Dutchy

From my point of view. In this game, you could call yourself Elite without a problem. When I joined, I found especially those at the top very welcoming, helpful and more then willing to share their time and knowledge.
From what I observed, those guys who are "kicking noobs" are not the same then the top-players.

Those updates are the best posts! 

Blight Nature Solo
Since my efforts to do Guns of Lyr Nature Solo have failed (yet), time to do something else. Of course the usual hide-and-get-orb-back, but what I think is somewhat different from the usual approach is that I dont recapture the first base - cause thats so messy anyway. If you can take the T3 position with T1, you can do T4 with T2, right? And the the 5th orb comes really handy if you approach things that way.
One small detail thats not in the replay: Its not mandatory to delay the incoming wave spawn(s), if you kill them, the timing with the next wave is kinda unfortunate with recapturing your orb the 2nd time, but with so many windweavers its no problem to kill the wave and still reclaim the orb in time. I dont like spawn trapping so I make sure the strategy is valid even without, especially if you might lose the map or would have to restart if the trap fails.
If you try to reproduce this another note: the attack at the T4 position can get very, very messy. Its alright if you lose most of your units, as long as you can take the orb and spawn Swamp Drakes, then defending incoming waves from both sides with them becomes a priority for a while. You might lose some time, but as long as you get the orb you are doing it right. If the attack completly fails, also no problem to recover and retry, all you lose is time, never the whole map.

Blight Solo Pure Nature.pmv

ah yes, just as rewarding an experience as i remember, with plenty of opportunity to combine those tainted cards into decks, Great Work guys

hey guys, new player Here, and a Big Big Big Time fan, (glad to be back, Here, in The World):, reminds Me of The Good Old Days
 
i loved everything about This Game, from the twilight cards, to the re-used textures of fire/ice enemies, and even, yes, The MAP!!!!, It was so good and Fun, and, worth defending, to take the Time of Day, to beat all Of It
 
thanks for reviving such a long forgotten, and, dead, Game, i'll have to think hard what else inspired Me to play, in the meantime though, i'll have to try to not pick up a bad T4 card, and handicapp My Deck

Hi, I have played this game since it's inception.   I love it and think it was revolutionary.   I think all you guys have done is awesome and I and others can't thank you enough.  I think all the update changes are pretty good.   My concerns: (and these are only concerns).   1.  I think you as a development team need to be very careful changing current maps.  Old add age: if it ain't broke don't fix it.  The problem with many new games on the market is that many players complain and said games get Nerfed, just because they can't win it.  Balance changes are obviously good for any game as long and they are not popularity based.    2. New cards or even new factions will keep making the game fresh.  I believe, and this is only my belief.......that this is the reason many leave the game because after you have done everything there is not much of a challenge.  So new cards and factions will give new life to the game.  I could never understand with the cards that they had:  Fire, nature, Frost, and shadow, why they never added Water?  lol  It would seem to be a logical progression.   3. The sooner we can get a fully functional new PvE map or Maps/campaign, the faster we will also get a return of, (shall we say.....less interested older players).   This is what was originally promised by EA, and of course it never came.  I believe you are working on these things, so this is not criticism.....but, these are my ideas as to how we can get a thriving player base.   4.  If there is any possibility of writing a code to allow players/friends to create a clan,  (perhaps like World of Warships, with letters in front of a players name), this would be a simple way of having friends quickly join a clan and by allowing that clan to have it's own tournaments as you are already trying to implement, this would also increase play ability!.   
I realize that some of these ideas if not all of these ideas you have thought about and may be trying implement.  As I said these are only my ideas and suggestions.  But I believe they would greatly increase the return of players and game play.    
Thanks for all you do.  Cheers!   😄

A great read as always!

The SR Team recently discussed changes to PvE campaign maps. The goal of these changes would be to maintain the identity of the map as closely as possible while improving aspects such as major exploits, unused sections of maps, and problem areas where players feel forced to "break" the map to play it. It is important to note that all of these changes are proposals, none of them are guaranteed to be implemented. We do not want to make changes to something as fundamental as campaign maps without input from the community about what they think and what they want to see or not see change-wise. 
Please discuss what you think of the proposed changes and how you would modify the proposes yourself.
You can find all of the proposed changes in the attached PDF:
Proposed Upcoming PvE Map Changes.pdf
There are individual threads to discuss each map.
Ascension
Bad Harvest
Blight
Convoy
Crusade
Defending Hope
Empire
Encounters with Twilight
King of the Giants
Nightmare Shard
Nightmare's End
Ocean
Oracle
Passage to Darkness
Siege of Hope
Slavemaster
Sunbridge
The Dwarven Riddle
The Guns of Lyr
The Insane God
The Soultree
The Treasure Fleet
Titans

Greetings Skylords!

It's been two weeks already since our last community update so it's time to bring you up to speed with everything going on in Skylords Reborn!

Share your feedback, get a booster!
You are currently reading the 10th Community Update! We hope you find these updates interesting, whether you are an active player or someone who wants to keep an eye on the project.
Time for some reflection and feedback. Last month we asked for your feedback regarding the Official PvE contests, but this time we want to know your opinion about Skylords Reborn in general. What do you like? What could be better? We want to keep improving the game and growing our playerbase, and your feedback is crucial for us. 
Please give us your feedback here. As a thank you there will be a booster for everyone who fills in the survey. Your feedback will be anonymous.
 

Next Patch Soontm
Our next patch is finally nearing completion! We expect the full patch to hit the test server at the end of this weekend. Once we are sure no bugs are within these changes, we plan to patch to live as soon as possible. There are truly a ton of changes in this patch, resulting in the patch notes already being 12 pages long, excluding bug and description changes! 
We will post the patch notes on our Patreon first, but of course we will share the full notes with everyone when the patch goes live on our main servers. And for those who are wondering; yes, Ravenheart will finally get its rework this patch. 
 
A discussion of upcoming map changes
The Skylords Reborn team recently discussed changes to PvE campaign maps. The goal of these changes would be to maintain the identity of the map as closely as possible while improving aspects such as major exploits, unused sections of maps, and problem areas where players feel forced to "break" the map to play it. 
It is important to note that all of these changes are proposals, none of them are guaranteed to be implemented! We do not want to make changes to something as fundamental as campaign maps without input from the community and what they want to see or not see change-wise. 
Please discuss what you think of the proposed changes and share your ideas in this topic or the discord. 
You can find all of the proposed changes in the attached PDF. 
Proposed Upcoming PvE Map Changes.pdf

PvP Improvements in development

We are also looking at ways to make it easier to find matches in PvP. One of the low-hanging fruits here is better rewards. Currently, the reward system is heavily favoring playing PvE over PvP. The low number of players currently playing PvP also isn't helping with completing Daily PvP Quests, and can cause for a lot of idle time for players. To counter this and reward players for playing PvP, we are currently looking into options like draining the BFP-reserve while being in the ranked queue.
Another nice feature we are working on are PvP Happy Hours. During specific time periods, players will receive additional rewards playing PvP. We notice the current PvP is quite scattered, with a lot of players wanting to play, but going offline again when they cant find opponents. We hope that by clustering those players together during certain time frames, we can encourage the PvP scene. As mentioned in a previous Community Update, it will soon also be possible to still see sparring lobbies while being in the ranked queue, without having to cancel your matchmaking. We also expect the next balance patch to cause a breath of fresh air.
Currently we are planning to offer Happy Hours for both 1vs1 and 2vs2. During Happy Hours, there will be an in-game announcement and the icon on the world map will indicate Happy Hours are active. When we have fleshed out our ideas a bit more, we will announce more details. 


 
Tournaments & Events
• Finished: Community Tournament: Toggy's Tome Tournament - August 22th
Last weekend Toggy hosted another Tome tournament, meaning players had to build a deck from a selection of random cards and play PvP matches with them. You can rewatch the stream here in case you missed it. 

• Host your own event / tournament
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our Event Organizer Hiko to have your event prizes sponsored by us. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you. 
 
New Team Members / Open Positions
We have a new Map Tester! We are very happy to welcome Rawne!
At the same time we are sad to see our balance developer Razeroc go. We want to thank him again for all the hard work he put into the project, and we hope to still see you in the forge from time to time!

We could definitely need some more help with the Skylords Reborn project however.
Below are three roles highlighted, but you can find more information, desired traits and all our open positions here. 
If you are unsure if you qualify, please reach out and have a talk!
 
Open Position - Balance Developer
As a balance developer you are responsible to implement design changes to in-game cards using our internal balancing tool. In other words, you are responsible to implement new cards and changes to existing cards. These implementation requests can come from balance updates and content patches from our Faction Designers but also from the official Skylords Reborn map making team (for example, new bosses for a new map). An integral part of this role is learning our internal balancing tool, as that is the tool that allows us to perform all these changes. You are by no means required to have any programming experience.

Open Position - Map Artist
As a map artist you are responsible to polish the aesthetics of a map. This includes texture the map, add decorations and add different effects and sounds. In other words, responsible for making the map look and feel good.

Open Position - Client Developer
As a game client developer you are responsible to maintain and develop the game client. This mostly includes add new pre-game features (content outside of matches, so no game mechanics) through .pak files used by the game. You will be responsible to create and design in-game interfaces for new features, add networking support for new features that require it, solve bugs etc. using LUA, XML and little bit of Rust. BattleForge uses LUA and XML in their .pak files which are loaded by the client. Communication with the server happens through a proxy written in Rust.
 

In Conclusion
Thanks for reading! 
This marks the 10th Community Update already. Is there anything you wish us to cover in upcoming community updates? How do you feel about the structure of the updates? As always, we are open to feedback so please let us know!
Here is a scratch code you can redeem in-game for 100bfp: COMM-UNIT-YNEW-S010
The code is valid till September 11th. Please note you can also get a booster by filling in our survey. 
Archive
Community Update #7
Community Update #8
Community Update #9
 

Amazing to see another tome tournament.
Unfortunately I cannot make it today again. Keep it up and have fun 😊!

For those unaware:
How can I join the test server?
To join the test server you simply need to launch LauncherTest.exe located in your BattleForge installation folder. It is important you run the updater first, so you download the latest test server files. In the future we plan to make it easier to join the test server. 

So, is it an open tournament this time?
Sadly, I won't be able to make it either way. Hopefully next time 😉

Lovely way to spend my Sunday, im game! 

HYPE HYPE HYPE 😄

Hello Skyladies and Skylords,
the new PvP patch is coming closer and in the Skylords Open many battles were fought. It is time for a little fun... with a tome tournament! This means: the tournament decks will be built out of the content of a few (5-10) Boosterpacks!
 
Format?
The tournament will be played as a 1on1 best of 3 double elimination tournament, grand finals will be best of 5, no reset. The grand finalist coming from the winnerbracket will start with  a win (1-0) already. Oh and it will be tome. And we play on the Testserver.
 
When?
On 22.08.21 starting on 1pm CET (Berlin time), the stream will start about 30 minutes in advance.
 
Prize Pool! (subject to change)
1st place  - 3 Booster packs
2nd place - 2 Booster packs
3rd place - 1 Booster pack
 
Organisation?
The tournament will be organized in challonge. If you want to participate contact me via Discord respond in this thread. I will send you a list of your cardpool ~1h before the tournament starts (I will not send you actual 8 boosters) . Also we will play on the Testserver.
 
Rules! (read this)
-Be online in Discord or the forum ~1h before the tournament starts to receive your cardpool. If I cannot find you you cannot participate.
-Disconnection during a game results in a default loss. If both sides agree it is possible to have a remake.
-Not showing up to your match after 15 minutes results in a default loss. The plan is to play a round of matches every ~30 mins.
-After your match, go to Challonge and insert the result. That is done by clicking on your match and selecting the winner/stats . The brackets will be updated automatically.
-The Map Pool is: 1st round: Haladur, 2nd round: Simai, 3rd: Elyon, 4th: Lajesh, 5th: Uro and 6th: Yrmia (same pool as in ranked duel). The first match of the round will be played on the fixed map, then it is losers choice.  The winning player (who won the previous match in this bo3) also has to lock in his deck first.
-The brackets for the tournament will be shuffled before the tournament starts.
-Use your Battleforge name for the tournament. If your Challonge account differs from your Battleforge account name use the "Sign up with an alternate name" feature or change your name for the tournament in the settings. Finding your opponent will be a LOT easier this way.
 
List of participants (if oyu want to join contact me via Discord or Forum):
1. Majora
2. Afro
3. Crossbow_andy
4. dutchydutchy
5. Volin
6. FatedToFail
7. Killbuster
8. Cocodracu
 
 
Best regards,
Toggy

Foreword
Content:
Cost Tier progression Alternative cards to use Upgrade priorities Replays My other Guides Reading time is maybe 15 to 20 minutes.
For some people the first thing they ask in the game is "can sb show me a good beginner deck?"
Unfortunately some of the answers they receive won't consider the cost. Both when it comes to the cards themselves but also for the upgrades, which cost gold.
This deck here is meant as a baseline to get going. Present some various, different concepts to give pointers and grant access to gold flow. But Skylords is all about experimenting! Don't like something? Change it!
Want to give something a try? Just slot it in!
Pulled an interesting card that you want to see in action? Build a deck around it, make it work!
Struggle with a specific map? Try different cards, there might be more suitable ones for different situations.
Create something else entirely from the ground up? The card pool is your oyster.
With that being said my goals here are:
Use almost exclusively Common cards to keep upgrading costs to a minimum Use cheap cards Introduce cards (in the deck itself or as alternatives) that have at least some interesting synergies and are more involved Be forgiving Be flexible, so many cards can be changed Be rPvE 9 ready right out of the box, so it also packs a punch Cost
The total to put this deck together is much less than 300 BFP! That means you can literally have this whole deck up and running within 45 minutes after first starting the game. You get 150 from your two dailies. 200 from your daily boost and you are set already. If you want a bit more buy your discounted daily booster for 350, resell it to someone. Netting you a total of at least 420 BFP, which you can use to buy everything you need and more.
I played a few rounds of rPvE 9 without any upgrades myself. I'd advise you to stick to solo until you got a good feeling for the deck. Play one round of 6 or 7 at first. Then try 8, then 9.
This deck contains almost exclusively super cheap Commons or ones that are even included as starter cards. You can also ask around in trade, people might be willing to sell in bulk for even less than in the AH.

Windweavers 20 (starter card) Burrower 30 Razorshard G 20 Swamp Drake 20 (starter card)  Lost Horror G 20 Grimvine 80  Giant Wyrm 20 (starter card)  Primal Defender 10 (starter card)  Fountain of Rebirth 40  Breeding Grounds 15 (starter card)  Healing Gardens 30  Necroblaster G 10 (starter card)  Surge of Light 20 (starter card)  Curse of Oink 25 (starter card)  Stone Shell G 20  Equilibrium G 15  Regrowth 15 (starter card)  Unholy Hero 10 (starter card)  Rifle Cultists 10 (starter card)  Offering G 10 (starter card) So minus starter cards it totals roughly 255 BFP. Even less if you take the time to ask people in trade chat. A bit more if you buy during price spikes in the AH.
Alternatives to Grimvine (note the comments under "Alternative cards to use"):
Gemeye P or G - 50 AH (Auction House) prices seem to be pretty consistent, if big outliers appear they usually settle again after a few days. You could get away without using Grimvine or Gemeye, slightly reducing the total cost of the deck, but a T4 with only Lost Horror G and Giant Wyrm lacks a beefy frontline. You could also spam Emberstrike and Boom Brothers, as presented as alternatives below.
You will notice my use of singular letters next to card names, which are referring to the cards affinity. G = Green, P = Purple, B = Blue, R = Red. Cards with affinities have two different versions and they vary in effect, depending on their affinity. Affinities are represented by a small dot on the card in their respective color. They have nothing to do with what Orbs you need to play that card though.
Tier progression
Tier 1 - Nature
Build two Fountains of Rebirth so you can have their buff permanently running. They even affect allies, which is a massive boon for all other factions that usually have no or little sustain on T1. In the long run, it will also reduce how often you have to use Surge of Light. What is more, it will make you accustomed to managing timed, global buffs. A mechanic that many decks utilize (Shrine of War being the most prominent example). To make things easier, assign the two fountains to one group each as a shortcut, just as you do with your units.
Spam WWs (Windweavers). Because of their ability they can hit two targets at once. Which means, as long as there is more than one target, their effective DP20 (Damage Per 20 Seconds, which is the average damage value that is printed on cards) is actually 960. As soon as a squad of WWs goes down to about 50% HP, pull them behind other squads. Enemies will switch to attacking one of the closer squads, at which point you can reengage with the wounded WWs. This distribution of damage will make the Fountains more effective and also make it more likely you don't overheal with Surge.
If you want a tower at T1, the Primal Defender is your building. Two of them can be a big help to defend your initial base on solo rPvE 9 so you can go on the offensive with your WWs.
Tier 2 - Nature -> Frost
Razorshard G is the backbone of this T2. The main reason for this is its healing aura, which does not require card upgrades to be powerful. Spawn two of them so they can heal one another. It might feel a bit clunky to play at first but its worth it. You will get accustomed to active abilities, positioning and effective use of units which have immobility. Also, while WWs have no preferred target (see the star next to their damage value), Razorshard G will deal 1.5x damage against S size enemies (if the target has an S next to their life value). So have your Razorshard focus on those targets to take them off the field earlier. Very important to note though, that this damage bonus only applies to their melee attacks. Their Bombing Raid ability does not benefit.
Keep using your Fountains and you will have very nice passive healing.
Burrowers are meant to do one thing only: Charge at the enemy (spawn) buildings and destroy them asap. Support them with Curse of Oink and heals. Curse of Oink is temporarily CC (crowd control, so hindering enemy units in some form). Careful though, if they take damage, the spell ends much sooner.
Keep using Surge of Light if needed.
Breeding Grounds is an exceptionally powerful building that reduces the power cost of all own and allied units spawned within its AoE (area of effect). You still need to have the default amount of energy available though, you simply spend less on spawn. This is a building that you can keep using for your T3 and your T4 units. However, do remember that the building itself costs 70 energy. So just to break even on the investment you have to then spawn units for a total of just about 470 energy next to it! This gets more generous once Breeding Grounds are upgraded.
Tier 3 - Nature -> Frost -> Shadow
If you still have WWs at this point, kill them.
Lost Horror G is the main star here. Just like WWs he has no damage bonus against any particular unit size. But he shoots THREE attacks at once. This means that his damage potential is 5610, which is comparable to a T4 unit, Absolutely devastating as long as there are at least three targets to aim at.
Unfortunately, against big single targets Lost Horror G doesn't pack a good punch. Swamp Drake does though! Not only is it very mobile, being airborne, but it has an XL damage bonus, which are usually the tankiest foes. Their ability is CC like Curse of Oink, disabling enemy units for some time but it ends sooner if they take damage.
Stone Shell G is a damage reduction that becomes more effective if more allied units are within its AoE. In case of emergency, use Equilibrium G for a heal that becomes more potent, the more allied max HP is within its AoE.
You only need one Lost Horror G card to start! Use Offering G on one of your Swamp Drakes. This kills it but returns 90% of its energy cost to void and refreshes one charge for all T3 cards in your deck.
After you have your T3 army going build two Healing Gardens somewhere safe. Their active effect will increase any healing effects on your units by 85%, making them much more efficient. It's not the most powerful regeneration at this point because your units will start having much more HP but you can even continue using your Fountains together with Gardens. It's not much passive healing but it's something. Otherwise you can destroy your Fountains at this point or on T4.
The Necroblaster G is an exceedingly powerful tower. But it requires HP gathered from any corpses to fire its shot. If you use them, build maybe two of them together and either protect them until they have a bit of HP stored or kill your own units near them if necessary. Affinity doesn't matter that much, but feel free to experiment with it.
Tier 4 - Nature -> Frost -> Shadow -> any
If you still have any T2 units at this point, kill them. Lost Horror G can stay because its AoE damage is phenomenal. Swamp Drakes will probably naturally start dying in battle.
Since not a single card in the deck requires two identical Orbs, it doesn't really matter what you build as your last one. I'd go with Nature, because should you somehow lose your one Nature Orb, it's going to be far more devastating than losing the Shadow or Frost one. But you can also change cards in the deck so that your last orb has to be something specific.
Giant Wyrm is a go-to powerhouse. It's just a very mobile, huge ball of stats.
Grimvine is a tanky frontliner that destroys buildings and soaks damage. The ability is just alright but luckily also very cheap. It also serves as ground presence, which is important to spawn more units or use spells that are not Arcane (which can be used anywhere).
When you hit your unit cap of 120 you can start replacing any remaining Lost Horrors G with T4 units. This becomes even better once your Giant Wyrms are upgraded a bit.
You can continue using Equilibrium G here while on the move. But in more stationary battles Regrowth is superior. Make sure that you currently have the effect from Healing Gardens running when you cast a healing spell. The increase in effectiveness is huge. Unholy Hero makes the buffed unit really deadly. But beware of the drawback. To be safe, use it on a unit, like a Giant Wyrm, that is out of reach for enemies.
Once again, charge upgrades for Grimvine, Giant Wyrm and even Regrowth aren't necessary because you also have Rifle Cultists. If you Offer them, you get one charge for each T4 card back. However this also means that once your big T4 cards are upgraded with sufficient charges, you can take out both Offering G and Rifle Cultists, which frees up two valuable slots in your deck.
But don't think they are just there to recharge your XL T4 units. Their ability is very powerful. Especially once you upgrade them to charge it quicker and use Unholy Hero on them. Use it carefully, since it also damages your own units, and it can severely cripple enemy forces before the fight even begins.
Alternative Cards to use
With each Tier explained, let's look at some alternatives, upgrades or additions. I am not trying to mess with the Orb sequence though as that can require extensive remodelling of the deck.
Rough price chart:
Very cheap - <20
Cheap - <80
Moderate - <150
Expensive - <250
Very expensive - <500
Tier 1 Options
Dryad B - Her aura makes your units (even past T1) sturdier and therefore also makes every heal on them more effective. Expensive.
Shaman - You can replace Fountain of Rebirth with it. Don't get slowed down too much though. Each Shaman healing is equivalent to one WW not dealing damage. Expensive.
Ensnaring Roots/Hurricane - Great with WWs. The former lets you kill melee units before they reach you and the latter knocks around S units for a long time. Cheap to moderate.
Tunnel - Get around the map quickly. Very cheap.
Tier 2 Options
Stormsinger G - Good, mobile ranged unit with strong AA (anti-air). Moderate.
Defenders - Extremely powerful unit once upgraded. 2025 EHP (effective health points) when they hunker down, which makes any healing effect very potent. Notice their ability has two circling arrows. Usually, when you use abilities and spells or units/buildings get destroyed 90% of the invested power will return to your void pool to slowly trickle back into your usable power. However, a switch-ability puts 100% of its power cost into the void pool! So use it liberally. Very cheap.
Stone Tempest - Lots of damage and knockback. Cheap.
Ghostspears - If you want to add some melee prowess. Very cheap.
Crystal Fiend B - Has good healing that also makes affected units take less damage. Very good with Defenders. Moderate.
Aggressors - Support unit that knocks back even L units. Damage is low for their cost so they need something else to actually kill stuff. Especially S squads can sometimes become impervious against Aggressor attacks if they are spread out too much from the knockback. Cheap.
Ray of Light - If you feel like, even with Razorshard G, Surge of Light and Fountain of Rebirth, you need more heal. Very cheap.
Coldsnap - Very powerful CC to disable troublesome foes. Consider that frozen enemies only take 50% damage, so you'll kill them much slower. Be mindful with freezes so you don't mess up your allies' plan. Moderate.
Northern Keep/Cannon Tower - Cannon Tower is a very strong building against ground units. Northern Keep R has an extremely powerful ability that makes friendly S and M units invulnerable in its AoE. Especially with Defenders this is a defensive barrier that can withstand almost anything. Very cheap.
Juice Tanks - If you are uncertain how long a map will take or if you are sure it might drag on a bit. For a small power investment your wells will run dry much, much slower. This will net you a safety net for drawn out maps so you can spend power liberally. Don't build them in rPvE though since the time limit will end the match before Juice Tanks really benefit you. Cheap.
Tier 3 Options
Ashbone Pyro - Destructive unit and potent synergy with heals. Only really gets good after a few upgrades though. Moderate to expensive.
Deepcoil Worm - Good ranged unit and you can combine it with Tunnel. Very expensive.
Silverwind Lancers - Disposable, cheap and mobile fighters. Another unit to Offer if you want to spawn a different T3 unit more frequently. Very cheap.
Revenge - Both an offensive and defensive spell. It even splashes the self-damage from Ashbone Pyro onto enemies! Expensive.
Thunderstorm - Purely offensive spell to make quick work of big packs of weaker enemies. Not necessary when your Lost Horror is nearby but good to clean up a sudden surprise attack. Cheap.
Tier 4 Options
Gemeye P/G - Artillery range and powerful passive abilities, P dealing more damage overall because of the DoT (damage over time) and G paralyzing units, which disables them for a set time, even if you keep attacking them. However, if you use them instead of Grimvine, their long range will make them stay behind your Giant Wyrms, which makes those take the brunt of enemy fire. Not ideal at all, so you should specifically manage them to stay in front and serve as your tanks. The 15% damage reduction from Adamant Skin makes them very resilient. Could even use both affinity variants simultaneously. Cheap.
LSS (Lost Spirit Ship) - Instead of Giant Wyrm or even in addition. Deals damage on the move, hits a lot of targets simultaneously and become a tide of destruction once you have multiple of them. Cheap to moderate.
Boom Brothers/Emberstrike - A more active playstyle as you have a lot of powerful abilities to spam. Boom Brothers annihilate ground presence, units and buildings alike, and their XL bonus damage even applies to their ability. Their knockback keeps everything that survives at bay. Emberstrikes ability can also hit airborne targets and they can be summoned on the fly (they don't suffer temporarily reduced max HP and damage if summoned away from Power Wells/Orbs) but their damage bonus is M, which generally isn't very good on T4. Spamming their abilities can become an issue if you don't have a way to quickly regain void energy. Very cheap.
Bloodhorn - Once upgraded its Stampede ability tears down multiple buildings. Has XL counter. A very powerful card and one of the best T4 alternatives you could go for. Its ability varies: R makes it immune to debuffs and CC, which makes it very reliable. P makes it deal much more damage, which makes it incredibly destructive. Expensive to very expensive.
Earthshaker - Destroys enemy buildings quickly. Expensive.
Maelstrom - Huge AoE and good damage while eventually freezing enemy units. Again, frozen units only take 50% damage. Cheap.
Ice Tornado - High damage. Doesn't need to travel, you can cast it on a single spot for high single-target damage. Moderate.
Noxious Cloud - Slow burn which deals massively high damage overall but has to ramp up. Cheap.
Other upgrades
Quickly recovering your void energy into actually usable energy pool is very powerful as it speeds up your game a lot. To enable this, you can pick from a few good options. They all affect your Orb choices.
Cultist Master + Furnace of Flesh - Spawn crawlers near the Furnace and kill them. Only becomes good once those cards are upgraded. It's fine if you only get your second shadow orb on T4. Expensive.
Shrine of Martyrs - Bit tricky to use. You will need to add some ways to freeze enemies. Moderate.
Shrine of Memory - Makes you regain void energy much faster. No bursts of power regained but it's consistent. Moderate.
Upgrade priorities
Some advice on what to invest in once you start gathering Gold for card upgrades and BFP for more charges:
Vital upgrades AND charges
WWs - Your T1 start needs to pack a punch
Surge of Light - See above
Regrowth - More usage and more energy efficient
Necroblaster G - Higher damage means more opportunity to recharge HP from corpses. Only vital if you find yourself using these a lot
Vital upgrades
Fountain of Rebirth - More expensive to upgrade but you will notice the increase in regen
Breeding Grounds - Even cheaper units
Curse of Oink - More CC and cheaper
Giant Wyrm - Much more damage for this power expensive unit
Primal Defender - If you use them frequently
(Gemeye G/P - More bang for your buck on those as well, if you use them)
Important upgrades
Equilibrium G - Better heal
Burrower - More life is useful since it has to run past enemies
Grimvine - Even tankier
Swamp Drake - Increased HP makes them more forgiving and more CC
Unholy Hero - A risky spell, so it has to be worth it if you use it, right?
Offering G - Cheaper and more frequent use
Decent upgrades
Stone Shell - Cheaper and longer duration
Lost Horror - More life
Razorshard G - More life
Healing Gardens - Even more heal effectiveness
Rifle Cultists - If you find yourself enjoying their ability, upgrade them as soon as you like
Replays
Some replays with this deck on rPvE. To watch them you have to download the file and add it to: C:\Users\<user name>\Documents\BattleForge\replays
None of the cards are upgraded, this is as bare bones as it gets. Difficulty 7 and 8 are very easy and already net a big payout in gold that lets you upgrade a lot of cards. Difficulty 9 can get a bit messy at times but is also consistently doable.
Beginner Deck - Solo rPvE 7.pmv 2200 gold payout.
Very easy with this deck.
Beginner Deck - Solo rPvE 8.pmv 3250 gold payout.
While defending my T2 I was too greedy and spawned one too many WWs. Which lead to me not having enough energy to heal my army and losing 5 squads. Would've probably lost only 2 had I healed instead. Not the cleanest T4 finish either but good enough.
Beginner Deck - Solo rPvE 9 (T2 skip).pmv 4200 gold payout.
Here I skipped T2 because the opportunity to attack T3 presented itself after the entire camp got pulled. I knew the camp was empty now and charged in. Not the most representative replay because of that but it happens. After getting T3 I suicide rushed a base with my remaining WWs just to take out a spawn and ease the pressure. By the way, every time a Swamp Drake just randomly dies, it's because I Offered it to get a charge back for a Lost Horror G. Notice how I destroy the enemy spawn buildings asap, because if another batch of enemies spawns mid fight it just draws things out.
My other Guides
HOW TO: PvE Deckbuilding Guide - If you are unsure how to start building your own decks and what to consider.
CHEAP Pure-Fire Deck - If you are rather interested in a cheap and flexible fire deck.
CHEAP Pure-Shadow Deck - If you are rather interested in a cheap and flexible shadow deck.

Props to the dev team, nice work on the game so far! Cannot wait to see the new cards. 

I'm glad that you think about security aspects in our software. And you're indeed right with what you say. Admin privileges are actually a "No Go" for today's software.
The Updater itself doesn't need any administrative privileges in the system. The fact that it still forces the user to start it like that is a problem from the past where we were still in the development process of how the packets were sent to our server instead of the EA ones. Fun fact ... even the EA BattleForge Bootstrapper required admin rights. 🙂 
In the past, our little piece of extremely important software (let us call it Injector for now) was started along with the BattleForge executable and injected itself into the BattleForge process. The injector itself was invisible for the user and ran as a background process. The injection however was only possible with admin privileges since you have to call a method where you need those privileges. Otherwise the method call would fail. We decided to transfer those permissions over to the Updater since all processes called by it will also start with the same privileges (also called AsInvoker in manifest files). The reason for that was, that the user doesn't get a system popup for a software he can't see (the Injector) and maybe denies the execution of it. If he would, the game wouldn't start and connect to our servers at all. That's for the history of the injector.
Unfortunately at some point there were some pieces of information which got stored afterwards at some places on the user's PC which can only be accessed with write permissions when the software will be started with administrative privileges. This wasn't the intention in the beginning. And the information isn't stored by the Updater, but by the game. That information will need to be stored somewhere else before we can remove the admin rights request for the Updater. But we're of course in the process of doing so. I actually expect an update for the current Updater in the upcoming days/weeks to remove that whole thing.
Side note: I was always against an Updater which needs that high level of privileges. Some users (and I count myself to that group of users) don't like software, which require these permissions, at all. And maybe that's also a reason for them to not use that software.

When we remove those permissions, we need to make sure, that the Updater and the game can access all files with all needed permissions. That's also the reason why our installer doesn't accept directories as installation location which are protected by Windows. Those locations are however hardcoded.
I hope you can live with the fact that it requires those permissions for another few days or weeks. They will for sure be removed in the near future.
Sneak preview: The new Updater won't have that requirement at all.

With the release of the now third official document I made a wiki page dedicated to providing an overview of the various pieces for quick and easy access.

Huge respect to the developer department which, despite all obstacles,  keeps pushing the live release forward. You guys are the unsung heroes of SR.

Greetings Skylords!

It's been two weeks already since our last community update so it's time to bring you up to speed with everything going on in Skylords Reborn!
 

Deep Dive: Rarities
As our development of new cards continues, a frequently asked question is the upcoming rarities. These will be the first brand new cards for Skylords Reborn, so we want to have a system in place to provide insights on what makes a card common, uncommon, rare or ultra rare. We have explored this in a document, providing a deep dive into the rarities EA used in their first edition for the game: the Twilight Edition. Even though these are not always consistent, and expansions have not made things any easier, we still can take some lessons from the current distribution and apply it going forward. 
If you are interested in the thought process behind card rarities and how we will decide them for our new cards, you can read the full document here: Designing_for_Card_Rarity.pdf
And in case you missed them, here are the rarity icons for our new cards:

 
Test Server Patch Notes
Iteration 17 of our test server is here! Check out the patch notes. This patch mainly finalizes the PvP changes which will soon hit the live server. Please keep in mind that these changes are all relative to the previous iteration. The final PvE changes will go live in the next iteration. 
There are also some noteworthy requested general changes in this iteration. We fixed the inventory sorting, which should now properly sort the cards as specified. We also added a power well and a monument for each player in the forge. You can now test out all your damage combo's without the need to find a building that has exactly the same amount of health as these buildings. 
We also made another change to the game that will certainly be the topic of many conversations in the future. We added a preliminary fix so units in PvE maps always have correct orb and power costs. This means that certain abilities, like e.g. Nightguard Swap or Mindcontrol cannot ignore the orb requirements anymore. Please note these changes will not be included in the next live server patch. We want to test and gather feedback before making a change like this, but first had to figure out if it was even possible. You can discuss these and other changes on our balance discord.

Next Live Patch Delayed
Because of a delay of the Test Server Patch we sadly also have to delay the Live Patch we were hoping to release this week. Since this is going to be a big one, we need a little more time to make sure all the bugs (not you Scythe Fiend) are taken care of before we patch to live. Please be patient a bit longer, we are still hoping for a release in August. 



Special Effect Tool
Last Community Update we gave you a sneak peek at our new special effect tool. With the this tool we will be able to create fancy new spells and effects. Even though we are currently not able to add new models to the game, this is a great step in allowing us to create new visually appealing content. 
We are looking for players who are interested in learning how to create special effects and give feedback on how to improve the tool. If you are interested in this, please reach out to Ladadoos on Discord for a quick explanation. We have plans to open source the editor in the future.

Tournaments & Events
• NEW: Feedback official PvE events
Now that we have hosted two official events, we are looking for some feedback regarding both the events and the stream to improve upon them where possible. Feedback is anonymous and can be provided here. Please keep the feedback constructive and understand we do this in our free time. 

• Finished: Community Tournament: Toggy's Tome Invitational
If you played BattleForge back in the day you might remember Tomes. In this gamemode you get a selection of boosters that you have to use to build your deck with, after which you play PvP matches. While Tomes got discontinued around the end of BattleForge and are not available in Skylords Reborn, Toggy hosted a limited-access event last weekend to relive the experience. It was a great success, with crazy off-meta plays and is bound to return. For now you can rewatch the stream in case you missed it. 

• NEW : Community Tournament: Toggy's Tome Tournament - August 22th
A new tome tournament has been announced! This one is open for everyone, but you need to sign up in advance by contacting Toggy. This will be another Tome tournament, meaning you will build a deck with a selection of random cards and play PvP matches with them. Sign up and read the details about it here. 

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

New Team Members / Open Positions
We are happy to welcome a new member to the team: Kerkk has joined us as a web developer! 
We could definitely need some more help with the Skylords Reborn project however.
Below are three roles highlighted, but you can find more information, desired traits and all our open positions here. 
Open Position - Map Tester 
As a map tester you get early access to new maps and gamemodes and are responsible to playtest them and provide feedback to the other map developers about possible issues or improvements. This includes check how balanced the map is, how fun it is to play, if there are any exploits, if areas on the map need to be prettified etc. Map developers/designers/artists should be able to rely on you to make sure maps that are released or changed are done so properly.

Open Position - Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator
As a Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator you are responsible to spread the word and create awareness about Skylords Reborn and to attract veteran and new players alike. This includes actively researching and reaching out to potentially interested streamers, youtubers, Discord channels, game magazines, among others. You will be responsible for the communication to and from interested parties and for any promotion deals (for example involving scratch codes). Please note that Skylords Reborn cannot do any paid promotions.

Open Position - Artist
As an artist you are responsible to create the visuals required for new content. This is a broad position and there are many areas where you could help in, depending on your skills and interests. Think of loading screen artwork for new maps, card artwork for new cards, visual UI elements for new features that involve adding UI to the game, banners for events/tournaments/community challenges/large game updates etc. Our current artist Tweeto is hard at work on new cards, but he can only do so much. If you have the skills and want to speed up the progress, please reach out to us. 
 

In Conclusion
Thanks for reading! 
Is there anything you wish us to cover in upcoming community updates? As always, we are open to feedback so please let us know!
Here is a scratch code you can redeem in-game for 100bfp. COMM-UNIT-YUPD-ATE9
The code is valid till August 28th. 
Archive
Community Update #6
Community Update #7
Community Update #8

Stream is now live: 
 
 

@Majora You got to represent us dutchies 😛

@Majora You got to represent us dutchies 😛

Thanks! Looks like I will need it!