Treim

After playing a few days again too much rpve I have to come back to this topic once again. 🙂

More and more I can't understand this "Fire is to easy" thing. Many people that I see struggle with the high damage output of the fire faction. I see a comparable amount of wipes against Fire then I see against Lost Souls. Even some above average players struggle if they come with (solid) non-meta decks.
Meta decks struggle partly too, especially when they bring the standard Fire T1 which can perform nicely but must be played very clean. Same for usual FireT1 vs T3 bases - the meta here is countered very well and only works when it is played super clean. Don't get me wrong, that's all doable tasks, but playing random groups I see a complete different picture then Fundus and the TO do see here.
And for the Bosses I see even the total opposite for this beast "Abbadon" - he is unfair strong and wipes most solo or duo engages in the first attempt, as his damage is overpowered high. I think I cleared him 2 times in the first approach in all the times that I met him and have seen the same for other players. This counts too for very strong and known above average players.
The only safe engage is in maps where the last row is a long line where all 4 players naturally gather and walk the path together, but even here I saw very close calls. Another quite safe engage is when you have a Nature (big heals) and a pure Frost player (both big shields) have huge armys or support a boss killer like Bloodhorns - all paired with a running Shrine of War to throw in all the mass heals and shields and the boss is down very fast.
When he stays as he is, I am quite sure some of us will learn to approach him better and better - no question. We will find ways to deal with him. But in the end we would have the same situation as for example a T3 Lost Souls camp, with Vigils, a double spawn on it, that is close to the outer lanes T2 - doable for some of us, while most players just feel desperate how to engage such situations. Or an even better comparison would perhaps be a LS BG10 with Vigils on T2. Yes this is doable, by roughly (if at all) 10 players on this server. Do we really want to tighten things that much?

I already start to read "Oh no fire" as the "Oh no Lost Souls" that we have. I personally still feel the faction is very well balanced and like the complete different feeling to fight them with their high damage output but therefore low HP. I am a big fan of learning how to deal with that instead of running away anything that is harder then a Bandit map with single spawn lanes on T3 - but making fire harder would not have a bit support from me. And according to Abbadon - please consider if his AoE dmg can nerfed to a point where a good player can heal/shield against it if he brings his spells on point. It feels unfair if 3 Players throw in heals and still a strong army is wrecked like nothing.

Is there a quest you really would like to have in the game? Well here is your chance on suggesting it and maybe the devs will implement it.
This thread's purpose is to collect all kinds of ideas for quests and achievements to help out the staff team with coming up with those and instead just picking the good/ best ones out of here.
Please try to not suggest ideas that are already on the list in some form (also include not suggesting numbers for a already existing quest).
Please note that i am not part of the staff and therefor can not guarantee that any of your suggestions will get implemented in any kind or form.
If you post your ideas here i will add them to the main post to the best of my abilities . The general ones i will post in a general form so they can be applied to every map/ difficulty in that way. Thanks in advance to all ideas mentioned.
Suggestion: General quests could be expanded to also include selected community maps.
General quests/achievements:
Complete x map on standard/advanced(or higher)/ expert difficulty Reach x PvE/PvP rank Complete a 1/2/4/any rPvE map on x difficulty Play/Complete x games of PvP/ranked PvP Play x amount of time in a PvP/ranked PvP/PVE/rPVE/any match Complete the story around Rogan Kayle Complete the Story around Mo Complete every map on standard/advanced/expert difficulty Complete any map with only x cards in your deck on standard/advanced/expert difficulty Play/Complete x amounts of PvE/rPvE/PvP/ranked PvP games (on x difficulty- PvE only) Open all gold chests on x map on x difficulty Complete x map in under x minutes Complete a ranked PvP match in under x minutes (Countermeasure against instant leaves probably necassary) Complete x amounts of daily quests/achievements Open x amounts of gold chests/boosters total Complete a 2/4 player map solo on x difficulty Deal x amount of damage using spells/buildings/units (all time) Heal x amount of health (units only - no regenerating at nearby buildings/wells/monuments Built x amounts of orbs/power wells/ (killing and rebuilding orbs does not count) Use x card/any single card/any single card type(spells, buildings, units) x amounts of time Use (any) card abilities x amounts of times Kill x amounts of Lost Souls/Bandits/Stonekin/Twilight enemies Have 4 different orbs in a match Break x amounts of shields/ break shields with the HP value of y Reach the Unit limit with only small/flying/x unit(s) Don't let a single of your units in a match die Destroy an enemy structure with your own building Complete a map without spawning a ranged unit  Complete x map with only unit cards One Shot any Boss Hear "a monument is destroyed" x amounts of times Build x wells and/or y monuments Break the population/unit limit by at least x points Get 1000 power from your void within 3 seconds Control a single unit of s units for x seconds Complete x map without/only using fire/frost/nature/shadow (splashs included/splashs not included) on y difficulty -->(maybe 1 map for each orb) Play/Win a match with x differentt(unique) players Participate/Reach x rank in an "official" Skylords Reborn tournament (probably needs to be handed out manually) Use every card in your deck at least once in x amounts of matches Complete x amounts of matches playing with a friend Let a unit survive for at least 15 minutes Have no void power at any time in a match Complete a match without using any spells/buildings Complete any map without self-destructing a single unit or building  
"Out of match" achievements:
Clone x amounts of decks Add your own custommade map to Battleforge Win x amount of bid auctions Kill all AI creatures available in the forge at least once Upgrade x card(s) to rank 1/2/3 (with rarity common/uncommon/rare/ultra rare) Own x unique/every cards of y faction/edition/element /rarity/size/total Trade/Buy/Sell x amount of cards Upgrade x cards to UX Add x players to your friendlist Reach deck level x Buy x amounts of boosters Earn x amounts of BFP/gold with Quests/Achievements/Trading/any way Show a (single unique) deck to x persons Watch x amounts of different decks (from other players)  
Specific quests/achievements:
I will try to seperate good ideas for endgame achievements beforehand in a 2nd list below. Please let me know if you agree with that kind of structuring and if you have a different opinion on how good those choices are. This is done simply for better visibility and a better overall structure as i a assume we will have quite a number of suggestions:
Ability/Card Specific Quests/Achievements
Teleport a unit using a "tunnel" ability Travel through a Deepcoil Worm with another Deepcoil Worm Complete a level 1 battleground using only "snapjaws" "Freeze" x amounts of units in matches (Santa Reward?) Destroy x amount of buildings using a unit with the "siege ability" Absorb/Heal x amount using "Ashbone Pyro" Do x amount of damage using "x unit" Use a "revenants doom ability" Use a "transform ability" "Knock back" x amounts of unit Spawn more than x % of units within range of "Breeding Grounds" Have 12 "Lost Spirit Ships" spawned at the same time Have every dragon creature summoned at the same time (t4 only -- Fire Dragon, Lost Dragon, Giant Wyrm, Grim Bahir, Skycatcher) Have every Worm summoned at the same time (Fire Worm, Shadow Worm, Deepcoil Worm, Core Dredge) Use "Enlightenment" to build an "Ice Barrier" Grab a paralyzed target with a "Deep One" Summon "all legendary cards" in a match Make a "Shadow Phoenix" revive x times or more Build all 4 Affinity Crystals in 1 match Kill a Nightguard that was once yours with a Nox Trooper ability Deconstruct a unit that has more than 6k health (by using Wrathgazer, Grigori, Shadow Worm, etc) Destroy x units with a single Shadow Worm/Church of Negation Build a root network with at least x participants (units or buildings) Use a healing spell to revive at least x squad members at once Let a Tortugun eat x population or more in 1 match Destroy x or more buildings with a single Worldbreaker Gun shot Kill any Boss using only Termite Hills  
(Map)specific quests/achievements
i will not specifically name the difficulty or the like on these achievements as they probably have to be manually chosen by the staff team, maybe in cooperation with the community to allow for enough achievements on each difficulty of play and to make them reasonable for the players that play on that level. These are supposed to be challenging not outright impossible for players of that skill level. The really hard ones  come down below .
Complete "Introduction" without killing the Bandit Healer Complete "Introduction" without building t3 units Complete "Encounters with Twilight" by attacking the Twilight fortifications on x difficulty Complete "Encounters with Twilight" without a spirit reaching the Wrathgazer (was it called that?) on x difficulty Complete "Encounters with Twilight" by defending against the Twilight horde attacking on x difficulty Complete "Encounters with Twilight" and don't loose any units to the Wrathgazer on x difficulty Complete "Siege of Hope" without any defenders dying on x diffiuclty Complete "Siege of Hope" Complete "Defending Hope" without Rogan taking any damage on x difficulty Complete "The Soultree" without Moon getting under x % of health on x difficulty (no Amii-Monument) Complete "The Soultree" without any of the Lyrish Defenders die on x difficulty Complete "Mo" and kill the Commando Walker on x difficulty Complete "Mo" without any of the Banzai birds exploding Complete "Oracle" using all trick magic devices in Oracle correctly on the first try Complete "The Treasure Fleet" without losing a single Gold Wagon on x difficulty Complete "The Treasure Fleet" without opening a single Gold Chest Complete "Sunbridge" switching the gate in Sunbridge x amount of times on x difficulty Complete "Sunbridge" without loosing any units against Mora on x difficulty Complete "Convoy" without letting x amouns of Walkers die on y difficulty Complete "Convoy" without using the spell devices more than x times on y difficulty Complete "Nightmares End" without losing any of the nodes on x difficulty Complete "The Insane God" without letting any of the priests or temples take damage on x difficulty Complete "Bad Harvest" without the Gold Wagon taking any damage on x difficulty Complete "Titans" and save every single Prisoner on x difficulty Complete "Blight" killing the Ravenheart in under x seconds on x difficulty Complete "Blight" without failing to destroy a bandit camp in time on x difficulty Complete "Empire" killing Brannoc in x amount of time on x difficulty Complete "The Ravens End" killing at least x amounts of Raven Scoutships on x difficulty Complete "Guns of Lyr" without Rogans Stronghold taking any damage on x difficulty Complete "The Dwarven Riddle" without using the Fire Altar on x difficulty Complete a "Battleground difficulty 5" only using Manawing and Deathglider Complete a "PvP ranked match" going t3 before your opponent builds a second monument Kill a Promo unit with a Promo unit in a "PvP ranked match" Kill an XL unit with a S unit in a "PvP ranked match" Kill x amounts of frozen units in "PvP matches" Win a match with someone x PvP ranks lower than you in a "PvP Match" (same team) Complete a "Battleground" match on every difficulty Complete a "usergenerated map" on x difficulty  
Endgame, (map)specific quests/achievements:
Some of these probably need some testing if at all possible (I will mark the ones i think might prove difficult to achieve or have outright no clue if possible for testing by making them yellow coloured. If you have already completed such feats in the original game or know that they are possible let me know and i will make sure they are no longer coloured).
Complete "Mo" without Mo ever getting under x% (maybe 90%/95%/99%?) of HP on expert difficulty Complete "Crusade" without using the teleporters on expert difficulty Complete "Crusade" without building any walls on expert difficulty Complete "Sunbridge" without using the Amii-Portal-Switches on expert difficulty Complete "Slavemaster" without using the Firetrap on expert difficulty Complete "Bad Harvest" without building any walls on expert difficulty Complete "King of the Giants" without Rogan Kayle taking any damage on expert difficulty Complete "Dwarven Riddle" solo without building any buildings (including walls) on expert difficulty Complete "The Dwarven Riddle" killing all crystals within 3 minutes after destroying the first one on expert difficulty Complete "Guns of Lyr" solo without building any buildings (including walls) on expert difficulty Complete any 2 Player map solo using the tutorial deck on expert difficulty Complete a 12 Player map with only on person on each map and without using any spells on expert difficulty Complete all PVE maps in under 6 hours on expert difficulty (adding the all-time speedrun rankings of all time together (no rPvE) results in about 5 hours and 20-25 minutes --> 6 hours should be possible but still be a challenge even for most if not all speedrunners) --> can this even be tracked? Complete a "solo lvl 10 Battleground match" with only 2 monuments build total Own every card at least once ( (not) including promos?) Have every card fully upgraded (U3 + fully charged) Complete 1P rPvE at lvl x in under y minutes Complete 2P rPvE at lvl x in under y minutes Complete 4P rPvE in under 10 minutes 30 seconds on difficulty 9 Complete 4P rPvE in under 13 minutes 30 seconds on difficulty 10 Own x amount of gold Complete x amounts of "PvP ranked matches" in a row Reach Top 3 in either ranked PVP 1v1 or 2v2 Reach Top 1 on any Map of the month ranking (not including maps with fixed times: F.e. Siege of Hope) Use every card at least once in a match (all time) Complete all 2 and 4 Player maps solo on expert difficulty Complete any map with maximal 4(?) cards solo on expert difficulty  
Changelog:
2018.08.17
Added a "Ability/ Card specific" list for a better structure.
Added @Eddio's suggestions (https://forum.skylords.eu/index.php?/topic/4166-quest-achievement-suggestions/&do=findComment&comment=70866)
2018.08.19
Added @Chimaka( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)'s suggestions (https://forum.skylords.eu/index.php?/topic/4166-quest-achievement-suggestions/&do=findComment&comment=70893)
Added @LetsEinfallslos002's thread (https://forum.skylords.eu/index.php?/topic/1948-achievements-for-bfr/&tab=comments#comment-40340)
--> Does not include the "Kill x amount of units with y" or "Control x amount of units with y card" quests/achievements as those can be done for every card and would therefor make the list even more unreadable as it already is
2018.08.29
Added @Navarr's suggestions (https://forum.skylords.eu/index.php?/topic/4166-quest-achievement-suggestions/&do=findComment&comment=70938)
Added @Smok's suggestions (https://forum.skylords.eu/index.php?/topic/4166-quest-achievement-suggestions/&do=findComment&comment=70959)
Added @MephistoRoss's thread (https://forum.skylords.eu/index.php?/topic/704-ideas-for-daily-quests/&)
Adeed achievement category "out of match" (should be rather self explanatory, but here you get anything that is about trading and forge activities and really anything that is not directly reached in a match)
2018.09.04
Added @Kiwi's thread (https://forum.skylords.eu/index.php?/topic/2737-quest-suggestions/&)
Added some more own map specific and end game specific quests
2018.09.08
Added @Navarr's post (https://forum.skylords.eu/index.php?/topic/4166-quest-achievement-suggestions-megathread/&do=findComment&comment=71129)
Added some more own quests
2018.10.09
Added @Karl Lavafeld's post in form of a suggestion/hint in the thread introduction (https://forum.skylords.eu/index.php?/topic/4166-quest-achievement-suggestions-megathread/&do=findComment&comment=76186)

I didn't like churches as my engineers kept on taking away from the unit limit later on - also my placement was bad so that engineers kept on dying by maelstroms.. Cultist Master to charge the necroblasters initially and for a bit of void return, also for offering (frenetic assault + skyelf sage).
Replay file attached for anyone wanting to have a look - was my first time on the map.
20220111_173234_the_last_soultree.pmv

It's valid till the end of January, so no worries 😃

Great idea,
sadly I only got today to get a time in and improve upon it. Well let's see where I end up.

Great idea,
sadly I only got today to get a time in and improve upon it. Well let's see where I end up.

Great idea,
sadly I only got today to get a time in and improve upon it. Well let's see where I end up.

Great idea,
sadly I only got today to get a time in and improve upon it. Well let's see where I end up.

Great idea,
sadly I only got today to get a time in and improve upon it. Well let's see where I end up.

Great idea,
sadly I only got today to get a time in and improve upon it. Well let's see where I end up.

Hello Skylords, Skyladies and other Skybeings; and welcome to CCC #1 - the very first Crappy Community Contest!
 
 
THE CONTEST HAS ENDED.
To see the winners, scroll down below. If you are just here to grab the booster code, there you go:  CRAP-YCMN-TYCO-NTES
 
 
 
What are “Crappy Community Contests”?
This and future CCCs are meant to be super-small-scale contests with weird challenges, hopefully luring you away from well-trodden paths. They are small scale on the organizers side too: there will not be a stream, video or event announcing the winners. What's special about this contest is a participation price for the whole community.
 
What, when, where, how?
There are no special rules for this contest besides one:
rPVE 1 (Map of the Month) - Fastest time wins 

Small groups of bandits escaped from the rPVE9 contest. Kill them fast! 
 
The contest has started already! Submit your replay of your fastest rPVE 1 1-Player MotM run through Discord (DM to Kapo#0116, please include your IGN) or the Skylords Forum (DM to Kapo) until 26.12. 23:59:59 (= 7 days time total).

You can submit multiple times, but only your fastest one will count. Please note that the Top 3 Replays will be posted here in the forums.
You can find your replays here: Documents=>Battleforge=>replays
 
What's the prize pool?
Since this is not just a Crappy Contest, but a Crappy Community Contest, you may earn a price for the whole Community. If we reach more than 30 participants (unique players, not entries), you will unlock a Mini-Booster code for the whole Skylords Community. If more than 50 participants enter, it will be upgraded to a Booster instead of a Mini-Booster. So tell your fellow Skylords to do a quick run, rPVE 1 is less than three minutes but it raises our chances to hand out a code for everybody. 
 
The fastest skylords will get small prices too, sponsored by myself and other skylords:
1st place               1000 bfp + Easter Egg + Bandit Minefield + Nether Warp (G)
2nd place              500 bfp + Wheel of Gifts + Matter Mastery (G) + Grinder P
3rd place               250 bfp + Worldbreaker Gun + Rogan Kayle + Grinder P
4rd place               100 bfp + Church of Negation + Bandit Sniper + Grinder R
5rd place               100 bfp + Home Soil  + Bloodhorn (R) + Grinder R
6rd place               100 bfp + Battleship + Matter Mastery (G)
7rd place               100 bfp + Ashbone Pyro + Cultist Master
8rd place               75 bfp + Cultist Master + Ravenheart
9th place                50 bfp + Corsair + Ravenheart
10th place              50 bfp + Ravenheart + Plague
11th place              Crystal Fiend (G) + Aggressor G
12th place              Plague + Frost Crystal
13th place              Amii Paladins + Mountain Rowdy P
14th place              Amii Paladins + Coldsnap +
15th place              Soulhunter B + Soulhunter P
16th place              4 Crystals (Dark/Flame/...) and 2  Amii Phantoms as a Consolation Prize 😉

Upper 50%             Split share of 3000 BFP
Lower 50%             One random Skylord in the lower half recieves Enlightenment, another one Rageflame (B), another one Amii Monument.
Last Place               Juice Tank (x4)
In the unlikely case of a tie, the run that has been submitted earlier gets the higher placement in the ranks.
If one or more mighty Skylords decides to sponsor this event, please contact me, I would be more than happy to upgrade the price pool. My special thanks to the SR Team for supporting a community prize idea. Also a big thanks to the following Skylords for sponsoring cards and/or BFP:
THE_BIG_WET     Easter Egg Promo
CrazyCockerell    Bandit Sniper
Ultralord             500 BFP + Crystals
Dutchy                3000 BFP + Ashbone Pyro, Cultist Master, Home Soil, Battleship, Worldbreaker Gun, Bandit Minefield, Corsair (G), Bloodhorn (R),
                           Crystal Fiend (G), Matter Mastery (G), Rogan Kayle
Worgrimm          Amii Monument
Sanguiris             Rageflame B, Nether Warp (G), Church of Negation, Matter Mastery G, Ravenheart (x4), Grinder P (x2), Grinder R (x2), Cultist Master, Plague, Mountain Rowdy P, Frost Crystal, Soulhunter P, Soulhunter B, Aggressor G, Aggressor B, Amii Paladins (x2), Amii Phantom (x2)
Anonymous        Wheel of Gifts, Coldsnap, Plague
Anonymous 2     Enlightenment
Damo                 4 Juice Tanks specifically for the last Place
In conclusion
My hope is to start off a series of CCCs with very different ideas and themes, to explore the possibilities of small scale contests that don't take weeks to prepare and execute. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.
Best regards,
Kapo
 
Future events
If you are interested in helping with these (or better) kinds of events for the community, or want to host one yourself, don't be afraid and simply reach out! Contact our beloved Event Managers Minashigo Hiko and Metagross31 on the forums or discord. They are happy to assist you with upcoming events and with sponsoring your prize pool!
If you especially like this small-scale-format and you have an idea for it, you may also contact me directly to discuss your idea.

I wasn't able to keep Revenant alive throughout a whole battlegrounds. I think my maximum was about 4:30 to 5 minutes which is still considerable but far from indefinite. Generally the duration ran out after 3 to 4 minutes. The strategy has massive issues with long distance travel, so dead ends really kill the strategy as time is overall limited and the as you cant stay within Revenants Blessing to move you cut that time down further just by moving like that. That is why you need to plan your route meticously and scout the general map layout through the fog of war.
The deck revolved around using Lost Evocation + Blood Healing for sustain, 2x Revenants Blessing and both Netherwarps and staying clumped up with units as much as possible within bases to minimize the useage of Revenants Blessing.
A pure lost Souls deck is relatively underwhelming as is the case for most factions. What I like to do is build decks around keycards from these factions and if there are 2 cards that are relatively close in useability you choose the one that is of the faction even if slightly weaker than the "optimal choice". I think that way you can build a useable deck that can stay true to the factions/key cards identitiy without sacrificing playability too much.
To stay on topic of Lost Souls here you might want to play Viridya with Lost shades + Home Soil-Ice Barrier/ Motivate (Frostbite and Gravity Surge if necassary). While that makes it a non pure deck the core unit still is Lost Shades and you merely use supporting cards to enable/enhance the strategy.
You can generally build around 1 or 2 such concepts/ key cards for each tier and then build around that accordingly. You just need to ensure that certain cards do not take over the deck. Prominent examples are the aforementioned Frenetic assault and Infect as it is all too easy to suddenly make the deck reliant on those cards rather on the key cards you initially chose as such.
So e.g. you have the theoretical choice between Frenetic Assault and Coldsnap, Knight of Chaos or Glyph of Frost, Lost Converter --> discard Frenetic Assault as it is most likely to overbearing and pick one of the other ones that either works well with your current deck on the current map and that you can execute on. If choose the Freezing stuff maybe think about picking up complementary units like Lost Wanderer to enhance damage against frozen units or use netherwarp to teleport(requires t3) units into the effect radius of Lost Converter use Soul splicer to pick up souls and feed the converter, use Lost Vigils as main unit to make use of the building in t3 --> etc. You get the drill. Maybe you can make certain buildings or cards work at multiple times in the game that way.

i know this is a bit of abstract advice and maybe not the direct one you searched for but i hope that this helps you nonetheless.

added last months 1 Player replay and new alltime record. YT will follow sometime.
Sub 11 was possible but wouldve needed a perfect run which I didn't feel like grinding for any more.
Major time losses were the t3 clear where the strikers survived due to teh strikers not running out towards my spawned archers. Usually an archer squad survived the first dive and would pull it. Misclick of the archers to all attack the birds instead of 1 pushing towards t3 results (in combination with first well being late 5 secs and the mentioned 3rd dive of phoenixes) in t3 and therefor bata being about 10 seconds late.
Secondly the warp into the Slavemaster camp was slightly too far. Best case scenario was the Bata coming out directly left of the artillery. Where he can turn and directly attack the Slavemaster again while still killing the spawn camp with his aura. Instead of the little dance that he did in the replay - time loss about 5 secs. After killing the income bata stops running for about 3 seconds. Same thing for a moment after getting bata through the portal nexus - another 4 seconds. The cc in the top right camp was not nice but ultimately only cost me about 5 seconds as otherwise he couldve been positioned better towards the next camp.
That makes up around 27 seconds (10+5+3+4+5) + a second here or there for slightly better clears per camp. So ~10:50-10:55 with a perfect run at least with this strategy.
Deck used:

added last months 1 Player replay and new alltime record. YT will follow sometime.
Sub 11 was possible but wouldve needed a perfect run which I didn't feel like grinding for any more.
Major time losses were the t3 clear where the strikers survived due to teh strikers not running out towards my spawned archers. Usually an archer squad survived the first dive and would pull it. Misclick of the archers to all attack the birds instead of 1 pushing towards t3 results (in combination with first well being late 5 secs and the mentioned 3rd dive of phoenixes) in t3 and therefor bata being about 10 seconds late.
Secondly the warp into the Slavemaster camp was slightly too far. Best case scenario was the Bata coming out directly left of the artillery. Where he can turn and directly attack the Slavemaster again while still killing the spawn camp with his aura. Instead of the little dance that he did in the replay - time loss about 5 secs. After killing the income bata stops running for about 3 seconds. Same thing for a moment after getting bata through the portal nexus - another 4 seconds. The cc in the top right camp was not nice but ultimately only cost me about 5 seconds as otherwise he couldve been positioned better towards the next camp.
That makes up around 27 seconds (10+5+3+4+5) + a second here or there for slightly better clears per camp. So ~10:50-10:55 with a perfect run at least with this strategy.
Deck used:

------------------Disclaimer------------------
I wrote this guide without access to the game and do not intend to update it anytime soon. I apologize for all inaccuracies due to my limited memory. The vast majority of things should be actually correct, but I might've missed a few smaller things that i probably wouldn't now.
Also note that the metagame in some areas has evolved since the game has been accessable again. This mostly manifests in the fact that Lost Spirit Ships became a lot more situational and Batariel is often the way to go instead, even against Lost Souls maps. This happened because Batariel is a lot better understood in its limitations and players got better at playing around those limitations which are especially relevant to Lost Souls maps.

If you want to see the theories described here in practice you might want to check out following thread where I upload solo speedruns of 1, 2 & 4 Player maps pretty much whenever I play them: https://forum.skylords.eu/index.php?/topic/6281-treims-motm-solo-speedrun-archive/
 
Apparently images originally attached and referenced in the explanations just ceased to exist for some reason. For the full guide please go to the END of this post and use the dropbox link attached there to get access to the full guide.

2. General Information
 
2.1. Spawn Mechanics

First of all: Spawn mechanics in rPVE are very simple, they are following only 4 rules:
 
Whenever you attack a unit from an enemy base (except the spawns), every camp that has a direct path to that attacked camp will start spawning units. A camp has a direct path to another camp when you can go there without facing any other camp on the way, its direct. You can go from camp A to camp C without the need to go through Camp B. When such a unit is spawned, it will always directly attack your monument, that was the last one you have built at the time the enemies spawned, monuments that weren't built up, but were in progress, when they spawned count as a 'full' monument. Any monument you build after they spawned are not relevant for that specific spawn. Whenever a camp started spawning units, it will not stop until you kill the spawn building. A camp can only spawn new units if the complete previous spawn gets killed.
Example:

In the picture I have named camps: '1','2','3','4','5'
The arrow symbolizes your attack, so the following will happen:
When you hit the first units from '1', '2' and '3' will start spawning as their is a direct path from '1' to them.
Nothing will happen to '4' and '5' as they do not have such a linkage to '1'.

After '1' is cleared you could go to '2' or '3'. In this scenario we will go to '2'.
When you attack '2', '4' will start spawning units as they have a direct linkage.'3' will still spawn units, as it can't stop; '5' will still do nothing; '1' doesn't exist anymore.

Next step would be to clear '4'. As soon as you attack '4', '5' will start spawning units due to their direct linkage. '3' still spawns units, '1' and '2' doesn't exist anymore.


2.2. Base structure & how to find the 'right' spawnbuilding

So a base is always built up like this (with more or less paths to it):

First of all you need to know that in every base there is always only 1 spawn building, if there is a 2nd one that could potentially be a spawn building as well (just from the way it looks), one of those is fake and will never spawn any units. There's a way to identify the correct and the fake spawn building with 100% security. In order to do so you need to know following things:
You will have several entries and one of them is the 'main entry', you can always recognize the 'main' entry on how the base is aligned.
In this case the 'main' entry is 'entry 1'. You can recognize it as 2 towers are directly oriented to that entry (they are always on the left and the right of that entry), even though you might get into the base from entry 2, 3 or 4, '1' will always be the main one.
With that knowledge the spawn building that spawns units is not random at all anymore, its 100% predictable which of them will be the 'right' one.
When you would run into the base from the 'main' entry, it is ALWAYS the spawn building on the right side of the base. If you ever think it's not, well better check if you have the main entry identified correctly.
 
2.3. The issue of close camps and trapping spawns.

I bet most of you (if not any), already had this: you're into a battleground game and you pull the aggro of the t3 when trying to take t2.
This often happens (95% of the time), the spawn of the t3 will somewhat pull the whole t3 base to your t2 base. In very rare cases, the aggro range of the t3 includes the t2. In all the other cases the spawn will just 'ask for ally help'. That actually means that you can avoid those attacks from close camps by 'trapping' the spawn in-between t1 and t2.
Every fraction (fire/nature/frost/shadow) can do that, some easier some harder:
Fire: Get 3 nomads (green), kill the melee part of the spawn and kill the most part of the archers, you want of the squad of 6 archers that maximal 4 are alive, so your nomads always stay healthy. For the last few hp you need to take away from them, you can just through them. It is very necessary to hold position (press 's'), so that the nomads don't attack the archer squad. Demonstration: http://listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=g52hV...ade_Expert Frost: Kill the melee units, take aggro of the archers with one unit and run to t2 with another one, you can take a well when the archers are NOT in range of it, otherwise its a gamble, if they switch their focus. After that spam some ice barriers and kill the squad you held aggro with. (if you are confident in your skill, you can try to do the same as with nomads, but its much harder as you can not run through them to do damage. You need to use master archers and stop the attack of them at the exact correct time, so that the bolts doesn't finish off the whole squad, but only parts( that works because every unit of the squad needs to get killed by a single bolt) Shadow: Basically same game as with frost, kill the melees, pull the aggro of the archer squad with one unit and take a well at t2 with another unit, kill that one after. Build Soul Splicer in-between t1 and t2 and kill some units next to it to, to fill it up. Then just press 's' with the squad you have aggro. By the time the soul splicer is empty, your aggro unit is dead and the soul splicer is destroyed, you should have enough energy collected to clear t3 easily. (You can try the same as mentioned in Frost, as it will lower the damage of the squad you gain more time) Nature: Kill the melees or the archers, take aggro of the other one with a shaman and build t2.. done. Extra tip: When you face lost souls and the spawn includes a lost dancer you are the luckiest guy in the world. Use any squad unit (windweavers/forsaken/northguards/master archers, etc.,etc.), kill all other stuff but the lost dancer, and press 's' with your squad unit. When the lost dancer attacks it, the squad will split up and stay like that, any following attack of the lost dancer on that squad will do no damage anymore.
This also works for close camps at from t3 to t4.
3. rPVE/Battleground 1 Player

3.1. Map structure and general principles
First of all I would like to show you the general structure of a lvl 10 1 player Battleground map, you will need to understand this in order to follow some of my thought process.



In this case we start at the bottom of the map. That is because it easier to explain it that way, but it doesn't matter if the map is twisted 90°, 180°, or 270°. The principle stays the same. You see that the way will split up right in front of your t1. The t2 will always be at the end of the way that goes to the edge of the mini map. Notice that the way to the camp that is closer to the centre of the map will always be way shorter and you might get problems with pulling the whole camp and or shamans if any exist in that camp. That is important as you want to avoid attacking anything from that base, because it will force another camp to spawn units as well, it makes it way harder to defend. You always want to rush to t2 with the smallest possible amount of energy being used - in other words as soon as possible. At that rank on the map you will always have 2 camps next to your t2, while t3 is always above on the next rank of the map. You always want to clear that as soon as possible as well, without using to much power in defence for the units that will attack your t2. Next to your t3 you will always find 2 other camps and the t4 on the exact opposite of the map.
From that point on you will have 2 more ranks on the map with each 3, rarely 4 camps. That means in general you have to clear 6-7 bases after you cleared the 'real' t4 base.
Whenever you reach a base you basically want to destroy the 'right' spawn building before it can spawn any units, as those can respawn the whole base. Which would cost a lot of time.
3.2. Common t1- t4 strategies

T1: Enemy - Bandits:
Fire: Get 3 nomads (green), kill the melee part of the spawn and kill the most part of the archers, you want of the squad of 6 archers that maximal 4 are alive, so your nomads always stay healthy. For the last few hp you need to take away from them, you can just through them. It is very necessary to hold position (press 's'), so that the nomads don't attack the archer squad. Demonstration: There's some additional information I want to mention: This only works when your monuments can NOT attack the spawn, it will kill them slowly but not for sure. That makes it very important to be careful with the positioning of the spawn.
Shadow: Almost always your first choice to go. You will need forsaken or Nox Trooper (I personally prefer forsaken because- of their passive and because Nox Trooper aren't very good against squad units, which you will mainly face at t2). Key cards are forsaken, soul splicer and motivate. You basically want to build up the soul splicer at the exact range, where you don't aggro the t2 and then build just enough forsaken to clear the camp. You want to use 3 frenzied forsaken (in some cases with very bad spawns and unit positioning you might need more) to clear the spawn building, while you focus on taking down towers and those annoying mana wings with the other forsakens first. As soon as the first forsaken (not frenzied) hits a point where he has half of his hp left, motivate them. So the soul splicer can heal the rest up in time. Sometimes its worth/necessary to get a skeleton warrior in front of them to tank up a lot of damage. That is the case when you have a t2 base with bunch of units. Defend with 2 forsaken. Spawn behind the monument and don't worry about enemies focussing on the monument. Frost: If shadow isn't working great against the enemy try frost. Key cards are frost mage, ice barrier and homesoil. If you face those annoying spearmen that can't get knock backed summon 2-3 master archers in order to kill the spawn building, as frost mages aren't really good against those due that they cant attack the spawn building properly. Defend with 1-2 frost mages, if the spawn includes spearmen use 1 frost mage and 1 master archer. Spawn behind the monument and don't worry about enemies focussing on the monument. Fire: Only good in very rare cases. Mostly when you have these windhunter thingies AND you're having a close camp. What you want to do is: Spawn 3 nomads (green) set 1-2 mines and use 4 eruptions to kill the spawn building. You can defend with makeshift tower or 1 mine. Key cards: Nomad (green), mine, eruption. If necessary you can add sunstriders against those mana wings. After that you want to set up 3 blaster cannons (red) and build another nomad. So you have 4 nomads. Then set 2-3 mines in front of the t3 base and pull the whole base into your mines and blaster cannons. You run in the t3 base and clear the spawn building with eruptions. Mission accomplished. I got an example video for you: http://listenonrepeat.com/?v=8EkqkzbuLw0..._von_Treim Nature: Never viable, units and spells are just to expensive and following orb order is not better than frost. Basic information: in 95% of the maps you should be fine with spawning 6-8 units to clear the t2.

T1: Enemy - Stonekin:
Shadow: Same as Bandits, but you will almost always need to have skeleton warriors on top of the soul splicer. If there are those crystal fiends at t2 you should prefer nox troopers over forsaken as well, just to avoid the knock back, as well as being able to kill them very fast with the 'overload' ability. You will need immediate motivate in order to clear the spawn building with nox troopers though. In general 4 should be enough for that. Frost: You will often need some master archers on top of the frost mages, as they're not very good against the crystal fiends with their non targeted damage. You need to focus on them before killing the spawn building as they do so much damage. It's very likely that they respawn if you only use frostmages as well. I recommend using at least 3-4 master archers to kill the spawn building. Fire: not viable Nature: not viable  
T2: Enemy - Bandits:

Your second orb is always shadow. You always want shadow phoenixes to clear the t3. If you started shadow t1 you can even build up resource boosters already. Those are a must in every deck.
If you have those windhunters at t3 use spawn 3 shadow phoenixes use the embalmer shrine (you want to build up 2, so you can have the effect up all the time) and clear the base next to your t2, kill the spawn building in 100% of the cases and find the right target to get all 3 phoenixes back. That way you made those 3 phoenixes 'voidless'. That means they're not binding any more energy in them. You get all the energy back (into the void pool) when they attack. That way you can spawn 2-3 more phoenixes relatively fast and attack. You need 5-6 of them as 2 will get paralysed and might get focussed down before they are able to attack. If there are no windhunters just use 3 shadow phoenixes and enjoy to clear your t3 very fast.

T2: Enemy - Stonekin:
Basically the same as for against Bandits just with some special cases. You will most likely face constructs and tortuguns and t3 that means you need 11-13 phoenixes.
In order to get 13 phoenixes very fast, you need to modify the way you get the  phoenixes voidless by a little bit. You want to basically get 3-4 (depending on how many you can get back when attacking) and attack  the base next to t2 again. But this time use a unit in the base that is far enough away from the spawn building, that the spawn building will NOT die. You will just fly away with your 3-4 phoenixes and let whole base respawn just to spawn 3-4 more phoenixes and now kill the base entirely (don't kill towers or anything if phoenixes wouldn't revive from it).
that way you will have 6-8 phoenixes already and can almost instantly build 4 new  and your good 2 go.
Pro tip: Some of those tortuguns have a ranged anti air attack (just as the normal tortuguns have). Those will destroy a lot of phoenixes if it hits and your attack will most likely fail. In order to prevent that 'stack' the phoenixes on top of each other.


If you tell 12 phoenixes at the same time to go to a certain map point they will automatically get in the formation you can see on the left side of the picture. However you can pick small groups or even single phoenixes and all let them go through a certain point and press 's' to stop them from moving right when they're in that point where you want to stack the phoenixes. If you stacked them correctly there should maximally die 1 or 2 of them to the tortugun, as they will fly in basically the same point all the time.
If there are windhunters in that base you might want to consider to send 2-3 units in front of the phoenixes to tank their paralyse and damage. If you started frost you can use coldsnap to just freeze them.
In some cases you will face something that is even more annoying: you might have to deal with deepgorge towers that will attack your t2 when you try to build it up. Those bases will get pulled when the spawn hits the t2 definetly. You have to trap the spawn in-between your t1 and t2 as mentioned in 2.3.. In those cases you need to get a bit creatively. You do not want to take the wells and only take the monument. You can either defend it with skyelf templar and trap the spawn with ice barrier spam, what is really expensive though (if you are not able to kill the most part of the archer squad and only leave parts of it alive) as you will need some time to get enough power in order to be able to attack t3 OR you use warden's sigil and just shield the t2 over and over with 2 of those and trap the spam with 2 warden's sigil that give each other a shield. I prefer the green one over the blue affinity due to the healing that helps much against the trapped spawn.

T3: Enemy - Bandit:
Get 3 cultist masters and a Furnace of flesh (if you didnt build one yet, I recommend building one already at t2) + amii monument.
Latest point you get your resource boosters is when you hit t3.


T3: Enemy - Stonekin:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Should be a nature orb. Get amii-monument with nature aswell. Switch the frost orb into shadow if you started frost t1. Do not build t3 shadow just to get the resource boosters, but rather get it for frenetic assault. Its not worth it if you just build them now as you don't need a whole bunch of power  anymore until you're totally fine. Enlight Batariel (red).

T4: Enemy - Bandit:
Spawn Lost Spirit Ship and clear the map. Use heals and buffs to keep them alive.
I recommend to only use Lost Spirit Ship (red) so you can use flame crystal and motivate to buff them up. Use rifle cultists and offering (green) to get enough charges. I recommend to send 1 rifle cultist right behind your frontline so you get ground presence close to your main army and you're able to spawn them without them having to run a very long way to your troops.

Extra information: If there is a boss with a lot of hit points you can use a fallen skyelf and his 'tainted disease' to kill those faster . You need to be very careful with the timing though at it gets completely reset if you are not able to kill the boss in the time 'tainted disease' is active. I only recommend using this if you have a free slot in your deck that you don't really need.

T4: Enemy- Stonekin:
Get 2 shrine of war to permanently have the void manipulation active and just buff it with spells. You can get those by switching the amii-nature orb into a fire orb. You also need that to get disenchant against the windhunter paralyse.

Extra information: if there is a boss with a lot of hit points on the map, such as command walker (not sure if he was called like that, I mean that super construct thingy): You can use Bloodhorn(s)(purple) with his 'tainted enrage' and unholy hero to basically kill those in few seconds as batariel is very slow against bosses.
So your end orbs would be like that: shadow, nature, nature, fire.
This being said I would like to present you some very standard decks for a Lost Spirit Ship and a Batariel deck.
 

I did not explain every card in detail but the one I didn't mention pretty much are explaining themselves.

One last shot on this topic: Most of the time you will need to learn how much units you minimally need in order to clear t1-t3 just by trial and error.
This is especially true for the fight for t2. You will probably need several tries until you find the correct units to focus and when to change the aggro.
Just don't get frustrated if it doesn't work in the first few tries ^^

3.3. Pathing

Okay so at this point it starts to get a bit more complicated. In order to find the optimal path to run you need to always keep in mind these 3 basic variables:
The strength of each camp The strength and way spawns will try to run down your base Most importantly the general map structure, that includes the ways you are allowed to run (the ways from base to base) as well as the position of certain camps on the map. To 1.:
It doesn't really matter to much for Batariel decks, you can steamroll them anyway and you should always have enough power due to shrine of war. You just need to take care that you don't get to the very high damage bosses to fast as you don't have enough power to support 1 or 2 bloodhorns and a batariel early on the t4 phase.
Crucial point for Lost Spirit Ship, you really want to kill the easier camps at first, as some camps are just to strong for few Lost Spirit Ship. Either it takes forever or you will just get wiped out. In order to use that time correctly try to kill easy bases at first. You really want to avoid bosses with high hit points until the very end.
I'm talking mostly about the command walker as those literally take forever without at least 7 ships and a fallen skyelf.

To 2.:
As you want to clear bases with your Batariel and only send your bloodhorns in after the base is dead (except the boss) just try and let them sit back on ways where spawns will pass by. This requires you to study the ways certain spawns will go.
Basically you want to avoid spawning too many units at your base to defend as that binds power that might be necessary for buffing and healing. Sometimes you can use Lost Spirit Ship that you would use for motivating in your base anyways to defend, but you need a bit of luck to have the power for that at the exact right time. That means you basically want to defend most, if possible spawn the rifle cultist and spawn a Lost Spirit Ship next to him that can then be added to your troops straight away. Sometimes you need to kite a bit in order to have enough power.
In both cases you want to prevent that very strong spawns hit at your t3 as you will often times just loose the game by that.

To 3.:
With both decks you want to avoid going unnecessary ways. That means you need to find the way with the shortest distance to run by clearing all camps. Often times there is not a perfect solution that would include you running every way exactly 1 time and never run out of a base in order to reach the next one. If you remember the picture of 3.1. (or just scroll up to it again) you have exactly that case given. You need to run backwards from at least camp 7 or 10 depending on which one you want to do first.
I played exactly that map in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EkqkzbuLw0 (you might remember it 30x15file:///C:\Users\Niklas\AppData\Local\Temp\OICE_BB1A28E5-6F75-4C7E-BE57-31B96B37F208.0\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image001.png). Even though I didn't use amii-monument in that game due to a challenge I had with a friend you can see the path I took after I had t4. This ones doesn't really give you a big task of finding the best path just because of the limited amount of Lost Spirit Ship I had and the fact that bases on top (8,9,10)of the map wouldn't be possible for me to clear due to their insane strengths. As well as the point that the chance of pulling the whole base 9 while mainly attacking cap 8 is kind of high due to the fact the whole camp is built up in a very small place and Lost Spirit Ship sometimes move weirdly through that. Even if I made it through that one it is likely that if I attack camp 9 I would pull camp 6. Those risks just shut down the only other efficient route in terms of point 3.

To sum this one up: Its very necessary to know a map very good in order to be able to combine the 3 above listed variables well enough to find the optimal path. Often times you will need to gain that knowledge just with trial and error even though it will get much better the more experience you have with combining the variables and overall speed run experience.

4. rPVE/Battleground 2 Players

4.1. Map strucutre and general principles


So obviously you have 2 starting bases on a 2 player map. These are basically identical in structure. Both have 2 direct ways away from their t1 to 2 outer camps. In-between those you will face a third camp. A nice little fact to take note of: If the t2 is at the left/right side of his t1, it will be on the same side for player 2 as well. This is always the case. There is no separate bases for t3 and t4, but both monuments are in the same base. The T3/4 bases are always directly linked. On the way you will face 2-3 camps (most of the time 3). Rest of the map is split in 2 rows with each 5 bases.
The basic concepts of 1 player rpve and what you want to do and avoid are similar: Destroy the correct spawn buildings as soon as possible and try to not use to many resources in defence.
 
4.2. Common t1-t4 strategies

T1 - Enemy Bandits
Basically you are doing the same like in 1 Player rPVE, for both players.

T1 - Enemy Stonekin
Basically you are doing the same like in 1 Player rPVE, for both players.

T1 - Enemy Twilight
Shadow: Standard t1 with forsaken, soul splicer and motivate. Attack the spawn with 3 frenzied forsaken and kill the units with the rest of your forsaken. If have got Twilight hags at t2 you can use skeleton warriors to absorb the damage and use knock back with them, 1 should be enough though. If you face those annoying parasite swarms, either take them down very quickly or just start with frost. Frost: Standard t1 with frost mages, ice barrier and home soil. If you face twilight hags I recommend some master archers to have an easier time on focusing on them and the spawn building. Parasite swarms are no problem due to the knock back of frost mages. Fire: super situational. I don't recommend it 99% of the time. Nature: Not viable Extra information: This is the case for both players. I recommend one of them to start shadow, so you get some early embalmer shrines for t2 shadow phoenix. T1 - Enemy Lost Souls
Shadow: Only viable for 1 player and only if the t2 doesn't include lost vigils. The other player will need to support the shadow player with massive fire spell spam. Use skeleton warriors only. Frost: Not viable Fire: If one player starts shadow support him massively with 2 mines and 4 eruptions on the spawn building at  least. That's 440 energy minimum. You can add a defensive mine to defend the spawn near t1 to that if you wish. Notice that this will slow down the fire player massively but will speed up the other player massively. If there are lost vigils though you are forced to play fire with both players. The concept stays the same though. One player will support the other one with spells. You want to support the other player with at least 2 mines and 2 eruptions on the spawn building. Blaster Cannons are a must have. You want to start off with 3-4 nomads (depending on how good you can pull and how fast you can erupt). Start of with 2-3 blaster cannons (when you build 2 you will most likely need to erupt 1-2 times unless you're a bit lucky with the focus). You want to set up 2-3 mines at the place the ground units will attack your blaster cannons. Placement of those can get tricky, depending on which enemies (trees, manabeasts, lost dancers, etc) you will face. After you set up yourself or your team-mate, pull out the whole base into your blaster cannons and let them switch focus, until you run into the base again and kill the spawn building. In optimal case you want to kill the spawn with the eruptions as well. Set a defensive mine to defend t1. You want to basically support the other player with basically ~60% of the total energy costs for spells that is necessary to clear the base. The supporter should NOT build any units or buildings until the t2 of the other player is cleared. The supported player will go t2 afterwards. The supporter will try to clear his base mostly alone, most of the time he will get only 1 mine and 2 eruptions. Notice that you need sun striders to trap those annoying lost dancer spawns. Nature: Not viable
T2 - Enemy Bandits/Stonekin
Bandits and Stonekin T3/4 is built up identical, so I'll just sum them up. You will face either 2 constructs, 2 tortuguns or 1 construct and 1 tortugun. Sometimes you will face Windhunter's in addition to that. Most of the time you will have at least 1 guy starting frost t1 so you will have coldsnap most of the time for those annoying dragons. You need again ~12 phoenixes to clear the base 100% calculating that you might 1 or 2 before you can attack the spawn. In order to get them fast you will need to make them voidless again, just as described in 3.2 T2- Enemy Stonekin. When you face that long range attacks from tortuguns just stack them as described in there as well. You will most likely have to defend against a bunch of spawns, you can leave some of them alive to defend against that. The rest you can kill near a furnace of flesh to get some void power back. Clear the dragons with frost mages/ master archers/ forsakens.

T2 - Twilight
Most twilight t3's aren't really strong, you will most likely need 5-6 phoenixes for an easy clear. Just care about those parasite swarms. If they are able to make your unit beyond control you might screw up. Just make sure you give them right target to attack before you lose control.


T2 - Lost Souls
So this one can get kind of tricky. You will most likely face a lot of units at t3 and I recommend using around 10 phoenixes. In order to do that you will need to make phoenixes voidless. But you need to take care that they don't die when you fly into a base or leave it. Lost vigils kill phoenixes really fast. In order to do that you probably have to fly from weird angle into them or have to attack units that you wouldn't focus  on other wise. For example little squad units. Those die basically from 1 phoenix, you need to make sure that all phoenixes you send in attack that unit. Do that by stacking them, so they all reach that unit at the same time.
Those weird angles and unit focuses are sometimes even necessary for t3/4 attack. Especially if you use less phoenixes as possible. Try to clear any air units with either a nomad spear, sun striders or blaster cannons. Use your phoenixes to defend the spawns.

T4 - Enemy Bandits
In 2 player maps you will often face a major amount of bosses. I recommend at least 1 player uses bloodhorns to kill the big bosses. You will probably need to split that one up from the rest of the troops, so that the bloodhorn can take care of bosses that are alone in their base while Lost Spirit Ship clears the rest of the base and just run from boss to boss. Batariel can  be an option here as well. You need to decide individually, what is better --> trial and error.

T4 - Stonekin
Most of the time Batariels will be faster than Lost Spirit Ship against Stonekin maps. But Lost Spirit Ship can be an option for some maps --> trial and error
I recommend Bloodhorns as well.

T4 - Twilight
Hardest T4 in the whole game. There is basically only shit available and you can get wiped out with everything quite easily. You need tons of crowd control. Both players need to have oink and at least 1 freeze (such as coldsnap or maelstrom) to cc those wrathgazers. In some bases you will face 4-5 of them+ spawns. Personally I play bloodhorn and Lost Spirit Ship against that, you can add 2-3 green gemeyes for the extra crowd control. Earthshaker is a must to get rid of the willzapper buildings. I do not recommend to split up at the last rank of bases. You will need every single unit you can get. Sometimes you can't even clear those easier t4 bases alone. Batariel is not an option. Path finding becomes very important at this map, because you can not defend your base with a single t4 unit, due to wrathgazer spawns. You need to kill every spawn on its way to your base with your main troops or it might get messy.
If you want even wheel of gifts can be an option. Shrine of war is a must.

T4 - Lost Souls
Lost Spirit Ship - Spam. Incredible Mo with yellow ability is a must. It prevents the lost dragon debuff and so you got a pretty easy time with your Lost Spirit Ship. You can add a Bloodhorn and send them behind your ships to clear the bosses. Do not run into bases with it though or it will get just get killed instantly. Shrine of war is not a must, but I highly recommend it.  Batariel is not an option as you have the anti-spell aura buildings and any spell you use in advance of entering the base will get deleted by those nasty lost dancers (that's true for wheel of gift, incredible mo, spells, etc --> never build those buildings against Lost Souls unless you have a lot of air units). That will cause your batariel to just get destroyed in later bases.

4.3. Pathing

This one gets a bit harder than for the 1 Player maps. So what you basically want is both players to clear their last bases at the exact same time. Then you did everything correct. However in order to find both paths that are optimal you always have to keep the 3 variables in mind:
The strength of each camp The strength and spawns that will try to run down your base Most importantly the general map structure, that includes the ways you are allowed to run (the ways from base to base) as well as the position of certain camps on the map. However you need to now keep in mind for yourself and your team-mate that it might be an easier or harder to get to t4 due to probably stronger spawns, bases, etc.. So there might be camps that you can clear at a certain time. The map structure will most likely not be mirrored exactly so that one of you will have longer ways to certain key points of the map.
Might be easiest if I just explain with the help of the graphic above in 4.1..
I assume that that map is a bandit map and you both decided for Lost Spirit Ship. The camps in-between got cleared by you with 3 Lost Spirit Ship and you both are back at your t4 with 5 Lost Spirit Ship in total.(That's a typical scenario. You clear the easy bases between the t4's while your waiting for enough power to spawn enough Lost Spirit Ships to start fighting the bigger bases). You have similar power and start at the same time running from t4. Notice that this is just a model.
So this is basically the perfect situation to plan routes. In this case Player 1 wants to go clear camp 10 --> camp 9 --> camp 11 --> camp 16 and camp 17. Player 2 wants to clear camp 13 --> camp 12 --> camp 16 --> camp 15 --> camp 14. That is because Player 1 has a sub optimal way to go as they have to run a certain amount backwards (out of camp 9) and has an extra camp before reaching the very hard camps. In order to compensate for having a longer way than player 2, player 1 gets 3 easy camps and 2 hard camps to clear while player 2 gets 2 easy and 3 hard camps to clear.
This gets even more complicated if you assume that in certain camps are bosses of different strength or only 1 player has a bloodhorn. I hope that the base concept of this got clear with this easy example though.

5.rPVE/Battleground 4 Players

5.1. Map structure and general principles


So as you can see in the image above, you will face again the split way at t1 meaning that as soon as you attack you will get attacked at your T1.
Notice that the T2 is for all players on the same side of their T1 (in this case right side). T3 and T4 is pretty standard as 2 players share those bases with each other. In-between the T4's of the 2 sides you will face 1-2 bases, and in the 2 ranks after T4 you will have each 4-5 bases. The spawns that will come from T3 always attacks the outer players (1 & 4). Therefore they will have more of a supportive role in the game as they aren't able to build up their t2 army as soon as the inner players (2 & 3).
The basic principles pretty much stay the same: Kill the 'right' spawnbuilding as soon as possible and do not use any more power than necessary for defence.

5.2. Common t1-t4 strategies

T1 - Enemy Bandits/ Stonekin/ Twilight
Player 1 will support Player 2 and Player 4 will support player 3. Therefore the outer positions will start with fire while inner positions start shadow for early access to resource booster. Depending on the strength of the camp player 2 and 3 will get 1-2 mines & 3-4 eruptions on the spawnbuilding. Depending on the map Dreadchargers might be a thing to destroy the spawnbuilding if you 'only' get 3 eruptions. No need for skeleton warriors.
After that outer positions can try and clear their t2 by themselves or wait for the inner players to help clearing them.

T1 - Enemy Lost Souls
This one can get really tricky. If you only get 1-2 manabeasts or treespirits + only squad units, your good to go and just do the same as against Bandits, Stonekin and Twilight. But most of the time you wont be that lucky and face lost vigils in addition. If that's the case you will have to choose one guy who starts shadow, so either position 2 or 3. Who starts shadow depends on how easy the T3 will be and how well he can reach other parts of the map from his side of the map as this guy will have quite significantly more power than everyone else. The other 3 will start fire and just support the hell out of him. Erupt the spawnbuilding (each vigil needs 5-6 eruptions when buffed up, depending on how fast you can erupt). I recommend 2-3 mines and as many eruptions as necessary while the shadow player will tank the damage with 2-3 skeleton warriors (unholy armour obviously active). After that the other inner player will get supported by the 2 outer players and himself. He can take care of the vigils with help of Blaster cannons. I recommend 3-4 nomads for that + 2-3 blaster cannons. Outer players are just defending themselves against the T3 spawn and gather power.

T2 - Enemy Bandits/ Twilight
Most likely very easy camps. 5-6 shadow phoenixes should be enough to clear T3 and T4, unless you face a boss at t4 or have those nasty windhunters against you.

T2- Enemy Stonekin
You will most likely face constructs and/ or tortuguns again. Means you need to summon 12 phoenixes again by making some of them voidless in the first place. Pretty much same as in 4.2. T2 - Enemy Stonekin. I recommend not to clear T4 unless you are 100% sure you can do it as some of the spawns can get really nasty, especially if they are coming from the after T4 camps (bunch of shields and those bandit snipers) and you really want to have some shadow phoenixes to defend against that.

T2 - Enemy Lost Souls
You will most likely need 10-12 phoenixes to clear t3 and help your team mates on the outer positions to clear their t2. Outer positions will spawn a bunch of sunstriders for lost vigils while shadow phoenixes take care of the big ground units (treespirits & manabeasts). I recommend using 4-6 shadow phoenixes for that depending on if those ground units get shielded or not. (Man beasts die from 3 phoenixes and 5 if shielded, treespirits from 4 phoenixes and 6 if shielded).
You will most likely get massive spawns from the camps after T4, those can include 2-3 treespirits/manabeasts, 2 lost vigils, several squad units and those shield lost wanderers. That means you will need several phoenixes to defend against that and something anti air. Sometimes a mark of the keeper is worth thinking about.

T3 - Enemy Bandit/ Twilight
Basically skipped as T4 is already cleared. Outer players building shrine of war. Against twilight healing gardens and wheel of gifts CAN be built. If you want so outer players will do it.

T3 - Enemy Stonekin/ Lost Souls

One of the inner players will go amii-monument and clear the t4 of his mate (against Lost Souls most of the time the shadow player). The other side can try ashbone pyros with frenetic assault/ infect/ soulshatter. Shrine of war is build by outer players again. Against Lost Souls incredible Mo with 'benevolent Mo' effect is a must, also build by outer players.

T4 - Enemy Bandit
Lost Spirit Ship Spam supported by bloodhorns(red) for the outer players (they might have some lost spirit ships in the end as well). I highly recommend using red Lost Spirit Ships only as you can use motivate + flame crystal to increase their damage significantly. Use Bloodhorns for the bosses.

T4 - Enemy Twilight
Mix of bloodhorn and Lost Spirit Ships. You will need a lot of crowd control to be able to deal with the wrathgazers. I highly recommend earthshaker for destroying willzappers. Always run with 2 people (I recommend 1 inner and 1 outer player) or its very very likely that you get wiped out. Batariel CAN be an option for 1 or 2 players (I recommend 1 maximum). You need the ground presence of the bloodhorns but be careful to keep them alive.
Same deal with Lost Spirit Ships and flame crystal.

T4- Enemy Stonekin
I recommend a mix of Batariel and Bloodhorns as Lost Spirit Ships have huge problems with the high hp buildings and units of stonekin.

T4 - Enemy Lost Souls
Lost Spirit Ships are the only way to go here. Incredible Mo prevents Lost Dragon debuff from them. Have bloodhorns always 1 base behind them and send them in after the base is cleared to kill bosses (be careful at the hellhound as he can 'eat' your bloodhorns) otherwise your bloodhorns will just get killed by necrofurys and even your ships have a harder time as necrofurys can deal damage to them when they focus a ground unit right under them. Batariel is not an option in here as lost dancers will deny all the buffs you want to send at him and necrofurys killing him super fast then.

5.3. Pathing

Basically the same as for 2 player maps but now you have to also coordinate 2 more players, which can lead to some weird routes especially for the outer players. Expect to have a power deficit on one side of the map making that side a bit slower by clearing camps and overall starting to clear camps. It becomes very situational in 4 player maps even though basic concept stays the same. Most of the time you will need to change up your original route to go by quite a bit as its hard to calculate strength of each player at every time in the game correctly and you will most likely have mistakes in there which is changing viable routes completely. Learning by doing is the only way to find correct routes in 4 player maps.

6. Cards that can be very useful but are very situational (mostly for 4 player maps)

Netherwarp - Porting over walls.
Portal Nexus - Viable with ground units only, makes ways shorter to the next base and avoids long ways back out of bases / dead ends - mostly use for stonekin maps
Tunnel + Burrowing Ritual - Having few units that are mostly air and in a dead end? use this - mostly useful on twilight maps
Mark of the Keeper - Defending against heavy Lost Souls spawn on your T3
Witchclaws (red) - Sometimes good in 2 player maps to clear out the spawnbuilding when its very far back.
Stone of Torment - Avoiding to pull out shamans from bases.
Matter Mastery (green) - Some Bandit Maps having this nasty Rioter's Retreat towers, matter mastery can be an option if the rest of the base is very weak and you are getting strong spawns.             
Frost Bite(purple) - Alternative to Fallen Skyelf when not using 2 shadow orbs and having a free deck slot. Used against bosses to increase the damage they take( mostly used in 2 and 4 player).      
Mumbo Jumbo (red) - Alternative to Fallen Skyelf when not using 2 shadow orbs and having a free deck slot. Used against bosses to increase the damage they take( mostly used in 2 and 4 player)

Constructive critics and comments and improvement suggestions are very appreciated. Feel free to ask any kind of questions as well. Leave a reputation if this was helpful

At this point a special thank-you goes to @Kiwi, that helped me with my english for this guide and @ladadoos who made the graphics, you are awesome

Thanks for reading.
P.s. as the attachment upload doesn't work for me i will add a dropbox link where you can find a pdf with the whole guide: https://www.dropbox.com/s/6kgyobccr9u03hd/Treim's Battleforge rPVE Speedrun Guide.pdf?dl=0

Foreword
Content:
Orb and Color Overview Picking your Approach General considerations Units in general Units in Tiers Buildings Spells Synergies My other Guides If you recently asked "Can somebody show me a good deck for this color?" or "Can anyone rate my deck?" then this PvE Deckbuilding Guide could give you a foundation to use if you need some early pointers on what to pay attention to when you start building your own deck.
Experimentation and exploration are name of the game, so feel free to deviate from conventions. In line with that I will refrain from giving concrete examples or handholding. This is supposed to provide food for thought to point into a helpful direction to build decks yourself if you are still unsure.
There is no universal solution for deck building. For many maps, especially on expert difficulty, some adjustments to tackle the individual circumstances are advisable. It’s also quite different whether you play cPvE (campaign maps) or rPvE (randomly generated PvE).
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.

Orb and Color Overview
Your deck consists of 20 cards and usually you get 4 orbs during a normal game of Skylords. The color of the orbs you pick dictate which cards you are able to play.
Every card requires a specific amount of orbs too, these are referred to as tiers, shortened to just T. If a card requires one orb, it’s T1. If you need two orbs, it’s T2 and so on.

Lost Vigil G, thus the green nature affinity, is a T3 unit. So for starters you need three orbs to play it. One of these has to be frost and one shadow, represented by the blue and purple dot respectively. The color of the third orb does not matter, which is represented by the grey circle. It doesn’t have to be nature just because its affinity is, it can be anything. The order in which these orb colors were built doesn't matter either.
This makes Lost Vigil G a semi-flexible card color wise since it does require two fixed orb colors but leaves the third one up to the player. For example, you wouldn’t be able to play Lost Vigil G if you previously picked two fire orbs for your T2. But one fire orb would be fine.
Check out the wiki articles for Monuments and Orbs and Cards for more information.

Picking the Approach
First you have to settle on the broad idea you want to follow. For that I want to present a few simple approaches. The images are meant to illustrate the concepts, not represent a deck.
Build bottom up
Pick the color you want to start with on T1. Chose cards that build onto that as T2, either using the same color as T1 or a new one. Repeat for T3. Finally look at what’s left on T4 for the color combination you ended up with.

Build order:
Starting with Forsaken means my first Orb is . Then I pick Rippers , so I am actually still undecided on which color to pick next. After I decide on Vulcan I have to go for fire on T2 nonetheless because it needs two of those. For my last orb I settle on , which opens up Skycatcher B . Could’ve picked Giant Wyrm , Bloodhorn , Tortugun , Tempest or many other cards instead if I adjusted my 4th Orb accordingly.
Build top down
Pick T4 cards that fit together color wise first. Which T3 cards can be used with these colors if you subtract one orb? Then check T2, finally pick what’s left for T1.

Build order:
I pick Lost Dragon P as my T4. That still leaves me enough wiggle room to use Tremor as my T3. For T2 I want War Eagle , so that means I have to build my first shadow orb on T3. It also means I have to start with frost.
Build for a color theme
Decide which color combination you want to end up with, this will naturally limit your available card pool. Then look in which order you want these orbs and which cards fit that order.

Build order: then either or . Last one flexible.
I am building a Stonekin deck, which means I am restricting myself to and . So I could start with either of them, in this case. Then add because I really want my first Stonekin unit by T2. T3 could be either or since Deepfang R is flexible. Gemeye G is already covered but maybe another card in the deck needs one more or , so I have to pay attention to that.
Build for specific cards
Decide what cards you absolutely want to use. If there are multiple, check if they fit together into a linear orb progression. If yes, reverse engineer which other colored cards you can add for the color progression to work.

Build order:
I really want to use Juggernaut . That means I have to start and also add another on T2. On T4 though, I am free to pick whatever. Either make a pure fire deck or go for something else entirely, like Grimvine . But Juggernaut wouldn’t fit with T1 or T2 cards that require other colors than .
Build for specific maps
Can be important for the more difficult content. Once you learn a maps hurdles, you can try to adjust decks to tackle them more effectively or build decks for them from the ground up.
Are there positions you have to defend at certain tiers? Might be a good idea to add some towers.
Are you fighting from walls? Ranged S squads are helpful.
Do you encounter a lot of enemies of a certain size? Use a respective size counter.
Enemy buildings need to be destroyed quickly? Siege units will do the job.
Lots of enemy air units? Look into anti-air solutions or ranged counters.
Incoming artillery units? Bring ways to combat their long range.
And so fourth. Knowing what awaits you on a map goes a long way when building a good deck to tackle it.
General considerations
Combining Color
Color order
Something important to look out for is that you are actually able to play all the cards you picked at a certain tier. There are some exceptions to this but in general a deck only functions when most cards can succeed each other.

Here the Deep One P cannot be played until T3 because the deck starts with :fireorb:. So this is obviously a waste. Either I change my T1 to or I change my T2 to cards that allow it to be :fireorb:.
Color restrictions
Orb color requirements dictate which cards you can potentially use together in a normal deck that progresses linearly through T1 up to T4. If you want to mix your orb colors a lot, then you won’t be able to use some cards that have stricter color requirements.

Something like this would be a so-called rainbow deck. :frostorb::shadoworb::natureorb::fireorb: is the orb sequence and everything works together just fine. I won’t be able to use any cards that need two of the same color. But one of each leaves me with a sizable card pool to choose from nonetheless.
Color flexibility
Most cards don't need a fixed color for every orb to be played. These are prime candidates to be splashed, which means being mixed with other colors.

Here, despite all cards being nature, it actually only requires one specific :natureorb: to play them all. It’s often the case that your T4 and sometimes even T3 color doesn’t need to be something specific because you got your colors covered beforehand.
Taking care of the Army
Sustain
Coming from units, buildings or spells to keep your army and constructions healthy. If at all available, it’s good if you have one source of sustain in the lower tiers, so T1 or T2 and one stronger source in T3 or T4. Sustain on demand in the form of heals or shields will make a deck more forgiving and durable. Without it your units will eventually die to accumulating damage. All colors have access to different types of sustain.
Damage mitigation
Defensive buffs for both units and buildings. Especially in T3 and T4 there are some very strong options. Having ways of mitigating damage is valuable because especially in later tiers your army is quite expensive. Damage mitigation also makes every point of health and therefore healing more efficient. Think, with 50% damage reduction, it takes 2 damage to remove 1 HP but only a healing value of 1 to restore it again.
Damage buffs
If enemies die quicker you take less damage and progress faster. Percentage based buffs (% more damage) are usable at any point in the game even if they are T1 or T2.
Taking care of the Enemy
Crowd Control (CC)
Disabling enemies is very important. It’s great to have CC available at every tier but some lower tier CC can work throughout the entire game. Enemies become resilient against CC for a short time after being affected by it. Also, death is the best CC so if you are unsure then it could be a good idea to go for ...
Extra damage
Either through unit abilities, spells or even some buildings, a solid burst of frontloaded damage can make fights much easier. AoE damage makes big armies more manageable. Well timed extra damage can turn a loss around or solidify victory.
Debuffs
There are various debuffs available that weaken enemies. Use them to pick off priority targets or make them less threatening.
Lock down Areas
Fortification
If the situation calls for it, consider adding Towers and Fortresses. Depending on the map it will make defending a lot easier. There are even units that excel at this.
Utility
Meatshields
There are various ways to quickly summon big quantities of disposable units. And although they won’t grant ground presence (they don't have an "aura" that allows you to play out cards next to them), they also don’t bind power and can not only deal some damage but also take the hits instead of your actual entities.
Mobility
Very powerful if used correctly. Means to traverse the map quickly can turn the tides of war. Either to rush ahead when time is of the essence, make a quick retreat or help out on a different front.
Economy
Anything with energy management: Get energy faster, preserve it, pay less, recover spent energy from the void pool and so on. Very important if you want to keep running on full steam. Every color has different means to achieve that.
Charges in your deck are also part of the economy and can be manipulated if you are in need of that.

The beauty of Skylords is that you can combine colors very freely, depending on your collection, intentions, preferences and creativity.
You can try to build a more flexible all rounder deck or specialize for a particular aspect. This might seem like a lot to keep in mind but don’t worry about it too much. Some color combinations naturally lean more into certain areas so just look at the cards available and see what you want or can get.
No need to worry if you cannot hit all the marks. For example, if you have a lot of sustain, you might not need a lot of damage mitigation, although they have natural synergy with one another. Or vice versa. If your deck can deal a lot of extra damage, maybe you don’t need damage buffs. And so on.
Units in general
After you have a broad idea how you want to build, it’s time to go into the specific card types.
Most of the time a unit roster consists of 1 or 2 cards for each tier. 3 unit cards for one tier is already a noteworthy commitment. Using more can become slot inefficient and you might run out of space to fit good cards into your deck in other places. So usually there are 6 to 8, at times maybe even 10 units in a deck.
Some possible picks for unit combinations in each tier are:
One ranged unit
Sometimes just spamming one solid ranged unit is enough. Take care to have enough charges on that one card to play it repeatedly before it goes on cooldown.
Two ranged units
Two different ranged units can also be used as a duo if they have good synergy.
One ranged and one melee unit
Mix one melee and one ranged unit to create a conventional army set-up of a front- and backline.
One ranged/melee and one support unit
Support units can debuff enemies, buff your own or allied entities, shield or heal. Many beneficial effects to pick from if you are so inclined.
Investing too much energy into supportive units will slow you down though. After all, every unit exclusively busy supporting is equivalent to one damage orientated unit, that you could’ve summoned instead, not fighting.
If you summon a mix of melee and ranged units, the ratio of your army is usually about 1/3 melee, 2/3 ranged. For supportive units, it’s roughly ¾ ranged/melee and ¼ support.
In case you forgo ranged units entirely, don’t leave yourself vulnerable to enemy air units. Also consider that only a certain number of melee units can attack one building at a time.
Again, these are general guidelines and deviating from them is fine if you still feel like you get everything you need out of your deck. Adding more units can lead to a more flexible army with interesting synergies.

Units in Tiers
Tier 1
Already on T1 there are many combinations to discover, so go out and try a few or observe how units do by themselves.
Tier 2
Things get more complicated here because now orbs can be splashed and there are much more units to choose from.
L sized units are expensive energy wise but deliver a good bang for your buck. If you pick a beefy L melee frontliner, you can supplement them with ranged units. But ranged L units can often hold their own as well. L units are also less susceptible to knockback, which can be a real pain for S and M units. Don't dismiss them entirely though. They often boast strong effects and are cheaper to summon.
Good airborne units become broadly available on T2. Those are squishy and die easily but their great damage can make up for it if you use their high mobility to focus weak spots like melee enemies or buildings unable to defend against air.
Strong traits like exceptionally long artillery range or siege damage that destroys buildings quickly will also be at your disposal. Units generally start having much more interesting abilities. So consider if you want to have these in your deck as there are many synergies to discover.
You can still fall back on your T1 units if necessary. Especially some T1 support units can still keep up.
Tier 3
Powerful XL units start being common in T3. They are big energy investments but if you take care of them, they can do some serious work.
L units are no slouch either, many of them are loaded with amazing effects.
S and M units are usually a bit more specialized here. Knockback against S and M units is very common at this point in the game, so they are more difficult to pilot. However, their abilities can turn the tides of battle.
Tier 4
The realm of mighty XL units. The colors you picked in your previous tiers heavily influence which units you have available here.
T4 L and S units have powerful offensive abilities. M units are incredible supports.
It’s tempting to use a lot of different XL units but you should exercise restraint and not add too many of them into your deck, overloading your T4 unit roster. Their big energy cost means you won’t be able to summon them rapidly.

Buildings
Usually buildings make up the smallest part of a deck. Sometimes as low as 2, especially in rPvE. For some cPvE maps it can be as much as 7 or 8. But commonly somewhere in the 3 to 5 range.
Towers and Fortresses
Most of them are pretty straight forward and are simply meant to kill enemies. Defending is their most obvious use but they can also be utilized offensively if you can wait out the construction time when building away from wells and orbs and bait enemies into them.
Some towers are dedicated anti-air (AA) and some have additional utility effects giving them extra uses past their damage capabilities.
These rarely find a place in rPvE decks where you are mostly on the move. But for cPvE they are very good to fortify key locations. If necessary, 2 of these can be added to the deck at different tiers. 3 if you want to lean into it more heavily and have a smoother transition between tiers. More than that would be a very tower heavy, specialized deck.
Always have them in the back of your mind though. These classes of buildings usually have much higher damage and life than any unit for their cost or extremely powerful combat effects. So whenever you repeatedly find yourself in situations where your units have a tough time, maybe backup from a building does the trick.
Shrines, Huts and Devices
Utility buildings, mostly without damage capabilities by themselves but with useful effects. Like sustain, cross-map mobility for units and support for other entities.
Being generally very useful almost all decks have a few of these. You will likely find at the very least 2 helpful buildings within these classes, regardless of your decks purpose. Possibly even more.
A very important aspect about these is economy management, especially void return. Speeding up the energy return from your void pool can make your game a lot faster overall. Having at least one building that is able to manipulate energy in some way is a big benefit. Either making summons cost less, affecting well output, changing power refund when killing units or affecting void return.

Spells
Spells are a very important card type that often turns the tides of battle. So it’s not uncommon for a deck to contain a lot of these. Rarely are there less than 5 spells. More commonly somewhere between 7 or even 10 spell cards.
There are three spell classes:
Spell
Requires ground presence. Which means there has to be a conventionally summoned (played straight from a card) ground entity nearby.
Enchantments
Global effects that can be played anywhere.
Arcane
Local effects that can be played anywhere.
Spell cards themselves have a lot of different uses. Some buff or heal your own units or buildings. Others deal a lot of damage to enemies. And there are utility spells that offer mobility, CC or have uniquely powerful effects. There are even low tier spell cards that are useful throughout the entire game.
A good balance of spells that allow for flexibility is very helpful. They can also be used to further define your decks strengths or cover for weaknesses. You can refer back to the general considerations to decide which spells you prefer in order to cover a given purpose.
Synergies
Decks really shine if you use cards that work well together. Some synergies are obvious and part of the card description. Like cards that depend on freezes or nearby buildings for full effect. Others are maybe not as immediately apparent. Here are a couple pointers to look out for, with many more waiting to be discovered as you familiarize yourself with the game.
Damage reduction is very powerful when combined with sustain since it makes every bit of healing worth so much more. Similarly many self-damage mechanics can also be mitigated, so definitely test those in the forge. Healing combos incredibly well to compensate. There are some ways to directly increase effectiveness of healing, so if you lean a lot into health restoration mechanics, these can vastly improve their performance. Mechanics that summon disposable units work great together with those that require sacrifices or corpses. For mechanics that use corpses as a resource, it’s possible to boost their efficiency. If you are struggling with charges or cooldowns on certain cards, there are ways to replenish them during a game. Internal buffs (effects entities apply to themselves passively) stack with themselves. External buffs (effects that for example a spell applies to an entity) don't stack with themselves. Only the strongest one is applied. Damage redirection abilities don't stack with themselves. Units that specialize in abilities that lock them in place can be very potent together as you can use localized effects much better. Damage buffs on your units and simultaneously damage taken debuffs on enemies have devastating effects. Root networks can develop into very powerful set-ups. My other Guides
CHEAP and powerful BEGINNER Deck - If you are interested in a very cheap and flexible mixed deck.
CHEAP Pure-Fire Deck - If you are interested in a cheap and flexible fire deck.
CHEAP Pure-Shadow Deck - If you are interested in a cheap and flexible shadow deck.

Hello Skyfolks!
 
Even though not everyone plays it, 4 player rPvE lvl 9 battlegrounds is probably the most popular game mode in general. About time for a competition! The latest big balance patch, which has been around for a while now, made me realize I've never seen a rPvE match with 4 different colors. I'm curious to see your replays!
Since I can't participate in my own contest, of course, I'd be happy to spend some time with you, if you'd like. Let's see how I can help!
Replay analysis - strategic tips
Anyone who has played their first rPvE lvl10, or speedrun with me knows I am a patient teacher and will gladly share ALL my knowledge if you just ask for it.
And even if competitions are aimed at players above the average, we also know that there are (hopefully) many very good players who want to participate, but whose experience in speedrun is much smaller.
That's why I'm happy to offer my strategic support to any team that wants it. Deckbuilding, routes, interaction, little tricks - I'll be happy to take a look at your replays over the next few weeks and try to support you from the outside as much as possible.
My only condition: provide me with a replay and ask specific questions about it. If I see something obvious outside of the questions, I will of course mention it.
I just want to make sure that you make the same effort as I do and not have a lot of theoretical discussions in advance.
 
Team finding
Although I would not recommend you to take this service, I would like to offer it: If you are looking for a "fixed" group for this contest, but can't find any players ingame or on Discord, feel free to contact me - if there are enough players, I can help you to group up. If necessary, you can also register here as a group of 2 or 3 and I will help you find the last members.
However, I strongly recommend you to actively form your groups yourself via Discord or ingame, otherwise you will lose valuable time and players will hang in the queue until I have 4 requests together.
 
General tips
There are free voice chats in the official Skylords Reborn Discord - use them! I promise you, the top teams will be those, who had fast and good communication. Act as team. Ask yourselves constantly: What can I do for my companions? How could my team support me in my task? Teamwork and strategy are worth more than any good individual performance. Stick to the meta (as far as possible). Voidreturn is usually essential in Speedruns. This should (presumably) be your first priority, to which you subordinate EVERYTHING else. Do not hesitate to restart! Once the basic framework of a strategy is in place and a first time has been reached, it is often not worth finishing games where a lot has already gone wrong. Talk to each other and just restart the round! And please keep in mind that there are harder tasks and easier ones. It is not uncommon for the same player to ask for a restart over and over again. This may not be because your teammate is bad, but often because their task is difficult. Speedruns are often at the limit, otherwise they wouldn't be a speedrun, so things just go wrong sometimes. Think outside of the box!  
I wish all participants a lot of fun! And if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me.
 
 

Due to unfair treatment of one of our speedrunning team member which is connected to a ban for the 3 next official pve/pvp events I will not participate in this event. 

Hey all,
as the last deck that I showed was more an super-expensive expert deck, let's speak about the most beloved beginner faction this time - Stonekin.
Prologue:
Even though I don't want to present simple solutions with fixed 20 cards, I have to split the Stonekin topic into 3 parts. There are always nice cards that you can not take because of the limited slots, or other cards that offer other options, but that would be just another deck. Stonekin is a great example.
So that the tension is not quite so unbearable, already the outlook for you:
1/3 will be a classic Stonekin deck with (any row), a macro deck, with a small budget and equally popular among beginners as well as suitable for them.
2/3 will be a bit more expensive and a bit more advanced, taking advantage of the -meta. The deck becomes (slightly) faster, significantly stronger, but in the same measure becomes more "vulnerable" and requires significantly more intervention from the player.
3/3 will follow with the next patch as I have some changes in view on the test server. Here we will focus on the freeze mechanics and build a nice strong, but even more micro-intensive deck. A great fun!
1/3 Classical Stonekin
Theme/Scope: classic Stonekin deck with (any row), prefering Stonekin-Faction over pure Faction where it makes sense, easy to play

Playstyle: Macro
Budget: low budget
Addresses to beginners

Core Deck: 
(as RPVE Decks mostly happen in T4, every RPVE Deck considering should be done from T4 downwards imo - just to explain my approach)
- Our scope sets Grinder as core unit as there are only 3 cards in this orb range. The other 2 cards have no value for us here, as they are about defense, a thing that we don't even consider for a second in Battlegrounds. Always forward, never backward.
- The Grinder is an incredibly good tank, but unfortunately does very little damage - we need a Damage Dealer (DD) and here Gemeye offers itself, more on this below
- Since we don't have good void manipulation ourselves, we rely more on armies than spells in all tiers. ("more" does not mean only)
- We use our nice crowd control (CC) spells that we have through all tiers
- We use large area buffs and heals for maximum efficiency with only a few interventions
- the 2 dmg Spells that we have speed up killing alot
 
T1: Either or
Basically, with any deck, keep the T1/T2/T3 as large as necessary and as small as possible
 
Nature Start - A classic, the most common start, and yet something to talk about, many do a lot "wrong" here
- Windweavers (WW), Surge of Light and Ensnaring Roots are usually set and enough for any rpve9. This is the gold standard.
- Dryad (B) is a great addition, but to me a waste slot as it is not needed. Shaman is a nice Quality of Life (QoL) addition but usually not needed either. If you want to take one of this two cards don't play too much. Usually build not more then 2 Dryads or 2-3 Shamans. For BG10 I would recommend Dryad (B), even more then a Shaman. If you play Dryad (B) I would recommend beginners to switch them to dmg (not using sleeping) it makes them easier to hold in line with your WW.
- Treespirits or Mana Wings are Rare, aren't they an option to Windweavers? Not a bit, WW are the superior nature allrounder. Mana Wings can be a rare solution against Lost Souls (if you play a MOTM where you know you face LS) as some of their strong units can't attack flying. But this is a too rare case to use Mana Wings as allrounder
- Melee Units or Amazon are simply no beginner options, please just trust me. Most melee T1 units lead to unintended pulls and Amazon is too weak for BG imo.
- Other T1 options that are worth mentioning: Mark of the Keeper as Upgrade for BG10, Hurricane is great against S- Units but usually not worth the short T1 stage (nice BG10 Upgrade), Fountain of Rebirth can be a nice addon in 4player groups, solo not worth the pick (BG10 and such... 🙂 )
In BG9 usually bring out 4-6 Windweavers, root smart and have one Surge of Light ready and T2 should be clear. Against LS play 6-8 WW, one of the rare cases where you want to pull enemys to you a bit out of the camp and clean beasts one by one. Fokus your fire a bit and your troops will do better.
 
Frost Start - the underestimated alternative, a shitload more damage but less sustain
- Frost Mages mixed with Masterarches in ratios between 1:1 and 1:2 supported by Homesoil/Ice Barrier can handle any BG9. If you choose to go for blue T1 then there is no way around Homesoil/Ice Barrier, use this combination the whole match until late T4 for your Gemeyes
- again melee tanks are no option in the scope of a beginner deck, though this is a valid option for more sustain melees usually do more harm then they give a benefit (aka unintended pulls)
- Nice BG10 addons can be: Glyph of Frost, one of the Wintertides, Lightblade (very micro intense), Frost Sorc (very micro intense)
Use your Homesoil (eventual Ice Barrier) to clear T2, ~6 Units deal insane dmg with that support, Barrier can be used to heal units too in some cases.
 
T2 either or - the opposite of the T1 choice
As we want to make a stonekin Deck, lets go Stonekin with our T2, where we get great options in our faction. As both colors come with some great splash cards at t2 too, we will focus on Stonekin and only go for "mandatory" splash cards, like the omnipresent Oink - never go out without your Oink! 🙂 Again we want to have a most lean T2, so pick at maximum 2 of the following considerable Units:
- Razorshard (G) is my hidden champion here on the paper he may look not that great (another S-Counter, you need to use ability, delayed damage), but he performs outstanding against most BG9 enemys, he gives your remaining T1 force a nice basic heal that gives a shitload of sustain
- Crystal Fiend (B) moooore sustain though is audio sucks - a really strong option, but beware that your army does not only consists of supporters and healers, a common "mistake"
- Stone Tempest a bit fiddly but a good M counter and providing nice CC via his knockback, though in some cases annoying
- Aggressor - ok'ish unit as L counter if needed, please consider that he is rather a supporter too then a damage dealer
From the Mono color units the following might be worth mentioning: Stormsinger (any) as strong air-counter or Burrower as swift sieger.
As most of the above mentioned are pure supporters or more-supporters keep some/all of your T1 force alive. Usually at T2 a Breeding Ground is not worth (building). After getting mix in - depending on the T3 situation - 0-4 of the above Units. All your T1 options are still viable and your army supported even with your T2 spells now should be fine to deal with anything and everything. The following spells are nice at T2:
- Oink, as said, never have a deck with a that goes without
- if you started Frost you still can consider to take a Surge of Light. Usually T1 spells are not worth a T2 slot, this is an exception
- Matter Mastery, expensive but strong and fun, can be used in combination with Homesoil if you started frost
- in rare cases: Gravity Surge (B) but Stormsinger would be prolly a better T2 choice for most uses here
- and finally the big question "to freeze or not to freeze" -> Coldsnap 
  It is a super strong tool in some rare cases but often used brainless, where it hurts more then it helps. I like to have it with me for seldom super hard T3 camps or to stop a frontline in late match when I am completly on my own. Always have in mind, that freezed enemys only take 50% dmg, which is a very significant penalty. Freeze is very strong against Lost Souls T3 camps, Coldsnap while running in and take out spawner + other buildings to weaken the Lost Vigils.
And please be very careful about freezing units for others, decks that have high burst damage or also rely on triggering their infects can be put in quite a hassle by a single freeze. As a rule of thumb, if you want to help your mates, buff or heal them, but unsolicited freezes are rarely welcome.
 
T3  (?)

Let's speak about void first.
Stonekin has two obvious options here, either Shrine of Memory () or Shrine of Martyrs () that both can be made available at T3, if we stay in the scope of Stonekin and mixed T2. I don't consider Shrine of Martyrs to be usefull in a deck that is not build around freezing, and even then it is doubtful. Shrine of Memory is very weak too, and I think leaving it out at all can be an option, but after hundreds of games with and hundreds without I have the weak feeling that the 2x 100 energy are just about worth the investment.
I find it very difficult to make an absolute statement here, but my cautious recommendation goes in the direction of SoMem, hence the choice of headline ""
As my Stonekin T1/2 units give usually give a very solid mix I tend not to take any T3 units for the usually quite short T3 stage - spells and my remaining force needs to do the job. If you want to take in a unit, it must be something really beneficial like taking in an XL unit like Deepcoil Worm or Deepfang. There are ofc other nice'ish units, but noting that really adds something that you couldn't do with your T1/T2.
You may now say "Hey, it's Stonekin, what about Rageflame/Stone Warrior" and you are right, those give an excellent combo. But still in this deck they would be aliens and not really solve any ugly T4 camp situations for which you would take them in now. I will have a close look on those two in part 3/3 of this "guide".
Spellwise T3 brings two mandatory ones for me, for this deck:
- Revenge
- Stone Shell (G)
Easy to use, both stack, and make your already strong force almost invincible.

Next "mandatory" pick: Thunderstorm - a perfect allrounder you want to have with you if you play a green splash. If there is a Shrine of War from your mates, use your Thunderstorm all the time either for waves (don't stop for them) or when you fight camps. Thunderstorm is as Curse of Oink - this card can't be wrong in most of your decks.
Other spells worth mentioning would be
- Equilibrium (G) if you feel need for more heal, here it is. Usually this should not be needed but can be a nice filler if you feel better with it
Neither Enlightenment nor Frost Shard would add something at T3, so they are not considerable for me.
And now comes the part where opinions differ: Support Buildings
- Wheels of Gifts are no option for me in this deck whereby I have to emphasize here "for me" just as much as the "no" option. Wheels bind 540 (405 with construction hut) energy that can't be invested in units. Solo even with taking muuuuch time it is hard to reach even the break even point where the wheels are useful. In groups ofc wheels pay out earlier, but are usually not really worth slowing down one player that strong.
The problem is compounded by the nature of the Stonekin faction, as individual units are not as strong here, but they become stronger when combined, having almost 2 units less on the field hurts me a lot there. Another reason for me to do without the wheels is that only one wheel buff is very profitable for ourselves, namely the attack buff.
On easy maps, a skilled Stonekin player doesn't even need a single heal, to buff this further with Wheels (partly it wouldn't even stack) would be absurd for me.
However, I also know my Battlegrounds so well that many factors are no longer random for me, but well predictable, that it is very difficult for me to fully take a beginner's perspective here. 20% is 20% more - and if you feel better to wait 1-2 min and take that 20%, then do it!
- Healing Gardens - a great buff! But still I rarely play them, as I consider most content well doable if all decks around are build well, it's a bit the same as for the wheels. But again, of course, if you feel the 300 energy for 2 HG is worth it, then play them (in a group). I would also prefer the HG over the Wheels.


  T4
We have 2 Units in our Faction at T4, as both work together well, why not build around them?
- Grinder is our tank, usually I would only want to have one slot for it and take one of either affinty. Honestly, the fewest will use the skill. But it's not completely useless, though, so give it a try. I therefore slightly prefer the purple. I think having 2 is recommended, the more the better ofc. Grinders benefit greatly from grouping, I would want to set up 2-3 straight up and have 4-5 towards the end, then they are actually almost immortal, especially if you buff them nicely.
- Both Gemeyes are great for me, I like to have them both. Usually I play 1 green, put out all my purples and play Grinders or further purple Gemeyes when the cooldown is off. I would recommend to charge the purple Gemeye for this deck sooner or later. Ofc the green can be cut if you have other preferences.
- always leave some energy left for 1-2 spells
Ofc other Units can support this mix, though I don't feel a need for it. Primeval Watcher for example could go as supporter, Giant Wyrm as super budget DD.
The two spells I recommend the most here are Regrowth and Ice Tornado. The former is mandatory in most unit based decks though I don't often feel the need to use it in a Stonekin Deck. The latter is a great damage spell and should be set in the back of most camps, while you fight the frontline. Also it is a nice support for bosses or just as helper to increase dmg on endless crossing fights. Tornado and Thunderstorm should be used all the time if a Shrine of War of a group member is running.
Maelstorm can be an option to get even more sustain, but hey, freezing, we had this topic - be smart when you freeze!
There are other cool spells in this color range, but none that I would consider for this deck
 
Any more options throughout the the tiers?
- Incredible Mo is important against LS, if you play random maps make sure there is one around or take yourself (Yellow buff to avoid anti-range debuff)
- Amii Mon for solo purpose ofc possible
- construction hut if you considered any of the Buff Buildings or Amii
- Frost Bite (P) does work on bosses, usually not worth the slot to me but hey it needs to be mentioned
 
Bosses you struggle with:
- Hellhound can be dangerous, avoid to face him with a too small army alone. Keep your buffs up, take out spawner via Tornado and perhaps focus the boss then
- fear very early Urzachs and Infester, keep your Gemeyes out of range but close enough for your Grinders to count for their passive heal
Any other dangerous situations for this deck:
- early bosses, especially when you are on your shitty SoMem. Know your deck and retreat if needed in time
- Ugly T4 situations end in quite a "zerg" - even t3 units do not change much about that
- usually not a deck I want to bring to BG10 random maps/groups as it is too slow for the given time frame
- Willzappers in early match, reason enough for me to justfy Matter Mastery (that is useless against Lost Souls)
Personally tested Deck proposals, as always from Spells over Units to Buildings
BG9 allrounder

BG10 Solo


Replays:

BG9_4pl_motm_Stonekin_noheals
The very easy current motm, I guess I did not even use a regrowth in that match, perhaps one lazy one in the end. If maps are that easy usually this deck cannot ever be beaten.

BG10_1pl_MOTM_Stonekin
Current super easy motm tempted me to do it with a stonekin - slow but steady, deck above.
I will add a replay of a close and ugly T4 situation (current motm 3/4 comes to my mind) the next days. This is noting you want to have with this deck, but still doable.
BG9_4pl_MOTM_Stonekin_close_t4_fight
As I have seen many people struggling with this Pos3/4 (I am sitting in 4 here) I was a bit afraid to play it with this deck. A very low rank, Deck lvl 7 sat next to me. He touched every next camp in advance to trigger useless further spawn and brought non-optimal units to the field - a perfect stress-test for our Stonekin deck.
And what shall I say, have a look yourself, we are super-clean t4 in ~8min. Far from being fast, but for this map and situation still rock-solid imo.
 
If you have feedback, suggestions, nice replays or storys about this deck, please feel free to post below!

As always, all information without guarantee and with strong personal preference.

See you in the Battlegrounds!
 
Thanks to https://www.deepl.com/translator for helping me with some partly translations
BG9_4pl_motm_Stonekin_noheals.pmv BG10_1pl_MOTM_Stonekin.pmv
BG9_4pl_MOTM_Stonekin_close_t4_fight.pmv

new rPvE 4 Player solo record

The advantage of the frost affinity is that you are not bound by tier and so once you are past a tier you can use its units to gain more charges for higher tiers, the problem being here that usually units scale up in size over the tiers and that the units with charge problems are almost all XL which severely limits what cards are actually useful to use it on, not to mention that power costs make this largely inefficient to spawn a corsair, soulhunter or Grigori compared to a rifle cultist or Cultist master. Even with void manipulation you have to pay it upfront which is just inconvenient with the numbers we're talking about. You can argue that you save a deck slot if you actively use an Xl unit in t3 but then again, Cultist Master are a staple anyways and Rifle Cultists ability can still be usefull so it is not even necassarily a wasted slot.

--> The problem is that where the frost affinity should have an advantage the inherent power costs of units where it should be usefull make it inconvenient to say the least.
I think the biggest reason to play it currently would be when you are missing a lot of charges of L-sized creatures in t3 and then try to fit it in with relatively cheap L-sized t2 units like lost shade. This is pretty much only applicable to beginner and maybe early advanced players that are still building up their collection.
When you then consider that with nature affinity you can enable combinations like 2x infect, 2xsoulshatter, 2xthunderstorm or 2x cluster explosion, reset the cooldown of cc in a critical moment of a fight it is pretty obvious that nature affinity might cost you a deck slot but is more flexible and convenient. Frost offers 1 (potentially) big upside, but that upside also has downsides besides all the clear negatives compared to nature affinity.

Just an idea out of the blue (hah!) - why not let offering frost affinity regain charges for all cards that share orb requirements with the offered card (e.g. I offer a Lost Vigil and all cards that have frost or shadow orbs as requirements regain a charge), not sure about this though because it does sound very strong in 2 orb splash decks.

new rPvE 4 Player solo record

new rPvE 4 Player solo record

For some reason the images in the initial post just ceased to exist (no clue why, when, how?!?).
Please use the link provided at the END of the original post to access dropbox where a .pdf document with the whole guide is provided.