WindHunter

The issue here is that the whole reason we designed the card was to put it on walls. With our defensive rPvE finally moving towards an endpoint in the foreseeable future, we are trying to add units which can be used in the game mode. The other issue is that design-wise we were intending to have it leave a pool of magma on the ground which burned enemies, but with 4 to 6 small worms this cluttered the screen. So, many small issues with the card, which is not that uncommon, but the community usually does not see the "failures." Yes, I agree. Also as a hint towards some coming changes to the upgrade system, we have redistributed all upgrades in the game across the maps evenly by rarity. So every map now has more-or-less the same number of Common, Uncommon, Rare, and Ultra Rare cards.

Wow, this update makes me look bad, why are we showing everyone I have only played a single map on standard? On a serious note: We also ran into the issue that Fire Wormlings were intended to work on walls and this seemed to bother most of our playtesters. We will consider whether we can fix the current issues and kept them mostly as-is, or if we will have to make them M-sized instead.

I would recommend posting a picture of the deck here along with the deck code.

Gold chests are receiving a change which will allow them to be opened even if units nearby are currently occupied doing something else (like shielding their allies). In terms of Lost Wanderer, I agree he could use some love. We can likely make his targeting prioritize units currently without shields. I do not think making it prioritize units in the same group is possible.

We are dealing with this. Expect changes soonish.

SpiritAlpha did a great job on both the card artwork and the model textures. Try using it with Promise of Life, it is a whole different card. Promise of Life is also useful in T4 to unbind your Forest Elder, greatly increasing your rate of building an army. We discovered this before releasing the last round of changes but did not have time to fix it. We are still investigating the issue. We do not think on-death abilities of this kind are fitting for Fire units. I think this is a great explanation of what makes the challenges different than our regularly occurring events. Several of the achievements are spins on previous events as well, but now there is no time or social pressure on the player.

It is difficult for me to say whether or not this was a conscious design choice, because I have no knowledge of a conversation about it. I remember previously asking for more global slots, but I do not ever remember discussing limiting the amount of buffs to only showing your own buff. It is very possible this discussion happened prior to me joining the team, or perhaps without my knowledge (remember I have only been lead designer for a year now), or perhaps so long ago I no longer remember. I have not followed the thread here, but I would be open to changes to the existing system which I think fails in several key ways to convey the information most important to the player at the time.

I would like to avoid a situation where players go searching through every map and player count in an attempt to find the "forgotten" mode where they can finally achieve a top 3 result. Ideally only one of a player's top 3 results would count, that player's highest, and the rest would be ignore. This way a player would got fifth could actually receive 3rd place if 2 of the people in front of him already received rewards previously, but I do not think we have that kind of modularity and it seems like it would be more effort than it is worth for an achievement that rewards only 3 booster packs once a month.

Hello everyone, It has been ten days now since the patch has released, and while this is not exactly a long time, I wanted to open a discussion and encourage everyone to provide feedback on the changes we have made to the game. Below are some of the topics of which we are most interested in soliciting feedback, though feel free to offer any suggestions regarding the patch and the current direction of the game. Do you like the changes to cards and factions (PvE and PvP)? Why or why not? Where did we hit the mark, and implement something exciting you'd like to see more of? Where did you miss the mark and what should we avoid in the future? Do you enjoy the new cards, are they balanced, etc.? What do you think of the new achievements? Which ones are fun and exciting? Which ones are frustrating and boring? Do you like the shift to cosmetic rewards instead of gameplay rewards like boosters and gold? You can also join us at our balance discord to further discuss changes to cards: https://discord.gg/jrGEBG9NT5

We as a dev team only have so many resources with which to work. Anything which has been announced but is not included in this patch will come in some future patch.

Card Balance Changes Global Balance Changes Ranged attack delays standardized: - Towers and ranged units are now assigned a standard 0.5 second delay on spawn instead of a semi-randomized number between 0.1-1 second in 0.1 second increments. This only modifies cards affected by the bug, many ranged units and towers will be unaffected by the change. If a tower or ranged unit's attack has a longer resolve timer than its attack speed, a number is assigned to said tower or unit on spawn between 0.1-1 seconds, which is permanently added to its attack speed. For examples, this means that while a certain tower might be capable of attacking every 2 seconds, if it is affected by this mechanic any particular instance of this tower spawned has an actual attack speed of between 2.1 seconds and 3 seconds. This means all affected towers are not created equal, even among towers of the same kind, and can have widely varying performances. Ranged cards with high attack speeds are impacted more strongly than ranged cards with low attack speeds, but all affected towers and units are inconsistent. Given that we have already begun to balance around the average attack speed of each ranged attack after we previously discovered the discrepancy, we did not want to simply remove the attack delay as it would potentially require us to once again rebalance all affected cards. Instead, we have opted to standardize the delay timer to 0.5 seconds, which is on average a slight buff to all affected cards, and which will henceforward make all ranged cards consistent with themselves. Card attack speed descriptions do not currently reflect the change. We will work to slowly remedy this over time as we continue our work to fix existing descriptive issues. PvE Balance Changes While changes are split here between PvE and PvP sections, many of the changes have important consequences for both game modes. Our PvE and PvP balance teams work closely together to ensure that the impact of all changes are evaluated for both game modes. Below, we have listed both the changes and our reasoning behind them. [ Tier 1 ] Nightguard: 1. Damage: 60 damage (450 dp20) ➜ 90 damage (675 dp20) 2. Add "Swift" ability to both affinities. 3. Gifted affinity ➜ Infused affinity: A. Add "Infused Fury" - Deals 50% more damage against elementals. Give swift to both affinities and make their difference be in species damage type. Substantially increased combat stats to make the unit more valuable when unable to immediately swap, but still primarily useful for swapping. Amazon (g): 1. Wildlife Protection healing amplification: 50% ➜ 65% Minor buff intended to make combinations like Amazon(g) + Werebeasts more rewarding. Strikers: 1. Remove "Looter" ability 2. Add new passive "Gang Up!": When being surrounded by at least 3 friendly orcs in a 25m radius, all incoming damage will be spread among all gang members relative to each unit's current life points. Additionally, affected units take 15% less damage. 3. Add new passive "Group Pressure": Unit is immune to Unity and its effects. We are giving Thugs' "Gang Up!" passive to Strikers and changing both Strikers and Thugs' abilities to work based on friendly orcs instead of just friendly Thugs. This will allow Strikers and Thugs to form a gang together, creating a new Fire T1 combo. Additionally, we are fully removing "Looter" from Strikers. Our balance team is currently in the beginning stages of reintroducing a rebalanced Looter ability to the game for higher tier units as part of a project to allow each faction to have a power acceleration mechanic. Shadow's Resource Booster is the most obvious example of such an acceleration mechanic. Nature also has existing acceleration tools in the Breeding Grounds effect (unit cost reduction) and Promise of Life (unbinding units). We think Looter could be a good tool to enable a unique acceleration mechanic for Fire. More details will be announced on this topic when proposals become more concrete. [ Tier 2 ] Earthkeeper: 1. Back Up ability rework: A. Can now be knocked back while ability is active. B. Duration: 30 seconds ➜ Until interrupted C. Power cost: 0p ➜ 25p Earthkeeper has a very powerful ability, particularly the blessed (b) affinity. By making it last indefinitely absent interruption, Earthkeeper can be used by Stonekin decks to set up incredibly durable defenses that do not need to be constantly maintained. We removed immobile to allow Earthkeeper to be knocked back, requiring good positioning, and added a 25p cost to increase initial set up cost in exchange for the indefinite duration. [ Tier 3 ] Abyssal Warder: 1. Power cost: 250p ➜ 240p 2. Crystal Spikes ability damage: 725, up to 2175 in total ➜ 800, up to 4800 in total 3. Class change: Giant Destroyer ➜ Ancient Destroyer Abyssal Warder has been much more viable since the buff to Promise of Life. Players can send Abyssal Warder on a suicide mission, cast Promise of Life just before death, and be rewarded with 2 L-sized warders and a new XL-sized one. This same Promise of Life can then be used in T4 to quickly unbind the player's initial Forest Elder. Even so, Abyssal Warder remains a weak option, and it struggles greatly against masses of weaker enemies. We are over doubling the total damage of its Crystal Spikes ability to allow it to clear crowds of weak enemies quickly and slightly decreasing its power cost to make it more efficient. Deepfang: 1. Damage: 150 damage per second (3000 dp20) ➜ 165 damage per second (3300 dp20) 2. Life points: 3200 ➜ 3500 3. Stonekin Critter (unit): A. Damage: 60, up to 90 in total (500 dp20) ➜ 72, up to 108 in total (600 dp20) B. Life points: 550 ➜ 750 Deepfang is currently underwhelming, particularly as a good portion of its strength relies on the continued existence of two weak support units. Once they die, Deepfang has worse stat efficiency than the almost pure support unit Rageflame. We are giving a general buff to the damage and life points of both Deepfang and its Stonekin Critters. In the future, we also intend to rework the unit's summoning mechanic and to allow Deepfang to cast Union even if its Critters have died. Rageflame: 1. Frostshower (both affinities): A. Now able to target air units. B. Freeze duration: 10 seconds ➜ 15 seconds 2. Blessed Frostshower (b) new affinity effect: Units frozen by this ability will receive full damage when attacked. 3. New passive, "Shatter Ice" (both affinities): The unit is able to ignore the usual damage reduction of frozen targets. Rageflame is meant to be a hybrid damage and support unit, but it does neither well. We are leaning more into its support aspects, while also removing the card's built-in anti-synergy by allowing it to always deal full damage to frozen targets. The unit's freeze duration has been increased, and it can now target air units, removing one of its major weaknesses. Additionally, the blue affinity's freeze allows all units to continue dealing full damage, giving players a choice between ignoring freeze's damage reduction or disabling buildings when choosing between affinities. Unity: 1. Gifted Sharing (g) regeneration: 40 life points every 2 seconds ➜ 50 life points every 2 seconds 2. Blessed Sharing (b) damage reduction: 25% ➜ 20% After the recent Fire changes, Unity(b) has proven too strong. The damage reduction double stacks (once when the initial unit is attacked, once when the remaining damage is transferred). This means that the actual damage reduction granted by the blue affinity is often substantially more than 25%. On the other hand, the green affinity has been the weaker of the two since the beginning. We are giving it a slight boost to hopefully make the decision between which affinity to bring more meaningful. Ward of the North: 1. Units under the effect of this spell can no longer be knocked back. Minor buff to the card to give players a reason to use it over its competitors Revenge and Stone Shell. [ Tier 4 ] Batariel: 1. Stage Duration (both affinities): A. Stage 1: 4 sec ➜ 5 sec B Stage 2: 4 sec ➜ 5 sec 2. Stage Threshold Value (both affinities): A. Stage 1: 1200 damage ➜ 800 damage 3. Damage per Stage Batariel (fire affinity): A. Stage 1: unchanged (100 dmg) B. Stage 2: 150 dmg ➜ 200 dmg C. Stage 3: 200 dmg ➜ 300 dmg Follow-up on previous changes which left Batariel's fire affinity too weak. Death Ray: 1. Leech Guns ability: A. Damage buff: 100% more damage ➜ 150% more damage B. Stored life point cost: 1 additional damage per 1 stored life point ➜ 1 additional damage per 0.66 stored life points Death Ray is a well-designed card which currently demands a substantial amount of deckbuilding cost and in-game micromanagement to make it work. While decent, Death Ray should give more to justify its high investment costs. This change increases Death Ray's damage buff while charged with life points, without otherwise increasing the amount of life points required to be harvested via Leech Guns. This should leave the current experience of the deck unchanged, except that it is now stronger. Fire Sphere: 1. Cooldown: 10 seconds ➜ 20 seconds The last round of buffs left Fire Sphere too strong. Instead of taking away from the aspects of the card that have quickly made it a top tier option, we are reverting a previous change to its cooldown. This should reduce the ability to spam the card, making its initial 10 second wind-up a more important factor to account for when using the spell. Forest Elder: 1. Pest Plants is now a basic ability that exists on both affinities of Forest Elder. A. Radius: 30m ➜ 20m B. Damage: 30 damage per second ➜ 40 damage per second 2. Forest Charm ability rework: A. No longer applies an effect to allies. Now functions more like a mobile Regrowth. B. New ability description: "Activate to release the power of the forest, creating a regenerative zone of 30m radius. Every 2 seconds, friendly units within restore up to 300 life points, up to 3000 in total. Also affects the caster. Lasts for 30 seconds. Reusable every 60 seconds." 3. Gifted Flower Power: The +25% damage buff now also applies to Forest Elder itself. Also affects Pest Plants. 4. Shadow Affinity (p) ➜ Frost Affinity (b): A. Blessed Flower Power effect: Friendly units now ignore slow caused by unit collision in a 30m range. Also applies to Forest Elder itself. 5. Class change: Beast Dominator ➜ Beast Commander Our testing found that Pest Plants was an essential component of Forest Elder's ability to clear early T4 camps and for all melee army compositions to succeed. As such, we added it to both affinities as a basic ability and adjusted its power level accordingly. To enable the all melee deck styles that arose during our testing, we added the ability for the new blue affinity Forest Elder to enable its allies and itself to ignore unit collision based slows. This makes melee armies substantially more dynamic. In general, the green affinity Forest Elder works best combined with Primeval Watcher, while the blue affinity Forest Elder works best when combined with Colossus and Grimvine. Finally, we reworked the Forest Charm healing ability. It is now substantially stronger than previously, as well as much more consistent in terms of expected healing. With these changes, the changes to Mind Control, and the release of Sanctuary, Pure Nature should be comparable in strength to other pure deck archetypes. Gemeye: 1. Damage: 550, up to 825 in total (2750 dp20) ➜ 650, up to 975 in total (3250 dp20) 2. Tainted Spit (p): A. All damage is now piercing B. Contamination damage: 55, up to 165 in total every second ➜ 50, up to 150 in total every second 3. Gifted Spit (g): A. Paralyze targets: 4 ➜ 5 B. Paralyze duration: 10 seconds ➜ 15 seconds Minor buff to Gemeye in general. Gemeye's two affinities widely vary in usefulness. The purple affinity can deal up to 3300 additional damage over 20 seconds, increasing its actual attack value to 5450 dp20. This damage also stacks if there are multiple Gemeyes. By contrast, the green affinity can paralyze up to 4 targets after a 5 second wait period for up to 10 seconds. 10 seconds is already a short duration for crowd control in T4 and the 5 second wait timer makes it even worse, as it is actually much longer when accounting for Gemeye's attack animation and projectile travel time. Additionally, paralyze effects cannot stack, and they quickly run afoul of crowd control's diminishing returns penalty if the player casts spells such as Curse of Oink or a freeze effect. Overall, this leads to the situation where in the vast majority of situations the purple affinity is far superior. The goal here is to break the two affinities into two different deck paths. By allowing the purple affinity to always pierce through damage reduction, it means that its damage will not be reduced when attacking frozen targets. On the other hand, the green affinity's built-in crowd control will synergize with splash options lacking CC and Noxious Cloud which deals a lot of damage but needs time to work. The changes should also allow the green affinity to do a better job when utilized as part of static defenses for its built-in crowd control. Grimvine: 1. Strangling Vines ability radius: 20m ➜ 25m Quality of Life change intended to make Grimvine's ability slightly better. Mind Control: 1. Power cost: 300p ➜ 250p 2. Charges: 4 ➜ 8 3. Takeover limit: 300p ➜ 350p 4. Allow to be used past population limit 5. Now cleanses all debuffs and makes mind controlled unit immune to all major debuffs for 15 seconds after cast. Mind Control is one of those cards which initially seems awesome because it enables you to take over your favorite enemy units, but soon after results in frustration. NPC enemies mostly lack abilities making them no more than stat sticks, charges are extremely limited, the card becomes useless when you hit population cap, your ally's Incredible Mo permanently debuffs the unit even when it becomes yours, and taking over major threats inside a camp usually results in almost instant crowd control into death. We have tried to address all of these issues at once. After the changes, Mind Control should provide a strong incentive to use 3 Nature orbs as well as provide a means by which Nature can bolster its unit-based strategy without binding power in the process. Shadow Worm: 1. Damage: 400, up to 600 in total (4000 dp20) ➜ 440, up to 660 in total (4400 dp20) 2. Life points: 3500 ➜ 4400 3. Mass Disintegration ability targets: May only disintegrate units ➜ May now disintegrate units and buildings 4. Earth Dive ability damage: 250, up to 1000 in total ➜ 325, up to 1300 in total Shadow Worm is the only T4 Pure Shadow unit in the game. While the previous buffs helped the card a lot, Shadow Worm remains by itself an insufficient payoff to give up a splash orb. It also, despite the buffs and its high orb restrictions, remained one of the lowest stat efficiency units in T4. With these changes, we are both giving a general buff to Shadow Worm's stats and making some changes to enable the two unique aspects of the card, its Mass Disintegration and its Earth Dive mechanic. Mass Disintegration will now be able to target buildings (but not spawns which have building immunity), giving the ability much needed flexibility. Shadow Worm's life points increase will also allow the unit to survive 5 seconds longer when disintegrating the maximum number of targets simultaneously. Additionally, the 30% damage increase to Earth Dive damage will enable a particularly unique playstyle given that Life Stealer also affects Earth Dive. Thunder Wagon: 1. Remove "Tainted Death" from shadow affinity 2. Change Shadow affinity (p) ➜ Frost affinity (b) A. Blessed Flamethrower (b): Now able to target air units. [ Building Changes ] It is the general principle of the faction design team not to change abilities or introduce complex mechanics needlessly. Cards should generally perform a single function and perform that function well. A lot of the buildings in the game are already well-designed, but lack sufficient stats or possess too strict of requirements. As such, we have opted wherever possible to introduce simple changes to bring the tower to the appropriate power level. If you would like to learn more about our thought process behind the tower changes, please head to Skylords Reborn Documents to read our design Deep Dive on Towers, as well as other design documents. Artillery: 1. Range: 50m ➜ 60m 2. Increased turret turn speed. Allow Artillery to damage siege units even when placed behind a wall. Bandit Launcher: 1. Flame Arrow splash radius: 5m ➜ 8m 2. Life points: 1500 ➜ 800 3. Add "Fast Construction" - Construction time is reduced by 50%. 4. Firebug: A. Radius: 20m ➜ 25m B. Power cost: 20 ➜ 25 Energy C. Infused Firebug damage: 400, up to 1200 in total ➜ 600, up to 1800 in total D. Tainted Firebug damage: 600, up to 1800 in total ➜ 800, up to 2400 in total Differentiate Bandit Launcher from its more defensive oriented brother Rioter's Retreat by focusing it around attacking and using its suicide ability to quickly and cheaply clear enemies. Deepgorge: 1. Cold Clutch radius: 25m ➜ 30m. Deepgorge has substantially increased in strength since the most recent changes, particularly in connection with North Star(b) with which it naturally synergizes. Unfortunately, due to the tower's large size, its ability radius is still too small when the tower is placed behind a wall making it difficult even for a well-placed Deepgorge to hit all melee attackers on long walls. Fire Bomb: 1. Damage: 715 up to 1650 in total ➜ 720, up to 1800 in total 2. Add "Fast Construction" - Construction time is reduced by 50%. 3. Allow to hit air units & enable splash overflow fix. Small buff to Fire Bomb that should allow it to be used more aggressively. Hammerfall: 1. Increase turret turn speed. 2. Breeze of Life (g) / Breeze of Strength (b): A. Maximum capacity: 1500 ➜ 3000 B. Recharge rate: 15 per second ➜ 40 per second C. Radius: 20m ➜ 25m 3. Breeze of Strength, Ice Shield cost: 495 capacity ➜ 600 capacity Increased turret turn speed should increase damage output due to faster target tracking. Change to affinity effects: Higher maximum capacity should make both affinity effects better, but especially Hammerfall (g) which is only drained as required. Higher recharge rate means that a new Ice Shield can be bestowed every 15 seconds instead of every 33 seconds, even with the higher cost. Radius increase will make it easier to place units around it. Total charge time is now 90 seconds. Additionally, Hammerfall's shields do not decay while within the aura. This makes them a stable source of extra health for allied units. Hammerfall's recharge and healing is still less than Healing Well's, a T2 60p card, with the same maximum capacity. Howling Shrine: 1. Essence Bolts damage: 600, up to 900 in total (3000 dp20) ➜ 750, up to 1125 in total (3750 dp20) 2. Crowd control duration (both affinities): 10 sec ➜ 15 seconds Howling Shrine is feeling better after the buffs both to itself and to the root network in general. When the initial changes were proposed, some people suggested larger buffs to the card, but we urged caution due to the difficulty to account for how things would change once the full set of root network changes came through. Now that we can evaluate the changes more fully, it appears that Howling Shrine is still on the weak side. To remedy this, we are giving it a +25% damage increase and increasing the duration of both its root and paralyze to help it keep dangerous melee units at a safe distance. Infected Tower: 1. Damage: 114, up to 172 in total (1215 dp20) ➜ 138, up to 207 in total. (1466 dp20) 2. Splash Radius: 5m ➜ 8m A +20% damage increase and small splash radius increase. Changes to Infected Tower's ability have been postponed until we can properly rework it. Lost Converter: 1. Add Soul Splicer's "Soul Suction" ability to the card, allowing it to gather corpses outside its passive range. 2. Corpse cost to freeze: 200 ➜ 250 stored life points All corpse support buildings should have a way to gather corpses from further away. As such, we are adding Soul Splicer's Soul Suction ability to both Lost Converter and Waystation, as well as any future buildings of this type. Morklay Trap: 1. Enable splash overflow fix 2. Explosion Blast total damage: 2640 in total ➜ 4400 in total Increase total targets from 3 to 5 and enable splash damage properly transferred even when units die. This should make Morklay Trap a viable option to clear T3 camps or defend against incoming waves. Stone Hurler: 1. Damage: 100 damage, up to 150 in total (834 dp20) ➜ 120 up to 180 in total (1000 dp20) Align actual damage with stated damage on the card through an approximately +20% damage increase. Twilight Bombard: 1. Remove "Siege" from Infused affinity 2. Add "Rage" to Infused affinity. A. Stage 1: +25%; Stage 2: +50% damage B. Attacks per stage: 3 C. Reset timer: 10 seconds 3. Increase turret turn speed. The red affinity of Twilight Bombard has Siege as its affinity effect, which is largely useless. By changing it to Rage instead, we make the choice between the two affinities one of increased damage versus crowd control. Waystation: 1. Add Soul Splicer's "Soul Suction" ability to the card, allowing it to gather corpses outside its passive range. 2. New passive, Fast Construction: Construction time is reduced by 50%. 3. Infused damage buff: 30% ➜ 40% 4. Tainted poison damage: 30 life points every second ➜ 40 life points every second 5. Corpse storage: 2500 total ➜ 4500 total 6. Corpse cost per potion/poison (both affinities): 180 ➜ 400 stored life points will be used up. 7. Radius: 25m ➜ 30m The first step in what will eventually be a full rework of Waystation. For now, the addition of fast construction means it can be set up offensively as its name suggests and the addition of Soul Suction means it should be able to easily gather corpses to fuel itself. Gave a small boost to both affinity effects and increased the radius to require ranged units to enter its effective radius to damage it. Worldbreaker Gun: 1. Life points: 4500 ➜ 5400 2. Descriptive: Add "Has a long range of 50m" to its Ground Attack description. WBG is the best defense in the entire game, but that is achieved primarily through its Heavy Snowball ability augmented by Skyelf Sage. In terms of functions as a tower, it is still good, but has uncharacteristically low life points for its cost and tier. We are giving it a slight bump in total health, which should help it when functioning as a tower, while leaving it unchanged as a long range artillery piece. PvP Balance Changes [ Twilight Follow-up ] After the first round of Twilight buffs and the new introduction of Twilight Crawlers, the faction did not reach the level of performance for which we had hoped. Making good use of Twilight cards and transformation mechanics in a dynamic environment turned out to be too difficult. We will buff some cards to add further incentive of mastering Twilight decks. This might not be the last Twilight iteration as we will continue to monitor the situation moving forward. Slaver: 1. Life points: 780 ➜ 820 Increased durability to make Slaver better when used on open ground, where the unit is prone to kiting. Twilight Brute: 1. Life points: 780 ➜ 820 2. Bloodlust ability duration: 20 seconds ➜ 25 seconds Increased stat efficiency and also extended buff duration upon Transforming, making it a little easier to utilize. Twilight Crawlers: 1. Damage: 940 dp20 ➜ 1000 dp20 2. Chitin Shell ability damage reduction: 20% ➜ 30% Whereas Twilight Crawlers scale decently well into high energy game stages, they don’t provide enough stability in early game. They had problems dueling some units they were supposed to counter making it incredibly difficult to play from behind. Increased stat efficiency and higher absorption rate on their passive should settle this and make Twilight Crawlers a worthy S-counter. Twilight Minions: 1. Incentive ability duration (both affinities): 20 seconds ➜ 25 seconds Extended buff duration upon Transforming, making it easier to make use of the effect. Vileblood: 1. Power cost: 130p ➜ 120p 2. Damage: 1400 dp20 ➜ 1250 dp20 3. Life points: 1350 ➜ 1250 4. Transformation ability cost: 111p ➜ 102p 5. Infused Liquids (r) ability: 130 damage per wave (520 total) ➜ 150 damage per wave (960 total) 6. Gifted Liquids (g) ability: 250 healing per wave ➜ 300 healing per wave Reduced unit cost and adjusted stat efficiency to reward multi-unit set-ups and transformation effects. The decreased damage ratio will limit the impact Vileblood has on its own, but with less bound power, there are many more options to combine it with other cards and abilities. [ Tier 1 ] Executor: 1. Burnout ability: A. Damage buff: 60% more damage ➜ 80% more damage B. Damage debuff: Now 60% less damage on all upgrades C. Damage buff duration: 20 seconds ➜ 30 seconds D. Damage debuff duration: 30 seconds ➜ 20 seconds on all upgrades After Nightguard received nerfs, Executor's performance as a compensation tool has been a bit underwhelming. These changes should address early L-counter issues and diversify Shadow’s defensive options in T1. Forsaken: 1. Frenzy ability initial cooldown: 0 seconds ➜ 7 seconds With this patch, we intend to distribute the power of Shadow T1 more evenly and improve faction design overall. Shadow T1 is very Forsaken centric against Fire T1 and in the mirror matchup. The Frenzy ability allows them to be good in skirmishes, defense, and siege at the same time. While this can’t be changed fundamentally for slot reasons and due to available design options, we can shift a bit of Shadows' defensive strength from Forsaken to Wrathblades and Executor. This should add a bit more depth to the mentioned matchups and goes more in line with what would be expected from the counter system. Thugs: 1. Damage: 720 dp20 ➜ 750 dp20 2. Gang Up! ability: Now works based on nearby friendly orcs, not just friendly Thugs. As newly buffed Wrathblades will have a certain impact on skirmishing against Fire T1, Thugs will receive a slight damage increase as well. Warden's Sigil (g): 1. Gifted Sigil Ice Shield regeneration: 25 strength per second ➜ 35 strength per second Providing clear identities to both Sigil affinities and granting more reasons to pick anything besides the frost one. Wrathblades: 1. Burnout ability: A. Damage buff: 60% more damage ➜ 80% more damage B. Damage debuff: Now 60% less damage on all upgrades C. Damage buff duration: 20 seconds ➜ 30 seconds D. Damage debuff duration: 30 seconds ➜ 20 seconds on all upgrades [ Tier 2 ] Moon: 1. Necroshade ability cost: 50p ➜ 40p Moon has access to fairly strong abilities, but very high upfront costs put her into a very niche position, especially for a legendary card. Necroshade cost being reduced should add more room for skill expressive gameplay and reinforce her identity as an assassin type unit. Ripper: 1. Cannibalize ability regeneration: 25 life points per second ➜ 35 life points per second Buffed the corpse interaction for increased card value in extended combat and better survivability of dazed summons. This change will also affect the Rippers spawning from Nox Carriers. Viridya: 1. Damage: 90, up to 135 in total (750 dp20) ➜ 108, up to 162 in total (900 dp20) 2. Unit's attack radius now applied around the unit hit instead of the squad's center. Viridya’s autocast is nothing but frustrating to use. Attacks apply such a widespread knockback against squad units, to the point where she stops dealing any damage to them after a single attack. These changes should alleviate the mentioned issue and add a fair reward for utilizing her as an S-counter overall. [ Tier 3 ] Amii Ritual: 1. Power cost: 150p ➜ 80p 2. Duration: 20 seconds ➜ 25 seconds 3. Cooldown: 60 seconds ➜ 100 seconds In the past, Amii Ritual has been underwhelming as its high cost made it fairly difficult to use the spell when needed the most. With this change the drawbacks of the card will be shifted to a long cooldown instead. This puts more emphasis on good strategic usage. Payoff can be significantly higher, but additional time between activations makes it easier to punish a mistimed use. Mo: 1. Mo's Better Blues ability: A. Duration: 20 seconds ➜ 30 seconds 2. Group Hug ability: A. Minimum healing: 500 life points ➜ 1000 life points B. Maximum healing: 3000 life points ➜ 4000 life points Whenever Mo sees occasional play, it is due to Stampede being one of the most valuable abilities in the game. More often than not, the cost and cast animation of his remaining abilities make it better to just not use them at all. These buffs should address this without reinforcing his base-nuke oriented play pattern. Nox Carrier: 1. Power cost: 180p ➜ 80p 2. Charges: 8 ➜ 16 3. Life points: 1500 ➜ 1050 4. Necro Strike ability (both affinities): A. Initial cooldown: 10 seconds ➜ 15 seconds B. Damage: 3400 damage ➜ 900 damage 5. Tainted Necro Strike (p) poison duration: 15 seconds ➜ 10 seconds Nox-Carrier has been fairly problematic due to its one-dimensional design. The ability to destroy full health orbs turned the unit into a raw stat check, especially when combined with cards that can remove the downside of heavily reduced movement speed. In order to buff this card to a viable state, we needed to get rid of this pattern. As a result, we strictly nerfed the siege ability followed by a drastic cost reduction. This puts higher emphasis on Ripper spawns instead of ability damage. With Rippers also getting buffed, this should add a lot of room for creative card usage and remind everyone that Nox Carrier is actually carrying something. Queek Queek: 1. Damage per attack: 76 (610 dp20) ➜ 80 (640 dp20) 2. Attack range of normal Queek Queek: Now always 9m 3. Superpig ability damage buff: 120% (1340 dp20) ➜ 150% (1600 dp20) Pushing unit stats to at least match other flying units in T3. The opportunity has also been used to clean up damage numbers. Shadow Insect: 1. Soul Shock ability damage: 500 ➜ 600 Shadow Insect is a strong unit with a rather unique ability design, but often requires too much micromanagement to outweigh the cons of having weaker stats compared to most other T3 units. We will strengthen the ability a little for that reason. Vulcan: 1. Conflagrate ability cost: 50p ➜ 30p With buffs to many T3 units across the board, Vulcan was left somewhat behind in comparison. With lowered ability cost, it should be easier to make use of his strong damage spikes.

Patch #400039 Welcome to our newest patch. This update contains our seventh balance patch for the game, brand-new cards, and many other changes, enjoy! Patch Preview - Four new cards are now available as well as our first ever promo building! Jump in-game to collect Raven Archwalker, Sanctuary(b), Sanctuary(g), and promo Worldbreaker Gun. - Added player cosmetics! In addition to your avatar, you can now change your border, title, and banner; earnable through achievements. - 32 new achievements and changes to several existing endless achievements to go alongside our new cosmetic player system. - Our second balance pass on towers, a large number of buffs to well-designed but underperforming cards, and a substantial amount of changes to Nature and Twilight cards. - New quality of life features including a longer Market Place option, more advanced filtering options, an import/export deck function, and a new advanced filtering in-game guide! General Changes There is now an option to list cards in the Market Place for 5 days (120 hours). We hope this will benefit those players which cannot play as frequently, as well as maintain a larger stock of cards in the Market Place to prevent scenarios where there are 0 copies of a card currently listed. You can now use the chat command /exportdeck to generate and automatically copy a shareable deck code based on your existing deck, which can be shared and imported by other players using /importdeck DECKCODE (i.e. /importdeck MgE9DiF8KhK7FfE) in the in-game chat. We hope this makes sharing decks both on the forums and on Discord easier for everyone. The icon for the final tier of PvE ranks has been changed from the speedrunning shoe to a new ember crown. Since the final rank is Master of the Forge, we think this homage to Brannoc is better fitting. The speedrun shoe might see a return in the future, but as part of speedrunning, not a general rank. A new advanced filtering tooltip has been added to the card menu. It includes a list of commands and operators, alongside examples of how to combine them, to help players be able to utilize this powerful filtering system. Additionally two new commands have been added: rarity and power. Achievement tooltips have been expanded greatly. You should now be able to see all maps required to complete an achievement from the tooltip. Achievements have been reorganized into a general progression list and the achievement type is now listed on the banner to give players a better understanding of which achievements are appropriate to their current skill level. The dropdown menus have also been updated accordingly. Current time in queue is now shown in the ranked PvP lobby. Allowed for custom extensions for advanced filtering. Loading screen will now be displayed bigger for higher resolutions (added support up to QHD 2560x1440). New Cards Sanctuary - 80p T4 Nature (Frost and Nature Affinity) You will find the upgrades for this card on the maps The Soultree and Titans When rebalancing Pure Nature, we determined the faction lacked sufficient tools to counter several existing threats, such as Willzappers. Given Nature's unit-focused strategy and that Mark of the Keeper's effect is a well known and uniquely Nature mechanic, we thought it would be more fitting for a Pure Nature spell than another standard CC or rejuvenation effect. Sanctuary can turn off ranged units and buildings, giving Nature a way to deal with difficult Lost Souls and Twilight camps. For more information, check out Community Update 30. Raven Archwalker - 300p T4 Legendary You will find the upgrades for this card on the map Mo. Raven Archwalker is our next addition to our developing Raven legendary deck. Just like Ravenheart, Raven Archwalker speeds up when near other Raven units. Like the walker it is based off of from the campaign map Mo, Archwalker has the ability to fire a corrupting aura capable of damaging both units and buildings. Given the way Aura of Corruption works, and the fact that legendary units are fully splashable, this means players will even be able to use healing spells to deal damage. For more information, check out Community Update 29. Worldbreaker Gun (promo) - 250p T4 Fortress The promo version of Worldbreaker Gun will be unlocked by completing the achievement "Urban Planner" detailed below. While debating which promo card to release next, we thought it would be a good idea to release our first ever promo building. The decision of which building was an easy one. We wanted a tower which was both widely used and widely loved. Worldbreaker Gun fits the bill in every sense, and it seems right to make a Frost card the first promo building. Player Cosmetics A major part of the upcoming update is the addition of new cosmetic options. These new options include banners and avatar borders. Additionally, there are several new avatars from which to choose and players can now customize their player titles. Players will now be able to pick between any titles they earned, whether from PvE, PvP, or achievements. [ New Cosmetics ] Progressive Faction Borders Each faction, excluding Amii and Fire/Frost, will be receiving progressive avatar borders. For now there are only two levels, but eventually we plan to add at least a third level. Level 1 borders can be earned by winning 10 games in ranked PvP or 25 wins in any PvE mode with the respective faction. Level 2 requires winning 25 ranked PvP games or 50 PvE games. These rewards are retroactive. Progressive Random PvE Avatars Both level 9 and level 10 rPvE will have new progressive avatars. Faction Banners Each faction primary faction (Fire, Frost, Nature, and Shadow) will receive a single banner inspired by that faction. Individual Avatar Borders There will be three non-faction avatar borders added: Shield, Burlap, and Gold borders. New Avatars Seven new avatars will be earnable via achievements: Silver Lock, Human Brannoc, Fortification Wall, Gift, Banzai Bird, Crossed Swords, Mask, and Gold Coin avatars. Individual Banners There will be three non-faction banners added: Cannon Holes, Shield, and Jorne banners. Combo Cosmetic There will be one combo cosmetic set: A New Sun Avatar + Banner New Titles There will be seven new titles to earn: "Makeshift Defender", "Tutorial Master", "Anxious Traveler", "Moneybags", "Eagle Scout", "Day Trader", and "Monopoly Man" New Achievements 32 new achievements. A majority of these achievements were taken from previous community suggestions. [ Miscellaneous Achievements ] Bladestorm Street Trader [Title: Day Trader & Title: Monopoly Man] Buy or sell cards in the Auction House. [100 & 1000 cards] Dragon's Hoard [Title: Moneybags & Border: Gold] Earn gold. [5.000.000 & 10.000.000 gold] [ Advanced Achievements ] A New Sun [Avatar: New Sun; Banner: New Sun] Complete all initially released campaign maps on advanced difficulty or higher playing only cards from the Twilight Edition. Burning Crusade [Banner: Fire] Win the 2-player scenario Crusade on advanced difficulty or higher with all players in your team playing only Fire cards. Frost Rescue Team [Banner: Frost] Win the 2-player scenario Slave Master on advanced difficulty or higher with all players in your team playing only Frost cards. Gotta Go Fast [Avatar: rPvE 9 progressive] Win a 4-player randomly generated PvE scenario of difficulty 9 within X minutes (Progressive achievement). I Believe I Can Fly [Title: Eagle Scout] Win a 1-player randomly generated PvE scenario of difficulty 7 or higher without playing any ground units. Ruthless Green Plague [Banner: Nature] Win a 1-player randomly generated PvE scenario of difficulty 9 or higher playing only Nature cards. The Nightmare's Nightmare [Banner: Shadow] Win the 2-player scenario The Nightmare Shard on advanced difficulty or higher with all players in your team playing only Shadow cards. [ Veteran Achievements ] A Need For Speed [Avatar: rPvE 10 progressive] Win a 4-player randomly generated PvE scenario of difficulty 10 within X minutes (Progressive achievement). An Ill-fated Expedition [Avatar: Crossed Swords] Win the 1-player scenario Ocean on expert difficulty without playing any flying units. Brannoc's Surprise Party [Avatar: Gift] Win the 4-player scenario Titans on expert difficulty after successfully freeing all civilians before Jorne arrives. Build Bridges, Not Walls [Avatar: Fortification Wall] Win the 2-player scenario Sunbridge on expert difficulty without activating the Amii Devices. Cheapskate [Border: Burlap] Complete 10 different campaign maps on expert difficulty, playing only cards of common rarity. He Made the Trains Run on Time [Banner: Jorne] Win the 4-player campaign scenario King of the Giants on expert difficulty after successfully destroying all walls in Rogan's path before he arrives. Makeshift Defender [Title: Makeshift Defender] Win the 1-player scenario The Treasure Fleet on expert difficulty without losing a wagon and by playing only cards from Tier 2 and below. No Human Left Behind [Banner: Shield] Win the 1-player scenario Siege of Hope on expert difficulty without losing any refugee units and the 1-player scenario The Soultree on expert difficulty without losing any of the Lyrish Defenders. Protection Racket [Avatar: Banzai Bird] Win the 4-player scenario Bad Harvest on expert difficulty with all players in your team playing only Fire, Shadow, or Bandit cards while successfully destroying all guild cannons. With Your Shield, or on It [Border: Shield] Win the 1-player scenario Mo on expert difficulty, playing only unit cards. [ Virtuoso Achievements ] Codebreaker [Avatar: Locked Page] Win the 4-player scenarios Dwarven Riddle and Guns of Lyr on expert difficulty solo without using buildings or building walls. Corporate Downsizing [Avatar: Gold Coin] Win 2 different campaign scenarios on expert difficulty with all players in your team using decks containing no more than 5 total cards. It's the Player, Not the Cards [Title: Tutorial Master] Win any campaign scenario on expert difficulty with all players in your team using the Tutorial deck. Lone Ranger [Avatar: Mask] Complete 4-player scenario maps solo on expert difficulty. Teleportation Anxiety [Title: Anxious Traveler] Win the 2-player scenario Crusade and the 1-player scenario Ocean on expert difficulty without activating any Amii Devices. Too Heavy to Carry [Banner: Cannon Holes] Win the 4-player scenario Blight on expert difficulty, destroying all bandit garrisons before they launch their attacks. Urban Planner [Card: Worldbreaker Gun (Promo)] Win the 2-player scenario The Sunbridge and the 1-player scenarios Mo and Ocean on expert difficulty, with all players in your team playing only building and spell cards. [ Leaderboard Achievements ] Master of the Forge [Avatar: Human Brannoc] Achieve rank 1 in any leaderboard at the end of the month. Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger [3x General Booster, repeatable] Achieve rank 3 or higher in any leaderboard at the end of the month. A Legend Among Gods [100.000 gold, repeatable] Achieve rank 10 or better in the PvP 1v1 leaderboard at the end of the month. Hero Among Lords [50.000 gold, repeatable] Achieve rank 25 or better in the PvP 1v1 leaderboard at the end of the month. Skylord Special Forces [25.000 gold, repeatable] Achieve rank 50 or better in the PvP 1v1 leaderboard at the end of the month. Skylord Enforcer [10.000 gold, repeatable] Achieve rank 100 or better in the PvP 1v1 leaderboard at the end of the month.

The power cost reduction pertains to the ability cost of Nomad's Sky Scare ability, not to the power cost of Nomads themselves.

Update: The current proposal for Grove Spirit has proven high problematic in terms of bugs and usability. We are therefore postponing its release. Additionally, it is highly likely we will need to once again change its design given the likely unsolvable problems caused by the current iteration.

In response to both community feedback and from testing without our PvE Taskforce, we have amended the upcoming changes to Forest Elder as follows: New Iteration 2 1. Pest Plants (add to both affinities): A. Poison damage: 30 dmg per second --> 50 damage per second 2. Forest Charm Rework: A. No longer applies a healing buff to up to 10 units over a 30 second period. B. NEW - "Every 2 seconds, friendly units restore up to 300 life points, up to 3000 in total. Also affects the caster. Lasts for 30 seconds. Reusable every 60 seconds." 3. Class: Beast Dominator --> Beast Commander 4. Flower Power: A. Nature affinity, Gifted Flower Power: no changes B. Shadow affinity --> Frost Affinity (Blessed Flower Power) - Allied units in range are not slowed by unit collision We have decided to add Pest Plants to both affinities after tests showed that melee-unit army compositions (Forest Elder + Colossus) struggled to be successful without heavy reliance on Thunderstorm. This should also help early T4 clears which often rely on a single Forest Elder. The Forest Charm rework is as previously mentioned and has shown itself to be much stronger than the original ability. As such, we have changed its cooldown back to 60 seconds. Given that Pest Plants is now a standard ability for Forest Elder, we decided to start from scratch and develop a new affinity effect. The goal here is to enable melee heavy Nature armies, but testing showed these were often substantially hampered by the slows generated via collision with enemy units. By removing this collision effect, Forest Elder(b) will enable melee units to charge towards priority targets unimpeded. The end result is that Pure Nature players should have two standard army compositions, one with Forest Elder(g) & Primeval Watcher and one with Forest Elder(b) & Colossus.

The gold earned from disenchanting upgrades you receive from campaign maps will be receiving a substantial buff next patch. Anywhere from 25-80% total increase in Disenchant gold based on the difficulty (standard is receiving the largest increase, expert the smallest). We are also buffing single player map gold by 50% independently of this other increase to help increase their replayability and not punish players who can complete 2p and 4p maps solo.

SkylordsRebornDesignPhilosophy.pdf While our design philosophy document is a bit outdated, particularly the first section, it is does a good job of explaining our reasoning in terms of how we think about the game. I think for your purposes you will find the 3rd section most interesting, which is also the only section I would regard as up-to-date. You can view more of our design documents here: Skylords Reborn Design Documents I would heavily recommend the Frost one as it goes in depth about how we carefully pursued the issue of Dreadnought and our new card Cost of Protection needing to be worth investing in the 4th Frost orb by themselves and how we went about achieving that. ________ I would echo the two people above in saying that I think you are critiquing a BattleForge that does not exist anymore. We have carefully and steadily rebalanced well over 100 cards and are continually working on more each patch. Our first project was making Pure Frost viable, which I think was one of our greatest successes, and afterward we focused on finishing up Nature (ongoing), Bandits, and Fire. Not to be disrespectful, but I also think you possess a misunderstanding about the current state of Pure Fire. Fire right now is the strongest it has ever been. We completely revamped the purple affinity of Batariel solely for Pure Fire. It heavily outcompetes Unholy Hero as a combo with Fire Dragons. Our team reworked Fire Sphere to be a CC/damage hybrid spell worthy of 3 Fire orbs which is able to cover several Pure Fire weaknesses. We also majorly reworked Bloodthirst so that combined with Unity it provides a source of sustain that is thematically fitting to Fire. All of this was done in service of a holistic vision which we have for how we think Fire as a faction is supposed to play.

Small update on upcoming changes to Batariel. I am posting it here due to how much discussion has occurred around the card: Batariel: 1. Stage Duration (both affinities): A. Stage 1: 4 sec --> 5 sec B. Stage 2: 4 sec --> 5 sec 2. Stage Threshold Value (both affinities): A. Stage 1: 1200 damage --> 800 damage 3. Damage per Stage Batariel (r) (a) Stage 1: unchanged (b) Stage 2: 150 dmg --> 200 dmg (c) Stage 3: 200 dmg --> 300 dmg

We would love to both improve the animation and remove the line of sight requirement, not just for this card but for others as well such as Northland Drake and Primeval Watcher, but we currently do not know how to do that. This is a different issue, and also one we do not know how to fix.

While people should feel free to continue to offer suggestions and theory craft on how to make this work, there are no plans at present to release any hybrid faction cards for T1. We plan on continuing to flesh out existing factions and combinations for the foreseeable future. Making new cards takes a lot of time and resources and we still have the Amii faction waiting with only 4 cards to its name.

Conjuration only works on spell charges.

In order for a second Forest Elder(p) to outcompete a second Forest Elder(g) in a 20 second period, it would require there to be 13 units simultaneously in range for the entire 20 second duration. This functionally means it is never worth it and if Forest Elder is your only T4 card and you only plan on using a singular instance, you will have a better time just using T3 units as Forest Elder has a poor stat efficiency. For the same cost, you can summon 5 Fathom Lords or Swamp Drakes, or 2 Abyssal Warders and 1 Swamp Drake. Given the coming ability buffs for Abyssal Warder, it will solidly outcompete Forest Elder(p) in similar circumstances, even if we buffed Forest Elder's poison to 40. I would suggest that before a person complain about one change to a card of a faction, they take the time to look up our announced changes for other units of the same faction in that same tier. If you did, you would find that we have announced significant changes to Colossus which will make it fulfill the role Forest Elder (p)'s is likely intended to have fulfilled as a strong singular unit. Upcoming Colossus Changes Additionally, we do not balance Pure units around non-pure cards. This change will provide significant synergy with existing cards in Nature's T4 in a way that has previously not existed.

Purple Forest Elder is still getting the proposed changes. Multiple Forest Charms will be able to stack, same way all spell-effect style heals, such as Ray of Light and Regrowth, currently work.

While not perfect, the plan is to use the existing animation for both Lost Converter and Waystation. Given they both have a Shadow orb it should be close enough. But it is interesting how Bandit's aesthetic is much more Fire than Shadow. If we were to do the same thing by adding a Fire animation to a Bandit card, I do not think anyone would question it.

Yes, its current damage reduction ability is not changing.