WindHunter

Yes, it will also have Rage.

Instead of getting angry, I recommend you go back and read our explanation for why we nerfed Northern Keep to begin with, and if you do not understand what it is explaining, then the proper response is not to become angry and start launching accusations, but to ask for more information. I have quoted the patch notes for you here: Ice Shield Tower and Northern Keep have different primary use cases. Ice Shield Tower provides a medium strength shield to steadily more and more units the longer it stays alive. It is a "sticky" card whose power scales by holding the same position for an extended period of time, but which is relatively weak when first built, as it only has 1 shield to apply and can only apply an addition shield every 20 seconds. Even when it is fully charged, Ice Shield Tower can only store 3 Ice Shields equivalent to 1980 health. This means that Ice Shield tower has a carefully defined breakthrough point at which the enemy overwhelms it, and this breakthrough point does not scale well into higher tiers. Ice Shield Tower's main use in higher tiers is to function as a pure support tower, revolving entirely around its shield extension passive ability for better shields like those from Coat of Protection, Icespike, or Winter Witch. Northern Keep is used to make your own units invulnerable to incoming damage and it used to work on an infinite amount of incoming damage. This meant that Northern Keep could tank any attack wave, no matter how strong, simply by placing units in range and making them hold position. As we saw in the Season 2 T1-only challenge, this meant that Northern Keep was able to singlehandedly carry dozens of campaign maps. A T1 card should not provide unconditional immunity and out tank any other card in the entire game. This seasonal challenge made it obvious to everyone who participated in it that Northern Keep was far too strong and needed a fail condition, which we were finally able to add once we fleshed out the rest of Frost T1. The card is a bit weak right now in its intended use case of something you can build and immediately use (unlike IST which is meant to be set up far in advance and then scale up over time), and we think this is largely due to costing too much power. 30 less power per ability activation is a lot when T1 first begins, especially if you are planning for 2 Northern Keeps, and the card still allows players to tank a lot of incoming damage for a T1 tower. With the recent change to its absorb mechanic, you can also use Glacier Shell and Warden's Sigil on it to bring back some of its previous cheese potential, but if you want to do this, you now need to invest the extra card slots and active upkeep. By lowering the ability cost, we make using these additional options more viable. As you can see, the idea that Ice Shield Tower right now is better than old Northern Keep is simply not true, because the current Ice Shield Tower is not capable of singlehandedly carrying a T1-only player through dozens of campaign maps, nor is it able to singlehandedly tank things like T3 and T4 attack waves from Nightmare's End and Unexpected Visitors.

In response to player feedback, we are making the following changes to the original proposal. Iteration 2 Changes - Frenetic Assault - Reduce cooldown to 30 seconds Northern Keep - Reduce ability cost from 50p to 20p. This should allow more power to play around its newfound interaction with Ice Shields and Glacier Shell. Ice Age - Increase charges to 16 Root Nexus - Remove the blessed affinity (b), the gifted affinity (g) is the new base card. Forest's Vim will be reworked as a more active defense card to fill the gap left by the removing of the frost affinity. Sylvan Gate - Remove tainted affinity (p), the infused affinity (r) is the new base card. Bloodhorn - Merge affinities: Purge now grants immunity to major debuffs and increases damage dealt by 100%. Amok - Increase charges to 12 and change base effect to "Additionally, affected hostile units take 30% more damage while affected allied units take 30% less." Twilight Curse - Reduce cooldown to 0 seconds Twilight Bombard - Increase power cost to 110p Lost Launcher - Reduce tower life points to 830 and shield recharge to 20 seconds. Rename shield to "Frozen Armor" to standardize. Matter Mastery - Remove tainted affinity (p), the gifted affinity (g) is the new base card. Move NPC Willzapper to T3 140p to allow takeover, and examine other NPC towers for possible changes. Core Dredge - Core Dredge will not be consolidated; its two existing affinities will remain untouched. These changes are in addition to the already announced changes to these cards.

Some cards will need further adjustments, and not all of these adjustments have been included here as we have been soliciting feedback from the community to see what they think needs to change to make the card viable as a single affinity. Northern Keep, for example, has been brought up in the Discord discussion as needing some adjustments to it alongside the affinity consolidation. As I mentioned in the opening post explaining the changes, more charges is not a good reason for an affinity to exist in most cases, as the standalone card can just have its charges rebalanced. We need to think more about the future than just the present state of a card's balance. As per the comments related to gameplay diversity, I already offered some thoughts on this in the opening post. The big thing is that most affinities do not actually increase the diversity within the game, rather they destroy it. There are only a few limited effects which can realistically be affinity effects on most cards and these soon become boring. Slapping the same effects on cards of every faction, and even giving factions abilities which ought to be exclusive to other factions, makes the entire game feel samey. The ideal is that each faction has a unique and distinct identity that attracts players to it; factions should be more than reskins. Additionally, Skylords Reborn is simply not a game with an infinite design space. If cards overlap, the better one will be used and the other ignored, meaning we want to open up some of the space being blocked by affinities to make room for new cards which can full embody the niche that many affinities only partially fill. Core Dredge was one card which many people in the Discord discussion raised concerns about, so we are considering pulling back that change. Per your other question related to upgraded, please check out the clarifications in the opening post, where this question is answered.

@Nibylg Please see the quoted section of the original post, which should answer your questions here. --- We will have another iteration in the future which will include some more card changes. We know that some cards are balanced around double affinities, such as Frenetic and Ice Age, and we will be making charge and/or cooldown modifications to these spells to ensure they stay viable. In some cases the merge doubles as a nerf, and this is true of a few cards, such as Green Peace and Matter Mastery. I do not think it is healthy to have a T2 card which can mind control any tower in the game (same reason we nerfed Nightguard and Parasite Swarm); rather I think if the other affinity lacks viability in some places, such as rPvE, we ought to look at individual NPC tower orb/power costs to potentially move them into takeover range. We also want to more fully differentiate between Matter Mastery and Stone Age. --- Just to clarify, cards which were not brought forward for changes generally fall into one or more of the following categories: Each affinity has a substantial playrate. Each affinity has a use case in either PvP or PvE such that it justifies an independent existence for its affinity We are planning on reworking the whole card or one of its affinities. We don't know what to do with the card yet, so combining affinities could be counterproductive if we end up reworking it and having a good concept for two affinities.

Affinity Consolidation As part of our previously announced decision to combine affinities, here is the current proposal list. Cards which are not mentioned have no present plans to change their affinities. Fire Cards 1. Blaster Cannon - Merge affinities: New base card will have both Rage and Magma 2. Scorched Earth - Remove tainted affinity (p), the infused affinity (r) is the new base card. 3. Sun Reaver - Remove both affinity effects and combine into one version. Completely remove the root ability and all connected modules from the card. 4. Dying Breed - Remove gifted affinity (g), the tainted affinity (p) is the new base card. 5. Thunder Wagon - Merge affinities: New base card will have siege and the ability of the flamethrower to target flying units. 6. Cluster Explosion - Remove tainted affinity (p), the infused affinity (r) is the new base card. Shadow Cards 1. Nightguard - Remove tainted affinity (p), the infused affinity (r) is the new base card. 2. Time Vortex - Remove tainted affinity (p), the blessed affinity (b) is the new base card. 3. Eliminator - Remove tainted affinity (p), the gifted affinity (g) is the new base card. 4. Satanael - Merge affinities into one card: New Satanael can now cast summon both tainted (p) and infused (r) Snapjaws; abilities should have a combined cooldown 5. Necroblaster - Combine into one affinity, the ability is being completely reworked 6. Evocator's Woe - Remove tainted affinity (p), the gifted affinity (g) is the new base card. 7. Frenetic - Merge affinities: New base card will be able to target buildings and poison enemies in range. 8. Grim Bahir - Remove gifted affinity (g), the infused affinity (r) is the new base card. 9. Incubator - Remove tainted affinity (p), the infused affinity (r) is the new base card. Frost Cards 1. Northern Keep - Combine into one affinity, remove both affinity effects 2. Glaciation - Merge affinities: New base card prevents wall knock-off and grants a +50% damage buff; additionally, remove cooldown from new base card (reusable instantly) 3. Stormsinger - Remove infused affinity (r), the gifted affinity (g) is the new base card. 4. Northstar - Merge affinities: New base card causes hostiles units in range to move at walk speed and increases freeze duration by 25%. 5. Core Dredge - Remove infused affinity (r), the blessed affinity (b) is the new base card. 6. Amii Ritual - Remove gifted affinity (g), the blessed affinity (b) is the new base card. 7. Ice Age - Remove the blessed affinity (b), the gifted affinity (g) is the new base card. 8. Kobold Inc - Remove the blessed affinity (b), the tainted affinity (p) is the new base card. Nature Cards 1. Root Nexus - Move the blessed affinity (b) effect (damage reduction) to Sylvan Gate; the gifted affinity (g) is the new base card. 2. Sylvan Gate - Remove both existing affinity effects (piercing, damage buff) and add the blessed affinity (b) effect from Root Nexus as the new base card. 3. Green Peace - Merge affinities: New base card has both positive effects (damage buff and damage reduction) on friendly units; also reduce cooldown to 10 seconds and increase charges to 8. Bandit Cards 1. Bandit Stalker - Remove the blessed affinity (b), the gifted affinity (g) is the new base card. 2. Banditos - Remove the blessed affinity (b), the gifted affinity (g) is the new base card. 3. Commandos - Remove tainted affinity (p), the blessed affinity (b) is the new base card. 4. Bandit Launcher - Remove tainted affinity (p), the infused affinity (r) is the new base card. 5. Skydefender - Remove gifted affinity (g), the tainted affinity (p) is the new base card. 6. Bandit Lancer - Merge affinities: disables special abilities, moves at walk speed, and takes 15% more damage. 7. Corsair - Merge affinities: New Corsair can summon either Commandos or Banditos, with each ability having a combined global cooldown (same as Satanel). 8. Soulhunter - Merge affinities: On spawn unit knocks back small, medium, and large units and deals 50 dps to enemies. 9. Bloodhorn - Pending 10. Tortugun - Remove the blessed affinity (b), the infused affinity (r) is the new base card. 11. Wasteland Terror - Merge affinities: New base card effect grants 100% siege and gives immunity to major debuffs for 15 seconds. 12. Artillery - Remove infused affinity (r), the tainted affinity (p) is the new base card; ability is slated to be reworked anyway. 13. Amok - Remove infused affinity (r), the tainted affinity (p) is the new base card. Twilight Cards 1. Twilight Brute - Remove gifted affinity (g), the infused affinity (r) is the new base card. 2. Slaver - Remove tainted affinity (p), the infused affinity (r) is the new base card. 3. Treefiend - Delete both affinity effects (delete Acid Bath) and combine into one card. 4. Willzapper - Remove tainted affinity (p), the infused affinity (r) is the new base card; will see another rework soon. 5. Twilight Curse - Merge affinities with a modification: infused effect now happens when used on an allied unit, the tainted affinity effect when used on an enemy (see Tranquility). 6. Twilight Slayers - Delete both affinity effects (Fury) and combine into one card. 7. Nightshade Plant - Merge affinities: New base card effect poisons enemies and roots them for 20 seconds. 8. Twilight Bombard - Merge affinities: New base card now has rage and M-knockback on its attack. 9. Twilight Warfare - Remove infused affinity (r), the tainted affinity (p) is the new base card. 10. Hatecaster - Remove tainted affinity (p), the gifted affinity (g) is the new base card. 11. Twilight Pestilence - Merge affinities and modify numbers: New base card increases damage dealt by 70% and reduces damage taken by 30%. Lost Souls Cards 1. Lost Dancer - Remove both affinity effects and combine into one version; will rework the ability in the future. 2. Lost Reaver - Remove tainted affinity (p), the infused affinity (r) is the new base card. 3. Lost Launcher - Merge affinities: New base card has both rage and the slowly regenerating shield. 4. Lost Vigil - Remove tainted affinity (p), the gifted affinity (g) is now the base card. 5. Lost Banestone - Merge affinities: Can use either existing "Underworld Gate" ability with a shared global cooldown; similar treatment to Satanael. 6. Lost Disruptor - Merge affinities: New base card effect prevents use of card abilities and increases building damage taken by 15%. Stonekin Cards 1. Stone Tempest - Remove tainted affinity (p), the blessed affinity (b) is the new base card. 2. Stone Hurler - Remove tainted affinity (p), the infused affinity (r) is the new base card. 3. Matter Mastery - Remove tainted affinity (p), the gifted affinity (g) is the new base card. 4. Rageflame - Merge affinities: New base card freezes buildings and its freeze does not apply frozen damage reduction. 5. Stone Launcher - Remove tainted affinity (p), the blessed affinity (b) is the new base card; fuller rework coming to Stone Launcher's ability. 6. Bedrock - Remove tainted affinity (p), the blessed affinity (b) is the new base card.

Northern Keep's nerf was coordinated alongside Landship's release, which was specifically designed with high level rPvE in mind.

Patch #400057 - Wrath of Winter Welcome to our newest patch. This update contains our twenty third balance patch for the game, the release of Season 4, three brand-new cards, multiple map changes, new quality of life features, and much more! Patch Preview Face 48 new challenges and earn cosmetic and card rewards over four months as part of Season 4, Wrath of Winter! Three new cards and one new promo are now available! Jump in-game to collect Aftershock, Landship, Stone Age, and promo Avatar of Frost! Players can experience a major rework to Oracle as well as improvements to Heart of Trouble, Blight, and Convoy. Substantial balance changes and reworks to Frost and Stonekin cards. Players can earn the new Lyrish City Forge. This forge departs from the normal Forge reskins we normally do and is full of buildings, Lyrish units, and civilians, making it feel truly alive! A new way to organize your decks! Many fixes and QoL changes based on community requests. Season 4 - Wrath of Winter This patch introduces our fourth season. Our seasons system is based around challenges that the player will complete over a 4-month time period (in this case August 1st to November 30th). Shown below are all rewards available this season: We were fairly unhappy with our challenge structure for the last season. Too many challenges required highly specific decks and therefore players could not experience just playing Shadow and Lost Souls. We have learned from this experience and majorly restructured the challenges to make it easier to jump straight into the game. We also found the card rewards awkward, so we added Starter Packs to the game. These will be rewarded early on in the seasonal track and they are intended to give players the building blocks of creating functional decks for the season, especially for players who might be new to the faction. On this same topic, we have added a gold discount to purchasing and applying U1 and U2 card upgrades for Frost and Stonekin cards for the season duration. This should make it easier for players new to the seasonal factions to quickly upgrade their decks to a usable state. Finally, we made it so that players earn points every time they complete part of a challenge. Players will no longer need to beat both maps to get any points, now they will receive points anytime a standard challenge progresses, meaning players have even more choice when advancing through the season. These changes are in response to player feedback, and we are thankful for your many suggestions. [ Repeatable Challenges ] There are repeatable challenges by which the player slowly accrues points while doing other challenges and simply playing the game. Available from August 1st. Only a maximum of 400 points can be earned from all repeatable challenges. While doing repeatable challenges beyond the 400 point maximum will not reward a player any points, completing any repeatable itself will reward a Relic. Given that these challenges have barely changed from previous seasons, we have omitted listing them here. [ One-time Challenges ] The first set of three one-time challenges available from August 1st. The next set with 7 challenges unlocks on September 1st and the last set with 5 challenges unlocks on October 1st. Players will have until the season ends on November 30th to complete them. Challenge 2.1 Win different campaign maps in the Southern Wastes on standard difficulty or higher. Only Frost, Stonekin, and Neutral cards are allowed. These restrictions apply only to the player. Challenge 2.2 Kill enemies while playing the 4-player featured community map Random Wall Defense on any difficulty. All cards except Enlightenment are allowed. These restrictions apply to all team members. Killing enemies on higher difficulties and with you using decks that contain 10 or more Frost or Stonekin cards you will reward more mission progress. Challenge 2.3 Win the 4-player featured community map Random Wall Defense on standard difficulty or higher. Challenge 2.4 Win the 1-player scenario Siege of Hope without losing any refugee units and the 1-player scenario The Soultree on standard difficulty or higher without losing any of the Lyrish Defenders. Only Frost cards are allowed. Challenge 2.5 Win 6 different 4-player random PvE scenario Map of the Season presets on Adv++ (6) difficulty or higher. Higher difficulties do not award more points. Only Frost and Stonekin cards are allowed. Nature spells are also allowed. These restrictions apply to all team members. Challenge 2.6 Win the 2-player scenarios The Shifting Temple and Crusade on standard difficulty or higher. Only 1 spell, 1 unit, and 1 building card are allowed from each tier. Only Frost, Stonekin, and Neutral cards are allowed. These restrictions apply to all team members. Challenge 2.7 Win the 1-player featured community maps Aeglos Fortress and Crystal Clear Intentions on advanced difficulty or higher. All units T2 and above must be elementals. Only Frost and Stonekin cards are allowed. Nature spells are also allowed. Challenge 2.8 Win the 4-player scenarios The Dwarven Riddle and Titans on advanced difficulty or higher. All units T2 and above must be flying units. No fortresses are allowed. Only Frost and Stonekin cards are allowed. These restrictions apply to all team members. Challenge 2.9 Win the 2-player scenario Slave Master on standard difficulty or higher without activating the Fire Emitter. Only Frost, Stonekin, and Neutral cards are allowed. These restrictions apply to all team members. [ Nightmare Challenges ] The first set of two "Nightmare" challenges. The other set unlocks on October 1st. These challenges are harder and meant for skilled veteran players, though most are still intended to be completable by the average player on lower difficulties, potentially with help from a guide. Challenge 5.1 Win a 1p random PvE scenario Map of the Season preset on Expert+ (8) difficulty in under 29 minutes. Only Frost and Stonekin cards are allowed. Additionally, placing among the top 50 fastest times at the end of the season awards progressively more points depending on final placement. Challenge 5.2 Win the 2-player scenario Into the Jungle on expert difficulty in under 26 minutes. Only Frost and Stonekin cards are allowed. These restrictions apply to all team members. Completing the challenge more quickly awards progressively more points. Challenge 5.3 As a duo, win the 4-player scenarios Guns of Lyr on advanced difficulty or higher. No towers, artillery, or fortresses are allowed. Only Frost and Stonekin cards are allowed. These restrictions apply to all team members. Challenge 5.4 As a solo player, win the 2-player scenario The Insane God on advanced difficulty or higher without losing a temple. Only Frost cards are allowed. Challenge 5.4 Win a random PvE scenario that is Map of the Season or Map of the Month on Adv++ (6) difficulty or higher. Only Frost, Stonekin, Nature, and Neutral cards are allowed. Completing the challenge with less cards played and on a higher difficulty awards progressively more points. These restrictions apply to all team members. To get started with Season 4, go to the new in-game icon shown at the top of this section which opens the Seasons window. The second round of challenges will unlock on September 1st. New Game Features Players can now highlight challenges in the lobby description and via in-game chat by typing the season and challenge number. Other players can hover over the challenge number and the specific challenge description will now pop-up. For example, if you want to play Season 4 challenge 2.2, simply type 4.2.2 in the chat or lobby description and it will automatically be highlighted for other players to see. Deck categories have been added to improve players' ability to organize their deck tags. Players can now sort their deck tags by categories and search these categories or collapse them to hide away little used or presently irrelevant deck tags. During seasonal breaks, players can now select an active season. This will allow players to progress the "repeatable" (General) category within seasons, allowing players to earn nearly all possible points from past seasons. Leaderboard challenges will remain unavailable. General Changes & Fixes Support for Windows 7 will be dropped with this update. The deck checking feature for seasonal challenges is now real-time when you hover over the challenge magnifying glass icon. Players can now compare their progress in seasonal challenges and cosmetic acquisition when comparing profiles. The Collect All button on the in-game mails should now actually collect all attached items, even those not presently visible in the inbox. Inventory filters for past seasonal challenges should now be more accurate. Added information about the Relic shop discount on the main seasonal tab. When selecting a season to examine, it will now tell you how much of a discount you have earned on seasonal items from that season based on current progress. Starter Packs, a special pre-defined booster pack, have been added with new artwork. Starter Packs are available as early rewards in seasons. U1 and U2 upgrades for seasonal factions are now 33% less gold while the season is active. This discount is shown on the main seasonal tab. Added an "Auto Claim" checkbox on the seasonal challenges tab. New Cards The following new cards have been added to the game. Please note that all three new cards are timely-exclusive, meaning they are tied to the season rewards and will not drop from booster packs or reforging while the season is active. After the season has concluded, the non-promo cards will drop as usual. Landship - 120p T1 Frost Siege Unit You will find the upgrades for this card on the maps The Shifting Temple (U1/U2/U3). Frost T1 has steadily improved its viability and flexibility over time as we added new cards like Soulstone and buffed old cards like Imperials. While the faction is in a good spot in cPvE, most players still struggle to pilot it on higher difficulties in rPvE. Soulstone is often too slow and too expensive to help out in T1, and Frost generally lacks burst damage on building targets in lower tiers. These considerations lead us to design Landship, which has a flamethrower auto-attack and a Grenade active ability capable of taking out small spawners. And best of all, it is a new unique model with new unique animations, our first every truly new card! Aftershock - 75p T2 Stonekin Unit You will find the upgrades for this card on the map The Shifting Temple (U1/U2/U3). Stonekin has 6 existing units in T2, but the only one that sees significant play in PvE is Crystal Fiend, which is often just used with leftover T1 units such as Windweavers. We wanted to design a PvE-oriented unit which is easy to pilot and fitting for the faction's needs. With the invention of the new pull-in mechanic, we thought a pull-in plus charge-up damage effect fit Stonekin. The more life points that surround Aftershock, the more damage that the ability will do, functioning similar to Grinder's healing ability. We hope this will add some dynamism to Stonekin's T2 arsenal and prove a fun to play addition to the faction's arsenal. Stone Age - 225p T4 Stonekin Ultimate Spell You will find the upgrades for this card on the map Heart of Trouble (U1/U2/U3). Stone Age is Stonekin's ultimate T4 spell. It is an area of effect Matter Mastery which permanently takes over every enemy non-boss, non-spawner building in the area. Additionally, it applies the Stonekin tag to every building taken over in this way, allowing it to be used with Tectonic Shift. We have long wanted to give Stonekin a strong offensive spell but we struggled with figuring out how to do it without transgressing the faction's core card identity. With Stone Age, Stonekin will now feel like the Masters of Stone they truly are, and cement themselves as the top building faction in the game alongside Frost. Promo Avatar - Promo Card You can get this special promo card by earning 900 seasonal points. After the season has concluded, promo Avatar of Frost will be purchasable in the Relic shop, for those who did not get it during the season. Map Changes When we are designing new campaign maps or considering changes to existing ones, one of the factors we consider is the map's average win rate. Generally we want an expert map to have an average win rate of 30-60% depending on its intended challenge level, while advanced maps should have a win rate no lower than 60%, though ideally in the 80% range. This is because advanced is the "normal" difficulty level of Skylords Reborn while expert is the "hard" difficulty. In our most recent map, The Shifting Temple, we aimed for an easier map and the map released with a 60.41% expert win rate and a 82.36% advanced win rate, meaning that we succeeded in achieving the correct map difficulty level. This makes TST on release the 15th easiest map in the game and we expect as time goes on and the community gets used to the map that it will likely move into the top 10 for easiest campaign maps. Besides Into the Jungle, which started with a lower win rate and has steadily improved over time to within the desired threshold on both expert and advanced, our other two maps are released too hard. In our last patch we made major balance changes to Unexpected Visitors' advanced difficulty, and this patch we will be doing the same to all of Heart of Trouble's difficulties. Oracle Rework (all difficulties): 1. Reduced total Stone Wagons from 8 to 6. 2. The locations of Stone Wagons are now revealed immediately on game start. 3. Substantially rebalanced the map's attack waves, removing double spawns and making them scale more slowly over time (i.e. no more instant Gunner attack waves). 4. Removed all non-functional and duplicate spawn buildings from the map. Players will now no longer need arcane knowledge to divine which spawn buildings actually spawn enemies. 5. Changed the respawn timers for all camps, and rebalanced all camps from the T3 camp onward. 6. Reduced the total number of Power Wells and adjusted the total power available in existing Wells. 7. Reformed the terrain around the camp to the left of the Mo Statue to make it easier for players to maneuver their units. Also fixed a terrain bug which would cause flying units to fall off the camp. 8. Removed the bridge between the two southern camps. This means that the other camp will no longer aggro onto the player, which often forced the player to fight two T4 camps at once. 9. Succeeding on the Mo State ritual mini-game now benefits the player. The number of enemies in the final boss fight will be reduced for every ritual sequence the player successfully completes. 10. The allied Fire Chanters can now be affected by friendly spell effects, meaning that players can heal and shield them. 11. Added a new mini-map reflecting the terrain changes. Generally speaking, we do not like reworking existing maps to this extent, and it is unlikely we do it again to any other existing maps, but Oracle was a uniquely frustrating experience for many players with a persistently low win rate on all difficulties. After we decided to fix the attack waves, we were forced to rebalance the rest of the map to avoid making it too easy. Steadily overtime it became clear to us that we could succeed in reworking the map not to make it play differently, but to allow it to play the way it was supposed to from the beginning. We think that this rework has made the map's gameplay loop more satisfying and more consistent, and we hope you feel the same way. Heart of Trouble: Standard difficulty: 1. Time until the initial attack on the allied fort: 4:30 min ➜ 5:00 minutes 2. Delay between initial waves: 70 sec ➜ 80 seconds 3. Delay between scaled up waves: 90 sec ➜ 100 seconds 4. Number of waves until waves scale: 7 ➜ 6 5. Delay between cannon barrages: 45 sec ➜ 50 seconds Advanced difficulty: 1. Time until the initial attack on the allied fort: 4:00 min ➜ 4:30 minutes 2. Delay between initial waves: 60 sec ➜ 70 seconds 3. Delay between scaled up waves: 80 sec ➜ 90 seconds 4. Number of waves until waves scale: 7 ➜ 6 5. Delay between cannon barrages: 40 sec ➜ 45 seconds Expert difficulty: 1. Time until the initial attack on the allied fort: 4:00 minutes (unchanged) 2. Delay between initial waves: 60 sec ➜ 63 seconds 3. Delay between scaled up waves: 80 sec ➜ 83 seconds 4. Number of waves until waves scale: 6 (unchanged) 5. Delay between cannon barrages: 35 sec ➜ 40 seconds Heart of Trouble has maintained a persistently low win rate across all difficulties since it was released. Players have told us that the map has a feeling of unrelenting pressure, so we have aimed our nerfs at reducing the time and defense pressure on the player, giving the player more time to breathe between attack waves and cannon barrages. Convoy (all difficulties): 1. Fixed a bug that when the Stonekin with Charges attack waves would scale, that twice as many units as intended would spawn. Blight (all difficulties): 1. Destroying all enemy camps before the timer is over no longer reduces the time players have to kill the next set of camps. This change means that players will no longer be penalized for being fast. Below are the now fixed wave spawn times for each group of camps: 1st camps: 4:05 2nd camps: 8:15 (+10 sec for each failed previous group - unchanged) 3rd camps: 13:10 (+10 sec for each failed previous group - unchanged) Game Balance Changes Flying Unit Knockback Duration: Reduced duration before the knockback recovery animation of flying units activates from 2 sec to 0.5 seconds. This will prevent flying units from freezing mid-air, but also means they recover more quickly from knockback effects. Mind Control - Global Buffs Logic Change: Units which have been mind controlled and changed teams will now have all existing global effects removed and then reapply when teams are changed. This means that units mind controlled will no longer keep their Infection effects, while they will also receive player global buffs like Wheel of Gifts. This is a significant buff to Mind Control effects. [ Skyelf Army Rework ] Skyelves are a major part of the game with 6 different variants (including Skydancer which will not be part of this rework). As is, most of them are ability bots with poor combat stats and little justification to use in normal gameplay. We have long wanted to make playing a Skyelf Army a legitimate approach to the game and in this rework we are hoping to do so by making the deck revolve around Skyelf Commander. When other Skyelves are within 30m of Commander, they will begin buffing friendly Skyelves in the area, each with their own respective effects, making the deck feel like a gradually strengthening flying army. Skyelf Commander: 1. Celestial Blade rework - Every 1.6 seconds, unit casts an arc of light that deals 105 damage to all enemies it passes through. 2. New active ability, Shield of the Sky [30p] - "Activate to bestow up to 5 friendly units within a 20m radius with an Ice Shield. Each Ice Shield absorbs up to 880 damage for 30 seconds and can be strengthened to absorb up to 2000 damage. Both a Skyelf Templar and a Skyelf Sage must be within 30m. Reusable every 30 seconds." 3. Combine building abilities into one - High Guard: Resilient For Commander herself, we are changing her attack so that instead of a single-target attack, she will gain a 30m line attack that damages all enemies it passes through (think Phantom Stampede or Spikeroot). The shield ability, which will be dependent on Templars and Sages remaining in range, will give the whole Host a lot more staying power, especially for the much squishier Templar and Sage. Sage will buff the damage of the other sky elves, while Templar will make all the shields regenerate. Skyelf Sage: 1. Rename ability: Celestial Blade ➜ Celestial Blast 2. New passive ability, Heaven's Host: Courage - "While Skyelf Sage is within a 30m radius of a friendly Skyelf Templar, the attacks of friendly sky elves in a 30m radius around Skyelf Sage deal 25 more damage. When Sage is within a 30m radius of both a friendly Skyelf Templar and Skyelf Commander, this buff increases to 75 more damage." 3. New active ability, Call of the Wind [30p] - "Teleports all own sky elves to the unit. Only affects sky elves more than 50m away. Both a Skyelf Templar and a Skyelf Commander must be within 30m. Reusable every 30 seconds." 4. Combine building abilities into one - High Guard: Strength The concept is that Skyelf Sage, when near both a Templar and a Commander, can teleport skyelves to herself. This will allow players to spawn other sky elves back at base, then add them to the army. It will also give the player some interesting manueverability options if they have multiple smaller sky elf armies. Skyelf Templar: 1. New passive ability: Heaven's Host: Fortitude - "While Skyelf Templar is within a 30m radius of a friendly Skyelf Sage, unit gains the ability to attack both ground and flying enemies. When Templar is within a 30m radius of a friendly Skyelf Commander, Templar causes all friendly Ice Shields in a 30m radius to regenerate 25 strength per second." 2. New active ability, Freezing Mist [30p] - "Activate to freeze up to 7 hostile units at a target location of 20m radius for 15 seconds. After the effect wears off, targets are immune against Freeze for 10 seconds. Both a Skyelf Sage and a Skyelf Commander must be within 30m. Reusable every 20 seconds." 3. Combine building abilities into one - High Guard: Blessing When surrounded by a Sage and a Commander, Templar will be able to cast an area freeze spell similar to Swamp Drake's Sleep Well! ability. When around just a Sage, she will gain the ability to target ground units, allowing her to be more generally useful. [ Tier 1 Card Changes ] Dreadcharger: 1. Damage: 600 dp20 ➜ 630 dp20 Slight damage increase helping shadow to trade more reliably when facing early T2. All factions will receive T1 buffs to account for the average power level increase on instant T2 strategies in PvP. Dryad: 1. Bedtime! sleep duration: 10 sec ➜ 15 seconds Increasing micro pay off for target switching on Dryad and enabling more counterplay when nature T1 is attacked by supported T2 L-units very early into the game. Firesworn: 1. Life points: 480 ➜ 500 2. Big Shot ability cost: 40p ➜ 30p Mountaineer's re-entry into the meta with full force substantially hurts Firesworn's performance. The unit dies after two consecutive hits, meaning it loses to the main target it’s supposed to counter. Increasing the health pool should change this dynamic and a cheaper ability should also offer more accessible burst damage to get past the Ice Shield. Ice Guardian: 1. Damage: 580 dp20 ➜ 620 dp20 As all factions receive buffs to their Swift units, Frost gains a buff for its main counter unit in return. Due to being prone to kiting Ice Guardian is not as spammable as the swift units it is supposed to counter and Frost is forced to invest some of its power in ranged units regardless of the enemy unit composition. Therefore, buff percentages are higher relative to other unit stat increases. Ice Shield Tower: 1. Ice Shield rework - Now works similar to Hammerfall (b) - New functionality - “Friendly units within a 30m radius will consume 500 shielding capacity to receive an Ice Shield that absorbs up to 660 damage and lasts for another 20 seconds upon leaving area around the building. There is an initial shielding capacity of 500 and a maximum capacity of 1500 which can be exhausted but will recharge by 25 per second. Cannot be disabled by spellblocking abilities.” Sadly our last attempted fix to the tower left it broken. We are pivoting to applying the shields similar to Hammerfall (b), which frankly we should have just done from the beginning given it was a proven model. In this iteration, Ice Shield Tower will apply 1 shield on initial build, then can apply another shield every 20 seconds, but with the ability to "save up" 3 shields if it sits there for 60 seconds with no units to shield. Imperials: 1. Damage: 660 dp20 ➜ 690 dp20 Slight stat buffs to account for the increased power level of the units they are supposed to fight. Lightblade: 1. Life points: 1050 ➜ 1120 2. Provoke initial cooldown: 0 sec ➜ 20 seconds 3. New passive ability "Territorial": Unit speed increases when an enemy is within 25m of Lightblade (4.8 m/s ➜ 6.4 m/s) We are redesigning Lightblade as a PvP starter unit for Frost T1 capable of scaling better against swift spam. The initial cooldown combined with the increased movement speed should add much more room for skill expression and keep play patterns fair for both sides. We will monitor unit performance and potentially follow up with number tweaks in the future. Nightguard: 1. Swap ability cost: 50p ➜ 40p As Nightguard is a little too easy to defend these days, we are reducing the amount of power players need to hold back for the swap. This can then be thrown into protecting her instead. Northern Keep: 1. Life points: 1400 ➜ 1550 2. Trench now absorbs part of the prevented damage. Absorbed damage can be mitigated by effects like Glacier Shell and Ice Shields. A. Trench generic description: “Activate to entrench small and medium friendly units within a 20m radius. Entrenched units take 100% less damage, transferring 25% of the absorbed damage to Northern Keep. Lasts for 20 seconds. Reusable every 30 seconds. Affects ground targets only.” As revealed by the T1-only challenge from Season 2, Northern Keep is very overpowered and capable of blocking nearly any attack wave in the game due to providing invulnerability to friendly units in range. We have long known that the card needed a nerf, but we left it overly strong due to Frost T1's need of it in high level rPvE. With the introduction of Landship, we now feel comfortable nerfing Northern Keep. With these numbers, Northern Keep will be able to absorb 6200 life points worth of damage before the building kills itself, and moving forward we will closely monitor if this proves too strong or too weak. Nox Trooper: 1. Overload ability damage: 325 ➜ 350 Improved burst breakpoint to account for several M-units receiving health increases while also strengthening Overload’s efficiency when targeting T2 units. Scavenger: 1. Life points: 540 ➜ 570 Increasing Scavenger’s durability to make sure it can apply the highly valuable on hit slow when facing powerful T2 units without getting bursted down immediately. Spearmen: 1. Damage: 792 dp20 ➜ 858 dp20 When fighting nature on T1 players often tend to ignore unit trades while directly going for power wells. As a result Spearmen receive a substantial damage increase to keep up with that. Swiftclaw: 1. Life points: 650 ➜ 670 When rushing early T2 with nature in PvP Swiftclaw’s survivability is a key factor to determine success as the unit has the best damage efficiency against structures out of all nature T1 units. [ Tier 2 Card Changes ] Dark Mind: 1. Attack range: 30m ➜ 20m While Dark Mind succeeded at balancing out pure Shadow’s play patterns across several matchups in PvP, the highly consistent application of confusion also caused a lot of frustration when versing the unit. Decreasing attack range will reduce the effective zoning potential and also remove randomness on Skyfire hits or Stormsinger ability sometimes getting interrupted in attempted hit exchanges due to Dark Mind having a fast attack animation. This should help keep Dark Mind in place as a tech card rather than an oppressive generalist. Frost Crystal: 1. Power cost: 60p ➜ 80p 2. Ice Shard rework: A. Damage: 920 dp20 ➜ 1710 dp20 B. New attack style, the windmill propellers now each fire an ice shard independently, similar to how Rocket Tower and Lost Spirit Ship work. 3. Ice Wave Rework: A. Ability cost: 0p ➜ 20p B. Targeting: Self-cast ➜ Arc of 40m (Termite Hill width) It has always been a bit weird that Pure Frost, the defense faction, relied on a splash tower in T2. Frost Crystal has long struggled to find its place and while we have previously buffed its damage by +50% and reduced its cost, it still struggled to find a place due to having too much of its power budget built into its life points. We are therefore fully reworking the card. Its windmill will now fire ice shards, similar to the way Lost Spirit Ship's torpedoes work. We are also making Ice Wave an actual wave, by turning it into a conical ability. Gravity Surge: 1. Targets: Can now ensnare up to 3 enemy flying units in a 10m radius around the target. Gravity Surge should now be more viable as a PvE card due to a higher target count. Icefang Raptor: 1. Power cost: 70p ➜ 120p 2. Size: M-sized ➜ L-sized 3. Base speed: 4.8 m/s (standard M-size) ➜ 6.4 m/s (standard L-size) 4. Damage: 820 dp20 ➜ 1280 dp20 5. Life points: 900 ➜ 1330 6. Reserve life point threshold: 450 ➜ 665 7. Removed "Agility" ability In its current iteration Icefang Raptor has long struggled to find a place in Frost's T2, both in PvP and PvE. The goal is to give Frost T2 an easy to pilot frontline tank which synergizes well with Ice Shields via its Reserve ability. Juice Tank: 1. Power cost: 50p ➜ 100p 2. Charges: 8 ➜ 4 3. The Juice Must Flow: A. Target: Friendly wells ➜ Own wells B. Range: 25m ➜ Global C. Description: “The remaining capacity of all own Power Wells in the current game take 40 / 45 / 50 / 55% longer to deplete. Production per time increment remains the same.” We are changing Juice Tank from a building you need to place at every Well Cluster to a global shrine which will buff every Power Well in the game. Generally, when you want to use Juice Tank, you want to use it everywhere. As a reminder, Juice Tank has not viable in random PvE and should not be used there, as the well capacities are so large Power Wells will not run dry naturally. Lost Dancer: 1. Blast splash radius: 15m ➜ 10m Lost Dancer's splash radius has been adjusted. It was previously greater than that of any existing T2 unit and did not match the visual indicator. This made targeting and splash applications overly reliable in PvE and extremely frustrating when used against another player. Power Shrine: 1. Life points: 2000 ➜ 900 This change is part of the void shrine and player spawn building changes, which are aimed at allowing more counterplay against these buildings in PvP without having an appreciable effect on their viability in PvE. Rogan Kayle: 1. Inspiring Leader now buffs human units an additional 25%, for a total of 50% more damage. While not a Frost unit, this change nonetheless aims at giving Rogan Kayle some more thematic synergy with Frost, which has 11 distinct human units. Given the short range of Rogan's aura, this will primarily encourage players to use him alongside other melee units. Spirit Gate: 1. Spell targeting radius around own ground presence: 10m ➜ 40m (excluding caster) With this change, Spirit Gate now functions similarly to Nether Warp, which should greatly improve its general usability. A big problem we ran into is that we released Spirit Gate without activating the "does not work over terrain" option, meaning it quickly became used as a means to clip through cliffs and other such terrain features in speedruns. We attempted to cut the baby in half by allowing the terrain skip to continue, but in a limited way, yet by doing so we destroyed the card's general usability due to the need to strongly restrict its cast radius. At this point, the card's almost sole function is just trying to break maps while it is frustrating and underwhelming to use in normal play. At this point, it is clear we made a mistake and should have simply fixed the problem to begin with (which will be our modus operandi for any such problems going forward), but since its been a year we did not want to take it away from players. So this change will keep the current functionality if cast via only the caster's nearby ground presence, but revert to Nether Warp's terrain block when cast near any non-caster own ground presence. Treasure Wagon: 1. Avarice initial cooldown: 0 sec ➜ 20 seconds Adding counterplay to the mass taunt in PvP without overly nerfing existing niche applications in PvE. [ Tier 3 Card Changes ] Architect's Call: 1. General Changes: A. Power cost: 90p ➜ 75p B. Radius: 20m ➜ 25m C. Friendly buildings in the area now cost 25% less power to construct. 2. Blessed Construction: A. Healing: 20 life points per second ➜ 50 life points per second, up to 3600 in total. 3. Tainted Construction (p) ➜ Infused Construction (r) A. New affinity effect - Friendly ancient and artifact units move at the newly introduced sprint speed (default S/M: 6.4m/s; L/XL: 8m/s, reduced for slow units) for the duration. B. Description: Creates a productive aura that reduces the necessary construction time of friendly buildings placed within a 25m radius by 25 / 35 / 50 / 50% and requires 25% less power cost. Additionally, every ancient or artifact unit in the area will move at sprint speed for 30 seconds. Lasts for 20 seconds. Reusable every 30 seconds. Architect's Call is a card which has struggled to find a place in the game. Part of this is that it offers less to the player than cards in earlier tiers. Its blue affinity heals less than Kobold Trick and does not even have a building cost discount, making it unlikely you would ever use it to replace Construction Hut. As such, we are improving nearly all parts of the card, including its cost, its healing, its radius, and adding a building cost reduction aura. We determined the tainted affinity is unsalveagle, so we are changing it to an infused affinity and making it work with ancient and artifact units. This will give Frost a way to keep Battleship and Construct moving quickly within the faction, without relying on Spirit Gate or Nether Warp. Bandit Hut: 1. Life points: 1820 ➜ 1120 This change is part of the void shrine and player spawn building changes, which are aimed at allowing more counterplay against these buildings in PvP without having an appreciable effect on their viability in PvE. Deepfang: 1. Stonekin Critter artwork: We have replaced the existing Crystal Fiend model and artwork with a new Stonekin-textured Energy Parasite. Kobold Engineer: 1. Fix it up! A. No longer works on walls 2. New passive ability, *Workaholic* - "The unit restores lost life points while working. After the unit repairs a structure, it regenerates 35 life points per second. Lasts for 5 seconds." Kobold Engineer annoyingly likes to run off and repair walls instead of staying focused on his primary task of keeping the defense towers well oiled. Additionally, he frequently will slowly die from splash damage because his repair ability keeps him near constantly in "active" mode, meaning he does not heal from being near buildings. The new passive ability is meant to fix this. Shrine of Martyrs: 1. Life points: 2300 ➜ 1800 2. Blessing of the Martyr A. Trigger effect: Units are frozen → Units are frozen or enchained B. Can now be disabled by crowd control effects for 45 seconds at a time. C. Description: "Whenever a hostile unit or building is frozen or enchained, 12 / 13 / 15 / 18% of each friendly player's current void power will be transferred back to their actual power pool. Whenever the shrine is affected by a status effect like Freeze, Paralyze, or Suppression this effect is interrupted for 45 seconds." We are expanding the trigger effect for Shrine of Martyrs so that it also returns void power when enemies are enchained (gravity surged). Shrine of Martyrs is also being changed as part of our system-wide nerfs to Shrines in PvP. These PvP changes should help reduce the card's strength in 2v2 and 3v3 without affecting PvE in any appreciable way. Shrine of Memory: 1. Life points: 2200 ➜ 1640 This change is part of the void shrine and player spawn building changes, which are aimed at allowing more counterplay against these buildings in PvP without having an appreciable effect on their viability in PvE. Shrine of War: 1. Life points: 1800 ➜ 1600 This change is part of the void shrine and player spawn building changes, which are aimed at allowing more counterplay against these buildings in PvP without having an appreciable effect on their viability in PvE. Timeless One: 1. Frozen stasis now affects buildings (not including Walls, Orbs, or Power Wells). This change grants Frost T3 in PvP more flexibility, especially against emerging building threats, without changing the amount of T3 slots required. Timeshifter Spirit: 1. Life points: 1000 ➜ 1200 2. Countermagic Field: A. Ability cost: 70p ➜ 0p B. Countermagic Field no longer blocks card play (no effect on PvE) By removing the card blocking, Timeshifter Spirit gains more room for buffs to function as a ranged unit blocker. With the lower cost and larger health pool it should offer more room to activate the ability aggressively and also enable interrupts agains structures like Shrines, spawn buildings or Tectonic attacks. Twilight Infestation: 1. Life points: 1660 ➜ 1340 This change is part of the void shrine and player spawn building changes, which are aimed at allowing more counterplay against these buildings in PvP without having an appreciable effect on their viability in PvE. Virtuoso: 1. Trumpet of Jelicoo now suppresses affected buildings, preventing them from attacking or using their special abilities for 20 seconds. Expanding Virtuoso's existing niche to make him even better against buildings. While primarily a PvP change, this will also buff him in PvE. [ Tier 4 Card Changes ] Coat of Protection: 1. Orb cost: 4 Frost (T4) ➜ 2 Frost, 2 Neutral (T4) Coat of Protection is moving to be a splash card while Winter Witch is moving to being a pure card. This should give many Frost-splash T4 decks an easy to slot and easy to use sustain option. Dreadnought: 1. Shared Pain: A. Target: Friendly units ➜ Friendly units and buildings i. Does not work on structures like monuments or walls B. Damage reduction: Friendlies take 10% damage ➜ 20% C. Damage absorbed/transferred: 15% ➜ 25% We want to make Dreadnought's Shared Pain / Pledge of Giants ability work on buildings to make it an option for scaling Pure Frost defenses in T4. To do so, we need to weaken the present percentages. Since the previous change to Dreadnought which allows it to regenerate via Ice Shields, the ability, which was already very strong, is now too strong. We are adjusting it mildly downwards to make it similar to Lifestream in strength while making it also affect buildings. Ironclad: 1. Snowy Bomb damage: 544, up to 860 in total (4680 dp20) ➜ 590, up to 885 in total (4920 dp20) We are wanting to do a fuller rework of Ironclad. As part of this we will add a new animation and completely rework the ability. Until then, we are giving it a simple damage buff to increase its efficiency. Tempest: 1. Whirlwind now functions as a normal ranged attack with a range of 30m 2. Frozen Wrath: A. Root animation speed: 5 sec ➜ 2.5 sec B. Range increase: +20m while rooted C. Description: “Enable to become immobile and increase the attack range of Whirlwind by 20m.” Tempest has long been an unwieldly card to use, which is hardly good given it is one of the game's starter cards. With this change, Tempest will now attack like a normal ranged unit, making it significantly easier to use. It will maintain its mode-change, which will make it stationary, immune to knockback, and with an increased attack range of 50m. Tortugun: 1. Eruption damage: 672, up to 1008 in total ➜ 672, up to 1344 in total 2. Devour: Affinity effects no longer stack 3. New passive effect, Rally: “Own units summoned within a 25m radius around the unit are not dazed.” We increased the splash damage ratio to make use of Tortugun's very large splash radius, and we gave it the Rally effect to allow other cards besides Emberstrike to be used as food. These changes are partial compensation for removing the affinity effect stacking, which was never intended but nonetheless has now been in the game for several patches. Winter Witch: 1. Orb cost: 2 Frost, 2 Neutral (T4) ➜ 4 Frost (T4) 2. Frost beam: A. Target: Units ➜ Units & buildings B. Now a channel like Grove Spirit with 25 second duration. C. Range: 30m ➜ 40m 3. Add “Swift” with 6.4 m/s Winter Witch is a very strong card though she is clunky to use. We want to make the card easier to pilot, so we are increasing her speed, increasing the attack range, and improving the attack to work similar to Grove Spirit while also freezing buildings. This should allow Winter Witch to keep up better while remaining in the backline after from the enemy's primary threats. As part of this, we are swapping her orb requirements with Coat of Protection which will be moving to 2 Frost, 2 Neutral, while Winter Witch becomes a Pure Frost T4 unit. [ NPC Changes ] New NPC Entities - NPC versions of Scorchlings, Hellhound, Termite Hill, Voodoo Shack, and Comet Catcher were added to the game. Fire NPC Changes: 1. Thugs: Added the passive ability "Gang Up!" 2. Wrecker: Casts "Wallbreaker" spell when within 20m of a wall for 15 seconds. 3. Gladiatrix: Upon death, cleanses all allies within a 20m radius of CC and gives them immunity to further CC to 10 seconds. 4. Scythe Fiends: Now deal 50% more damage to structures (Siege) 5. Virtuoso: Trumpet of Jelicoo ability now suppresses all buildings in affected area for 8 seconds. 6. Moloch: Now 400p. Gained boss immunity. New passive ability which absorbs 30% of the damage taken by allies in a 25m radius 7. Magma Fiend: Now casts the "Burning Liquids" ability which heals nearby allies and cleanses them of all major debuffs. These changes are intended as part of our upcoming preparation for an official version of dPvE which will build on the lessons we learned from the recently released Random Wall Defense (RWD) survival map which can be accessed in the community map section. We are aware that they could have large impacts on Fire rPvE balance and we will therefore be carefully monitoring the game mode to see if spawn modifications will be necessary in response to these unit buffs. [ Bugfixes & Minor Changes ] Fixed Raven Scoutship's displayed damage to be correct (2700 ➜ 3300 dp20). This is purely a visual change to better reflect the unit's actual strength. Range modifiers will now work on all Flamethrower (i.e. Vulcan), Channel (i.e. Winter Witch) and Cone (i.e. Gunner) type attacks.

We will be making challenges less restrictive moving forward. Shadow season was a high water mark for challenge restrictions and we went a bit overboard with them. Things should be more tame now, and many challenges have begun allowing neutral cards.

As Riviute mentioned, PvE is the main game mode for most players. We have 31 official campaign maps with three difficulties. Many of them have high replayability, especially if you are wanting to improve enough to tackle expert level content. For clarification, standard mode is actually easy mode, it's mostly a jumping off stone for advanced which is the game's normal difficulty. We also have several featured community maps, where around a dozen of them are very high quality. Then there is random PvE mode which has 6 different factions and 8 different difficulties. Besides that, there are a lot of achievements and seasonal challenges to complete, cards to collect, and monthly community events in which to participate. So, overall, I would say there is a good amount of content even if you are just wanting to do an adv or higher playthrough of the existing content.

Our server just happens to be in Germany, and because of government actions out of our control, many Russian players are blocked from server access because of sanctions. We recommend using a VPN and setting it to Germany to allow for more consistent connections.

Keep your eye out in the future as we are getting fairly close to doing an official release for dPvE.

Sadly, we do not own the rights to the game so we cannot put it on one of the standard distribution platforms.

Speed runs do not take precedence when we are designing or balancing any part of the game. At the same time, yes we generally avoid major changes to campaign maps which would make the existing records impossible, though obviously this would be us making a map harder, not easier. Irrespective of speedrunning, we have maintained a pretty hands-off approach to existing campaign maps, and when we did change things we wanted the changes to be mostly unnoticed. We fixed some major problems, like wave trapping on Guns of Lyr, and also did minor things like moving the T2 wells/orbs slightly on Sunbridge slightly south to prevent accidentally pulling the T3 camp. We did some more substantial changes to maps with long durations and high failure rates (Behind Enemy Lines, Nightmare Shard, Nightmare's End, Convoy). In each case the changes were careful and targeted, and in the case of Nightmare's End we were able to reduce average map time by 20+ minutes while significantly increasing the win rate. As another example, before our changes to Convoy, expert difficulty had a 15-20% win rate, and it is at least double that now. Yet, unless you read the patch notes or obsessively played a map, you likely would not have noticed these changes because they were so subtle. Maybe we will change our approach in the future, but for now we mostly want to reduce pain points in maps without changing their overall feel. This is also because making new maps just seems more worthwhile to us than going back and overhauling existing maps. An exception to this is when we feel like a map could really benefit from a substantial overhaul, to the point where it will feel like a new map, and we will soon be announcing a few of these reworks, including potentially one in our next major patch.

Windhunter and Skyfire are balanced based on PvP. There are different considerations here compared to defense towers which see very little play in PvP, and if they do, charges are not a balancing consideration. One of the benefits of Offering is cooldown refreshing. It is also limited to one faction. This is an advanced mechanic anyway. Heart of Trouble and The Shifting Temple have nearly identical scaling mechanics, though of course balanced very differently. They use an objective + timed wave scaling mechanic where a wave scales up when the player reaches a specific point (typically building an orb) and the once more 5-6 minutes later. The wave then does not scale any further until the next objective is reached, regardless of how much time has passed.