Amii Paladins, every nature splash has its own melee S-sized M counter nowadays. By moving Ghostspears to pure Nature, we can tweak each of these units to specifically balance them towards each faction's needs. This change opens up room to buff pure Nature’s overall trading capabilities. 
 Parasite:
   - Orb requirements changed: 1 Nature, 1 Neutral ➜ 2 Nature orbs
   - Cost reduction: 100p -> 80p
   - Damage per second increase: 60 / 60 / 60 / 66  dmg/s -> 70 / 70 / 70 / 80 dmg/s
   - Max targets increase: 4 / 5 / 6 / 6 -> 8 / 9 / 10 / 10 total targets
   - Fixed damage interval from 0.9 to 1 sec without increasing total damage
Pure Nature had little room to interact with air units in the past. Spirit Hunter poison gets countered by strong sustain tools (Ravage, Crystal Fiend healing etc.) and Parasite Swarm is too expensive and too susceptible to cc in order to work consistently. Parasite is supposed to be a strong support tool addressing this issue. Additionally, the card synergizes well with crowd control options to deal with stacked unit setups. We will move orb requirements towards pure nature to avoid interactions with splash factions, creating space for such a strong buff.
 Parasite Swarm:
   - Splash damage removed
   - Total damage increase: 16, up to 24 total damage (800 dp20) ➜ 24 damage (960 dp20)
   - Counter type change: M-counter ➜ XL-counter
   - Mind Control: added 10s initial ability cooldown
Parasite Swarm is mostly reliant on using its active ability to generate value. This makes using the card rather inconsistent, especially in early T2 stages. The upcoming change increases single target damage by 50% vs L, S and buildings, while increasing damage by 125% against XL units (M remains unchanged). On top of that, its counter type is getting shifted from M to XL in order to provide a new option of dealing with XL units. This should make Rogan Kayle less mandatory in pure Nature. In return, we add a small initial cooldown on the ability to prevent undazed spawn into instant swap plays.
 Rogan Kayle:
   - Damage increase: 990 dp20 ➜ 1075 dp20
   - It’s the Shoes range increase: 15m ➜ 20m
While not a pure Nature card in the first place, Rogan Kayle often gets used in combination with crowd control spells to produce permanent cc-chains. Outside of that, the card is rarely used and has large drawbacks due to rather underwhelming stat cost ratios. We increase its power a bit to open up more situations where the Lyrish leader can actually lead to victory.
 Shrine of Memory:
Shrine of Memory will be shifted away from a meta pure Nature card and redesigned as a T3 tool. The card used to be a catch-up mechanic to compensate for nature’s weak early T2 complementing its spell spam heavy snowball tools. With the upcoming buffs, a back loaded hyperscaling mechanic is no longer necessary. Considering gameplay with SoM point and click hard counters like Suppression or Matter Mastery would naturally get more popular if Nature would increase in popularity, we decided to rework the card entirely. For more information, head towards the PvE section, where SoMs new powerful role will be further discussed.
 Spikeroot:
   - Unit cost reduction: 120p ➜ 110p
Root Network decks were kept in a rather weak state in PvP considering static siege setups are rarely fun to play against. That said, we think it’s safe to increase Spikeroots power level a bit considering the card can complement Nature decks in various ways and is not reliant on root network support to be functional in the first place. It can be used as another tool to address nature’s M-counter issues. 
[ Shadow L-counter Adjustments ]
Nightguard has been dominant across Shadow splashes by shutting down a lot of L-unit centric strategies entirely across multiple matchups. The advantages of getting unbound units through mind control effects are more substantial than just removing units from the map. When kept alive, even a single unbound L-unit would lead to a huge long term advantage. Her omnipresence is preventing options to diversify faction identities, but also leads to numerous unhealthy interactions like shutting down L-unit centric factions entirely. We haven’t been able to touch Nightguard so far as a few L-units were at risk of getting out of hand without her (i.e. old Mountaineer). But since these outliers have received nerfs, we want to attempt to redesign the L-Counter role in Shadow splashes to enable more proactive skirmishing.
 Nightguard:
   - Unit cost increase: 65p ➜ 90p
   - Swap ability cost reduction: 75p ➜ 50p
As the central change here, Nightguard unit cost will be increased by 25 energy, rewarding energy investments to prevent the swap from going through in the first place. On the other hand, her ability cost will go down by the same amount, so total swap costs remain unchanged. This will weaken Nightguard’s preemptive zoning power before the swap goes through and also strengthen any re-swap scenarios. Therefore, taking down the Nightguard after a swap goes through needs to be prioritized even more than before. As the total cost per swap remains unchanged PvE impact is minimized considering it is way more likely to be able to keep her safe compared to PvP.
 Executor:
   - Counter type change: M-counter ➜ L-counter
   - New passive ability, "Piercing Death" - Unit deals 60% piercing damage
Executor has been redundant so far given that Shadow already has exceptional M counter options. To bring up a combat based alternative to Nightguard his counter type will be changed from M to L. In addition he will receive piercing damage to be able to help against buffed L units. This should help against early T2 or in 2vs2 matches.
 Knight of Chaos:
   - Chaos ability cost reduction: 50p ➜ 40p
Pure Shadow was quite reliant on Nightguard to sufficiently counter L units. This buff should help compensate for the loss of power, and will also open up more opportunities for the less reliable purple affinity to finally cause real chaos.
[ Miscellaneous Changes ]
 Dreadcharger:
   - Charge increase: 12 ➜ 16
Small change as a response to recent design changes in the Shadow vs Frost matchup. This should enable more extended T1’s given that Frost also receives Ice Guardian buffs in this patch.
 Eliminator:
   - Taming ability radius increase: 20m ➜ 30m
      - Added radius preview
      - Buff increase, fire(r) affinity only: 30% ➜ 50%
   - Fixed affinities not working together without allowing it to stack infinitely 
Helping Eliminator to reward very specific strategies in decks that are built around him.
 Ice Guardian:
   - Increased range from structures before Ice Shield decays: 25m ➜ 30m
   - Added a visual indicator when the Ice Shield is not decaying.
After acquiring more data from the Master Archer change, the previous spam scenarios are less effective in PvP as predicted. That said, Frost often ends up being confined to its own structures. We are giving Ice Guardian a bit more room to chase units and add a little bit more power into close well combat, where Frost is supposed to excel. This is needed to avoid map cutoffs early into the game. We also added a visual indicator when the ice shield is not decaying. This should lead to more comfortable unit micro options.
 Mountain Rowdy:
   - Ice Block ability cooldown increase: 30 / 25 / 20 / 20s ➜ 40 / 35 / 30 / 30s
While we are satisfied with the overall position Mountain Rowdy took in pure Frost, he currently has the potential to keep his ability active constantly. With the increased range, this is a very potent zoning tool and sometimes slows down the game a bit too much. Therefore, we want to provide a proper window for players to attack after the ability runs out. 
 Phalanx:
   - Damage increase: 570 / 600 / 660 / 750 dp20 ➜ 600 / 630 / 690 / 780 dp20
Phalanx recently saw a bit more play in PvP. We think they still are on the weak side, therefore a small buff, which doesn’t impact their combo potential with Nasty Surprise should help them take a more consistent L counter role in Frost splashes.
 Slaver:
   - Cost reduction: 80p ➜ 75p
Small buff to bring stat efficiency more into the line of other T2 L counters. Shouldn’t affect the unit performance too much.
 Stoneshards:
   - Life points reduction: 840 ➜ 810
Small tweak for Stoneshards considering Stonekin is slightly overperforming and will benefit a lot from upcoming Nightguard changes.
 Strikers:
   - Movement speed increase: 6.4 m/s ➜ 8 m/s
While Strikers are underperforming as a unit, we do want to keep them in a niche role rather than buffing them back into a meta position. Increased movement speed should help to seperate the great Striker players from the good ones without inflating their power level. This should make it easier for them to isolate and pick off units more often.
 Twilight Brute:
   - Damage increase: 940 dp20 ➜ 970 dp20
Even though Twilight Brute is a strong tool in a few matchups, deck slot limitations are quite restrictive in Fire Nature decks, so the card doesn’t see too much play all in all. Increasing the attack should provide a small extra reward for selecting them.
 Twilight Minions
   - Damage increase: 900 dp20 ➜ 930 dp20
   - Life points increase: 780 ➜ 840
Considering Fire Nature loses Ghostspears as small sized M counter, Twilight Minions need to step in and take their role. Despite their superior stat efficiency, they were rarely played due to ranged disadvantages compared to Ghostspears and a less flexible ability. As a result, we will increase stat efficiency a little further to compensate for this patch and also look to add a lot more value for Twilight oriented deck builds in Fire Nature in the near future.
 Virtuoso:
   - Damage increase: 1790 / 1890 / 2075 / 2265 dp20 ➜ 2025 / 2125 / 2310 / 2500 dp20
Even after the recent ability buffs, Virtuoso remained underplayed due to his inferior stat efficiency compared to most other L sized melee units. As a result, we decided to increase his damage output to help him at countering L units and sieging.
 Warden Sigil (Frost):
   - Blessed(b)Sigil ability: Can no longer be attached to structures that are still under construction.
We are working on Wardens Sigil buffs to add more defensive tools in Frost T1. Unfortunately, the testing process isn't finished entirely, therefore only some technical preparations will be included this patch. We will follow up on this one soon.
 Warlock:
   - Cost increase: 45p ➜ 50p
   - Damage increase: 430 dp20 ➜ 600 dp20
      - Blaze Bolt: 60, up to 90 total damage (430 dp20) ➜ 72, up to 108 total damage (600 dp20)
      - Attack speed: 3,5s ➜ 3s
   - Witchcraft ability now allows self-targeting
After testing the Warlock sufficiently, we do think it’s safe to enable a little more combat power rather than keeping the unit just as a cheap supportive tool. Warlock still should remain as a part of growing armies, but once he can deal a bit of meaningful damage himself, the required amount of set-up to make him work is reduced. This should help Warlock become more valuable in earlier T2 stages.
 White Rangers:
   - Increased ability damage against non-Amii buildings from 50% ➜ 100% (orbs and power wells still do not receive any damage)
White Rangers already perform well in PvP, but given there is a distinction between normal and Amii structures (orbs and power wells), we can remove their reduced damage output against buildings to open up more use cases in PvE without inflating their PvP power level.

Patch #400033 - Force of Nature
Welcome to our newest patch, titled "Force of Nature"!
This update contains our fifth balance patch for the game, brand-new cards, and many other changes, enjoy!

Patch Preview
 - Three new cards are now available! Jump in-game to collect Wasteland Terror, Burning Spears, and Transcendence.
 - Major changes to the PvP game mode, including PvP Happy Hours, reward reworks, hiding player loses, and more. 
 - Added 18 new, primarily PvE achievements for both beginners and veterans alike. Including one to earn the new promo Mana Wing!
 - Rebalanced Fire RPvE to provide a still challenging but less frustrating experience
 - Rebalanced over 40 cards, with a large focus on Nature cards. 
 - Changed several PvP and PvE maps to improve player experience 

General Changes
Updated in-game player banner colors for GM accounts to represent the current roles. Added ability to search for missing copies and charges in the Auction House. For example, writing `(charge=2 & copies<2) | (charge=1 & copies<3) | (charge=0 & copies<4)` in the textbox will show you all the cards you can still potentially buy to get a fully charged collection. Added ability to play cards by clicking on the upgrades in the upgrade scroll view or the upgrades in the upgrade window. Added ability to change the play speed in the forge, or to pause and unpause it. New hotkeys are available in the options menu. The default hotkeys are J, K and L for decreasing speed, toggling pause, and increasing speed. Added a responsive deck counter to the decks window that shows how many decks the player has, relative to the maximum number of allowed decks. Improved the UI that displays what is remaining to complete an achievement. Previously, players could hover over the progress bar to see a tooltip, but this was unclear. Now, there will be a clearly visible (?) icon next to the progress bar that has the tooltip instead. Added ability to press the Space button in the reforge window to reforge the current cards in the window. This removes the need to press the Reforge cards button.   Increased unit icon (dot) size on in-game minimaps from 4x4 to 5x5 pixels. Added the new Force of Nature loading screen. Added ability to change how the automatically generated replays are named. There is an extra setting in the GUI section of the configuration file at `/Battleforge/config.json` called `savereplaysnameparts` for this.
New Cards
Burning Spears - 80p T2 Pure Fire
You will find the upgrades for this card on the map Oracle. 
S-unit designed to counter Large and Extra Large units. For more information, check out our design spotlight below in the PvP Balance Changes, section as well as Community Update #23.
 
Wasteland Terror - 260p T4 Pure Bandits  (Fire and Nature Affinity)
You will find the upgrades for this card on the map Blight (Fire Affinity) and Raven's End (Nature Affinity).
Bandit dragon for those Bandits players who want other options besides Tortugun. Its ability acts as a mass Disenchant to let your army continue to more forward through crowd control. For more information, check out Community Update #14. 
 
Transcendence - 90p T4 Amii Spell 
You will find the upgrade for this card on the map Sunbridge. 
Our first Amii spell is castable on both enemies and allies, with different effects depending on the target. When cast on enemies, it buffs one unit and debuffs all of its surrounding allies. When cast on allies, it debuffs one unit and buffs and its surrounding allies. In both cases, it rewards careful target selection and micromanagement from the player side. For more information, check out Community Update #20.

Mana Wing - New Promo Card 
While not a new card, we have also added a new promo to the game. Every player will be able to get a promo Mana Wing by completing the new achievement "A Force of Nature". The promo will not be available in boosters, but it will be trade-able. For more information, check out Community Update #24.
 

PvP Game Mode Changes
[ New Player Protection ]
To protect new players from facing top players when they are just getting started in ranked play, it is no longer possible to get matched with players with a base ELO above 135.000 if your own base ELO is below 102.000.
[ Made Player Names Anonymous ]
To prevent players from dodging bad match-ups, player names have been anonymized in the ranked lobby. This does not affect the sparring lobbies. 
[ Losses are Now Hidden]
It has been proven in other competitive games that showing losses on the ranked ladder results in demotivation and higher entry barriers. We have therefore removed losses from the ladder. The information is still accessible on your profile if you want to look it up. 
[ Updates to the Free PvP Decks ]
We have made some changes to the cards contained in the free PvP decks to compete with the new meta. If we made updates to the free PvP decks you have currently selected, you will now have the option to either swap to the new cards, or keep your current set up. Changes have been made to Pure Nature (Parasite over Shrine of Memory), Twilight (Twilight Minions over Ghost Spears), Pure Shadow (Executor over Nightguard) and Pure Fire (Burning Spears over Scorched Earth). 
[ Improved Rewards ]
We have removed the gold penalty that was currently active for playing sparring games. Quests that require you to play 2vs2 games, now also count 3vs3 games for completion. 
We have also allowed you to drain the reserve while looking for ranked a match. If you queue for at least 5 minutes, even if you don't find an opponent, you will earn BFP as if you were ingame, meaning you get BFP not just for playing, but also while searching for matches. 
[ Happy Hours ]
Happy Hours are specific time periods where players will receive additional gold and BFP for playing PvP. The daily boost / reserve will drain at a factor of 1.5x, while you will also get 1BFP per minute extra for queuing. For Happy Hours, there will be an in-game announcement, and the icon on the world map will indicate Happy Hours are active. 

Happy Hours will take place during the following times:
- 1vs1 happy hours: 7pm-9pm CET
- 2vs2 happy hours: 9pm-10pm CET
- 1vs1 happy hours: 4am-5am CET
By clustering players together during certain time frames, players will have an easier time finding matches more frequently. 

New Achievements
Skylords Reborn currently faces primary two issues in terms of content: early game progression is too steep, and endgame content is nearly nonexistent. These achievements are intended to make the first step in tackling both issues. Smaller, more digestible progressive achievements will mean a player will no longer finish the campaign on standard, with the next goal in sight being to play all the maps again on advanced before being rewarded. New players will now be slowly guided through the campaign and RPvE, allowing them to steadily accumulate cards along the way. 
At the same time, we are adding our first set of endgame achievements to the game. This will provide more content for our veteran players and give them a reason to replay old maps, often with a twist. We hope you all enjoy these new challenges, and we will continue to expand the endgame content into the future.  
[ Infinitely Scaling Achievement ]
Reborn in Fire  [1 Mini-booster]
Reforge Cards (Unlocks every 20 reforges, scales infinitely)
[ Beginner Achievements ]

Just a Story  [1 Twilight booster]
Complete Viridya and Brannoc's story on standard difficulty or higher (Encounters, Siege of Hope, Defending Hope, Soultree, Crusade, Sunbridge, King of the Giants, Titans, Ascension)
The Most Dangerous Game [1 Bandits booster]
Complete Mo's story on standard difficulty or higher {Mo, Ocean, Oracle, Slave Master, Convoy, Blight, Raven's End, Empire)
A Debt Unpaid  [20,000 gold]
Complete the story related to the Treasure Fleet on advanced difficulty or higher. (Bad Harvest, Treasure Fleet, Mo, Blight, Slave Master, Convoy) 
A Mile in His Shoes  [2 Stonekin boosters]
Complete Rogan's story on advanced difficulty or higher (Encounters, Siege of Hope, Defending Hope, Crusade, King of the Giants, Titans, Dwarven Riddle, Guns of Lyr, Empire)
A Wrinkle in Time  [250 bfp]
Win the 4-player map Empire spawning at least 5 different Lost Souls cards from a deck containing only frost, shadow, and Lost Souls cards.
Godslayer  [250 bfp]
Win the 2-player maps Sunbridge and Insane God on any difficulty. 
Apprentice  [1 booster]
Win 20 randomly generated PvE matches of difficulty 5 or higher. 
[ Veteran PvE Achievements ]

The Road Not Taken  [3 boosters]
Win 20 randomly generated PvE matches of difficulty 9 or higher.
Turn Back All Ye Who Enter Here  [6 boosters]
Win 20 randomly generated PvE matches of difficulty 10.
Nevermore  [2 Bandit boosters]
Complete Blight's story on expert difficulty (Blight, Raven's End, Slave Master, Ocean, and Oracle)
Make it Double  [2 Amii boosters]
Complete all 2-player maps on expert difficulty. (Crusade, Sunbridge, Nightmare Shard, Nightmare's End, The Insane God, Slave Master and Convoy)
Never Thought of Him  [100,000 gold]
Complete the story of Mo becoming the new king of the fire tribes on expert difficulty with all players in the map using decks containing only Fire cards.  (Mo, Ocean, Oracle, Slave Master, Convoy, and Raven's End)
The Long Journey Home  [2 Frost boosters]
Complete the story re-establishing the Kingdom of Lyr on expert difficulty using decks containing only frost cards. (Encounters with Twilight, Siege of Hope, Defending Hope, Bad Harvest, Dwarven Riddle, and Guns of Lyr)
Not Even My Final Form  [Rogan Kayle Card]
Win the 1-player map Encounters with Twilight on expert difficulty without using T3 or T4 cards.
Forest for the Tree  [Viridya Card]
Complete the 1-player map The Soultree on expert difficulty using only Nature cards from T1 and T2.
A City Strongly Compact  [Stronghold Card]
Win the 1-player map Defending Hope on expert difficulty with a deck containing only spell and building cards.
A Force of Nature   [Promo Mana Wing]
Complete all 1-player and 2-player scenarios on expert difficulty with all players in your team using decks containing only Nature cards.

Those who complete "A Force of Nature" will be rewarded with a Promo Mana Wing! This promo is unique to this achievement and will not be available from boosters, but it will be trade-able. We hope you look forward to the challenge!

Welcome to this guide on how to construct and pilot the Batariel deck. This guide will go over all the ins and outs of the deck, what to do in certain situations, and general tips and tricks for both beginning and more advanced Batariel players. Let’s open the Gates of Purgatory and jump in.
 
What does Batariel do?
Batariel is a Tier 4  card. It is a rare card and got two affinities.
 Its first ability is Gates of Hell.

ACTIVE: Activate to smash Batariel's giant mace onto the ground, dealing damage to enemies in a 10m radius. The impact will crack open the ground, allowing an enormous cleft to emerge that will erupt fountains of red-hot lava after 5 seconds. Reusable every 30 seconds. Affects ground targets only.

The second ability is Infused/Tainted Purgatory.
PASSIVE: Unit enters stages of rage in battle depending on how much damage it has recently dealt. Either it does more AoE damage around himself, or he shreds the enemy’s armor, depending on the affinity. But if there is no damage dealt for 4 seconds, the flames will abate again.

For this deck we will only be using the fire affinity, and all future references, unless explicitly stated, will refer to the fire affinity Batariel. The fire affinity is used because his passive does more damage, and the shadow affinity reduces the armor of the enemies. Reducing the armor is only relevant if you have other units to do damage as well, in a pure fire deck for example.
How is the Batariel summoned if you do not have four Fire orbs? Enlightenment. Enlightenment is three orbs, two of which nature, and it allows you to use any card for the next 20 seconds without orb restriction. You do still have to pay the cost, 300 power in this case. 

 
The Deck
Let’s start with the Tier 1 options this deck has. When playing a Batariel deck, you have three factions to choose from. Either you start with fire, nature, or shadow. Frost is by all means the worst faction to start with, as a general Batariel deck does not contain a single frost orb.
 
Fire start
With fire, most of the time you want to start with 3 Nomads (Nature affinity). An alternative could be Sunderer in some cases where you try to speedrun certain maps, but Nomads are recommended over Sunderer as they heal themselves and can hit air with their ability and are in general more flexible.
The second card you want is Mine. Mine is an excellent card to take out the enemy units at your t2 camp. In bandits and Twilight maps, often one Mine should be enough. If you are fighting Fire you could use only one Mine, but if you are less experienced or are not as comfortable with a fire start, you can use two mines. When you encounter Lost Souls, you always place one mine and wait with engaging the camp until a second mine is off cooldown. The reason for this is that you may encounter Tier 3 units like Mana Beasts, one mine if often not enough. If there are also units that give shields, then two Mines might not be enough, and you need to place a third one.
The third card you want to bring is Eruption. This card is excellent in taking out pesky (flying) units or to help out your opponents when they are in trouble. Eruption has one other very important use, which is to take our crucial spawn camps. One eruption does 300 damage for 75 power. All small spawning camps have 1200 health, so four eruptions will take out the camp and will set you back 300 power. This tactic is the mostly used in RPvE difficulty 10, but can also be utilized, and encouraged, in RPvE difficulty 9 when you try to clear the Tier 3 camp. In difficulty 9 and below, one to two Eruptions are often enough as you have your Nomads hitting the camp as well.

Blaster Cannon an optional card. This card is not necessary in RPvE difficulty 9 and below, but is almost a must-have in difficulty 10. The reason for this is that there can be flying enemy units on your Tier 2 location, which does not happen in difficulty 9 and below. Blaster cannon fire affinity does insane damage versus flying units and because of that it is preferred over the shadow affinity. The shadow affinity also hits air, but traded extra damage against flying units for extra damage to ground units, but that damage is negligible.
Sunstriders can be a nice addition too as they could replace blaster Cannon, they are inferior, but more versatile.
 
Shadow start
Shadow starts are very straight forward. The first card you want to bring are Forsaken. Forsaken do insane damage and have an awesome ability to do even more ridiculous damage at the cost of dying after the ability wears off.
Nox Trooper is a decent alternative to Forsaken, and is far superior against Crystal Fiend camps, where Forsaken get destroyed. Also, they have a better trapping capability as they shoot each unit in a squad one by one. And base damage output is higher than Forsaken, even when they lose overall to frenzied Forsaken especially when getting rid of the spawner. Dreadcharger also a decent alternative, but very situation.
Motivate is a card shadow can not go without. This card gives a near-dying unit a new purpose by allowing the same units to do more damage for the next 30 seconds.
For Soul Splicer, we want to have the Nature affinity. You want to build this shrine outside the enemies range, as it takes some time to construct it. When constructed, it can collect corpses around itself and a select area. These corpses can be used to heal your Forsaken when they are within the range of the Soul Splicer.

A general tactic when approaching the Tier 2 orb is to construct your Soul Splicer and wait until you have 6-8 Forsaken, depending on how comfortable you are. With the Forsaken you want to lure the enemy towards the Soul Splicer, so it can collect their corpses whenever they die. When fighting the enemy, use motivate on one of your Forsaken to allow the others to do more damage, and to have your first corpses inside the Soul Splicer.
You want to bring an Embalmer’s Shrine if you bring Shadow Phoenix as your Tier 2 unit. You want to construct two Embalmer’s Shrines before doing anything else.
If you play a shadow start in RPVE difficulty 10, then it is recommended to bring 9-11 forsaken, Lost Souls can require more, 3-4 squads gets frenzied and immediately attack the spawner. The remaining units clear the units with the help of a Soul Splicer and Motivate.
 
Nature Start
Nature t1 is relatively effective, in some cases better than fire, especially in solo. Basic composition is Windweavers + Dryad (Blue affinity) + Ensnaring Roots, for difficulty 10 Hurricane and Mark of the Keeper are very strong as well, and may be essential. Root is preferred over Hurricane is because it also helps vs non-S-units up to Tier 4. The edge that nature has over fire is solely not having to build a fire orb until an orb switch, with access to cultists + furnace and breeding grounds (especially useful with Shadow Phoenix against stronger t3-t4 camps)
Windweavers is the go-to damage dealer for Nature Tier 1. They are versatile and can shoot multiple enemies at once, which makes them excellent in clearing early camps. 
Dryad provides the units around her with a damage reduction buff. One Dryad is often enough, but keep in mind that she does not buff herself. Having a damage reduction buff on your units allows you to use less heals. 
Surge of Light is great. It is super good to heal your low health Windweavers, and  it scales super good into the later stages of the game as you can still use it to heal your Batariel. 
Ensnaring Roots is a must have. This spell can create distance between the enemy and your Windweavers. This card is also very effective when you need to take out a spawner in difficulty 10. 

Mark of the keeper is a must have in difficulty 10, but in difficulty 9 or lower it is not needed.
No Shaman? Yes, Shaman is not used in Batariel decks. Shaman is a unit that rarely attacks, and it binds power. For every Shaman you have, you have one Windweaver less. There are only 20 deck slots, and Shaman should not be in there.
 
Tier 2 options
On Tier 2, there are a couple options to choose from. When you start with Fire, you are generally safe to use your Nomads + Mine and use Eruptions on the spawning camp. In difficulty 10, you can bring Gladiatrix (Nature affinity) with Curse of Oink, or you can bring Shadow Phoenix with Embalmer’s Shrine. If you start with Shadow, your best option is to bring Shadow Phoenix. You need three Shadow Phoenix to kill a small spawning camp.

or

When you are playing difficulty 10, if you start with fire and want to use Phoenix, you will need to do an additional orb swap for your Batariel. This sets you back some power, but might be required sometimes.
 Less optimal, but alternative options are Bandit Minefield and Lavafield.
 
Core of a Batariel deck
The core of a Batariel deck are Life Weaving and Unholy Hero. Life Weaving keeps Batariel alive, and Unholy hero allows the Batariel to do insane amounts of damage.

Heals are important in every deck, Batariel decks are no exceptions. You should bring at least one heal spell, such as Regrowth. It is recommended to bring a backup heal in case you run out of Regrowth charges or the card is on cooldown. Two options are Surge of Light and Equilibrium (Frost affinity). It is totally fine to bring all three heal spells, as even some veteran players do.

Very important spells to bring are both Frenetic Assault’s (one is mandatory, the other is quality of life), Infect (mainly quality of life, you can do without) and Disenchant (depending on the enemy faction). Frenetic Assault makes sure the enemies are not attacking your Batariel, but each other, which gives Batariel more survivability. Both Frenetic Assaults are recommended as they have a long cooldown between casts, and you might need more than one in a difficult camp. Infect serves a similar purpose and cleans up remains. After the enemies kill each other with the Frenetic Assault effect, two Nightcrawlers will spawn from each corpse, up to 10 corpses. 20 extra units to soak up damage and to do more incremental damage.

Batariel needs to have his burning passive ability active as soon as possible. He does this be damaging enemy units or buildings. If Batariel is not able to attack, due to a paralyze effect, the chances are the Batariel will die. To solve this, Disenchant is a must-have when you fight enemies like Bandits and Twilight. Those otherwise annoying Willzappers and Windhunters are now useless when you bring Disenchant. Bandits have one boss that permanently reduces the attack by 50% when it does damage: the Equestrian Twins. This debuff can also be nullified with Disenchant.

There are two more must have cards in every Batariel deck, which are Curse of Oink and Nether Warp. Curse of Oink was mentioned earlier as well in the Tier 2 section, but it is also an all-star when Batariel is out already. Curse of Oink is an instant CC (crowd control) spell. Whenever Disenchant is on cooldown, or whenever there are scary enemy units, Curse of Oink can keep incoming damage to a minimum. Keep in mind, this has no synergy with Frenetic Assault.

When entering an enemy camp, you want to position your burning Batariel in a location where it can either hit as many enemies as possible, or where it can take out a spawner. Nether Warp is the solution for this. After you Batariels AoE burning is active, you can warp him further into the camp. Keep in mind, all the enemies will be able to target him, so make sure you have some heals ready and Life Weaving active. Recommended is the Nature affinity Nether Warp because the Frost affinity debuffs your Batariel with a slow effect. Yes, the Nature affinity heals your opponents units too, but that heal is insignificant compared to the damage output of the Batariel.

When you have your core, there are one, two or three spots left for other cards. Thunderstorm is the one that is most recommended bringing as it is such a versatile damage spell. The second card is Soulshatter, as it can decimate smaller camps on its own, but you need to be careful as the damage also damages friendly units. The third option is Earthshaker. This card can take out crucial enemy buildings. This is optional, as Batariel should not have any problem taking out buildings on its own, but can be a quality of life.
 
 
Void return
Because spells are cycled non-stop in this deck, void return is of utmost importance. There are two options available for a Batariel deck. Either Shrine of War, or Cultist Master + Furnace of Flesh.
Shrine of War is the best void return card in the game for multiplayer maps. You use spells whenever you want to kill enemy units, and whenever enemy units die, the Shrine of War gives back void power. It is the perfect synergy, there is however a big downside. Shrine of War costs 150 power and has no continuous upkeep. You will need two to be able to keep it running constantly. You will need to invest 300 power, which delays your Batariel immensely. Shine of War is recommended in fire starts.

The ability of the Cultist Master is free, and it summons three Nightcrawlers that die after 20 seconds. When they die near a Furnace of Flesh, it gives back void power. Similar to Shrine of War, you will need to maintain the upkeep of this. It is recommended to have around three Cultist Masters to give reliable void return. If you have more than four, then consider building a second Furnace of Flesh or to alternate between the activations, but this requires way more micro. This option is preferred in Batariel decks that start with Shadow or in solo RPvE maps. If a teammate has a Shrine of War, you can kill the Cultist Masters and the Furnace of Flesh, as Shrine of War is superior to them.

 
Fallen Skyelf
Fallen Skyelf can play a critical role in certain scenarios, vs bosses like Twilight Hulk or Abaddon, which have very high damage output, or Hellhound who will eat all your units if you don’t kill him quick enough. And helps overall vs bosses.

 
Plague
Double Shadow starters sometimes gravitate towards triple shadow instead of switching to fire. These decks require more precise play due to the lack of cards like Disenchant or Earthshaker, but end up being significantly faster upon being executed well, given how strong Plague is. The spell speeds up camp clears in general and sometimes even allows very powerful pathing advantages as a spell combo around Plague + Infect (+ Frenetic) sometimes removes T4 camps on its own (ideally this even works against small boss camps i.e. Umbabwe/Bandit Lancer). Sometimes Disenchant cannot be removed upon facing factions like Twilight, but whenever there is an angle to cut the fire orb Plague should be your go-to choice when considering the orb swap with a double Shadow start.

 
How to kill a camp
When entering a camp best to attack a unit, preferably flying, because Batariel doesn’t dance around those, like he may sometimes when trying to attack ground entities. Also, because Batariel does more damage per hit with his normal attacks against flying units. If power levels/refund permits, then Batariels ability is a great way to enter, use it on a building cluster or a boss. Best to warp after front buildings are destroyed or nearly destroyed (possibly finished by infect). Infect should also be used when entering the camp to maximize the crawlers spawned, after the buffs with frenetic, not necessary, but can be useful, plays an especially important role vs Lost Souls and Twilight bugfest.
When playing vs Lost Souls always have at least two Batariels for later camps, keep one in front to tank all the debuffs and for ground presence to cast cc spells against spellbreakers, and teleport second Batariel in the back line, who will take care of the camp. Preferably, use infect to soak up the damage and all the debuffs as well. In case of 2 Lost Bane presence, drag the camp out use spells (with infect) and try to either use Batariels ability on Lost Bane closest to the spawner, and then warp, or if possible just warp in. Can also try to power through after dragging the camp after getting rid of Lost Banes and having crawlers, enemies won’t pose as much threat even if they respawn, just keep eyes on Spellbreakers.
Against Twilight Infect is crucial, especially against difficulty 10, where Twilight gazers are bugged and reflect huge damage back to Batariel if not careful, crawlers soak up that damage. Best wait to approach them is to use Batariels ability and maybe even port them together in a bunch, then frenetic/oink and use Batariels ability. But be careful as you won’t have nether warp available to get close to the camp.
 
Bosses
Against Bosses, either focus them with Skyelf support, if they can be killed within the ability right away, or warp in the backline and deal with a boss after taking out the majority of the camp. Raven ship is very tricky to kill with a Skyelf, she most likely will get focused, must use infect and possible defensive spells on her, or be on a safe side and deal with the boss without, it’s not too dangerous to Batariel, just have to oink gunner when it spawns. Twilight Dragon boss also takes a while to kill, and Skyelf will heal it if used too early, so it’s better to used when more than half hp is depleted. Nyxia debuff can be disenchanted, which means that the Batariel can freely attack her. Hellhound is best if approached with at least two Batariels like all late game LS camps, and infect must be used. Try to get rid of him asap, before your Nightcrawlers die and he starts eating Batariels. Killing him is not a problem, surviving is.
Due to the Lost Spellbreakers Disenchant, engaging with Frenetic Assault (both work here) or Curse of Oink may save you a lot of trouble. Can be tricky, especially in non-motm maps where you don't know exactly where they're located. Against higher tier Souls camps with Banestones:
1 Banestone: Try to disable the Lost Spellbreakers as mentioned above, engage with Batariel ability onto the Banestone and port into the camp. Can be hard with Lost Dragons and such where the Batariels ability couldn’t be used, in that case Disenchant (G) works well.
2 Banestones: From my experience it's best to just wait for the camp wave to spawn into your direction, use Infect on it and engage the camp with the Nightcrawlers before Batariel to distract the Lost Spellbreakers.  Try to get one Banestone down as fast as possible and use Frenetic Assault + Nether Warp into the camp (hoping that Bata burns at this point)
Fire Bosses: Abaddon, you must avoid his ability at all costs, either send a unit in front to take it, or just dodge/warp in the backline and deal with Abaddon when you have taken care of the camp. Golem should be attacked with ability for the majority of HP, auto-attacking is dangerous.  Magma Fiend boss is the most difficult to deal with as a Batariel deck. Must have at least 2 units, if only playing Batariel in t4, have 1 or 2 extra when approaching it, go in with a single Batariel without any buffs and instantly warp in the back line and cc the camp, infect will help as well, then buff Batariel and take care of the camp. After the majority of the camp is gone, send in other Batariels to tank debuff, and buff the one not being attacked. For all these bosses Skyelf is crucial, may not be mandatory. Keep Fallen Skyelf in a distance from Abaddon, she will die very quickly if she is close.
 
General tips
You might be asking, but what about Unholy Power? That increases the damage of Batariel too, right? Simple answer, no. Unholy Power is basically a dead card in your deck, as it does not stack with the burning of Batariel.
When you fight Lost Souls or Fire, Disenchant is not needed, as these enemies has no way of stopping your Batariel via cc. When you start with Shadow, you can stay and you do not have to switch an orb to fire.
If you spawn your Batariel at Tier 3, it is recommended not to build the two wells at your Tier 4 orb location. This will set you back 200 power, and will only pay off when you are floating in power anyway.
Batariel does more damage with an attack than against non-flying:
XL Ground: 481
L Flying: 697
XL Flying: 1045
This is due to the longer animation when attacking flying units and as the damage per 20 seconds is fixed, attack types with different execution durations deal different damage.
 
@Volin has a in-depth Twitch Stream about Buffed Batariels, where you can see some gameplay: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1423615481?t=00h06m39s

Special thanks to the following people for helping out with this guide!
@arabikaa @Damo @Donaar @Kapo @Mocaak @RadicalX @Volin
 

Oh I remember sketching those concepts during first days of war... Sirens and withering of hope. Yet never give up till you breathe and do what you must! And you can see how it progressed, together we all will win.✊