WindHunter

As we announced in our Towers Deep Dive, our faction design team has been working on performing a balance pass across all attack buildings in the game. Some of these changes are relatively minor, while other changes are more substantial. This thread will function as the main thread for our second round of building changes. The original master thread can be found here. Minor changes are included here, while major changes have their own threads linked to below. Please note that all changes proposed here are provisional and as such as subject to change. Substantial Reworks and Balance Changes The following buildings have significant enough changes to warrant their own threads. Previously Announced: Rocket Tower Stronghold Newly Announced or Updated: Armored Tower Ice Shield Tower Fortress Changes One category of towers we spoke of in our Deep Dive were Fortresses. Fortresses are expensive towers from T3+ that have large models. Due to the way space works in BattleForge, larger towers should have higher stats in comparison to other towers as you can build less of them in a given area. We have decided, outside of the unique case of Church of Negation, to make 200p the base cost of Fortresses. This allows us room to pack more stats into a single building. Our goal is to move Fortresses in the direction of self-sufficient defenses that can hold positions even in those locations where you might only be able to build one or two. Deepgorge 1. Cold Clutch radius: 25m ➜ 30m. While 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. Howling Shrine 1. Essence Bolts damage: 600, up to 900 in total ➜ 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 in 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 a tad 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. Volcano 1. Power cost: 150p ➜ 200p 2. Damage: 581, up to 872 (3990 dp20) ➜ 766, up to 1149 (5270 dp20) 3. Life points: 4390 ➜ 5690 4. Infused Eruption's (red affinity) Rage: A. Rage scaling: 100%/200% ➜ 75%/150% B. Rage timer: 7 sec ➜ 10 seconds C. Attacks per stack: 4 attacks ➜ 3 attacks 5. Lava Sea A. Radius: 25m ➜ 30m B. Bugfix the ability so that it works Making Volcano more "dense" by increasing its power cost and then adjusting its stats accordingly. Total damage when enraged is slightly increased despite the nerf to Rage's percentile damage increase (12,000 --> 13175 dp20). Additionally, the rage should activate substantially sooner. Previously it took 29 seconds in combat to full scale, now it should only take 22 seconds. One thing we learned in the wake of Volcano's previous changes is that its Lava Sea ability is bugged and does not work. Fixing the ability to function as advertised should do much to make Volcano a larger threat. 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. Minor 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. All values below are U3. Artillery 1. Range: 50m ➜ 60m 2. Increase turret turn speed. Allow Artillery to damage siege units even when placed behind a wall. 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. 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 the healing one 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. Range increase to 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. 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 +20% damage increase and small splash radius increase. Changes to Infected Tower's ability have been postponed until we can properly rework it. Kobold Laboratory 1. Mason Mastery radius: 25m ➜ 30m 2. Material Research: A. Changed buildings ➜ buildings and walls B. Allow repairing while in combat C. Radius: 25m ➜ 30m D. New description: "Friendly buildings and walls in a 30m radius have 50 / 50 / 50 / 70% lower repair costs and are repairable in combat." Allow Kobold Laboratory to have a niche use in defense and to provide something beyond what Glaciation is capable of providing. Change is meant in preparation for DRPvE and will also be useful in maps with prolonged defenses, especially near walls. 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 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. 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. 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. Twilight Bombard (r) 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.

As part of our second round of building changes, Ice Shield Tower will be receiving the following proposed changes. Please note that all changes proposed here are provisional and as such as subject to change: Iteration 1 1. Orb cost: 1 Frost (T1) ➜ 1 Frost, 1 Neutral (T2) 2. Power cost: 50p ➜ 90p 3. Life points: 1100 ➜ 1440 4. Ice Bolt: A. Damage: 66 damage, up to 100 in total (581 dp20) ➜ 96 damage, up to 144 in total (840 dp20) B. Radius: 5m ➜ 8m 5. Ice Shield: A. Change from active to auto-cast (30m range, add radius on hover). B. No longer affects flying units. C. *New Description:* "Every 6 seconds, tower applies an Ice Shield to a friendly ground unit that absorbs up to 690 / 730 / 800 / 880 damage for 30 seconds. Has a range of 30m. Affects ground targets only." Iteration 1 Goals Ice Shield Tower has long struggled to find a place alongside its T1 counterparts. Defense Tower is much more stat efficient and Northern Keep is a better support tower. In terms of Ice Shields, it competes with the more mobile Frost Sorceress which is favored over Ice Shield Tower in PvP. In light of this situation, we have decided to move the tower to T2 and make its Ice Shield ability auto-cast. This allows us to increase its strength and opens up the possibility of creating Ice Shield synergies in T2 and beyond, such as has already been done with Icefang Raptor, by creating a more readily available source of Ice Shields. One issue we ran into with this change was how strong it would be alongside War Eagles and Skyfire Drakes in PvP, leading us to removing its ability to work alongside air units.

Our plans for Armored Tower have undergone substantial revisions in light of other changes we are making, including Ice Shield Tower. Below you can find the new proposal Iteration 1 Revised 1. Ice Bolt splash radius: 5m --> 8m 2. Gift of Ice A. Radius: 25m --> 30m B. Duration: 30 sec --> Until absorb limit has been hit C. Cooldown: None --> Reusable every 30 seconds. 3. New passive, "Permafrost" A. Friendly wall segments within a 30m radius will regenerate 3% of their maximum life points every 2 seconds. Cannot be disabled by spellblocking abilities. Iteration 1 Goals Similar to what we did with Lifestream, we want to allow Armored Tower to remain in its defensive state for as long as its absorb limit has not been hit. This should reduce the amount of micromanagement required by the player to get the most out of the card. As it stands, the Gift of Ice ability has no cooldown, meaning the player can swap back and forth endlessly without consequence. We want to change that, so we are adding a 30 second cooldown for when manually swapping between each mode. Finally, we are giving Armored Tower a new passive called Permafrost which heals nearby wall segments. This should make wall segments more useful, which otherwise start to fall off heavily by T3, and in less need of babysitting.

We have been working on Forest Elder and have an update for its Forest Charm ability. 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, restores 250 / 275 / 300 / 300 life points to allied units in a 30m radius, up to 2500 / 2750 / 3000 / 3000 in total. Lasts for 30 seconds." C. Cooldown: 60 seconds --> 50 seconds. Forest Charm was previously implemented in an odd way whereby it applied a healing buff to individual units in range. This seems to have been a workaround to make Forest Elder's healing function similar to the way damage spells work where there is both a single-target and a splash damage component (ie. 300, up to 900 in total). Right now, healing is undifferentiated, meaning that a spell like Surge of Light which can heal up to 1320 life points will always divide that health equally among affected members. If there is only a single target, it will heal for all 1320 life points, if 3, each will heal for 440 life points each. Unfortunately, Forest Elder's workaround has its own issues. Namely, the healing buff cancels as soon as its target reaches maximum life points. If said target is then damaged, it will be buffed again, potentially taking two or more different heal buffs without actually needing them and significantly reducing the efficiency of Forest Charm in the process. Additionally, Lost Spellbreaker prevents the application of the healing buff, creating situations where it will never reach its intended target. We have worked to implement alternative healing methods and we can now make healing spells function like damage spells. This means we can have a healing spell affect a single-target for one amount, while healing for a different total amount. As such, we can and are changing Forest Elder's ability to this new healing format. This should lead to greater consistency and higher on average healing.

Looks like a fun creative deck. I always appreciate seeing our redesigned cards finding their place in people's decks.

The paralyze beam will remain, similar to how Shaman has both a heal and an attack. Woodland Blessing will be given higher priority, which should mean Grove Spirit prioritizes buffing unless specifically commanded to paralyze an enemy. About Healing Song: By T4 Nature has a lot of healing and nearly all of it is more convenient than adding in a T4 M-unit and keeping it safe. Equilibrium, Healing Gardens, Forest Elder, and Regrowth are all better and you likely have at least 2 of these in your deck. So while this is a nerf to Grove Spirit's healing, it does allow the unit to provide something which Nature is lacking, namely, CC immunity. Nature has zero offensive spells which can damage buildings meaning the heavy lifting needs to happen via units. We could have "fixed" this by giving Nature an offensive anti-building spell or unit ability but instead decided to accept it as a design restriction and attempt to design around Nature's building weakness for the sake of more unique gameplay. Grove Spirit will provide a 25m radius area of CC immunity and 10 seconds of safety outside of that zone. This should allow Nature's powerful backline in Primeval Watcher to do its job without interruption. I will also note that this card, while in active development right now, is not yet complete. It will undergo a testing phase during which we will adjust its values based on Nature's needs as a faction.

Grove Spirit was already given steadfast as part of the original community changes to the game. Additionally, immunity does not cleanse existing effects, it merely prevents new effects from being applied.

The worry about faction identity is duly noted, but in this particular case I think things might not be what they seem. There is, for example, at least one T4 melee XL unit in every primary and hybrid faction in the game with the exception of Amii which has no T4 units. At the same time, this fact is not one which gives rise to complaints about muddling faction diversity as each of these units are sufficiently different so as to mask the faction that they exist within the same class. Batariel is hardly anything like Forest Elder, which is hardly anything like Dreadnought. Even Overlord and Grinder, which both have a self-healing mechanic, feel substantially different. A lot of this has to do with the fact that archetypes which use these units have highly diversified support spells leading to widely varying playstyles. The reason seemingly different factions like Frost and Shadow have T1s that feel similar is because they have overlapping playstyles even as the cards themselves are different. S-archer unit, damage buff spell, and support building are the general building blocks of both T1s. There just are not that many viable options in terms of T1s and generally speaking I notice that players are more interested in deck diversity at the higher tiers where cards tend to be more complex. Now I do think just adding archers to add archers would be a mistake. That is not what is happening here, there is a method to our madness. DRPvE has made great strides in recent months and is steadily moving towards release. At the higher tiers of this mode, there is just nothing worth putting on the walls as lower tiered archers wall off too heavily in effectiveness to justify either their population contribution or their bound power cost. What we are attempting to do is rebalance and redesign the various defensive tools of each faction and to create archers with strengths and abilities that fill the gaps left over after our balance pass. I am confident we can do this without compromising the unique identity of each faction, just as we have been doing in our rebalance of the more offensive tools each faction brings to the table.

There are plans to eventually release T3/T4 archers for each faction. Issues with Twilight Slayer's orb restriction should be taken in light of this consideration.

Somebody nerf this Wanky + Lebovim combination.

One important thing for us to consider when discussing Batariel's strength is that despite all the changes there are still only a few decks which can reliably clear RPvE 10, at least outside of a subset of highly skilled players. Potentially losing Batariel(r) from this group is an issue because it reduces deck diversity and pushes players to default to well-established Bandit decks.

Hey Spizzy, Achievements are generally split between two categories, skill-based challenges and progression trackers. Some achievements, such as "Among the Old Gods," are both simultaneously. Skill-based achievements are meant to encourage a person to play the game in a specific manner, often with restrictions or odd challenges attached, and to then reward the player for succeeding. The goal is to make the reward match the difficulty of the achievement and to expand the game's content through opt-in challenges. Progression tracking achievements are meant to give players the ability to look back and see "woah, I opened 740 boosters since I started" while also being slowly rewarded for just playing the game however they want. These achievements are not intended to encourage you to open a bunch of boosters or Reforge a bunch of cards in an attempt to get the rewards. The rewards are minor and of ancillary importance on purpose. As I mentioned in the most recent patch thread, we do want to add more challenge achievements to the game and are currently working on doing so.

Hey Zomby, The change was made because many people were joining RPvE 10 to get the achievement who were unable to actually contribute to the group. This caused many people who regularly play the game mode to stop due to having to face the consistent issue of unprepared players who expected to be carried. This is a non-ideal situation where you have been caught inadvertently in our attempt to fix a different problem largely due to your own elevated level of play in relation to your rank. I'm sorry about this and I understand it is very frustrating. While the achievement is locked, your progress is not reset, it is still keeping track underneath. As soon as you reach level 10 your rewards will instantly be given to you.

In terms of the reserve achievements: these have caused substantial problems and I would argue were a mistake from the very beginning. We should not be encouraging players to burn themselves out from the game. Achievements should generally challenge a player's skill or track their progress, neither of which is true for the reserve achievements. In terms of the others: I think we need to draw a distinct between achievements which reward gameplay related items, such as boosters and gold, and those which do not. I agree it would be nice to have a set of much harder achievements as well as more achievements in general. But I do not think very difficult achievements should be connected to gameplay related rewards as these type of rewards, if combined with either too difficult a challenge compared to the reward (Never Thought of Him) or a frustrating hidden mechanic (A City Strongly Compact), lead to a bad gameplay experience because the player is "missing out" by not having the achievement complete. On the other hand, non-gameplay rewards do not have this same issue because missing out on a character avatar, to give an example, is not hurting your game progression. It is just vanity.

One of the issues we face as a balance team is that we are often unable to release changes as completed wholes, instead things are released as they are completed. Twilight Slayers falls into this category as there are other changes to Twilight we plan to make which we aid it in its job as a defensive wall-based unit. It is hard then to determine if the current situation is due to a particular weakness in Twilight Slayer or due to an unfavorable environment around it until we actually fix said environment. Of course we very possibly could have gotten the numbers wrong with Slayers, it is our first ever attempt at a T3 S-archer and walls do not scale over time, so we appreciate the feedback and will continue to monitor its performance going forward.

Hey Role, If you head to the wiki: https://skylords-reborn.fandom.com/wiki/Skylords_Reborn and scroll down a bit you can use the filter option (PC only, it isn't supported for mobile) on the front page. There is an option to filter for Edition, where you can chose "Reborn" and see all new cards that have been added. The wiki also has all balance changes a card has undergone at the bottom of a card's page in case you run into something that seems different than before.

There are plans for eventually expanding on the Ravenheart deck through introduction of other notable Raven squadron cards as legendaries. I think this is the correct path forward, not making an arbitrary exception to the faction-legendary divide. Additionally, allowing Corsair to affect Ravenheart would require a full rebalance of Ravenheart's stats to compensate and essentially make it useless outside of Bandit decks.

Hello everyone, It has been a week 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. What do you think of our first PvE nerfs? Do the various decks still feel usable? Have they changed much at all, etc.? Do you like the changes to card 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 map changes? You can also join us at our balance discord to further discuss changes to cards: https://discord.gg/jrGEBG9NT5

I would like to clarify that root network units drain support not if they are attacking that exact moment, but if they are considering "in-combat." A root network unit is considered in-combat if it has been issued a valid attack command against an enemy, regardless of whether or not they are attacking in that moment or even capable of attacking. Note, that an attack command can be given automatically when an enemy enters sight range. What this means is that even if, say, a Razorleaf is currently paralyzed by an attacking Windhunter, that Razorleaf will still drain up to 6 support as long as enemies remain in range which it can attack. If a Razorleaf were instead affected by something like Lost Banestone it would not be draining support, because in that kind of state it cannot receive attack commands.

Yes this is correct.

We have some exciting plans for Twilight and Lost Souls coming up in the not too distant future. The upcoming patch includes a major rework of nearly all T2 and T3 Twilight units. While we don't have anything for this patch yet, we are working on making each of the hybrid faction spells help enable a unique play style for their respective factions.

Patch #400036 Welcome to our newest patch. This update contains a follow-up to our larger patch earlier in the month with new achievements and changes to existing achievements. General Changes Added notificaton when all gold chests have been opened. Fixed bug where you could start campaign PvE matches with free PvP decks. Solved numerous smaller textual inconsistencies in the UI. Renamed "Delete all" to "Collect all" in the mail window. Added dialog box that mentions the mails will also be deleted, instead. Removed map seeds from the random PvE map pool known to crash the game. This should solve the issue where a random PvE map crashes on start-up. Faction ability icons are no longer displayed as status effects on a unit to conserve space for non-permanent effects. This includes: Life Stealer (Bandits), Elusive (Amii), Adamant Skin (Stonekin units), and Adamant Alloy (Stonekin buildings). New & Existing Achievements Skylords Reborn released with a base set of achievements, including 3 achievements which reward players for draining their BFP reserves. Unfortunately, since release we have seen that contrary to encouraging more play, these reserve achievements are actually driving players away from the game. Players will grind many hours in a row to finish all three achievements and in the process completely burn themselves out. Given this situation, we have decided to remove all 3 reserve achievements and replace them with general in-game playtime achievements that the player can complete at their own pace. These new achievements will be available to everyone, even those who previously completed the reserve achievements. Sadly, our newest achievements were also not free from issues. "A Wrinkle in Time" caused a lot of confusion with its description and has been updated accordingly. Our new RPvE 10 achievement "Abandon Hope..." has proved to be quite popular, even with brand-new players who attempt it without being properly prepared. This has led to frustration among our more veteran players, who the achievement was meant to help by increasing the RPvE 10 player pool. As such, we have locked the achievement beyond PvE Rank 10, to prevent unprepared players from joining lobbies in hopes of easy boosters. Our Pure Fire achievement "Never Thought of Him" has had a very low completion rate and after talking to players we decided to reduce the restrictions. Now, only the player pursuing the achievement is required to use a Pure Fire deck, instead of the entire team. While not mentioned here, see PvE map changes below, we have made changes to Defending Hope to allow the player to activate Rogan with a building and not just a unit. While the fact Rogan required a unit to be activated was intended to be a fun puzzle-like challenge for the "A City Strongly Compact" achievement, we noticed this caused substantial frustration among players, especially those who were also trying to complete "The Long Journey Home" simultaneously. [ New Achievements ] Thirsty for More [1/2/3 General Boosters ] Spend time in matches. (5/15/30 hours) Up and Coming [1 Mini-booster] Complete the 1-player scenario Introduction. Gym Rat [3 General Boosters] Win 20 sparring PvP matches. Moon's Disciple [6 General Boosters] Win 20 ranked PvP matches. (Locked until Gym Rat has been completed) [ Changes to Existing Achievements ] All 3 Reserve Achievements (Drink Up, Me Hearties!; Thirsty for More; To the Last Drop) - Permanently removed from the game A Wrinkle in Time - Description changed to clarify it requires Lost Souls cards. Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here - Achievement is now locked until a player reaches PvE rank 10 (Gold 2) Never Thought of Him - Only requires the player to use a Pure Fire deck instead of the entire team. A Force of Nature - Reward description changed to "1x Promo Mana Wing" to clarify it is not a normal Mana Wing being rewarded.

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

Card Balance Changes Global Balance Changes Changes to PvE Unit Orb & Power Costs: more details can be found here: Changes to PvE Unit Orb & Power Costs - Additionally, the general mind control immunity on the PvE versions of Bandit Windhunter, Twilight Deathglider, and all Lost Souls units and buildings has been removed. Each NPC unit in both campaign and random PvE maps has orb and power costs just like player units, which might come as a surprise to players used to using Nightguard and Parasite Swarm to takeover nearly any unit in the game. This is because there has been a longstanding bug, going back to the game's release, where units which are spawned in via map script did not have properly assigned orb and power costs. The original developers knew about this bug, but they do not appear to have known how to fix it. By the time Empire and the Lost Souls RPvE faction were added to the game, the original developers decided to add a universal immunity to mind control to the entire Lost Souls faction to prevent further abuses of the mind control mechanic. They also added total immunity to Windhunter and Death Glider. The bug in question has now been fixed and as part of this fix we have gone through and updated the power and orb costs of every unit in the game. The goal of this rework was to create situations where mind control is still useful, and indeed powerful, while tampering down the current situation where mind control units, especially Nightguard, trivialize a map and thus become the universally proscribed solution to nearly any difficult situation. As part of these changes, we are also making several changes to current campaign maps, which we already started last patch with the changes to Nightmare Shard, Nightmare's End, and Behind Enemy Lines. All map changes can be found in the Map Balance Changes section in the next post. S-unit population count: decreased from 6 ➜ 4 Total root network support cap: 10 maximum support within a network ➜ infinite amount of support possible Twilight Transformation duration: decreased from 2 seconds ➜ 1.2 seconds Increased turn speeds of several units: - Gladiatrix, Ice Guardian, Knight of Chaos, Lightblade, Mauler, Mountain Rowdy, Rogan Kayle, Shadow Insect, Slaver, Treespirit, Viridya's Treespirit, Twilight Brute, Warlock, and Wrecker. Lost Spellbreaker (NPC Unit): - No longer casts Disenchant on-hit, still makes affected units immune to further buffs. - Now makes affected units unable to use their special abilities. Lost Spellbreaker has been a perpetual headache for us as a balance team because she hard counters some factions while barely affecting others. Every single mechanic we add to the game must face the question of how it interacts with Spellbreaker. If Spellbreaker does remove it, the question then becomes if that faction can still function, particularly against the already difficult Lost Souls faction. At the same time, we want to keep Spellbreaker as a major debuff unit. As such, we decided to remove Spellbreaker's Disenchant ability while leaving the immunity to further buffs and adding on an ability silence. This change should allow players to preemptively apply buffs to their units as a way to counter Lost Spellbreaker. Our hope is that Lost Spellbreaker will remain an annoyance and a priority target, without single-handedly countering entire deck archetypes. Hybrid Orb requirements have been added: A Hybrid Orb allows you to meet its requirements with one of its two colors. For example, a card can be played with either or . Hybrid Orbs can be found on our Twilight Slayers, Twilight Hag, Treefiend, Nightshade Plant and Deepfang. PvE Balance Changes While changes are split here between PvE and PvP sections, many of the changes, such as Deep One, Nightshade Plant, and Twilight Creeper, 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 ] Decomposer: - Now only works on own units Decomposer has been a controversial card for a long time. When usable on friendly units, Decomposer allows players to transfer power between themselves. Practically speaking, this means that Decomposer turns previously multiplayer maps into effectively single-player maps, where one player can gain power far in excess of what should be possible at a given time, even if all Power Wells were given to one player. For this reason, it is a mainstay of speedruns and goldfarming alike, to the point of choking out other potential strategies. Decomposer also stands in direct violation of our fundamental design principle that power should only be generated via Power Wells. While violations of design principles are possible to justify via card restrictions such as high power cost, tier, or orb restrictions, the power generation principle is the most fundamental of all principles and Decomposer is able to violate it as a Tier 1 Shadow card. There is an additional consideration which is often forgotten in discussions on this topic, and that is the experience of the player feeding the Decomposer, usually called a "feeder." While there can be no doubt that many Decomposer-based speedruns, including the existing record on Bad Harvest, are matters of strategic brilliance in terms of planning, the same is not true in terms of execution for the majority of the players in the speedrun. While feeders do contribute in a minor sense, the runner does the overwhelming majority of the actions in the run and it truly succeeds or fails based on the skill of the runner. In more casual settings, this often becomes even worse, with the feeder doing close to nothing. Decomposer transforms the feeder from a teammate into little more than a spectator. The feeder is a mere battery powering the runner, a resource to be used instead of a person with whom you play alongside. Feeding makes for a gameplay experience where teammates give up almost all of their agency. It is not engaging, and we should not be creating a situation where the player must chose between efficiency and an engaging experience. The continuing preservation of this kind of gameplay has done great harm to new player retention. For that reason alone we should have made this change a long time ago. In fact, we have planned this change for nearly 18 months, yet have repeatedly delayed it in hopes of releasing a Decomposer-like mode simultaneously with the nerf for players who enjoy the mechanic and who wish to opt-in, even without rewards. This optional Map Modifiers game mode is something we are still desirous of completing eventually, but as we announced in Community Update #25, without further developers we can only commit to releasing card balancing changes for the foreseeable future. Given the many factors surrounding Decomposer and the strong negative impact it creates on the game experience of many players, we have decided to finally go through and change the card to no longer allow it to transfer power between players. [ Tier 2 ] Parasite Swarm: - Takeover limit: 150 power cost ➜ maximum of 175 power cost Allows us to make some units able to be transformed by Twilight Curse and taken over by Parasite Swarm, while remaining out of reach of Nightguard. [ Tier 3 ] Corsair: - Inspirational Call: deal 50% more damage ➜ 60% more damage Corsair was previously changed to work not just on human units, but all Bandit units. This helped a lot, but the card itself as well as Bandit's T3 is still somewhat lacking. We are giving a slight boost to its aura to help encourage more Bandit-based unit compositions. Frenetic Assault: - General Changes: - Power cost: 80 ➜ 90p - Initial Amok effect duration: 20s ➜ 15s - Frenetic is now a two-stage effect: - Stage 1: Bewitches the targeted hostile target attracting the aggression of up to 7 of its allied units within a 20m radius for 15 seconds. - Stage 2: If the target dies within 10 seconds, up to 10 of its allied units within a 20m radius are bewitched for 10 seconds. - Affinity swap: Gifted Aggression (g) ➜ Infused Aggression (r) - Infused Aggression(r): No longer slows or prevents healing, change description to clarify it can be used on buildings and units. Frenetic Assault is potentially the strongest card in the game. It is also the strongest crowd control spell, has no downside, and has no death effect. While not necessarily wrong, it is a bit odd for such a card to exist in Shadow. All in all, it is more a Bandit card than a Shadow card. We as a balance team have endeavored to nerf the card from an S+ tier to an A tier card, while also giving it mechanics to make it feel like a Shadow card. Frenetic now has two stages. The first stage affects 7 targets for 15 seconds. The second stage, which triggers off the death of the initial target within 10 seconds, affects 10 targets for 10 seconds. This gives Frenetic a total possible duration of 20 seconds if used perfectly with up to 17 total affected enemies. It should remain one of the strongest spells in the game, without being so good as to single-handedly carry entire archetypes. Healing Gardens: - Ritual of Recovery duration: 30 seconds ➜ 45 seconds Healing Gardens' increased rejuvenation effect is strong, but its short duration requires two Gardens to be built simultaneously. This can significantly slow down deck archetypes dependent on the effect, so we are increasing Ritual of Recovery's duration to allow the player to utilize just one instance of Healing Gardens with the downside of a slight effect downtime. Additionally, the lack of regular activation is a common problem among all active global effects in casual play. This should help to alleviate that problem by making it so that when the effect is actually activated, it stays up for longer. Ice Age: - Now allows multiple instances of the spell to be active at the same time. Ice Age previously had anti-synergy with itself, such that multiple Pure Frost players could not cast it simultaneously. Given that this is not an issue with healing sustain options, we decided to remove this restriction. Sandstorm: - Power cost: 160p ➜ 140p - Ability radius: 10m ➜ 12m We previously gave Sandstorm two large buffs, a 70p cost reduction and the addition of L-knockback on the blue affinity. Even with these changes, Sandstorm remains an uncompelling option. As such, we are further reducing the power to 140p while increasing the radius of the tornado, which should allow the player to more easily crowd control priority targets. Twilight Creeper: - Tainted / Infused Spit, total targets: 3 ➜ 8 - Infused Spit(r) debuff: 30% less damage ➜ 40% less damage Small buff to Twilight Creeper's debuff and a large buff to total target count, allowing Creeper to debuff substantially more enemies in a camp. Wrathgazer: - Disintegrating Gaze: May only disintegrate units ➜ May only disintegrate units and buildings. - Pain Link: 100% damage distributed ➜ 50% damage distributed. Wrathgazer's Pain Link distributes damage before Resilient is applied. This means that as-is, 100% of damage is done to surrounding units and 50% also to Wrathgazer (assuming non-piercing damage). The total damage is thus multiplied by 50% assuming there are any allies in range. With the changed numbers, 50% of damage is now done to Wrathgazer and 50% to surrounding units. This should make Wrathgazer usable in an army without being an active detriment. Additionally, only being able to target units severely restricts Wrathgazer's usability. To remedy this, we are adding the ability to disintegrate buildings as well, allowing Wrathgazer to be more useful offensively. Note, this change does not allow wall segments, Power Wells, or Monuments to be disintegrated. Wrathgazer will also be unable to disintegrate spawn buildings, as this causes a bug where the spawn building, despite being destroyed, begins phantom spawning waves of enemies. [ Tier 4 ] Altar of Chaos: - Enable overkill splash damage bug fix. - Mass Destruction Nether Bomb life points: 4000 ➜ 4500 Nether Bomb will no longer lose damage when overkilling enemies, constituting a minor buff for unfed bombs and a major buff for fed bombs. Additionally, the small increase in bomb life points is intended to synergize with Lost Spirit Ship's recycle ability. One bomb will now provide enough life points for 3 Lost Spirit Ship Crystals. Batariel: - Damage: 4400 ➜ 5600 - Purgatory's damage is no longer affected by damage modifiers, including buffs on Batariel itself and debuffs on enemies. - Stage 1 Activation Threshold: 1000(r) and 1250(p) ➜ 1200 damage (both affinities) - Damage/Effect per Stage Batariel (p): (a) Stage 1: 100 dmg ➜ 100 dmg + 25% increased enemy damage taken (b) Stage 2: 100dmg + 35% increased damage taken ➜ 100dmg + 50% increased enemy damage taken (c) Stage 3: 100dmg + 75% increased damage taken ➜ 100dmg + 100% increased enemy damage taken - Squad damage: Only damages a squad once instead of each member individually. - Gates of Hell power cost: 150p ➜ 120p It would be uncontroversial to say that Batariel and the deck that surrounds it is the strongest deck in the game. The question has never been the strength of Batariel, but what to do with it. Some do not want it changed at all. Among those in favor of nerfs, many people have suggested nerfing Batariel itself, others Enlightenment, others Frenetic Assault, still others Unholy Hero as the main source of the problem to bring Batariel from S++ tier to closer to S or A+ tier. After much discussion among all segments of the playerbase, and especially with some of the game's top players, we have come to the determination that we cannot successfully balance Batariel unless we also nerf Unholy Hero or at least decouple it from Batariel. At the same time, we cannot directly nerf Unholy Hero without affecting a large portion of decks that are otherwise balanced. Frenetic Assault, while very powerful in combination with Batariel, is also overpowered in its own right. In the end, we have settled on nerfing both Batariel and Frenetic Assault while decoupling it from Unholy Hero. Batariel's damage aura no longer benefits from any buffs on Batariel or debuffs on enemies, including Batariel(p)'s own armor shredding aura. With this drastic step taken, we have also increased Batariel's base damage significantly, along with adjustments to its stage 1 activation threshold. Batariel can now activate stage 1 in 2 attacks against XL-units and in 3 attacks against non-XL units. A Batariel buffed with Unholy Hero can now also one-shot a small spawn building, while the base damage buff helps Batariel substantially when fighting bosses. The cost reduction to Gates of Hell allows the player to quickly and efficiently activate Batariel's stage 3 in a single ability. Overall, our tests have shown that while Batariel is slower than before, the Enlightenment-Batariel deck remains intact as a top tier deck for both skilled and casual play. The bigger issue in balancing Batariel came from the purple affinity regularly used in Pure Fire decks. In the current meta, Pure Fire typically uses a mix of both affinities, with the purple affinity amplifying the already substantial damage of the red affinity to even greater heights. With the changes to Batariel's aura, this damage amplification is no longer possible. As such, we had to get creative in keeping the Pure Fire deck viable. Alongside these changes, we have also buffed other Fire cards such as Bloodthirst, Magma Fiend, and Fire Sphere. The changes to Bloodthirst help make a Batariel(p) + Fire Dragon deck much more viable and significantly more durable. We increased the synergy between Batariel and Fire Dragon by making the purple affinity increase the damage taken by enemies even further. When Batariel(p) and Fire Dragons are both fully enraged with Bloodthirst, Fire Dragons deal 30,000 damage per 20 seconds. We also increased the speed of Magma Fiend to open up the option of using it with other Fire cards. Finally, the changes to Fire Sphere have proven much more substantial than initially anticipated. A perfectly executed Fire Sphere (remember it has a 10 second wind-up period) that combos with a stage 3 Batariel(p) can one shot an entire camp. All in all, while Pure Fire will prove to be much different after the changes, it increasingly has a playstyle that feels all its own. Bloodthirst: - Power cost: 160p ➜ 140p - Unit count: 7 total targets ➜ 8 total targets - Duration: 20 seconds ➜ 25 seconds - Healing: 175 life points per second ➜ 200 life points per second - Damage buff: 20% more damage ➜ 40% more damage Our initial testing for the last round of changes showed Bloodthirst far overperforming its intended power level. Unfortunately, the new Bloodthirst received a double nerf upon release when we not only reduced its healing, but we also removed its ability to heal stack. Since then, it has performed below what is appropriate for a card of its requirements and its weak state is keeping Fire archetypes from achieving their true potential. We have buffed up nearly all aspects of the spell. Cluster Explosion(p) - Initial radius: 20m ➜ 25m Equalizing initial radii of both affinities to be 25m. Coat of Protection(b) - Increased Ice Shield total cap, which can be strengthened to absorb from to 2500 damage ➜ 3000. The purple affinity of Coat of Protection has by and large been the better of the two affinities. Additionally, the current cap makes using the blue affinity of Ice Age with the blue affinity of CoP quite inefficient. This change rectifies that issue. Fire Sphere - Damage maximum: 8000 ➜ 10000 in total - Spell radius: 15m ➜ 25m (visual FX already appeared to be 25m) - Knockback: Small, medium, and large units ➜ Knocks back all unit sizes in the area (regardless of whether they are damaged or not). Fire Sphere is not a good card. It also lacks identity due to how good its competitors are in its own faction. While thinking about the card, we realized it could keep its boss killing identity while providing 3 Fire+ decks with a thematically appropriate CC effect in knock back. By changing the way its knock back applies and increasing its effect radius to match its existing visual effect, we allow the Fire player to potentially knock back an entire camp. The changes to its splash damage last patch also mean that it no longer loses damage when overkilling an enemy. Our tests have found that a perfectly timed Fire Sphere combined with a fully enraged Batariel give Pure Fire the ability to fully wipe camps in both RPvE 9+ and expert campaign maps. Fire Worm: - Power cost: 210p ➜ 200p - Charges: 4 ➜ 8 - Attack range: 30m ➜ 40m Fire Worm is not a bad card per se, but it lacks a firm identity and a reason to choose it over other options. Its stats are also not great, having only 2640 life points, lower than several T3 units, with a real attack value of only 4000 despite its claim to deal 4800 damage. Thinking about Fire Worm more, we have decided to move it into the role of a disposable sniper unit. The longer range helps it to survive longer and pick out priority targets without placing itself in danger. Fire Worm will be the first and only XL-unit to have 8 charges. This, along with the lower cost, will allow the player to spam them out quickly, allowing them to function as skirmisher like units without having to fear losing a precious charge on an XL-unit. Grove Spirit: - Healing Song healing capacity: 5000 life points ➜ 5500 life points Minor correction to allow Grove Spirit to actually heal as much as she claims. Ice Tornado: - Power cost: 145p ➜ 140p Jorne: - Wrecking Hammer radius: 20m ➜ 25m - Wrecking Hammer damage total: 6600 in total ➜ 8800 in total Minor buff to Jorne and the accompanying legendary deck. This should make Jorne's anti-building ability easier to hit on multiple targets and more worth the power investment. Lifestream: - Life Link: 20% of absorbed damage transferred ➜ 30% of absorbed damage transferred After the recent buffs, Lifestream is in a good place but is slightly too strong. We as a team do not want to encourage strategies which can functionally create invincible armies, particularly not in a faction with already strong sustain options. As such, we are slightly toning down Lifestream by making it take more damage. This should make the downside real, with the possibility of killing the Lifestream if the player does not pay close enough attention. Lost Dragon: - Damage: 335, up to 502 in total (3000 dp20) ➜ 416, up to 624 total (3715 dp20) - Life points: 3780 ➜ 4080 Lost Dragon card is very weak for its requirements, even with its very strong passive debuffs. Given it is a support unit, we considered placing more of its power budget into its debuff effects, but after consideration determined that the current debuffs are already sufficiently strong and well-designed. Lost Dragons stats are just too low. As such, we decided on a ~23% damage buff and ~8% life point buff. We wanted to preserve the existing trait of Lost Souls units, where life points are generally higher than damage. Magma Fiend: - Burning Liquid cost: 100p ➜ 50p - Movement Speed: 4.8 m/s (run) + 2.4 m/s (walk) ➜ 6.4 m/s (run) + 4.8 m/s (walk) Burning Liquids is a decent ability, but like many abilities in the game it is overpriced. We are reducing its cost to align the price more closely with the effect produced. Additionally, we are increasing Magma Fiend's movement speed from slow to normal XL. We think that slow speeds should fit the unit in terms of balance, theme, or both. In the case of Magma Fiend, there is neither a thematic nor a balance reason for its currently slow speed, so we changed it. Noxious Cloud: - Power cost: 250p ➜ 230p - Initial damage: 13 (3750 total) ➜ 24 damage every second (5640 total) - Time between damage increase: 2 seconds ➜ 3 seconds Noxious Cloud is one of the most expensive spells in the game. While theoretically having a large potential total damage of 37,500, this rarely occurs as it requires all 10 initial targets to both live for the full duration and to remain inside the area for 37 seconds in total. In practice, even the Tier 3 Thunderstorm is usually better. Even in perfect situations, Noxious Cloud is heavily outcompeted by rival options such as Plague and Cluster Explosion. We wanted to buff Noxious Cloud without turning it into a copy of these other spells. As such, it continues to only affect units and we kept the total spell duration at 37 seconds. This is similar to the other Nature damage spell, such as Thunderstorm and Parasite, which have long durations and are only capable of damaging units. The new Noxious Cloud should kill most XL-units that remain within its effect for the full duration, while also cleaning up more S and M-units units due to its higher base damage. It also remains expensive, as Nature's faction identity is centered around unit-based damage, not damage dealing spells. Plague: - Power cost: 150p ➜ 170p - Parasite duration: 15 seconds ➜ 10 seconds Despite toning down the new Plague before release, it remains one of the strongest spells in the game and is capable of single-handedly clearing camps, any respawns, and even bosses. We have decided to increase its cost to reduce power efficiency and reduce parasite duration. This reduces each parasite's single-target damage from 1500 to 1000, while making it harder to proc the secondary parasites due to reduced duration. The reduced duration also nerfs the powerful non-immunity applying ranged silence. Overall, this should mean Plague is no longer a cast and forget spell; players will need to encourage the initial parasites to proc themselves if they want to make get full use out of the spell. Primeval Watcher: - Orb cost: 2 Nature, 2 Neutral ➜ 3 Nature, 1 Neutral - Damage: 600 / 288 / 192 / 127 / 84 (6550 dp20) ➜ 660 / 330 / 220 / 165 / 132 (7220 dp20) - Life points: 4650 ➜ 4850 - Stasis Field: - Targets: 7 enemies ➜ 9 enemies - Ability cost: 0p ➜ 25p - New passive, "Siege": Deals 50% more damage against structures. Primeval Watcher is Pure Nature's primarily damage dealer. As such, Pure Nature's viability as an army-centric faction rises and falls based on Primeval's performance. We have wanted to increase Primeval's stats, but its current orb requirements limited our options as it would have mainly buffed Primeval Watcher in non-Pure Nature decks. Due to this, we have decided to increase its orb requirements to 3 Nature orbs to make room for more substantial stat buffs. Additionally, given that Primeval Watcher is one of Nature's only ways to kill buildings, particularly in the back of a camp, we have given it Siege to aid in this role. Skycatcher: - Damage 520, up to 780 in total (4660 dp20) ➜ 600, up to 800 in total (5000 dp20) - Fixed bug where killing the initial unit would reduce all splash damage to 0. - Twilight Infection power cost: 50p ➜ 0p - Twilight Infection cooldown: 20 sec ➜ 3 sec Slight buff to Skycatcher to allow it to better perform its role as a backline attacker. The changes to Twilight Infection will allow Skycatcher to quickly transform a T2 or T3 army into a T4 army. Transcendence: - Radius: 25m ➜ 30m - Kenosis, healing buff: 50% ➜ 75% more healing - Tyranny: - Healing debuff: 50% ➜ 75% less healing - Damage debuff: 25% ➜ 40% less damage We are happy with Transcendence in concept but not in practice. The stats it released with have proven too low for it to be a compelling option in decks that might otherwise want to make use of it. We are buffing up its buffs and debuffs and increasing its radius to make it easier to use in chaotic T4 fights. [ Tower 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: - Orb requirements: 2 Fire, 2 Shadow ➜ 1 Fire, 1 Shadow, 2 Neutral - Power cost: 190p ➜ 150p Deepgorge: - Power cost: 225p ➜ 200p - Damage: 480, up to 720 in total (3000 dp20) ➜ 675, up to 1015 in total (3760 dp20) - Cold Clutch freeze radius: 20m ➜ 25m Frost Crystal: - Power cost: 70p ➜ 60p - Damage: 72, up to 110 in total (728 dp20) ➜ 92, up to 138 in total (920 dp20) - Frost Wave freeze radius: 20m ➜ 25m Hammerfall: - Power cost: 150p ➜ 130p Hatecaster: - Orb costs: 2 Fire, 2 Nature ➜ 1 Fire, 1 Nature, 2 Neutral Howling Shrine: - Life points: 3160 ➜ 4260 - Linked Fire support: 1 support ➜ 4 support provided while out of combat Living Tower: - Splash radius: 5m ➜ 10m Mindweaver: - Splash radius: 5m ➜ 8m - Damage: 250, up to 375 in total (1900 dp20) ➜ 290, up to 435 in total (2200 dp20) Necroblaster: - Splash radius: 10m ➜ 12m - Corpse cost per shot: 500 life points ➜ 825 life points - Maximum corpses storable: 4500 ➜ 6600 life points - Corpse gathering radius: 33m ➜ 40m Primal Defender: - Cloudstrike damage: 220 ➜ 225 per hit Rioter's Retreat, - Splash radius: 5m ➜ 8m Stone Hurler, - Splash radius: 5m ➜ 8m Time Vortex: - Life points: 2820 ➜ 1830 - Splash radius: 5m ➜ 8m Tower of Flames: - Damage: 216, up to 324 in total (2160 dp20) ➜ 266, up to 399 in total (2660 dp20) - Splash Radius: 5m ➜ 10m Twilight Bombard: - Splash radius: 10m ➜ 15m Volcano: - Orb cost: 3 Fire, 1 Neutral ➜ 2 Fire, 2 Neutral - Gifted Eruption(g): - Self regeneration: 150 ➜ 200 life points per second - Regeneration duration: 5 sec ➜ 10 sec [ Miscellaneous Changes ] - Mind controlled units can no longer be targeted by revive effects. - NoClaim and NoCardPlay have been removed from the effects list of The Incredible Mo and Dryad(g) as neither are debuffs nor weakening effects. This means that these two cards will no longer prevent the removal of ground presence or the removal of the ability to claim walls, Power Wells, and Monuments. - The temporary immunity to revive effects on units recently resurrected by Promise of Life is now displayed as an effect. - Viridya / Ravenheart: Now spawn summoned units one at a time, no longer requiring the player to kill one unit to spawn a third unit. - Changed several more units with unbound power costs to show 0 power as the power cost when hovering over them in-game. - The following units have had their class changed from Beast to Primordial: Deepcoil Worm, Deep One, Fathom Lord, Fire Worm, Magma Fiend, Shadow Worm, and Twilight Horror - The ability "Accelerated Construction" has been renamed to "Fast Construction" to conserve space on cards. - Added visual effect for Dying Breed on air units. - Magma Spore now properly shows it is Swift. - Portal Nexus's Explosive Death now has a range preview when hovered over. - Viridya and promo Viridya's Treespirits have been renamed to Viridya's Treespirits. - The Bandit random PvE boss Equestrian Twins debuff duration has been decreased from infinite to 30 seconds. PvP Balance Changes [ New Card Design Spotlight - Twilight Crawler ] Twilight Crawlers will be a new addition to Twilight decks in T2 and widen the pool of potential transformation targets. They will be a Twilight oriented replacement for Scythe Fiends with the upsides of lower costs and an increased durability against ranged units and spells, creating synergy with healing effects like Ravage. Their transformation ability grants a faster animation, leading to a lowered risk of getting interrupted in PvP scenarios. With fast movement, they will add more versatility to the Fire Nature T2 and even more so when opting for a Twilight unit deck. [ New Card Design Spotlight - Tranquility ] We are happy to add a second spell to the Amii faction. Tranquility was designed as a flexible T2 support spell, emphasizing Amii's current PvP identity with a strong early game oriented around low energy trading. As the majority of units accessible by Shadow Nature are very cheap, the existing single target buffs from shadow splashes exceed the unit cost, makes buffing units less efficient compared to playing a second unit most of the time. The Foreboding Whispers effect should add more counterplay when facing buffed single units, which opt into focusing down Power Wells. Beside Nightguard, who has been nerfed recently, Amii lacks direct counters for L/XL units, making them slow to take down key targets. As the spell scales fairly well into higher tiers, it might also see play in late game battles, as well as PvE scenarios. [ Twilight Rework ] Twilight Transformation: The Twilight Transformation mechanic has been perceived as disappointing by most of our players. The existing aura effects were not cost efficient, and the upside of creating strong units with reduced bound power was overshadowed by Breeding Grounds. On top of that, the transformation mechanic was very clunky. A two second channel time made it difficult to use the ability in the midst of battle. A unit would risk taking a large chunk of unnecessary damage during channel time, or even have its transformation canceled by crowd control. As we have wanted to buff Twilight Transformation effects across the board, the clunky nature of this ability needed to be addressed first. To achieve this goal, we reduced the channel time of all Twilight Transformations. To address the issue of weak transformation effects, we will buff up existing ones while also adding several new mechanics, rewarding players for engaging in smart transformations. We intend to keep working on the Twilight archetype into the future, including focusing on more PvE centric changes following the same design approach seen here. This should ideally solidify the transformation ability as a powerful mechanic and make Twilight as a faction more rewarding and fun to play overall. Slaver: - Power cost: 75p ➜ 70p - Blowout: - Now also damages air units - Now also triggers after transformation -. Infused Blowout(r): - Max damage: 450 ➜ 900 total damage - Now knocks back S-units - Tainted Blowout(p): - Max damage: 350 ➜ 810 total damage - Now knocks back S and M-units Slaver was outclassed by other L-counter options in Fire Nature decks. As we want to allow more options for Twilight oriented decks, the high slot investment for its various units needs to offer more value in return. With the listed changes, we want to allow Slaver to compete with other L-counter options and also add more room for creative usage of the blowout ability. Channeling a transformation or killing the unit by yourself to get extra burst damage in critical situations should create interesting gameplay options, especially since it has an in-built L-counter bonus that gets applied even after the unit dies. Twilight Brute: - New passive, "Bloodlust": If the unit is transformed, it will incite friendly units within a 20m radius to restore 25% of their damage dealt as life points. Lasts for 20 seconds. Based on its stats, Twilight Brute has been a viable option to Fire Nature decks in the past. Its playrate was strictly limited due to deck slot issues though, as the unit was good at defending against key units like Bandit Stalker or Scythe Fiends, but didn’t add much pressure during counter-attacks compared to other M counter options like Skyfire Drake. To raise the incentive of playing him in Twilight decks, we will add a new Transformation effect, that can enable strong counterattacks after a successful defense. We will keep an eye on him to see if he can find his place in Twilight decks moving forward. We might also adjust his Burstout ability in the near future, which was not touched this patch cycle for workload reasons. Twilight Minions: - Gifted / Infused Incentive radius: 20m ➜ 25m - Gifted Incentive(g): Now also affects Fire and Nature units - Infused Incentive(r) damage buff: 50% ➜ 65% Twilight Minions fill the role of a main M-counter regardless of whether you want to pursue the current Fire Nature style or move towards a Twilight oriented deck. We want to make sure the transformations are a little more useful for both of these decks. Vileblood: - Gifted / Infused Liquids, radius: 15m ➜ 18m - Gifted Liquids(g) healing: 200 ➜ 250 life points per wave - Infused Liquids(r): - Damage: 100, up to 330 in total ➜ 130, up to 520 in total - Now knocks back S and M-unit - No longer damages structures We are buffing the Vileblood transformation towards unit damage instead of cheesing for a guaranteed 600 damage on power wells. With the newly added knockback, it should be fairly useful to punish stacked melee counter units. Also buffing the green affinity a little bit to keep up in value. Mutating Maniac: - Removed "Hex" passive ability (both affinities). - New passive, "Infused Fervor"(r): - If the unit is transformed, it will incite friendly Twilight units within a 20m radius to move 40% faster. Additionally, they will deal 50% more damage. Lasts for 15 seconds. - New passive, "Gifted Fervor"(g): - If the unit is transformed, it will incite friendly Twilight units within a 20m radius to move 40% faster. Additionally, they will be immune to all major debuffs. Lasts for 15 seconds. Since its previous changes, Mutating Maniac started performing fairly well in multiple decks. That said, the transformation ability remained fairly underwhelming. The effect was both very weak and there was no unit worth transforming into. Since moving Nightshade Plant to T3 will change the second part, we are remedying the first issue by replacing the current transformation effect with a more powerful one. If utilized correctly, this should make transforming worthwhile despite the significant power investment. Nightshade Plant: - Orb cost: 2 Nature, 2 Fire (T4) ➜ 1 Nature, 1 Fire, 1 Hybrid (T3) - Damage: 6380 ➜ 4100 - Life points: 5800 ➜ 3400 - New passive, "Siege": Deals 50% more damage against structures. - New passive "Adept Mutation": Reduced transformation cost 208p ➜ 180p - Tainted Tendrils, damage: 50 per sec ➜ 20 per sec Nightshade Plant has been highly redundant in PvE due to being outclassed by Abomination. As the card's design doesn't enable a different playstyle for Twilight decks, we have decided to rework it into a T3 unit that is most efficient when being summoned through transformation. This should add more depth to the Twilight archetype in both PvP and PvE. In PvP, Fire Nature often doesn't have the option of playing more than 2 or 3 cards in T3. This led to late game issues against more defensive oriented decks. Closing out leads was often quite a tough task outside the top echelons of play. Adding a strong game finisher will help the faction to compete to a certain extent. Decks including various Twilight units from earlier game stages will have more strategic options to utilize the card through different transformation effects. Twilight Minions will provide a very cheap summoning, Twilight Crawlers can quickly move to desired locations before transforming, and Mutating Maniac will provide the most powerful transformation buff and unit synergy. [ Bandit Touch-up ] Bandits has been in a very strong position ever since the release of its new cards, especially in lower ELOs. As a result, we will tweak it from both ends by slightly nerfing Bandit Minefield and Bandit Stalker, while also buffing some of its most favorable matchups with Pure Nature and Fire Nature. We received a lot of feedback mainly regarding the Bandit Minefield being perceived as fairly oppressive and will closely observe whether this continues to be the case after this set of changes. Bandit Minefield: - Cooldown: 25 seconds ➜ 30 seconds Bandit Minefield has been extremely popular since its release. We noticed the spell is getting spammed a lot, as it ensures great trades in almost any state of the game. Microing around the spell and punishing a player during its cooldown is supposed to be this spells intended counterplay. This downside demands a good understanding of matchup from the opponent's side as well as a solid level of execution, making the card even more efficient in lower ELOs. As we want to add more possibilities to play around the spell, we will increase its cooldown. This should open up bigger time windows to attack a Bandit player, who used the spell too recklessly. With reduced power on the Bandit Stalker, see below, there also should be more room to make use of beast creatures that can avoid the mines more consistently due to their mobility. Bandit Stalker(g): - Damage against Beasts: 100% more damage ➜ 80% more damage Bandit Stalker received a powerful buff in the past to help Bandits deal with a lot of the beast units, against which the faction used to struggle. With new powerful cards added to the faction, Bandits has become a bit too good against beast reliant decks. As a result, we decided to reduce the beast bonus damage on the green affinity of Bandit Stalker, providing players with the opportunity to snowball a lead against Bandits without getting shut down by this powerful counter unit. Bandit Lancer: - Branding targeting range: 5m ➜ 8m - Added a targeting range preview to Branding when hovered over. QoL changes which will make the ability smoother to use. [ Miscellaneous Changes ] Deep One: - Life points: 1450 ➜ 1500 - Gifted Catch root immunity duration: 20 seconds ➜ 10 seconds - Species class: Beast ➜ Primordial Pure Nature did not perform to the level we had hoped after its small rework. While we do think it was the right move to reduce Deep One’s health pool, we went a little too far. Pure Nature started struggling to break through strong Frost Splash defenses. We will revert some parts of the health nerfs and also reduce the CC immunity duration applied by gifted catch, which had a much longer duration compared to the usual cc abilities. Outside of that, the Nature versus Bandits matchup has been perceived as fairly oppressive amongst most players that gave us feedback. Deep One will move from Beast to the new Primordial class to make sure it is not getting hard countered by units like Bandit Stalker in the future. With more freedom to use its various units in skirmishes, Nature should also gain more room to play around Bandit Minefield. The spell strongly punishes any misplacement of Ghostspears or Spirit Hunters, which were the only viable trading units in this matchup, assuming a normal nature deck build was being played. Emberstrike: - Fire Lance can no longer damage Monuments and Power Wells. Small change to alleviate issues regarding the card in 2vs2 in order to keep games enjoyable without affecting any PvE unit interactions. Icefang Raptor: - Infused Reserve(r): 30% ➜ 35% of damage reflected to melee attackers - Blessed Reserve(b): 25% ➜ 30% damage reduction With the addition of Amii Paladins and buffs to cards like Twilight Minions or Ghostspears, the impact of small sized medium counters has increased overall. As a result, Icefang Raptor has fallen a bit behind. Its issues are amplified by the bonus counter passives of some S-units it is supposed to fight against, such as Stone Shards or Bandit Spearmen. Adding more power to the unit's passive should balance this out and push the unit further towards decks that can provide appropriate support in the first place. Mumbo Jumbo: - Debuff (both affinities): 20% ➜ 25% Adding a bit of power to Mumbo Jumbo as the spell is fairly difficult to use. The buffs should enable a small extra reward for nature players opting into a large T1 without altering the potentially unhealthy interactions around its spawn presence denial. Warden's Sigil - New passive, "Fast Construction": Construction time is reduced by 50% - Cooldown: 20 seconds ➜ 15 seconds Frost T1 has struggled a lot against early T2 attacks centered around Nightcrawlers and Burrowers. These units were capable of ignoring any counters entirely by focusing down structures. This inherent weakness often pushed players in the direction of playing frost very aggressively instead of methodically securing map control and power leads over time. These changes to Warden's Sigil should add more options for Frost to keep power wells alive without altering its capabilities in unit trading. While Warden's Sigil will be able to help a player get through the early game more consistently, it will be at the cost of fewer card slots for higher tier options. Since we did not want to support forward siege building strategies, the ability to attach on buildings under construction will only remain on the green affinity (this already got added in the last patch).

Patch #400035 Welcome to our newest patch. This update contains our sixth balance patch for the game, brand-new cards, and many other changes, enjoy! Patch Preview - Three new cards are now available! Jump in-game to collect Twilight Slayers, Twilight Crawler, and Tranquility. - Our initial balance pass on towers, a large number of buffs to well-designed but underperforming cards, our first PvE nerfs, and a substantial amount of changes to Fire, Nature, and Twilight cards. - Changed several PvE maps to improve player experience. General Changes Updated in-game player banner colors for GM accounts to represent the current roles. Added a search bar to the community map and sparring PvP map selection screens, which can be used to search for map names as well as map creators' names. Added a dropdown menu to the community map and sparring PvP selection screens to filter for player count. Added a "reset all filters" button to the filtering widget in the deck control window. Added a "search in marketplace" option in the right click menu of cards in the inventory. All-time PvE rankings have been reset due to many times no longer being possible. Made changes to the Shadow/Nature, Nature/Shadow, Fire/Nature, and Nature/Fire decks free PvP decks to keep them up to date with the new cards and balance changes. New Cards Twilight Slayers - 75p T3 Twilight (Fire and Shadow Affinity) You will find the upgrades for this card on the maps Crusade (fire affinity) and Defending Hope (shadow affinity). Twilight Slayers are our first ever T3 S-archer unit. Like their NPC cousins, they deal less damage if enemies are nearby. In exchange, they sport a very high attack value for use with Nature's plentiful crowd control. One affinity deals increased damage to elementals, making them an ideal counter for Stonekin, while the other deals increased damage to humans and ogres, making them a good choice against Bandits. For more information, check out Community Update 26. Twilight Crawler - 80p T2 Twilight You will find the upgrades for this card on the map Encounters with Twilight. A new M-sized S-counter for Twilight T2. Since changing Ghostspears to , Twilight has been reliant on Scythe Fiends as an S-counter in PvP. This opens up a Twilight specific S-counter which takes reduced damage from ranged attacks and spells, just like the NPC version. Tranquility - 40p T2 Amii Spell You will find the upgrade for this card on the map Nightmare's End. Like Transcendence before it, Tranquility has a different effect depending on whether it is cast on an ally (buff) or an enemy (debuff). The card's flexibility should help it fill a much-needed role in Amii's T2, particularly in PvP, as well as remain relevant in T3. For more information, check out Community Update 27.