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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!

Click below to view our April Fools joke for 2024. 
    • Upcoming Patch - April

While we continue working on our significant Summer patch (which will include our new campaign missions), we are nearly ready to release another patch to bridge the gap until you can get your hands on the Echoes of the Amii patch. In this smaller patch, planned for release in April, we will introduce two new cards, Map-of-the-Day, our new Rebirth booster, as well as some minor balance changes. Stay tuned for the full patch notes later this month.
The two new cards included in this patch will be the long-awaited Stonekin turtle, Bedrock, and a new build-around tool for Lost Souls players in Gate of Akylos.

As you can see, these cards will mark the introduction of the first new Ultra Rare cards to the game. If you're curious about the basis for our rarities, please check out our rarity design philosophy.
While maintaining a consistent logic for rarities is important to us, we also want to ensure that players can actually experience our newly created content. These new cards will be obtainable in their respective boosters as usual, but introducing an Ultra Rare without additional measures would likely make them unattainable for the majority of the player base.
We have received feedback from the community regarding the availability of the new cards in the Rebirth Edition in general, and set out to find a solution. Introducing: the Rebirth booster.

This booster will differ from the other boosters currently in the game. It will not be available in the store and can only be obtained through special events and a new reoccurring achievement. This new achievement rewards you for interacting with our new Map-of-the-Day feature. Every day, a random multiplayer Campaign Map will be selected for the Map-of-the-Day. They will be easy to spot, with an effect around their icon on the world map similar to the PvP-happy hour. For every completed Map-of-the-Day on a different day, players will receive 50 BFP. Additionally, for every 10th map, they will receive a Rebirth booster.
Each Rebirth booster contains 3 cards, all from the Rebirth Edition. Additionally, there will be an increased chance for cards of a higher rarity to drop.
We hope that Map-of-the-Day will encourage players to play both fan-favorite and lesser-played campaign maps. This should also help in assisting new players who are seeking to complete the full campaign. We will be monitoring the prices of our new cards and the impact the Rebirth booster is having on the economy, and might adjust accordingly in the future. We are also planning to distribute some Rebirth boosters through various events.
 
While we are unable to announce a specific release date yet, we feel quite comfortable announcing that this patch will go live in April. We hope you look forward to it!
 
• New Card Reveal - Skydancer

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. Last month we revealed Amii Sentinel. Today we are ready to reveal Skydancer!
Please note: We are still testing the card. While we are generally happy with it, numbers and effects might still change before release. 


 
Spirit Blade
Every 1.6 seconds, unit casts a lance of elemental power that deals 222 damage to enemies in a 5m radius around its target, up to 333 in total.

 
Spirit of Anguish - Mode Change, Cost: 50p
Activate to call forth an ancient Shadow spirit draining the enemy’s will to fight. While an enemy unit is within 40m of Sky Dancer, it deals 20% less damage. After being affected for 10 seconds, the debuff increases, causing enemies to deal 50% less damage. Effect lasts for 10 seconds after an enemy leaves range. Lasts until deactivated. Reusable every 30 seconds.
 
Spirit of Hope - Mode Change, Cost: 50p
Activate to call forth an ancient Nature spirit that bolsters the life of allies. While an allied unit is within 30m of Sky Dancer, its maximum life points are increased by 20% and it regenerates 1% of its life points every second. Effect lasts for 10 seconds after units leave the area of effect. Lasts until deactivated. Reusable every 30 seconds.
 
Elusive
Units with Elusive have the duration of the immobilizing effects of Freeze and Paralyze reduced by 10%.
 
 
Design notes: Last month, we revealed Amii Sentinel. The card itself was well received and its design led to a lively discussion in our card balancing discord about potential synergizes and the types of strategies people thought it would create. The design of Amii Sentinel, while interesting in itself, becomes more so when considered alongside its intended support unit, Skydancer. Skydancer is an L-sized flying unit with two powerful support abilities. The first is Spirit of Anguish, a kind of anti-rage effect which scales in strength as the enemy remains in range. The other is Spirit of Hope, which introduces a new mechanic allowing for players to increase the maximum life points of their own units. This second ability is the one intended to directly synergize with Amii Sentinel. Amii Sentinel can turn health into damage through its reflect mechanic, and by adding more total life points to its pool of health, the total damage available through reflection also increases. 
Our goal for Skydancer goes beyond being a summon-once support for Amii Sentinel. In general, XL-sized melee units rule T4, particularly in random PvE, with there being a lot of structural reasons why this is true. While we love XL-units as much as everyone else, we as a team want to start diversifying the unit experience by bolstering other types of strategies. With a solid damage-to-power ratio, a large amount of survivability via both Spirit abilities, and a natural synergy with Transcendence, we hope to see flying armies of Skydancers become a viable strategy in T4, both with and without Amii Sentinel. 
Skydancer is currently planned to release alongside our next major content patch in the summer, including brand-new campaign maps. We are not yet able to announce an exact release date. Please stay tuned for more information, and check in next month for another Amii card reveal!
 
• Input requested: Elemental Mastery

Skylords Reborn can be a daunting game, given the large variety of cards and mechanics. With so many options to explore, there is always more to learn. We want players to get a sense of which faction they play the most, what kind of interactions they have with the faction, and to complete tasks that give them a sense of having achieved mastery with said faction. To support both the learning and mastering process for each faction, we would like to introduce a new category of mini-achievements known as Elemental Masteries. These achievements will be tailored to each faction and divided into two categories:
Individual - these will track specific card actions, such as the number of spawns erupted to death.
General - these will will track player progress with the overall faction, such as how many maps a player has completed with Pure Fire.
Each category will reward minor rewards along the way, mostly in the form of faction-specific cosmetics.
The goal is for each faction to track 5 interactions per tier, as well as 5-10 general faction progress trackers. We are interested in the community's ideas for what types of card actions they would like to track, with focus on things which are commonly repeatable. Focus can be either PvP or PvE, though the final choices will be a mix of both.
 
Examples of Trackable Actions
Due to recent advancements in our understanding of the game, we can track most internal and external card interactions. Below are a list of some of these trackable events, all of which have been taken from Fire cards.  
• Number of units charged by Enforcer
• Enemy spawn buildings erupted to death
• Buildings suppressed (Sunstriders + Suppression)
• Enemies knocked back with Lava Field
• Total time Batariel has spent in his stage 3 burning phase
• Total damage dealt by Fire Dragons
• Void returned with Shrine of War
 
Join our brainstorm
You can share your idea's in this thread on the Forum. Brainstorming is also taking place in our official discord dedicated to discussion of card balancing in Skylords Reborn. Please join us there if you would like to see more elemental mastery suggestions or if you would like to participate in discussions relating to proposed changes to the game before they happen.

 
• 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 - Returning Easter Event
Complete any match during the Easter season to collect a free Promo Easter Egg. Additionally, you can collect a special Easter-themed border by completing the community map "The Easter Tree". 
 
 • 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 Event Organizer @Metagross31. 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

We are happy to announce that both a new and a returning member have formally joined the Skylords Reborn team. ElementG is our new 3D artist, assisting the art team with model adjustments. His latest work, Skydancer, has turned out very nicely, so stay tuned for that. Additionally, Chibiterasu has re-joined the team as a Card Implementor. We are delighted to have him return, as his experience with the tools is a welcome addition to our work output.
Minashigo Hiko has concluded his role as an Event Manager. We would like to thank him for his contributions over the years.
As our team continues to grow, Dutchy has taken on the role of HR Coordinator alongside his Lead Moderator duties. Are you interested in helping out with the project but not sure how? Feel free to send him a message!
 
• Contribute to Skylords Reborn

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: SKYL-ORDS-REBO-RNVR
The code is valid until May 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 March 2024
 

Only 300? Mine has 450 in the back 😎
Fresh from today 🙂

New oven goes all the way to 300 degrees Celsius, perfect for making pizza!

@Omega1001 but EA did not write the game in C#, and they did not give us source code for the game, do you also have some example on how to add it to game without changing a source code?

a replay would help greatly here.

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
 

Welcome fellow Skylords, to the official map editor tutorial!
Split into several parts, this tutorial will guide you on how to work with the BattleForge Map Editor. By the end, you will be able to create your own maps, script them, and publish them to the Community Maps section of the game.
Some of the topics might seem pretty lenghty. Truth is I only wanted to be thorough when making this tutorial, as the BF Map Editor has many little quirks, and any of them may prevent you from playing your map.
Don't be discouraged though, I will point out any known issues as I go along, and once you get more experience with the editor, you will find your best practises.
To begin, we'll need to start the map editor.
 
• Starting the Editor

Map editor is automatically installed with the game and is located in your Battleforge install folder under the name: pluginbasededitor.exe  
Simply double click the exe, wait for the editor to load and congratulations! You have just launched the editor and are ready to make some awesome maps!
 
Below is a list of tutorials we will go over, in order.
 
• Tutorials

In-Depth Tutorials
These tutorials are meant to be followed in order, and are aimed at complete beginners. However they sometimes contain little details that are not widely known about the editor, so even for a more experienced user, these can contain some new information. As the scripting tutorials go along, the topics covered in them get more complex.
Map Work Creating a Map Working with Entities  Sculpting the Terrain and Blocking Texturing the Terrain Publishing a Map (Coming Soon)  
Scripting Script Editors Scripting Introduction Scripting Basic Events Part 1 Scripting Basic Events Part 2 Script Groups, Script Areas and Script Paths Creating Goals Default Script Files Creating Member Scripts Using Ifs and Loops Warfare Patterns (Coming Soon)  
Extra Tutorials
These tutorials discuss topics that are not necessary for map creation, but can make work easier or elevate the map to another level.
Importing a Heightmap Map Patches (Coming Soon) Sound Tool (Coming Soon) Creating Cutscenes (Coming Soon) Template Scripts (Coming Soon)  
• FAQ

Before we begin with the tutorial itself, here are some frequently asked questions.
Note that you can always ask questions in official Skylords Reborn Map Making Discord.
Q. Why cannot I see the map in the game?
A. Make sure that you:
set up the teams and player kits, ideally, using the available presets create and save the map description place and assign a starting position and monument for each player look in the correct place in game - for PvE maps only - open the Community maps node, for PvP or PvPvE maps open the Sparring node  
Q. Can I create my own entities? Such as an XL Mauler or S sized Emberstrike?
A. Unfortunately, no. BUT you can "modify" entities via the scripting tool. It is very basic and easiest is adding passive abilities. If you want to add active abilities, you also need to manually script the unit to use those abilities and where to target them, which is another problem altogether.
 
Q. My map keeps crashing when I want to play it, what do I do?
A. If you get an error message (it might be a bit tough to actually open the error message window) try to read it, it usually gives you a pointer to a script that is causing the issue, and what the issue might be.
If the map crashes without an error, check for any typos in your code, or if you accidentaly put an Action into Condition block, or vise versa.
If you still cannot figure it out, turn to our map making discord: Skylords Reborn Map Making
 
Q. What are the things that can crash the editor or corrupt my map?
A. Several:
Cutscene editor - crashes, prevents map saving
While the tool is functional, it is heavily advised to leave creating cutscenes as the absolute last part of map development. Switching maps and then changing tags of entities - crash
With frequent saving, this, as any other crash, will be only a mild inconvenience. Working on a map that is not saved - crash
It is best to save your map as soon as possible, the editor cannot handle working on an unsaved map for longer period of time and you will lose all your work. Selecting quest_pve_soullight object under Leveldesign folder (DBID 254) - crash
Simply selecting the object in Entity Placement is enough to crash your editor. Hiding entities via Entity List - occasional crash
Sometimes the editor crashes when hiding entities, it seems to mostly happen for the first couple of times you use it, just save often and you'll be fine.  

Card Balance Changes
 

Global Balance Changes
Neutral Units are now limited on a per-player basis: 
   - Each player will now be able to play one copy of each neutral units. Neutral buildings are still limited on a per-team basis.
We have been increasing neutral unit synergies and releasing new neutral cards, but an issue is that if one player is running a neutral archetype, say Ravenheart & Raven Archwalker, the other members of the team are also restricted in their deckbuilding choices. We think this is contrary to the spirit of the game, and since there are no balance considerations preventing a change, we are loosening the restriction while keeping the uniqueness of neutral units intact.

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 ]
 Envenom:
1. Base damage: Restored one missing tick on both affinities
2. Infused Intoxication: Scaling damage: Each time the 80 dmg threshold is reached, the poison damage increases by 10, stacking up to 6 times up to a maximum of 95 damage per second, and refreshing the spell duration.
This change should allow the card to remain near its current state in PvP by allowing the player to micro their unit away before the poison stacks out of control, while providing a powerful new tool for Nature T1 in PvE as powerful singular units steadily kill themselves by stacking the poison damage higher and higher.
 Mumbo Jumbo:
1. Power cost: 40p ➜ 50p
2. Targeting: Units only ➜ Units and buildings
3. Debuff strength (both affinities): 25% ➜ 35%
Improve Mumbo Jumbo's usability in PvE by allowing it to target buildings. This will be especially useful with the infused affinity (r) which increases damage taken by 35%. This should help Nature T1 focus down troublesome towers and spawners.
[ Tier 2 ]
 Earthkeeper:
1. Damage: 540 dp20 ➜ 660 dp20
2. Back Up, power cost: 25p ➜ 0p
Improve use cases for Back Up by removing activation cost and give the card slightly more in-combat power by giving it a 22% damage boost.
 Lost Reaver:
1. Mob:
   A. Targets: Hostile and friendly units ➜ Hostile units
   B. Corpse cost: 1500 ➜ 2000
   C. Crawler health: 310 ➜ 440 life points
2. Corpse Gathering maximum amount: 1500 ➜ 2000
Lost Reaver's ability seems made for PvE, but it has anti-synergy because it damages other friendly units and even its fellow crawlers. We have increased the corpse cost to make it slightly harder to use in PvP, while increase crawler health for better survivability. Additionally, and most importantly, we have removed the ability's friendly fire, which will allow players to spawn multiple crawler groups at a time without worrying about them killing each other instead of the enemy.
 Lost Shade(p):
1. Tainted Union
   A. Remove existing reflect effect.
   B. New effect, "When surrounded by at least 2 other Lost Shades, each individual unit will deal 61/61/61/68 damage per second and take 15% more damage."
Lost Shade(p)'s reflection effect has never quite worked, the more shades are in the union, the less damage is actually reflected. Instead of attempting to salvage an affinity effect we think is unfitting to the unit, we have instead decided to make the tainted affinity the true opposite of its frosty counterpart. Tainted Shades will receive more damage but deal more in turn, making them a high risk-high reward option.
 Vileblood(g):
1. Gifted Liquids (g) healing per wave: 300 life points equally spread ➜ 160 life points, up to 800 in total
Now works similar to Forest Elder's healing ability, with a separated single-target and multi-target healing amount. There are 6 total healing waves, meaning this changes the spell from 1800 total healing to 960 single-target healing to up to 5 targets. 
[ Tier 3 ]
 Ethereal Storm:
1. Charges: 8 ➜ 16
2. Power: 150p ➜ 130p
3. Duration: 21 / 21 / 21 / 26 ➜ 25 seconds on all upgrade levels
4. Now only damages hostile units.
5. Blessed affinity (b): All enemies in range take full damage, even when frozen (everything does full damage).
6. Infused affinity (r): Enemy units take 20% more damage.
7. Remove all stages except 1:
   A. Only one stage, baseline (0 Revenants) and stage 1 (1 Revenant).
   B. Baseline: 40 damage / Stage 1: 100 damage
The existing scaling effect is bugged, so we are simplifying the mechanic. There is now a base effect and an improved effect if one Revenant is present. This gives LS a consistent damage spell for itself but with reduced effectiveness in helping allies due to a lack of Revenants unless the player also casts Lost Evocation. The affinity effects provide missing things in the faction, such as the ability to ignore freeze's damage reduction.
 Lost Banestone:
1. Underworld Gate:
   A. Remove existing effect
   B. Add affinities, Tainted and Blessed
   C. Now spawns an own Lost Shade Revenant of the respective affinity
   D. Duration: Infinite ➜ 20 seconds
   E. Cooldown: 60 seconds ➜ 40 seconds
2. Tainted Underworld Gate (p):
   A. New effect: "Activate to curse the targeted enemy unit. Every second, the targeted unit will lose 40 life points. Additionally, if the target dies, it explodes dealing 300 damage to every enemy in a 10m radius and a Lost Shade revenant with an affinity toward Shadow will spawn out of its corpse with a lifetime of 25 seconds."
3. Blessed Underworld Gate (b):
   A. New effect: "Activate to curse the targeted enemy unit. Every second, the targeted unit will lose 40 life points. Additionally, if the target dies, Lost Banestone is fully repaired and a Lost Shade revenant with an affinity toward Frost will spawn out of its corpse with a lifetime of 25 seconds."
4. Glacial ➜ Everlasting
   A. Remove affinities, now one effect
   B. Radius: 25m ➜ 30m
   C. Now suspends the duration of any friendly revenants in the area.
With its new aura and the ability to generate unbound defenders, Lost Banestone will allow players to transition their T2 offensive units into T3 defenders. This fits in line with the new Revenant-based playstyle we envision for the faction. This will also remove the exploit where Banestone can permanently stop enemies on some cPvE maps from spawning, such as Bad Harvest and Siege of Hope. While this exploit is well known and used, these maps are perfectly completable without them, and they trivialize defending by functionally turning the map off.
 Promise of Life:
1. Affected units can no longer be healed.
2. Blessed Revive (b):
   A. Spawn delay: 15 seconds ➜ 10 seconds
   B. Ice Shield strength: 800 ➜ 1500
Improve blue affinity without impacting the current workaround to spawn extra legendary units. Additionally, add a new effect to both affinities preventing units affected by Promise of Life from being healed. This should especially help in multiplayer, where well-intentioned allies heal units you want to die. 
 Stone Launcher:
1. Orb cost: 1 Nature, 1 Frost, 1 Hybrid (T3) ➜ 1 Nature, 1 Frost, 1 Neutral (T3)
 Twilight Slayers:
1. Orb cost: 1 Nature, 1 Fire, 1 Hybrid (T3) ➜ 1 Nature, 1 Fire, 1 Neutral (T3)
[ Tier 4 ]
 Green Peace:
1. Protect the Environment! allied buff duration: 20 seconds ➜ 30 seconds
2. Protect the Environment! (r) damage buff: 50% ➜ 60%
 Infernal Chain:
1. Orb cost: 2 Shadow, 2 Neutral (T4) ➜ 4 Shadow (T4)
2. Power cost: 150p ➜ 100p
   A. Spell now costs 50p to cast once applied to the unit.
3. Ability Rework:
   A. Target: Single-target ➜ Up to 5 enemy units
   B. Bugfix: Allow Infernal Chain's healing to regenerate squad members
3. Blessed Bond (b) ➜ Tainted Bond (p):
   A. Remove 50% damage reduction for caster ➜ Add healing effect (55 per second) for each bond established
   B. Affected enemies now return 12% of current void power as power from the void
4. Gifted Bond (g): 
   A. Healing: 75 per second ➜ 55 per second per bond
   B. Stuns affected targets after 5 seconds for 15 seconds.
Two dedicated Shadow orb decks already have a lot going for them, 3 dedicated Shadow orb decks have both Death Ray and Plague, and Shadow Worm fails to provide a sufficient reason to go Pure Shadow on its own. The changes allow multiple bonds, with healing occurring per bond. This is intended to synergize with Shadow Worm's life loss from Mass Disintegration. Each affinity has a different role: the shadow affinity provides in the field void return, and the nature affinity grants a crowd control effect. 
 Lost Evocation:
1. Power cost: 150p ➜ 140p
 Lost Spirit Ship:
1. Torpedo Changes:
   A. Splash Radius: 15m ➜ 10m
   B. Knockback: Remove S & M-knockback
2. Life points:  3930 ➜ 3630
3. Power cost: 240p ➜ 230p
4. Recycling:
   A. Target: Own buildings ➜ Own buildings and Revenants
   B. Cooldown: 10 seconds ➜ 5 seconds
   C. Ability description simplified
5. Crystal Rework:
   A. Gifted Crystal (g): Damage effect removed, it now only heals
   B. Infused Crystal (r): Grants a +40% movement speed increase to friendly Lost Souls units
   C. Ability description simplified
Lost Spirit Ship (LSS) is the major damage dealer for Lost Souls, which relies on units to deal damage. Therefore, we would be unable to remove its high damage without providing heavy compensation in other places. Instead of doing a full stat realignment of Lost Souls units, we are focusing on LSS.
While the changes might look like LSS was significantly nerfed, this is less true than it first appears. First off, the card has the same stat efficiency as previously due to the cost decrease. The splash reduction is a direct nerf, but the removal of S & M-knockback is actually a buff. LSS would frequently knock back units, particularly S-squads, so far that it and other splash cards could no longer damage them. Additionally, there is a hitbox bug with flying S-units which makes it so that when they are knocked back their "click-box" extends over a massive radius. This issue was a major problem for LSS which is supposed to move around the camp to stay safe and to damage enough targets, as the player could no longer click a location to move, but now only press "attack" on the displaced S-unit."
The crystal is being changed to either heal or increase movement speed, with the pointless spawn zone effect being removed. By allowing it to vacuum up Revenants, we add strong synergy with both Lost Warlord's new ability and Lost Evocation. This means that LSS will scale in strength the more a player invests into Lost Souls.
 Lost Warlord:
1. New passive, "Undying": 
   A. Blessed Undying (b): The unit's revenant form spawns with an Ice Shield that absorbs up to 3000 damage. The Ice Shield refreshes every 25 seconds. 
   B. Infused Undying (r): The unit's revenant form deals 50% more damage.
2. Onslaught rework:
   A. Remove affinity
   B. Provides ground presence.
   C. New effect - "Activate for Lost Warlord to project a revenant of himself to a destination within a 40m range. This revenant provides ground presence, has no abilities, and lasts for 25 seconds. Reusable every 30/25/25/25 40/35/35/35 seconds."
With these changes, we hope to make Lost Warlord into the ultimate Lost Souls card, with a heavy focus on Revenants that synergizes with Nether Warp for quick movement of armies. We view this violation of fundamental game principles to be justified by the card's high orb restrictions and the recognition that by T4, the exploits enabled by teleporting ground presence are largely moot. The blue affinity is being buffed to have a refreshing Ice Shield for when players use cards like Lost Banestone and Revenant's Blessing to extend Revenant life times. This should help to equalize the two affinities.
 Overlord:
1. Blood Share:
   A. Life point cost: 1000 life points ➜ 1500 life points
   B. Healing: 1500 life points ➜ 1500 life points, up to 7500 in total
   C. Cooldown: 5 seconds ➜ 30 seconds
   D. Ability cost: 0p ➜ 20p
This change makes Overlord's "Blood Share" work similar to Forest Elder's "Forest Charm" in that it heals the group and the individual in different amounts. The goal here is to allow Overlord to function more fully as a sustain tank for the units it is protecting, as it already does for itself. This will help it to support army-based Shadow compositions, such as Shadow Worms, which is important because Overlord is the only melee Shadow unit in T4.
 Twilight Pestilence:
1. Power cost: 150p ➜ 120p

Miscellaneous Changes
Added Nature faction classes to generic NPC Nature buildings: Mark of the Keeper, Primal Defender, Stranglehold, Healing Well, Living Tower, Root Nexus, Healing Gardens, Howling Shrine, Mindweaver, Gateway of Nature, Temple of Nature, Wheel of Resilience, Wheel of Juvenescence, Wheel of Strength, Earth Crystal, and Fortress of Nature. Added Fire faction classes to generic NPC Fire buildings: Makeshift Tower, Rocket Tower, Blaster Cannon, Pyromaniac, Volcano, Tower of Flames, Gateway of Fire, Temple of Fire, Flame Crystal Added over 20 new Shadow NPC enemies for use in community maps. Includes units, towers, and spawn buildings. Units - Dreadcharger, Forsaken, Skeleton Warriors, Wrath Blades, Nox Trooper, Harvester, Shadow Mage, Mutating Frenzy, Cultist Master, Rifle Cultists, Necrofury, Unstable Demon, Ashbone Pyro, and Grim Bahir. Buildings - Stone of Torment, Lifestealer, Soul Splicer, Time Vortex, Necroblaster, Church of Negation, Embalmer's Shrine, Incubator (small spawner), and Shrine of Greed (large spawner)  Worldbreaker Gun: Fixed animations not playing on U3. Fixed the normal maps of several map objects to correct their interaction with light. Nomad: Improved upgrade description to be more consistent.

Patch #400045 - Revenant's Doom
Welcome to our newest patch. This update contains our tenth balance patch for the game, two brand-new cards, a rework of the rPvE difficulty system, tutorial missions, and many other changes, enjoy!

Patch Preview
Two new cards are now available! Jump in-game to collect Tectonic Shift and Lost Manabeast. Added tutorial missions! New and old players alike can now receive rewards for simple missions meant to explain some of the harder to understand mechanics of BattleForge. A new rPvE difficulty and changes to the existing difficulty system to align it better with the campaign map difficulties. Our much anticipated Lost Souls rework, a large number of buffs to well-designed but underperforming cards, and a change to the neutral unit exclusion rule. A complete rework of the campaign reward system, with individualized upgrades, gold rewards overtime, and gold rewards on-loss.
General Changes
Pause, Speed-up, and Slow-down buttons have been added to the Forge. Standard difficulty has been removed for the 12p maps Passage of Darkness and Ascension. Achievements have been adjusted accordingly.  The game will now remember the difficulty you selected for each map until you restart the game. Removed post-game message "Maximum rank achieved" for those players who are Master of the Forge rank in PvE. The post-game reward screen now always displays the player's current rank and experience earned. A description of the achievement completed has been added to achievement reward mail. Added previews when hovering over card and boosters rewards for achievements.  The networking library used for the client has been updated. Linux users will now need Wine 7.13 or higher to play the game. The game should still work on Windows 7, but support has been discontinued. General Fixes
Improved user interface responsiveness. Longer gaming sessions were previously experiencing slowdowns. Resolved an issue that prevented free PvP decks from being cloned. Fixed a game crash related to map scripts, most commonly affecting the "Titans" map.
New Cards
Tectonic Shift - 50p T3 Stonekin Spell 
You will find the upgrades for this card on the map "King of the Giants".
When thinking about Stonekin's design, we determined that more buildings interactions fit well with the faction. More specifically, we thought that a building-based archetype was the natural expansion for a faction of living stones. Tectonic Shift is a T3 spell that adds a teleport ability to friendly Stonekin, Frost, and Nature buildings. This teleportation ability functions highly similar to Phase Tower's ability as a permanent addition, similar to how Santa and Infernal Chain add new abilities to a unit. For more information, check out Community Update - September 2023.
Lost Manabeast - 120p T3 Lost Souls 
You will find the upgrades for this card on the map "Titans".
As part of our Lost Souls rework, we wanted to add the well-known NPC unit Lost Manabeast to the faction. The player version of Lost Manabeast is a ranged unit, which collects the souls of its victims to reset the revenant timer of allied Lost Souls units. It is a perfect fit for those players wanted to engage in revenant-based gameplay. For more information, check out Community Update - December 2023.
 

Random PvE Difficulty Redesign
A major part of the upcoming update is the addition of a new random PvE difficulty between level 9 and level 10. The significant gap that exists between level 9 and level 10 is well known, and this new difficulty, often referred to as level 9.5, is meant to help players prepare themselves to make the jump into level 10. Alongside this new difficulty, we are also changing the naming scheme of the random PvE difficulties and removing difficulty levels 1 to 3, which are almost never played. We hope this new system will make it easier for players to understand what difficulty is right for their skill level.
[ New Difficulty Naming Scheme ]
Standard difficulty - Old level 4 Standard+ difficulty - Old level 5 Standard++ difficulty - Old level 6 Advanced difficulty - Old level 7 Advanced+ difficulty - Old level 8 Advanced++ difficulty - Old level 9 Expert difficulty - NEW level 9.5 Expert+ difficulty - Old level 10
Campaign Loot Rework
Anyone who plays PvE in Skylords Reborn knows that the most commonly played multiplayer game mode is random PvE. One part of this is due to the ease of matchmaking, you can go to the 4p area and join a random PvE game of any difficulty without needing to jump around the map checking lobbies, and the other part is due to rewards. In most cases, random PvE simply rewards the player better, unless you get lucky while looking for an expensive level 3 upgrade. While our upcoming improvements to campaign map matchmaking will have to wait for a future patch, we are now rectifying the reward discrepancy between the two modes. 
[ Campaign Reward Changes ]
Campaign maps now reward gold over time. The total amount of gold rewarded has been substantially increased at all difficulty levels, even if players previously disenchanted all upgrades. Solo maps and multiplayer maps now give the same rewards. Campaign maps also reward players who lose a map part of the gold they would have obtained had they won. Standard maps reward 70%, advanced maps 40%, and expert maps 25% of the expected gold on-loss. Gold on-loss cannot be earned unless at least 5 minutes have passed in-game. The new Pick reward mode has replaced Random, Need/Greed, and Assign, which have been removed from the game.  Upgrades are now decided on a per-player basis, with each player able to choose the upgrade(s) of their choice. Expert and advanced maps reward 1 upgrade, while standard maps reward 2 upgrades. In the future, players will have the ability to earn more upgrades per map completion under special circumstances. Disenchanting an upgrade now rewards the same gold regardless of the rarity of the upgrade, while also providing the player with PvE experience, depending on the level of the upgrade. 

Tutorial Missions
Twenty-one new tutorial missions have been added to the game. These missions are designed to help new and old players alike to discover basic game features, as well as many of the new functionalities the Skylords Reborn team has added since the game's revival. Completing all 21 missions will reward players with 12 common cards, 8 uncommon cards, 900 gold, and the new in-game title "Lyrish Scholar." These rewards are designed to help new players and function as a supplement to the existing starter decks. All missions are completable within an hour.
Tutorial Missions will be the new focus of attention when opening the rewards window, but focus will revert to quests once the missions are complete. 

 
 

Patch #400044 - 28 October 2023
🎃👻 Welcome to the Spoooooky Halloween Patch! 🦇🕷️
Skylords, gather 'round as the shadows lengthen and the nights grow cold! We're thrilled to present our ninth balance patch, teeming with delightful treats and perhaps a trick or two.
Dive deep into the abyss to discover a mysterious new card, unveil chilling new achievements that await the brave, and embrace the night as you light up the forge with a hauntingly beautiful new theme.
Happy Halloween in the Forge, Skylords!

Achievement Updates
[New] Happy Halloween! Rewards: Halloween Pumpkin (Avatar) + 1x Lost Souls Booster
Win the PvE community map Spooky Encounters on expert difficulty during the Halloween season. (One week from Oct. 28th)
[Updated] Never Thought of Him
Now rewards a brand new Fire Forge theme in addition to the 100,000 gold. Reward is retroactive.
Corporate Downsizing
Added 2 additional levels to the achievement with 2 additional progressive avatars.
General Changes
The deck limit has been raised to 500 total decks, inclusive of PvP, Tutorial, and General decks. Please note: Performance issues may occur at higher deck counts. A warning for this will be displayed once you reach 100 decks. Players using a deck level below 100 will now receive a notification encouraging them to check out the free PvP decks. High-res textures are now used for "Flightblocking" objects. Completed goals in maps will now be stored in replay files. The "Seasonal" forge theme has been renamed to the "Featured" forge theme. The new Fire Forge will be the featured theme until the end of November 2023. The game's file system logic has been updated to use UTF-8 paths for enhanced support. This feature is experimental and may be rolled back if necessary. Profile comparison section has been improved with filters allowing sorting by achievement group, achievement type, and locked achievements.
General Fixes
The 'Show Upgrades' button has been repositioned, creating more space between it and the 'Create Game' button. The brown background issue that occurred when clicking on the leaderboard entry in 2 player scenarios has been fixed. Leaderboard filters no longer reload incorrectly after choosing the map from the dropdown. Flying units are now restricted from opening gold chests. This rectifies an issue introduced by a previous change. Issues related to entities like power wells, monuments, and walls not updating their position correctly when teleported via map scripts have been fixed. Achievement Fixes
The tooltip for the forge spring theme locked achievement now correctly displays (8 maps) instead of (10 maps). Corrected faulty achievement descriptions with missing placeholder values in the profile comparison section. Resolved issues with the type filter not functioning properly in the profile comparison section. Chat commands in the chat menu will remain visible when switching chat regions. Community Map Fixes
Removed misleading error messages that appeared after downloading a community map when joining an open game. Resolved issues related to rapidly switching between community map entries which affected the minimap load. Private maps will now be deleted after 3 hours as intended. Downloaded maps will now properly replace older map versions on the filesystem. The "Local" map type filter will from now on display all locally available community maps, including those downloaded and already on the server. Fixed the issue of daily quests not progressing when playing featured community maps. Rectified the error where maps were counted multiple times for the 'complete different featured community maps' achievement. Resolved inaccuracies in the text for hardcoded local community maps.  

New Cards
Soulstone  - 70p T1 Frost ()
You will find the upgrades for this card on the map Defending Hope.
A common complaint among players is that Frost lacks good shield spells and abilities for PvE before T4. This hole in Frost's design is real, and leads to other issues, such as a lack of teamplay oriented utility and army sustain in the early game. Soulstone, a Frost-like version of Fountain of Rebirth that grants ice shields, fills this gap. It is also the first card to make use of a new evolution mechanic we are adding to the game. Once the player reaches T2, Soulstone can be transformed into a stronger version of itself. This allows it to scale with the player, without being overpowered in T1. We hope players enjoy this new card and the many synergies it brings to Frost, and we cannot wait to see what you do with it.  

Card & NPC Balance Changes

Global Changes
Standardize Basic Class Types:
Added missing faction & affinity class tags to all player buildings. Fixed wrong affinity class type on dozens of units. Added missing class type to dozens of units and buildings.  While technically a balance change as it fixes several card inconsistencies, such as some affinities not working with the correct elemental crystal card, this change also improves the accuracy of the card filtering function.

Description Fixes:
  Cleaned up the descriptions of dozens of player cards and NPCs for improved clarity in each language.     Introduced a new standard description for rage on all cards with the ability. Bug Fixes:
Shrine of Martyrs: Fixed a bug preventing alive units from being affected by a shrine if they had already been affected and the current one was destroyed. Sun Reaver: Fixed various faulty interactions with linked fire.
PvE Balance Changes
 Earthen Gift:
1. Charges: 8 ➜ 12
 Frontier Keep:
1. Power cost: 250p ➜ 125p
In truth, we have little idea how strong Frontier Keep is as a card, merely that it is overpriced for its current effect. As such, we are cutting its price in half and seeing what happens. 
 Grinder(r):
1. Infused Provoke (r): The damage buff is now stackable with external effects. 
Grinder's built-in damage buff after using provoke will now stack with effects like Earthen Gift(r) and Wheel of Gifts. 
 Mindweaver:
1. Fixed a bug where the population cap would be permanently increased beyond the 120 limit if a controlled unit died.
2. Edict of Command range: 30m ➜ 40m
3. Added a 40m radius indicator for Edict of Command on card play-out.
 Parasite Swarm:
1. Can now takeover T3 units on upgrade 2 instead of upgrade 3. 
Make Parasite Swarm more accessible to new players by reducing the total gold investment to reach T3 takeovers. 
 Sleet Storm:
1. Radius: 15m ➜ 20m
2. Spell delay: 5 seconds ➜ 4 seconds
Sleet Storm released below the power level we wanted for the card. We have increased the effect radius and decreased the time it takes for the root and gravity surge effects to activate to ensure the player can ensnare faster moving L and XL-units more consistently. 
 Stone Launcher:
1. Orb cost: 1 Frost, 1 Nature, 1 Neutral ➜ 1 Frost, 1 Nature, 1 Hybrid
2. Power cost: 70p ➜ 100p
3. Life points: 1700 ➜ 2200
4. Rock shot
   A. Splash radius: 5m ➜ 8m
   B. Now damages both air and ground units
5. Pulldown power cost: 80 / 80 / 75 / 70p ➜ 50 / 50 / 45 / 40p
Stone Launcher is now a normal tower. We think that T3+ AA-only towers are largely a bad design, and, on top of that, we needed a normal T3 Stonekin tower for our upcoming card Bedrock to be able to summon and Tectonic Shift to teleport.
 Stronghold:
1. Power cost: 150p ➜ 200p
2. Displayed attack value: 2850 dp20 ➜ 4950 dp20
3. Life points: 3600 ➜ 4500
4. Cannon Turrets: 
   A. Splash radius: 5m ➜ 10m
   B. Turret firing arc: Allow up to 3 turrets to attack a target at a time.
   C. Damage: 74 damage, up to 110 in total ➜ 164 damage, up to 246 in total
5. Bombardment:
   A. Now an active ability
   B. New description: Activate to shoot a mortar shell that deals 800 damage to enemies in a 15m radius around its target, up to 3200 in total. Knocks back small, medium, and large units. Has a range of 40m. Reusable every 30 seconds.
6. New passive, "To the Last!" 
   A. Description: If the fortress has equal to or less than 3000 life points left it will deal 25% more damage and take 25% less damage. If the fortress has equal or less than 1500 life points left it will deal 50% more damage and take 50% less damage.
7. New passive, "Slowed Construction:" Construction time is increased by 50%.
Stronghold has been reworked from the ground up and is finally worthy of being an Ultra-rare card. We encourage players to experience the card for themselves and we hope that we have done the card sufficient justice so that it will live up to its name and model. 
NPC Balance Changes
[ Existing NPC Changes ]
The changes discussed in this section pertain to the non-player versions of these entities which players encounter in campaign and random PvE.
 Flame Crystal:
1. Can now be frozen and disintegrated.
 Howling Shrine (rPvE variant):
1. Root Network connection radius: 25m ➜ 40m
 Mindweaver (rPvE variant):
1. Added small and medium knockback.
2. Splash radius: 5m ➜ 8m
 Nature Random PvE Boss Units:
1. Removed the "Nature" class to prevent unintended interactions with player cards (such as Protector's Seal)
2. Boss Tier: T5 ➜ T4
 Primal Defender (rPvE variant):
1. Orb cost: 3 Nature ➜ 2 Nature
2. Power cost: 150p ➜ 100p 
Now able to be overtaken by both affinities of Matter Mastery.
 Root Network Units (Nature rPvE Variants):
1. Fixed an issue where Treespirit, Thornbark, and Guardian of Nature would not aggro against flying units.
2. Increased ranged at which these units root to attack enemies from 20m to 28m.  
 Root Nexus:
1. No longer provides 2 support. 
2. Removed from Nature rPvE and replaced by the new Earth Crystal.
 Stranglehold:
1. Tower range: 30m ➜ 40m
[ New NPCs ]
These new NPCs are available to map makers to use for community maps. 
New NPC Units:
   1. Pest Creepers: A permanent version of the nature affinity Pest Creepers spawned by Sunken Temple. 
   2. Earth Crystal: Provides 2 support to root network entities within a 20m radius, replaces Root Nexus in Nature rPvE. 
   3. Fortress of Nature: Boss variant of Howling Shrine with 50m range.
   4. Bramblethorn: New Nature variant of Stonekin Rockstorm which roots on-hit. 
   5. Amii Phantom: Ranged-only with swift. 
 

You guys are really putting some hard work into this, amazing! 😁
So many new amazing features, and still some people feel the need to bitch about stuff, it sickens me.
AMAZING WORK!!!!

Card Balance Changes

Global Balance Changes
Random PvE Boss Leader Immunity:
   - Added Steadfast to all rPvE bosses.
Ranged attack delays re-randomized:
   - Towers and ranged units are now assigned a randomized 0.3-0.7 second delay on a per-attack basis instead of a standardized 0.5 second delay on spawn. This only modifies cards affected by the bug, many ranged units and towers will be unaffected by the change. 
Last patch, we changed the randomized attack delay assigned on spawn from ranging between 0.1-1.1 seconds to a standardized delay of 0.5 seconds. While this successfully achieved our goal of making each unit and tower a player spawns equal, it introduced other problems. The chief concern reported by the playerbase was an aesthetic one. While previously battles in BattleForge felt very alive, with units and towers on each side attacking continuously, with the standardized delay combat started to feel more turn-based. Your units would attack, their units would attack, then your units would attack again. This also led to easy kiting of enemies, particularly NPC enemies, because you could play around the standard delay to unleash volleys of attacks then retreat until the next volley was ready. Given the widespread and consistent feedback we received that something unique to the BattleForge experience had been lost by this change, we decided to pursue a few alternative solutions that would fix both the old and the new problems. The solution we settled on was to re-add the attack delay with a smaller range and to make it apply on a per-attack instead of a per-spawn basis. This means each affected unit or tower will have a slightly different attack speed for each attack, but will on average have the same attack speed over a long enough period. The chaotic nature of combat should also return, with both sides continuously attacking instead of engaging in a semi turn-based encounter.
Revenant's Doom Costs Standardization:
   - Standardize Revenant's Doom costs by tier, with an increasing discount as the tiers progress: T2: 75%, T3: 65%, T4: 50% of unit's normal power cost
NPC Building Power and Orb Cost Fix:
   - All NPC buildings now have an assigned power and orb cost. 
Similar to how we fixed the missing power and orb costs for NPC units several patches ago, we have now given each NPC building its own power and orb cost. One motivation for this change is to allow us to add new cards and card abilities that can be limited in terms of which buildings they can and cannot be taken over, which would otherwise not be possible. A second motivation is to create consistency between NPC buildings. Prior to this change, buildings added with Fire rPvE had properly assigned costs, which is also true of the new Nature rPvE buildings, while the original buildings did not. This created a major inconsistency between and within game modes in regard to Matter Mastery, making it difficult or impossible to know when to bring one or the other affinity. A third motivation was to create a real distinction between the two existing affinities of Matter Mastery. Previously, before this change, the nature affinity could overtake every building in the game, meaning there was no real reason to use the tainted affinity or for it to exist. At the same time, we do not want to strongly nerf the nature affinity, which we do not view as inherently problematic. As such, as part of this change, we are also changing the nature affinity of Matter Mastery to work on T3 buildings, up to a power cost of 140p. Below, we have listed each building affected by this change and what will be its new tier and power cost.
Tier 2 - 100p
Bandit Launcher, Stonekin Hurler, Twilight Infected Tower, Lost Launcher
Tier 3 - 140p
Bandit Sky Defender, Bandit Waystation, Bandit Wizard Tower, Stonekin Deepgorge, Stonekin Launcher, Stonekin Shatterer, Twilight Fleshbender, Twilight Hatecaster, Twilight Skyscorcher, Lost Banestone, Lost Converter, Lost Disruptor
Tier 4 - 200p
Bandit Artillery, Stonekin Hammerfall, Stonekin Shredder, Twilight Bombard, Twilight Willsapper
XL-unit Turn Speed Increase:
   - Increased the turn speed of all player XL-units based on category.
Ground XL: 25% faster turn speed
Flying XL: 40% faster turn speed
Worm XL: 200% faster turn speed
Global Disenchant Hostile versus Friendly Root Distinction:
   - Disenchant's immunity no longer prevents the application of the Immobile, Immobileroot is still prevented.
BattleForge has two types of root effects, one called Immobile and the other Immobileroot. The distinction between them is that Immobile is only applied by friendly effects, while Immobileroot is applied by hostile effects. This change makes it so that a friendly effect which causes a unit to be rooted in place is no longer prevented by Disenchant's immunity effect. The primary reason behind this change is that effects which self-root a unit or its allies are baked into the balancing considerations of a card and its effects. The ability to bypass this downside, which has become easier as we have added, and likely will continue to add, more ways to apply Disenchant, has therefore become a constant balance consideration for both upcoming and existing cards. We are forced to ask ourselves if we can really buff Forest's Vim if we have to account for a Razorleaf that can walk around at normal speed, attacking the entire time. As we work on campaign maps with longer T4 sequences, we have to consider that a player can summon a Dreadnought and have it permanently stay in its Pledge of the Giants mode while walking around, trivializing vast portions of the map with ease. In such cases, do we nerf the Dreadnought and the Razorleaf, or do we nerf the mechanic which is causing the issue? Our decision was to nerf the Disenchant interaction.
Squad Position Fix:
   - Game now checks and updates the Squad position to the unit position if they are too far away from each other.
Any unit has two positions. A squad position and a unit position, which is equal to what we see on screen. This position tends to be close or equal to the units position itself but seems to behave slightly different for some actions. For example,. a Magma Hurler will shift his squad position slightly behind himself when attacking. This is not problematic. But some actions lead to only the unit position being updated while the squad position remained stationary. Prime candidates for this are hold position orders or rooting effects. The squad position can remain at the initial spot while the unit including its unit position can move to attack. Squad position is used by many abilities and spells to check if they should apply to the corresponding unit. Meaning, a unit with a squad position far away from its unit position would no longer be hit by things like CC or AoE attacks targeting the unit position. The fix going live now checks and updates the Squad position to the unit position if they are too far away from each other. Worms are not included here due to issues with worm movement.

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 ]
 Banner of Glory:
1. Life points: 500 ➜ 300
2. Void return percentage: 33% ➜ 40%
Higher percentage void return will allow more efficient cycling of lower tier units into real power. The life points were lowered to avoid situations in PvP where it becomes too strong, such as offensively inside an Aura of Corruption.
 Decomposer:
1. Void return percentage: 50% ➜ 60%
 Frost Mage:
1. Remove knock back from damage cone
2. Add non-damaging cone with reduced range, that applies knock back. A 33m knock back cone should result in Frost Mage consistently applying damage to squads she attacks, fixing the issue where units are knocked outside of her damage range, but she continues to attack them anyway.
 Imperials:
1. Add passive, "Protected Rush:" While under the effect of an Ice Shield, the unit gains significantly increased movement speed.
   A. Only works while Defensive Stance is active
   B. Movement speed while shielded = 4.8 m/s
Improve Frost Sorceress and Ice Shield Tower synergy with Imperials. 
 Scorched Earth (p):
1. Tainted Deconstruction (p):
   A. Damage debuff: 50% ➜ 75%
   B. Remove “The erection of buildings that are presently under construction will be interrupted and it will not be possible to repair anything.” from functionally and description.
The increase of Scorched Earth(p)'s debuff allows it to become a semi-suppression of buildings in a large area (20m) and to protect your fragile Fire units in PvE. We removed the construction-suppression effect to reduce double-scorched usage in PvP, which also gives each affinity a role in either PvE or PvP. 
 Snapjaws:
1. Remove Splash Damage: 5 damage, up to 9 in total ➜ 7 damage
Snapjaws have an abysmal splash radius of only 3m. This is so small it effectively does not exist and only serves to reduce the unit's damage against squad units. We are removing the splash and changing the unit's damage to single-target. This increases the unit's single-target damage from 138 to 193 dp20, a +40% increase in total effective damage. This will change the damage of Satanael's Snapjaws from 414 dp20 to 579 dp20.
 Tunnel:
1. Power cost: 40p ➜ 35p
2. Life points: 880 ➜ 600
Encourage Tunnel play by slightly lowering cost. HP reduction to prevent issues with an overly health efficient Tunnel.
 Witchclaws:
1. Power cost: 65 ➜ 70
2. Damage: 630 ➜ 680
3. Add passive, "Corpse Gathering:" Harvests energy from nearby corpses equal to their former maximum life points to enable more powerful explosions. A maximum of 3000 life points can be stored at once.
4. Infiltration Rework:
   A. Damage (both affinities): 330, up to 1650 in total damage + up to 600 damage per target, up to 5 targets in total based on the number of corpses gathered
   B. Enable splash overflow fix for ability.
   C. Both affinities now damage units and buildings.
   D. Explosion radius: 20m ➜ 15m
   E. Fire affinity: Additionally, when 3000 corpses have been gathered, Witchclaws deal 50% more damage after teleporting.
   F. Shadow affinity ➜ Frost Affinity: Additionally, when 3000 corpses have been gathered, Witchclaws take 50% less damage after teleporting.
[ Tier 2 ]
 Breeding Grounds:
1. Power cost: 70p ➜ 90p
Breeding Grounds is one of the stronger cards in the game and has some of the best scaling of any T2 card or building. At only 1 Nature orb and available as easy as T2, it grants a permanent -25% discount to all own and allied units. While the card is something of a third rail due to its popularity, now that we have significantly buffed nearly all parts of Nature, we believe it is time to give the card a minor nerf. When considering what to do with the card, we considered several options, such as making the discount scale upwards or downwards with tier (i.e. 15% discount if player is T2, 20% if T3, etc.) or just nerfing the -25% discount outright. In the end, we settled on a slap-on-the-wrist nerf, at least initially. The increased bound power will delay players initially in T2, but only cost them 2 extra permanent power if they destroy the building. At the same time, the increased bound power cost should encourage players to actually destroy Breeding Grounds made obsolete by map progression, and it will provide a much needed nerf in the PvP game mode as well. 
 Burrow Ritual:
1. Orb cost: 1 Nature, 1 Neutral (T2) ➜ 1 Nature (T1)
Reducing the card's tier should allow more synergy with Tunnel, allowing for more strategies to emerge and helping to better justify Burrow Ritual's inclusion in a deck.
 Defenders:
1. Crossbow Attack damage: 9 per shot (540 dp20) → 10 per shot (600 dp20)
2. Life points: 810 → 750
Stat realignment to make Defenders more viable offensively and a more attractive option. Life points are worth less than damage when considering stat efficiency, particularly amongst ranged units in PvE.
 Earthkeeper:
1. Fixed a bug which allowed Earthkeeper to make connected units immune to all damage while also not affecting Earthkeeper. 
 Lost Priest:
1. Exhaustion:
   A. Cast range: 30➜ 40m
   B. Total targets: 5 ➜ 10
   C. Debuff Timer: 20 sec ➜ 30s
   D. Jump speed increase
   E. Debuff strength: 30% ➜ 40%
Improvements to Lost Priest's support capacity will help its viability in PvE, particularly in combination with other units such as Lost Shade and Lost Dancer. 
 Matter Mastery (g):
1. Gifted Takeover (g): maximum of 2 orbs and 100 power costs ➜ maximum of 3 orbs and 140 power costs
See Global Balance Changes above for more details. We are also considering more substantial changes to the tainted affinity in a future update. 
 Revenant's Blessing:
1. Charges: 8 ➜ 12
2. Radius: 20m ➜ 25m
3. Gifted Immortal healing: 15 ➜ 30 life points per second
4. Infused Immortal damage: 25% ➜ 30% more damage
5. Bugfix: Allow overlapping Revenant's Blessings to reapply the effect without requiring the unit to exit and re-enter the area.
We are working towards improving the current use case of Revenant's Doom through direct buffs to it and through improving its support tools. With this change, Lost Shades are usable without needing Viridya and the spell scales better into the higher tiers for those you want to use revenants. More support to the faction and to revenants in particular will come in the next patch when we finish the rest of the upcoming Lost Souls rework. 
 Root Nexus:
1. Orb cost: 1 Nature, 1 Neutral (T2) ➜ 1 Nature (T1)
2. Life points: 850 ➜ 650
Moving Root Nexus to T1 gives Treespirit a much-needed support card. Life points reduced to prevent too health efficient blocking options in T1. 
 Spikeroot:
1. Waves per root attack: 2.5 spike waves ➜ 2 spike waves
2. Damage per wave: 100, up to 150 in total ➜ 125, up to 190 in total (+25% increase)
Overall damage remains identical. Spikeroot now always deals the same damage at each point in its attack, instead of having high and low points. 
 Sunken Temple:
1. Added Mode-change, "Hibernate:" Pest Creepers enter a state of dormancy and are no longer summoned.
2. Pest Creepers now aggro against enemies in an area around the Temple.
The new mode change will allow the player to temporarily turn off Pest Creepers. This will be especially helpful when using a large number of Sunken Temples, which quickly fill up the unit population limit, and you want to summon new non-Creeper units. The other change will make it so that Pest Creepers no longer stand around waiting for enemies to either attack them or move within a short distance. They will now actively aggro on enemies that come within a moderate radius around the Temple which spawned them. Overall, these changes should make the card function much more fluidly. 
 Unholy Power:
1. Stored Strength (ammo): 2000 ➜ 3000
2. Ammo is refreshed whenever Unholy Power is recast on a unit already affected by another instance of Unholy Power.
3. Bugfix: Unholy Power no longer decays all remaining ammo when a previous instance of the spell expires. 
Unholy Power is a highly inconsistent spell, and a lot of that regards bugs in its original implementation. By fixing the decay issue, new applications of Unholy Power existing concurrently with previous applications should no longer be removed by older instances expiring. Additionally, new applications, in addition to continuing to stack additively, now refresh the card's ammo pool back to full. On top of these important changes to the card's functioning, we also increased its total strength pool by 50% from 2000 to 3000 which should help it to scale better into T3. With all these changes, Unholy Power should become a significantly stronger and more consistent buff spell.  
 Viridya (normal and promo versions):
1. Viridya’s Blessing is now able to restore lost squad members
 Wallbreaker:
1. Orb cost: 1 Fire, 1 Neutral (T2) ➜ 1 Fire (T1)
Opens up several early use cases for the card on Titans, Dwarven Riddle, and Sunbridge. 
[ Tier 3 ]
 Abyssal Warder:
1. New Active ability for large and medium-sized golems, "Reassemble:" Bond with two other Abyssal Warders of the same size in a 20m radius to reform into an Abyssal Warder of a larger size.
2. Frost affinity effect, Ice Shield duration: 15s ➜ 30 seconds
There is a large disparity between the usefulness of the two Abyssal Warder affinities in terms of effects. The fire affinity (r) provides a permanent buff, while the blessed affinity (b) only grants an Ice Shield for 15 seconds. In an attempt to partially remedy this issue, we have doubled the length of the smaller Warders' Ice Shields to 30 seconds. Additionally, we have finally been able to add a new effect to the small and medium sized Warders which will allow them to rebuild themselves into a larger Warder. Reassemble requires 3 Warders to work, meaning that it is not inherently efficient, though it provides another strong synergy with Promise of Life and builds on the buffs to Abyssal Warder last patch. 
 Blood Healing:
1. Charges 12 ➜ 16
 Thornbark:
1. Melee damage: 1400 dp20 ➜ 1550 dp20
 Mutating Frenzy:
1. Sacrifice cooldown: 15 sec ➜ 5 sec
 Santa Claus:
1. Blue Gift, Red Gift, Christmas Peace cooldown: 60 seconds ➜ 40 seconds
 Satanael:
1. Fealty (both affinities):
   A. Cannot be activated if the player is at or above 125 population. 
   B. Summoned Snapjaws damage: 200% ➜ 120%
Removing all instances of infinite spawning in the game due to the attendant performance issues they cause. Buffing Snapjaws individually as compensation. Overall, the damage of each summoned Snapjaws squad is increased slightly. 
 Shrine of Martyrs:
1. Void return per frozen unit: 12% ➜ 18% of current void pool
2. Bugfix: Void return effect is no longer triggered multiple times per entity.
Regular users of Shrine of Martyrs know that the void return effect is often inconsistent. The same group of enemies could provide wildly different void return rates when frozen due to the fact that the effect would switch between applying once or multiple times per enemy. We fixed this inconsistency, but it left the shrine, which is likely already the weakest of the four standard options, even weaker. As such, we have given it a large +50% buff to its void return percentage in compensation for removing the existing bug. This change will allow players to develop an intuitive understanding of how much void is actually returned per frozen enemies. The percentage we chose is a bit of a guess and is subject to change based on the feedback we receive from player testing.  
 Shrine of War:
1. Orb cost: 1 Fire, 2 Neutral (T3) ➜ 2 Fire, 1 Neutral (T3)
When we first began nerfing cards, many people asked us when we were planning on touching Shrine of War. We previously delayed any changes to the card due to its importance to the rPvE game mode at all levels and because other factions, such as Frost and Nature, lacked sufficient methods of void return, an aspect we think is integral to the balance of all factions. Now that all factions have a viable method of void return, we have decided to give Shrine of War a nerf. We were between the two ideas of nerfing its void return percentage or increasing its orb restrictions. While Shrine of War has by far the most efficient void return when accounting for multiple players out of all the available options, we decided that we did not think its efficiency was outside the line of acceptability, but that the Shrine was too splashable compared to the other options. As such, we choose to leave Shrine of War as the best void return shrine in the game, but to require the player to invest into 2 Fire orbs to access it. 
[ Tier 4 ]
 Altar of Chaos:
1. Change Nether Bomb cast range to work like spells instead of like units & buildings. Still limited to own ground presence only.
This seemingly small change substantially increases the positioning capacities of the Nether Bomb and allows own units to be much farther away when placing bombs. 
 Battleship:
1. Barrage damage per shot: 550, up to 3300 in total ➜ 800, up to 2400 in total
Battleship's ability has a long range of 50m and can be used to snipe out enemies far into the enemy's backline while remaining safe itself. The ability has a very large amount of splash damage, able to fully damage up to 6 enemies in its target radius. At the same time, the target radius is only 12m making it very unlikely there are 6 enemies to damage. Additionally, despite its long animation and unleashing 5 shots, the single-target damage is not even able to destroy a large spawn building. We are reducing the total splash damage in favor of higher single-target damage, increasing the damage dealt to one target from 2750 to 4000 in total. 
 Cluster Explosion (p):
1. Tainted Burst radii per successive explosion: 25m / 20m / 15m / 10m / 5m ➜ 25m / 20m / 15m / 12m / 10m
Increased the radius of the explosion for the 3rd and 4th waves of Cluster Explosion (p). These radii were so small, they often failed to hit any enemies. By increasing them, we hope to give a slight buff to this affinity in ideal situations with a lot of closely clustered enemies. 
 Earthen Gift:
Earthen Gift Redesign
1. Charges: 4 ➜ 8
2. Infused Earth (r) ➜ Blessed Earth (b):
   A. Damage buff: 30% ➜ 50%
3. Tainted Earth (p) ➜ Gifted Earth (g):
   A. Affects Elemental units, not structures
   B. Remove "Every hostile building in the current game will deal 50% less damage."
   C. Damage buff: +50% more damage
   D. Healing per second: 10% ➜ 5%
Earthen Gift is one of the worst cards in the entire game. Before Reforging, its normal price was 3 BFP despite being a Rare spell. As Stonekin's Pure T4 spell, it ought to be one of the reasons why a player goes 2 Nature and 2 Frost orbs, but right now it is a waste of a card slot. The card's existing identity is as a combined buff and healing card, but it is restricted to only work on structures. Even on structures it is not useful.
Instead of completely rejecting the card's initial design, we are attempting to improve on it for the one affinity by increasing the damage buff where it may prove useful upon the release of defensive rPvE. For the other affinity, we are swapping its effect from structures to elemental units, which includes all Stonekin units, and modifying its heal and damage buff accordingly. The idea is to potentially allow the spell to replace Regrowth while also giving Stonekin access to a minor damage buff for itself and any other friendly elemental units. Between this and the Grinder buff, Stonekin's T4 should feel significantly stronger.
 Evil Eye:
1. Damage now ticks every 0.5 seconds instead of every 1 second. Rage still takes the same amount of time to activate.
2. Initial damage delay for Evil Eye's Searing Sight has been removed. Damage will now starts as soon as Evil Eye targets an enemy.
 Grinder:
1. Harmony: Added a yellow bar akin to Mountaineer showing when the healing effect will next occur.
2. Provoke (both affinities): Single target ➜ All enemies in a 15m radius
   A. Infused Provoke Buff: 50% more damage ➜ 75% more damage
Quality of life change to Grinder's harmony ability. Added some increased strength and flexibility to Grinder's taunt by allowing it to affect multiple targets in a small area. This will also allow Grinder (r) to taunt the empty air versus bosses, allowing it to still generate the personal damage buff, which has been increased to +75%, regards of whether or not any enemy units are actually taunted. Stonekin struggles against strong single target enemies such as bosses and this is one step in an attempt to remedy that without damaging the faction's existing identity.
 Lost Evocation:
1. Charges: 4 ➜ 8
2. Cast time reduction: 2 seconds ➜ 0.8 seconds
3. Infused Revenant damage buff: 50% ➜ 100%
The charge increase allows Lost Souls to get access to its primary support spell without having to use two deck slots on Rifle Cultists + Offering. The cast time reduction prevents the use of both Evocations simultaneously, while the buff to the fire affinity (r)'s damage buff makes it a more compelling option for a faction whose main damage dealing occurs through units.
 Shadow Worm:
1. Increase turn rate of disintegration turrets: 200 ➜ 260
 Tempest:
1. Whirlwind splash radius: 5m ➜ 8m
 Twilight Pestilence:
1. Damage: 44 ➜ 64 life points per second
2. Healing (both affinities): Both affinities now heal friendly Twilight units by equivalent damage as they deal to enemies.
3. Change Gifted Affinity (g) ➜ Infused Affinity (r)
   A. Add +30% damage buff for friendly Twilight units
Improvements in nearly all aspects of Twilight's marquee spell. Previously, the blessed affinity (b) was the only one worth using due to the damage reduction it provides. We decided to roll the healing effect of the gifted affinity (g) into the base spell and create an alternative damage buff variant instead. The goal with this change is to allow Twilight Pestilence to be a more flexible spell, one able to provide a supportive effect while also clearing minor enemies and recovering chip damage to player units that might otherwise prompt the player to cast an additional healing spell. 
 Void Maw:
1. Void Shear ability cost: 75p ➜ 60p
[ Tower Changes ]
It is the general principle of the faction design team not to change abilities or introduce complex mechanics needlessly. Cards should generally perform a single function and perform that function well. A lot of the buildings in the game are already well-designed, but lack sufficient stats or possess too strict of requirements. As such, we have opted wherever possible to introduce simple changes to bring towers up 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. 
Tower Targeting Fixes:
1. Changed the damage delay of the auto-attacks for a large range of towers to the standard delay of 0.1 sec. These towers should now have an easier time hitting moving targets, including swift units. 
   A. Affects the following towers, including both affinities when applicable: Artillery, Hammerfall, Defense Tower, Lifestealer, Northern Keep, Primal Defender, Twilight Bombard, Tower of Flames
 Blaster Cannon:
1. Splash radius: 5m ➜ 8m
2. Tainted Magma: 15m ➜ 20m
 Defense Tower:
1. Splash radius: 5m ➜ 8m
 Howling Shrine:
1. Essence Bolts firing arc: 90 degrees ➜ 135 degrees
2. New passive, “Restoration:” Regenerate 30 life points every second.
To truly fulfill its role as a fortress and to provide a meaningful choice between itself and Razorleaf, Howling Shrine must be a self-sufficient defender able to justify the massive amount of space it occupies. The restoration effect will allow the tower to persist even absent player attention or when facing continuous attack waves that prevent repair. The increase to the firing arc of its main weapon is a much needed change. Prior to this, Howling Shrine could only target most enemies with one turret at a time and XL units with two turrets only if the tower was positioned perfectly with respect to the XL unit's path. The tower should now be able to target units of all sizes with two turrets in most cases. 
 Lifestealer:
1. Splash radius: 5m ➜ 8m
2. Still alive regeneration: 5 life points per second ➜ 8 life points per second
3. Sacrifice cooldown: 15 seconds ➜ 3 seconds
 Lost Disruptor:
1. Damage: 300, up to 330 in total ➜ 300, up to 450 in total (3000 dp20)
2. Splash radius: 5m ➜ 10m
3. Disruption cost: 50p ➜ 20p
Increase Lost Disruptor's effectiveness against multiple enemies. Also, Lost Disruptor's ability is one of the better counters to Shrine of Memory in 2v2 PvP. By decreasing the cost, we better enable players to make use of the card simply for its ability effect.
 Northern Keep:
1. Splash radius: 5m ➜ 8m
 Primal Defender:
1. Earthstrike splash radius: 5m ➜ 8m
2. Cloudstrike:
   A. Damage (add splash): 225 ➜ 250, up to 375 in total (2030 dp20)
   B. Splash radius: 0m ➜ 8m
Buff to Primal Defender's anti-air capacity. This leaves it as a middle ground between a non-raged and a fully raged Blaster Cannon, and should hopefully allow the tower to better aid Nature T1 in dealing with anti-air threats, particularly those which can counter small and medium units.
 Rocket Tower
1. Orb cost: 2 Fire ➜ 1 Fire, 1 Neutral
2. Power cost: 80p ➜ 70p
3. Life points: 2000 ➜ 1480
4. Rocket Barrage:
   A. Total rockets: 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 ➜ 4 on all upgrade levels
   B. Attack speed: Every 5 seconds ➜ every 4 seconds
   C. Damage per rocket: 85 ➜ 90 (900 dp20)
Fire T2 currently lacks a splash tower, while Pure Fire T2 has 2 towers. We think Pyromaniac sufficiently fills the slot of T2 tower for Pure Fire, so we are transitioning Rocket Tower into a splash card. As part of this change, we will be cutting down on its large pool of life points while otherwise increasing the consistency of Rocket Tower, both in terms of knockback and damage dealing. Even with the cost decrease, this change will make Rocket Tower mildly less stat efficient against large groups in exchange for a lower start up cost and the ability to consistently knockback multiple enemies due to the fixed targeting and increased rate of fire. These changes should allow Rocket Tower to fulfill its role as a knockback-centric tower while its high damage allies provide the necessary fire power. 
 Skydefender:
1. Damage: 128 up to 192 in total ➜ 153 up to 230 (2300 dp20)
2. Life points: 1400 ➜ 1600
3. Range: 40m ➜ 50m
4. Splash Radius: 5m ➜ 8m
Substantial buff to Skydefender to give it more teeth against the T3 and T4 air threats it is designed to counter. The range increase will make it able to fight back against Raven Battleships, which are one of the most common flying enemies in the campaign. 
 Time Vortex (p):
1. Tainted Void Shock (p), attack speed increase void levels: Above 150, 300, 600, 1200 void ➜ Above 100, 200, 400, 800 void
Improve the efficiency of the tainted affinity (p) by decreasing the amount of void which is required to trigger each attack speed increase.  
 Volcano:
1. Power cost: 150p ➜ 200p
2. Damage: 581, up to 872 (3990 dp20) ➜ 766, up to 1149 (5270 dp20)
3. Life points: 4390 ➜ 5690
4. Infused Eruption (r) Rage:
   A. Rage scaling: 100% 1st stage, 200% 2nd stage ➜ 75% 1st stage, 150% 2nd stage
   B. Rage reset timer: 7 sec ➜ 10 seconds
5. Lava Sea:
   A. Radius: 25m ➜ 30m
   B. Bugfix - Lava Sea now works as described
   C. Added a new visual effect
The goal is to make Volcano more "dense" by increasing its power cost and then adjusting its stats accordingly. Making each Volcano more powerful helps to mitigate the tower's large size and also makes it a better target for building buff effects such as those provided by Frost's Skyelves. Total damage when enraged is slightly increased despite the Rage nerf (12,000 dp20 ➜ 13175 dp20). Overall, Volcano loses a very small amount of total stat efficiency, but gains in total strength by having an ability that actually works. The old Lava Sea provided zero value to the tower because it did not work. The new Lava Sea, which functions as described on the card, turns this Fire fortress into a terrifying strongpoint capable of wiping out hordes of enemy units.  

PvP Balance Changes
[ Tier 1 ]
 Life Weaving:
1. No longer affects buildings.
Life Weaving changes are made to weaken its scaling potential into higher tiers considering most shadow splashes tend to be fairly strong at later game stages anyway. Buffed single unit attacks with straight well focus are very easy to execute and fairly annoying to play against when any damage on the target also increases the damage against your Power Well.
 Sunstriders:
1. Suppression Fire ability cost: 25p ➜ 10p
In PvP, Suppression Fire's most relevant applications arise on higher tech levels, where a 50 energy investment for a fragile T1 unit is already enough of a restriction. As a result, there is room to buff the ability power cost for those niche cases.
[ Tier 2 ]
 Bandit Launcher:
1. Power cost: 60p ➜ 50p
2. Firebug ability cost: 40/35/30/25p ➜ 40p on all upgrade levels
The addition of a weaker building with reduced construction time led to some rather unique T2 strategies, but the high bound power requirements restrict its relevance. This change should open up some more room for creative usage of Bandit Launcher and the Fire Bug ability.
 Bandit Minefield:
1. Mine spawn speed reduced by 0.25 seconds per mine. 
Bandit Minefield has been a fairly controversial topic. The spell was very powerful and played an important role in every game mode. Based on play rates and general feedback, our PvP faction overhaul succeeded in making Bandits more viable and fun to play, but there was a lot of frustration when playing against the faction due to an overly dominant Minefield. After recent tweaks, play rates have dropped by about 20% and Bandits seems to be in a very healthy position based on global faction popularity and high ELO presence ever since. However, the experience of playing against Minefield continued to be perceived as frustrating by many of our players. The intended goal of this set of changes is to keep the faction at a similar level of strength, but distribute its power more evenly across Bandit T2 cards and strategies.
Mine spawn speed will be reduced to enable counter play without removing its zoning power and damage potential upon being ignored. The design direction of allowing placement under units is absolutely intended, crucial for the faction viability, and differentiates the card from basic trap card design. Due to a lack of crowd control and building protection, Bandits needs a tool to defend vs melee unit well focus consistently. A major issue in PvP is that outside of its intended design direction (melee unit zoning and S unit denial), Minefield generates too much trading value as its damage is almost guaranteed. The spell tends to trade up against anything except for swift unit micro. This should be addressed.
In return, we will buff Commandos, Sniper, and Bandit Launcher in compensation. As Warriors Death came up to the discussion for compensations: The card design is not healthy for PvP due to a lack of counterplay, as such we will just leave the card as is since its mechanic is also powerful in end game PvE content.
 Bandit Sniper:
1. Damage: 75 dmg per hit (750 dp20) ➜ 78 dmg per hit (780 dp20)
Slight damage increase to compensate for Bandit Minefield nerfs.
 Commandos:
1. Power cost: 75p ➜ 65p
2. Concentrate ability cost: 10p ➜ 20p
After some testing, we think it is safe to make Commandos a little stronger, as long as the upfront cost of mode-switching remains the same. This should be beneficial for the card in all game modes.
 Gravity Surge:
1. Cooldown: 20 seconds ➜ 15 seconds
Allow Gravity Surge to be more functional as a niche counter for air unit heavy strategies.
 Lyrish Knight:
1. Damage: 400 dp20 ➜ 800 dp20
2. Life points: 980 ➜ 900
3. Surge of Strength:
   A. No longer increases damage by 100%
   B. Now increases damage dealt to frozen targets by 50%
While we had the intentions to give Lyrish Knight a more meaningful role in the game, finding a healthy buff for the card just by tweaking the stats has not proven easy. The extraordinarily high health ratio makes the unit very powerful when combined with health scaling mechanics like Nasty Surprise. Furthermore, the card is easily spammable and can take over games. As a result, we will allow the card to interact more with Frost's spell arsenal rather than just adding value through raw stats.
 Mauler:
1. Power cost: 75p ➜ 70p
After Mountaineer fell out of the meta, Mauler lost its main purpose in PvP. A slight cost reduction should help him shine more in niche situations.
 Mountain Rowdy:
1. Tainted Ice Block damage (p): 25 dmg/sec ➜ 20 dmg/sec
2. Blessed Ice Block (b):
   A. Damage reduction: 25% ➜ 30%
   B. Now affects friendly air units.
With the previous changes, Mountain Rowdy (p) played a strong role in pure Frost due to its high damage potential, which made it a little too effortless to shut down T2 aggression. While Frost should be strong at deflecting attacks around own structures, we want to give players a fair chance to punish the faction when a player acquires a strong tempo lead. Mountain Rowdy (b), on the other hand, has been rather underwhelming, so we will buff the damage reduction percentage a bit.
 Shadow Mage:
1. Sacrifice range: 30m ➜ 40m
2. Foul Play:
   A. Damage percentage: 300% ➜ 400%
   B. Duration until explosion: 20 seconds ➜ 12 seconds
   C. Cast range: 30m ➜ 40m
   D. Now deals half damage to buildings
Despite her great stat efficiency, Shadow Mage's abilities have been rather underwhelming in relation to what the card is supposed to do with them. By adding a burst limit against structures, we open up a lot of room for Foul Play buffs in order to make this ability more rewarding in unit combat.
 Spirit Hunter (p):
1. Tainted Bow Attack poison damage: 20 dmg per second ➜ 25 dmg per second
The current damage loss compared to the green affinity does not get compensated by the additional piercing damage. This change should grant Spirit Hunters purple some better niche uses.
 Stone Shards (b):
1. Blessed Fury ➜ Shatter Ice
   A. No longer deals increased damage to demons and undead
   B. Now deals full damage to frozen targets
Stone Shards (b) are currently unused across all game modes. The affinity effect being effectively useless plays a big role here. This change is supposed to enable alternative strategies in Stonekin (Shards (b) + Spirit Hunters (p) + Coldsnap) without overbuffing the already powerful T2.
 Stone Tempest:
1. Stone Rest healing: 20 life points per second ➜ 40 life points per second
This change is supposed to give the self-heal ability a more meaningful role given that the self-cc almost always outweighs the benefits of using this mechanic. As many of the factions received more tools to counter the unit (i.e. Burning Spears release), we think it is safe to enable more ways to use the card without directly strengthening patterns that have been perceived as oppressive in the past.
 Twilight Curse:
1. Cooldown: 15 seconds ➜ 2 seconds
Allow Twilight Curse to scale into high energy T2s without increasing card efficiency.
 Warlock (r):
1. Infused Witchcraft damage buff: 15% ➜ 25%
We agree that the previous buff reduction was unnecessary when we reduced unit power cost. This has now been reverted.
[ Tier 3 ]
 Drones:
1. Life points: 1760 ➜ 1840
The recent changes for Drones did not help the card as much as we had hoped. Stat efficiency will be increased a bit further.
 Nox Carrier:
1. New passive, "Push the Cart:" Increase movement speed to 6.4 m/s when at least 3 friendly units are within a 25m radius
Based on some previous suggestions by the community in the balancing discord, we will add a conditional movement speed increase to Nox Carrier in order to make sure it actually reaches its destination.
 Sandstorm:
1. Charges: 8 ➜ 12
 Shield Building:
1. Cooldown: 20 seconds ➜ 30 seconds
Shield building has been very powerful for a long time, and a card nerf has been requested by the community rather frequently. We agree. 100% uptime on a shield, strong enough to outlast XL unit focus, is too much value even if you invest a full deck slot for a purely defensive spell.
 Timeshifter Spirit
1. Healing per jump: 275 / 220 / 165 / 110 / 55 life points ➜ 300 / 240 / 180 / 120 / 60
 Tremor:
1. Ground Slam:
   A. Ability cost: 30p ➜ 40p
   B. Cooldown: 15 seconds ➜ 20 seconds
2. Tremor's walk speed (2.4 m/s) is now half of its normal speed (4.8m/s), instead of being identical. 
Tremor is one of the most popular and most powerful siege units in T3. We will be making some minor changes to the ability in order to bring it more in line with other T3 options.
 Unstable Demon
1. Demonic Rage:
   A. Bonus movement speed: 25% ➜ 60%
   B. Cooldown: 20 seconds ➜ 15 seconds
After the initial round of changes, Unstable Demon is not being used as much as we had hoped. As the card is very difficult to use, we will strengthen it to reward good unit management a little bit more.

Patch #400042 - Nature's Awakening
Welcome to our newest patch. This update contains our eighth balance patch for the game, a brand-new card, all kinds of quality of life features, and many other changes, enjoy!

Patch Preview
- One new card is now available! Jump in-game to collect Sleet Storm.
- Nature becomes the next faction to join the party in random PvE. 
- The first half of our two-part gold rework for PvE game modes and card upgrade costs.
- The Community Map menu has been completely reworked to increase usability. Also, gold rewards and a new achievement have been added for community maps. 
- Our third balance pass on towers, numerous buffs to well-designed but underperforming cards, and some of our first changes to NPC enemies.
- New quality of life features including a single-player pause feature, key down versus key up interactions, the ability to copy text from the in-game chat, the ability to immediately import a deck when a valid code is pasted in chat, and many more!

General Changes
The Community Map section has been completely revamped. Players can now better filter between maps, rank maps themselves, search for high-rated maps from other players, and receive overtime gold rewards while playing both featured and non-featured community maps. Cards played in featured community maps now also count towards daily quest rewards, and a new achievement to play and beat featured community maps will reward players with the Spring Forge skin. This rework will open up a lot of new content with which players can engage, and hopefully encourage more community members to bless their fellow Skylords with their map making talents. For more information, check out the February 2023 Community Update. Players can now pause PvE matches when they are the only active player in the game, including situations where multiple players were previously active in the match but have since left. The game automatically pauses whenever you open the options menu, showing a pause message while darkening the screen, and automatically unpauses when you close the options menu. Players will still be able to earn progress towards quests and achievements when pausing, but any game where a pause occurred will be removed from the leaderboard. Pausing solo matches can be disabled in the config file by changing the "allow_pausing_solo_games" option under the "application" section to false. The game now handles global key events on key down rather than on key up interactions. BattleForge is an outlier among modern games in that hotkeys are activated when a player releases a key, not when it is first pressed. By changing this, the game now feels much smoother and more responsive. Players can change back to using key up interactions by changing the line "global_key_events_on_key_down" in the config file to false. Gold rewards for rPvE have been changed. Random PvE now rewards players with overtime gold rewards based on map difficulty and whether they are playing 1p, 2p, or 4p. Gold earned from a 4p level 9 match will be roughly identical, while the gold reward for most other levels has been increased. 1p and 2p rPvE matches now reward significantly more gold than previously. Additionally, all rPvE matches now reward 15% of the expected rewards on-loss.  The gold cost to purchase and apply upgrades has been restructured. Previously, the application cost accounted for 28% of the total gold cost; it has now been increased to 40% while the cost to purchase upgrades has been decreased proportionately. Additionally, common and uncommon cards now have higher gold costs, while rare and ultra-rare cards have lower gold costs. The total cost to purchase and apply all upgrades, approximately 5.7 million gold for all cards, remains unchanged. This change is intended to make higher rarity cards easier to upgrade for newer players, while making lower rarity upgrades more valuable. More changes to upgrades and their procurement will be coming in a follow-up patch when we rework and increase the rewards for playing campaign maps.  Card upgrade drop locations are now provided in-game. When upgrading a card, it will now tell players where they can find the other upgrades they are missing. Additionally, each map now has a "Show Upgrades" button where players can filter and search for what upgrades the map provides at each difficulty level. For more information, see the March 2023 Community Update. All card upgrades have had their locations changed. Each map now has a roughly equal amount of commons, uncommons, rares, and ultra-rares. The 12p maps Passage to Darkness and Ascension are unchanged and will continue to only provide gold.  Players now have the ability to compare their profiles. Right now, this feature is limited to just comparing what achievements each player has completed, though it may be expanded to include more details in the future depending on community feedback. The feature is set to "Friends only" by default (meaning only people that you personally have added as a friend can see your profile), but it can be opened to the public or restricted completely in the settings.  Nature has been added as an enemy faction in rPvE. Face iconic Nature units, discover new bosses, battle through enemy root networks, and overcome the ultimate control faction in this newest addition to the random PvE game mode! For more information, and an interview with the designer, see the May 2023 Community Update. Shaman users rejoice, gold chests are now openable in-combat! Two new chat options have been added to the right-click context menu. Players can now copy messages directly from the chat and import decks from any message that contains a valid deck code automatically. Additionally, the context menu now only shows currently available actions instead of every possible action at all times.  Major changes have been made to the global effects system. More than 5 global effects are now shown at the top-left of the match window, with temporary effects, like Shrine of War, taking precedence over permanent effects, like Wheel of Gifts. Players should now be able to see all, or nearly all, global effects currently active in the game.  Twilight Transformation now counts as playing a card for the sake of achievements, meaning it can no longer be used to bypass achievement unit or card restrictions. Does not affect Not Even My Final Form.
New Cards
Sleet Storm  - 60p T3 Frost  
You will find the upgrades for this card on the map Defending Hope.
Two issues plague Frost in the higher tiers of PvE. The first is that the faction's only source of area CC is freeze. Given that a unit or building can only be frozen once, freeze application cards overlap in non-productive ways. The second issue is that while one orb of other factions gives the player powerful tools, the same is not true of one Frost orb. Most good Frost cards are locked behind 2 Frost orbs. We therefore wanted to address both issues at once by releasing a new Frost CC which was fully splashable. We made it an area Gravity Surge effect to synergize with Construct and to give other deck archetypes that lack anti-air easy access to it. For more information, check out the April 2023 Community Update.

Map & NPC Changes

[ NPC Balance Changes ]
 Lost Reaver:
1. Reclassify Lost Reaver as a melee-unit instead of a ranged-unit.
Players are likely familiar with the fact that a Lost Reaver will spawn its Lost Crawlers and then stand off to the side while it and its allies are slaughtered. This has now been fixed. Lost Reaver will use its ability and move towards and engage enemies in melee combat. This should constitute a slight buff to the unit's strength as an enemy.
 Lost Wanderer (shield variant):
1. Ice Shield duration: Infinite ➜ 20 seconds
2. Targets: All available targets in a 20m radius ➜ 5 closest units in a 20m radius
3. New passive effect: The duration of friendly Ice Shields is extended indefinitely within a 20m radius around Lost Wanderer.
These changes aim to make the unit more fair through changing Lost Wanderer's Ice Shields to only be conditionally permanent and to have an upper limit on the number of allies that can be shielded at a time. This should enable more counter play on the player's end, as a player can now focus on Lost Wanderers to give the Ice Shields the possibility of wearing off.
 Twilight Evil Eye:
1. Remove passive Pain Link damage reflection ability
Twilight Evil Eye possessed the same Pain Link ability as the player version of Wrathgazer. Pain Link is only supposed to work on Evil Eye's allies, but there is a common bug with the ability which causes it to frequently enemies as well. This would lead to situations where a player would kill their own units by killing an Evil Eye, an issue which disproportionally affected melee unit compositions due to Pain Link's small radius. While this therefore constitutes a buff to players in niche situations, the removal of Pain Link will also make late game Twilight camps more durable by no longer distributing additional damage to Evil Eye's allies.
 Twilight Leech (Siege of Hope Mini-boss):
1. Enemies affected by the unit's teleport ability now have a 10-second immunity to further teleports to prevent infinite teleport ping-ponging of units around camps.
 Twilight Minions:
1. New passive ability: Increase damage of Twilight Minions by +20% for each friendly Twilight Minion nearby.
While Twilight Minions currently claim they deal more damage based on nearby allies, this is not actually true. We are therefore adding such an ability which scales based only on other nearby friendly Twilight Minions. The current numbers and effect are relatively small as we want to ensure we do not potentially over buff the unit in early campaign scenarios.
 Twilight Willsapper:
1. Rework Willsapper's auto-cast paralyze substantially.
   A. Every 4 seconds, up to 2 hostile units within a 40m radius will be paralyzed for 11 seconds upon inhaling it. After the effect wears off, targets are immune against Paralyze for a short time.
   B. Recast timer: 4 seconds
   C. Targets: Closest 2 hostile units not currently paralyzed or immune.
   D. Duration: 11 seconds
   E. Range: 40m
   F. Immunity: 5 seconds
Up to 6 units can now be paralyzed by Willzapper at once, each for 11 seconds. They then have a very short (5 second) immunity period. The effect targets the closest non-paralyzed hostile units because otherwise it would permanently target the 2 closest units and be ineffective. Willsapper should no longer paralyze enemies after its death, and enemies will now have a short window to respond before being re-paralyzed. This is in contrast to the previous implementation, which allowed Willsapper to permanently paralyze up to 5 enemy units at once. We hope these changes will make this iconic enemy building more fair while still providing a substantial challenge when facing the Twilight faction.
 The Red King (Empire Boss):
1. Now casts an Amok ability periodically, causing enemies to attack each other in a large radius around him.
 Bandit Lord (rPvE Boss):
1. Change Name: Bandit Lord ➜ Banzai Lord
2. Add boss immunity
3. Life points: 7000 ➜ 20000
4. New ability, "Bird Calling":
   A. Spawns Banzai Birds, identical to U3 player tainted affinity.
   B. Casts every 10 seconds
5. Add “Flesh Feast” ability from Overlord to description
It is well known that Bandits are the easiest enemies in rPvE by a good margin. One contributing factor to this is that the Bandit Lord enemy is counted as a boss when generating rPvE matches, despite being no more than a slightly beefier and reskinned Overlord. We have decided to change this mini-boss into a real boss, akin to the player and campaign versions of Banzai Lord. This boss will both regenerate life points based on nearby corpses and spawn powerful Banzai Birds to destroy the armies of players. We hope players enjoy this first step towards making Bandits a more fearsome and interesting faction to fight in rPvE. 
 Lost Crawler (Lost Souls rPvE)
1. The non-shielding variants of Lost Wanderer have been replaced by Lost Crawlers in the Lost Souls preset in random PvE.
These are M-sized units that explode on death, which many players have seen before in our Halloween event map Spooky Encounters. This should present a slight increase in the difficulty of early game Lost Souls compared to similar situations prior to the patch. 

[ Systematic Changes ]
Spring Forge has been added to the game. Available via an achievement to win several featured community maps. Random PvE factions have had their probabilities redistributed to account for the addition of Nature rPvE [ General Fixes]
Removed a broken variant of Portal Nexus from the map editor. Battlegrounds: Fixed a typo in the lobby setup screen in English. The Treasure Fleet: Improved localization of the goals to be more consistent: Properly translate "first" to "erste" rather than "nächste" in German. Always lowercase "chariot" in French. Always end goals with a period in Russian. The Guns of Lyr: Fixed a typo in the goal (F) description to find and slay all remaining enemies in English. Slave Master / Mo: Capitalized the gameplay term "Health" for usage in the goal "Mo's Health" for consistency.
[ Campaign Map Changes ]
 Behind Enemy Lines:
1. Auto-destroy top left wall if 50% of barrier modules are already destroyed.
2. Added a Flightblocking / Vision Block to the top left base to prevent the Twilight Dragon from aggroing onto units at the player's T2/T3 location.
3. Line of Sight improvements along the bottom middle Twilight Disciple path.
Blight:
1. Fixed a line of sight issue at the top right starting position, which prevented ranged units from attacking enemies without closing to almost melee range.
2. Added two new bridges connecting the left and right sections of the map on both the top and the bottom.
3. Updated minimap to reflect changes and to be more accurate in general.

 
 Convoy:
1. Command Walker spawn frequency (delay between the spawns of two Walkers) on expert difficulty: 120 seconds ➜ 180 seconds
2. Amii Spell Device effects:
   A. "Area Freeze" (Coldsnap):
      - Maximum number of targets: 7 ➜ 12
      - Fixed description to display correct info, improved the spell preview, and displayed maximum spell range while selecting target area.
   B. "Healing Radiance" (Ray of Light) maximum healing: 3600 ➜ 4400 life points
   C. "Meteor Shower" (Inferno)
      - Scatter radius of meteor impact area: 20 ➜ 15m radius
      - Fixed description to display correct info, improved the spell preview, and displayed maximum spell range while selecting target area.
Convoy on expert difficulty has an 18% successful completion rate, the lowest of any campaign map in the game by far. Part of this is the map's seemingly infinite scaling potential, where attack waves progressively get harder and harder, even very late into the game. Part of this is the unique mechanics of the map, which often confuse players. And part of this is that success or failure on this map, when not cheesing it with Rifle Cultists, Voodoo Shack, or Enlightenment, is RNG. A player can do identical actions from one game to the next, with one playthrough succeeding and the next failing. It all depends on how many units the Command Walker gets attacked by on its way north and how many of these units it fails to kill due to poor target selection. In several test runs, we found that the number of units which congregate to attack the Command Walker, while it itself is attacking the Power Shrine, can range from 7 to 13 without any player intervention. Enemy groups at the lower end of the range are beatable using only the map's mechanics, while enemy groups at the upper end of the range more can kill the Walker, which often led to failure even when the players executed perfectly.
Winning or losing a map due to the target selection of an AI controlled unit is not acceptable. If two players execute well, they should not lose because the map's core mechanic is poorly designed and poorly balanced. To fix this issue, we are increasing the time between Command Walker spawns by 30 seconds. This will increase the total available time for players to prepare by approximately a minute without effecting other portions of the map. We are also strongly buffing the spell effects available to the player when they capture nodes and gather Stonekin spell charges. The Coldsnap effect has had its target count increased to 12, allowing it to freeze all enemies around the Walker in the vast majority of cases, even if the Command Walker has the worst possible target selection. The Ray of Light effect has been buffed by 22%, while the Inferno effect's tightened scatter radius will allow the player to pick off priority targets with increased reliability. Overall, the goal is that a team which has captured and successfully defended 2 nodes, while also having gathered 20 Stonekin charges by the time the 3rd Walker reaches the Power Shrine, should be able to win the Command Walker mini-game with 100% reliability as long as they use the Amii Spell Device somewhat competently. 
 Nightmare Shard:
1. Replace the Twilight Deathglider spawned at the "Shadow Camp" on expert difficulty with Twilight Mindbenders.
Most veteran players approach this map by immediately rushing the spawn buildings of the Shadow Camps on both sides with either Nomad + Eruption or Mana Wings. They do this because it prevents the spawn of several camp defenders, the most notable of which is the Twilight Deathglider. Twilight Deathgliders have an AoE knockback of S and M-units. Additionally, the pathway into the Shadow Camp is incredibly narrow, meaning that a single Twilight Deathglider can, and often does, permanently CC an infinite amount of player units on this map. By changing this singular unit, we allow players to play the map in the normal way without facing an enemy that single-handedly counters every non-Fire faction at T1. At the same time, we do nothing to change the map for veterans and speedrunners.
Nightmare's End:
1. Decreased the pond size at the starting location on the left side of the map (see minimap image), allowing for enough space to build a second tower defending the southern wall.
2. Decreased blocking on the right side of the map (see minimap image).
3. Updated Minimap to reflect changes and to be more accurate in general.

 Sunbridge:
1. Fixed several terrain and water visual issues.
2. Moved the single Power Well on the right side down a bit.
3. Moved the 3 Power Wells and Monument on the right side down a bit.
4. Slightly improved blocking to allow better spawning of units at wells near terrain.
Minor quality of life improvements. The changes to the Wells and Monument on the right side of the map should hopefully prevent the player from aggroing the next camp simply by claiming the Wells and Monument. 

DESCRIPTION: We were playing Empire, and just after we got control over Rogan, the User that had control over Rogan, left - killing Rogan and ending the Game with a "Rogan died"
REPRODUCIBILITY: - not tried yet
SCREENSHOT/VIDEO: Replay attached
LOG: _log_proxy_latest.log
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: I don't know if that even is enough of a Bug to be fixed, but it would be great if the game could continue running with someone else having control over Rogan
_log_proxy_latest.log 2023-02-04_11-48-21_Empire_diff1_s21011_bergerb_Szum_Spinxios_TribalDragon_time_0_14_36.4_v260.pmv

Twelve Players Maps 2/2
Passage to Darkness
Ascension
 
Ascension Expert 1.pmv Ascension Expert 2.pmv Ascension Expert 3.pmv
Passage to Darkness Expert.pmv

Four Players Maps 3.95/8
Bad Harvest - work in progress
King of the Giants
Titans
Blight
Empire
The Dwarven Riddle - Reference only

Expect little to no progress until February.
Blight Fr3.pmv Blight FN1.pmv Titans Expert.pmv Blight Fr1.pmv Empire Expert.pmv Titans Expert Frost 4.pmv
Blight S2.pmv King of the Giants Expert.pmv King of the Giants Expert Perfect.pmv Blight S4.pmv
Bad Harvest Expert Frost.pmv

Two players maps 7/7
Crusade
Sunbridge
Nightmare Shard
Nightmare's End
Slave Master
Convoy
The Insane God
 
Sunbridge Expert.pmv The Insane God Expert.pmv Convoy Expert.pmv Crusade Expert.pmv Nightmare Shard Expert.pmv Nightmare's End Expert.pmv Slave Master Expert.pmv Nightmare Shard Expert Mana Wing.pmv Nightmares End Expert 25.pmv

Fellow Skylords and Cute Beings,
As second person to ever complete “Among the Old Gods” achievement in Battleforge, I started using title “The Old God of Battleships”. As we learn from King of the World himself, best way of starting a cult is being friendly and helpful. Therefore I wish you will enjoy this read, aimed at providing you with both comprehensive and powerful knowledge.

 
Introduction

The thread is aimed at players who struggle with Among the Old Gods. In order to complete the achievement, you have to win all campaign missions on expert difficulty. You will be rewarded generously in 8 General Boosters. Many maps have different exploits and tricks that may make the map trivial – however, as they feel unfair, require particular cards and may be removed by developers, they are not covered here.
Deck choice usually is irrelevant when it comes to expert difficulty. The important aspect is to specialise your deck for each map, and prepare it for particular threats you may encounter. On my first playthrough I have completed the campaign with  Pure Frost deck, as it is my favourite faction. It was before first balance patch, so back then all factions were weaker and had lower amount of viable cards. Pure Fire still may struggle with the achievement, nonetheless, overall you should be able to finish the campaign with your favourite PvE faction. There is no need to sacrifice fun for playing meta, as there is no “the only correct way” – the only limits are in your head.
 
Approach is important
Expert is not meant to be easy.
Try, lose, improve.
This is how humans become better – by making mistakes and learning from them. Thanks to the guide, you can learn on my mistakes and significantly decrease amount of necessary tries to complete the achievement. Pay attention to which enemies you will face, what is their position, weak points and how to exploit the situation. Check map topography to quickly reach Power Wells and intercept enemy attacks. Learn attack timings and understand triggers. [1] Be prepared and do not leave anything to a chance. You will come across problems – enemy attack too strong to deal with, restricted access to cards or monuments, mechanics that doesn’t work like you expected.
 
[1]. Trigger is a condition that starts a particular event. For example in Behind Enemy Lines if you destroy any of spawners that are nearby your Tier 2 locations, enemy waves will become significantly stronger and use specialised units. Keeping spawners alive allows you to explore the map and prepare defence in a more relieved way.
 
Explore. Adapt. Overcome.
There are many cards in Battleforge that are neglected and overlooked, as they are not as flexible as the most popular choices. If someone told me I would be using Icefang Raptor to complete Ocean, or pre-rework Sunken Temple to win Soultree with Pure Nature, I would laugh, as those cards seemed worthless to me. I was wrong, niche cards are awesome in niche situations. When you will start looking for solutions, you will notice those little gems in your collection.
If you are looking for something cheap and solid, you may want to check @Weak1ings ‘s deck, as he was the first person to complete Among the Old Gods, he used an affordable flexible meta deck.
 
Weak1ings' deck:
 
Make sure to use what you already have to forge your path to victory, possibly in an unique way. Amii Monument may make many missions easier – however, it is easy to get lazy because of it, and majority of maps are difficult due to situations that happen before you reach Tier 3.  
 
Progress Track

 
Accessing Replays
 
Maps are in separate posts
1 player maps are in this post. 2 player maps are in post 2 posts below. 4 player maps are in post 6 posts below. 12 player maps are in post 8 posts below.  
One Player Maps 9/9
 
Encounters with Twilight

 
Siege of Hope

 
Defending Hope


The Soultree

 
The Treasure Fleet


Mo

Ocean
Oracle
Behind Enemy Lines
I will try to improve style and review errors at some point, and also introduce more maps.
List of many guides across the forum by @Eirias.
Larger base of Youtube videos by @MephistoRoss.
Here only replays for 1 player maps are available. Check other posts to find 2, 4 and 12 player maps.
Siege of Hope Expert.pmv Behind Enemy Lines Expert.pmv Defending Hope Expert.pmv Ocean Expert.pmv Oracle Expert.pmvThe Treasure Fleet Expert.pmv Soultree Speedrun.pmv Mo Expert.pmv Behind Enemy Lines Expert Shadow.pmv Defending Hope Expert Shadow.pmv The Treasure Fleet Expert Metagross.pmv
 
 
 
 
 
 

Alright, here is mine

Hey,
 
I am currently trying to find out how Dwarven Riddle exactly works.
What I got so far:
There are different types of groups. These groups dont seem to spawn at the same locations and also not with the same amounts:
 
My tries:
 
 
What I am wondering:
Why I sometimes get more spawns than other times?
And why they sometimes attack my orb and sometimes not?
 
bergerb

Alright, here is mine

I'm not saying their doing a bad job, i support them and their efforts 100%, but they should not promise a a precise week when the game will be released, its stupid. They should have just said the end of the month or start of next month, instead of rushing and losing sleep like insane hawk has admitted because losing sleep not only effects the devs health, but also prolongs the games release