Titan

Why I think Battleforge/Skylords Reborn has one of the best RTS tutorials.
Hey guys, I have been an RTS enthusiast since i was roughly 7 years old, I could barely hold the mouse in my hand back then and of course I was really bad. I played Command and Conquer and Starcraft, and even up to this day I still look around for new RTS to play and enjoy, and especially now is a good time to be a fan of RTS games as we have some very exciting games coming up, like Zerospace, Tempest Rising, Stormgate and D.O.R.F.. 
And even though I've played so much RTS in my life, which is arguably my most favorite genre, I still always check out the tutorial of new games, and sometimes I even catch myself how I check out the tutorial of a game that I have played a thousand times just to see how they handled the tutorial. Were they doing a good job explaining stuff? Was the pacing good? Did they let you have some freedom in it or was it extremely strict and limited?
I still check out these tutorials because at the end of the day, I would still consider myself being a casual RTS player, I don't need difficult challenges to overcome, for me the S in RTS stands for sandbox (took the quote from GiantGrantGames). I just wanna have fun! But in order for that to happen I need a good tutorial. One that teaches me all the unique stuff about this particular RTS. They still can do the little control tutorial part but it shouldn't be overdone. (As you never know if this is a players first RTS or not, so littlebit of control tutorial should be part of it)
RTS games that I have played are Starcraft 1/2, Warcraft 3, Age of Empires 2/3, Star Wars Empire at War, Age of Mythology, Command & Conquer (almost all of them except 4), 8-Bit Armies, Battle for Middleearth 1/2, War of the Ring, Rise of Nations, Rise of Legends, Dawn of War 1, SWINE, Arena Wars, Pikmin 2/3/4, A year of rain, Warparty, Stronghold (1, Crusader 1/2 and Warlords) and of course Skylords Reborn. But among all these i actually think Skyloords has the best tutorial out there.
Age of empires 2 was fine but also extremely long and slow. Some of the tutorial missions could have been thrown together.
Starcraft 2 was also fine but it didn't leave you much freedom to just go and try stuff. It was very limited.
Warcraft 3 almost takes the win, but instead of having Thrall explain things to you or a grunt, its just a disembodied voice as a narrator.
Dawn of war 1 was basically just a skirmish with an extradumb AI and another disembodied voice.
This is where I think Battleforge back then nailed it.
1. First of all, the narrator. Youre being guided through the tutorial by Moon, a character that is relevant for the entire campaign. And shes not talking to you breaking the fourth wall, she talks to you as an equivalent, you are a fellow skylord as well. The way she talks to you is way more immersive than in some other games were they basically remind you that this is a game.
2. The whole control stuff with the camera and unitcontrol is being dealt with quickly. The basecontrols of any RTS games is just never the difficult part, its easy to pick up and doesn't need much explaination. She also doesn't force you to things that you might never end up doing anyway. There were games were you had to spin the camera, or click on the minimap to move the camera but in the actual game you just never did it because its just not necessary.
3. Next is the explaination of the ressource system, its quick and easy to understand, but that is part of the game mechanics itself.
4. The tutorial is actually disguised as an actual mission. You not here in a bootcamp like situation, there are bandits and they need to be dealt with. At one point even Moon was shocked how well equipped the bandits were and she even helped you with an earthquake spell. This was not just a trial or an exam, it was a mission!
5. The pacing in general is very well done, you are not dumped with too many informations at one point without doing too much in the meantime. It was well proportioned overall, a little bit of info, then you got to some stuff again.
6. In the introduction you also had to not only attack, but also defend. Some tutorials always show you just how to A-move and then they are done, but here you also  had to defend on that wall. Whats even more interesting is, when she wants you to defend, you are tasked to build a cannon tower, building something takes time. But instead of waiting until its finished the enemy attack wave is already on the way. You are not idly sitting around doing nothing waiting for the tower to be finished you already being attacked, the tower finishes midcombat and then helps you out a lot.
There are even more little things that I could point out, like the way abilities were explained, spell showcase, or construction of walls with the right direction. But the final important thing about this tutorial is the ending.
7. Once you have arrived at the third monument, the mission opens up. You can play with more stuff and there is a lot to do. You get access to magma hurler and tremors, which when I played the game for the first time were cool as heck! Moon tasked with the task to take out the remaining enemies and their boss. A BOSS... IN A TUTORIAL! This was awesome, you have access to everything now and can do whatever you want, there is a bunch more enemies to deal with, even with a little camp to the side where you can find more power wells (its not worth it building them up as they wont pay for themselves anymore but its just plain fun, finding stuff and being rewarded for being curious) The choice of your final two units is also well made, you got the magma hurler as pretty good ranged damage dealer without abilities, so you can just A-move them, but the tremor have an aoe that knocks back smaller targets, is it strong? No but it also doesn't need to be, just seeing all the enemies sent flying with the skill is awesome. 
And then there is the boss, is he difficult? No but he got a very strong healer and if that one isn't dealt with the fight can take way longer. It rewards the player realizing the situation and figuring stuff out. Sure looking back its not that impressive, but newer players will feel good after this.
Overall I think of all the tutorials that I have played this is one of the best of all time. I'm curios to see how the upcoming RTS are gonna handle this stuff.
If there is one thing that I would add is maybe at least a voice line telling you about the effectiveness of counters and that its a 50% damagebuff. Not everything must be within a tutorial but I think that one would be nice.
So this is my opinion on this, again I'm just a casual and probably some people are gonna disagree with some of the things that I said.
What did you think of the introduction, or which RTS tutorial did you think did it best?

Greetings Skylords!
A new month; a new Community Update! It's time to bring you up to speed with everything going on in Skylords Reborn!

• February Hotfix Patches

Over the course of February, we released several hotfix patches for our most recent major content update. If you are still experiencing any issues, please contact our technical support team and/or use the 'report a bug'-feature on our Discord.
One of these hotfix patches also includes an often-requested feature: spawnable bosses in the Forge. We have added a new 'Leader' tab to the Forge Menu, allowing you to spawn bosses from randomly generated scenarios. 
 
• Upcoming Feature - Map of the Day 

In our last patch, we increased the rewards for playing campaign maps to bring them more in line with rPvE, which players could feel forced to play due to its better rewards. In our continued effort to allow players to enjoy each different game mode, we are working on multiple additional incentives to play the campaign; one being Map of the Day. 
Map of the Day is a feature that highlights a particular multi-player map each day and rewards players additional rewards for completing that map, similar to the PvP Happy Hour. This map is randomly selected each day, and picks from the pool of existing multi-player campaign maps. Our new campaign maps, once released, will also be added to the pool. 

Playing on the Map of the Day rewards players with an additional upgrade on all 2-player and 4-player maps. Players will also receive additional gold for completing the 12-player maps Passage to Darkness and Ascension on Advanced (1200g), and Expert (2400g) difficulties.
Our goal for Map of the Day is to give players an incentive to get together and play one of the various campaign maps, including less popular ones. The Map of the Day will highlight in a similar way to Happy Hours on the World Map, so people know which map is active for additional rewards. 

We are currently working on finalizing the feature, and hope to release it in the near future. 
Disclaimer: text, layout and colors are subject to change.
 
• Skylords Reborn Classic - Legacy Server

BattleForge shut down its servers on October 31, 2013, following its release in March 2009. Our unofficial revival of the game opened its servers on December 18, 2020 as Skylords Reborn. Over the past 3 years since its release, we have added a ton of new content, quality of life changes and balance changes to the game. While we don't have a video covering the last year, our 2-year recap video should give you an idea of what we've added to the game. 
It is not uncommon for communities to provide mod support for older titles. However, those titles are typically still available for purchase or playable offline post-official support. This is not the case for BattleForge. If you want to play BattleForge in 2024, your only option is through Skylords Reborn.  
Our dedicated team, now comprising over 50 volunteers, has always taken this project very seriously, striving to make it the best it can possibly be. We're committed to continually introducing new content and delivering fresh experiences to keep our players engaged. Whether it's through new campaign maps, additional cards, new systems (such as Reforging), or balance adjustments (discussed on our balance discord), we feel a responsibility to keep the legacy of BattleForge in place, while also wanting to prevent the same fate of its downfall. 
However, we acknowledge that some of our past and future changes, while essential for the health of the game, may impact players' nostalgic sentiments. Considering that numerous cards have already undergone modifications compared to the original game, the differences between Skylords Reborn and BattleForge is increasing with each patch. Thus, the concept of a Legacy server has been a topic of discussion within our team over the years.
Yet, implementing a Legacy server isn't as straightforward as reverting to the version of BattleForge at the time of its shutdown. The game simply wouldn't work. Significant overhauls to the game's economy, rectification of critical bugs, and resolution of other technical issues were needed. Now, as we enter the fourth year of Skylords Reborn, we felt it was time to revisit this idea and have devised a way to introduce a Legacy server without impeding Skylords Reborn's ongoing development.
Here is what you can expect of the Legacy server:
• Original cards, maps and balancing
• All cards are available to the player right away
• No progression system
• No new cards
• No balance patches
• No additional rPvE factions (Fire, Nature) or campaign maps
• No technical or moderation support
We have to set up the server this way to prevent additional workload that would impact our actual patch releases for Skylords Reborn, which will continue to be our top priority. Additionally, there may be certain features on the Legacy server that deviate from a true "legacy" experience. For instance, Reforging will be available (though redundant given the complete card collection), and while Achievements and Quests may also be accessible, some may be unattainable due to outdated balance, game systems, or maps. 
The server will work similar to our current test server, you'll log into the Legacy server with a new account, and there will be no interaction between players on this server and the primary SR-server. The SR-server will remain the default server for both new players discovering the game and seasoned veterans seeking fresh content. All our major content patches will be releasing exclusively on the SR-server, including new campaign maps and new cards. Because of this, we don't expect a big split in our player base.      
Nevertheless, we anticipate that the Legacy server will offer a nostalgic journey for Skylords keen on revisiting the original BattleForge gameplay, as well as for players interested in witnessing the evolution of Skylords Reborn.
While we're still finalizing certain details, and things might change before its release. The Legacy server is scheduled to launch alongside our next major content patch.
 
• New Card Reveal - Amii Sentinel

During our Anniversary Stream we announced there would be three new Amii units coming to Skylords Reborn in 2024. We will be revealing those cards in the upcoming Community Updates, the first being revealed today! Here is Amii Sentinel!
Please note: We are still testing the card. While we are generally happy with it, numbers and effects might still change before release. 


 
Grasp of the Earth - 60 power
Activate to reach Amii Golem's fist into the ground, emerging within the target area of 15m and dealing 1800 damage to enemies, up to 5400 in total. Reusable every 20 seconds.
 
Volatile Body
100% of all damage done to the unit will additionally also be distributed among all units within a 20m radius. This damage cannot be warded off with the help of damage reducing abilities because it is able to circumvent every buff or protective shield.
 
Siege
Deals 50% more damage against structures.
 
 
Elusive
Units with Elusive have the duration of the immobilizing effects of Freeze and Paralyze reduced by 10%.
 
 
Design notes: Our goal for Amii's T4 is to create a micro-intensive deck where most of the damage is unit-based. With Amii Sentinel in particular, our goal is to create a frontline tank that functions as a perfect conduit for Shadow's single-target buff cards. Volatile Body's 100% reflect turns Sentinel's health into a damage resource, which synergizes perfectly with cards like Regrowth, Transcendence, and Lifeweaving.
The active ability "Grasp of the Earth" is designed to one-shot problematic buildings when buffed, which is important because both Shadow and Nature lack fast acting anti-building tools.
Amii Sentinel is currently planned to release alongside our next major content patch, including brand-new campaign maps. We are not yet able to announce a release date. Please stay tuned for more information, and check in next month for another Amii card reveal!
 
• Art Spotlight - Amii Sentinel

It has been a while since we have done an Art Spotlight; diving into the process of our artists coming up with a new card artwork. Amii Sentinel was always part of a combination of three Amii units, combined into a single landscape image. We asked our artist Tweeto to share some work-in-progress artwork and sketches, as well as his workflow. As always, a big thanks to our Art Critiques to offer valuable feedback during the process.

Initial Sketch: I started off with a loose sketch to block in the basic stance and proportions of the character. Keeping the lines dynamic and rough, I focused on the silhouette to ensure a strong, impactful presence that conveys power and stability.
Values Blocking: Next, I moved into grayscale, blocking my values to develop the form and give the character a sense of volume. This is a critical step in figuring how light interacts with the different materials and shapes of the character. To speed up this process, I employed AI generation tools, which allowed me to quickly iterate on different lighting scenarios and value compositions
Color Blocking: After nailing down the values, I started laying in broad strokes of color. Using a muted palette, I began to block in the main hues, thinking about the overall temperature balance and how it will complement the character's environment.

Detailing and Texture: With the base colors in place, I zoomed in to start rendering the finer details. Here, I focused on the texture of the stone, adding cracks and variations to make the surface look realistic. I also added golden ornate details to give it a more intricate look, and connect the character to the Amii aesthetics.

Lighting and Atmosphere: Then, I intensified the lighting effects to emphasize the magical core and the dramatic ambient light of the scene. I worked on the specular highlights on the metal parts, as well as the soft glow emanating from the core, to suggest a powerful energy source within.

Final Adjustments: In the final stage, I made subtle adjustments to the composition and the pose, fine-tuning the contrast and saturation to make certain elements pop. I also added a more pronounced rim light to enhance the character's form against the background, and adjusted the overall color balance for visual harmony.
Polishing: To finish off, I polished the image by sharpening key areas to draw focus, such as the face, the core, and the hand. I also rendered the background elements, ensuring the character look integrated with the environment and reflect the character's influence on its surroundings.

We are very happy with how the Amii faction is now finally coming together, and hope you appreciate all the thoughts and passion that went into creating them! 
 
• PvP Bots

Right now, Skylords Reborn doesn't have a mode where players can practice against computer-controlled opponents before jumping into ranked matches. This missing feature can make it tough for new players to get into PvP (Player versus Player). To help players ease into PvP, we're looking to add bots to the game in the future, and we're asking the community for their support to make it happen.
Below you can see a short video showcasing bots playing against each other:
 
ai_contest_announcement.webm
If you are interested in helping out, be sure to check the PvP AI programming contest below!
 
• Events

In between our monthly Community Updates, we host various events and tournaments, so be sure to keep a close eye on the in-game event tab and the forum calendar to stay informed and not miss out on any exciting events!
 
• NEW - Battle of Tactics #6 - Rainbow Road - February 23rd until March 3rd
Try to conquer a modified version of Dwarven Riddle in this crazy colorful contest hosted by Ultralord. In this one player map, you don't build orbs, but have a Rainbow crystal granting you different elements. More information.
 
• FINISHED - Faction Fusion: Embrace the Shift
Skylords were tasked to play the newly redesigned rPvE difficulties to have a chance at receiving one of the new cards, Lost Manabeast and Tectonic Shift. More information.
 
 • SECOND PHASE STARTED - PvP AI programming contest
We are gathering players for a new type of event. Get ready for an AI Programming Tournament, where the submitted programs will face off in an epic showdown to find the ultimate AI strategist! More information.
 
• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our other Event Organizers, @Metagross31or @Minashigo Hiko. We can help you out with various topics and are glad to discuss potential ideas. We can also sponsor the prize pool for your event. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you.
 
• Contribute

Skylords Reborn is a community-driven project fueled by the passion and dedication of over 50 volunteers. We are always on the lookout for like-minded individuals. If you have a passion for gaming, programming, design, or marketing, we invite you to have a look at our open positions!

We are especially looking for some more proofreaders (English), to read over stuff like the Community Update and Event posts before they go live. We are also looking for translators (French, Russian) to help with our new campaign maps and more. 
Don't have time to formally join the staff, but still would like to help out? Please check out this guide on how to support Skylords Reborn as a community member.
 
• In Conclusion

That's all for this Community Update! We appreciate you taking the time to read through it.
As is tradition, we're including a scratch code as a small token of our appreciation for your support.
The code will reward you with a General booster: AFTE-RALL-THIS-TIME
The code is valid until April 1st, when we will bring you another Community Update. 
We're always looking for ways to improve and value your feedback. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please don't hesitate to share them with us. We'll be back next month with more updates on our ongoing projects and upcoming features. You can also sign up to our e-mail newsletter here. 

Archive
• Skylords Reborn Documents (Deep Dives, Behind the Scenes, PvP Guide)  
• Overview Community Updates
• Community Update February 2024
 

Sorry to hear this! I hope you come back some day, feel free to DM me in Discord (sorry, I barely read the forums) if you need to chat 🤗. Goodbye for now.

Greetings Skylords!
A new month; a new Community Update! It's time to bring you up to speed with everything going on in Skylords Reborn!

• Patch Date Announcement - 19th of May
Exciting news! Our next content patch is almost ready for release. We are currently hard at work to finalize its content, and are ready to announce a patch date. Our spring patch is planned for a release on the 19th of May. 
We have a lot of exciting things in the works in various stages of development, some of which you will see in later patches. While we highlighted some upcoming Lost Souls changes in last month's community update, we are still working to resolve some issues before we can confirm their inclusion in this patch. We appreciate your patience and want to assure you that if these changes are not ready for the spring patch, they will be included in a later one.
As we get closer to the patch's release, we will provide more details about the content in the patch notes. In the meantime, we are pleased to share that the Nature faction will be introduced to the game as a new enemy for rPvE.
 
• A look at Nature rPvE
On December 18th, 2021, we introduced the Fire faction as a formidable new enemy to be faced in rPvE. We're thrilled to announce that the Nature faction is now ready to be added to the ranks, In celebration of this occasion, we sat down with Hodron to give us some insights into its development.

 
Let's start with introductions, for those who do not know you, what is your role on the Skylords Reborn team?
Hey, I am Hodron, I am part of the map department of the Skylords Reborn Team. I have mostly worked on the Fire rPvE set before Nature, which has been a quite monumental task in both cases.
 
How long have you been working on Nature rPvE?
In early 2022, after the release of the Fire rPvE faction, we had a poll to decide what the next faction would be; Nature or Frost. The overwhelming majority voted for Nature, and we started working on it around February 2022. If I had to estimate the time I was actively working on the faction, I would say about a year due to some pauses during development.
 
How do you start designing a new rRvE faction?
First of all, I think of all the Nature cards in the game and then imagine the AI using their abilities like the Fire units are already. Terrifying thought, am I right? Our very brave map testers can probably still remember the horrors of some early testing versions of Nature rPvE. The camps were stacked with healing and damage reduction while constantly paralyzing the player, almost like a horde of Twilight Willzappers. For the first few rounds of testing, we never actually won a match on difficulty 9, not even close. From there the process turns to cutting and / or improving the units, buildings, and camps until a good mix across all difficulties is found.
What about units?
Nature units were proving to be problematic in their original state because they are supposed to give the player a varied box of tools, but they cost energy to balance this. For example, Deep One: The ability to move player units into a camp and root them in place was immensely frustrating to play against, especially when multiple of these fellas were in one camp or attack wave. Swamp Drake also went through multiple iterations; first having the Sleep ability, then being like a Bandit Windhunter and lastly now only being a stat unit. 
 
Are there more units that act completely different compared to their card counterparts?
Of course, there are some units that differ quite a bit from their card version, either because of balance or because of how some card abilities would be wasted on the AI. Some examples include the Timeshifter Spirit which does not have his anti-magic field but can instead
 
While adding the Fire faction, we had the challenge of a faction that does not really have access to CC, resulting in a more glass cannon approach for the faction. Did you have a specific theme in mind for the Nature faction?
So I knew that the core of the nature faction would be healing and crowd control. But I also wanted to let the Root Network shine a bit. Then there were the more problematic things like Parasite Swarm, Mind Weaver and Mind Control, which we played around with for a while. However, it was simply not fun to play against enemies that took away too many of your units, even though it made for some hilarious scenarios, in which first timers got half of their army stolen, the other half eliminated and then after regaining control, also losing the other half.
 
So a focus on mindcontrol did not work out, were you able to find alternatives?
I think the mix of paralyze and root the faction now has, while also using the root network to some extent, will provide a unique experience.
 
What about buildings, can you tell us something about those?
Nature buildings were in a weird spot, some were completely overpowered against some frequent player strategies like early Strangleholds, while others were quite underwhelming like the Primal Defender. Because AI units only root while in combat, they are unable to provide support, and buildings that depend on the root network may fluctuate greatly in difficulty based on the amount of support a camp can generate. In the end, buildings are one thing that I did not want the focus to be on, so they are maybe even a little boring compared to the units.
 
What would you say is unique about facing the Nature faction, compared to the other factions?
Nature introduces a completly new mechanic which amps up their late game and can thus break the mold of later camps feeling all the same.
 
You mentioned our brave map testers, can you tell us something about balancing?
I think we almost exclusively had to nerf units after their initial inception, which were mostly just a carbon copy of the player card with their abilities set to automatically be used. Which really goes to show how strong crowd control and healing in a faction can be, even if they have only slightly above average damage. As mentioned before, we had to nerf quite a bit before we could actually win a match on difficulty 9 with quite experienced players and exclusive S-tier decks. Through playing a lot we found the parts that were annoying or outright destroying the flow, which we then tried to smooth out.
 
How difficult do you think rPvE is compared to the other factions?
I was aiming for this faction to be around the difficulty level of Twilight due to the depths of the mechanics that Nature uses. You will have to focus targets or their healing will overwhelm you while you are paralyzed, but there is room for outplaying that.
 
What was the thing you enjoyed most about designing the faction?
Designing the boss units was very enjoyable, as it had been the case for Fire. I also had a lot of fun just looking at camps and watching their mechanics interact with each other.
 
What was the biggest challenge while developing the faction?
A big challenge was to make units distinct, by which I mean to give each unit traits by which each player could gauge their threat level to their deck and playstyle. In the beginning, almost all units were tanky and had a lot of damage or had damage and some form of crowd control. We had to shift stats to make damage dealers less tanky, make crowd control units deal less damage and tanks have shorter range on their crowd control abilities.
 
Fire rPvE introduced some fun and fan favourite bosses. Will we see new boss units for Nature as well?
Yes, absolutely! The nature faction will ship with a set of nine new boss units. I really like how the low tier boss units based on the Burrower which is spitting acid all over the place and the Timeshifter Spirit which summons hordes of poisoned creepers turned out. But there are of course some threatening late game bosses.
 
Will we see rPvE Frost or Shadow next?
After working on rPvE for quite some time now, I really want to shift focus to campaign maps for a while, as that is also a huge part of the game that I and many others enjoy.
 
Is there anything else you'd like to share with our players?
Thank you for being so loyal to such an old game. I hope you enjoy this new faction once it is released and see you in the forge.
 


A big thanks to Hodron and our map testers for pouring so much love and time into the development of this new rPvE faction. We hope you look forward to facing them! 
 
• Easter Event Recap
We are glad to share our Easter Event was a huge success, with nearly 700 of you unlocking the new special Easter banner. Although the banner is no longer obtainable, you can still find the map in the Community Map section by searching for "The Easter Tree" if you wish to play it.
We hope you enjoyed all the effort that was put into the special map. While we always try to carefully balance our time investment into special events like this. We would love to hear some feedback. Would you like to see more events like the Easter and Halloween ones, where we modify a familiar map to suit the holiday theme?
We noticed that not many of you participated in the speedrun competition for the map, and we would like to know why. Your feedback is very valuable to us, so please leave us a message below.
 
• Event: Through Ice and Flames
While you are waiting for our new patch, be sure to check out the community event Through Ice and Flames. This event takes place on two great community maps, created by @Damo and @Hrdina_Imperia. Check out the trailer below, and go here for more information.
The event lasts till the 14th of May, though the maps will still be playable after. 

In between our monthly Community Updates, we host various events and tournaments, so be sure to keep a close eye on the in-game event tab and the forum calendar to stay informed and not miss out on any exciting events!

• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event yourself? Please reach out to our Event Organizers, @Metagross31, @Minashigo Hiko, or @nukie! We can help you out with various topics and are glad to discuss potential ideas. We can also sponsor the prize pool for your event. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you.
 
• Team Changes
Katchau has recently departed from the team. We greatly appreciate his contributions, especially his development of the search card in market feature. We wish him all the best in his future endeavors.

That being said, we are happy to announce three new community members formally joined our team last month!
We have a new developer in Piskr, who will start out with a focus on Client Development. He is currently working on improving the player right click menu, including a way to improve importing decks. 

Known in the community for his streams and beautiful artwork, Ultralord has joined the team as our first Video Editor.
Another well known community member with terrible luck in opening promo's from boosters, Volin, has joined the team to help us out with coordinating Map Testing. 
Volin and Ultralord also worked together to give us the Lost Souls overview video from last month.

Welcome everyone, and we are looking forward to your contributions! 
 
• Contribute
Interested in joining the team yourself? Skylords Reborn is a community-driven project fuelled by the passion and dedication of over 30 volunteers. We are always on the lookout for like-minded individuals. If you have a passion for gaming, programming, design, or marketing, we invite you to take a look at our open positions!
 

 
• In Conclusion
That's all for this Community Update! We appreciate you taking the time to read through it.
As is tradition, we're including a scratch code as a small token of our appreciation for your support.
The code will reward you with a General booster: 19TH-MAYN-EXTP-ATCH
The code is valid until June 1st, when we will bring you another Community Update. 
We're always looking for ways to improve and value your feedback. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please don't hesitate to share them with us. We'll be back next month with more updates on our ongoing projects and upcoming features. You can also sign-up to our e-mail newsletter here. 

Archive
• Skylords Reborn Documents (Deep Dives, Behind the Scenes, PvP Guide)  
• Overview Community Updates
• Community Update April 2023

🔔 Hear, hear! 🔔
It's time for a reveal - the following Discord emoticons are the choices for the winner of the contest:
                      
Special thanks to @Titan for creating these, and may the winner chose wisely!

Why does X suck... I guess it can be called a series now. To read "Why does Wheel of Gift suck", please click here:   https://forum.skylords.eu/index.php?/topic/9219-why-does-wheel-of-gifts-suck/

Juice Tank is a Tier 2 building (device). It costs 50 power and passive ability that does the following:
"Within a 25m radius the remaining capacity of own and friendly Power Wells takes 40 / 45 / 50 / 55% longer to deplete. Production per time increment remains the same."
To explain in simple terms, if you build a Juice Tank near a Power Well, it will take longer for that Power Well to run out, resulting on more total power gained from that Power Well. Maps that take a long time to clear, or where your Power Wells have low capacity, Juice Tank is a card to consider. The only reason you want to put this card in your deck is if you run the risk of running out of power.
Running out of power on a map is extremely rare. There are only a handful of maps where this is realistically possible, Nightmare's End comes to mind. Because Juice Tank takes a while to get usage out of it, it is not recommended to use in maps where there is a strict time limit. Prime example of this is Random PvE maps. In none of the difficulties will the Power Wells run out before the timer does. This makes Juice Tanks completely useless in Random PvE. To make matter worse, if you build a Juice Tank on all your Power Well clusters, you bind 200 power. This is the equivalent of (almost) a Tier 4 unit. 
Considering all of the aforementioned, I earnestly ask everyone to review their Random PvE decks and remove the Juice Tanks.
Thank you 🙂  



--------------------
Juice Tank can be played in Lost Spirit decks to fuel their ability, destorying the Juice Tank in the process. 

Greetings Skylords!
A new month; a new Community Update! It's time to bring you up to speed with everything going on in Skylords Reborn!

 
• Forge Lag and Leaderboard Achievements

We want to take a moment to address the Forge lag issue that many of our players have been experiencing. We understand that it has been causing frustration, and we're sorry for any inconvenience it has caused. Luckily, we're happy to report that we've made significant progress in resolving the issue. Because we introduced major features such as cosmetics with our latest patch, it took us some time to pinpoint the cause of the lag, but we have now identified and fixed the issue through a patch. You should now experience a smoother and more enjoyable experience in the Forge.
In addition to addressing the lag issue, we have also fixed the problems with leaderboard achievements and retroactively distributed rewards for the past month. Furthermore, we've fixed a bug that affected the display of achieved rankings for this month's leaderboard achievements. The displayed rankings now accurately reflect your current rank, so you can see how you're doing and earn rewards accordingly.
Click here to read the full patch notes. 
 
• Upcoming Feature: Drop Locations

Upgrading cards is a fundamental aspect of Skylords Reborn, and finding the locations of these upgrades can be challenging, especially for new players. We understand that browsing external sources like the Wiki can be a significant barrier for players to gather information. That's why we're happy to announce the upcoming feature of in-game drop locations!

With the new "View Upgrades" button added to the create-a-lobby screen, finding upgrade locations is just one click away. You can easily access the upgrade locations you need without ever leaving the game, making the process of finding the upgrades you need more straightforward and easier.


Clicking on the "View Upgrades" button will reveal a list of upgrades that can be found on the map. You can filter the list by colour, difficulty, and whether you already own the upgrades. This will help you to quickly and easily find the upgrades you need. 

 
Moreover, we've added an upgrade location feature to the "Claim Upgrade" section of your cards. Right-click a card from your inventory, click "Upgrade", and you will now be able to see the drop location of the upgrade. This is in addition to the existing feature of purchasing the upgrade with gold. This makes it easier for you to decide whether to spend gold on an upgrade, or complete the map to try to gather it. 
 


We are happy to introduce this feature into the game, and believe it will help our players to more easily complete their collection. We hope to include this feature in our next patch and are excited to see how it will improve the player experience in Skylords Reborn.
 
• Upcoming Feature: Comparing Profiles

In our latest patch, we introduced new cosmetics and achievements, which brought a fresh set of challenges for players. We are excited to announce that we are working on a new feature – Comparing Profiles – that will allow players to compare their progress with others.

With this feature, you'll be able to right-click on another player and compare your profile with theirs. This comparison will show your achievements and progress in the game, helping you to see how you stack up against other players. We believe that this feature will encourage more players to collaborate and tackle the most challenging achievements together.
To ensure that everyone feels comfortable sharing their progress, profiles will be publicly visible by default, but players will have the option to set their profiles to private, friends-only, or group-only. This will give you control over who can see your progress, and ensure that you are only sharing your achievements with the audience you choose.

We are currently finalizing this feature and are already able to share a sneak peek of how it will look in the game:

We believe that this feature will be a great addition to the game, and we plan to include it in our next patch. We hope players are looking forward to it!
 
• Behind the Scenes: Fire Wormlings

As Skylords Reborn continues to evolve, we're constantly hard at work creating new content and cards to keep the game fresh and exciting. However, as with any development process, we sometimes encounter unexpected challenges along the way.
Today, we want to take you behind the scenes of one of our recent projects that didn't go according to plan – the implementation of a new card called "Fire Wormlings", and share some of the challenges we faced.

Fire Wormlings, Artwork by Tweeto
Designed as a squad of six small worms based on the card "Fire Worm", the Wormlings were intended to be a strong S-squad archer-unit, perfect for our upcoming defensive rPvE mode. Unfortunately, we ran into several unexpected issues during development.
For example, we encountered problems when attempting to mount the squad on walls. This was problematic, since the goal of the card in the first place was to provide additional archers to be used in late game defensive scenario's. Placing the squad on a wall would result in a buggy model with the worms' tails sticking out of the wall segment, looking quite silly in the progress:
 
Additionally, the death animation of the worms didn't quite look right, as it was designed for a single XL unit, rather than a squad of small S units. Facing them in combat sure looked... dramatic:
Despite these challenges, we're still committed to finding a solution that meets our standards and gives our players new enjoyable cards to play with. We're currently exploring other ways to incorporate the "Fire Wormlings" into the game, though it might be a while before you see them again.  
We appreciate your patience as we work through these challenges. We know that players are eager to hear about actual upcoming content, so we would like to know: do you enjoy these behind-the-scenes at our development process, or would you prefer us sticking to announcing more concrete upcoming content? Please let us know in the comments below! 
 
• PvP Guide Update

Our latest balance patch resulted in significant changes to both the PvP meta and the free PvP decks. To ensure that you're up-to-date with the latest strategies, the PvP Guide has been updated accordingly.
Whether you're a beginner or a seasoned player, this comprehensive guide has got you covered. It includes deck descriptions, tips and tricks for each match-up, and an overview of the pros and cons of your deck. We also indicate how beginner-friendly each deck is to play.
The guide is written by RadicalX and Hirooo, two of the top players in the game. You can trust their expertise and insights to help you level up your PvP skills. So make sure you read up on the latest updates and get ready for the upcoming PvP tournament on Sunday!

 
• Tournaments / Events

In between our monthly Community Updates, we host various events and tournaments, so be sure to keep a close eye on the in-game event tab and the forum calendar to stay informed and not miss out on any exciting events!

FINISHED  – Official PvE Contest #8: Insane God
"One of Urzachs Minions is heading for an altar. sToP tHeM!" The results are in: check out the winner reveal stream, hosted by Ultralord, of our Insane God event this Friday the 3rd. More information.
 
NEW - Skylords Reborn Championship #2 – Sunday 5th of March
Get ready for our PvP tournament, the Skylords Reborn Championship! This event is open to players of all skill levels, and will be live-streamed by RadicalX. There are many prizes to be won, including for the audience! Don't forget to sign up in advance if you want to participate. More information.
 
NEW - CCC #10 Ashbone Pyro vs. Magma Hurler - UNTIL 12.03.2022
In the next installment of CCC, players will answer the ultimate question: Ashbone Pyro or Magma Hurler? Show your allegiance and fight for supremacy in the latest Crappy Community Contest! More information.
 
• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event yourself? Please reach out to our Event Organizers, Metagross, Minashigo Hiko, or Nukie! We can help you out with various topics and are glad to discuss potential ideas. We can also sponsor the prize pool for your event. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you.
 
 
• Join the Team

Skylords Reborn is a community-driven project fuelled by the passion and dedication of over 30 volunteers. We are always on the lookout for like-minded individuals. If you have a passion for gaming, programming, design, or marketing, we invite you to take a look at our open positions!
 


• Newsletter


While we aim to keep our community in the loop with monthly news through our Community Updates, we understand that sometimes these updates might not reach you. That's why we offer a newsletter that will notify you when a new patch or update is released. Don't worry, we respect your privacy and promise not to send spam or use your data in any other way. Click here to sign up.

If you provided your email address during our summer survey to stay up to date, then you are automatically subscribed to our newsletter. We recently sent out our first newsletter, which announced the release of our latest patch.
• In Conclusion

That's all for this Community Update! We appreciate you taking the time to read through it.
As is tradition, we're including a scratch code as a small token of our appreciation for your support.
The code will reward you with a General booster: DROP-LOCA-TION-MAPS

The code is valid until April 1st, when we will bring you another Community Update. 
We're always looking for ways to improve and value your feedback. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please don't hesitate to share them with us. We'll be back next month with more updates on our ongoing projects and upcoming features.

Archive
• Skylords Reborn Documents (Deep Dives, Behind the Scenes, PvP Guide)  
• Overview Community Updates
• Community Update February 2023

Things you will need to download:
FBX Converter - https://www.autodesk.com/developer-network/platform-technologies/fbx-converter-archives
BF Model Viewer - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1O0SdQE3Jo0HECUZjbLhbdauZhHoLibAU/view
Blender - https://www.blender.org/download/ 

To start off, make sure you exported all the models from BF into the BFModels folder in BFModelViewer folder. Open BFModelViewer.exe, choose your graphics options, and hit Play!. Navigate to your choice of model .drs, as an example I'll take skel_human_claw > unit_striker.drs and hit Export to FBX. Next go to that folder \BFModels\skel_human_claw\unit_striker.fbx, open FBX Converter, and drag and drop your unit_striker.fbx.fbx file into the left side of FBX Converter. On the right, change FBX Save Mode to Binary and hit Convert. Back in the folder, you'll now see it made another folder called FBX 2013 and in there is the .fbx file you'll need to import into Blender. So Open Blender, File > Import > Import FBX, navigate to that FBX 2013 folder, and import it (no need to change options).

To get textures working, go to the Shading tab and you'll have to go back to the \skel_human_claw\ folder and create a new texture, add a image texture, or drag and drop the .dds files (ex. unit_striker_col.dds) from the folder directly. Next, create a Mapping and Texture Coordinate node (CTRL+T if you have Node Wrangler enabled) and connect them together. Connect the unit_striker_col.dds to the Color node on the Principled BSDF. You'll notice the textures are not right, so you need to change the Y Scale on the Mapping node to -1.000 instead of 1.000, then you should see it looks correct. You will also need to connect the _par and _nor files to their respective places as I have shown in the attached image (Separate Color = Separate RGB depending on Blender version). And now you should have a fully textured Battleforge model in Blender.

If you want to change the textures, you'll need to flip the UVs manually instead of using Y Scale: -1.000 on the Mapping node. To do that, go to UV editing tab, select all (A), and invert them on the Y axis (you can just type S, Y, -1) to show them correctly.

Things you will need to download:
FBX Converter - https://www.autodesk.com/developer-network/platform-technologies/fbx-converter-archives
BF Model Viewer - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1O0SdQE3Jo0HECUZjbLhbdauZhHoLibAU/view
Blender - https://www.blender.org/download/ 

To start off, make sure you exported all the models from BF into the BFModels folder in BFModelViewer folder. Open BFModelViewer.exe, choose your graphics options, and hit Play!. Navigate to your choice of model .drs, as an example I'll take skel_human_claw > unit_striker.drs and hit Export to FBX. Next go to that folder \BFModels\skel_human_claw\unit_striker.fbx, open FBX Converter, and drag and drop your unit_striker.fbx.fbx file into the left side of FBX Converter. On the right, change FBX Save Mode to Binary and hit Convert. Back in the folder, you'll now see it made another folder called FBX 2013 and in there is the .fbx file you'll need to import into Blender. So Open Blender, File > Import > Import FBX, navigate to that FBX 2013 folder, and import it (no need to change options).

To get textures working, go to the Shading tab and you'll have to go back to the \skel_human_claw\ folder and create a new texture, add a image texture, or drag and drop the .dds files (ex. unit_striker_col.dds) from the folder directly. Next, create a Mapping and Texture Coordinate node (CTRL+T if you have Node Wrangler enabled) and connect them together. Connect the unit_striker_col.dds to the Color node on the Principled BSDF. You'll notice the textures are not right, so you need to change the Y Scale on the Mapping node to -1.000 instead of 1.000, then you should see it looks correct. You will also need to connect the _par and _nor files to their respective places as I have shown in the attached image (Separate Color = Separate RGB depending on Blender version). And now you should have a fully textured Battleforge model in Blender.

If you want to change the textures, you'll need to flip the UVs manually instead of using Y Scale: -1.000 on the Mapping node. To do that, go to UV editing tab, select all (A), and invert them on the Y axis (you can just type S, Y, -1) to show them correctly.

I dont think it's fair to say that the pvp balance is in shambles just because 1 card seems to be overpowered.

Isn't it only Stone Tempest that went up and then only 10? What other cards are more expensive? Bandits being underwhelming sounds bad? Can't you just run away before Minefield activates thus making it a waste of power? You could join the Balancing Discord and see the balance changes in the forums, obviously devs aren't going to see what's written in game when it goes away after people type more.

I don't agree with some of the changes, but I'm no expert, and a game that doesn't change will just stay boring and stale and never keep a player base. Just wait until stonekin get buffed, I'm sure they'll see more changes very soon. 😉

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.

Hello Skylords, Skyladies, and other Skybeings; and welcome to CCC #9 – the ninth Crappy Community Contest!


THE CONTEST HAS ENDED.
To see the winners, CLICK HERE. If you are just here to grab the code, there you go: CCC9-BOWA-NDST-RING
 
 
What are “Crappy Community Contests”?
CCC's are meant to be small-scale contests with weird challenges, hopefully luring you away from well-trodden paths. They are small-scale on the organizers side too: usually there will be no stream, video, or event announcing the winners. What's special about these contests is a participation prize for the whole Skylords community.

After a short pause, the CCC is back again, this time with a rPvE Challenge:
 
What, when, where, how?
The Archer's Tournament

All the famous archers want to settle this question once and for all: Which of them is the strongest?

This challenge is to win the highest possible single-player rPvE Map of the Month
in the fastest time under severe card limitations.

In this challenge, you are sent to win a rPvE MotM as fast as you can, using mainly T1 archers to destroy your enemies. You may unlock a maximum total of 3 cards (limited choice) by building your orbs:
Tier 1: Chose your Archers



Tier 2: Unlocks your first support spell


Tier 3: Unlocks your second support spell


Winners will be ranked according to the usual ranking tables – first on difficulty, then on time. For example, if you have an ultra-slow run on a rPvE difficulty 6 map, you will still be ranked higher than all difficulty 5 entries. Clearing a map with only archers is hard? Fear not! If you only want to participate, you may enter with a simple rPvE Difficulty Map of the Month Difficulty 1 run under these rules, making you eligible for the random prizes, which will only take you a minute or two.
Clarifications:
Don't forget to select Map of the Month! Replays with randomly generated maps are not allowed to enter the tournament. Even if you are able to play out a spell mentioned on Tier 2/Tier 3 earlier, you are only allowed to cast it once your orb has been built. If you don't want or need the T2 or T3 support spells, of course, you can ignore them and just build a big army of archers. You may also choose a second spell listed on Tier 2 after building your Tier 3, but you are not allowed to pick a second archer card. Lastly, even though the above pictures are of cards without upgrades, you can of course use your fully upgraded ones. The red affinity of Wintertide is allowed, but please note that the Infused Defense is plain worse in this challenge scenario.
  How to enter:
Battleforge automatically saves a replay file of the last match you play, named autosave.pmv.  After playing the map, rename this file, so it doesn't get overwritten. You can find your replays here: Documents => Battleforge => replays.

The contest has started with the release of this post – submit your replay through Discord (DM to Kapo#0116) or the Skylords Forum (DM to @Kapo) until 10.12.2022 23:59 CET  (= 8 days time total). You can submit multiple times, but only your best entry will count. Please note that any submitted replays may be posted here in the forums.

To lessen my workload, please rename your replay to the following format: CCC9_<difficulty>_<time>_<name>.pmv  (e.g. CCC9_5_17.22_Kapo.pmv)


 
What's the prize pool?
Since this is not just a crappy contest, but a Crappy Community Contest, you may help with your participation to earn a prize for the whole community. If we reach more than 25 participants (unique players, not entries), we will unlock a Mini-Booster code for the entire Skylords community. If more than 40 participants enter, the code will be upgraded to a Booster instead of a Mini-Booster. So tell your fellow Skylords to try this challenge – it's an occasion to try something completely new, and it raises our chances to hand out a code for everybody. 
Of course, the top ranking Skylords will get prizes too, sponsored by myself, the Community and the Skylords Reborn Team:
1st place               5 General Boosters + Promo Razorleaf
2nd place              4 General Boosters + Promo Rogan Kayle
3rd place              3 General Boosters + Promo Lyrish Knight
4th place              2 General Boosters + Harvester + Bandit Minefield
5th place              1 General Booster +  Amii Monument
6th place              Disenchant (G) + Deepcoil Worm
7th place              Cluster Explosion (R)+ Razorleaf
8th place              Parasite Swarm + Soulshatter
9th place              Ice Age (G) + Transcendence
10th place            Stronghold
11-15th place       Two Rare cards (see sponsored cards below)
16-20th place       One Rare card (see below)


Last place              Juice Tank (x4)
For participation, there is a random chance to win one of the following cards out of a large pool:
Random Draws          5x1 General Booster, Evil Eye (x5), Spitfire, Stronghold, QueekQueek, Church of Negation, Mine, Nether Warp (B), Ice Age (B), Timeshifter Spirit, Mindweaver, Wrathgazer, Abyssal Warder (R), Mine, Frenetic Assault (R), Ashbone Pyro (x2), Cultist Master, Satanael (R), Razorleaf (x2), Wildfire, Deepcoil Worm, Mark of the Keeper, Hurricane, Corsair (G) (x2), Corsair (P), Bandit Minefield (x2), Banzai Lord (P) (x3), Lost Shade (B) (x2), Twilight Creeper (R), Abomination (P), Sunderer, Juggernaut, Shrine of War, Batariel (R), Earthshaker, Soulshatter, Home Soil (x2), War Eagle, Worldbreaker Gun, Battleship, Ice Tornado, Mana Wing, Spikeroot, Shrine of Memory, Colossus, Bloodhorn (P) (x2), Bloodhorn (R) (x2), Nightshade Plant (G), Abomination (B), Lost Shade (P), Lost Grigori (P), Transcendence, Grinder (R), Grinder (P), Viridya, Brannoc, Mo, The Incredible Mo, Jorne (x2), Ravenheart, Embalmers Shrine, Nightguard (P), Skyelf Sage, 250 BFP (x20).
 
This CCC also features again a Newcomer Card Pool. By participating, players of Bronze or Silver Rank will automatically receive at least one valuable uncommon card (more likely two or three). Of course, you may also win other random draws additionally if you are lucky. The Newbie Card Pool contains the following cards:
 
Should we get more too many entries, the pool will be expanded, so every newcomer will receive a guaranteed card. Those expansion cards will be rare cards (instead of more Uncommons), so tell your fellow beginner to participate!
 
Sponsors
If one or more mighty Skylord(s) decides to sponsor this event, please contact me. I would be more than happy to beef up or expand the prize pool, add additional random draws, special bounties or any other upgrades to the prize pool. 
The following prizes have been sponsored so far:
Skylords Team          General Boosters (x20), Evil Eye (x7), Community Booster Code
@THE_BIG_WET     Newcomer Card Pool (see above), Promo Lyrish Knight, Sunderer(x3), Juggernaut (x3), Shrine of War (x3), Batariel (R) (x3), Earthshaker (x3), Ashbone Pyro (x3), Soulshatter (x2), Home Soil (x3), War Eagle (x3), Worldbreaker Gun (x3), Battleship (x3), Ice Tornado (x3), Mana Wing (x3), Spikeroot (x2), Deepcoil Worm (x3), Shrine of Memory (x3), Colossus (x3), Corsair (G) (x3), Bandit Minefield (x3), Banzai Lord (P) (x3), Bloodhorn (P) (x2), Bloodhorn (R) (x2), Nightshade Plant (G) (x3), Abomination (B) (x3), Lost Shade (P) (x3), Lost Grigori (P) (x3), Transcendence (x3), Grinder (R) (x3), Grinder (P) (x3), Viridya (x3), Brannoc (x3), Mo (x3), The Incredible Mo (x3), Jorne (x3), Ravenheart (x2)
@MadDoggo         Promo Razorleaf
@arabikaa             Promo Rogan Kayle
@T1421                Spitfire
@Titan                 Harvester, Disenchant (G), Cluster Explosion (R), Cluster Explosion (P), Church of Negation (x2), Spitfire, Nether Warp (B), Ice Age (G), Ice Age (B), Timeshifter Spirit, Parasite Swarm, Mindweaver, Stronghold, Wrathgazer, Abyssal Warder (R), Mine, Frenetic Assault (R) (x2), Ashbone Pyro (x2), Cultist Master, Satanael (R), Wildfire, Razorleaf (x4), Deepcoil Worm (x2), Mark of the Keeper, Hurricane, Corsair (G) (x2), Corsair (P) (x2), Bandit Minefield, Banzai (P) (x2), Bloodhorn (R), Lost Shade (B) (x4), Twilight Creeper (R) (x2), Abomination (P) (x2)
@hauclir               Stronghold, QueekQueek
@Dolewan            Embalmers Shrine, Nightguard (P), Skyelf Sage, Banzai Lord (P), Cultist Master
@Lans                  Skyfire Drake (x4), Fire Dragon (x4), Nox Trooper (x4), Life Weaving (x4), Shadow Phoenix (x4), Void Maw (x4), Frost Mage (x4), Coldsnap (x4), Construct (x4), Shaman (x3), Ensnaring Roots (x3), Grimvine (x4), Lost Spirit Ship G (x4), Razorshard G (x4), Gemeye P (x4), Gemeye G (x4), Home Soil (x1)
@Grak                  5000 BFP
@Skury                 Abomination (B) (that got lost somehow, and when I wanted to buy it he gave it for free <3)
Anonymous              Amii Monument
Note: Since there have been two incredible big donations, some of those cards will go into the next CCC as well.
Conclusion
I hope you have fun with this challenge, and I hope your arrows and spells strike true.
Kapo
     
Future Events – get involved!
If you are interested in helping with these (or better) kinds of events for the community, or want to host one yourself, don't be afraid and simply reach out! Contact our beloved Event Manager @Metagross31 on the forums or discord. They are happy to assist you with upcoming events and with sponsoring your prize pool!
If you especially like this small-scale-format, and you have an idea for it, you may also contact me directly to discuss your idea and host your own Crappy Community Contest.
 
 
 

Welcome to the Official Halloween Event!

The Lost Souls have altered the timeline again - instead of encountering Twilight, Rogan Kayle finds himself facing very different horrors. Enjoy a spooky experience, celebrate Halloween and the release of the new card “Evil Eye” with us!    
 
Everything you need to know:
Map                 - Spooky Encounters (Community Map) Difficulty          - Expert Date                 - 28.10.2022 - 02.11.2022 Restrictions      - None Goals                - Win the map on Expert difficulty Prizes               - Either 1 Evil Eye (upcoming new card) or 1 Twilight Booster Replays            - Send through DM on Discord (Kapo#0116) or PM on the forum (@Kapo).
  Send in your replay, renamed to Halloween and your ingame name – for example: “Halloween_MyName.pmv” until the 2nd of November 2022, 23:59 CET. 

At the end of the event, we may make a compilation of interesting and/or funny replays/screenshots – by participating, you automatically agree to be included in that.

How To Play
Go to the Community Map section and select the Event map named Spooky Encounters / Gruselige Begegnungen / Rencontre avec les Perdus / Жуткие Стычки. Complete the map on expert and send me your replay.

How to access the map:
How to get your replay:

Prize pool
For this event, everybody will get a prize – you have a 50:50 chance to either get your hands on the upcoming new card Twilight Evil Eye or a Twilight Booster. There is no restriction on how many prizes we dish out, half of the players will get an Evil Eye, the others will receive the Booster, determined by a roll of the die. Please note that you can only enter once with one winning replay. Prizes will be sent out manually after the event ends. 
          

We are looking forward to your replays! If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.

Last but not least, a big shoutout to those who helped with this Event: @LEBOVIN, @Dallarian, @Majora, @R4bitF00t, @Metagross31, @CrazyCockerell, @SpiritAlpha and our map testers!


Best regards,
Skylords Reborn Team

104/201, hard to know what is what edition lol.

104/201, hard to know what is what edition lol.

Fine fine, I send you email with 3000 bfp, take all my money. 😭

I don't see why these changes should change that. The new orb requirement to 3nature1neutral will not make this better.

If Primeval Watcher is to go 3Nature1Neutral, I think Nature itself needs a replacement. Every faction has at least two 2Factioncolor2Neutral units for committed hybrid decks or dipping two orbs deep into one color.
This effectively leaves Nature with zero, because Spore Launcher is a root-card and has niche needs. Sure, you have Grimvine and Giant Wyrm as even more flexible splashes but that ain't the same. Primeval Watcher always was the sole T4 unit Nature offered as an "upgrade" for 2Nature splash.
Alternatively, instead of increasing the orb requirements, an ability cost could be added since it is now much more powerful.
Or an orb-swap with Colossus could be considered as well. So Primeval Watcher 3Nature1Neutral and Colossus 2Nature2Neutral.

Greetings Skylords!
Every three weeks, we give an update on the things going on behind the scenes of Skylords Reborn. Welcome to another Community Update!

• Soon™

Last Community Update we revealed our upcoming new achievements and ever since we get daily questions when those (and the patch in general) will hit the live server. We are currently hard at work finalizing the upcoming patch, but aren't able to reveal a concrete release date just yet.
We expect to share more information with you regarding its release in the coming weeks, so stay tuned for that. 
In the meantime, we are excited to reveal a new card today! 

• New Card Reveal: Burning Spears

Burning Spears is a new tier 2 fire unit, requiring two fire orbs. Upgrading the card reduces its power cost and increases its stats. The values noted here are for U3. It will be an Uncommon and won't have an affinity. 

Burning Spears is an S-sized squad unit that contains a weapon-switch similar to Ghost Spears. They will also have the Steadfast passive ability, meaning they can't be knocked back. 
 
Weapon Change
Type: mode-switch
Makes unit more effective against large units instead of extra-large ones. Lasts until deactivated.
 
Weapon Change
Type: mode-switch
Makes unit more effective against extra-large units instead of large ones. Lasts until deactivated.
 
Burning Lance / Scorching Injury (passive ability)
Enemies hit by Burning Spear's attacks will be set on fire and take additional damage that steadily increases the longer they burn. The burn deals 2 damage per second and stacks up to 25 times. Attacked units may only walk at walk speed for 15 seconds.
 
Design Goals
Burning Spears are designed as a new tool to increase deck building options in pure Fire. The faction currently has a limited pool of pure cards in PvP, leading to a very M-unit centric deck design with a limited amount of deck building options and balancing levers to change specific matchup behaviors.
The addition of Burning Spears will add a versatile small sized unit into the faction, that is supposed to help with some of the factions counter issues against L and XL units in T2, while demanding a deck slot investment in return. The passive ability enables very high backloaded damage potential to punish players that try to ignore them, whereas the slow and steadfast ability allow Burning Spears to stick to their priority targets while enabling further spell synergies with cards like Wildfire.
Please note: We are still testing the card. While we are generally happy about it and feel comfortable revealing it, numbers and effects might still change before release.
 
• Artwork Spotlight

Now that our art team has grown, we tried a different approach for our creation process. The card was already play tested, so we knew its effects and that it would use the Ghost Spears model, but there were no other hard restrictions for the art. 
Our artist Spirit Alpha worked together with Tweeto to explore some ideas, which resulted in multiple concept arts. They settled on a barbaric look. 


The next step was to visualize the design in-game, and make sure what we had in mind would actually be possible to implement, preventing a mismatch between art and model.

Once the theme, colors and general appearance were fleshed out, it was time to start working on the artwork. Different compositions were explored again.



 
Spirit Alpha then handed in this artwork. While we were generally happy with how this design turned out, there were still some things to be done. While the Deep One claw was a nice touch, we found it did make the artwork more cluttered and distracted the viewer's eye. With the help of Tweeto, adjustments were also made to the background, contrast and skin, left arm anatomy, right arm shape and the spear. 
 

After a couple of extra iterations (and lots of discussion about flames with our art critique), we finally settled on the current design. A big thanks to our artists Spirit Alpha and Tweeto for drawing the artwork, to Friendly Firefly for working on the ability icons and to our art critiques for their support and comments. 
As you can see, a ton of work went into this, and we haven't even showed you half of the iterations. 
We are very happy with how it turned out, and hope you like it as well!
 
• Upcoming PvP changes

While PvP has a very passionate community, the game mode currently has certain flaws that prevent players from getting into it. We hope to tackle these in our upcoming patch. Here are some of the changes we will implement:

Queue will drain the BFP reserve
PvP often enters a "Spiral of Death" when too few players are online. It takes too long to find a match, so players stop queuing, which results in it taking longer to find a match... We want to give players an incentive to wait in the ranked lobby for more than a few minutes, resulting in the lobby no longer being empty and the next person who wants to play finding an opponent quickly. If you queue for at least 5 minutes, even if you don't find an opponent, you will earn BFP as if you were ingame, meaning you get BFP not just for playing, but also while searching for matches. 

Hide Player Names
We have seen that some players tend to dodge certain high ranked players while playing ranked, not queuing up when they see higher skilled opponents in the lobby. To prevent this behavior, we will hide player names in the ranked lobby. To not impact casual play, we have separated the sparring and ranked lobbies, allowing you to still invite players into your lobby and make things like tournaments and Toggy's Fightclub still possible.

Hide Losses
Another reason that prevents players from queuing up is the fear of messing up their win/loss ratio, or even feeling shame to have their losses publicly shown on the ladder. It has been proven in other competitive games that showing losses results in demotivation and higher entry barriers. We hope this change encourages players to focus on what matters (playing the game and improving yourself) instead of stats that might not even represent your current skill level.

New Player Protection
To protect new players from facing top players when they are just getting started, we will prevent players with <102.000 base ELO from getting matched with players at >135.000 base ELO. 

Changes to Free PvP Decks
With upcoming balance adjustments and new cards, we will update our free PvP decks to compete with the new meta. Additionally, we have made changing these decks more flexible; resulting in no longer having to reset all the free PvP decks when we make these changes.
If we update one of the free PvP decks you have currently selected, you will now have the option to either swap to the new cards, or keep your current set up. We are currently planning to make the following changes:

Pure Nature:
+ Parasite
- Shrine of Memory

Fire/Nature
+ Twilight Minions (G)
- Ghost Spears

Pure Shadow
+ Executor
- Nightguard

Rebalanced 2vs2 Maps
While we mostly balance the game around 1vs1, we know players really enjoy 2vs2 as well. We are very happy with how our rebalanced 1vs1 maps turned out, and we want to give 2vs2 the same treatment. 

Changes include removal (or adjustments) of walls, wells, slight changes to the layout, and making certain area's immovable for flying units. This should result in a better play experience and more balanced maps. 

These maps will also have observer versions, meaning it will now be possible to host 2vs2 tournaments again! We also updated the minimaps to be accurate. 


PvP Happy Hours
A feature long in the works and finally nearing release is Happy Hours. Happy Hours are specific time periods where players will receive additional gold and BFP for playing PvP. 
We have noticed PvP is currently quite scattered, with a lot of players wanting to play, but going offline again when they can't find opponents. While rewarding to queue is one incentive to have players stay online longer when the lobbies are empty, we also want to help players find opponents in general. We hope that by clustering players together during certain time frames, players will have an easier time finding matches more frequently. 
Happy Hours will take place during the following times:
- 1vs1 happy hours: 7pm-9pm CET
- 2vs2 happy hours: 9pm-10pm CET
- 1vs1 happy hours: 4am-5am CET

These times were decided upon by going over our available data and keeping different time zones in mind where possible. During Happy Hours, there will be an in-game announcement and the icon on the world map will indicate Happy Hours are active. 

We hope to release all these features with our next patch, though Happy Hours is currently still in active development. We hope to finish it in time to be included as well. 

• Team Changes

We have a new teammember in Nukie, who has joined the team recently as a Global Moderator. Welcome, and thanks for your help!

• Open Positions Rework

We have made some changes to our open positions and spotlighted them in their own forum section. It is now easier than ever to see the current open positions, and we also added some extra information to each role, better showcasing what you will be doing. 

Skylords Reborn is always looking for motivated volunteers to help out the project. You can currently help out in multiple areas, ranging from artwork to development, map design and much more. 

Want to help out but don't want to join the staff? No problem! We also have positions like proofreader and map tester where you can more easily drop in and out, helping out when you have time. Lastly, we also have open-source projects and our Skylords Bounty (see below). Please take a look!

 
• Active Bounty

While we already have some nice contenders, our current Bounty to create a Spring Forge is still open. A Skylords Bounty is an open-source task for the community to create something needed in one of the departments of Skylords Reborn. If your entry gets chosen, you can win a great prize, and we will reward everyone who applies with a serious attempt with a participation reward as well. View more information on Active bounties.

• OPEN - Spring Forge Bounty
Spring Forge Bounty is an opportunity for the community to have full engagement with the next upcoming Forge. This allows everyone to submit a possible design for how they would like the Forge to look! The winning design will be rewarded with a Promo Razorleaf!
A tutorial video has been provided to assist and help the community take its first steps for doing so!

• Tournaments / Events

• NEW - Toggys Tome Tournament #4 17.05.22 
A midweek tournament held on Tuesday May 17th, at 18:30 CEST (Berlin time). The format will be Tome, meaning you will build your decks for this tournament out of a booster pool Toggy provide to you. Tome tournaments always result in crazy decks and cards you dont see very often, so be sure to join the action or watch the tournament on Twitch. The tournament will be played on the Testserver. More information and sign-up. 


• STREAM - Official 2p rPvE Contest#3 Last Resort - 25.05.2022 16:30 CEST
In this event, players were only allowed to use units, not spells or buildings. We will host a stream revealing the winners of this contest on Wednesday 25rd of May, 16:30 on our official twitch channel. 

• FINISHED - CCC #4
Kapo hosted another successful Crappy Community Contest© on the map Mo. Players were encouraged to play as few cards as possible to complete the map. As one of the first events to not focus on speed, this resulted in some interesting strategies. As with all CCC, the more players attend, the better the prizes are, in this case resulting in a free booster for the whole community. 
 
• FINISHED - Skylords Open 14
The Skylords Open returned with a blast! We saw some of the best players battle it out, with some match results that would surprise you. You can rewatch the matches here. 

• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our Event Organizers Hiko and/or Metagross to have your event prizes sponsored by us. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you. 
 
• In Conclusion

And that's it for this Community Update, thanks for reading! 
As is tradition, this community update comes with a scratch code. 
The code will reward you with a mini-booster: FIRE-CARD-HYPE-TIME
The code is valid until June 4th, when we will bring you another Community Update. 
As always, we are open to feedback, so please let us know if you have any questions, suggestions or comments! 

Archive
• Skylords Reborn Documents (Deep Dives, Behind the Scenes, PvP Guide)  
• Overview Community Updates
• Community Update #22

Very nice write-up, the only thing I can't agree with on balancing is the final tower as I don't think it will fix how bad that card is unless Firebug can still go off when destroyed.
Can't wait to see tower changes (though I probably won't be using Necroblaster anymore 😆).

Greetings Skylords!
Every three weeks, we give an update on the things going on behind the scenes of Skylords Reborn. Welcome to another Community Update!

• Small Patch
We are hard at work on our new content patch, which will still take quite a while. However, we plan to release a small patch this weekend including some small features and bug fixes. We have also added a much requested feature: you will now be notified when a friend comes online. 
Below, you can read about two highlighted changes from this patch. The patch also includes various bugfixes, for example being able to queue into yourself in PvP.
 
• Adjustments to the booster images
During our anniversary patch, we noticed that the booster images in the game had plenty of issues. First of all, the ratios are all over the place, with some boosters being tall, where others are wide. Additionally, the positioning angles and BattleForge logo placement is not consistent and some images had shadows where others didn't. We gave them some touchups and have added new images for the boosters. 
Old booster packaging:

New booster packaging:

 
• Winter Forge
While the holidays are over, winter is still here. We thought it would be fun to give the Forge a different look during winter, spring, summer and autumn, so we have updated it to a snowy theme! For the spring, summer and autumn Forges we plan to include the Community, so stay tuned for that!
In a previous patch, we added powerwells and monuments into the forge for testing. We are curious to hear if you enjoy changes like this, even if they are purely cosmetic. 

Is the new look too cold for your taste? Feel free to swap it back to the neutral forge with the new slider on the top right.
 
• Current State of the Economy & Reforging
On the 18th of December we released both Reforging and a 100BFP booster discount. As expected, this heavily impacted the economy of Skylords Reborn. Now that the dust has settled and the booster discount has expired, we can slowly start looking at the state of the economy. Windhunter has shared some statistics and thoughts on this topic.  
"The market trends pre-update (not shown here) were that Common cards were largely worthless, Uncommon cards were following the same trend, Rare cards were steadily decreasing in price (even among sought after cards such as Overlord, Bloodhorn, and Amii Monument), and desirable Ultra-rare and promo cards were increasingly inflating. This was because Ultra-rare and promo cards were the only remaining sources of value left in the economy. Reforging changed this by condensing the total price range of the market and by giving each card in the game a base level of value." 
You can read the whole post and check the stats for yourself here. 
 
• Deep Dive: Towers
As we continue to work towards the release of DRPvE, a topic of much discussion has been the current state of towers in the game. While some towers over perform, most are not worth a deckslot.
In this Deep Dive, we take a look at the different kinds of towers in Skylords Reborn, their strengths and weaknesses, and how we plan to make changes to them in the future. Please note we are still in the early stages of our tower rebalance; ideas are not final and these changes will take quite a while to implement once they are finalized. Either way, we hope you enjoy this insight into our current philosophy regarding Towers in Skylords Reborn, and that it provides you with the necessary information to join the discussion in our balance discord.
DeepDive_Towers.pdf
The next design document you can expect will be our in progress Nature Deep Dive. You can find all our Deep Dives and other documents here.
 
• Changing the size of buildings
While working on the above topic, we came across a new possibility for the game: resizing towers. We are now able to change the size of a building (visual and collision-shape-wise), which will be very relevant for cards like Rocket Tower, that take up way more space than you would expect from its model. This will be another helpful tool in adding some QoL changes to Skylords Reborn! 
Please note: the image below is an example, there are currently no concrete changes to Tunnel planned. 


• Art Timelapse
With our anniversary patch, it was revealed that the artwork of the new bandit cards combine into a single art piece: the new Bandit loading screen. If you are a frequent reader of the community updates, you have seen the work that went into each different new bandit cards over the last few months, including sketches of early iterations. However, if you are interested in more behind the scenes, we have a nice treat for you. Tweeto has actually recorded his design process, and we created a time-lapse video showing all the steps that went into this latest art piece. Did you know Bandit Sniper is actually standing on a dead Burrower? Find out everything that was added (and removed) in the video here. 
Big thanks to Tweeto for his hard work and jabbyay for helping to create this video. Tweeto is already hard at work on the next art piece, which we will show off in a later community update. Like this kind of content? Please be sure to let us know!
 
 
• Advanced Filtering
We would like to take a quick moment to thank everyone for taking our survey about your use of advanced filtering. We are working on a full documentation for the filters that are currently available in the game. If you don't want to wait for that, you can find a Work in Progress version in the game files under BattleForge/docs/advanced_filtering.txt once the patch hits. 
We have also added a few new filters and a lot of alternative words for current filters. 
 
• Tournaments & Events
• NEW - Toggy's Tome Tournament - 30.01.2022
It's time for another Tome Tournament! In Tome you play 1vs1 PvP but with a twist; your deck is build right before the tournament from the content of a number of boosters. This results in wacky decks and a very different PvP experience, so be sure to check it out. The tournament will be streamed live, check out the full rules and sign-up here. 

• NEW - CCC #2 The Besieged Forge - UNTIL 05.02.2022
Kapo has started another Crappy Community Contest! Participating in it will result in a reward for the entire community, so be sure to check it out. In this contest, players are playing on a new map created specifically for this contest! Check out the full rules here. 

• ALMOST ENDING - Official 2p rPvE Contest#2: The Bandit alliance UNTIL 31.01.2022
You only have a few days left to compete in this event! For this challenge, we want to see your adaptability in unique situations.
We are looking for the fastest time with only one rule: each player may only spawn one single unit with ground presence through the whole run!

• COMING SOON – Community 1p PvE Contest – early February
Hope you didn’t hide your warm clothes yet! To celebrate the end of winter, we will pay a visit to another Frost themed map. This time the challenge will be for a single Skylord, so bring your best deck and face the unknown. All the details should be published next week, stay tuned.

• Host your own event/tournament
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our Event Organizers Hiko and/or Metagross to have your event prizes sponsored by us. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you. 
 

 
• We need your help!
Now that we are able to implement voicelines and audio into the game (thanks to some great voiceactors helping us out!), we are looking for someone to help us with audio post-production and quality control. Unfortunately we currently do not have enough volunteers to continue implementing any further voicelines and sound effects into the game.
• Open Position: Audio Editor
We would love to continue adding voicelines for more cards and narration for new maps. As an Audio Editor, you will be responsible for selecting and extracting the best takes, doing post-production and making sure the overall quality is high enough to be implemented into the game. If you have more skills, you will also be able to design new sounds for the game as Audio Producer. Click here to read more and apply.
 
• Team changes
We are excited to finally add a marketeer/outreach coordinator to our team! Runeseeker will help us out with promoting the project and attracting new and old players alike. We appreciate the help and are happy to have him on our team! 
We also have various potential team members doing their trial tasks. In the near future we hope to add more balance developers, moderators and an artist. 
 
• In Conclusion
And that's it for this Community Update, thanks for reading! 
As is tradition, this community update comes with a scratch code. 
The code will reward you with a mini-booster: COMM-UNIT-YNEW-S18B
The code is valid till February 19th, when we will bring you another Community Update. 
As always, we are open to feedback, so please let us know if you have any questions, suggestions or comments! 

Archive
• Skylords Reborn Documents (Deep Dives, Behind the Scenes, PvP Guide)  
• Overview Community Updates
• Community Update #17

Hello everyone, 
As everyone knows, the in-game economy shifted massively after the advent of the Reforging system. This has led a number of players to express concerns about the health of the economy, and as such we would like to share some relevant economic data with the community. 
Some important information on the data: When it says "Fire Pool" it includes every card in the game which includes a Fire Orb. The data was collected and presented in this manner because this is how Reforging works when it tells you that the output card has an X% chance of containing a Fire Orb. Additionally, all price information presented is an average of actual sales in the auction house over a given period. While some extreme outliers were removed from the data set, such as 5 bfp Harvesters and 400 bfp Northguards, in 99% of instances the data was accepted as-is without tampering from our side.
Control Data Set: Contains data prior to the release of Reforging, from June to September 2021.

 
Post-Reforging Data Set: Contains data from two weeks after the release of Reforging, approximately December 25th 2021 to January 5th 2022.

Initial Analysis of Data Set:
At first glance, you can quickly see that after the update the following changes occurred:
The average, median, and minimum prices of Common cards increased across the board.  The minimum and median prices of Uncommon cards increased across the board, while the maximum and average prices decreased. The decrease in average prices can be attributed to 1-2 outlier cards in most factions, such as Frost Mage and Shaman, which substantially increased the average price of Uncommon cards in their respective factions. The same thing happened to Rare cards as happened to Uncommon cards. Average, median, and max price of Ultra-rare cards decreased across the board while minimum price increased.  General booster worth decreased from 378 bfp to 311 bfp. Given booster prices are still discounted by 100 bfp until January 18th, this means it is actually more worthwhile to open boosters after the update than it was before. On average, the daily discounted booster will profit a player 61 bfp post-update versus 28 bfp pre-update. How this data will move after the discount is removed remains to be seen, but we expect a slow creep up in prices for cards across the board. Reforging established a minimum base worth for all cards dependent on rarity that did not exist prior. For now this seems to be: Common: 4-5 bfp Uncommon: 14-16 bfp Rare: 62-64 bfp Ultra-rare: 153-165 bfp  Neutral Cards - A Control Set
Control Data Set: Neutral card prices;

Post-Reforging Data Set: Neutral card prices

Neutral cards were purposefully excluded from the Reforging feature. As such, they can only be put into the Reforging system but can never come out. This makes them a good control for examining the data because their prices should only increase when combined with Reforging. While this happened with the Common and Uncommon cards, the same is not true for Rare and Ultra-rare cards. The only increases to Rare and Ultra-rare cards seem to be in-line with those cards increasing to match the base value of other cards of their rarities. This can be seen with Curse Well and Curse Orb and partially in Queek Queek, though it is possible due to the low trading volume of QueekQueek the numbers were simply erratic in the period examined.
This decrease in the value of Rare cards and the value stagnation of undesirable Ultra-rare cards we see in Neutral cards was a consistent trend among all card values pre-update. If you look above, you will see that the maximum price of Shadow Pool cards in the control data is shown as 3865 bfp. As many of you might have guessed, this data point refers to Infect. Now if you were active in the weeks before the update, you will also know that the price of Infect at the time was actually in the 4500-5000 bfp range. In only a 2-month period, the average price of Infect inflated by between 700-1200 bfp. This trend was not confined to only Infect but to every desirable Ultra-rare card in the game.
The market trends pre-update (not shown here) were that Common cards were largely worthless, Uncommon cards were following the same trend, Rare cards were steadily decreasing in price (even among sought after cards such as Overlord, Bloodhorn, and Amii Monument), and desirable Ultra-rare and promo cards were increasingly inflating. This was because Ultra-rare and promo cards were the only remaining sources of value left in the economy. Reforging changed this by condensing the total price range of the market and by giving each card in the game a base level of value. 
 

Greetings Skylords!
Happy Anniversary! Today marks the 1-year anniversary of the Skylords Reborn project. We hope you had a lot of fun reliving your BattleForge memories and are excited to give you a look into the future. 

• Anniversary Stream
In case you missed it, we hosted a special anniversary stream yesterday. We celebrated the past, present en future of Skylords Reborn, with news, card reveals, give-aways and more! 
Sadly, something went wrong with the playback of yesterdays stream that we are not sure we can fix. Since we recorded it live with the 3 of us, and 2 audio tracks are broken, it does not make much sense for the viewer anymore. We are sorry for those who missed the stream and now can't watch it.

If we cannot fix the video, we plan to do a retake for youtube, adjusting it to be some kind of looking back at 2021, that people can watch to see everything that has been added to Skylords Reborn since release. 
 
• Patch Reveal + Toggy Stream
Our biggest surprise from the Anniversary Stream: our Anniversary Patch releases today!
See the brand new cards and features in action during a special celebration stream hosted by Toggy tonight!
There will also be a quiz where you can win the new cards, so be sure to check it out!
The Stream is happening at twitch.tv/dastoggy 
We are very grateful for Toggy's support over the years and have officially rewarded him with Skylords of Honor today. Well deserved, and to many more years!
 
• New Cards
This patch will release five brand new cards into the game! We are excited that you will finally get your hands on the cards we have been working on for the past months. The following cards will be added to the game:
 
Coat of Protection
Coat of Protection is a new incentive to play Pure Frost. This tier 4 spell can be seen as the frost equivalent of Regrowth, helping the faction with some lategame support. Check out the full card-reveal here.

 
Bandit Minefield
Bandit Minefield is a new tier 2 Spell for Fire/Shadow that should greatly help the faction in PvP. It is a rare and does not have an affinity. Check out the full card-reveal, including the design process, here.

 
Banzai Lord
Banzai Lord is a powerful new tier 4 unit that can be splashed into, requiring only one shadow and one fire orb. He collects the corpses of fallen foes and allies to summon his darling birds. The card appears in two affinities, one with destructive birds, one with healing birds. You can find more information in the Bandit Deep Dive. 

 
Bandit Sniper
Bandit Sniper is a new, ranged M counter for the Bandits-faction. It is an uncommon that does not have an affinity. It's ability Focus Shot allows the Bandit Sniper to live up to its name, dealing devastating damage to enemies at long range. 


Amii Paladin
The shroud surrounding the Amii-faction is slowly lifted. Amii Paladins is our first look at the Amii-faction, after the never followed on tease from Amii Phantom back in the day. It's special ability ''Reflective Armor'' allows the unit to reflect 100% of incoming damage back into enemies, making them a challenging foe to fight. 
Amii Paladins has the new Amii Passive Ability "Elusive". Units with Elusive have the duration of the immobilizing effects of Freeze and Paralyze reduced by 10%. This ability will be added to all current and future Amii units. 


Amii Phantom
While not a new card, Amii Phantom has received a brand new look! Both her artwork and ingame look have been adjusted to fit with the vision of the Amii-Faction. Elusive has also been added, and we plan to change her voicelines (she currently has those from Nightguard) to complete her makeover. 


A word on Wasteland Terror
Some of you might be wondering why Wasteland Terror (previously Wasteland Wing) is not included in this patch, even though he was revealed in an earlier communtiy update. Sadly, we were not able to make the anniversary deadline and could not include him in this patch. Rest assured that he we will be implemented in a future patch, though we are not able to tell when just yet. Until then, may you enjoy the clear blue skies while you still can..
 
• Voice Actors Update
Now for some disappointing news. With the help of some talented voice actors, we have created some great voicelines to go along with our new (and some old) cards. Sadly, we ran into technical issues. For some reason, the game keeps crashing inconsistently while playing the new voicelines.  Because this did not happen during our initial testing, we could not pinpoint the issue on time to solve it for this patch. Sadly we have to ship the new cards without their matching voicelines. We are really disappointed about this, and we hope to be able to find the solution soon and patch in the new voicelines in all their glory. For this we would love to get your help. 
Beside the new cards, we will also be adding voicelines for Dryad, Mountain Rowdy and Amii Phantom in the future. There are also already plans for other cards that are currently without voicelines, like Bandit Lancer or Warlock. 
We would like to give you a sneak peak of what we have been working on and give you a proper first impression of two new cards.

Here is what you can expect from the sinister Banzai Lord:
And here is what you will hear leading the Amii Paladins into battle:
We would love to have the help of the community fixing the issues we ran into implementing these voicelines. If you have any understanding of coding and/or sound, please head over here and join us in solving this issue. 


• Balance Changes
Alongside new cards and features, we will also release some balance changes this patch. 

Following the Bandits Deep Dive, there are a couple of changes in this patch, including Amok, Commando's, Windhunter, Sandstorm and Corsair. Further PvE-focussed balance changes will be implemented for Frost, with adjustments to Ice Age, Battleship, Maelstrom, Northern Keep, Retreating Circle and fan-favorite: Juice Tank. 

There are also some changes to popular cards like Sunderer, Dryad, Master Archers and Stormsinger, in combination with the new cards you can expect a fresh meta for PvP as well. 

You can check out all the details and explanations for the changes in the patch notes. 
Patch_400031_-_December_18_2021.pdf
• Free PvP Decks Updated
We expect new cards like Bandit Minefield to shake up the PvP scene and find it important that everyone who wants to play PvP can do so without grinding for cards or upgrades first. We have upgraded our free PvP decks to include the new cards, alongside adjustments to most decks to adapt to the meta changes that have happened since the introduction of the free PvP decks. Please note: to update the decks, we had to reset all the current decks. Sorry about the inconvenience. 
Here is a quick recap on where you can find the PvP decks: 

- Select the sword on the top right of the menu to select your 2 free PvP decks.
- Free PvP decks are fully upgraded decks, that can only be used in PvP. 
- You can select two new decks every day*, if you want to switch things up.
- You can freely swap around cards in those decks with cards in your collection to customize the decks to your liking. You can do this by clicking the tab in your inventory on the top left and changing General to Free PvP and vice-versa.
*We have reduced the timer to change your two Free PvP decks from 7 days to 24 hours.
 
• Updated PvP Starter Guides
On top of changes to the standard free PvP decks, RadicalX and Hirooo got together to update their starter guide for PvP. Want to get into PvP but not sure where to start? In this guide you will find everything you need: deck descriptions, tips and tricks for every match-up, an overview of the pro's and con's of your deck and how beginner friendly the deck is to play!
The guide ended up being longer than your average thesis, but we made sure to provide it with a clear layout so you can easily find your favorite deck and browse through the information you need. 
You can find the updated starter guide here, and be sure to join the Tutor and Apprentice discord that is specifically designed to help new players get started. Feel free to ask all your questions there. 
 
• New Fire rPvE Preset
It is now possible to face the Fire faction in all its blazing glory in rPvE! You can expect a fresh new challenge for rPvE, including new bosses to fight against. While we did a lot of testing, we would love to hear your feedback on the balance of this new enemy.
Please let us know your feedback on the forum or discord!

 
• Reforging
One of our biggest and most requested new features this patch is Reforging. The idea behind this new system is to give players a use for their spare cards without listing them on the Auction House. Players have no use for 40+ copies of the same common, and listing them for 3BFP on the AH has proven to be quite tedious and often unsuccessful. Additionally, the rise of expensive ultra rare cards is becoming a problem. We hope to tackle these issues with this new feature.
Here is how it works; players can reforge four cards from their collection to create one brand new card, destroying the four cards in the process. The card that is created will depend on different factors such as the rarity and color of the input cards. Players can also increase their odds by selecting cards that have something in common, for example four buildings. Using higher rarity cards will also increase the odds of an ultra rare dropping. Should the odds of reforging into an ultra rare card ever exceed 100%, players will get some spare Forge Shards. These Shards can then be used to get a mini-booster. It is not possible to use or get a promo card when reforging.
 

 
We expect this feature to have a large impact on the economy as a whole. Being able to exchange rares and cheap ultra rares for the chance of getting one of the more expensive ultra rares should bring their prices down. At the same time, this feature should increase the price of cheap ultra rares, since they are now valuable resources for reforging. While some of you might be worried that destroying four ultra rare cards to create one random one will further decrease the supply; please note that reforging multiple ultra rares is designed to be inefficient, thus discouraging the use of more than one ultra rare at a time, since the odds of getting an ultra rare does not improve over using a combination of rares and ultra rares. After the dust has settled, we expect this will bring a better balance to prices within a rarity. Because of the big shake-up this will have on the economy, we have closed the Auction House between the announcement of this system and the release of it.
 

 
• Legacy Avatars
We have added additional features regarding the player avatar you can select. It is now possible to buy the avatar that was previously only selectable with the creation of a new account for 15.000 gold. Additionally, once you have bought one of those avatars, they will be added to your collection, allowing you to swap freely!
In the future we are also planning to add additional avatars that can be collected through special events or achievements. 


• Advanced Filtering
Our developer Kubik has been working on improving the filtering of search results, both for the inventory and the auction house. Some of you showed interest in this progress, so we put together a document explaining how the current filtering works, why it's far from perfect, and how it will be changed. It's a bit more technical than the other documents we have shared with the community so far, but we hope you will enjoy this look behind the scenes! 
Advanced filtering.pdf

 
• Booster Discounts + Santa 
As a special treat for our one year anniversary, all boosters in the game will be 100BFP cheaper between 18-12-2021 and 18-01-2022. 
Additionally, every player will receive the Santa Claus card after playing a game. Happy Holidays Skylords!

• Team Changes / Open Positions
It has been a wild ride getting Skylords Reborn to the state it is now. We still have more new cards and exciting game modes in development, but need help getting them to you sooner. If you love the project, please consider helping us out, we would love to have you on our team. 
Below are three roles highlighted, but you can find more information, desired traits and all our open positions here. If you are unsure if you qualify, please reach out and have a talk! At the same time, we are sad to announce Carofex has left the team as a balance developer. We want to thank him for his contributions and wish him well! 
Open Position - Map Tester
As a map tester you get early access to new maps and gamemodes and are responsible to playtest them and provide feedback to the other map developers about possible issues or improvements. This includes check how balanced the map is, how fun it is to play, if there are any exploits, if areas on the map need to be prettified etc. Map developers/designers/artists should be able to rely on you to make sure maps that are released or changed are done so properly. More information.
Open Position - Client Developer
As a game client developer you are responsible to maintain and develop the game client. This mostly includes add new pre-game features (content outside of matches, so no game mechanics) through .pak files used by the game. You will be responsible to create and design in-game interfaces for new features, add networking support for new features that require it, solve bugs etc. using LUA, XML and little bit of Rust. BattleForge uses LUA and XML in their .pak files which are loaded by the client. Communication with the server happens through a proxy written in Rust. More information.
Open Position - Game Server Developer
As a game server developer you are responsible to maintain and develop the game servers. This includes add new features, track and fix bugs, optimize code, roll out new server updates, improve server monitoring etc. The servers are written in C++17, use boost asio for networking, MySQL as database, Prometheus and Grafana for monitoring etc. More information.


• In Conclusion
And that's it for this Community Update, thanks for reading! 
Remember; as a special treat for our one year anniversary, all boosters in the game will be 100BFP cheaper between 18-12-2021 and 18-01-2022. 
We also have a scratch code for you, which will reward you with a general booster: SKYL-ORDS-REBO-RN1Y
The code is valid until January 8th 2022, which is when our next community update will release.

We hope you will join us in the celebrations playing this new patch, and we would love to hear your feedback on how you experienced the past year of Skylords Reborn! Please let us know below.  
Happy holidays!

Archive
Community Update #13
Community Update #14
Community Update #15

NAME: Offering sets cards on cooldown
DESCRIPTION: When you use up a card until it's at 0 charges and wait for it to recharge 1 charge, then use Offering, any cards that recharged 1 charge  and Offering increased to 2 or more will go on cooldown after you bring them to 1 charge remaining. This only happens when using Offering while a summoned unit is still in it's summoning animation.
REPRODUCIBILITY: Always happens. For an example, play Thugs until you have 0, wait for it to recharge to 1. Next summon a Wrecker and use Offering (Green) on the Wrecker as soon as possible (spam it). Now Thugs will have 2 charges. Summon another Thugs and you will see it is now on cooldown. You can use offering multiple times to have more charges, but as soon as it goes back to 1 charge, it will go on cooldown. This works with any card, so you can use bring Harvester to 1 then spawn another easily long animation like Bloodhorn and use Offering (Blue) on it for the same effect.
SCREENSHOT: Attached.
LOG: Attached.
offering.webm _log_proxy_latest.log