[Mission placement suggestion]

Almost none of the maps are located in accurate locations. Titans, Guns of Lyr, and Empire all take place in the city of Lyr, and not one of them are actually placed in Lyr. So the areas really become storyline dependent, not geographically based.

Also, we cannot put them after Insane God because that is where the next set of maps are going. 

[Patch #400048 - 21 September 2024]

1 minute ago, UltDragon said:

Apparently you can stack them on legacy
 

Stacking and their effects stacking are very different things. We changed them to no longer stack like this because it does nothing, but the effects do not stack and it was Phenomic who changed that, not us. 

[Patch #400048 - 21 September 2024]

Patch #400048 - Echoes of the Amii

Welcome to our newest patch. This update contains our fourteenth balance patch for the game, 4 brand-new cards, 2 new campaign maps, a new PvP mode, four new achievements, and much more!

Patch Preview

• Four new cards are now available! Jump in-game to collect Amii Sentinel, Skydancer, Energy Core, and Umbabwe!
• Added two new campaign maps! Continue the story of Skylords Reborn in the first two maps of our new campaign.
• BattleArena has arrived! Play against your friends in 2v2 or 3v3 battles in this casual PvP mode.
• Four new achievements and cosmetics to go along with the new maps and game mode.
• A few balance changes and major card reworks mostly to previously unviable cards.

General Changes

• The Shadow enemies found on the summoning menu in the Forge have been swapped with their NPC versions. Amii enemies have also been added to the Forge's summoning menu.
• A new section has been added to PvE leaderboard to account for potential speedrun changes arising from changes to Amii Monument without wiping the rankings. 
• Upgrades have been redistributed, you can find more information in-game by using the "Show Upgrades" option on each map. All Rebirth edition cards have had their U2 and U3 upgrades moved to the new maps.
• The Lost Souls Forge skin is now available. Complete the new achievement "After All These Years" on expert difficulty to unlock it. 
• Deleted players are now displayed as <deleted> rather than empty.
• New setting "Force create unit group when holding SHIFT key" added to options.
• Reverted previously undocumented changes to attack-move command (shortcut Q), that were causing issues with unit responsiveness.
• Added Map of the Day info to the "Daily Rewards" section.
• When a player completes the Map of the Day in a given day, the flame on the world map will be grayed out. This change is to help players remember if they have already completed a particular Map of the Day for achievement progress. Players can continue to play the Map of the Day for extra upgrade rewards as normal. 
• Re-enabled the chat command export collection.
• Re-enabled the explore replay button.

New Campaign Maps
At long last the Skylords Reborn story continues with the addition of two brand-new fully-voiced (in English) campaign maps. These maps continue the story after Dwarven Riddle and are the product of hundreds of hours of our team's artists, designers, community map testers, translators, and voice actors. Both come with new achievements and rewards to encourage you to dive-in and explore. 

Unexpected Visitors, 2-player campaign map
Journey into the northern wastes to find the secrets hidden within the Riddle of Gnaur. Discover the last enclave of the elusive Amii and save them from certain destruction.

Into the Jungle, 2-player campaign map
Brave the jungles of Viridya's island to find a new home for your Amii allies. 

New Cards

Amii Sentinel - 260p T4 Amii Unit 
You will find the upgrades for this card on the map "Into the Jungle."

Our goal for Amii's T4 is to create a micro-intensive deck where most of the damage is unit-based. With Amii Sentinel in particular, our goal is to create a frontline tank that functions as a perfect conduit for Shadow's single-target buff cards. Volatile Body's 120% reflect turns Sentinel's health into a damage resource, which synergizes perfectly with cards like Regrowth, Transcendence, and Skydancer. 

 

Energy Core - 140p T4 Amii Unit 
You will find the upgrades for this card on the map "Unexpected Visitors."

Energy Core's original design came from the Community Card Contest we held over a year ago. The idea behind Energy Core is to create a unit which is more of a mobile spell than it is a traditional unit. It has no auto-attack, but it has two active abilities. Both abilities damage Energy Core, one more significantly than the other, requiring the player to pay close attention to unit health and weigh their options over what is possible for them and whether or not risking losing the unit is worthwhile. 

 

Skydancer - 120p T4 Amii Unit 
You will find the upgrades for this card on the map "Unexpected Visitors."

While Sentinel and Energy Core fit the roles of tank and damage dealer respectively, Skydancer functions as the supporter. Skydancer has two different mode-changes, one debuffing enemies and one buffing allies. The debuff functions as a kind of anti-rage effect, while the buff increases allied life points by a set amount. The health buff effect directly synergizes with Sentinel and Energy Core who both has health-based damage mechanics. 

 

Umbabwe - 200p T4 Legendary Unit 
You will find the upgrades for this card on the map "Into the Jungle."

Blight's infamous witch doctor is finally making his player card appearance. As a standalone legendary unit, he is intended to function as a spellcaster type unit. To accomplish this, the card has a lot of built-in flexibility via its spells. Umbabwe has an auto-attack which is a meteor from Inferno, the ability to cast his signature spell Oink, and an active ability to summon a fiery tornado which applies a painful burn effect. 

 

BattleArena - New PvP Mode
For a long time, we have been developing an alternative PvP mode called BattleArena which we feel is finally ready to release. In this game mode, players do not use cards from their deck. Instead, they are given spell devices and progressively stronger creatures which they must use to overcome their enemies. The mode can be played 2v2 or 3v3 and comes with a new achievement to reward players for trying it out. Go to Sparring Grounds in-game to play BattleArena.

Voice Actors
Many of the above new features would not be nearly as enjoyable without the help of our volunteer voice actors. In this patch, the following players have lent their voices to liven up the Skylords Reborn universe. We thank them greatly for their help!

• Vox - Gaeron (new Frost Skylord)
• Ultralord - Burning Spears
• Edgelord - Skydancer
• Edgelord - Amii Phantom (includes the card's voice lines and the unit's appearance in the new maps)
• Elijah - Amii Sentinel
• Dreamlord - New map loading screen narration

Achievements
As part of the release of the two new campaign maps and BattleArena, we have released four accompanying achievements. There is a normal achievement just for beating the new maps, which rewards the player with the new Amii Sentinel on advanced and the Lost Souls forge on expert, as well as two achievements for mastering the maps. BattleArena has a new progressive achievement for playing the mode. We are also adding new Amii borders to the existing endless achievements for playing Amii decks in PvE and PvP.

[ New Achievements ]

After All These Years [Card: Amii Sentinel; Forge: Lost Souls]
Win the 2-player scenarios Unexpected Visitors and Into the Jungle on Advanced / Expert difficulty or higher.

Evacuation Expert [Progressive Banner: Bronze rank ➜ Ember rank]
Win the 2-player scenario Unexpected Visitors on Expert difficulty in under 35 / 33 / 31 / 29 / 27 minutes.

Earth, Wind, Fire [Avatar: Tribal] 
Win the 2-player scenario Into the Jungle on Expert difficulty after defeating all 3 bosses in a single match.

Honor Bound [Booster: 1 General; Avatar: Mo Ocean] 
Play BattleArena [3 matches & 10 matches]

[ Existing Achievement Changes ]

Giver and Taker of Life (PvE) & Path of Insight (PvP)
Both achievements now grant progressive Amii borders in line with the requirements of other faction borders. Borders will be added to the player's account retroactively based on achievement progress.

 

Legacy Server
While we are happy with the game's development since its revival, we understand that there are some parts of old BattleForge that players might miss. In response to this feeling, we have created a legacy server. This legacy server is equivalent to BattleForge the day it was shut down, with none of the balance changes, new cards, or new maps that have occurred as part of Skylords Reborn's continued development being included. The legacy server functions similarly to the public test server in that the player already has all cards and upgrades. To access the legacy server navigate to the game folder, in standard installations the game folder is be found at C:\Games\Skylords Reborn, and start StartBattleForgeLegacy.bat. From there, you login with your normal account information. 

Game Balance Changes

[ Global Balance Changes ]

 Amii faction passive scaling: Amii's faction passive Elusive now scales based on the unit's tier.

• Tier 2: 10% less Freeze and Paralyze duration. 
• Tier 3: 20% less Freeze and Paralyze duration. 
• Tier 4: 30% less Freeze and Paralyze duration. 

Legendary building restrictions: Legendary buildings are now one-per-player, not one-per-team.

Random PvE 1p starting void power: Starting void power has been changed to account for the Amii Monument changes.

• Standard / Standard+ (Difficulties 1-2): 600 starting void power
• Standard++ to Expert+ (Difficulties 3-8): 700 starting void power

[ Card Changes ]

 Amii Monument:
1. Power Cost: 250p ➜ 125p
2. Ability Cost: 140p ➜ 100p
3. Orbs granted by Amii Monument no longer increase a player’s tier. Players still gain access to cards within their current tier that require the orb granted by Amii Monument. For example, if a player has 3 Fire orbs via normal Monuments, and builds a Nature orb via Amii Monument, they will still be T3, but will be able to summon Juggernauts and heal them via Equilbrium.
   A. Description - “Switch into this mode to gain one tierless Shadow Orb. This orb will not increase a player's tier, but will allow the player to play cards within their current tier that would require this Orb. The Orb will be ready and functional after 10 seconds. It cannot be switched back for 30 seconds.”

Amii Monument in its existing state is a cheat card. It breaks a map's design, allowing players unfettered access to T4 cards when the map is balanced around the player only having access to T3 cards and creating a persistent toxic effect on the normal game experience.

Amii Monument removes an entire tier from the game. This has a disruption impact on the game experience by changing deckbuilding at its core. In decks without Amii Monument, the player needs to consider how many cards they can budget for each tier and choose accordingly. With Amii Monument in a deck, the player can simply remove all T3 cards from their deck besides Amii Monument itself (spells like Infect which scale well into T4 are the exception), opening up more deck slots for T1, T2, and T4 cards. Consider also that nearly all PvE maps are functionally finished before the player ever reaches T4. Combined with the fact that T4 cards are significantly stronger than T3 cards (the power difference between T4 and T3 cards is the single largest increase in card strength between tiers) means that the player requires fewer T3 and T4 cards in their deck, allowing the use of more card slots for T1 and T2. This heavily warps the game experience by making the player stronger than the map is designed to account for at all tiers, not just once the player reaches T3. 

There is also the psychological effect Amii Monument has upon players. Since we first started balancing cards in Skylords Reborn, players have asked us to nerf Amii Monument, not just because of the balance issues, but because they felt compelled to always include it in their deck regardless of the situation. This is unsurprising as many game studios have recognized that players in general will choose the most efficient option, even to the detriment of their own enjoyment. And who of us have not experienced this? How many of us have not used mind-numbingly boring methods to grind in games just because it is the fastest way to procure loot, even if it ends up making us hate the game? Who has not included Amii Monument as a default deck option at some point in their time playing Skylords Reborn?

To briefly summarize, Amii Monument undermines map design, deckbuilding, and possesses a factor that makes players feel compelled to include it in their decks, even when they know it undermines their own enjoyment. While designing our new maps, including not just the two maps releasing with this patch but the multiple additional maps currently in development, we found ourselves face to face with these issues in a way that made the card's problems no longer ignorable. For all these reasons and more, we felt that the time had finally come to nerf Amii Monument. Yet we do not want to destroy the card. The new design is tailored towards enabling unique, previously impossible, deckbuilding possibilities, in direct opposition to its previous design. We also realized that many T3 cards were not generally strong enough to be satisfying to use, so we dedicated almost the entire last patch to adding new T3 options through buffs, reworks, and new cards, and we are dedicated to continuing this project next patch. 

Lastly, we understand that this change will upset many people, but we hope you will see that we did not make this choice lightly. We do not enjoy nerfing cards players like, but we do it because we think it is the best choice for the game. At the same time, we think that the time of major nerfs is now at an end with these changes to Amii Monument, and we as a team commit to no further nerfs on the scale of Amii Monument or the previous Batariel nerf from 2 years ago to existing cards going forward.

 Dying Breed:
1. Power cost: 100p ➜ 90p
2. Orb cost: 1 Fire, 2 Neutral (T3) ➜ 2 Fire, 1 Neutral (T3)
2. Tainted Plunder (p):
   A. Description - Target enemy unit is filled with plunder. If the target enemy dies within the next 30 seconds, all friendly fire units in a 25m radius gain Looter for 25 seconds. Units with Looter harvest the bound power of enemies. Up to 10% of an enemy's original power costs can be harvested relative to the amount of its maximum life points received as damage. Reusable every 30 seconds.
3. Gifted Plunder (g): 
   A. Description - Target enemy unit is filled with plunder and takes 30 damage per second. If the target enemy dies within the next 30 seconds, all friendly fire units in a 25m radius gain Looter for 25 seconds. Units with Looter harvest the bound power of enemies. Up to 7% of an enemy's original power costs can be harvested relative to the amount of its maximum life points received as damage. Reusable every 30 seconds.
4. New FX to go with the new card effect.

One of our long-term design projects is trying to give other factions besides Pure Shadow, with its Resource Booster, the ability to accelerate their power in higher tiers. We started this with changes to Nature's power flow via Forest Elder and Promise of Life, and now we are turning our eyes to Fire. Most Fire players are responsible for building 2 Shrines of War as soon as they get T3, immediately putting them behind by 300 power. Combined with high power cost units in T4, this gives Fire a painfully slow start with a frequent reliance on hoping your allies brought a Breeding Grounds for you to use. After carefully considering our options to accelerate Fire's power gain, we decided to bring back the Looter mechanic, but have it applied only temporarily with moderate percentages. We choose Dying Breed as the rework target because its previous effect was unsalvageable. The changes should allow Fire to use Dying Breed in early T3 to accelerate the transition into T4, or to payoff the bound power invested into Shrine of War, without being so strong as to cause Fire's power gain to grow out of control. 

 Fire Force (Formerly Girl Power):
1. Change name: Girl Power ➜ Fire Force
2. Power cost: 50p ➜ 80p
3. Blessed Morale (b): 
   A. Description - Target own melee unit will be designated the champion of Fire. All friendly melee units in a 30m radius will take 20% less damage. If at least 2 enemies die within a 30m radius of the champion within a 10 second period, the damage reduction increases to 50% for 15 seconds. Lasts until the champion dies, or until a different champion is chosen. There may only be one champion of Fire per player at a time. Reusable every 60 seconds.
4. Infused Morale (r):
   A. Description - Target own melee unit will be designated the champion of Fire. All friendly melee units in a 30m radius will deal 25% more damage. If at least 2 enemies die within a 30m radius of the champion within a 10 second period, the damage buff increases to 50% for 15 seconds. Lasts until the champion dies, or until a different champion is chosen. There may only be one champion of Fire per player at a time. Reusable every 60 seconds.
5. New FX to go with the new card effect.

Girl Power was an odd card that did not fit within the game. It was never clear to the player what cards were men, which were women, and which were neither. We did not see a way to salvage the card as it was, so we reworked it into a tool to enable new melee based strategies in Fire decks. The newly minted Fire Force is a permanent spell effect that you apply to a single unit which transforms that unit into a leader type unit. Allies around the leader are buffed, either with increasing damage reduction or increasing damage dealt, when enemies around the leader unit die. Our hope is that this card enables previously niche T2 and T3 melee units to become viable options in PvE.

 Grove Spirit:
1. Movement speed: 4.8 m/s ➜ 6.4 m/s (normal L/XL-speed)
2. Life points: 1100 ➜ 1600
3. Healing Song cost: 90p ➜ 60p

Grove Spirit has found itself a niche in a deck which uses it alongside Offering to cycle Mind Control. The idea of this deck is to use Grove Spirit as ground presence while you build yourself an army out of your enemy's units. The issue is that Grove Spirit itself is slow and dies in one-shot to artillery buildings. We have given the unit a booster shot of life points and made her undulate her tentacles faster, alongside a discount to the Healing Song ability. Pending any further rework to the unit, we hope in the meantime that this helps the unit in the one niche it has found for itself.

 Lost Dancer:
1. Tainted Blast affinity effect: 50% more damage against humans ➜ 30% more damage against humans

Lost Dancer has proven too strong in PvP and we are toning down the extra damage against humans to bring her back in-line. 

 Lost Manabeast:
1. Immortalize requirement: 7 enemy life essences ➜ 3 enemy life essences

Immortalize's enemy requirement is too strict, making it overly difficult to make good use of the ability. We are substantially reducing the requirements to hopefully give Lost Manabeast a better synergy with Revenant strategies. 

[ NPC & Map Changes ]

 Spearmen (NPC):
1. Toggle ability Defensive Formation: 25% damage reduction now applies properly

 Fire Emitter (Slavemaster version):
1. Power cost: 2000p ➜ 200p

New NPC Entities: Available for use by official and community mapmakers.

• Added Frost NPC entities:
  • Units: War Eagle, Tremor, Mountain Rowdy, Northland Drake, Icespike, Avatar of Frost, Construct, Dreadnought, Core Dredge, Dredgling, Mountaineer, Tempest, Winter Witch
  • Buildings: Ice Launcher, Frost Crystal, Frontier Keep (large spawner), Kobold Inc. (small spawner)
• Added Amii NPC entities:
  • Amii Crossbowmen, Amii Paladins, Amii Phantom, Amii Sentinel, Amii Keep

Bad Harvest: Both orbs near the Treasure Wagon now spawn when a player in position 3 is playing solo.

The Soultree: The map now requires all 5 normal orbs to be built or under construction to fulfill the map's victory requirement. Amii Monument no longer counts towards this goal. 

[ Bugfixes & Miscellaneous Changes ]

• Fixed card descriptions in various languages.
• The longstanding issue which caused players' games to slowdown substantially when they destroyed multiple frozen air units at once, has now been fixed. The most well known occurrence of this bug was connected to Shatter Ice. 
• Dropdowns for rankings are no longer scrollable.

[T2 Stonekin flying dmg unit Critter]

I would agree with SunWu that even if we did add a new Stonekin flying unit, it would not use the Magma Spore model, as this model already as too much overlap with Stonekin units. Whether we do add another one eventually is up in the air. There are no plans for one right now, but things can always change.

I do think it fits Stonekin to be a primarily ground-based faction. They are living rocks after all. Keeping factions from becoming too heterogeneous, and overlapping too much with each other, is something we want to avoid. The goal is for each faction to play differently, to give a player a unique experience in comparison to other factions, and the lack of flying units is part of that experience in Stonekin.

[Map-specific Deck Log]

No estimate on either. The AV issues really slowed down our development track but now with that mostly under control we can hopefully get back to them both soon. 

[Map-specific Deck Log]

There will be more challenges for specific factions in the future as part of the elemental masteries content we have planned. Players will be encouraged to master each faction through various challenges and be rewarded for it. 

[One mixed orb Lost Souls/Stonekin/Bandit/Amii]

People have offered a few different suggestions for how to achieve this over the years, as it really is a very commonly reoccurring suggestion, and while it could probably be done in a way that bypasses the game's technical limits, I do not see what it adds to the game in a real sense. Yes, now you can play a specific hybrid faction from T1-T4, but the units we would introduce as part of this would need to be purposefully underpowered, and therefore no one would actually want to start with them. I think players significantly underestimate how fine-tuned of a machine T1 is in both PvP and PvE. This is the part of the game where we take the most care in making any changes, because nearly every card is theoretically usable in all game modes.

Consider then what adding a T1 Bandit unit to the game would actually mean. It would need to be balanced in both T1 Fire and T1 Shadow, simultaneously, in every game mode. This is just not realistic. It is more likely it would be balanced in one but not the other, overpowered in one but not the other, overpowered in both, or most likely, underpowered in both because we do not want to destroy what we have spent 4 painstaking years fixing. There is also the fact of how many dev resources this would require. To make this something worthwhile, we are talking 2-3 new units for each hybrid faction, because we would not be moving almost any T2 units down to T1, which means 8-12 new artworks, FXs, and card designs. Is this really what the community wants us to focus our energy on? 

So I get the reason why people want this to happen and why it would be cool, but for pragmatic reasons it just never will. We are not going to upend our carefully constructed T1 balance or shift our focus to introducing T1 cards which ultimately the game does not need. We would rather continue to flesh out existing factions with new tools, continue building the Amii faction to the point where it is actually on-par with Lost Souls or Stonekin, and hopefully in the farther future introduce a new Fire/Frost faction.  

[Community Update - September]

If the reasoning we provided is itself somehow not sufficient, we have years worth of feedback to support every conclusion we presented. We have testimonies from players who said they quit because of Amii Monument and many others who asked us to nerf it specifically because they cannot stop themselves from using it despite not wanting to. We have the data to show it has an absurdly high playrate for a T3 card and that most other T3 cards have correspondingly low playrates. And it is not like any of this came out of nowhere, the problems with Amii Monument have been discussed for years. When the balance discord opened back in 2019, some players were begging the devs to remove Amii Monument from the game before the rerelease, or at least to lock it behind so massive a wall that the vast majority of the playerbase could not touch it. Clearly, for these players, "just don't play it" was not a sufficient response to what they knew the card did to their own ability to play and enjoy the game as they liked (it ought to be obvious that compulsion is not just the providence of drugs, but that many things in life have this almost involuntary-pull upon a person). After all, their calls for the card's removal were hardly related to its competitive nature.

As mentioned by Cocofang, when we presented these changes several months ago to players on our balance discord, we also wanted to change Enlightenment. The goal was to remove Tier skipping from the game entirely. But we did not just force it through. We presented the team's reasoning and the community responded. There was a solid majority of people who supported the Amii Monument change, with some mild trepidation that the new iteration might not be strong enough (and if it is not, we will buff it, but playtesting data looks good). On the other hand, while a majority of players were willing to trust us about Enlightenment, most did not actually want to see it changed. They could understand and support the Amii Monument changes, it was obviously a cheat card, but Enlightenment had many more restrictions on it and had been part of the game since its inception, to lose it now would seem to be losing something essential to Skylords Reborn. We listened to the players and have since promised not to change Enlightenment. This was the compromise. If that is not enough, we also pulled back on proposed changes to Architect's Call originally intended for this patch after we received mixed community feedback. These instances show that the feedback system is working. 

Also, frankly, it is unreasonable, uncharitable, and insulting to think that we did not bother to talk to players, look at data, and carefully weigh all available options before making a change of this magnitude. You can disagree with our conclusion, but only a person who wants a reason to complain would ever read such malicious incompetence into our choice, and it says much more about them than it does about us or the changes presented.

[Change Forsaken, Nox Trooper and Rifle Cultists Class from Human to Undead.]

Overall, I think it would be beneficial to take a look through the various factions and to consider if there are any misapplied species/race tags. I think this is particularly important now that we have multiple viable cards which directly interact with the tags and it is better to have them figured out now, when we would be changing cards to work with them, then later and possibly mess something up. 

I think changing Forsaken and Rifle Cultists to Undead is a real option. I do not think I agree on Nox Trooper. My impression is that Nox Trooper is a still living human which has been cybernetically augmented and ritually reinforced to function as the foot soldiers of the Church of the Rifle, and not a living zombie akin to a monk of the rifle. 

[Community Update - September]

Is Amii Monument's playrate going to decrease, likely severely, after this change? Yes. That is to be expected of a card included in 33% of all PvE decks across all PvE modes (community, campaign, rPvE). This card has the same playrate as a T1 staple card like Windweavers, Surge of Light, or Nomads. No T3 card should have a play rate even close to this level, especially not a legendary. 

I also think it is bad reasoning to argue a change is bad because it will decrease a card's playrate, when that card's high playrate is the exact reason why an entire tier of cards have low playrates. Amii Monument's loss becomes all of T3's gain. Regardless, we do still want the card to be useful, and play tests have suggested it still is.

Right now, the card is an auto-include in most scenarios. It is the rework's goal for Amii Monument to enable new deck archetypes. Post-rework, players will need to consider if it is worth the slot and adjust accordingly. That is a good thing! Players should always be considering this, no card should be an auto-include. If Amii Monument proves too weak, we will buff it. But we are going into new territory here, so we are being a bit conservatively initially with the numbers.

[Community Update - September]

5 minutes ago, GeekAlot said:

Batariel nerf ? where ? 😮

 

The Batariel nerf (and subsequent re-buff) happened 2 years ago. We were just referencing it. 

[Community Update - September]

3 hours ago, Jodekoek said:

 What about enlightenment? Will it be touched? I hope not, personally. I feel as it is requires 2 nature orbs it doesn't negative impact the game diversity the same way.

We stated at the end of the Amii Monument explanation that we commit to no further major rework nerfs on existing cards. This means we will not be nerfing Enlightenment now or in the future.

[Quest & Achievement Suggestions - Megathread]

Rainbow Trifecta: Complete an expert campaign map, featured community map, and rPvE game with all members of your team using cards that require every orb type and at least one legendary. 

[Deck Builds]

More precisely it is: SMJ Community Decks. It also allows you to filter decks by map or game mode. You can then take the deck code and use the /importdeck function in-game to add it directly to your deck collection. 

SMJ is a great website which has a market tool for checking card prices, a card builder, a booster simulator, and (obviously) a deck builder, where you can publish your decks publicly. 

[Combination of Corsair's Inspirational call and bloodthirst doesnt work]

Mutating Frenzy's Deathwish stacks infinitely with itself. Bloodhorn's enrage will stack with the XL-counter and modify the stampede damage. 

Unholy Power gives you ammo. Each ammo = 1 life point. For every extra point of damage you deal, or for every point of damage you prevent with the damage reduction, 1 ammo is used up. When all ammo is used up, the ability ends. 

[Combination of Corsair's Inspirational call and bloodthirst doesnt work]

6 hours ago, Havran said:

The problem is in stacking of these two spells, just one works at the time. 

Hello Havran,

The failure of these spells to stack is not a bug, but a feature. In BattleForge, there is a distinction between internal and external buffs. Only the strongest external buff applies, while all internal buffs stack. What is an external buff? It is something which is added to the unit/building from outside of itself (f.e. Corsair aura, Bloodthirst, Home Soil, etc.). An internal buff is something the unit applied to itself and only itself (f.e. Bloodhorn's Tainted Enrage, Dreadnought's Shattering Blow, and a unit's counter (S/M/L/XL/Siege)). These internal effects will stack infinitely. 

The one exception to the stacking rule is ammo effects. The most common example would be Unholy Power, which stacks with everything, but which only has a limited amount of ammo before it depletes.

[Patch #400047 - 29 June 2024]

19 hours ago, Draconnor said:

i'm bit afraid. 

I think we have proven sufficiently that we can be trusted to make balance adjustments to cards without killing them when we specifically state we do not intend to kill them. Consider that in the past you needed 360-420p to fully support one Razorleaf (now only 240p), and that each root network could only contain a maximum of 10 support (now unlimited), meaning that you could not even have 2 fully supported Razorleaves next to each other. So the existing networks are cheaper, more flexible (different units, Sylvan Gate), and stronger than they used to be. All that extra power and flexibility has let players easily cover Razorleaf's weaknesses with cards like Strangehold, Healing Gardens, and Timeshifter Spirit. So it is not surprising an already top-tier card became too powerful when combined with all these indirect buffs, something which has become very apparent in several of the defense-based maps we have been developing. 

Per the other comments: Cherrypicking a single, very niche, situation where Spore Launcher can be better does nothing to say Razorleaf is not too powerful and in need of a nerf. Any person who has used the card in its intended environment, with a well-built root network deck, would not say that Razorleaf is not that strong, especially compared to all other T3 defenses in existence. Measuring the card in a random duel with other units also completely misses the point, as Razorleaf defenses are intended to be layered defenses. You can get a Stranglehold, a Timeshifter, a Healing Gardens, and Promise of Life the Razorleaf (i.e. unbind it) for less power than it takes to go T4, assuming you even have access to T4 in a given campaign map (which is often not the case). 

[Patch #400047 - 29 June 2024]

On 7/8/2024 at 8:46 PM, Draconnor said:

what changes to Razorleaf?


nevertheless - great work with update 😉

Razorleaf will likely see a slight damage nerf in the future. The card was already stronger than most T4 defenses before we made any changes, and our root network rework made it even stronger. While it is an iconic part of the game, and we intend to keep it very strong, we want to tone it down to be closer to a strong T4 unit than a functionally T5 unit, which only requires T3 to access. Razorleaf also shoves out all other options for root network decks once you reach T3. The amount of power creep we would need to introduce to make Spore Launcher or Howling Shrine viable alternatives is far in excess of what would be acceptable given the strength of the game content. 

[Patch #400047 - 29 June 2024]

On 6/30/2024 at 5:33 AM, Carofex said:

is it possible to add the visible radius on the ground for the necroexplosion ability of lost dancer.

We can probably make this happen, I'll ask our card implementers.

[Patch #400047 - 29 June 2024]

Patch #400047 - Summer Swarm

Welcome to our newest patch. This update contains our thirteenth balance patch for the game and two brand-new cards!

Patch Preview

• Two new cards are now available! Jump in-game to collect Swarm and Icespike!
• A large amount of balance changes, mostly to T3 cards, in preparation for our release of the new campaign maps later in the year. 

General Changes

• Synced Map of the Day reset with Daily Quests, the achievement tip for Map of the Day now displays the full date with time when last completed.
• Added the statistic "time spent in matches" to the in-game profile. 
• Using the text search in the achievements window will now also look for missing maps and missing cards. For example, if you search "Crusade," it will return all achievements related to the PvE map Crusade that are still incomplete.  
• Added friend list and ignore list capacity indicator to the UI.
• Increased the friend list limit from 200 to 300 total accounts.
• Added more information to logs when getting errors or crashes, which should help us better diagnose the cause of game instabilities. 
• Added "Don't show again" to multiple Yes/No dialog boxes in the game. 

General Fixes

• Fixed game connections not being properly closed when the match ends. This should hopefully improve game stability.
• Fix AFK players BFP reserve drain considering more playtime than up to the last action.
• Fixed context menu items showing as white when clicked.
• Fixed visual bug of charge count not decreasing when removing upgrades.

New Cards

Icespike - 110p T3 Frost Unit 
You will find the upgrades for this card on the map "Siege of Hope".
 
Active - Frozen Blanket:
Activate to bestow up to 5 friendly units within a 20m radius with an Ice Shield. Each Ice Shield absorbs up to 620/620/680/800 damage for 30 seconds and can be strengthened to absorb up to 2000 damage. Reusable every 30/20/20/20 seconds.
Passive - Brrrr!:
Attacked units are frozen for 15 seconds. After freeze wears off, targets are immune against Freeze for 10 seconds.

For more information, check out Community Update - May 2024.

Swarm - 90p T3 Nature Spell 
You will find the upgrades for this card on the map "Titans".

Spell - Beetle Infestation:
Summons a swarm of 4 Burrowers at the target location. The Burrowers have a lifetime of 20 seconds and do not provide ground presence to play out cards or claim structures next to them. Additionally, they are immune to revive effects and cannot be infected with the Twilight Curse. Reusable every 25 seconds.

For more information, check out Community Update - June 2024.

Card Balance Changes

[ Tier 1 Changes ]

 Mark of the Keeper:
1. Removed enemy player card play block.

Since the introduction of Tectonic Shift, Mark of the Keeper + Tectonic has become a PvP combo capable of completely disabling the enemy player's ability to respond and defend themselves. We are removing the card block ability to allow players to still summon cards inside a MotK aura. This will have no effect on PvE and this change does not affect the NPC version of Mark of the Keeper. 

 Thugs & Strikers:
1. Add "Marauder" tag to the game and add to Thugs and Strikers.
2. Change "Gang Up!" from "orcs" to "marauders."

We have been quite happy with the Gang Up! ability on Strikers and Thugs, but it currently has some weird interactions with Twilight Minions who are orcs but not part of the gang. We would also like to expand the Gang Up! ability to other cards, so we are swapping the effect from the species tag "orcs" to the new "marauder" tag both Thugs and Strikers already possess. 

[ Tier 2 Changes ]

 Banditos (incl. Corsair summons):
1. Alliance friendly unit requirement: 3 per stage ➜ 2 per stage
2. Blessed Alliance Rework:
   A. No longer based on nearby enemies
   B. Now grants increasingly more damage reduction based on number of friendly units nearby.
   C. Description - The unit will be incited to resist more damage when being surrounded by friendly units within a 25m radius. Per every 2 friendly ground units around them Banditos will receive 20% less damage up to a maximum of 6 units that will spur them on.

Part of our focus in the next 2 patches is to enable melee-based PvE strategies in the lower tiers. As part of this, we are enhancing Banditos' swarm identity by reducing the total number of Banditos needed to activate their bonuses. This will also indirectly buff Corsair. The new Frost affinity will grant scaling defensive bonuses, allowing Banditos (b) to act as a powerful frontline for Bandit armies.

 Befallen's Curse:
1. Power cost: 100 ➜ 90
2. Tainted Disease (p) damage reduction: 25% ➜ 40%
3. Both affinities: Fix the last infection's damage to properly match infection duration (180 dmg ➜ 200)

  Burrower:
1. Active ability Tunneling:
 - Change availablity from only U1/U2/U3 ➜ all upgrades.
2. Active ability Acid Spit:
 - Decreased damage from 850/850/1000/1100 (2550/2550/3000/3300 in total) ➜ 800/850/950/1100 (2400/2550/2850/3300 in total).
 - Fixed incorrect handling of overkill damage.
 - Fixed missing damage against mounted units on affected wall segments.
 - Added a preview of the ability radius that is displayed on hover over the activation button.
 - Changed display order on card visualization and tooltip from first ability to second ability to match activation icon order.

 Deep One:
1. Tainted catch debuff strength: 25% ➜ 40%

 Gladiatrix:
1. Sobering (both affinities) cooldown: 20 seconds ➜ 10 seconds

 Icefang Raptor:
1. Blessed Reserve (b) damage reduction: 30% ➜ 35%
2. Infused Reserve (r) damage reflection: 35% ➜ 60%

 Knight of Chaos:
1. Chaos range increased 20m ➜ 25m
2. Life Points: 900/900/950/950 ➜ 970/970/1020/1020
3. Fixed an issue where the aura would not affect units currently already affected by another instance of the debuff.
4. Added a preview of the ability radius that is displayed on hover over the unit, but only while the ability is active.

Pure Shadow is on the weak side in the current PvP meta. As a result, we are buffing Knight of Chaos to provide more reliable crowd control and to function as a better high health target for spell/ability combinations such as nasty surprise, mage bomb, and corpse explosion.

 Lost Dancer:
1. Blast damage: 80, up to 120 in total (670 dp20) ➜ 100, up to 150 in total (830 dp20)
2. Blast auto-cast range: 30m ➜ 40m
3. Tainted Blast human damage: 100% ➜ 50%
4. Infused Siege: 50% ➜ 30%

The +10m auto-attack range increase and +25% damage increase should improve Dancer's viability in both PvP and PvE. We reduced affinity specific damage bonuses to compensate for these other buffs, though the specific damage to structures and humans relative to each affinity remains largely the same. 

 Lyrish Knight:
1. Surge of Strength frozen damage buff: 50% ➜ 80% more damage

 Rageclaws:
1. Class: "Human Soldier" ➜ "Human Marauder"
2. Add "Gang Up!" to Rageclaws
3. Add “Group Pressure” to Rageclaws

Rageclaws now have Gang Up! and combo with Thugs and Strikers. 

 Revenant's Blessing:
1. Infused Immortal (r) damage buff: 30% ➜ 50% more damage
2. Bugfix: Now properly stacks with Lost Manabeast's Immortalize ability. 

Previously Revenant's Blessing, when combined with Manabeast's Immortalize ability, would cause Lost Wanderers and Lost Shades to instantly die. While we have fixed this instant-death issue, we have introduced an alternative issue where Immortalize, when combined with Revenant's Blessing, now makes the revenants of Lost Wanderer and Lost Shade live forever. While neither issue is ideal, we think it is better for the bug to benefit the players until we can figure out a permanent solution to the problem.

 Stone Shards:
1. Blessed Fury: Ignore freeze damage reduction ➜ Ignore freeze damage reduction and deal 50% more damage to frozen targets

 Stone Tempest:
1. Stone Wrath damage:  30/32/36/41 (45/48/54/62 in total) [840/890/1000/1140 dp20] ➜ 35/37/41/46 (52/55/61/69 in total) [870/920/1020/1150 dp20].

[ Tier 3 Changes ]

 Aura of Pain:
1. Power cost: 100/100/100/90 ➜ 90/90/90/80
2. Duration: 30 seconds ➜ 40 seconds
3. Card charges: 6/8/10/12 ➜ 10/14/17/20

Slight changes to Aura of Pain to encourage stacking the spell on own melee units. 

 Backlash:
1. Power cost: 120p ➜ 110p
2. Cooldown: 30 seconds ➜ 25 seconds

Small buff to Backlash to allow Fire decks to counter Swarm in T3. 

 Corsair:
1. Assistance cooldown: 90 / 90 / 60 / 60 seconds ➜ 45/45/30/30 seconds.
- Toggle ability Concentrate of summoned Commandos (Shadow):
  - Increased the activation cost from 10 power ➜ 20 power.

 Infect:
1. Total targets: 7/7/10/10 ➜ 6/6/8/8 enemies affected

Infect is one of the strongest spells in the game. We are slightly reducing the total targets to reduce its strength in ideal scenarios. 

 Lost Banestone:
1. Bugfix: Everlasting: No longer extends the lifetime of other temporary entities, but only Revenants.

 Lost Manabeast:
1. Bugfix: Increase attack speed to 3 seconds

Lost Manabeast has a slower attack speed than listed on the card, making the card deal around 25% less damage than originally intended.

 Lost Vigil:
1. Celestial Blast damage: 90, up to 135 (1125 dp20) ➜ 108, up to 162 (1350 dp20)
2. Invigoration damage: 135, up to 200 (1675 dp20) ➜ 162, up to 243 (2025 dp20)

Lost Vigil has languished ever since its nerf soon after the release of the Lost Souls edition in Phenomic times. It was nerfed at the time due to being overpowered in PvP. Since then, we have significantly buffed T3 anti-air units in PvP, so we now feel safe to give her a 20% damage buff.

 Magma Hurler:
1. Life points: 975/1000/1130/1270 ➜ 900/940/1020/1140

Slight tamper down on Magma Hurler’s life points. Magma Hurler has long been the go-to unit for Fire in T3 and it became more so when we buffed its damage several patches ago. While we are buffing up other Fire options in this and the next patch, we are slightly nerfing Magma Hurler to make space for those other options without killing the card.

 Northland Drake:
1. Tornado general changes:
   A. Duration: 15 seconds ➜ 8 seconds
   B. Damage per second: 108, up to 162 ➜ 232, up to 348
   C. Tornado length: 30m ➜ 35m
2. Blizzard power cost: 70p ➜ 50p
3. Blessed Blizzard (b) freeze speed: Every 3 seconds ➜ Every 1.5 seconds
4. Infused Blizzard (r) extra damage: 100 damage ➜ 200 damage.

The goal with these changes is to double the speed of the tornado and to adjust the other numbers accordingly to maintain existing damage and freeze numbers. The hope is that this will make the tornado more usable through higher responsiveness.

 Nox Carrier:
1. Infused Necrostrike (r) Ripper count: 2 ➜ 3 Rippers summoned
2. Tainted Necrostrike (p) poison damage 40 ➜ 50 damage per second

 Sandstorm:
1. Power cost: 140p ➜ 100p

Sandstorm remains well outside of general viability despite the previous buffs. Instead of increasing card damage, we have reduced the card’s power cost again to encourage using it as a crowd control alternative.

 Shadow Insect:
1. Damage: 1200 dp20 ➜ 1440 dp20

 Sleet Storm:
1. Spell duration 10 seconds ➜ 15 seconds

 Soulhunter:
1. Minefield damage: 80/80/100/100 against units and 21.25/21.25/25/25 against structures (240/240/300/300 in total) ➜ 160/160/200/200 against units and 20/20/25/25 against structures (480/480/600/600 in total).

Buffing up Soulhunter's ability to not be outcompeted by its T2 spell equivalent. 

 Spitfire:
1. Ground Bomb damage: 270/290/320/350 (405/435/480/530 in total) [5510/5610/5760/5920 dp20] ➜ 376/396/426/466 (565/595/640/700 in total) [5880/5980/6130/6330 dp20]
2. Siege: 100% ➜ 50%

Move damage out of siege and into the ground bomb itself to improve Spitfire’s usability outside of building siege situations. Damage to buildings remains identical while damage to non-buildings increases by 33%.

 Stronghold:
1. Power cost: 200p ➜ 230p
2. Passive ability To the Last!:
   A. Both stages of internal damage buff and damage reduction are now stackable with external sources of damage modification.
   B. Both stages of internal damage reduction can no longer be disenchanted.

Since the buffs and the release of Tectonic Shift, Stronghold has been too strong in both PvP and PvE. We are slightly increasing its cost to fit its new strength.  

 Tectonic Shift:
1. Initial spell application timer (cooldown): 20 seconds ➜ 10 seconds
   A. This is the spell application timer, not the teleport ability timer.

Allow players to apply Tectonic Shift to multiple towers more quickly. 

 Transcendence:
1. Orb cost: Shadow, Nature, Neutral, Neutral (T4) ➜ Shadow, Nature, Neutral (T3)

Give players access to Transcendence earlier, enabling more T3 army strategies.

 Unity:
1. Card charges: 6/8/10/12 ➜ 8/11/14/16

 Unstable Demon:
1. Demonic Rage:
   A. Movement speed bonus and acceleration 60% ➜ 100
   B. Duration 5 seconds ➜ 4 seconds
   C. Cooldown 15 seconds ➜ 5 seconds
2. Critical Mass damage : 560/700/900/900 (2000/2500/3000/3000 in total) ➜ 560/700/900/900 (4000/5000/6000/6000 in total)
  - Fixed incorrect handling of overkill damage.

 Virtuoso:
1. Trumpet of Jelicoo building damage:  600/675/750/825 (1700/1800/2000/2200 in total) ➜ 600/675/750/885 (1700/1800/2000/2200 in total)

We are currently reworking Girl Power into a melee-support card, and once it releases, it will, alongside this minor buff, allow Virtuoso to one-shot small spawn buildings with its ability. 

 Vulcan:
1. Flamethrower damage: 120 per second (2400 dp20) ➜ 140 per second (2800 dp20)
2. Conflagrate damage: 265 per second ➜ 280 per second

 Wrathgazer:
1. Power cost: 220p ➜ 200p
2. Disintegration speed: 150/150/150/165 ➜ 170/170/170/185 life points per second

[ Tier 4 Changes ]

 Colossus:
1. Thunderous Roar Rework:
   A. Releases a bloodcurdling roar that riles up Colossus. The unit will deal 75% more damage for 25 seconds. Additionally, Lumbering Step is activated for 25 seconds. Reusable every 30 seconds.
2. New ability, "Lumbering Step":
   A. Turn Speed - Increase turn speed by 50% for the duration.
   B. Damage: 200, up to 1000 in total.
   D. Description: "While moving around unit knocks back small and medium units dealing 200 damage, up to 1000 in total to enemies. Affects ground units only. "
3. New Ability, "Colossal Birth": When being spawned the unit is undazed and displaces the earth, knocking back small, medium, and large units. Can be spawned nearby enemy units and structures excluding walls. Affects ground units only.

Colossus's rework design was previously decided upon with community help, but the final implementation never managed to happen due to a lack of implementation capacity and a later shift in priorities towards other factions. This rework will finally see the light of day and provide the long promised melee-partner for Forest Elder (b). Colossus's Roar gives it a major self-damage buff, allowing it to kill bosses quickly, while the Lumbering Step gives it a Thunder Wagon-esque ability to damage enemies just by walking through them. 

 Kobold Inc.:
1. Orb cost: 3 Frost, 1 Neutral ➜ 2 Frost, 2 Neutral
2. Blessed Speed-up (b):
   A. Speed-up & Description: 50% faster ➜ Construction time is reduced by 66%
3. Tainted Speed-up (p) drawback: 400 damage ➜ 25% of maximum life points lost on spawn
4. Add Construction Hut cost reduction effect (-25% power cost) to both affinities.
5. Initial cooldown: 60 seconds ➜ 0 seconds

As part of our continual focus on creating a new building archetype, we want to propose several changes to Kobold Inc. As a T4 Frost building, Kobold Inc. should be the ultimate building support. One issue is its orb requirements. All other Frost buildings and their support requires only 2 orbs (this is similar to how all root network cards are available for 2 orbs), but Kobold Inc. uniquely requires 3 orbs. We think this unnecessarily constrains the card and limits what is actually available to use with Kobold Inc, which right now it really only Stronghold or WBG unless Kobold Inc is enlightened. After this change, other cards like Volcano, Deepgorge, Hatecaster, Artillery, or Comet Catcher when player's orb swap for Sages will become available for use with Kobold Inc.

Next, we want to equalize the different affinities. We are increasing the frost affinity's speed-up while making the shadow affinity's penalty percentage based. This will make it a choice between rapid construction or instant construction with health loss. It also removes edge cases like U0 Altar of Nihil which is instantly destroyed by Kobold Inc. because it only has 400 life points. Additionally, we are adding Construction Hut's discount to Kobold Inc., which seems like an obvious addition. T1 cards shouldn't outcompete T4 cards in the same role. Last, we are removing the initial cooldown from the card as it functions as an unneeded time penalty. This is only step one of the changes to Kobold Inc., as we have more changes planned for the frost affinity to ensure it is a compelling choice instead of players defaulting to the shadow affinity. 

 Lost Evocation:
1. Power cost: 140p ➜ 110p
2. Blessed Revenant damage reduction buff: 50% ➜ 60%
3. Infused Revenant damage buff: 100% ➜ 120%
4. Affected units can now receive the buff again if they re-enter the area of effect and the previous buff's duration has expired.

 Lost Warlord:
1. Add affinity effects to revenant's spawned by Revenant's Doom.

 Spore Launcher:
1. Remove slow, now moves at normal XL speed (6.4 m/s).
2. Remove Siege, add XL-counter
3. Add L-knockback to Explosive Spores

We are trying out a minor identity change for Spore Launcher, making it more mobile with stronger built-in crowd control. We realize this is unlikely to make it the preferred choice for root network absent changes to Razorleaf. 

 Tortugun:
1. Eruption:
   A. Remove affinity effect from Eruption, change both Eruption affinities to current Fire affinity with the Fire affinity description (50m range).
2. New Devour Affinities:
   A. Blessed (b) Devour: "Additionally, unit receives 50% less damage for 20 seconds after consuming a unit."
   B. Infused (r) Devour: "Additionally, unit deals 100% more damage for 20 seconds after consuming a unit."

Tortugun's affinities are wildly unequal with one having 30m range and the other having 50m range. We are making both affinities have 50m range and moving the affinity effects to Devour. Players are now encouraged to strategically time feeding their Tortuguns to gain access to a large damage reduction or damage increase buff for a short time. 

 

Map Changes

Uro (PvP Map):
Removed both red-colored fortification walls (incl. official spectator version of the map).

King of the Giants (PvE Map):
1. The unlikely event of Jorne dying now results in game over instead of soft-locking the players into the map.
2. Increased the detection range for both Rogan and Jorne near the final cave to end the map by 15m. This should decrease instances of players failing to complete the map despite successfully guiding Rogan to his objective.

Blight (PvE Map):
Fixed a rare crash that occurred when players were destroying the objective spawn buildings as the timer ended. 

[Translation Forum]

The original game devs were German. Volin's point is that the German texts are not translated, they are the originals. The English, French, and Russian texts are translations from the German original. 

[Patch #400046 - 27 April 2024]

Right now the daily quests and Feel the Burn increase from advanced to expert level required once you reach an Ember PvE rank. This system has been in place since the game's release but if people were interested in changing it, we could cap it at advanced. 

[Official PvE Event #13: A Town in Need is a Town Indeed - UNTIL 14.05. 23:59 CEST]

For everyone excited about this map, the same map designer who created "A Town in Need" is one of the people working on our new official campaign maps. So you will see more from him very soon. 

[Autocast for toggleable global effects, or the ability to group 2 into 1 hotkey.]

Options B and C are impossible. We have tried to change it so that players can add multiple buildings to a group and still use the abilities but we have been unsuccessful. The reason Bedrock's abilities disappear when you have multiple is because the spawn ability was originally from a building and it keeps the same limitation.

Option A is possible, it is mostly a question of balance and if we want shrines to work like that. We have discussed making Cultist Master having an auto-cast summon ability to enable Furnace of Flesh + Cultist Master to function autonomously though less efficiently, but we have not pulled the trigger on that as an idea we want to implement at this time.

[Community Update - May 2024]

32 minutes ago, Kelieto said:

I was curious as to how map of the day functions. Some questions I have are is it randomly picked? Or is it on a set rotation? Are single player maps able to be map of the day?

Map of the Day is multiplayer only. We did this because we wanted to use it as a way to funnel players together on campaign maps similar to what happens with rPvE. The choice of which map is the MotD is random with weights. The longer a map has not been the MotD, the higher its chance to be chosen the next day.