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Patch #400048 - Echoes of the Amii
Welcome to our newest patch. This update contains our fourteenth balance patch for the game, 4 brand-new cards, 2 new campaign maps, a new PvP mode, four new achievements, and much more!

Patch Preview
Four new cards are now available! Jump in-game to collect Amii Sentinel, Skydancer, Energy Core, and Umbabwe! Added two new campaign maps! Continue the story of Skylords Reborn in the first two maps of our new campaign. BattleArena has arrived! Play against your friends in 2v2 or 3v3 battles in this casual PvP mode. Four new achievements and cosmetics to go along with the new maps and game mode. A few balance changes and major card reworks mostly to previously unviable cards.
General Changes
The Shadow enemies found on the summoning menu in the Forge have been swapped with their NPC versions. Amii enemies have also been added to the Forge's summoning menu. A new section has been added to PvE leaderboard to account for potential speedrun changes arising from changes to Amii Monument without wiping the rankings.  Upgrades have been redistributed, you can find more information in-game by using the "Show Upgrades" option on each map. All Rebirth edition cards have had their U2 and U3 upgrades moved to the new maps. The Lost Souls Forge skin is now available. Complete the new achievement "After All These Years" on expert difficulty to unlock it.  Deleted players are now displayed as <deleted> rather than empty. New setting "Force create unit group when holding SHIFT key" added to options. Reverted previously undocumented changes to attack-move command (shortcut Q), that were causing issues with unit responsiveness. Added Map of the Day info to the "Daily Rewards" section. When a player completes the Map of the Day in a given day, the flame on the world map will be grayed out. This change is to help players remember if they have already completed a particular Map of the Day for achievement progress. Players can continue to play the Map of the Day for extra upgrade rewards as normal.  Re-enabled the chat command export collection. Re-enabled the explore replay button.
New Campaign Maps
At long last the Skylords Reborn story continues with the addition of two brand-new fully-voiced (in English) campaign maps. These maps continue the story after Dwarven Riddle and are the product of hundreds of hours of our team's artists, designers, community map testers, translators, and voice actors. Both come with new achievements and rewards to encourage you to dive-in and explore. 
Unexpected Visitors, 2-player campaign map
Journey into the northern wastes to find the secrets hidden within the Riddle of Gnaur. Discover the last enclave of the elusive Amii and save them from certain destruction.

Into the Jungle, 2-player campaign map
Brave the jungles of Viridya's island to find a new home for your Amii allies. 


New Cards
Amii Sentinel - 260p T4 Amii Unit 
You will find the upgrades for this card on the map "Into the Jungle."
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 120% reflect turns Sentinel's health into a damage resource, which synergizes perfectly with cards like Regrowth, Transcendence, and Skydancer. 
 
Energy Core - 140p T4 Amii Unit 
You will find the upgrades for this card on the map "Unexpected Visitors."
Energy Core's original design came from the Community Card Contest we held over a year ago. The idea behind Energy Core is to create a unit which is more of a mobile spell than it is a traditional unit. It has no auto-attack, but it has two active abilities. Both abilities damage Energy Core, one more significantly than the other, requiring the player to pay close attention to unit health and weigh their options over what is possible for them and whether or not risking losing the unit is worthwhile. 
 
Skydancer - 120p T4 Amii Unit 
You will find the upgrades for this card on the map "Unexpected Visitors."
While Sentinel and Energy Core fit the roles of tank and damage dealer respectively, Skydancer functions as the supporter. Skydancer has two different mode-changes, one debuffing enemies and one buffing allies. The debuff functions as a kind of anti-rage effect, while the buff increases allied life points by a set amount. The health buff effect directly synergizes with Sentinel and Energy Core who both has health-based damage mechanics. 
 
Umbabwe - 200p T4 Legendary Unit 
You will find the upgrades for this card on the map "Into the Jungle."
Blight's infamous witch doctor is finally making his player card appearance. As a standalone legendary unit, he is intended to function as a spellcaster type unit. To accomplish this, the card has a lot of built-in flexibility via its spells. Umbabwe has an auto-attack which is a meteor from Inferno, the ability to cast his signature spell Oink, and an active ability to summon a fiery tornado which applies a painful burn effect. 
 

BattleArena - New PvP Mode
For a long time, we have been developing an alternative PvP mode called BattleArena which we feel is finally ready to release. In this game mode, players do not use cards from their deck. Instead, they are given spell devices and progressively stronger creatures which they must use to overcome their enemies. The mode can be played 2v2 or 3v3 and comes with a new achievement to reward players for trying it out. Go to Sparring Grounds in-game to play BattleArena.


Voice Actors
Many of the above new features would not be nearly as enjoyable without the help of our volunteer voice actors. In this patch, the following players have lent their voices to liven up the Skylords Reborn universe. We thank them greatly for their help!
Vox - Gaeron (new Frost Skylord) Ultralord - Burning Spears Edgelord - Skydancer Edgelord - Amii Phantom (includes the card's voice lines and the unit's appearance in the new maps) Elijah - Amii Sentinel Dreamlord - New map loading screen narration
Achievements
As part of the release of the two new campaign maps and BattleArena, we have released four accompanying achievements. There is a normal achievement just for beating the new maps, which rewards the player with the new Amii Sentinel on advanced and the Lost Souls forge on expert, as well as two achievements for mastering the maps. BattleArena has a new progressive achievement for playing the mode. We are also adding new Amii borders to the existing endless achievements for playing Amii decks in PvE and PvP.
[ New Achievements ]
After All These Years [Card: Amii Sentinel; Forge: Lost Souls]
Win the 2-player scenarios Unexpected Visitors and Into the Jungle on Advanced / Expert difficulty or higher.
Evacuation Expert [Progressive Banner: Bronze rank ➜ Ember rank]
Win the 2-player scenario Unexpected Visitors on Expert difficulty in under 35 / 33 / 31 / 29 / 27 minutes.
Earth, Wind, Fire [Avatar: Tribal] 
Win the 2-player scenario Into the Jungle on Expert difficulty after defeating all 3 bosses in a single match.
Honor Bound [Booster: 1 General; Avatar: Mo Ocean] 
Play BattleArena [3 matches & 10 matches]
[ Existing Achievement Changes ]
Giver and Taker of Life (PvE) & Path of Insight (PvP)
Both achievements now grant progressive Amii borders in line with the requirements of other faction borders. Borders will be added to the player's account retroactively based on achievement progress.
 

Legacy Server
While we are happy with the game's development since its revival, we understand that there are some parts of old BattleForge that players might miss. In response to this feeling, we have created a legacy server. This legacy server is equivalent to BattleForge the day it was shut down, with none of the balance changes, new cards, or new maps that have occurred as part of Skylords Reborn's continued development being included. The legacy server functions similarly to the public test server in that the player already has all cards and upgrades. To access the legacy server navigate to the game folder, in standard installations the game folder is be found at C:\Games\Skylords Reborn, and start StartBattleForgeLegacy.bat. From there, you login with your normal account information. 

Game Balance Changes
[ Global Balance Changes ]
 Amii faction passive scaling: Amii's faction passive Elusive now scales based on the unit's tier.
Tier 2: 10% less Freeze and Paralyze duration.  Tier 3: 20% less Freeze and Paralyze duration.  Tier 4: 30% less Freeze and Paralyze duration.  Legendary building restrictions: Legendary buildings are now one-per-player, not one-per-team.
Random PvE 1p starting void power: Starting void power has been changed to account for the Amii Monument changes.
Standard / Standard+ (Difficulties 1-2): 600 starting void power Standard++ to Expert+ (Difficulties 3-8): 700 starting void power [ Card Changes ]
 Amii Monument:
1. Power Cost: 250p ➜ 125p
2. Ability Cost: 140p ➜ 100p
3. Orbs granted by Amii Monument no longer increase a player’s tier. Players still gain access to cards within their current tier that require the orb granted by Amii Monument. For example, if a player has 3 Fire orbs via normal Monuments, and builds a Nature orb via Amii Monument, they will still be T3, but will be able to summon Juggernauts and heal them via Equilbrium.
   A. Description - “Switch into this mode to gain one tierless Shadow Orb. This orb will not increase a player's tier, but will allow the player to play cards within their current tier that would require this Orb. The Orb will be ready and functional after 10 seconds. It cannot be switched back for 30 seconds.”
Amii Monument in its existing state is a cheat card. It breaks a map's design, allowing players unfettered access to T4 cards when the map is balanced around the player only having access to T3 cards and creating a persistent toxic effect on the normal game experience.
Amii Monument removes an entire tier from the game. This has a disruption impact on the game experience by changing deckbuilding at its core. In decks without Amii Monument, the player needs to consider how many cards they can budget for each tier and choose accordingly. With Amii Monument in a deck, the player can simply remove all T3 cards from their deck besides Amii Monument itself (spells like Infect which scale well into T4 are the exception), opening up more deck slots for T1, T2, and T4 cards. Consider also that nearly all PvE maps are functionally finished before the player ever reaches T4. Combined with the fact that T4 cards are significantly stronger than T3 cards (the power difference between T4 and T3 cards is the single largest increase in card strength between tiers) means that the player requires fewer T3 and T4 cards in their deck, allowing the use of more card slots for T1 and T2. This heavily warps the game experience by making the player stronger than the map is designed to account for at all tiers, not just once the player reaches T3. 
There is also the psychological effect Amii Monument has upon players. Since we first started balancing cards in Skylords Reborn, players have asked us to nerf Amii Monument, not just because of the balance issues, but because they felt compelled to always include it in their deck regardless of the situation. This is unsurprising as many game studios have recognized that players in general will choose the most efficient option, even to the detriment of their own enjoyment. And who of us have not experienced this? How many of us have not used mind-numbingly boring methods to grind in games just because it is the fastest way to procure loot, even if it ends up making us hate the game? Who has not included Amii Monument as a default deck option at some point in their time playing Skylords Reborn?
To briefly summarize, Amii Monument undermines map design, deckbuilding, and possesses a factor that makes players feel compelled to include it in their decks, even when they know it undermines their own enjoyment. While designing our new maps, including not just the two maps releasing with this patch but the multiple additional maps currently in development, we found ourselves face to face with these issues in a way that made the card's problems no longer ignorable. For all these reasons and more, we felt that the time had finally come to nerf Amii Monument. Yet we do not want to destroy the card. The new design is tailored towards enabling unique, previously impossible, deckbuilding possibilities, in direct opposition to its previous design. We also realized that many T3 cards were not generally strong enough to be satisfying to use, so we dedicated almost the entire last patch to adding new T3 options through buffs, reworks, and new cards, and we are dedicated to continuing this project next patch. 
Lastly, we understand that this change will upset many people, but we hope you will see that we did not make this choice lightly. We do not enjoy nerfing cards players like, but we do it because we think it is the best choice for the game. At the same time, we think that the time of major nerfs is now at an end with these changes to Amii Monument, and we as a team commit to no further nerfs on the scale of Amii Monument or the previous Batariel nerf from 2 years ago to existing cards going forward.
 Dying Breed:
1. Power cost: 100p ➜ 90p
2. Orb cost: 1 Fire, 2 Neutral (T3) ➜ 2 Fire, 1 Neutral (T3)
2. Tainted Plunder (p):
   A. Description - Target enemy unit is filled with plunder. If the target enemy dies within the next 30 seconds, all friendly fire units in a 25m radius gain Looter for 25 seconds. Units with Looter harvest the bound power of enemies. Up to 10% of an enemy's original power costs can be harvested relative to the amount of its maximum life points received as damage. Reusable every 30 seconds.
3. Gifted Plunder (g): 
   A. Description - Target enemy unit is filled with plunder and takes 30 damage per second. If the target enemy dies within the next 30 seconds, all friendly fire units in a 25m radius gain Looter for 25 seconds. Units with Looter harvest the bound power of enemies. Up to 7% of an enemy's original power costs can be harvested relative to the amount of its maximum life points received as damage. Reusable every 30 seconds.
4. New FX to go with the new card effect.
One of our long-term design projects is trying to give other factions besides Pure Shadow, with its Resource Booster, the ability to accelerate their power in higher tiers. We started this with changes to Nature's power flow via Forest Elder and Promise of Life, and now we are turning our eyes to Fire. Most Fire players are responsible for building 2 Shrines of War as soon as they get T3, immediately putting them behind by 300 power. Combined with high power cost units in T4, this gives Fire a painfully slow start with a frequent reliance on hoping your allies brought a Breeding Grounds for you to use. After carefully considering our options to accelerate Fire's power gain, we decided to bring back the Looter mechanic, but have it applied only temporarily with moderate percentages. We choose Dying Breed as the rework target because its previous effect was unsalvageable. The changes should allow Fire to use Dying Breed in early T3 to accelerate the transition into T4, or to payoff the bound power invested into Shrine of War, without being so strong as to cause Fire's power gain to grow out of control. 
 Fire Force (Formerly Girl Power):
1. Change name: Girl Power ➜ Fire Force
2. Power cost: 50p ➜ 80p
3. Blessed Morale (b): 
   A. Description - Target own melee unit will be designated the champion of Fire. All friendly melee units in a 30m radius will take 20% less damage. If at least 2 enemies die within a 30m radius of the champion within a 10 second period, the damage reduction increases to 50% for 15 seconds. Lasts until the champion dies, or until a different champion is chosen. There may only be one champion of Fire per player at a time. Reusable every 60 seconds.
4. Infused Morale (r):
   A. Description - Target own melee unit will be designated the champion of Fire. All friendly melee units in a 30m radius will deal 25% more damage. If at least 2 enemies die within a 30m radius of the champion within a 10 second period, the damage buff increases to 50% for 15 seconds. Lasts until the champion dies, or until a different champion is chosen. There may only be one champion of Fire per player at a time. Reusable every 60 seconds.
5. New FX to go with the new card effect.
Girl Power was an odd card that did not fit within the game. It was never clear to the player what cards were men, which were women, and which were neither. We did not see a way to salvage the card as it was, so we reworked it into a tool to enable new melee based strategies in Fire decks. The newly minted Fire Force is a permanent spell effect that you apply to a single unit which transforms that unit into a leader type unit. Allies around the leader are buffed, either with increasing damage reduction or increasing damage dealt, when enemies around the leader unit die. Our hope is that this card enables previously niche T2 and T3 melee units to become viable options in PvE.
 Grove Spirit:
1. Movement speed: 4.8 m/s ➜ 6.4 m/s (normal L/XL-speed)
2. Life points: 1100 ➜ 1600
3. Healing Song cost: 90p ➜ 60p
Grove Spirit has found itself a niche in a deck which uses it alongside Offering to cycle Mind Control. The idea of this deck is to use Grove Spirit as ground presence while you build yourself an army out of your enemy's units. The issue is that Grove Spirit itself is slow and dies in one-shot to artillery buildings. We have given the unit a booster shot of life points and made her undulate her tentacles faster, alongside a discount to the Healing Song ability. Pending any further rework to the unit, we hope in the meantime that this helps the unit in the one niche it has found for itself.
 Lost Dancer:
1. Tainted Blast affinity effect: 50% more damage against humans ➜ 30% more damage against humans
Lost Dancer has proven too strong in PvP and we are toning down the extra damage against humans to bring her back in-line. 
 Lost Manabeast:
1. Immortalize requirement: 7 enemy life essences ➜ 3 enemy life essences
Immortalize's enemy requirement is too strict, making it overly difficult to make good use of the ability. We are substantially reducing the requirements to hopefully give Lost Manabeast a better synergy with Revenant strategies. 
[ NPC & Map Changes ]
 Spearmen (NPC):
1. Toggle ability Defensive Formation: 25% damage reduction now applies properly
 Fire Emitter (Slavemaster version):
1. Power cost: 2000p ➜ 200p
New NPC Entities: Available for use by official and community mapmakers.
Added Frost NPC entities: Units: War Eagle, Tremor, Mountain Rowdy, Northland Drake, Icespike, Avatar of Frost, Construct, Dreadnought, Core Dredge, Dredgling, Mountaineer, Tempest, Winter Witch Buildings: Ice Launcher, Frost Crystal, Frontier Keep (large spawner), Kobold Inc. (small spawner) Added Amii NPC entities: Amii Crossbowmen, Amii Paladins, Amii Phantom, Amii Sentinel, Amii Keep Bad Harvest: Both orbs near the Treasure Wagon now spawn when a player in position 3 is playing solo.
The Soultree: The map now requires all 5 normal orbs to be built or under construction to fulfill the map's victory requirement. Amii Monument no longer counts towards this goal. 
[ Bugfixes & Miscellaneous Changes ]
Fixed card descriptions in various languages. The longstanding issue which caused players' games to slowdown substantially when they destroyed multiple frozen air units at once, has now been fixed. The most well known occurrence of this bug was connected to Shatter Ice.  Dropdowns for rankings are no longer scrollable.

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!

 
• Echoes of the Amii

Nearly 15 years have passed since the original BattleForge story concluded. When we revived the game through Skylords Reborn, two questions kept coming up: Will we get new Amii cards, and will we see new story or campaign maps?
One of the final cards released for the original game was Amii Phantom, offering a glimpse of what might have been. Over the years, our team has carefully expanded the mysterious Amii faction with new cards like Amii Paladins, Tranquility, and Transcendence, gradually shaping a distinct faction identity. With our upcoming patch, we're accelerating this effort by introducing three late-game units: Amii Sentinel, Skydancer, and Energy Core. These new units provide players with exciting options for building a dedicated Amii deck.
We are incredibly proud of how far this project has come, and we're grateful for the opportunity to expand the Amii faction with these new cards. Rest assured, we have more cards in development for the faction, some of which you can expect to see before the end of the year.
In addition to new cards, our next patch marks a significant milestone by adding new campaign maps. And what better way to do so than by properly integrating the Amii into the story? These new maps take place during the original story's timeframe, filling in some of the gaps and answering lingering questions, while also introducing a new Skylord and bringing the ancient Amii into the present-day narrative.
Our next patch will feature two new maps, with more in development. We've dedicated significant time and effort to these campaign maps, carefully refining the balance, map art, story, and gameplay. We hope players will appreciate the passion that went into their creation. After all this time, we want to ensure that these maps stand proudly alongside the original campaign. These maps are the product of hundreds of hours of our team's artists, designers, community map testers, translators, and voice actors. We hope you are looking forward to them!

We are excited to announce Echoes of the Amii will release on September 21st.
 
• New Card Reveal - Energy Core

With the patch release imminent, we have another new card to show you that will be included. Crackling with energy, Energy Core is powerful, but unstable. By overloading the core, it can deal massive amounts of damage, but doing so comes at a heavy cost. Let's break down the card!

Please note: We are still finalizing the card. While we are generally happy with it, numbers and effects might still change before release. 


Pulse 
Activate to unleash an electric shock through enemies in a straight line that deals 1200 damage to enemies in a 20m radius, up to 3000 in total. The shock damages Energy Core by 1150 life points points. Must have at least 1000 life points to activate. Reusable every 15 seconds.
 
Overcharge
Activate to overload the unit, dealing 2000 damage to enemies in a 25m radius, up to 6000 in total. The overload damages Energy Core by 2300 life points. This self-inflicted damage ignores damage modification and cannot be warded off with the help of damage reducing abilities because it is able to circumvent every buff or protective shield. Must have at least 2000 life points to activate. Reusable every 30 seconds.



Elusive
Units with Elusive have the duration of the immobilizing effects of Freeze and Paralyze reduced by 30%.
 
 
Sharp eyes might have noticed a change in the percentage of the Amii passive ability "Elusive". Starting with our next patch, the Elusive ability will be different depending on the tier of the unit. The current cards, Amii Phantom and Amii Palladin, and any future tier 2 Amii units will remain at 10%. Meanwhile, tier 3 will move the percentage up to 20%, and tier 4 units will have a 30% reduction to the duration of Freeze and Paralyze. 
 
Design notes: Energy Core's original design came from a player in the Community Card Contest we held over a year ago. At the time we were fleshing out the basic design of Amii's T4 and we thought that Energy Core was the perfect fit for what we envisioned regarding this faction's playstyle. The idea behind Energy Core is to create a unit which is more of a mobile spell than it is a traditional unit. It has no auto-attack, but it has two activatable abilities. Both abilities damage Energy Core, one more significantly than the other, requiring the player to pay close attention to the unit's health and weigh their options over what is possible for them and whether or not risking losing the unit is worthwhile. It synergizes directly with Skydancer, whose buff increases a unit's base health, allowing Overcharge to be used without directly killing Energy Core. The damage to enemies is modifiable by Shadow's buffs, allowing the card to work directly with Shadow's buffs and Nature's healing spells. 
Energy Core will release alongside our next content patch on the 21st.
 
• Art Spotlight - Energy Core

As the creators of Monuments and Powerwells in Nyn, the Amii seemed like the perfect faction for a unit embodying the essence of a monument's core. For the initial concept of the card, our artist, SpiritAlpha, took the model of Magma Spore, and incorporated faces in its design—a direction we've explored before with the spell Tranquility.
From the start, we knew we wanted to move away from the iconic chains of the Magma Spore, aiming to make the design feel more distinctive. While we're limited to the models from the original game, it was important to us that this unit didn’t come across as just another simple reskin.

We were drawn to this next concept art, evoking the feeling of soldiers stumbling upon an ancient construct in a temple-like setting. However, we were concerned that it resembled a spell too closely and weren’t entirely convinced by the facial design.
To refine the concept, we revisited other Amii structures in the game for inspiration. We noticed that the Amii Shrines featured a unique eye in their design, which we felt was worth exploring further. We paused work on the card art to ensure this idea could be executed well in the model. Once the model was finalized, we resumed work on the card artwork.
  
We were thrilled with the direction we took. The core not only looks powerful, but it also brings a distinct personality to what could have been a rather plain model. With its ominous eye watching over the battlefield and its rhythmic hum, the Energy Core is something truly unique in the lineup. We hope you love it as much as we do!

 
• Amii Monument Changes

One of the most anticipated—or depending on your perspective, feared—changes will be implemented in our next patch. After careful consideration and years of discussion, we have decided to change the card Amii Monument. We are fully aware of the controversy surrounding this topic, so we want to take the time to explain our reasoning and the thought process behind it.     The following changes will be made to the card:  1. Power Cost: 250p ➜ 125p
2. Ability Cost: 140p ➜ 100p
3. Orbs granted by Amii Monument no longer increase a player’s tier. Players still gain access to cards within their current tier that require the orb granted by Amii Monument. For example, if a player has 3 Fire orbs via normal Monuments, and builds a Nature orb via Amii Monument, they will still be T3, but will be able to summon Juggernauts and heal them via Equilbrium.
   New Description - “Switch into this mode to gain one tierless Shadow Orb. This orb will not increase a player's tier, but will allow the player to play cards within their current tier that would require this Orb. The Orb will be ready and functional after 10 seconds. It cannot be switched back for 30 seconds.”
4. Once built, Amii orbs attack as if they were a normal orb.
5. Legendary buildings are now one-per-player, not one-per-team.
Reasoning
Amii Monument in its existing state is a cheat card. It breaks a map's design, allowing players unfettered access to T4 cards when the map is balanced around the player only having access to T3 cards and creating a persistent toxic effect on the normal game experience. Amii Monument removes an entire tier from the game. This has a disruption impact on the game experience by changing deckbuilding at its core. In decks without Amii Monument, the player needs to consider how many cards they can budget for each tier and choose accordingly. With Amii Monument in a deck, the player can simply remove all T3 cards from their deck besides Amii Monument itself (spells like Infect which scale well into T4 are the exception), opening up more deck slots for T1, T2, and T4 cards. Consider also that nearly all PvE maps are functionally finished before the player ever reaches T4. Combined with the fact that T4 cards are significantly stronger than T3 cards (the power difference between T4 and T3 cards is the single largest increase in card strength between tiers) means that the player requires fewer T3 and T4 cards in their deck, allowing the use of more card slots for T1 and T2. This heavily warps the game experience by making the player stronger than the map is designed to account for at all tiers, not just once the player reaches T3. 
There is also the psychological effect Amii Monument has upon players. Since we first started balancing cards in Skylords Reborn, players have asked us to nerf Amii Monument, not just because of the balance issues, but because they felt compelled to always include it in their deck regardless of the situation. This is unsurprising as many game studios have recognized that players in general will choose the most efficient option, even to the detriment of their own enjoyment. And who of us have not experienced this? How many of us have not used mind-numbingly boring methods to grind in games just because it is the fastest way to procure loot, even if it ends up making us hate the game? Who has not included Amii Monument as a default deck option at some point in their time playing Skylords Reborn?
To briefly summarize, Amii Monument undermines map design, deckbuilding, and possesses a factor that makes players feel compelled to include it in their decks, even when they know it undermines their own enjoyment. While designing our new maps, including not just the two maps releasing with this patch but the multiple additional maps currently in development, we found ourselves face to face with these issues in a way that made the card's problems no longer ignorable. For all these reasons and more, we felt that the time had finally come to nerf Amii Monument. Yet we do not want to destroy the card. The new design is tailored towards enabling unique, previously impossible, deckbuilding possibilities, in direct opposition to its previous design. We also realized that many T3 cards were not generally strong enough to be satisfying to use, so we dedicated almost the entire last patch to adding new T3 options through buffs, reworks, and new cards, and we are dedicated to continuing this project next patch. 
Lastly, we understand that this change will upset many people, but we hope you will see that we did not make this choice lightly. We do not enjoy nerfing cards players like, but we do it because we think it is the best choice for the game. At the same time, we think that the time of major nerfs is now at an end with these changes to Amii Monument, and we as a team commit to no further nerfs on the scale of Amii Monument or the previous Batariel nerf from 2 years ago to existing cards going forward. 
 
• Battle Arena

Next patch will also bring the release of a new PvP mode called Battle Arena.  In this game mode, players do not use cards from their deck. Instead, they are given spell devices and progressively stronger creatures which they must use to overcome their enemies. The mode can be played 2v2 or 3v3 and will come with a new achievement to reward players for trying it out. 
 
• 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!
 
Current events:
• UPCOMING - Release Event
Once the patch is out, we will have an event to celebrate the release of the new campaign maps. In this special event, you'll have a chance to win some of the new cards or boosters! More details will be shared on patch day. 
 
• NEW - Seven Strategy Showdown 3 - Wrecking Time
The 3rd event in the series is now live! The tables have turned, and this time Skylords are the ones destroying buildings. Destroy as many buildings as possible within the time limit and win some great prizes. More information. 
 
• IN PROGRESS - Seven Strategy Showdown
Every two weeks there will be a new event in this series of seven events, each bringing a fun handcrafted challenge or mechanic! Be sure to check them out, as there are some great prizes to be won! More information.
 
• FINISHED - Seven Strategy Showdown 1 - The Salesman Problem
For this event players had to kill all the units on the event-map as fast as possible. It wasn't long before people broke the one minute mark, but after that the real competition kicked off. You can now watch the winners on Twitch. More information.
 
• FINISHED - Seven Strategy Showdown 2 - The Last Fortress
One building is all that stood between players and the leaderboard. Watch how the fierce competition concluded in the winner reveal stream on Twitch! More information.


 • SECOND PHASE EXTENDED - PvP AI programming contest
Get ready for an AI Programming Tournament, where the submitted programs will face off in an epic showdown to find the ultimate AI strategist! Players are still able to join this programming contest. 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

Two team members have concluded their roles; Piskr as Client Developer, and Xanatoss as Card implementer. We would like to thank them for their contributions to Skylord Reborn.   Meanwhile, Titan has transitioned to help us with audio, alongside the role of 3D-artist.   
• 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!
 

 
If you have any experience with e-mail newsletters, we could especially use your help as we move towards the release of our latest patch. Please take a look at this new role. 
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 an Amii booster: ISPY-WITH-AMII-EYES
The code is valid until October 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 August 2024

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!

• Statement about antivirus programs flagging Skylords Reborn as unsafe

Lately we have been seeing an alarming rate of issues regarding the launcher of Skylords Reborn. We'd like to take some time to explain the situation, what you can do yourself, and how we are working to resolve these issues.
Since our last patch, several antivirus programs have been flagging certain Skylords Reborn files, with pcre3.dll often being identified as the culprit, though we have also seen mentions of proxy-internal.dll, proxy-legacy.dll and proxy-test.dll. 
Unfortunately, reversing some of the changes in the patch did not resolve this issue. We are now considering alternatives, such as purchasing certificates to mark these files as safe. However, as a volunteer project, we need time to explore these options, ensure they will solve the problem, and make sure that server upkeep costs are not significantly impacted.
In the meantime, players can make an exception for the Skylords Reborn folder in their antivirus programs. We understand players might be hesitant to do so, and while we do not know for certain what exactly makes antivirus programs consider these files unsafe (as their explanations are usually very vague) we’ll give an example why they might. The Skylords launcher functions in a way that triggers some antivirus programs, yet this functionality is necessary for the game to work and is harmless for the user.
By default, the game is designed to send your login credentials to the EA server, just like every other always-online game communicates with its official server. However, EA shut down the official server, leaving nothing to communicate with. Without the EA server, the game cannot function. To make Skylords Reborn work, it uses a technique that "reroutes" the login credentials you enter to the Skylords Reborn server instead of the non-existent EA server.
Because login credentials are being sent to a different server, it makes sense for antivirus programs to be alarmed. However, to be clear, what is being redirected is only the credentials you enter on the login screen. These are your Skylords Reborn account credentials, which the project already has from your registration. They are then sent to the Skylords Reborn server instead of the dead EA server. Otherwise, the game would fail to connect and not work.
To allow the launcher to function correctly, you need to make an exception for the folder so the antivirus program leaves it alone. Otherwise, the launcher might get stuck trying to find a file that was quarantined by the antivirus program. Please note that this issue might resurface with future patches. How to make an exception varies for each antivirus program. If you need assistance, please head over to technical support, and we’ll try to help you.
We understand these issues are causing frustration among our players, and we are working hard to find a solution that prevents users from having to take actions they might not feel comfortable with. We appreciate your understanding and patience as we search for solutions.
 
• Feedback Survey - Community Updates

Last month we put out a survey to gather feedback on our Community Updates. A big thank you to everyone who participated and shared their thoughts and kind words. Whether you have been with us since the beginning, or have recently started following us, we appreciate you taking the time to check in. 
The survey gave us some valuable insights, and we are happy to confirm many of you read the Community Updates even when you are not actively playing the game. The main goal of these updates has always been to ensure you know we are constantly working behind the scenes of Skylords Reborn to prepare new content for you, even if you can't play it immediately. We know many of you are excited about new campaign maps, and we can't wait for you to experience them. Because we expect many inactive players to return once we release them, we are dedicating significant time to testing and balancing them to ensure they are ready for release.
Finding the right balance between making exciting announcements and delivering them within a reasonable timeframe has always been challenging. Due to the volunteer nature of the project, it remains difficult to estimate how long it will take to complete a task. One month, we may make great progress on a specific feature or card, only to have a critical team member needed for its implementation suddenly need to focus on their job or studies the next month, causing progress to halt. We are glad to see that you understand these challenges, but we will strive to manage expectations better regarding communicated release dates.
Fortunately, our card reveal for this month is a card that has already been implemented on the internal test server, so we can guarantee its future release. But before we get to that reveal, let's talk about patches. 
 
• Upcoming Patches


 
There are currently four new campaign maps in development; three 2-player maps, and one 1-player map. The first two maps you can expect will be Unexpected Visitors and Into the Jungle, which are part of the Key of Ashia story campaign, filling in some of the questions the original campaign failed to answer. In Unexpected Visitors, you will defend the last Amii tribe from the Lost Souls, while Into the Jungle tasks you with finding a new safe haven for them.
We are currently in the final stages of testing and tweaking these two maps, which will be released together in the upcoming "Echoes of the Amii" patch in 2024. We aim to release the other two maps shortly after in a follow-up patch, depending on the progress made.
Although we are not ready to announce a specific release month for the campaign maps, we are pleased to share that a new content and balance patch will release in June!
This balance patch will include long-awaited changes, such as the rework of Colossus, along with two new cards: Icespike and Swarm. Stay tuned for the patch notes for more information.
 
 
 
• New Card Reveal - Swarm

Today's card reveal takes us back to April 2022. In our Nature Deep Dive, we introduced the concept of a tier 3 spell card called Green Tide, designed to help the faction counter enemy crowd control defenses like Willzappers. We also discussed planned changes to Grove Spirit and the addition of a new tier 4 Nature spell, which ultimately became Sanctuary. While technical limitations unfortunately prevented us from implementing the changes to Grove Spirit, we are excited to announce the release of the tier 3 spell we previously mentioned. Introducing the renamed Green Tide: Swarm!
Please note: We are still working on the card. While we are generally happy with it, numbers and effects might still change before release. 


Swarm will be a new tier 3 Nature card, and will be an uncommon. Swarm will release in our next content patch in June. Let's break down the card.

Beetle Infestation
Summons a swarm of four Burrowers at the target location which die after 20 seconds. The Burrowers can be controlled by the player, but they do not provide ground presence. They will have the same upgrade level as the spell itself. Reusable every 25 seconds.
 
Design notes: While Nature decks have a lot of flexibility, one of Nature's persistent weaknesses is buildings. None of Nature's damage spells affect buildings and the faction lacks long-range siege abilities that would allow players to target important buildings in the backline. While we have tried multiple solutions to this problem that were not just adding a Nature version of Earthshaker, we also recognized that Nature does need a specific anti-building spell. Still, we wanted to give this spell a unique twist that fits the Nature faction and so we settled on a spell which spawns burrowers unconditionally, allowing you to directly target buildings with siege bugs.  
 
• Art Spotlight - Swarm

Since we knew Swarm would be spawning Burrowers, our obvious starting point for the card artwork was the original Burrower artwork. We wanted the card to clearly showcase the units being spawned were the familiar insect, yet keep the artwork distinct enough to convey that this is a spell, not a unit.

Our artist, SpiritAlpha, began with four rough sketches to determine the best way to achieve this. Knowing we could use the original spawn animation of Burrowers crawling out of the ground, we kept this in mind while working on the artwork. We quickly settled on the final pose.
      
We then spent a lot of time ensuring the creatures resembled the original Burrowers while being distinct enough to recognize each card separately in the deck. We experimented with various green color schemes, and a few iterations are shown below.
      
We liked how the piece was coming along, but were concerned about the lack of contrast, given that the entire artwork consisted of various shades of green. We brightened up the background to make the Burrowers pop a bit more. During the process, we also placed the artwork within the card border to ensure it remained clear and readable in-game, and we explored various options for its zoom level. We finalized the piece by adding some flying grass and raising the grass on the ground to align with the card frame's cut-off point. Making the Burrowers' eyes glow also turned out to be a nice finishing touch.
      
 
We are very happy with the end result, and hope players will appreciate the hard work of SpiritAlpha!
 
• Events

In between our monthly Community Updates, we host various events and tournaments, so be sure to keep a close eye on the in-game event tab and the forum calendar to stay informed and not miss out on any exciting events!
 
• FINISHED - Official Event #13 - A Town in Need is a Town Indeed
For this newly released community map, players had the choice of defending the town or overwhelming the Twilight attackers. You can watch the highlight video here, and be sure to check the map out if you haven't already.
 
 • SECOND PHASE IN PROGRESS - 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 share Bergerb has joined the map department. He has been working on fixing some of the bugs of the campaign, and will help the team in streamlining various maps. We also have a new Testing Coordinator. After Volin retired his role, we are glad to have Vrizz take up the mantle. Thank you, and a warm welcome to the team.
 
• 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.
After player feedback in our latest survey showed that players dislike scratch codes, we have decided to remove them.
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 May 2024

maybe today
Glad you are enjoying our favourite turtle!

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
 

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!

• General Update

It's been a while since our last content patch, and we'd like to provide a brief update on the project. Skylords Reborn relies entirely on the free time of our dedicated volunteers. While we strive to address sudden spikes in inactivity as effectively as possible, there are occasions when unexpected delays are inevitable. Our aim is to strike a balance between revealing upcoming new content and features and getting them into your hands. Currently, this balance is a bit off, resulting in the announcement of some upcoming features a while ago, while they have not yet been implemented. We hope for your understanding in these matters and that you still appreciate us showing what we are working on.
We'd also like to inform you that progress on our upcoming campaign maps is proceeding smoothly. Although we haven't disclosed specific details yet, this decision was made deliberately. The process of map creation can be complex, and even in the late stages of development, maps can undergo significant changes. We want to ensure that our new maps earn their place alongside the existing campaign, so we've invested substantial time in establishing the foundational elements to build upon. Our dedicated testers are currently working to ensure these maps provide an enjoyable playing experience, and we're confident that the end result will be something you'll greatly appreciate. Please stay tuned for more updates!
 
• New Card Reveal - Bedrock

In June, we unveiled the artwork for our highly anticipated tier 4 Stonekin turtle. Since then, people have been curious about the card and its associated effects. Today we are excited to show you the design for the upcoming Stonekin unit: Bedrock.
Please note: We are still testing the card. While we are generally happy with it, numbers, effects, and its rarity might still change before release. 
 

 
Delving further into the building-focused Stonekin archetype, Bedrock offers Stonekin players an exciting and versatile tool for the endgame. If you want to learn more about this archetype, please check out the Stonekin Deep Dive!
Bedrock stands as a formidable elemental destroyer, capable of both laying siege to enemy buildings and constructing new ones. Additionally, it possesses the ability to fortify friendly structures with an Ice Shield. This card has a ranged auto-attack, siege, two active abilities, and, naturally, the Stonekin passive ability.
Bedrock will be available in two different affinities, each influencing its unique Sculptor ability. Once released, the card will drop from boosters and can be reforgable. 
Bedrock will be the first Ultra Rare card from the Rebirth Edition. To make sure enough players will be able to enjoy the card, we are considering hosting an event around the release where you can earn the card. Stay tuned for more information.  
 
 
 
Let's break down the card: 
 
 Rock Throw (auto attack)
Range: 30m
Every 3 seconds, unit fires a molten stone dealing 633 damage, up to 950 in total. Knocks back small and medium units.
 

Blessed/Tainted Sculptor
Range: 30m
Place a Stone Launcher with an affinity towards Frost/Shadow that deconstructs after 30 seconds at a target location within a 30m radius. Only one tower may be placed at a time. Can be placed nearby enemy units and structures. Reusable every 30 seconds.
 
Living Rampart
Cost: 50p - Range: 30m
All friendly buildings in a 30m radius will be fortified, gaining an Ice Shield that absorbs 1800 damage for 15 seconds. The Ice Shield renews itself once after 15 seconds to absorb an additional 1800 damage. Reusable every 30 seconds.
 
 Siege
Deals 100% more damage against structures.
 Adamant Skin (Stonekin faction passive ability)
The unit takes 15% less damage
 
Bedrock has been in the making for quite some time now, and we still need a little more time to work on some technical implications. Alongside the new Tectonic Shift card and some upcoming balance changes, we hope to improve and explore the playstyles of the Stonekin faction. We are currently not able to communicate a release date yet.
 
• Look reveal - Bedrock

And finally, here's a sneak peek at how Bedrock will appear in the game!  We hope you are looking forward to our new favourite stone turtle!
   • Community Spotlight - Masters of the Forge

Skylord of Honour and CCC-host Kapo started a new project this month: Masters of the Forge.
In this podcast-like series, Kapo interviews various staff members to discuss the project and personal stories about their interaction with BattleForge and Skylords Reborn. In his own words:
Masters of the Forge will shine a light on all those people working so tirelessly on Skylords Reborn - for the average Skylord, [Game Masters] are elite, mythical creatures too many know nothing about, and we will hopefully change that. So, in this dev-talk-like podcast series we will meet several Masters of the Forge in person, and hopefully I will be able to ask them questions that are interesting to you. And, you will also get the chance to ask them some questions! The series will be streamed on Twitch and afterwards uploaded on YouTube.
Please note that while the content created is supported by the SR Team and will be all about Skylords Reborn, this is no official event or dev-talk. The focus will be around the guest, what their duties are, how they feel about the game and its development - we will not elaborate future changes in depth or announce anything fancy. But hopefully we will know more about the guest and how It's like to be part of the SR Team.

There are currently 3 episodes to watch:
• Episode 1: Dutchy, Lead Moderator
In this episode, Kapo and Dutchy discuss various moderator-related topics. Find out about how our moderators keep Skylords Reborn a fair community. Watch now.

• Episode 2: Majora, Project Coordinator
In this episode, Kapo and yours truly talk about the Community Updates and Project Coordination. We also go over what goes into creating a new card for Skylords Reborn, and which departments are needed to make it happen. Watch now.

• Episode 3: Volin, Testing Coordinator
In this episode, Kapo and Volin dive into the topic of testing, a crucial part of the game. As a special treat, Volin showcases the new rPvE difficulty 9.5, as previously announced in our community update. Watch now.
Episode 4 will be hosted live on the 7th of October and feature RadicalX, Game Designer and PvP expert. Tune in live on Twitch, or watch back on YouTube the day after.  
 
• 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 - 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 - Spotlight

If you are interested in helping out with our upcoming new campaign maps, Map Tester might be of interest to you!
 
• Open Position - Map Tester
As a map tester, you get early access to new maps and game modes and are responsible to playtest them and provide feedback to the other map developers about possible issues or improvements. This includes checking how balanced the map is, how fun it is to play, if there are any exploits, if areas on the map need to be prettified etc. Map developers/designers/artists should be able to rely on you to make sure maps that are released or changed are done so properly.
More information.
 
But there are more roles available. Below, you can take a look at all our open positions. 
Skylords Reborn is a community-driven project fuelled by the passion and dedication of over 45 volunteers. We are always on the lookout for like-minded individuals. If you have a passion for gaming, programming, design, or marketing, we invite you to take a look at our open positions!
 

 
• In Conclusion

That's all for this Community Update! We appreciate you taking the time to read through it.
As is tradition, we're including a scratch code as a small token of our appreciation for your support.
The code will reward you with a Stonekin booster: DOYO-ULIK-ETUR-TLES
The code is valid until November 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 September 2023

Hello everyone,
I am excited to announce that I will join the Skylords Reborn team as Community Manager!
As Community Manager I will be responsible for the communications between the Skylords Reborn team and the community. This will allow the team to focus more on their own positions, bringing you content and balancing patches faster, where I will be keeping you up to date about everything Skylords Reborn. This also includes on our social media channels, such as Twitter and Facebook.
One of the ways you can expect this to work is with biweekly status updates, highlighting things you might have missed and giving you sneak previews on what is being worked on.
I will also be making notes on frequently asked questions and the hot topics that are being discussed in the forums, discord or in-game. If you have any questions or ideas, feel free to post them in the forum or discord page, just as you are doing now. I will make sure to forward your ideas and questions to the team.
I'm happy and honored to join the team, being a Battleforge fan from the very first hour and I look forward in helping the project. If you also want to help, please take a look at the open staff positions here.
For now, please give me a bit of time to get up to date with the things happening behind the scenes. After that you can expect the very first biweekly status update, which I hope will result in a positive tradition.
I hope you are as excited as I am about the future of Skylords Reborn, and I look forward to working (and playing!) alongside all of you!

Patch #400026
Greetings Skylords, Skyladies and Skyfolk,
this is a minor update that for the most part includes a few fixes for the server crashes which happened during the last couple of weeks, and also the new spectator maps which were published on the test server last week. We also handed out the boosters which were promised for the players who were experiencing issues during the server instabilities back in January, and to the players who participated in Toggy's last tournament with sponsored prizes. We're sorry for the people who had to wait for their boosters until now. If you're wondering why the frequency of updates has drastically decreased recently, please read this announcement:
General changes
- Fixed various causes of server crashes.
- Added official spectator maps for the 1vs1 pvp maps. These maps are based on the recent reworks on the test server.
- Added the completion date for achievements.
- Reordered and added some loading screen hints. - translations done by LEBOVIM, Liorans, and Irisunna
- Reworked russian translations for many UI-Texts (Mostly surrounding Quests) - translations done by Liorans
- Removed Wazhai from the PvP ranked pool.
General fixes
- Fixed edge case where the UI would say that the player had an active booster discount when they did not.

We're expecting a downtime of around 30 minutes from approximately 8:30 to 9:00 CEST.

We are greatful for the Skylords Reborn staff! 
TY for everything

We are greatful for the Skylords Reborn staff! 
TY for everything

We are greatful for the Skylords Reborn staff! 
TY for everything

Greetings Skylords, Skyladies and Skyfolks!
Throughout the past few weeks we have noticed increasingly negative comments and remarks with regards to Skylords Reborn, its progress and its development time. Accusations of us scamming supporters are made on a daily basis, and while that is simply false in every aspect, we do understand that a lot of you have major concerns and are worried about the project, whether it's still a thing, whether we have run off with Patreon funds, and where we are right now after 3 years of development. Don't worry, though! We live, and as you will soon find out, we are doing well and are going nowhere!
The thing is, and beta testers know this, that we are actually making a lot of progress to the point where we are busy stress testing the servers with the Closed Beta testing group, improving server stability and creeping closer to Open Beta with every single test. And by the Old Gods, it took a while to get here. A lot of you have an idea of how long a game development cycle can take, and so it is only understandable that 3 years seems like an awful lot just to bring a game back. However, it's a lot more complicated than that due to this being a passion/voluntary project that we don't get paid for, and finding/fixing bugs being way more complex due to us not having made the client code at all. This makes it an unpredictable process in which we can't set deadlines or promise fixed release times. For a more detailed explanation, refer to the quote below from the Open Beta Information thread:
Rest assured, we are happy to inform you that we don't want to make money from this project (even if we wanted to, it would be illegal), and that your support is not in vain. Supporting the project is also completely voluntary, and we do not give any game rewards to patrons at all. Thanks to every single one of you who has been having faith in this project and supporting us by being a thriving and friendly community, we have managed to come a long way in 3 years, in which we faced managerial issues, legal complications, several server rewrites, and a lot of swapping regarding staff and partnerships. Our team right now is very solid and progressive, though, and we're getting closer and closer to that glorious Open Beta. We are reaching important testing milestones, which is fantastic. For example, @Kubik has evaluated our latest Closed Beta Stress Test, which was held yesterday. He has collected the following results:
For more details on the stress test results, there will be an update on our Developer Platform soon!
"What does all this mean?" you may wonder. In essence, it means that we are ironing out some of the last bugs in the current server code (as far as we can see), are getting further in making 12-player maps work properly, and the server is currently able to handle quite some players at the same time. In other words, progress, progress, progress! Keeping this in mind, we would like to give you the following information:
Something BIG is coming.
Though we will not be reaching a full open beta state just yet, something large and important will be coming to the Skylords Reborn community in the near future. To present this and to provide you with details on this big development milestone, we will be announcing a new, important official stream very soon, so stay tuned!
 
Hopefully this update will clarify things and ease away some of the major concerns you may all be having regarding the project. Be sure to check the forums, discord or other social media for the stream announcements, and for weekly updates about all the progress we are actively making, check our Developer Platform!
Thank you all again for your undying support and dedication to the project and the game, and we hope to bring all over 21 THOUSAND of you Skylords, Skyladies and Skythings (*GASP*) more great progress and updates in the near future!

Dearest Skylords, Skyladies, Skyfolks,
I'm sure most of you have an idea what this announcement is going to be about, given the latest status on Open Beta. As you all have realised, we haven't quite made our promised release goal of week 8. This mainly has to do with PvE breaking way more badly than we expected and fixing taking a lot more time than anticipated. How much time will this take? Well, please allow me a bit more space to explain. 
The Skylords community has grown bigger and better than ever before, for almost 3 years now. We are growing closer to the public beta release of the game, and we're growing more hyped and enthusiastic with every development update Fiki posts. This is a fantastic thing; the BattleForge community has always been my favourite community around, where everyone is relatively friendly and inviting, has fun together and creates a warm, comforting atmosphere. However, as with most hyped projects, enthusiasm can rapidly take over and make both community and developer overexcited. This is generally a great thing, except when it concerns voluntary development as is the case with Skylords Reborn. Don't get me wrong, it's great that you are all so excited about the game; it's really mostly on our side that causes issues. 
The programming team is just as excited about this as you are, and they are working tirelessly to make Open Beta a reality as soon as possible. However, with great hype and little experiences with such projects and group communities, comes great positivity. As you may know from the past, we have always been quite generous with our milestone and deadline estimations, striving every single day to make you all as happy and enthusiastic as possible, pushing our limits to satisfy you, the community, as well as we can. In our combined enthusiasm and desire to bring back a great game to you all, we have been blind to the risks of game development, and made completion date estimates very positively; but game development doesn't work like that. Something will always break, and several things have broken and put us back, changed things up, turned our schedule around. Real life has interfered, servers have been crashed, and the programming team has generally just been looking at the development cycle way too positively and have given themselves way too little time to work with in case things wouldn't go as planned. This has created a lot of frustration on the team and we have been rushing while we shouldn't rush.
Especially in this week of hype, the entire team has experienced the results of massive hype. Tonnes of repeated questions, lots of enthusiasm, but also lots of doubt, lots of impatience, and foremost, intense amounts of pressure on all of our shoulders. The drive and need to meet our target time got so emphasised, and the expectations were unfathomably high. And sadly I have to say that it is taking its toll on some of our team members, even outside of the programming department; we're being hit very hard, but we remain steadfast, for all of you!. We are doing our utmost best to keep you all informed, engaged, and excited about the project, and the last thing we want to do is to disappoint you; and every single time that we may have to, every single time that things go wrong and Open Beta ETA's have proven to be just a little too generous, we disappoint you. And I am certain that I can speak for the entire team if I say that it sometimes genuinely does feel like we fail you all with these hopes we work up for you and end up being forced to shatter. Please be aware that this was never our intention, and unforeseen consequences have resulted in many delays. This has driven the team to a very important and hard decision.
We are not going to give you any exact Open Beta completion times anymore. We will be more broad in our approach, and development timeframes will be larger.
I regret to announce that this is something that really must happen; but I truly care about you all as a community and it breaks my heart every single time we awaken hopes in you that turn out to be false, disappoint and fail you with declaring that we haven't met our terms... needless to say it hurts all of us, the SR team. We're done making unrealistic promises to you guys, and we are sick, tired, and exhausted of disappointing this amazing community over and over. You don't deserve that, and so we will broaden our estimations widely. 
This means that any development estimated times will be longer, but also more uncertain.
This does by no means imply that we are slowing down development. On the contrary! We are working and progressing harder than ever, as many Closed Beta testers can actively tell you. We understand you may be doubting us at this point, we understand you feel like the project isn't progressing enough, and we truly do understand you all want to play; but just short of a hundred testers can tell you that we are making massive progress every day. This project is happening right now as we speak, and those who doubted we would ever get the game online have been proven wrong, and we strive to keep proving doubters wrong as we progress daily. With this new way of announcing progression, it would mean less stress on the team, hopefully no heavy disappointment to the community, and the more exciting and enjoyable the moment is if we finish way ahead of schedule (which is now also way more likely). Hopefully this will give you all a better impression and allow for more realistic expectations.
Game development can take a lot of time, and especially for SR, it is extremely unpredictable. Things can suddenly go wrong, or we can suddenly make huge surges of progress. The most important thing remains that we don't want to rush things. When we release Open Beta we want stable servers, and the best experience for every single one of you. Coding under pressure will only create more bugs, flaws, crashes, and mental problems for our programmers, so we are giving them the time they need. We hope that you can understand this.
That being said, with some of the issues persisting, we will have to give Fiki and his majestic team of programmers some additional time to iron out the remaining bugs, memory leaks, and other annoyances before we allow you all in. Trust us when we say that we don't want you to get hyped, enter the servers, and have an uncomfortable experience or have the servers crash. That would be awful, and we don't want to kill off your enjoyment like that.

------TL;DR? Start here-------
The programming department has stated that they will need some more time to fix these issues. Although we consider this to be able to be completed sooner rather than later, we need to take risks and possible further delays into account. If we do end up knowing when we're releasing Open Beta with absolute certainty, you bet we'll have you know when!  -- Remember, we could be done way sooner or later than expected! Check the devplatform for the most up-to-date status of the game and/or release predictions: http://dev.skylords.eu/

Another very important note: There has been some false information that has been spread through the community on several different platforms, causing a lot of unnecessary havoc and stress for both community and staff. We would like to remind you that you can find all relevant and correct news and announcements on our official social media, but most importantly forum posts that keep you up to date. Please do not blindly trust any dates or information given to you by community members that you don't know, especially if it sounds groundbreaking or impactful; if you can't find it on the forums, it's probably not true. Remember, content written by any member with a coloured name are staff posts; official announcements made by them are to be considered as true. Confused as to who is part of the team? Follow this link for a list: https://forum.skylords.eu/index.php?/staff/

But there's some positive news too!
> The launcher is coming along nicely, and has been worked on separately from the server. That means that once server work is done, we won't also have to start making the launcher from scratch, which will save a lot of time!
> Many of you have expressed that they missed the original Booster Simulator. Now, the simulator is back in action and better than ever, integrated in our new cardbase, accurately supporting the booster ratios that will be in-game. Find it here: https://allcards.skylords.eu/booster.html
> Additionally, we have noticed a huge amount of questions for when Open Beta starts. Trust me when I say there will be a giant thread when Open Beta is released that will explain everything to you! Please be patient with your Open Beta questions until it starts; it will all be revealed.
> Feeling like you may have been too enthusiastic about Closed Beta giveaways? We will assure you that if you have been blacklisted on our Discord server and prevented from entering Closed Beta, your bans will be revoked and you will be given a second chance for Open Beta. Please don't break anything
> We have upgraded the forums to handle more traffic. You should all have a way smoother experience than before; our server was running at 220% CPU capacity, ouch! We're now running more smoothly, so you should experience faster loading times and a better overall connection to this website.
> During this upgrade, however, we almost lost the forum database because of all the problems linked to our server. We managed to save it just in time!
> The next big announcement we will make will be the Open Beta Announcement, which we will stream on our Twitch channel (https://www.twitch.tv/skylordsreborn). In the meantime, it is possible that we will stream some BattleForge on the official channel to give you an idea of how everything runs while we work on getting a good Open Beta working for you.
We would like to once again apologise for yet another delay and future vagueness on estimated times, and we would like to reassure you that it's healthier for the game's development, safety, stability, and enjoyability, as well as it is better for the health of the team, as we can take things easier on the moderation team, and allow the programmers to prioritise quality over time. We will do our utmost best to bring Open Beta to you as soon as we can, without the pains and frustrations and disappointment of further delays. We hope that you can understand and respect this decision, have the courage and determination to be patient for just a little longer, and that we may stand strong as a community, and that we may remain the most welcoming, friendly and comfortable community out there. Together we will soon reclaim the Forge and protect the lands of Nyn once again!
Sincerely, and on behalf of the entire Skylords Reborn Team,
MrXLink, your Community Manager

"Wasn't there a date in here?" Yes, that is correct, and we removed it for good reason. Refer to this post for details.

@Ultrakool @InsaneHawk  @MrXLink @Kiwi @fiki574 Personally, there is no need to apologise! I love you all like brothers and I don't mind it that there is a delay. In fact, we need to thank you all for doing all this excellent and hard work for us with bringing the game back! And Not just bring it back, but also making it better! I know it must be somtimes hard for y'all but never get your heads down & always go on! keep thinking positive and remember, when you are down, the only way to go is up!

You're all doing a great job & far better than most ppl or leading game companies would tbh xd we can count on you unlike other people in this world.
You can make delays as much as you want, I'll always be here to support every1 in whatever times that will come and aid where I can.

Forget all those negative people and those yelling at you or swearing at you, just ignore them, the only thing they are doing is making you even more famous and loved because of the support you'll get of the good members in here.

I believe in all of you and I just know you can do it!  

Take all the time you need. You are doing an amazing job. Let's all keep up the