n3tax

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

• Skylords ReBOOM

Today, we have a very exciting announcement to share! After introducing new cards, campaign maps, features, and even new game modes, we feel it's time to branch out even further. Please check out the trailer below.
That’s right—Skylords Reborn is entering the first-person shooter genre! Join Bandit Sniper Guy on his adventure as he faces familiar foes from the world of Nyn. While we will continue releasing new content for Skylords Reborn, the majority of our development focus will shift to Skylords ReBOOM. We hope you'll join us on the battlefield!
Pre-orders are up now, so get your copy!  

 
• New Card Reveal - Hellhound

Back in 2023 we held a card-creation contest, inviting the community to share their ideas for potential new cards, which were then judged anonymously by our designers. While many great designs were submitted—some of which have already made their way into the game, like Energy Core and Gate of Akylos—we might have saved the best for last. The highest-rated entry was Hellhound, an upcoming L-sized unit for Pure Fire. Let’s break down the card!

 
Magma Armor
Takes 25% less damage from ranged and magical attacks. After 5 seconds in combat, damage reduction increases to 40% less damage, and after 10 seconds in combat, the damage reduction increases to 60% less damage from ranged and magical attacks. Resets after 10 seconds out of combat.
 
Pyroclastic Flow
Cause Magma Armor to explode, dealing 660 damage to enemies in a 15m radius, up to 1980 damage in total. Magma Armor is reset to 25%. Requires Magma Armor to be fully charged. Reusable every 20 seconds.

Design notes:
Hellhound was the overall winner of our first ever Card Creation Contest, where we asked members of the community to submit ideas for new cards. The original design has seen little change since then. Hellhound is an L-sized T3 Pure Fire unit. Similar to Moloch, it has resistance to ranged and magical damage, though in Hellhound's case this resistance begins at 25% and scales up to 60% the longer the unit remains in combat. Once the armor fully scales, Hellhound can activate Pyroclastic Flow, exploding its Magma Armor to deal up to 1980 damage to nearby enemies.
The general concept behind Hellhound is to have a Fire unit that slowly scales in durability as it fights, but which can then transform that durability into damage. This will allow Hellhound to quickly clean up camp remnants, including flying units, using Pyroclastic Flow when Magma Armor is no longer needed.
Hellhound will be released in a future content patch—details to be announced!
 
• Art Spotlight - Hellhound

Hellhound started out as a trial task for Psyagita, who was interested in joining our art team. Unfortunately, they ended up being too busy to continue, but were kind enough to let us move forward with the work. We dove into our archives and found some early sketches from the art process!     Psyagita first provided us with these three sketches. Our lead artist at the time, Tweeto, had this to say about the initial batch: "I think I prefer the 3/4 view of the face over the profile version and am interested in seeing a more dramatic and imposing angle of the creature itself. Could you try sketching it from a lower perspective to highlight its intimidating presence?"    Psyagita came back with two new attempts. We preferred the second one, as it had more of an action pose—which tends to look better in a card frame. Work then began on finalizing the pose and adding color.
     At this point, Psyagita unfortunately became too busy, so our artist SpiritAlpha took over the task. Since we were working on the model simultaneously, we made a few adjustments that were reflected in the updated artwork—most notably, a new color for the flames and fur.     The piece was coming along nicely, but we felt it stood out a bit from other Fire cards, particularly due to the grey background. We also wanted to make sure the card felt cohesive in the deck bar alongside other Fire cards, so we looked to other units in the faction for inspiration.     By adding purple elements to the cave background, the artwork popped more and felt more in line with the rest of the Fire faction. After several rounds of feedback with our art group, we finalized the artwork for Hellhound.     We’re very happy with the result and hope you’re excited to play the card yourself in the future! A big thank you to Psyagita for laying the groundwork for this unique piece, and to SpiritAlpha for bringing it across the finish line!   • Team Changes
We’re excited to announce a new addition to our art team—Elkondo has joined us as a 2D artist! We hope you'll get to see some of his card artwork in the near future. Welcome, Elkondo!
We’re also happy to introduce Sabri as our new audio designer. Sabri has joined the team to support various audio-related tasks, including creating the sound effects for the recently released card Spirit Gate. We really appreciate the help!
Meanwhile, Prof_Emezy has stepped down from the team. He contributed as a Discord Moderator, Proofreader, and supported some exploratory work in marketing. We'd like to thank him for his efforts and dedication during his time with the team.

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


Don't have time to formally join the staff, but still would like to help out? Please check out this guide on how to support Skylords Reborn as a community member.
 
• Events

In between our monthly Community Updates, we host various events and tournaments, so be sure to keep a close eye on the in-game event tab and the forum calendar to stay informed and not miss out on any exciting events!
 
Current events:
• NEW - Rookie Tournament - 12.04.2025 at 16:00 CET
Interested in PvP, but intimidated by the veterans? We got you covered! Join this Rookie tournament, where only rookies can join and there are prizes for all participants! The tournament will be hosted and livestreamed by Ultralord, please sign-up in advance. 
 
• NEW - Battle of Tactics #8: Maximum Support - Until 13.04.2025 23:59 CEST
Battle of Tactics returns in 2025 with another tricking and exciting challenge! Play a modified version of the map Oracle, including a special pre-game twist, allowing you to scale the difficulty up and down! More information. 
 
• COMING UP - Skylords Reborn Mega Quiz - 03-05-2025 at 20:00 CEST
Win prizes with your knowledge of BattleForge! Join the Mega Quiz live on Twitch for a chance to win BFP and boosters. Come hang out with us, win some prizes, and perhaps learn a new thing or two! More information. 
 
• FINISHED - Skylords Reborn Winter Cup
The first PvP tournament has been completed! You can rewatch the action with commentary by Ultralord and special guest Toggy, with this highlight video. 
 
• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our Event Organizer @Metagross31. We can help you out with various topics and are glad to discuss potential ideas. We can also sponsor the prize pool for your event. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you.
 
• In Conclusion

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

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

Patch time! And some love to underperforming buildings and units, awesome. 

Patch #400051 - Spring Cleaning
Welcome to our newest patch. This update contains our seventeenth balance patch for the game, 4 brand-new cards, quality of life changes, and much more!

 

Patch Preview
Four new cards are now available! Jump in-game to collect Gate of Akylos, Power Shrine, Spirit Gate, and Bandit Hut! Many long awaited quality of life changes have been added to the game. Major reworks to several underperforming cards such as Ice Shield Tower, Mountaineer, Strikers, and Altar of Nihil.  Reworked Empire and fixed two other campaign maps to streamline the player experience.
General Changes & Fixes
When using Twilight Transformation, transformed units now inherit the original unit's group, selection, and commands. Increased the maximum number of visible buff icons on units and buildings to 8. Fixed global effects not applying to units spawned by abilities. For example, this fixes Ravenheart's Ravenships not being affected by Wheel of Gifts or The Incredible Mo.  Fixed an issue with Bedrock's Sculptor ability that caused its ability tooltip to disappear when multiple Bedrocks were selected at the same time. Affinity differences are now highlighted in each card's description. Each affinity has colored text corresponding to the color of the affinity element which highlights only those words and abilities which are different than its alterative affinity. Players who hover over cards with affinities in-game will immediately notice the changes. This featue can be disabled by setting "enable_affinities_highlighting" to "false" on the section "gui" of the file "Documents\BattleForge\config.json". New maps script: - "MapAudio": Audio files (flac, mp3, wav, ogg) can now be played directly from the community map folder. Reference can be viewed on https://skylords-reborn.fandom.com/wiki/Script_Information_-_Full_Reference.
New Updater - Version v0.15
Added support for game channels, you can select the channel on the top left, it will only check updates for the selected channel (main server, test server, etc.).  Improved performance and added caching to update checking. Added config settings to `Documents\BattleForge\updater-config.json`. Added logging to `Documents\BattleForge\Diag\log_updater.log`. Updated Skylords Reborn logo on the top left. Improved error handling and messages. Small UI improvements. Modifiable parameter on`updater-config.json`:
 `fileIntegrityCheckMaxDegreeOfParallelism`: Users can set it to 1 on HDD or slower PCs, default is Processor Count / 2. If you are using Wine on Linux or MacOS, additional dependencies are required:
`sudo apt-get install winbind` `WINEPREFIX=~/.wine32/ winetricks dotnet48 d3dcompiler_47 vkd3d`
New Cards
Bandit Hut - 120p T3 Bandit Building 
You will find the upgrades for this card on the maps Blight (U1) and Into the Jungle (U2/U3).
The enemies of the Skylords have long made use of spawn buildings to reinforce their armies, and this power is now also available to Bandit loving Skylords. Bandit Hut can spawn the previously unavailable units Bandit Vanguards (Bandit Strikers) and Alpha Skyrakes (Bandit Mana Wings), up to a population cap of 150. This will allow the player to quickly spawn in an army of weaker Bandit units to supplement their main army. Now Skylords can give their enemies a taste of their own medicine with their own attack waves! 
 
Gate of Akylos - 200p T3 Lost Souls Building 
You will find the upgrades for this card on the maps Empire (U1) and Unexpected Visitors (U2/U3).
Similar to Soulstone, Gate of Akylos was a card that got stuck in development hell as we faced substantially more implementation issues than initially expected. We are excited to finally share it with our players. Gate of Akylos is a global revenant support building. Its abilities focus around lengthening revenant duration and extracting revenants from existing Lost Souls units. We hope that Gate of Akylos, as well as the changes to other revenant support cards in this patch, help to make the revenant playstyle more accessible to the general playerbase.  
 
Power Shrine - 140p T2 Amii Building 
You will find the upgrades for this card on the maps Convoy (U1) and Into the Jungle (U2/U3).

Ever since we nerfed Shrine of War to require 2 Fire orbs, similar to all other void shrines, rainbow decks have been without a source of consistent void return. Power Shrine fixes this issue. Power Shrine is a T2 global Amii void shrine that allows players to play cards directly out of their void power. With each activation, each member of the Amii player's team will be able to use void power to play their next 3 cards. This card-based approach means Power Shrine will scale well into the later game as player card costs increase in higher tiers. 
 
Spirit Gate - 70p T2 Amii Spell 
You will find the upgrades for this card on the maps Sunbridge (U1) and Unexpected Visitors (U2/U3).

Nether Warp has long been the only source of teleportation that is both reliable and flexible. Spirit Gate adds a second strong teleportation option but with its own twist. Unlike Nether Warp, Spirit Gate is a unit-ability granting spell, similar to Tectonic Shift and Infernal Chain, which gives individual friendly units the ability to teleport to sources of own ground presence in a 75m range. Given the fact that it can be applied to friendly units and not just own units, a friendly Amii player can now grant every player on their team the ability to teleport their armies around the battlefield. Happy warping Skylords!
 

Game Balance Changes
[ Tier 1 Card Changes ]
 Ice Shield Tower:
1. Power cost: 50p ➜ 80p
2. Ice Bolt damage: 66, up to 100 in total ➜ 72, up to 108 in total
3. Ice Shield:
   A. Change from active to auto-cast (30m range).
   B. Ice Shield strength: 880 → 660
   C. New Description: "Every 20 seconds, tower applies an Ice Shield to a friendly unit that absorbs up to 660 damage for 30 seconds. Has a range of 30m."
4. Ice Field (new passive ability): Ice Shields within a 25m radius of the tower do not run out. Cannot be disabled by spellblocking abilities.
Frost T1 has a lot of building options and Ice Shield Tower has long struggled to find its place. We are reworking the card to make its Ice Shield ability into an auto-cast as well as adding a new passive ability that prevents Ice Shields from expiring in the area around the building. This should hopefully make it a compelling choice in defense situations where you have lots of time to build up shields for defending units. 
 Soul Splicer (r):
1. Infused Necromancy (r) damage boost: 50% ➜ 70%
 Snapjaws:
1. Power cost: 75p ➜ 65p
 Strikers:
1. Power cost: 90p ➜ 75p
2. Damage: 780 dp20 ➜ 600 dp20
3. Life points: 600 ➜ 420
4. Unit counter: M-counter ➜ S-counter
5. Charge damage: 30 ➜ 20 damage per squad member
6. New passive ability “Bloodthirsty”: Unit regenerates 15 life points per second over the next 4 seconds per every 150 damage it deals.
Ever since their looter nerf, Strikers have been languishing without much use in either PvP or PvE. We are therefore completely reworking them. On maps where hit-and-run tactics are favorable and where there is a lack of early flying enemies, our testing has shown the new Strikers to have a comparable or even superior performance compared to Nomads. The new Strikers will give Fire T1 players yet another starting unit option. 
[ Tier 2 Card Changes ]
 Altar of Nihil:
1. Orb cost: Shadow, Neutral, Neutral (T3) ➜ Shadow, Shadow (T2)
2. Power cost: 110p ➜ 50p
3. Life points: 990 ➜ 670
4. Complete Rework, Nihilation:
   A. Description: Activate to create a corrupted zone of 25m around the building where summoning friendly units requires 85% less of the usual power costs but causes all summoned units to irrevocably die after 20 seconds. Does not affect flying units. Lasts for 30 seconds. Reusable every 60 seconds.
Altar of Nihil was originally designed to support cards like Wrathgazer or Cultist Master in PvP. It was a niche strategy in the past until Voidstorm got moved to T3. A global map reset paired with void removal created arguably the the most uncounterable and overpowered late game PvP combination the game has ever seen. As a result, we had to remove the strategy entirely by nerfing Altar of Nihil into the ground. Since then, the card has maintained a 0% play rate in every game mode.
As the previous ability was not salvageable due to the interaction mentioned above, we redesigned Altar of Nihil entirely. The new ability is supposed to bring more strategic depth to Shadow's card arsenal by synergizing with its sacrificial elements. We also moved away from a purely harmful effect to open up PvE usage. We will keep a close eye on the card's balancing and adjust numbers in the future if necessary.
 Global Warming:
1. Both affinities now speed up own Fire units by 25% for 20 seconds.
This change will give Global Warming more flexibility, making it better able to justify itself in taking up a deck slot. 
 Mountaineer:
1. Life points: 1350 ➜ 1140
2. Bombard damage: 220, up to 330 in total ➜ 80, up to 120 in total
3. Glacier Shield now refreshes unconditionally every 12 seconds.
4. Icing Up Rework:
   A. Charges: 100, up to 800 in total ➜ 80, up to 400 in total
   B. Charge tick speed: 1000 ms (1 sec) ➜ 3500 ms (3.5 sec) - Aligns with the attack speed, so the unit gains 80 charges every 3.5 seconds.
   C. Charges are now converted into 200% damage.
Mountaineer now generates charges overtime which are then converted into damage, similar to the way Death Ray's corpse mechanic works. This gives Mountaineer more damage at the beginning of combat, but his damage over time drops sharply if he remains in combat for a long period of time. The idea is that the unit should maintain its hit-and-run playstyle but without the buggy shield interaction which would stop the unit from attacking whenever the shield recharged. As regards the Ice Shield, it now recharges unconditionally similar to Avatar of Frost's shield which should help with Mountaineers overall survivability. 
 Portal Nexus:
1. Explosive Death: Friendly entities ➜ Friendly units
This change should make it easier to place and use Portal Nexus without negatively affected the strategies that use the card to kill own and friendly units.
 Shadow Mage:
1. Foul Play health damage percentage: 400% ➜ 500%
 Shrine of Greed:
1. Enemy void return percentage: 50% ➜ 25%
 Revenant's Blessing:
1. Charges: 12 ➜ 20
2. Cooldown: Reusable every 20 seconds ➜ Instantly reusable.
As part of the release of Gate of Akylos, we are touching up a few revenant-based cards to help buff up the playstyle. This change is intended to make it easier to keep unbound revenants alive without bringing both affinities of Revenant's Blessing, saving the player an important deck slot. 
 Tranquility:
1. Soothing Whispers:
   A. Damage buff: 30% more damage ➜ 35% more damage
   B. Healing: 50 life points every 2 seconds ➜ 7% max life points every 2 seconds
2. Foreboding Whispers:
   A. Damage debuff: 30% more damage received ➜ 35% more damage received
With these changes, Tranquility should scale well as a single-target buff even into T3 and T4, giving the player a better reason to include it in Amii decks.
 Twilight Curse:
1. No longer blocked by mind control effects.
Players can now mind control enemies, such as with Amazon, and use Twilight Curse to transform them.
 Twilight Minions:
1. Gifted Incentive (g) damage boost: 30% ➜ 50% more damage by friendly Fire, Nature, and Twilight units
2. Infused Incentive (r) damage boost: 65% ➜ 75% more damage by friendly small units
Encourage use of Twilight Minion's transformation effect, especially alongside the new Twilight Archers card.
[ Tier 3 Card Changes ]
 Healing Gardens:
1. Ritual of Recovery duration: 45 seconds ➜ 60 seconds
Players can now keep Ritual of Recovery active 100% of the time with only one Healing Gardens.
 Lost Grigori:
1. Disintegrating Shock:
   A. Ability power cost: 100p ➜ 70p
   B. Cooldown: 30 seconds ➜ 20 seconds
   C. Can no longer disintegrate XL units
   D. Lost Grigori now regenerates 180 life points per sec while channeling disintegration.
Lost Grigori presently struggles in both PvP and PvE. We are tweaking its disintegration ability in an attempt to breathe some life into the card, especially in PvE. We are removing the ability to target XL-units to prevent PvP abuses, while at the same time giving it a cost reduction and cooldown reduction. Most importantly, Lost Grigori now heals itself while disintegrating enemies, meaning it can self-sustain without a need for other support cards.
 Razorleaf:
1. Damage per leaf: 34, up to 51 in total ➜ 30, up to 45 in total
Despite being a T3 unit, Razorleaf is stronger than most T4 defenses. The card has always been strong and it has received numerous indirect buffs as we have buffed other Nature cards around it. While we want the card to remain a strong endgame defensive option, even into T4, it currently stands too far above its competitors so we are chopping off 10% of its total damage. 
 Twilight Bombard:
1. Damage: 420, up to 630 total (2100 dp20) ➜ 460, up to 690 in total (2300 dp20)
2. Life points: 2660 ➜ 2920
Despite previous buffs, Twilight Bombard is still struggling to find its place among Twilight's T3 defense options. We are giving it a 10% buff to both its damage and life points to make it more efficient for the power cost.
[ Map Changes ]
  Ascension Map 3:
1. Map 3 of Ascension is now playable even when one side of the map has no players. This will allow players to play this map solo.
2. Map 3: Allow players from the respective other side to also take control of the portal devices with nearby ground entities.
 The Insane God:
1. Fixed a bug where a Seeker would instantly turn into a Guardian if it was killed while transforming.
2. Urzach's Seeker: Added an indicator to the visual effect of the transformation ritual and hide both if the ritual is interrupted.
 Empire:
1. Reworked Magic-Devices:
One of the more annoying things in Empire was the clunky Device-logic. Before this patch, only one player (per side) could teleport the Red-King to his timeline. Now every player is able to teleport the Red King back and forth.
2. Reworked Ritual:
We added a few visual indicators to hopefully make the ritual more understandable.
3. Removed Player-Limit:
As soon as one side of the map had no more players, the game ended. This restriction caused games to end, which could have been successful even without the other side of the map present.
4. Minor changes:
We also made a lot of miscellaneous changes. These range from small things such as incorrect map outcries to larger, more game-breaking issues like Jorne's allies blocking his path and thus blocking the game from advancing.

Great greetings, People of the Sky
Welcome to the first of four PVP Tournaments hosted by yours truly in 2025.
The plan is to have one Tournament in each season, so let’s kick this off with:


How to join and schedule
The event starts on                            08.03.2025 16:00 CET
You can join till                                  08.03.2025 15:50 CET
I will stream the event starting at      08.03.2025 15:30 CET Here is my twitch.tv/ultralord_t1421
                                                           Where we quickly go over the rules and answer last minute questions
You can join here on Challonge. (check rules beforehand)

Tournament Format
We play 1vs1, Best of 3, with double elimination.
So if you lose your first set, you are not out! You can make your way to the final in the lower bracket.
The grand final will be a Best of 5.
The bracket will be shuffled before the start of the tournament.
Rules
The tournament will be held on the Live Server! I highly recommend using a Free PvP Deck. Disconnection during a game will result in a default loss. If both sides agree, it is possible to have a rematch. Not showing up to your match after 15 minutes results in a default loss. The plan is to play a round of matches every ~30 minutes. After your match, go to Challonge and insert the result. This is done by clicking on your match and selecting the winner/stats.
The brackets/match list will be updated automatically after all have finished their match. The Map Pool is: Haladur, Simai, Elyon, Lajesh, Uro and Yrmia. The map of round one will be Haladur; after that, it's loser's choice.
Against the second opponent, you start with Simai. third Elyon, etc. (I will make notes in Challonge) The first deck lock is done by a coin flip. (/roll 1) After that, the winner has to lock in first. You can only win prizes if you show up to the event and play your matches. Have fun and don’t be an idiot!
Prizes
Place 1: 7 General Boosters   + 7.000 BFP   Place 2: 5 General Boosters   + 5.000 BFP   Place 3: 4 General Boosters   + 4.000 BFP   Place 4: 3 General Boosters   + 3.000 BFP   Place 5 to 50%: 1 General Boosters   + a part of 6.000BFP   Booster are Sponsored by the SLR Team
And the BFP are a donation from @Fundus
Thank you for your Support!
 

I hope you all are as hyped as I am to see some incredible PvP Action in 2025!
Ultralord 🎩

Hotfix
03 January 2025

General Fixes and Changes Fix Christmas achievement being hidden, progress will be adjusted and rewards will be given accordingly through in-game mail. Remove Unexpected Visitors and Into the Jungle from old campaign achievements, progresses will be adjusted and rewards will be given accordingly through in-game mail. Affected achievements:   Make It Double   A Force Of Nature   Hero of the Realm   Among the Old Gods Card Changes Stone Warrior (Nature): Active ability Shatter Lance: Fix splash damage affecting non-paralyzed units. Burrower: Active ability Acid Spit: Corrected upgrade 3 description numbers. Frost Mage (Promo): Fixed death animation (Tornado was stuck in the ground). Lost Shade (Shadow): Passive ability Tainted Union: Improved description to be more consistent in French. Nox Carrier (Fire) / Nox Carrier (Shadow): Active ability Infused Necro Strike: Improved description to be more consistent. Active ability Tainted Necro Strike: Improved description to be more consistent. Now instantly applies the first instance of contamination damage to fix the issue where it would deal one damage instance too little throughout its duration. The aura will now properly reapply to already present units in the vicinity. Ravenheart (Promo): Fix death animation to show correct promo textured debris. Razorshard (Fire) / Razorshard (Nature): Infused Bombing Raid: Improved description to be more consistent. Improved name to be more consistent in Russian. Gifted Bombing Raid: Improved description to be more consistent in Russian. Improved name to be more consistent in Russian. Satanael (Shadow): Active ability Tainted Fealty: Passive ability Tainted Dilution of summoned Snapjaws (Shadow): Improved status bar tooltip description on affected targets to be more consistent. Scorched Earth (Shadow Affinity): Tainted Deconstruction: Improved non-En description on affected entities to be more consistent. Snapjaws (Shadow): Passive ability Tainted Dilution: Improved status bar tooltip description on affected targets to be more consistent. Wrathgazer: Passive ability Resilient: Removed permanent status bar icon to make room for more temporary debuffs. Passive ability Pain Link: Improved description in German to be more consistent. Event NPC Changes Frost Mage (Event NPC): Added permanent passive abilities: ally Leader immunity, Teleport immunity, Un(-self)killable. Gold Wagon (Event NPC): Decrease orb requirements from 4 Neutral to 1 Neutral. Fixed present disappearing when the wagon is damaged. Fixed wrongly referenced flu and scratch textures. Improved the death animation (debris). Improved the sound played on death. Shadow NPC Changes Skeleton Warriors (NPC): Damage: 600 -> 510 Wrathblades (NPC): Health: 600 -> 450 Unstable Demon (NPC): Tier: T3 -> T2 Energy: 150 -> 175 Ashbone Pyro (NPC): Tier: T3 -> T2 Energy: 150 -> 175 Damage: 2000 -> 1800 Overlord (NPC): Health: 4000 -> 5100 Cultist Master (NPC): Summoned Night Crawler Lifetime: 20s -> 15s

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

• Happy New Year and Anniversary

Happy New Year Skylords! We hope you had a lovely holiday, and wish you all the best for 2025. 
December 18th marked the 4th Anniversary of Skylords Reborn, and we released a patch to celebrate the occasion. Be sure to check it out, because you can earn yourself a promo Frost Mage until February 2nd.  


We would also like to remind you that our feedback survey will close on January 5th. Because Skylords Reborn is a community project, we want to understand what our players enjoy and what could be improved. Your input is vital to helping us refine the game and expand our player base. 
We hope you’ll take a moment to answer the survey questions, as your responses will directly shape our development priorities. As a thank-you, everyone who completes the survey will receive two boosters. Your feedback will be anonymous.

In this Community Update, we are taking a look back at 2024, and share our plans for 2025. We have a lot to cover, so let's get started!
 
• Looking back at 2024

2024 was a great year for Skylords Reborn, and saw the release of new campaign maps, something players have been asking for since the start of the revival. But a lot of other things happened this year, and we'd like to take a moment to reflect upon 2024, and go over our releases.    January 27th - 2024   Our first content patch for 2024 introduced two new cards; Tectonic Shift and Lost Mana Beast. We also added a new rPvE difficulty and made changes to the existing difficulty system to align it better with the campaign map difficulties. We combined this change with our rework of the campaign reward system with individualized upgrades, gold rewards overtime, and gold rewards on-loss. We added tutorial missions, where players receive rewards for simple missions meant to explain some of the harder to understand mechanics of BattleForge. Lastly, the anticipated Lost Soul rework was released, containing a large number of buffs to well-designed but underperforming cards.
We also released some quality-of-life features, like buttons in the Forge to pause, speed up and slowdown, made a change to the neutral unit exclusion rule, and improved responsiveness of the game.   
     Looking back
Tectonic Shift was a successful card release, with a healthy playrate in both PvP and PvE. It created its own archetypes and is a card which you can build a deck around. Lost Manabeast was a specific failure for two reasons, one, because it accidentally released with -25% less damage than intended, and, two, because the ability restriction was too high. We buffed the card to fix both these issues, but Lost Souls in general is in an odd spot. We changed it to function as desired, but it is too high-micro for the average player, so we likely need further changes to the faction. Our changes to the rPvE difficulty system were successful in our view, providing a meaningful bridge between the old level 9 and level 10 content.
 
April 27th - 2024   In April, we released the highly anticipated new card Bedrock. This patch also saw the release of Map of the Day, and the introduction of the Rebirth Booster, containing only cards from the Skylords Reborn Rebirth edition, earnable through winning multiple Maps of the Day.  
We also made a few balance changes to underperforming Twilight cards, released some quality-of-life changes requested by the community, and fixed some bugs. 
     Looking back
Rebirth boosters have been a success both in terms of successfully speeding up the cost reduction of new cards and in driving player engagement with Map of the Day. Bedrock is a well-designed card, but we ran into major issues with the ability not showing up when you have multiple selected. The stone turtle is a cautionary tale about the real limits we have reverse engineering the game because we have not been able to fix the problem where the game thinks Bedrock's ability is a building ability, and it is not clear when we will be able to do so. 
  June 29th - 2024   We knew that our new campaign maps would take the spotlight of our next patch, so we decided to release a patch in June to give the new cards Icespike and Swarm some time to shine. We also implemented a large amount of balance changes, mostly to tier 3 cards, in preparation for the release of the new campaign maps.         Looking back
Swarm and Icespike are both functioning as intended and are unlikely to see changes anytime soon. We would regard them as successful card releases filling important gaps in their respective factions. 
    September 21st - 2024   Years in the making, September finally saw the release of two new campaign maps; Unexpected Visitors and Into the Jungle. There was a large focus on the Amii faction, and four new cards were released; Amii Sentinel, Energy Core, Skydancer and the long requested Umbabwe. Battle Arena, a PvP mode which had been in development for a long time, was also released into the Sparring Grounds with 2vs2 and 3vs3 modes.   We also implemented new voice lines, both for the new campaign maps and some of the new cards. To round out the patch, we added new achievements (one awarding a new Lost Souls-themed Forge), and another batch of balance changes, including a rework to Amii Monument, the topic of many discussions and heated arguments over the years. We also released the Legacy server, where players can experience BattleForge without balance changes and new cards added by the Skylords Reborn team.            Looking back
This was arguably our biggest patch yet, and players noticed. Player numbers have gone up since its release, and reception to the maps has been very positive. While we purposefully made the new maps harder than some existing maps, we likely made UV's advanced difficulty too hard. We also noticed that some players would play UV over a dozen times and still not understand the mechanics, so it gave us a lot to think about in regards to designing new maps and how complex we are able to make them without causing issues among players, especially because we only have English voice lines. The new cards were mostly successful, with a few follow-up tweaks planned for Energy Core. 
 
October 27th - 2024 While writing this Community Update I had to double check if those dates are correct, but indeed; one month after our biggest patch yet, we released another patch containing 2 new cards and a new promo card. The new Amii card Simulacrum wasn't quite ready for release in our Echoes of the Amii patch, but we were able to release him shortly after. We also added Twilight Archers, a simple but effective addition to the Twilight faction.
But the main focus for this patch was our Halloween event. Because of the positive response to our previous events, we decided to do something special this year, and introduced a Halloween-themed promo card: Jorne, earnable by playing a special Halloween version of King of the Giants map. If you missed out on this promo, rest assured that you will have another shot next Halloween.
      
 
Looking back
Twilight Archers are working as intended as a PvP card, and will not see PvE adjustments, though they may see some indirect buffs in PvE via other upcoming changes to the Twilight faction. Simulacrum is a bit underpowered right now and it will receive some mild buffs in the future. While we try to get things right from the start, balancing a kite-unit correctly on the first attempt is rather difficult. We as a team have enjoyed the Halloween event tradition that happened organically and were glad to offer a promo this year.
 
December 22th - 2024 Closing out the year we had another holiday-themed event, covering not one, but three maps. On these Christmas-themed maps, players faced off against the Shadow faction to save the presents, elves and Santa himself. Doing so rewarded them with a promo Frost Mage.
While not exactly new maps, player feedback has been very positive on our seasonal overhauls of familiar campaign maps. 
       
Looking back
While players seem to enjoy the 2 and 4 player maps, we have received feedback that the map Christmas Fleet is too hard. While we feel a promo should warrant a challenge, especially in a community that knows the ins-and-outs of Skylords through the years, we will take this feedback into account to try and make sure future time-based rewards are available for all skill levels. The maps will also likely see minor tweaks before the event ends, as it was our first time using Shadow units and some of them were not fully complete or tested by the time we had to release the map. 
  What else happened in 2024   Besides a steady stream of content releases, a lot of work went into other projects as well.  • Our Map Designer R4bitf00t released a Map Editor tutorial, making it easier for players to get started creating their own maps. 
• We shared an interview with the map department regarding the creation of the new campaign maps.  • We released a Deep Dive document for Twilight, sharing insight into the faction and its development going forward. • Players started working on developing PvP bots to face off against each other, and perhaps in the future against players as a sparring partner. • We had some major struggles with Anti-Virus programs flagging Skylords Reborn as unsafe. After a lot of hard work, most issues are now resolved. • We worked with volunteers outside of the staff who lend their voice to implement new voice-lines into the game. • We released our yearly Feedback survey to gather feedback about the state of the game, and what players enjoy or dislike about Skylords Reborn. • Ultralord hosted the Seven Strategy Showdown, the biggest event series to-date, with 7 great community events for players to enjoy.  • We spend a lot of time on our official YouTube channel, releasing trailers, card spotlights, and the how-does-it-work series.    Looking back
2024 was an exciting year for us, with the milestone of releasing our first campaign maps as the absolute highlight. It was lovely to see the buzz in the community, and see many old faces return to check out the new additions. Our card output was also higher than ever before, and there was always something to do or explore in the game, be it an event, a new card, or a new game mode. 2024 proved that Skylords Reborn is alive and well, and with 2025 marking the year where this revival project will outrun the original BattleForge, we are looking ahead to a bright future.    • Looking ahead at 2025

We consider 2024 largely a success for Skylords Reborn. Many players managed to find the project again, either for the first time, or to check out the new campaign maps and content we released over the years. You have also shared constructive feedback and kind words with us through the survey, and we intend to continue upon the legacy of BattleForge in 2025. While we won't go into much detail yet, here are some things you can expect in 2025. 
  New Campaign maps While players had to wait years to see Unexpected Visitors and Into the Jungle, the waiting time wont be as long for our next batch of new maps. We have multiple new maps in development, and hope to release two of them in the first half of 2025. We will take the feedback and lessons we learned to provide great content to enjoy for players from all skill levels.      New Cards   We have multiple new cards in various stages of development, and it won't be long before you get to experience them first hand. We currently expect the number of new card releases to be similar to 2024, and have some exciting cards on the way.        Balance Changes   In 2024 we made the controversial decision to change Amii monument. While we do not enjoy nerfing cards players like, we do so because we think it is the best choice for the game as a whole. As mentioned in our explanation of change, we think that the time of major nerfs is now at an end, and we as a team commit to no further nerfs on the scale of Amii Monument or the previous Batariel nerf from 2 years ago to existing cards going forward.
Instead, we intend to continue our work on making lesser played cards viable, and we have our eyes set on the Twilight faction. With changes focused on making more interesting use of the faction "Transform" ability, we hope to give players more incentives to play faction cards, instead of merely combining the best cards Nature and Fire have to offer.      Map Modifiers   Originally intended for 2024 (to the point of even being mentioned in the looking ahead of that year), map modifiers are still in the works. Modifiers add unique twists and challenges for players to explore. We are currently finalizing a beta roll-out of the feature, intended on gathering important feedback from our players. For starters, random maps will get infected with an elemental modifier for a week.   We see tremendous potential in map modifiers in regards to replayability of the game.  
And more!   As always, we will use the monthly community update to keep you informed about our work behind the scenes, with some nice surprises along the way. Be sure to check in every 1st of the month for the latest news about Skylords Reborn, and we hope you will enjoy what we have in store for 2025!     • New Card Reveal - Power Shrine

Now for something more concrete! To start out the year we have an exciting card reveal for you. We will save you the technical details, but after a lot of trial and error, we have finally figured out how to make Amii buildings happen. For our first Amii building, we decided to create a new Shrine card. Lets take a look at Power Shrine!
Please note: We are still working on the card. While we are generally happy with it, art, numbers and effects might still change before release. 


Grasp the Void
Activate to reverse the flow of power in the world temporarily. The next 3 cards each friendly player uses, and the next card each enemy player uses, will use void power to fulfill the card's power cost. Lasts for 30 seconds. Has a 60 seconds cool-down after the building was built. Reusable every 60 seconds.
This ability prioritizes void power, but if there is not sufficient void power to meet the card's power cost it will take the remainder from the normal power pool. If there is not enough combined power in the void and normal power pools to fulfill the card's power cost, it will be unable to be used as normal.

Design notes:
Every since we nerfed Shrine of War to require 2 Fire orbs, we have been looking to add a new void return option for rainbow decks. With Amii buildings now possible, that option became available via an interesting discovery that we could let the player use void power as if it were normal power. Power Shrine is an interesting twist on the normal void shrine because it allows the player to play 3 cards from their void power every 60 seconds. This means that it scales as the player's tier increases because cards generally cost more the higher their tier. This built-in scaling also allowed us to move Power Shrine down into T2, as three T2 cards every 60 seconds is not necessarily efficient given the high bound power cost, but it could be in a focused enough deck where players carefully determine their next 3 card choices given the unique power stipulation Power Shrine offers, especially in a team environment. 
Power Shrine is scheduled to release alongside our next content patch, date to be announced. 
 
• Clarification and modifications to the Global Rules

We have made some adjustments to our Global Rules, which apply both in-game and on our Discord and Forum. While it is commonly known that Skylords Reborn has a strict no-multiaccounting policy, there has been some confusion about our rules in regards to uneven trading and gifting. We have added some elaboration on these topics to the rules. We have also changed or removed some sections that were no longer relevant (for example, in regards to reputation on the Forum), and expanded upon communication and privacy-handling. You can read the full rules here.  Should you have any questions regarding these rules, please don't hesitate to contact our moderators. 
 
• Team changes and Contribute to Skylords Reborn

We had a bunch of lovely people joining as volunteers this year! The following Skylords joined in 2024:
ElementG as Tech-artist
Bergerb as Map Designer
Vrizz as Testing Coordinator
Chibiterasu as Card Implementor (rejoined)
TwilightPrincess as Card Implementor
Prof_Amezy as Discord Moderator (trial)

But it would be unfair to not also give a shout-out to the members who left the team during 2024: 
Minashigo Hiko left as Event manager.
Volin left as Map Tester Coordinator
Vrizz Left as Testing Coordinator
Noah left as Audio Editor
Thank you all for your work for the project! 
Skylords Reborn is a community-driven project fueled by the passion and dedication of over 50 volunteers. We are always on the lookout for like-minded individuals. If you have a passion for gaming, programming, design, or marketing, we invite you to have a look at our open positions!

 
Don't have time to formally join the staff, but still would like to help out? Please check out this guide on how to support Skylords Reborn as a community member.
 
• Events

In between our monthly Community Updates, we host various events and tournaments, so be sure to keep a close eye on the in-game event tab and the forum calendar to stay informed and not miss out on any exciting events!
 
Current events:
• NEW - Save Christmas - Until February 2nd
While Christmas is over, our event is not. Complete the 3 Christmas-themed community maps to earn yourself a promo Frost Mage. Be sure to do so before the 2nd of February, or you will have to wait till the holidays of 2025 to have another shot.  
 
 • CLOSING SOON - PvP AI programming contest - Until January 5th
Players have until Sunday, 5 January 2025 at 23:59 to work on their bots. By then, please send the version of your bot, which you want to participate with, to @Metagross31. either via DM in the forums or via Discord. More information.
 
 • NEW - PvP AI programming contest - Final Showdown
Get ready for the AI Programming Tournament, where the submitted programs will face off in an epic showdown to find the ultimate AI strategist! More information.
 
• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our Event Organizer @Metagross31. We can help you out with various topics and are glad to discuss potential ideas. We can also sponsor the prize pool for your event. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you.
 
• In Conclusion

That's all for this Community Update! We appreciate you taking the time to read through it.
As is tradition, we're including a scratch code as a small token of our appreciation for your support.
The code will reward you with a general booster: HAPP-YNEW-YEAR-2025
Please note: Filling out the feedback survey also rewards you with 2 boosters. The survey will close after January 5th. 
The code is valid until February 1st, when we will bring you another Community Update. 
We're always looking for ways to improve and value your feedback. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please don't hesitate to share them with us. We'll be back next month with more updates on our ongoing projects and upcoming features.
You can also sign-up to our e-mail newsletter here.

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

Today, marks the 4th Anniversary of Skylords Reborn! We’re thrilled not only to have revived this wonderful game but also to continue its development. This project is truly by the fans, for the fans, and we’re deeply grateful for your support in the Forge.
To mark this special occasion, we’ve prepared an exciting event! Starting December 22nd, our Save Christmas event goes live!
With this patch, a new achievement will challenge you to conquer three special Christmas-themed maps. Succeed, and you’ll earn a unique Frost Mage promo card as a reward.
Join us on December 22nd for the full patch notes and celebrate this milestone with us!
In the meantime, have a look at this teaser trailer. 

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

 
• Echoes of the Amii

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

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

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

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


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



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

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

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

 
• Amii Monument Changes

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

Next patch will also bring the release of a new PvP mode called Battle Arena.  In this game mode, players do not use cards from their deck. Instead, they are given spell devices and progressively stronger creatures which they must use to overcome their enemies. The mode can be played 2v2 or 3v3 and will come with a new achievement to reward players for trying it out. 
 
• Events

In between our monthly Community Updates, we host various events and tournaments, so be sure to keep a close eye on the in-game event tab and the forum calendar to stay informed and not miss out on any exciting events!
 
Current events:
• UPCOMING - Release Event
Once the patch is out, we will have an event to celebrate the release of the new campaign maps. In this special event, you'll have a chance to win some of the new cards or boosters! More details will be shared on patch day. 
 
• NEW - Seven Strategy Showdown 3 - Wrecking Time
The 3rd event in the series is now live! The tables have turned, and this time Skylords are the ones destroying buildings. Destroy as many buildings as possible within the time limit and win some great prizes. More information. 
 
• IN PROGRESS - Seven Strategy Showdown
Every two weeks there will be a new event in this series of seven events, each bringing a fun handcrafted challenge or mechanic! Be sure to check them out, as there are some great prizes to be won! More information.
 
• FINISHED - Seven Strategy Showdown 1 - The Salesman Problem
For this event players had to kill all the units on the event-map as fast as possible. It wasn't long before people broke the one minute mark, but after that the real competition kicked off. You can now watch the winners on Twitch. More information.
 
• FINISHED - Seven Strategy Showdown 2 - The Last Fortress
One building is all that stood between players and the leaderboard. Watch how the fierce competition concluded in the winner reveal stream on Twitch! More information.


 • SECOND PHASE EXTENDED - PvP AI programming contest
Get ready for an AI Programming Tournament, where the submitted programs will face off in an epic showdown to find the ultimate AI strategist! Players are still able to join this programming contest. More information.
 
• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our Event Organizer @Metagross31. We can help you out with various topics and are glad to discuss potential ideas. We can also sponsor the prize pool for your event. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you.
 
• Team Changes

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

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

 
If you have any experience with e-mail newsletters, we could especially use your help as we move towards the release of our latest patch. Please take a look at this new role. 
Don't have time to formally join the staff, but still would like to help out? Please check out this guide on how to support Skylords Reborn as a community member.
 
• In Conclusion

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

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

Patch #400046 - Stone Turtle
Welcome to our newest patch. This update contains our twelfth balance patch for the game, a brand-new card, a new booster type, and our new map of the day feature!

Patch Preview
One new card is now available! Jump in-game to collect Bedrock. Added Map of the Day! A multiplayer map will be chosen at random each day and highlighted on the map. Play it to receive extra rewards. The new Rebirth Booster is now available. Earn it by completing the Map of the Day and through events.  A few balance changes to underperforming Twilight cards as well as a bugfix to a longstanding bug with heal stacking. A batch of quality of life changes requested by the community.
General Changes
Added an indicator for if a random PvE lobby is for the Map of the Month. The Marketplace no longer resets the page on purchase. This should allow players to purchase multiple cards without having to repeatedly scroll back to the same page.  Boosters now stack in the booster inventory screen. Replays are now searchable and sortable. Players can also now see the played cards of all players in a replay. Outdated replays now show the required and current game version on hover over the gear icon. Replays of the tutorial map "Introduction" no longer show the gear icon regardless of game version. Dates & Times now are displayed in the player time zone using their operating system format. Deck name length increased from 16 to 30. This will allow players to better label their decks. The actual visible deck name is dependent on what resolution a person uses when playing the game. Free PvP deck cloning has been massively improved. If a player has a fully upgraded and charged copy of the card in their collection from the Free PvP deck, that card will now replace the free version of the card in the deck whenever the player clones a Free PvP deck.  Players can now export their in-game collection to the Skylords Marketplace Journal (SMJ) by using the chat command /exportcollection in-game. Once exported to SMJ, players can see their progress in terms of their total collection and check which of their cards are the most valuable to sell and which are cheap to buy in order to complete their collection. Removed generated maps from PvP daily quests. Additionally, the "win sparring match" on a specific PvP map quest has been changed from "win" to "play". This will allow players to finish the quest even if on a losing streak.  Units will ignore attack-move commands (Q shortcut) while in combat or using abilities. General Fixes
Implemented a fix for when sometimes swapping the player portrait with a card results in an error. Daily quests are now properly ordered with the most recently received quest at the top. Improved the descriptive text for the import deck tutorial mission. Added dates to PvE leaderboard entries. The text wrapping when displaying a lobby's rPvE difficulty has been fixed.   Fixed spectators counting for achievements, specifically PvP achievements. Fixed match statistics having an incorrect count for maps with spectators. A script will be run to correct the information in player profiles. Attack-move commands (Q shortcut) won't target corpses anymore.
New Cards
Bedrock - 280p T4 Stonekin Unit 
You will find the upgrades for this card on the map "King of the Giants".
When thinking about Stonekin's design, we determined that more buildings interactions fit well with the faction. More specifically, we thought that a building-based archetype was the natural expansion for a faction of living stones. Last patch, we released Tectonic Shift, and this patch we are adding Bedrock. Bedrock is a T4 ranged unit capable of spawning a Stone Launcher and casting an AoE shield that protects buildings in range. For more information, check out Community Update - October 2023.
 

Map of the Day
In our last major patch, we reworked campaign map rewards. A major driving force behind this change, beyond equalizing rewards between the random and campaign PvE modes, was to allow for more flexibility in the reward structure. This flexibility will allow us to create new systems which interact with campaign maps going forward. The first of these new systems is the Map of the Day (MotD) feature. The details for the MotD can be found below. We hope that by introducing this feature, and for rewarding players for regularly interacting with it, it will become as easy for players to find lobbies for campaign maps as it is for random PvE matches. We want players to be able to play the game mode they want, and to not be forced into a mode because of an imbalance in rewards or available lobbies.
[ Map of the Day Features ]
Each day, a new multiplayer map is chosen and highlighted on the world map via a flame identical to the flame used for PvP Happy Hours. Players who win the Map of the Day, on any difficulty, receive an additional choice of upgrade on the post-game reward screen. If the MotD is a 12p map, players will instead receive an additional 1200 gold for completing the map on advanced, and an additional 2400 gold for completing it on expert difficulty. A new achievement "Feel the Burn" has been added. For each day that a player completes the Map of the Day, they will receive 50 bfp. On every 10th completion, they will additionally receive a Rebirth Booster. Rebirth Boosters contain 3 cards, all from the Rebirth Edition (cards released by the Skylords Reborn team), with a substantially increased chance of producing an Ultra-rare card.
Achievements
[ Random PvE Achievement Changes ]
We have made a few changes to the names and structure of the main random PvE achievements. The new structure of the achievements and their rewards are listed below. Note that people who previously completed the random PvE 10 achievement (now expert+) will already receive credit for having completed "Out of the Frying Pan into the Fire." We have made this change to encourage people to play the new expert difficulty level, but without feeling forced to try and complete expert+ to get the booster reward.
The Road Not Taken [3 general boosters]
Win rPvE Advanced++ or higher [20 matches]
Out of the Frying Pan into the Fire [6 boosters]
Win rPvE Expert or higher [20 matches] - Locked until PvE rank 5 (Silver 1)
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here [Avatar: Demon Skull & Avatar: Hell Fire; Title: Hell Diver] 
Win rPvE Expert+ [10 matches & 20 matches] - Locked until PvE rank 10 (Gold 2)

Card Balance Changes
[ Global Balance Changes ]
All healing and rejuvenation effects now stack: 
Regardless of whether they are local, global, percentage, or flat, all healing effects now stack with each other. No longer will Fountain of Rebirth overwrite Wheel of Gift's healing effect. [ Twilight Changes ]
 Twilight Brute:
1. Gifted Burstout (g):
   A. Max Targets: 4 ➜ 7
   B. Damage application: Damages hostile or friendly units ➜ hostile units
   C. Ability cast range: 15m ➜ 25m
2. Infused Burstout (r):
   A. Damage: 400, up to 1600 ➜ 400, up to 2800
   B. Increase damage to buildings: 400 per target ➜ 600 per target
   C. Damage application: Damages hostile or friendly entities ➜ hostile entities
   D. Ability cast range: 15m ➜ 25m
Twilight Brute has an interesting ability that seems tailored fit for giving Twilight a new strategy in T2 PvE. While the ability itself is well-designed, its current strength holds it back. We are increasing the ability cast range to allow it to be used deeper into enemy encampments, increasing the total targets from 4 to 7, and removing the ally damage. We hope with these changes we help to create a new strategy where the player can run some Brutes into a camp and, along with Fire's damage spells, create a cascading explosion effect similar to how Evil Eye plays in T4.  
 Twilight Creeper:
1. Life points: 1700 ➜ 1880
2. Infused Spit debuff strength: 40% ➜ 50%
3. Tainted Spit debuff strength: 30% ➜ 40%
Twilight Creeper is well designed but it currently has low stat efficiency for a T3 L-sized melee unit. We are giving it some more life points and boosting its primary strength through the spit effect.
 Twilight Hag:
1. Damage: 75 damage, up to 153 in total ➜ 124, up to 186 in total (1030 dp20)
2. Life Points: 850 ➜ 1030 life points
3. Damage Counter: L-counter ➜ M-counter
4. Ability name change: Femme Fatale ➜ Enrapture
   A. Cooldown: 60 seconds ➜ 40 seconds
   B. No longer affects Male/Female. Negative effect now affects all enemies and positive effect all allies.
Twilight Hag is one of those cards which is fearsome to face in the lower tiers in PvE, but which as a player card is a wet noodle. We have sent her to the gym, and she has come back with an over 20% increase in both her damage and health stats. Alongside the stat increase, which is more than it might first appear because she had an unusually low single-target damage value previously, we are shifting her damage counter to M. The new M-counter plus her pre-existing small and medium knockback should make her feel powerful against smaller unit sizes. Besides low stats, Hag also suffers from a highly niche ability. The player cannot control the gender of their enemies, and it is not clear what units have what genders anyway (did you know Necrofury is a woman?). In general, we think these male/female mechanics just do not fit in Skylords Reborn, and in this particular case, they are holding back Twilight Hag from potentially becoming a potent crowd control unit similar to Timeless One. Therefore, we are removing the male/female interaction while also shaving 20 seconds off the ability cooldown. 
[ Minor Card Changes ]
 Wheel of Gifts:
1. The same gifts can no longer be activated while another instance of that gift is already starting up.
[ NPC Changes ]
Added several new NPC units: Bandit Bloodhorn, Bandit Wasteland Terror, Snapjaws, Overlord, and Lost Grigori. These units are now available for use by community and official mapmakers.   Lost Spirit Ship (NPC):
1. Removed the suicide ability.
2. Now spawns a Crystal similar to the player version on reaching the previous corpse threshold for suiciding.
   A. Crystal damages enemy units for 300 damage every second, up to 900 in total in a 30m radius.
   B. Cooldown: 30 seconds
   C. Duration: 10 seconds
The existing implementation of Lost Spirit Ship in PvE, while conceptually interesting and a good template for future suicidal units, simply does not work with a T4 XL-sized ranged unit. By changing NPC LSS to spawn a crystal instead, we give it a general usefulness that will open up the possibility of adding the unit to future maps and as a regular part of Lost Souls' rPvE repertoire. 
 Lost Converter (NPC):
1. Spell debuff: 20% less damage ➜ 30% less damage
2. Corpse collection radius: 25m ➜ 40m
3. Poison application radius: 25m ➜ 30m
3. Poison damage per tick: 25 (same as before)
4. Poison damage tick speed: 2s ➜ 1s
5. Corpse cost on enemy entry: 300 ➜ 50
6. Corpse cost per damage tick: 0 ➜ 25
In simpler terms: Lost Converter's poison effect now has normal ranged range (30m), deals double the damage it currently does, and has an increased debuff strength. The corpse collection range has also been increased to 40m, meaning that the building should begin poisoning the player sooner. This will slightly increase the strength of camps with a Lost Converter as the building should now do something.

Thank you all for keeping this alive and also updating it regulary. cant wait for the new campaign maps, that what i mosted whised for. 

In addition to the community update, I'd also like to take this time to share some of my personal thoughts as we transition into year 4 of Skylords Reborn. 

3 years and 43 Community Updates in the books! Working on this yearly recap sure was a trip down memory lane with many "Did we really release that this year?". With so many moving parts and various things in development, things can start to blur a bit. Due to the nature of map making, this felt like a year in which we did a ton of work behind the scenes, but couldn't show off our hard work yet. I'm excited we can now finally start to reveal what the team has been working on.
I hope our monthly community updates still managed to show we are hard at work, and had enough to reveal for players to feel engaged with the project. In hindsight, there were some things that we probably announced too early, (for example the Lost Soul Rework) but with so many variables in our project (our team now has 50 volunteers!) that is bound to happen now and then. I am extremely proud of the work our team put out this year, and I can't wait for players to get their hands on our new campaign maps. 
Speaking of the team, we had a bunch of lovely people joining as volunteers! I am super grateful that 3 years in, we still have so many people with dedication and love for the project that they are willing to spend their free time on it. The following Skylords joined in 2023:
CrazyCockerell and Titan as Tech-artists
Piskr as Client Developer
Pierakor as Tool Developer
Lucas Ansei as Web Developer
Ultralord as Video Editor
Volin as Map Tester Coordinator
Damo and Hrdina Impéria as Map Designers
Kayrie as Map Artist. 
Discoheart and Noah.K as Audio Editor 
Vultagx and Linkz as Global Moderator
ElementG is currently in his trial period for Tech-artist

But it would be unfair to not also give a shout-out to the members who left the team during 2023: 
Katchau (developer) left the team
Nukie left the event department
Watermelon Lord, Nukie, Pfirsichkralle and Dallarian left the Moderator department

Thank you all for your work for the project!
Besides the team, I would like to give a personal shout out to Kapo and Dreamlord. You know Kapo from his CCC and Masters of the Forge series, but he does not get nearly enough credit for how much he does for the project and has always been a reliable friend, whether it be proofreading my documents, or getting a Rayman statue imported from another country. Dreamlord has been our favorite Banzaiii Lorrrd and I have been consistently impressed by not only his quality voice acting but his professionalism and willingness to help out, sometimes on short notice. Besides doing voice-overs for our trailers, you can also expect to hear him in our loading screen narrations for the new maps in 2024. I have high hopes for his voice-acting career, and I hope 2024 will be the breakthrough year for him! 
2023 was a year full of highs and lows. My girlfriend and I got our own apartment and a lovely cat named Lyra. At the same time I saw friends struggling with depression, break-ups, war and death of loved ones. The world can be a rough place, so please take care of yourself and each other. 
What was your highlight for 2023? And what are you most excited about for 2024? Would love to hear it in the comments!
Thank you so much for being a part of this lovely community. 

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

 
• Skylord Reborn 3rd Anniversary

Happy New Year, everyone! We hope 2024 will be a wonderful year for every one of you! 
December 2023 marked the 3rd Anniversary of Skylords Reborn, and we are happy you are here to celebrate it with us!
In case you missed it, we hosted a special Anniversary Stream last Friday, which you can rewatch here. 

In this Community Update, we would like to take a look back at 2023, and share what 2024 has in store for Skylords Reborn. We have a lot to talk about, so let's get started!
 
• Looking back at 2023

Can you believe it's already been a year since we added cosmetics? Here is a quick summary of every patch we released in 2023. 
 
January 14th, 2023

Early in 2023, we released our 2nd Anniversary Patch. The patch contained three new cards; Sanctuary, a Tier 4 Nature spell to go along with our ongoing Pure Nature rework, Raven Archwalker, our first Legendary card, and Worldbreaker Gun Promo, the first Promo building in the game. 


This patch also introduced cosmetics; unlockable ways for Skylords to personalize their banner and avatar border. We also added 32 new achievements, many balance changes, and a ton of Quality of Life features; like a longer Marketplace option, more advanced filtering options including a handy in-game guide, and an import/export deck function.


February 27th, 2023

As with most major patches, our follow-up patch was a small one, containing some bugfixes, and the QoL option for players to re-roll the same quest multiple times. The minimum quest reward after re-rolls was changed to 50 BFP. 
 
April 8th, 2023

After our successful Halloween Event, we wanted to surprise Skylords with an Easter-themed event. While the map and general idea were received positively, we probably should not have attached a speedrun contest to it. Players expressed playing the map once was fun, but grinding the clunky Egg-push mechanic for the top time turned out to be a bit tedious. 

Regardless, completing the special map ''The Easter Tree" on any difficulty resulted in the completion of the newly added achievement "Bunny Brawler", which automatically rewarded Skylords with a new Easter-themed banner. We saw that banner equipped a lot around the holidays, so we are happy to see it being received so positively. 

This patch also contained some bugfixes, and a change to the friend list to display only online friends by default, a much requested change. 
 
May 19th - 2023

In May, we released another big content patch, called appropriately called Nature's Awakening. Alongside many Nature-themed changes, the patch also contained one new card: Sleetstorm.

The spotlight for this patch, however, was on the addition of the Nature faction to rPvE, joining Fire as the second Skylords-Reborn exclusive addition to the game mode. Hodron spend a lot of time balancing the faction and making it fun to play against, which you can read more about in our interview. The patch also contained many balance changes, mostly focusing on our Pure Nature rework. 

The patch also included many Quality of Life changes, including a single-player pause feature, key-down vs key-up interaction, the ability to copy text or import a deck from the in-game chat, and gold chests being openable in combat. Lastly, the patch also included our first part of our Gold rework, a few campaign map changes, and a rework of the community map section. 


This rework allows Skylords to have an easier time finding great community-made maps, by showing more information, and having featured maps for maps that are especially good or unique. We also had an event on two of those great community maps: An Expedition South and Lyrish Uprising. We would once again like to stress that every Skylords Reborn installation comes with a Map Editor, so feel free to add your creations to the list! 
 
July 25th - 2023

Sadly, the major content patch came alongside some annoying bugs, the most infamous being the lag in the Forge after playing for a while. The issue should be solved, though we still sometimes receive reports of similar behavior. If this is the case for you, please report it to our team to investigate. 
We also used this occasion to fix some inconsistencies in card descriptions and enabled playback for outdated replays. However, because replays are playbacks (instead of being a video), if cards were used that have since been changed, it can still result in not accurately reflecting the original gameplay. Regardless, it solved a major headache for our Event Department and Community Events to still be able to access replays if the game had been patched in a way that only effected a few cards that were not present in their replays. 
 
October 28th - 2023

For our Halloween patch, we added a new Pumpkin avatar for Skylords to unlock by playing the custom map Spooky Encounters once more during the Halloween season. The patch also contained one new card: the long awaited Soulstone. This card saw the longest development cycle yet, but we are very proud of how it turned out. 

There was one more thing for Skylords to unlock: we released a special Fire-themed Forge, locked behind an achievement we noticed not many players were participating in due to the old lackluster reward. We are happy to see an increase in the completion rate after adding the special Forge. 
Lastly, we also released a bunch of balance changes, bugfixes, and a batch of Quality of Life changes, like a higher deck-limit (500), a warning notification for queuing up with a low deck level for ranked (pointing towards the free PvP decks), and some improvements to comparing profiles. 

The Fire-themed Forge can be unlocked by completing the achievement "Never Thought of Him"
 
December - 2023 -> January 2024

Originally, our plan was to bring out a patch for our 3rd Anniversary in December. Sadly, we had to delay after crucial staff members became sick. Which brings us to...
 
• Looking ahead at 2024

We are kicking off 2024 with our first content patch, and today we are happy to announce the patch date:
January 26th - 2024

Our first content patch of 2024 will contain various previously announced features. You can expect to see the new card Lost Manabeast, our overhaul of the rPvE difficulty system, our Lost Souls Rework, balance changes, and quality of life features, like buttons in the Forge to pause, speed up and slowdown. While we are trying to include previously announced cards like Tectonic Shift and Bedrock, technical issues are plaguing their developments, so we can't make the promise they will be included yet. 
 
2024

While we are not able to provide a concrete roadmap for 2024, we are able to share some general information about what we have planned for the new year. We have spent a lot of 2023 working on map-content, and we are very excited to share what we have been working on! The following content can be expected further along in 2024: 
 
New Campaign Maps

2024 will see the release of some brand-new campaign maps! There are currently four maps in development, three 2-player maps, and one 1-player map. The first two maps you can expect will be Unexpected Visitors and Into the Jungle, which are part of our new Key of Ashia story campaign, filling in some of the questions the original campaign failed to answer. In Unexpected Visitors, you will face the Lost Souls to protect the last Amii tribe, while Into the Jungle tasks you with finding a new safe haven for them. We did a short live-play of Into the Jungle during our stream.

Unexpected Visitors will be the first new campaign map of Skylords Reborn.
 
New Cards

You can expect more new cards, including three for the Amii faction: Amii Golem, Amii Simulacrum and Amii Skydancer, bringing long-awaited higher tier units to the faction. We will reveal more about these new cards in the upcoming Community Updates. 
Besides new Amii cards, we also have a couple of other new cards in various stages of development. 
 
More voice-acting

Alongside voicing our new campaign-maps, we are also working on providing voices for both new and old cards alike. A teaser of the Amii Golem was already heard in the Amii-teaser above, but we also have talented people working on Burning Spears and other cards that patched without voice-lines. 

To navigate the players through the new campaign, we have also worked on a Frost Skylord named Gaeron, artwork made by our artist Tweeto. Gaeron was an Imperial Captain defending a Lyrish town. He is shortly mentioned in the original lore book in the game, and we thought he would be a fitting candidate to expand upon. We have found a great voice-actor to voice him during our search back in June.
 
Balance changes

We are always tweaking cards and looking for opportunities to make underplayed but cards with potential viable, and 2024 will be no different. Be sure to join our balance discord if you want to join the discussion and/or provide suggestions! A lot of the changes in SR are community suggestions, after all!
 
More Map Content

2024 will continue our vision of focusing on returning content. We are especially excited about Map Modifiers, special conditions that can be activated on campaign maps to provide new and exciting challenges. Modifiers that increase the defense of enemies, or cause them to explode once defeated, are simple examples that can already impact maps drastically. We plan to bundle these with a highlighted Map of the Day campaign map, resulting in additional rewards for Skylords facing the challenge. 

Example screenshot of Map Modifiers. Work in progress.

With new campaign maps, expanding on rPvE and Map Modifiers freshening up the original Campaign Maps, 2024 should be a good year for replayable content! 
 
• Events

Kicking off 2024 we also have a new event to enjoy!
 
• NEW - Amii Training Camp
While we eagerly wait for new Amii cards, let's find out if you fully master the excising ones! Play rPvE with only Amii Paladins and Amii Phantoms on Tier 2 and see how fast you can get! More information.
 
 • FIRST PHASE - PvP AI programming contest
We are gathering players for a new type of event. Get ready for an AI Programming Tournament, where the submitted programs will face off in an epic showdown to find the ultimate AI strategist! More information.
 
In between our monthly Community Updates, we host various events and tournaments, so be sure to keep a close eye on the in-game event tab and the forum calendar to stay informed and not miss out on any exciting events!
 
• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our other Event Organizers, @Metagross31or @Minashigo Hiko. We can help you out with various topics and are glad to discuss potential ideas. We can also sponsor the prize pool for your event. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you.
 
• Community Spotlight - Masters of the Forge

In this podcast-like series, Kapo interviews various staff members to discuss the project and personal stories about their interaction with BattleForge and Skylords Reborn. There are currently 10 episodes to watch:
• Episode 1: Dutchy, Lead Moderator - Watch now.
• Episode 2: Majora, Project Coordinator - Watch now.
• Episode 3: Volin, Testing Coordinator -  Watch now.
• Episode 4: RadicalX, Faction Designer - Watch now.
• Episode 5: Ult, Server Developer - Watch now.
• Episode 6: Ultralord, Video Editor - Watch now.
• Episode 7: Zyna & Ladadoos, Admins - Watch now.


• New: Episode 8: Maze, Web Developer - Watch now.
In this episode, Maze and Kapo talk about the moderation tool, different APIs, and of course in great detail about Maze' wonderful website, the Skylords Marketplace Journal (www.smj.cards)
 
• New: Episode 9: Windhunter, Lead Designer - Watch now.
In this episode, Windhunter and Kapo talk all about design, the priorities of picking what to change next, the state of the economy and loads of submitted questions from Fire-Frost to Deepdives, and what's upcoming in the next months and years. 
 
• New: Episode 10: Emmaerzeh & Hodron - Watch now.
This episode is all about the art of map-making, in all variations from campaign, rPvE and PvP-maps; with a highlight on how (community) mapmaking is done.
 
• Contribute

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


We are especially looking for an active and passionate outreach coordinator, helping us reach new Skylords by contacting streamers, influencers, media, and other potential parties. This role can make a drastic impact for Skylords Reborn! More information.
Please consider applying for this position; we would love to gather both new and old players alike in 2024 to check out our new campaign maps. We are also looking for someone who can help us with our newsletter. 
Don't have time to formally join the staff, but still would like to help out? Please check out this guide on how to support Skylords Reborn as a community member.
 
• In Conclusion

That's all for this Community Update! We appreciate you taking the time to read through it.
As is tradition, we're including a scratch code as a small token of our appreciation for your support.
The code will reward you with a General booster: LOOK-BACK-YEAR-2023
The code is valid until February 1st, when we will bring you another Community Update. 
We're always looking for ways to improve and value your feedback. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please don't hesitate to share them with us. We'll be back next month with more updates on our ongoing projects and upcoming features. You can also sign up to our e-mail newsletter here. 

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

Hello Skyladies, Skylords and other Skybeings,
Welcome to a Halloween-Season PvE event!


I remember, long was it ago,  
When I vanished, beneath earth's solemn throw.  
An Event Manager once, lively and grand,  
Whose absence turned into legend, across the land.
But now the Spooky Season calls my name,  
Awakening my spirit, rekindling my flame.  
A Lost Soul, rising from the earthly bed,  
With haunting ideas that fill the night with dread.
No longer gone, I’ve returned to my post,  
To host a Skylord Reborn's event, let's raise a ghostly toast.  
For this Halloween, let eerie magic unspool,  
A resurrection, from the land of the ghoul.
So come forth, brave warriors, if you dare,  
For this event promises a spine-chilling scare.  
I’m back to bring you ghoulish delight,  
Happy Haunting to all, and to all a frightful night!
 
Quick Overview:
Map                          - 1p rPvE Difficulty                   - 8 (Map of the Month) Date                          - 01.11 until 15.11  (23:59 UTC+2) Prizes                        - Boosters and the new card "Soulstone" Winner reveal           - On the 18th of November in this topic  
Goals and Restrictions:
You need to play the 1p rPvE map of the month on Difficulty 8 and achieve following three goals under two restrictions:
• Restriction 1: Your first and second orb are restricted to Frost and Shadows orbs only (this means also no double frost or double shadow start)
• Restriction 2: Once you are T2 (have your second orb available), you are only allowed to spawn Lost Soul units. This also means you are no longer allowed to play tier 1 units. This restriction does not apply to spells or buildings.
• Goal 1: Win the Map
• Goal 2: Open all Gold Chests
• Goal 3: Reach T4 without Amii Monument (The faster, the better)

 
FAQ:
I will update the FAQ below as questions are asked throughout the event. 

How can I participate?

Everyone with an ingame account can participate in the event, there is no need to sign up separately.
You just have to send in your best replay, including the player names and the time of map finish, to mHiko on Discord (minashigohiko) or the forum
(@Minashigo Hiko).
Replay name format - "mHiko_00h20m30s_.pmv"

You can send in your replays until 15.11 23:59 UTC+2.
You can find your replays here: Documents=>Battleforge=>replays


What's the Prize Pool?
The following prize pool will be adjusted according to the amount of participants.
All bfp prizes have been sponsored by @Vysnia
You can join the event multiple times, but only your fastest T4 time will be rewarded, and you can only enter the raffle once:
1st Place: 7 Lost Souls Boosters
2nd Place: 6 Lost Souls Boosters 
3rd Place: 6 Lost Souls Boosters 
4th Place: 3 Lost Souls Boosters + 1k BFP
5th Place: 3 Lost Souls Boosters + 1k BFP
6th Place: 3 Lost Souls Boosters + 1k BFP
7th Place: 3 Lost Souls Boosters + 1k BFP
8th Place: 3 Lost Souls Boosters + 1k BFP
9th-50% Place: 3 Lost Souls Boosters
Raffle
There are two Raffles:
• Raffle 1: we will raffle 10x General Boosters among players who did not win a prize or raffle yet (might scale with increasing participation)
• Raffle 2: The new card "Soulstone" will be raffled to half of the participating players (your placement doesn't matter for this)
 
When will the winners be announced?

The winners under top 5 will be announced via a comment in this topic on the 18th of November. Ultralord will also host a Twitch stream, where he will show the remaining 5 runs, a quiz and some interesting data from the event.
Stream: 24th of November at 19:00 (UTC+1)

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

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

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

Card & NPC Balance Changes

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

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

Hello Skylords, Skyladies, and other Skybeings; Welcome to CCC #12 – the twelfth Crappy Community Contest!
 

THE CONTEST HAS ENDED.
If you want to check out the winners, CLICK HERE. If you are just here to grab the code, there you go: CCC1-2BYE-TOTH-EONE
 
 
What are “Crappy Community Contests”?
CCC's are meant to be small-scale contests with weird challenges, hopefully luring you away from well-trodden paths. They are small-scale on the organizers side too: usually there will be no stream, video, or event announcing the winners. What's special about these contests is a participation prize for the whole Skylords community.

What, when, where, how?
Say Goodbye To One

The famous difficulty rPvE 1 will leave us soon.

This challenge is to win the current
1-player rPvE difficulty 1 Map of the Month
in the fastest time without using Fire orbs.

As the very first Crappy Community Contest, we had a rPvE 1 challenge, which was a lot of fun... and many, many people asked when I will do this again - but usually repeating something isn't that appealing. Unless it's the last chance to do so! As you may have noticed, the July Community Update announced that some of the difficulties will be changed to create a smoother scale, and along those lines difficulty 1 will be removed. (see picture).
But this time, to mix things up, the use of Fire orbs is banned. (This is totally because It's hot outside, not because Fire dominated the CCC#1. 🔥)

 
How to enter:
Battleforge automatically saves a replay file of the last match you play, named autosave.pmv.  After playing the map, rename this file, so it doesn't get overwritten. You can find your replays here: Documents => Battleforge => replays.

The contest has started with the release of this post – submit your replay through Discord (DM to Kapo#0116) or the Skylords Forum (DM to @Kapo) until 31.08.2023 23:59 CET  (= 11 days time total). You can submit multiple times, but only your last entry will count. Please note that any submitted replays may be posted here in the forums.

To lessen my workload, please rename your replay to the following format: CCC12_<your-time>_<your-name>.pmv  (e.g. CCC12_02_11.23_Kapo.pmv)
 

 
What's the prize pool?
Since this is not just a crappy contest, but a Crappy Community Contest, you may help with your participation to earn a prize for the whole community. If we reach more than 25 participants (unique players, not entries), we will unlock a Mini-Booster code for the entire Skylords community. If more than 40 participants enter, the code will be upgraded to a Booster instead of a Mini-Booster. So tell your fellow Skylords to try this challenge – it's an occasion to try something completely new, and it raises our chances to hand out a code for everybody. 
Of course, the top ranking Skylords will get prizes too, sponsored by myself, the Community and the Skylords Reborn Team:
1st place               5 General Boosters + Promo Swamp Drake + Lost Warlord (B) + Mana Wing
2nd place             4 General Boosters  + Harvester + Lost Warlord (B) 
3rd place              3 General Boosters + Spitfire + Lost Warlord (B)
4th place              2 General Boosters + Shadow Worm + Lost Warlord (B)
5th place              1 General Booster + Wrathgazer + Lost Warlord (R)
6th place              Shadow Worm + Gravity Surge (P) + Mana Wing
7th place              Wrathgazer + Evocators Woe (P) + Worldbreaker Gun
8th place              Tortugun (B) + Giant Slayer + Brannoc
9th place              Tortugun (R) + Shadow Mage + Juggernaut
10th place            Nox Carrier (P) + Fallen Skyelf +Shrine of Martyrs
11th place            Fire Worm + Corsair (G) + Ravenheart
12th place            Cultist Master + Lost Grigori (P) + Ice Tornado
13th place            Soul Splicer (G) + Crystal Fiend (G) + Mortar Tower
14th place            Ward of the North + Mark of the Keeper
15th place            Mind Control + Lost Banestone (B)
Newcomer Challenge:  The fastest player of Bronze or Silver Rank will receive a Promo Snapjaw.
Secret Achievements:  You have a chance for bonus-prizes - the achievement name may or may not give a hint on what to do:
"Overload" - 1x Nox Trooper "Better safe than sorry" - 1x Defenders "Cheater" - 1x Easter Egg For participation, there is a random chance to win one of the following prizes out of a large pool:
Random Draws          5x1 General Booster, Enlightenment, Infect, Cluster Explosion (R), Avatar of Frost, Shadow Worm (x2), Harvester, Wrathgazer (x2), Lost Warlord (B) (x2), Lord Warlord (R), Nox Carrier (P), Nox Carrier (R) (x3), Evocators Woe (P), Gravity Surge (P), Tortugun (B), Tortugun (R), Raven Archwalker, Mana Wing, Colossus, Bloodhorn (P), Matter Mastery (G), Motivate, War Eagle, Lifestream, Sanctuary (B), Giant Slayer, Shrine of Martyrs, Revenge, Nightshade Plant (P), Mark of the Keeper, Mountain Rowdy (B), Mind Control (x2), Aura of Corruption, Rocket Tower, Ashbone Pyro, Shadow Mage (x2), Shrine of Greed, Soul Splicer (G), Twilight Pestilence (R)

Sponsors
If one or more mighty Skylord(s) decides to sponsor this event, please contact me - community contest prizes are meant to be from the community, for the community. I would be more than happy to beef up or even expand the prize pool to more ranks, add additional random draws, add cards for newcomers, set special bounties or any other upgrades to the prize pool you can think of. 
The following prizes have been sponsored so far:
Skylords Team          General Boosters (x20), Community Booster Code
@Kapo                  Promo Swamp Drake, Enlightenment, Infect, Cluster Explosion (R), Avatar of Frost, Lost Banestone (B)
@Ultralord            Spitfire
@ElementG           Shadow Worm (x4), Wrathgazer (x3), Harvester (x2), Shadow Mage
@Trando               Lost Warlord (B) (x6), Lost Warlord (R) (x2), Nox Carrier (P) (x2), Nox Carrier (R) (x2), Evocators Woe (P) (x2), Gravity Surge (P) (x2), Tortugun (B) (x2), Tortugun (R) (x2)
@RadicalX            Shadow Mage, Mortar Tower, Motivate, Cultist Master, Giant Slayer, Soul Splicer (G), Fire Worm, Rocket Tower, Ward of the North, Mountain Rowdy (B), War Eagle, Colossus, Shrine of Martyrs, Mind Control, Lifestream, Sanctuary (B), Nightshade Plant (P), Twilight Pestilence (R), Corsair (G), Lost Grigori (P), Bloodhorn (P), Matter Mastery (G), Crystal Fiend (G)
@Bonobobobo      Soul Splicer (G), Nox Carrier (R), Shrine of Greed, Fallen Skyelf, Shadow Mage, Ashbone Pyro, Juggernaut, Aura of Corruption, Mind Control (x2), Mana Wing, Ice Tornado, Mark of the Keeper (x2), Worldbreaker Gun, Revenge, Shrine of Martyrs, Ravenheart, Brannoc, Raven Archwalker
@Dragonclaw       Nox Trooper(s), Easter Egg(s), Defenders
@Majora              Mana Wing (x2)
Thanks to the sponsors that support the contest! ❤️
 
Conclusion
I think the removal of some rPvE difficulty is well-warranted, but before it goes, let's have some fun with it. Good luck to all of you, and look forward to the strategies that appear!
Kapo
     
Future Events – get involved!
If you are interested in helping with these (or better) kinds of events for the community, or want to host one yourself, don't be afraid and simply reach out! Contact our Event Manager @Metagross31 or @Minashigo Hiko on the forums or discord. They are happy to assist you with upcoming events and with sponsoring your prize pool!
If you especially like this small-scale-format, and you have an idea for it, you may also contact me directly to discuss your idea and host your own Crappy Community Contest.

Map & NPC Changes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• 2nd Anniversary Stream

The 18th of December marked the 2nd Anniversary of Skylords Reborn! Two years ago, after many years of internal development and open stress tests, BattleForge was playable once again. We are very grateful for all your continued enthusiasm and support! 
On the anniversary, we hosted a celebration stream. If you missed it, you can view it on our YouTube channel. We will also cover most of the announcements in this Community Update.
Please note: The Anniversary Card Creation Contest ends today. If you want to participate, do so now! 
 



• Upcoming Content Patch

Sadly, our upcoming Content Patch which was planned for December didn't make it in time. The combination of many things to review (including our new feature Cosmetics) and the busy holidays proved to be a bit too ambitious. 
Since the upcoming patch will break replays due to the many balance changes deployed alongside it, we know it's far from ideal for events to not have a set patch date. We are doing our best to release the patch as soon as possible in early January, but sadly can't lock in a concrete date yet.
Please keep an eye on the Discord and the forum for more information in the coming days. 


• Upcoming Feature: Cosmetics

For our first anniversary patch, we had Reforging as our big new feature, focusing on improving the economy. 
For our second anniversary, Cosmetics will be introduced as a way to provide more challenges and collectibles. 
Players will be able to collect new borders, banners and titles, further customizing their experience. Here is a look at the new borders:  
 

 
Borders are the part of your profile that surround your character portrait. With the patch release, there will be two borders to choose from for each of the different elements/factions in the game. The first border is a simple but clean colour scheme, where the second level expands on the theme of the faction a bit more, like more vines for Nature or infestation for Twilight. 
Borders can be combined with Banners, here is an example: 
 

 
Banners, borders, and profile pictures can be freely combined to make unique combinations. There will also be new titles to unlock. An example of a title can be seen in the picture, above the name, in this case "Game Master". 
Your cosmetics will show up in the lobby, and when hovering over players in the chat list.   
 

 
Those new banners, borders, titles (and a few new profile pictures), are tied to new Achievements, which provide a variety of new challenges. Some will be rewarded simply by playing games with your favourite action, while others might ask you to complete the campaign using only cards from the Twilight Edition. 
We hope you are looking forward to a bunch of new challenges to explore, and new bling to show off! 
 
• Upcoming New Promo: Worldbreaker Gun

While our new cards Sanctuary and Raven Walker had already been announced in previous Community Updates, we had one more surprise in store in our stream: our next promo card and the first promo building: Worldbreaker Gun! 

In this year's feedback survey, people let us know loud and clear they would like to see buildings get the promo treatment. The newly buffed Worldbreaker Gun felt like the perfect candidate for being the very first promo building. 

You will be able to unlock this new promo by completing the upcoming achievement Urban Planner.

-- Please note: this achievement is not yet live! --
Urban Planner
Win the 2-player scenario The Sunbridge and the 1-player scenarios Mo and Ocean on expert difficulty, with all players in your team playing only building and spell cards
-- Please note: this achievement is not yet live! --
As with Mana Wing Promo, the promo will not drop from boosters, but will be tradeable. If you don't want to do the challenge yourself, you can buy the card on the market, or trade it with other players. 
 
• Advanced Filtering

We greatly expanded the search function in both the inventory and marketplace during the time of our first anniversary, which was probably overlooked by a lot of players in the new-patch-hype. Our developer Kubik wrote an in depth document about the way the new (and old) function worked, with handy shortcuts to find just the cards you need. 
But even the players who were aware of the new tools at their disposal, had a hard time remembering the search commands. Our UI designer Ult and Skylord of Honour Kapo worked together to provide a handy new ingame tooltip that should make searching for cards a lot easier for everyone. 
 

 
• Future Development Focus

We spend the last two years on improving and balancing many, many cards. We currently feel the balance of the game, while not perfect, is in the best place it has ever been. The campaign and rPvE are playable with every faction right now, and while PvE changes will continue, we intend a major pivot next patch cycle to map/game content with many of our balance developers and team members. 
This means we will put more focus on providing more map-based content, like our alternative Halloween map Spooky Encounters, the upcoming Nature rPvE faction, Defensive rPvE, tweaks to the difficulty levels of rPvE and new campaign maps. Basically, we want to focus on creating content that will lure back old players, and invite new ones in. 
This has proven challenging. While every player automatically has access to the map editor, map making is a long and patient process. We are very aware people are looking forward to new campaign maps, but their design is a huge undertaking, and due to the volunteer nature of the project, mapmakers don't always stick it out till the end. 
If you want to help out in the map department, please take a look at our open positions:
• Map Designer
• Map Developer
• Map Artist
We are also looking for an Audio Editor to help us with processing voice acting takes. Want to help out in another area? Check out our open positions.

 
• Tournaments / Events

Since Community Updates are posted on a monthly schedule, events might come and go in between them. Be sure to keep a close eye on the ingame event-tab and the forum calendar to not miss any events! 

• CLOSING SOON – Official Card Design Contest - UNTIL 01.01.2023 23:59 CET
A contest like this has often been suggested: create your own card! Entries will be judged by a jury of Designers and there are tiered prizes, including boosters and promos. Maybe your design will even make it into the game! Today is the last day to join: More information.

• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event yourself? Please reach out to our Event Organizer, Metagross! We can help you out with various topics and are glad to discuss potential ideas. We can also sponsor the prize pool for your event. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you.

• Newsletter

While we do our best to make it easy to follow Skylords Reborn by providing monthly news through these Community Updates, we are limited to the Forum and our Social Media channels to reach you. You can now sign up to our newsletter, which we will use to give you a heads-up about a new patch release or Community Update. Don't worry, we hate spam as much as you do and won't use your data in any other way. 

 If you provided your e-mail during our summer survey to stay up to date, you are automatically subscribed. 
 
• In Conclusion

And that's it for this Community Update, thanks for reading! 
As is tradition, this community update comes with a scratch code. 
The code will reward you with a General-booster: HAPP-YNEW-YEAR-2023

The code is valid until February 1st, when we will bring you another Community Update. 
As always, we are open to feedback, so please let us know if you have any questions, suggestions, or comments! 

Archive
• Skylords Reborn Documents (Deep Dives, Behind the Scenes, PvP Guide)  
• Overview Community Updates
• Community Update #30

Hello Skylords, Skyladies and other Skybeings.
Welcome to the seventh official PvE event!
It has been a while since the last official event, especially a multiplayer event, but we still hope you will have a lot of fun with this event!


Quick overview:

What kind of event will it be?

PvE - Advanced - Bad Harvest with a point system
For this challenge, we want to see you succeed in playing the map Bad Harvest, while accomplishing several goals of varying difficulty.
The more objectives your team accomplishes, the more points you get, which will lead to greater rewards!
Additionally, the teams with the highest number of points will receive some extra rewards.
But there is more! Similar to the beloved Crappy Community Contests, there will be something the entire community will work towards. Once the combined points of all submitted runs surpasses a certain threshold, the prizes for everyone will be increased.

So gather a team, polish your strategy and go for the Highscore!


How can I participate?

Everyone with an ingame account can participate in the event - there is no need to sign up separately.
You just have to send in your best replay, including the player names, the time of the replay and what objectives you accomplished. [Note: Your entry has to be a victory]
For example:
Low points:        A, C, D; Total:     700
Mid points:         K, L, P; Total:   1500
High points:              all; Total:   3800
Penalty points:          W; Total: -1000
Total points:                                5000

You can send in your replays until the 02.12.2022. 

Please note:
You are allowed to compete with multiple teams, but only your highest score will determine the rewards you win, meaning you can only get rewards for one submission. You are allowed to compete with a team of less than 4 people, or even alone.
You can find your replays here: Documents=>Battleforge=>replays


What are the objectives?

This event will have a point system: points will be rewarded by completing the following objectives. The goal is to get as many points as possible!
You don't have to complete them all, but of course you should aim for as many points as you can in a single run.
It is important, however, that your final score from objectives is greater than zero. Runs with a negative score do not qualify.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Low points:

A: Sharing is caring: 200p
Have at least two different players build the orbs and power wells next to the gold wagon. (One orb and 4 wells per player)
B: Preparing the Turkey: 200p (+100p if the unit used is a Beast-unit)
Fly 3 laps around the small peninsula below the first guild cannon using any flying unit. (See FAQ for a screenshot)
C: Saving the harvest: 200p
Don't let the gold chest next to the gold wagon get destroyed.
D: Saving the tractor: 300p
Don't let the gold wagon take any damage.
E: Fire Mastery: 300p
Have at least one player in your team play a pure fire deck.
F: Shadow Mastery: 300p
Have at least one player in your team play a pure shadow deck.
G: Frost Mastery: 300p
Have at least one player in your team play a pure frost deck.
H: Nature Mastery: 300p
Have at least one player in your team play a pure nature deck.
I: Make love, not war: 400p
Take out all the guild cannons on the map.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maximum low points:    2600
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Medium points:

J: Saving the farmers: 400p
Don't let any of the human defenders in-between the walls around the gold wagon die.
K: No grain left behind: 400p
Completely destroy all enemy walls.
L: Only pick the ripe ones: 400p
Do not kill any Bandit Master Healers.
M: Beware of the Tractor: 400p
Run over at least 5 squads of small units with a Thunder Wagon with activated RAMPAGE ability.
N: Getting the harvest home safely: 600p
Do not lose any of the prebuilt Defense Towers in the starting camp.
O: Don't step onto the fields: 700p
Have no player cross the wall in front of the top right Stonekin camp. (See FAQ for a screenshot)
P: Beyond the trodden path: 700p
Have no player cross the line above the camp with the second Stonekin lord. (See FAQ for a screenshot)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maximum medium points:    3600
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

High points:

Q: Beware of ergot!: 800p
As a team, do not own more than 5 orbs and 15 power wells in the starting camp at the same time.
R: The real deal:  1000p
Play the map on Expert difficulty instead of advanced.
S: Keeping the barn open: 1000p
Do not build any walls.
T: Hurry, before the rain comes: 1000p
Destroy 12 bandit tents within 30 seconds.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maximum high points:    3800
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maximum Total points:    10000
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Penalty points:
U: Caring too much: -1000p
Have a player control three or more different monuments in the starting base at the same time.
V: That's not a ... tractor!:  -1000p
Play out Amii Monument.
W: Wait! This isn't the Harvest Festival!: -1000p
Play out Church of Negation.
X: Halloween is already over: -1000p
Play out Necrofury or Mutating Frenzy.
Y: Rounding up the crops: -1000p
Play out two or more overlapping instances of Aura of Corruption at the same time.
Z: Your time has not yet come: -1000p
Play out Santa Claus.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total penalty points:    -6000
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

* Check the FAQ for clarifications.
Since those are a lot of objectives, we prepared a spreadsheet, which you can use to keep track of the objectives you want to complete and which player should complete them. You can find this spreadsheet here. Since this is a public spreadsheet, we recommend creating your own copy of it to not interfere with others.
Time Score:
There will also be points awarded for time. The faster you finish the map, the more points you will get with a maximum of 1500p.
There are no preset time windows that determine your time score, instead your time is compared to all entries.
This means that every second counts when it comes to your time score!
However, you can not lose any points by having a slow time. So it is up to you to decide whether you want to go for as many objectives as possible or if you want to leave some out in the hope of getting a better time.
You do not have to calculate the time score yourself, we will calculate the time score for every entry.
For a detailed explanation on how the time score is calculated, see the FAQ below.
 
FAQ     
In order to reduce confusion about the objectives, we have precompiled a list of questions you might have and answered them beforehand.
If you have any questions about one of the objectives, please check this FAQ first.
If your question is not yet answered in the FAQ, feel free to ask in this thread. That way it can be clarified and added to the FAQ.
Questions about specific objectives:
Calculation of the time score:






Sounds fun! What's the prize pool?

In contrast to past events, this event is less about how you fared in comparison to everyone else and more about how many points you collected overall. Thus, your reward will be directly based on your final score, including your time score. Note, that all rewards listed here are per player.
1000-2499 points: 100 BFP
2500-3749 points: 1 Mini Booster
3750-4999 points: 1 Mini Booster + 100 BFP
5000-5999 points: 1 General Booster
6000-6999 points: 2 General Boosters
7000-7999 points: 3 General Boosters
8000-8999 points: 5 General Boosters
9000-9999 points: 8 General Boosters
      10000+ points: 8 Boosters of your choice + 1 BFP per point beyond 10000
Additionally, the team with the highest total score will be rewarded a promo Harvester (1 per Player).
Furthermore, if the combined score (without time score) of all participating teams surpasses 75.000 points, all prizes will be increased by 50%!

How will the winners be presented?

This is yet to be determined. We will keep you updated about this.




Future events
If you are interested in helping with these kinds of events for the community, or want to host one yourself, don't be afraid and simply reach out!
Send me a PM on the forum, or direct message via Discord (Metagross31#1103).
We are happy to assist you with upcoming events and with sponsoring your prize pool!
We hope you have a lot of fun with this event, and we are looking forward to seeing all your replays!
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.

Best regards,
Skylords Reborn Team
 

Welcome to the Official Halloween Event!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Best regards,
Skylords Reborn Team

Map Balance Changes

PvE Map Changes
Bad Harvest, Defending Hope, & The Soultree: Replaced player variant of Defense Tower with NPC variant.
All player variants of cards on campaign maps are being swapped out for NPC variants to prevent balance changes to player cards affecting the cards used by NPCs in campaign and random PVE maps. Crusade: Players should be able to fulfil the victory condition immediately now when both paths are cleared early.
Speedrunners can now compete for top times without having to wait a fixed period of time, therefore removing the existing set minimum time on Crusade. Defending Hope: Rogan will now also move if a player's building is in the vicinity.
This will allow the achievement "A City Strongly Compact" to be completed entirely with building cards.  Mo: Change blocking at the cliff next to the Command Walker to no longer allow units to walk through the cliff.
Raven's End: 2 Stonekin units; 1 in the center and 1 in the camp in the right side, are no longer assigned to the Bandits.
The Dwarven Riddle: The 2 inner monuments that were added in Patch 400033 will now be observable in the fog of war like the other inner monuments.
The Insane God: Replaced a Twilight Horror with a Twilight Devastator on expert difficulty at Position 1's Tier 3 location and added an additional Slaver to the camp on all difficulties. Replaced all 4 player variant Living Towers with a custom NPC variant. Increased script trigger range around temples to prevent the player from entering the center undetected. Player controlled Urzach's Seeker (transformed Priest) now have the Burrower Acid Spit active ability.
Slight change to The Insane God to continue to allow use of Nightguard on the map. The addition of a new Slaver to the camp ensures that Position 1's T3 remains similar in difficulty to capture as before for non-Nightguard or Parasite Swarm users. Fixed a bug that allowed a player to sneak into the center without triggering the defense conditions, as well as gave the transformed Priest of Urzach an active ability to make it more worthwhile to engage in the Priest mini-game for the player. The NPC version will not use the Acid Spit ability.  Titans: Replaced 3 Fathom Lords in the Northern camps of Position 4 with Custom Deep Ones (1650 damage, 1650 life points). Expert difficulty only.
Position 4 is one of the hardest positions on a multiplayer expert map and most players get through it by using Nightguards. This change allows the player to continue using Nightguards, but since Deep Ones are weaker than Fathom Lords, it will increase the difficulty of the map when using this strategy. At the same time, it will minorly decrease the difficulty of Position 4 for non-Nightguard strategies. 
Bugfixes
Emberstrike, Tempest, and Fire Worm now properly ignore the 50% damage reduction of dazed units, as their passives suggest. Amii Paladins and Amii Phantom no longer have the "human" class. They now properly only have the "Amii" class. The Tunneling ability of Burrower and Drones no longer grants paralyze immunity during the cast time of the ability. The overkill splash damage bug has been fixed on the following cards: Banzai Lord (p)'s Banzai Birds, Comet Catcher, Death Ray, Fire Dragon, Gemeye, Giant Wyrm, Skycatcher, Rifle Cultist's Dark Grenade, and Worldbreaker Gun. This should constitute a minor buff for each of these cards. Fixed several instances of Revenants' displayed damage being misaligned with the regular unit. Mountain Rowdy's Tainted Ice Block no longer affects flying units on U0-U2. Missing Twilight class was added to the Twilight bug summoned by Twilight Curse. Vulcan now specifies it can only target ground units. Fixed a bug, that caused newly uploaded maps to show an error message as their map name. Fixed a bug that allowed units to clip through terrain with buildings.  Fixed a bug that prevented the use of Twilight Transformation when switching to the other side in the Forge. Community maps should no longer claim to be 2-player maps when they are actually 1-player maps. 

Card Balance Changes

Global Balance Changes
Changes to PvE Unit Orb & Power Costs: more details can be found here: Changes to PvE Unit Orb & Power Costs
   - Additionally, the general mind control immunity on the PvE versions of Bandit Windhunter, Twilight Deathglider, and all Lost Souls units and buildings has been removed.
Each NPC unit in both campaign and random PvE maps has orb and power costs just like player units, which might come as a surprise to players used to using Nightguard and Parasite Swarm to takeover nearly any unit in the game. This is because there has been a longstanding bug, going back to the game's release, where units which are spawned in via map script did not have properly assigned orb and power costs. The original developers knew about this bug, but they do not appear to have known how to fix it. By the time Empire and the Lost Souls RPvE faction were added to the game, the original developers decided to add a universal immunity to mind control to the entire Lost Souls faction to prevent further abuses of the mind control mechanic. They also added total immunity to Windhunter and Death Glider.
The bug in question has now been fixed and as part of this fix we have gone through and updated the power and orb costs of every unit in the game. The goal of this rework was to create situations where mind control is still useful, and indeed powerful, while tampering down the current situation where mind control units, especially Nightguard, trivialize a map and thus become the universally proscribed solution to nearly any difficult situation. As part of these changes, we are also making several changes to current campaign maps, which we already started last patch with the changes to Nightmare Shard, Nightmare's End, and Behind Enemy Lines. All map changes can be found in the Map Balance Changes section in the next post.
S-unit population count: decreased from 6 ➜ 4
Total root network support cap: 10 maximum support within a network ➜ infinite amount of support possible
Twilight Transformation duration: decreased from 2 seconds ➜ 1.2 seconds
Increased turn speeds of several units: 
   - Gladiatrix, Ice Guardian, Knight of Chaos, Lightblade, Mauler, Mountain Rowdy, Rogan Kayle, Shadow Insect, Slaver, Treespirit, Viridya's Treespirit, Twilight Brute, Warlock, and Wrecker.
Lost Spellbreaker (NPC Unit): 
   - No longer casts Disenchant on-hit, still makes affected units immune to further buffs.
   - Now makes affected units unable to use their special abilities.
Lost Spellbreaker has been a perpetual headache for us as a balance team because she hard counters some factions while barely affecting others. Every single mechanic we add to the game must face the question of how it interacts with Spellbreaker. If Spellbreaker does remove it, the question then becomes if that faction can still function, particularly against the already difficult Lost Souls faction. At the same time, we want to keep Spellbreaker as a major debuff unit. As such, we decided to remove Spellbreaker's Disenchant ability while leaving the immunity to further buffs and adding on an ability silence. This change should allow players to preemptively apply buffs to their units as a way to counter Lost Spellbreaker. Our hope is that Lost Spellbreaker will remain an annoyance and a priority target, without single-handedly countering entire deck archetypes. 
Hybrid Orb requirements have been added: A Hybrid Orb allows you to meet its requirements with one of its two colors. For example, a  card can be played with either  or . Hybrid Orbs can be found on our Twilight Slayers, Twilight Hag, Treefiend, Nightshade Plant and Deepfang. 

PvE Balance Changes
While changes are split here between PvE and PvP sections, many of the changes, such as Deep One, Nightshade Plant, and Twilight Creeper, have important consequences for both game modes. Our PvE and PvP balance teams work closely together to ensure that the impact of all changes are evaluated for both game modes. Below, we have listed both the changes and our reasoning behind them. 
[ Tier 1 ]
 Decomposer:
   - Now only works on own units
Decomposer has been a controversial card for a long time. When usable on friendly units, Decomposer allows players to transfer power between themselves. Practically speaking, this means that Decomposer turns previously multiplayer maps into effectively single-player maps, where one player can gain power far in excess of what should be possible at a given time, even if all Power Wells were given to one player. For this reason, it is a mainstay of speedruns and goldfarming alike, to the point of choking out other potential strategies. Decomposer also stands in direct violation of our fundamental design principle that power should only be generated via Power Wells. While violations of design principles are possible to justify via card restrictions such as high power cost, tier, or orb restrictions, the power generation principle is the most fundamental of all principles and Decomposer is able to violate it as a Tier 1 Shadow card. 
There is an additional consideration which is often forgotten in discussions on this topic, and that is the experience of the player feeding the Decomposer, usually called a "feeder." While there can be no doubt that many Decomposer-based speedruns, including the existing record on Bad Harvest, are matters of strategic brilliance in terms of planning, the same is not true in terms of execution for the majority of the players in the speedrun. While feeders do contribute in a minor sense, the runner does the overwhelming majority of the actions in the run and it truly succeeds or fails based on the skill of the runner. In more casual settings, this often becomes even worse, with the feeder doing close to nothing. Decomposer transforms the feeder from a teammate into little more than a spectator. The feeder is a mere battery powering the runner, a resource to be used instead of a person with whom you play alongside. Feeding makes for a gameplay experience where teammates give up almost all of their agency. It is not engaging, and we should not be creating a situation where the player must chose between efficiency and an engaging experience. 
The continuing preservation of this kind of gameplay has done great harm to new player retention. For that reason alone we should have made this change a long time ago. In fact, we have planned this change for nearly 18 months, yet have repeatedly delayed it in hopes of releasing a Decomposer-like mode simultaneously with the nerf for players who enjoy the mechanic and who wish to opt-in, even without rewards. This optional Map Modifiers game mode is something we are still desirous of completing eventually, but as we announced in Community Update #25, without further developers we can only commit to releasing card balancing changes for the foreseeable future. Given the many factors surrounding Decomposer and the strong negative impact it creates on the game experience of many players, we have decided to finally go through and change the card to no longer allow it to transfer power between players. 
[ Tier 2 ]
 Parasite Swarm:
   - Takeover limit: 150 power cost ➜ maximum of 175 power cost
Allows us to make some units able to be transformed by Twilight Curse and taken over by Parasite Swarm, while remaining out of reach of Nightguard.
[ Tier 3 ]
 Corsair:
   - Inspirational Call: deal 50% more damage ➜ 60% more damage
Corsair was previously changed to work not just on human units, but all Bandit units. This helped a lot, but the card itself as well as Bandit's T3 is still somewhat lacking. We are giving a slight boost to its aura to help encourage more Bandit-based unit compositions. 
 Frenetic Assault:
   - General Changes: 
      - Power cost: 80 ➜ 90p
      - Initial Amok effect duration: 20s ➜ 15s
   - Frenetic is now a two-stage effect:
      - Stage 1: Bewitches the targeted hostile target attracting the aggression of up to 7 of its allied units within a 20m radius for 15 seconds.
      - Stage 2: If the target dies within 10 seconds, up to 10 of its allied units within a 20m radius are bewitched for 10 seconds.
   - Affinity swap: Gifted Aggression (g) ➜ Infused Aggression (r)
      - Infused Aggression(r): No longer slows or prevents healing, change description to clarify it can be used on buildings and units. 
Frenetic Assault is potentially the strongest card in the game. It is also the strongest crowd control spell, has no downside, and has no death effect. While not necessarily wrong, it is a bit odd for such a card to exist in Shadow. All in all, it is more a Bandit card than a Shadow card. We as a balance team have endeavored to nerf the card from an S+ tier to an A tier card, while also giving it mechanics to make it feel like a Shadow card. 
Frenetic now has two stages. The first stage affects 7 targets for 15 seconds. The second stage, which triggers off the death of the initial target within 10 seconds, affects 10 targets for 10 seconds. This gives Frenetic a total possible duration of 20 seconds if used perfectly with up to 17 total affected enemies. It should remain one of the strongest spells in the game, without being so good as to single-handedly carry entire archetypes. 
 Healing Gardens:
   - Ritual of Recovery duration: 30 seconds ➜ 45 seconds
Healing Gardens' increased rejuvenation effect is strong, but its short duration requires two Gardens to be built simultaneously. This can significantly slow down deck archetypes dependent on the effect, so we are increasing Ritual of Recovery's duration to allow the player to utilize just one instance of Healing Gardens with the downside of a slight effect downtime. Additionally, the lack of regular activation is a common problem among all active global effects in casual play. This should help to alleviate that problem by making it so that when the effect is actually activated, it stays up for longer. 
 Ice Age:
   - Now allows multiple instances of the spell to be active at the same time.
Ice Age previously had anti-synergy with itself, such that multiple Pure Frost players could not cast it simultaneously. Given that this is not an issue with healing sustain options, we decided to remove this restriction.
 Sandstorm:
   - Power cost: 160p ➜ 140p
   - Ability radius: 10m ➜ 12m
We previously gave Sandstorm two large buffs, a 70p cost reduction and the addition of L-knockback on the blue affinity. Even with these changes, Sandstorm remains an uncompelling option. As such, we are further reducing the power to 140p while increasing the radius of the tornado, which should allow the player to more easily crowd control priority targets. 
 Twilight Creeper:
   - Tainted / Infused Spit, total targets: 3 ➜ 8
   - Infused Spit(r) debuff: 30% less damage ➜ 40% less damage
Small buff to Twilight Creeper's debuff and a large buff to total target count, allowing Creeper to debuff substantially more enemies in a camp.
 Wrathgazer:
   - Disintegrating Gaze: May only disintegrate units ➜ May only disintegrate units and buildings.
   - Pain Link: 100% damage distributed ➜ 50% damage distributed.
Wrathgazer's Pain Link distributes damage before Resilient is applied. This means that as-is, 100% of damage is done to surrounding units and 50% also to Wrathgazer (assuming non-piercing damage). The total damage is thus multiplied by 50% assuming there are any allies in range. With the changed numbers, 50% of damage is now done to Wrathgazer and 50% to surrounding units. This should make Wrathgazer usable in an army without being an active detriment. Additionally, only being able to target units severely restricts Wrathgazer's usability. To remedy this, we are adding the ability to disintegrate buildings as well, allowing Wrathgazer to be more useful offensively. Note, this change does not allow wall segments, Power Wells, or Monuments to be disintegrated. Wrathgazer will also be unable to disintegrate spawn buildings, as this causes a bug where the spawn building, despite being destroyed, begins phantom spawning waves of enemies. 
[ Tier 4 ]
 Altar of Chaos:
   - Enable overkill splash damage bug fix. 
   - Mass Destruction Nether Bomb life points: 4000 ➜ 4500
Nether Bomb will no longer lose damage when overkilling enemies, constituting a minor buff for unfed bombs and a major buff for fed bombs. Additionally, the small increase in bomb life points is intended to synergize with Lost Spirit Ship's recycle ability. One bomb will now provide enough life points for 3 Lost Spirit Ship Crystals. 
 Batariel:
   - Damage: 4400 ➜ 5600
   - Purgatory's damage is no longer affected by damage modifiers, including buffs on Batariel itself and debuffs on enemies. 
   - Stage 1 Activation Threshold: 1000(r) and 1250(p) ➜ 1200 damage (both affinities)
   - Damage/Effect per Stage Batariel (p):
      (a) Stage 1: 100 dmg ➜ 100 dmg + 25% increased enemy damage taken
      (b) Stage 2: 100dmg + 35% increased damage taken ➜ 100dmg + 50% increased enemy damage taken
      (c) Stage 3: 100dmg + 75% increased damage taken ➜ 100dmg + 100% increased enemy damage taken
   - Squad damage: Only damages a squad once instead of each member individually.
   - Gates of Hell power cost: 150p ➜ 120p
It would be uncontroversial to say that Batariel and the deck that surrounds it is the strongest deck in the game. The question has never been the strength of Batariel, but what to do with it. Some do not want it changed at all. Among those in favor of nerfs, many people have suggested nerfing Batariel itself, others Enlightenment, others Frenetic Assault, still others Unholy Hero as the main source of the problem to bring Batariel from S++ tier to closer to S or A+ tier. After much discussion among all segments of the playerbase, and especially with some of the game's top players, we have come to the determination that we cannot successfully balance Batariel unless we also nerf Unholy Hero or at least decouple it from Batariel. At the same time, we cannot directly nerf Unholy Hero without affecting a large portion of decks that are otherwise balanced. Frenetic Assault, while very powerful in combination with Batariel, is also overpowered in its own right. In the end, we have settled on nerfing both Batariel and Frenetic Assault while decoupling it from Unholy Hero.
Batariel's damage aura no longer benefits from any buffs on Batariel or debuffs on enemies, including Batariel(p)'s own armor shredding aura. With this drastic step taken, we have also increased Batariel's base damage significantly, along with adjustments to its stage 1 activation threshold. Batariel can now activate stage 1 in 2 attacks against XL-units and in 3 attacks against non-XL units. A Batariel buffed with Unholy Hero can now also one-shot a small spawn building, while the base damage buff helps Batariel substantially when fighting bosses. The cost reduction to Gates of Hell allows the player to quickly and efficiently activate Batariel's stage 3 in a single ability. Overall, our tests have shown that while Batariel is slower than before, the Enlightenment-Batariel deck remains intact as a top tier deck for both skilled and casual play. 
The bigger issue in balancing Batariel came from the purple affinity regularly used in Pure Fire decks. In the current meta, Pure Fire typically uses a mix of both affinities, with the purple affinity amplifying the already substantial damage of the red affinity to even greater heights. With the changes to Batariel's aura, this damage amplification is no longer possible. As such, we had to get creative in keeping the Pure Fire deck viable. Alongside these changes, we have also buffed other Fire cards such as Bloodthirst, Magma Fiend, and Fire Sphere. The changes to Bloodthirst help make a Batariel(p) + Fire Dragon deck much more viable and significantly more durable. We increased the synergy between Batariel and Fire Dragon by making the purple affinity increase the damage taken by enemies even further. When Batariel(p) and Fire Dragons are both fully enraged with Bloodthirst, Fire Dragons deal 30,000 damage per 20 seconds. We also increased the speed of Magma Fiend to open up the option of using it with other Fire cards. Finally, the changes to Fire Sphere have proven much more substantial than initially anticipated. A perfectly executed Fire Sphere (remember it has a 10 second wind-up period) that combos with a stage 3 Batariel(p) can one shot an entire camp. All in all, while Pure Fire will prove to be much different after the changes, it increasingly has a playstyle that feels all its own.
 Bloodthirst:
   - Power cost: 160p ➜ 140p
   - Unit count: 7 total targets ➜ 8 total targets
   - Duration: 20 seconds ➜ 25 seconds
   - Healing: 175 life points per second ➜ 200 life points per second
   - Damage buff: 20% more damage ➜ 40% more damage
Our initial testing for the last round of changes showed Bloodthirst far overperforming its intended power level. Unfortunately, the new Bloodthirst received a double nerf upon release when we not only reduced its healing, but we also removed its ability to heal stack. Since then, it has performed below what is appropriate for a card of its requirements and its weak state is keeping Fire archetypes from achieving their true potential. We have buffed up nearly all aspects of the spell.
 Cluster Explosion(p)
   - Initial radius: 20m ➜ 25m
Equalizing initial radii of both affinities to be 25m.
 Coat of Protection(b)
   - Increased Ice Shield total cap, which can be strengthened to absorb from to 2500 damage ➜ 3000.
The purple affinity of Coat of Protection has by and large been the better of the two affinities. Additionally, the current cap makes using the blue affinity of Ice Age with the blue affinity of CoP quite inefficient. This change rectifies that issue.
 Fire Sphere
   - Damage maximum: 8000 ➜ 10000 in total
   - Spell radius: 15m ➜ 25m (visual FX already appeared to be 25m)
   - Knockback: Small, medium, and large units ➜ Knocks back all unit sizes in the area (regardless of whether they are damaged or not).
Fire Sphere is not a good card. It also lacks identity due to how good its competitors are in its own faction. While thinking about the card, we realized it could keep its boss killing identity while providing 3 Fire+ decks with a thematically appropriate CC effect in knock back. By changing the way its knock back applies and increasing its effect radius to match its existing visual effect, we allow the Fire player to potentially knock back an entire camp. The changes to its splash damage last patch also mean that it no longer loses damage when overkilling an enemy. Our tests have found that a perfectly timed Fire Sphere combined with a fully enraged Batariel give Pure Fire the ability to fully wipe camps in both RPvE 9+ and expert campaign maps. 
 Fire Worm:   
   - Power cost: 210p ➜ 200p
   - Charges: 4 ➜ 8
   - Attack range: 30m ➜ 40m
Fire Worm is not a bad card per se, but it lacks a firm identity and a reason to choose it over other options. Its stats are also not great, having only 2640 life points, lower than several T3 units, with a real attack value of only 4000 despite its claim to deal 4800 damage. Thinking about Fire Worm more, we have decided to move it into the role of a disposable sniper unit. The longer range helps it to survive longer and pick out priority targets without placing itself in danger. Fire Worm will be the first and only XL-unit to have 8 charges. This, along with the lower cost, will allow the player to spam them out quickly, allowing them to function as skirmisher like units without having to fear losing a precious charge on an XL-unit. 
 Grove Spirit:   
   - Healing Song healing capacity: 5000 life points ➜ 5500 life points
Minor correction to allow Grove Spirit to actually heal as much as she claims. 
 Ice Tornado:   
   - Power cost: 145p ➜ 140p
 Jorne:   
   - Wrecking Hammer radius: 20m ➜ 25m
   - Wrecking Hammer damage total: 6600 in total ➜ 8800 in total
Minor buff to Jorne and the accompanying legendary deck. This should make Jorne's anti-building ability easier to hit on multiple targets and more worth the power investment.
 Lifestream: 
   - Life Link: 20% of absorbed damage transferred ➜ 30% of absorbed damage transferred
After the recent buffs, Lifestream is in a good place but is slightly too strong. We as a team do not want to encourage strategies which can functionally create invincible armies, particularly not in a faction with already strong sustain options. As such, we are slightly toning down Lifestream by making it take more damage. This should make the downside real, with the possibility of killing the Lifestream if the player does not pay close enough attention.
 Lost Dragon: 
   - Damage: 335, up to 502 in total (3000 dp20) ➜ 416, up to 624 total (3715 dp20)
   - Life points: 3780 ➜ 4080
Lost Dragon card is very weak for its requirements, even with its very strong passive debuffs. Given it is a support unit, we considered placing more of its power budget into its debuff effects, but after consideration determined that the current debuffs are already sufficiently strong and well-designed. Lost Dragons stats are just too low. As such, we decided on a ~23% damage buff and ~8% life point buff. We wanted to preserve the existing trait of Lost Souls units, where life points are generally higher than damage. 
 Magma Fiend: 
   - Burning Liquid cost: 100p ➜ 50p
   - Movement Speed: 4.8 m/s (run) + 2.4 m/s (walk) ➜ 6.4 m/s (run) + 4.8 m/s (walk)
Burning Liquids is a decent ability, but like many abilities in the game it is overpriced. We are reducing its cost to align the price more closely with the effect produced. Additionally, we are increasing Magma Fiend's movement speed from slow to normal XL. We think that slow speeds should fit the unit in terms of balance, theme, or both. In the case of Magma Fiend, there is neither a thematic nor a balance reason for its currently slow speed, so we changed it.
 Noxious Cloud: 
   - Power cost: 250p ➜ 230p
   - Initial damage: 13 (3750 total) ➜ 24 damage every second (5640 total)
   - Time between damage increase: 2 seconds ➜ 3 seconds
Noxious Cloud is one of the most expensive spells in the game. While theoretically having a large potential total damage of 37,500, this rarely occurs as it requires all 10 initial targets to both live for the full duration and to remain inside the area for 37 seconds in total. In practice, even the Tier 3 Thunderstorm is usually better. Even in perfect situations, Noxious Cloud is heavily outcompeted by rival options such as Plague and Cluster Explosion. We wanted to buff Noxious Cloud without turning it into a copy of these other spells. As such, it continues to only affect units and we kept the total spell duration at 37 seconds. This is similar to the other Nature damage spell, such as Thunderstorm and Parasite, which have long durations and are only capable of damaging units. The new Noxious Cloud should kill most XL-units that remain within its effect for the full duration, while also cleaning up more S and M-units units due to its higher base damage. It also remains expensive, as Nature's faction identity is centered around unit-based damage, not damage dealing spells. 
 Plague: 
   - Power cost: 150p ➜ 170p
   - Parasite duration: 15 seconds ➜ 10 seconds
Despite toning down the new Plague before release, it remains one of the strongest spells in the game and is capable of single-handedly clearing camps, any respawns, and even bosses. We have decided to increase its cost to reduce power efficiency and reduce parasite duration. This reduces each parasite's single-target damage from 1500 to 1000, while making it harder to proc the secondary parasites due to reduced duration. The reduced duration also nerfs the powerful non-immunity applying ranged silence. Overall, this should mean Plague is no longer a cast and forget spell; players will need to encourage the initial parasites to proc themselves if they want to make get full use out of the spell. 
 Primeval Watcher:
   - Orb cost: 2 Nature, 2 Neutral ➜ 3 Nature, 1 Neutral
   - Damage: 600 / 288 / 192 / 127 / 84 (6550 dp20) ➜  660 / 330 / 220 / 165 / 132 (7220 dp20)
   - Life points: 4650 ➜ 4850
   - Stasis Field:
      - Targets: 7 enemies ➜ 9 enemies
      - Ability cost: 0p ➜ 25p
   - New passive, "Siege": Deals 50% more damage against structures.
Primeval Watcher is Pure Nature's primarily damage dealer. As such, Pure Nature's viability as an army-centric faction rises and falls based on Primeval's performance. We have wanted to increase Primeval's stats, but its current orb requirements limited our options as it would have mainly buffed Primeval Watcher in non-Pure Nature decks. Due to this, we have decided to increase its orb requirements to 3 Nature orbs to make room for more substantial stat buffs. Additionally, given that Primeval Watcher is one of Nature's only ways to kill buildings, particularly in the back of a camp, we have given it Siege to aid in this role.
 Skycatcher:
   - Damage 520, up to 780 in total (4660 dp20) ➜ 600, up to 800 in total (5000 dp20)
   - Fixed bug where killing the initial unit would reduce all splash damage to 0.
   - Twilight Infection power cost: 50p ➜ 0p
   - Twilight Infection cooldown: 20 sec ➜ 3 sec
Slight buff to Skycatcher to allow it to better perform its role as a backline attacker. The changes to Twilight Infection will allow Skycatcher to quickly transform a T2 or T3 army into a T4 army. 
 Transcendence:
   - Radius: 25m ➜ 30m
   - Kenosis, healing buff: 50% ➜ 75% more healing
   - Tyranny:
      - Healing debuff: 50% ➜ 75% less healing
      - Damage debuff: 25% ➜ 40% less damage
We are happy with Transcendence in concept but not in practice. The stats it released with have proven too low for it to be a compelling option in decks that might otherwise want to make use of it. We are buffing up its buffs and debuffs and increasing its radius to make it easier to use in chaotic T4 fights.
[ Tower Changes ]
It is the general principle of the faction design team not to change abilities or introduce complex mechanics needlessly. Cards should generally perform a single function and perform that function well. A lot of the buildings in the game are already well-designed but lack sufficient stats or possess too strict of requirements. As such, we have opted wherever possible to introduce simple changes to bring the tower to the appropriate power level. If you would like to learn more about our thought process behind the tower changes, please head to Skylords Reborn Documents to read our design Deep Dive on Towers, as well as other design documents. 
 Artillery:
   - Orb requirements: 2 Fire, 2 Shadow ➜ 1 Fire, 1 Shadow, 2 Neutral
   - Power cost: 190p ➜ 150p
 Deepgorge:
   - Power cost: 225p ➜ 200p
   - Damage: 480, up to 720 in total (3000 dp20) ➜ 675, up to 1015 in total (3760 dp20)
   - Cold Clutch freeze radius: 20m ➜ 25m
 Frost Crystal:
   - Power cost: 70p ➜ 60p
   - Damage: 72, up to 110 in total (728 dp20) ➜ 92, up to 138 in total (920 dp20)
   - Frost Wave freeze radius: 20m ➜ 25m
 Hammerfall:
   - Power cost: 150p ➜ 130p
Hatecaster:
   - Orb costs: 2 Fire, 2 Nature ➜ 1 Fire, 1 Nature, 2 Neutral
 Howling Shrine:
   - Life points: 3160 ➜ 4260
   - Linked Fire support: 1 support ➜ 4 support provided while out of combat
 Living Tower:
   - Splash radius: 5m ➜ 10m
 Mindweaver:
   - Splash radius: 5m ➜ 8m
   - Damage: 250, up to 375 in total (1900 dp20) ➜ 290, up to 435 in total (2200 dp20)
 Necroblaster:
   - Splash radius: 10m ➜ 12m
   - Corpse cost per shot: 500 life points ➜ 825 life points
   - Maximum corpses storable: 4500 ➜ 6600 life points
   - Corpse gathering radius: 33m ➜ 40m
 Primal Defender:
   - Cloudstrike damage: 220 ➜ 225 per hit
 Rioter's Retreat,
   - Splash radius: 5m ➜ 8m
 Stone Hurler,
   - Splash radius: 5m ➜ 8m
 Time Vortex: 
   - Life points: 2820 ➜ 1830
   - Splash radius: 5m ➜ 8m
 Tower of Flames:
   - Damage: 216, up to 324 in total (2160 dp20) ➜ 266, up to 399 in total (2660 dp20)
   - Splash Radius: 5m ➜ 10m
Twilight Bombard:
   - Splash radius: 10m ➜ 15m
Volcano:
   - Orb cost: 3 Fire, 1 Neutral ➜ 2 Fire, 2 Neutral
   - Gifted Eruption(g):
      - Self regeneration: 150 ➜ 200 life points per second
      - Regeneration duration: 5 sec ➜ 10 sec
[ Miscellaneous Changes ]
 - Mind controlled units can no longer be targeted by revive effects.
 - NoClaim and NoCardPlay have been removed from the effects list of The Incredible Mo and Dryad(g) as neither are debuffs nor weakening effects. This means that these two cards will no longer prevent the removal of ground presence or the removal of the ability to claim walls, Power Wells, and Monuments. 
 - The temporary immunity to revive effects on units recently resurrected by Promise of Life is now displayed as an effect. 
 - Viridya / Ravenheart: Now spawn summoned units one at a time, no longer requiring the player to kill one unit to spawn a third unit.
 - Changed several more units with unbound power costs to show 0 power as the power cost when hovering over them in-game.
 - The following units have had their class changed from Beast to Primordial: Deepcoil Worm, Deep One, Fathom Lord, Fire Worm, Magma Fiend, Shadow Worm, and Twilight Horror
 - The ability "Accelerated Construction" has been renamed to "Fast Construction" to conserve space on cards.
 - Added visual effect for Dying Breed on air units.
 - Magma Spore now properly shows it is Swift.
 - Portal Nexus's Explosive Death now has a range preview when hovered over. 
 - Viridya and promo Viridya's Treespirits have been renamed to Viridya's Treespirits.
 - The Bandit random PvE boss Equestrian Twins debuff duration has been decreased from infinite to 30 seconds.

PvP Balance Changes
 [ New Card Design Spotlight  - Twilight Crawler ]
Twilight Crawlers will be a new addition to Twilight decks in T2 and widen the pool of potential transformation targets. They will be a Twilight oriented replacement for Scythe Fiends with the upsides of lower costs and an increased durability against ranged units and spells, creating synergy with healing effects like Ravage. Their transformation ability grants a faster animation, leading to a lowered risk of getting interrupted in PvP scenarios. With fast movement, they will add more versatility to the Fire Nature T2 and even more so when opting for a Twilight unit deck.
 [ New Card Design Spotlight  - Tranquility ]
We are happy to add a second spell to the Amii faction. Tranquility was designed as a flexible T2 support spell, emphasizing Amii's current PvP identity with a strong early game oriented around low energy trading. As the majority of units accessible by Shadow Nature are very cheap, the existing single target buffs from shadow splashes exceed the unit cost, makes buffing units less efficient compared to playing a second unit most of the time. The Foreboding Whispers effect should add more counterplay when facing buffed single units, which opt into focusing down Power Wells. Beside Nightguard, who has been nerfed recently, Amii lacks direct counters for L/XL units, making them slow to take down key targets. As the spell scales fairly well into higher tiers, it might also see play in late game battles, as well as PvE scenarios.
[ Twilight Rework ]
 Twilight Transformation:
The Twilight Transformation mechanic has been perceived as disappointing by most of our players. The existing aura effects were not cost efficient, and the upside of creating strong units with reduced bound power was overshadowed by Breeding Grounds. On top of that, the transformation mechanic was very clunky. A two second channel time made it difficult to use the ability in the midst of battle. A unit would risk taking a large chunk of unnecessary damage during channel time, or even have its transformation canceled by crowd control. As we have wanted to buff Twilight Transformation effects across the board, the clunky nature of this ability needed to be addressed first. To achieve this goal, we reduced the channel time of all Twilight Transformations. To address the issue of weak transformation effects, we will buff up existing ones while also adding several new mechanics, rewarding players for engaging in smart transformations. We intend to keep working on the Twilight archetype into the future, including focusing on more PvE centric changes following the same design approach seen here. This should ideally solidify the transformation ability as a powerful mechanic and make Twilight as a faction more rewarding and fun to play overall.
 Slaver:
   - Power cost: 75p ➜ 70p
   - Blowout:
      - Now also damages air units
      - Now also triggers after transformation
   -. Infused Blowout(r):
      - Max damage: 450 ➜ 900 total damage
      - Now knocks back S-units
   - Tainted Blowout(p):
      - Max damage: 350 ➜ 810 total damage
      - Now knocks back S and M-units
Slaver was outclassed by other L-counter options in Fire Nature decks. As we want to allow more options for Twilight oriented decks, the high slot investment for its various units needs to offer more value in return. With the listed changes, we want to allow Slaver to compete with other L-counter options and also add more room for creative usage of the blowout ability. Channeling a transformation or killing the unit by yourself to get extra burst damage in critical situations should create interesting gameplay options, especially since it has an in-built L-counter bonus that gets applied even after the unit dies.
 Twilight Brute:
   - New passive, "Bloodlust": If the unit is transformed, it will incite friendly units within a 20m radius to restore 25% of their damage dealt as life points. Lasts for 20 seconds.
Based on its stats, Twilight Brute has been a viable option to Fire Nature decks in the past. Its playrate was strictly limited due to deck slot issues though, as the unit was good at defending against key units like Bandit Stalker or Scythe Fiends, but didn’t add much pressure during counter-attacks compared to other M counter options like Skyfire Drake. To raise the incentive of playing him in Twilight decks, we will add a new Transformation effect, that can enable strong counterattacks after a successful defense. We will keep an eye on him to see if he can find his place in Twilight decks moving forward. We might also adjust his Burstout ability in the near future, which was not touched this patch cycle for workload reasons.
 Twilight Minions:
   - Gifted / Infused Incentive radius: 20m ➜ 25m
   - Gifted Incentive(g): Now also affects Fire and Nature units
   - Infused Incentive(r) damage buff: 50% ➜ 65%  
Twilight Minions fill the role of a main M-counter regardless of whether you want to pursue the current Fire Nature style or move towards a Twilight oriented deck. We want to make sure the transformations are a little more useful for both of these decks.
 Vileblood:
   - Gifted / Infused Liquids, radius: 15m ➜ 18m
   - Gifted Liquids(g) healing: 200 ➜ 250 life points per wave
   - Infused Liquids(r):
      - Damage: 100, up to 330 in total ➜ 130, up to 520 in total
      - Now knocks back S and M-unit
      - No longer damages structures
We are buffing the Vileblood transformation towards unit damage instead of cheesing for a guaranteed 600 damage on power wells. With the newly added knockback, it should be fairly useful to punish stacked melee counter units. Also buffing the green affinity a little bit to keep up in value.
 Mutating Maniac:
   - Removed "Hex" passive ability (both affinities).
   - New passive, "Infused Fervor"(r):
      - If the unit is transformed, it will incite friendly Twilight units within a 20m radius to move 40% faster. Additionally, they will deal 50% more damage. Lasts for 15 seconds. 
   - New passive, "Gifted Fervor"(g):
      - If the unit is transformed, it will incite friendly Twilight units within a 20m radius to move 40% faster. Additionally, they will be immune to all major debuffs. Lasts for 15 seconds. 
Since its previous changes, Mutating Maniac started performing fairly well in multiple decks. That said, the transformation ability remained fairly underwhelming. The effect was both very weak and there was no unit worth transforming into. Since moving Nightshade Plant to T3 will change the second part, we are remedying the first issue by replacing the current transformation effect with a more powerful one. If utilized correctly, this should make transforming worthwhile despite the significant power investment.
 Nightshade Plant:
   - Orb cost: 2 Nature, 2 Fire (T4) ➜ 1 Nature, 1 Fire, 1 Hybrid (T3) 
   - Damage: 6380 ➜ 4100
   - Life points: 5800 ➜ 3400
   - New passive, "Siege": Deals 50% more damage against structures.
   - New passive "Adept Mutation": Reduced transformation cost 208p ➜ 180p 
   - Tainted Tendrils, damage: 50 per sec ➜ 20 per sec
Nightshade Plant has been highly redundant in PvE due to being outclassed by Abomination. As the card's design doesn't enable a different playstyle for Twilight decks, we have decided to rework it into a T3 unit that is most efficient when being summoned through transformation. This should add more depth to the Twilight archetype in both PvP and PvE. In PvP, Fire Nature often doesn't have the option of playing more than 2 or 3 cards in T3. This led to late game issues against more defensive oriented decks. Closing out leads was often quite a tough task outside the top echelons of play. Adding a strong game finisher will help the faction to compete to a certain extent. Decks including various Twilight units from earlier game stages will have more strategic options to utilize the card through different transformation effects. Twilight Minions will provide a very cheap summoning, Twilight Crawlers can quickly move to desired locations before transforming, and Mutating Maniac will provide the most powerful transformation buff and unit synergy.
[ Bandit Touch-up ]
Bandits has been in a very strong position ever since the release of its new cards, especially in lower ELOs. As a result, we will tweak it from both ends by slightly nerfing Bandit Minefield and Bandit Stalker, while also buffing some of its most favorable matchups with Pure Nature and Fire Nature. We received a lot of feedback mainly regarding the Bandit Minefield being perceived as fairly oppressive and will closely observe whether this continues to be the case after this set of changes.
 Bandit Minefield:
   - Cooldown: 25 seconds ➜ 30 seconds
Bandit Minefield has been extremely popular since its release. We noticed the spell is getting spammed a lot, as it ensures great trades in almost any state of the game. Microing around the spell and punishing a player during its cooldown is supposed to be this spells intended counterplay. This downside demands a good understanding of matchup from the opponent's side as well as a solid level of execution, making the card even more efficient in lower ELOs. As we want to add more possibilities to play around the spell, we will increase its cooldown. This should open up bigger time windows to attack a Bandit player, who used the spell too recklessly. With reduced power on the Bandit Stalker, see below, there also should be more room to make use of beast creatures that can avoid the mines more consistently due to their mobility.
 Bandit Stalker(g):
   - Damage against Beasts: 100% more damage ➜ 80% more damage
Bandit Stalker received a powerful buff in the past to help Bandits deal with a lot of the beast units, against which the faction used to struggle. With new powerful cards added to the faction, Bandits has become a bit too good against beast reliant decks. As a result, we decided to reduce the beast bonus damage on the green affinity of Bandit Stalker, providing players with the opportunity to snowball a lead against Bandits without getting shut down by this powerful counter unit.
 Bandit Lancer:
   - Branding targeting range: 5m ➜ 8m
   - Added a targeting range preview to Branding when hovered over.
QoL changes which will make the ability smoother to use.
[ Miscellaneous Changes ]
 Deep One:
   - Life points: 1450 ➜ 1500
   - Gifted Catch root immunity duration: 20 seconds ➜ 10 seconds
   - Species class: Beast ➜ Primordial
Pure Nature did not perform to the level we had hoped after its small rework. While we do think it was the right move to reduce Deep One’s health pool, we went a little too far. Pure Nature started struggling to break through strong Frost Splash defenses. We will revert some parts of the health nerfs and also reduce the CC immunity duration applied by gifted catch, which had a much longer duration compared to the usual cc abilities. Outside of that, the Nature versus Bandits matchup has been perceived as fairly oppressive amongst most players that gave us feedback. Deep One will move from Beast to the new Primordial class to make sure it is not getting hard countered by units like Bandit Stalker in the future. With more freedom to use its various units in skirmishes, Nature should also gain more room to play around Bandit Minefield. The spell strongly punishes any misplacement of Ghostspears or Spirit Hunters, which were the only viable trading units in this matchup, assuming a normal nature deck build was being played.
 Emberstrike:
   - Fire Lance can no longer damage Monuments and Power Wells.
Small change to alleviate issues regarding the card in 2vs2 in order to keep games enjoyable without affecting any PvE unit interactions.
 Icefang Raptor:
   - Infused Reserve(r): 30% ➜ 35% of damage reflected to melee attackers
   - Blessed Reserve(b): 25% ➜ 30% damage reduction
With the addition of Amii Paladins and buffs to cards like Twilight Minions or Ghostspears, the impact of small sized medium counters has increased overall. As a result, Icefang Raptor has fallen a bit behind. Its issues are amplified by the bonus counter passives of some S-units it is supposed to fight against, such as Stone Shards or Bandit Spearmen. Adding more power to the unit's passive should balance this out and push the unit further towards decks that can provide appropriate support in the first place.
 Mumbo Jumbo:
   - Debuff (both affinities): 20% ➜ 25%
Adding a bit of power to Mumbo Jumbo as the spell is fairly difficult to use. The buffs should enable a small extra reward for nature players opting into a large T1 without altering the potentially unhealthy interactions around its spawn presence denial.
 Warden's Sigil
   - New passive, "Fast Construction": Construction time is reduced by 50%
   - Cooldown: 20 seconds ➜ 15 seconds
Frost T1 has struggled a lot against early T2 attacks centered around Nightcrawlers and Burrowers. These units were capable of ignoring any counters entirely by focusing down structures. This inherent weakness often pushed players in the direction of playing frost very aggressively instead of methodically securing map control and power leads over time. These changes to Warden's Sigil should add more options for Frost to keep power wells alive without altering its capabilities in unit trading. While Warden's Sigil will be able to help a player get through the early game more consistently, it will be at the cost of fewer card slots for higher tier options. Since we did not want to support forward siege building strategies, the ability to attach on buildings under construction will only remain on the green affinity (this already got added in the last patch).

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

• Survey Results

Once more, a big thank you to everyone who provided feedback in our 2022 Survey. 2.227 of you provided feedback regarding various topics, from general opinions regarding the project, to balance and upcoming features. We have collected the answers and provided them in a short presentation. 


• Upcoming Patch 

Last month we promised more information about our upcoming new content patch. We are almost ready to bring you a new patch that will include a ton of balance changes, map changes, bug fixes and new cards! While we sadly can't give you a concrete date on the patch yet, we are aiming for a release around mid-September. We are also planning to release some additional achievements in a small follow-up patch soon after. 
As for the upcoming content patch; we have added new Transformation effects to T2 and T3 Twilight cards, aimed at making Twilight's Transformation ability worth using. We have also made substantial changes to Fire T4 cards, while continuing our work on Nature. At the same time, we are making some much-needed changes for the health and future of the game. This patch will implement changes to Batariel, Decomposer, Frenetic Assault and mindcontrol-effects like Nightguard and Parasite Swarm. These cards have been the topic of many heated discussions over the years, which is why we would like to take some time to explain why we are making these changes. 
 
• Why Nerf Cards?

It has been the conscious choice of the Skylords Reborn Team since we began balancing the game nearly 2 years ago to avoid any PvE specific nerfs. The reasoning was twofold:
(1) Nerfs feel bad and continued nerfs of popular cards can be demoralizing to players, and
(2) There did not exist a sufficient number of strategies such that nerfing top performers would actually lead to more diverse gameplay. The top performing strategies were sometimes the only viable strategies in the game, and removing them would have just lead to an ever decreasing set of viable archetypes. 
Instead of nerfing cards, we in the faction design and balancing team have endeavored to create an increasingly large set of viable strategies, both between and within factions. Within factions, Bandits has been our greatest success, with several top tier Bandit deck archetypes being viable across all maps and game modes. Across factions, we have also steadily been succeeding in our original goal. Pure Frost and Pure Fire do not have as much intra-faction deck diversity as something like Bandits, but both do have viable archetypes capable of succeeding at all levels of play. Slowly, but steadily, we have also been working towards this same goal with Pure Nature, Pure Shadow, and their non-pure derivatives such as Shadow's Death Ray archetype. In the next few patch cycles we are hoping to touch the Stonekin, Lost Souls, and Twilight factions as well, simultaneously adding new unique strategies while also fleshing out their existing viable archetypes. All in all, we think we have come a very long way in creating both fun and viable strategies for the majority of factions, and we will labor every patch to continue this work. 
Unfortunately, despite the work that has been done, there is still a perception among much of the playerbase that decks like Pure Frost are not strong, despite Pure Frost being viable against all factions even in RPvE 10. This is because, with the exception of the addition of Banzai Lord and Plague, the top decks have remained nearly identical from release until now. This is unsurprising. In T4, Batariel-Enlightenment and Bloodhorn decks are so strong that if we attempted to make all archetypes compete with them, we would thereby trivialize the game through power creep. In T1, we have made substantial changes to ensure that every faction has a viable opening for all maps and game modes, but by and large a majority of players still progress through the campaign using Nightguard in at least a plurality if not a majority of maps. This situation of having a large set of viable playstyles but a few select ones that outshine all others, creates the impression that Skylords Reborn lacks gameplay diversity and leads to players defaulting to the same few decks over and over again. This is not a recipe for long term success. Even after the most recent patch, you can still see messages in global chat to the effect of "I wish there were other strategies than Batariel or Nightguard." There are many more strategies, it is just that some strategies are so strong that everything else seems paltry in comparison. 
Given the current state of the game, we as a balancing team have determined that it is finally time to nerf some of the game's top performers and that by doing so we will actually be expanding the set of strategies players view as viable, thereby hopefully leading to increased in-game deck diversity. Yet, our goal is not to remove the existing top strategies from the game. We want them to remain top strategies, but to be closer to the strength of other archetypes which have proven themselves to be viable alternatives. We are truly convinced this is the best course of action for the long term health of Skylords Reborn. The other options are increasing the strength of all cards to the level of these very few cards, thereby trivializing existing content, or accepting a perpetually stagnate meta where the same few strategies continue to dominate forever. 
As a final note, we want to assuage any fears that we will be going through and nerfing any and every strong card in the game. We are convinced that there are less than 10 total cards problematic enough to justify large changes. Balancing is more music than algebra. There is a band of viability within which cards sit. It is okay if some cards are better than other ones, as long as those cards are neither too powerful nor too weak. As long as a strategy is not so dominant across multiple game modes that it warps the game around itself and adversely affects the playerbase's perception of what is acceptably strong, we can and will happily turn a blind eye to it and allow it to continue unchanged. 
Our upcoming patch notes will dive into what exactly will be changed about these cards. These will be posted alongside the patch release.

• New Card Reveal: Tranquility

The results from our feedback survey shows you really like new cards, so we are excited to reveal our new Amii spell: Tranquility!

This card holds the record for longest development cycle, going all the way back to November 2021. Having changed names, effects, art and visuals multiple times during its long process since then. We are very happy with the end result though, and we hope you look forward to playing it.
Please note: We are still testing the card. While we are generally happy about it, numbers and effects might still change before release.
Let's break down the card: 

Tranquility is a tier 2 spell for Nature/Shadow. Upgrading the card increases its effect and reduces its Power Cost. It will be a rare and won't have an affinity. As with the card Transcendence, the effect of this new Amii spell changes depending on if you cast it on an enemy or friendly unit:
 
Soothing Whispers
Empowers a friendly unit to fight more joyfully. Target friendly unit will deal 20/30/30/30% more damage and regenerate 50 life points every 2 seconds if the unit deals at least 80 damage every 5 seconds. Lasts 20 seconds. Reusable every 25 seconds.

Foreboding Whispers
Weakens an enemy unit and makes it unable to fight. Target hostile unit cannot attack or use special abilities and takes 20/20/30/30% more damage for 10 seconds. Reusable every 25 seconds.
 
Tranquility offers Skylords a flexible early game Amii spell that can be used in both PvE and PvP.
For its buff/debuff visual, we have created a completely new flower model, another milestone in our development for Skylords Reborn! 

 
• Phone Wallpaper

The artwork for Tranquility was created by Tweeto, and went through many iterations (as tends to happen with our team full of perfectionists). The final artwork goes beyond the size of what we can show on a card, which is why we decided to release the full artwork as a Phone Wallpaper. We hope you like it!  

• Skylords Reborn Instagram


Want to see more art, exclusive content and giveaways? Be sure to follow us on our new Instagram! Rumors say you might even catch a glimpse of a new and not yet revealed card in the upcoming days! Follow us now to join our upcoming giveaway for a chance to win some Twilight boosters.
 
• Tournaments / Events

Now that the Community Updates moved to a monthly schedule, events might come and go in between Community Updates. Be sure to keep a close eye on the ingame event-tab and the forum calendar to not miss any events! 

• NEW - Community PvE League Season 1
In this Community-hosted PvE league, you will compete against other players of similar abilities and ranks in a series of challenges, consisting of campaign, community and rPVE maps. There are exciting prizes to be won, so be sure to click here for more information! 

• NEW- Crappy Community Contest #8
The contest-idea-contest (CCC#7) has brought some excellent ideas to light, and the yet unannounced winner will be presented tomorrow as a new contest. As always, if enough Skylords participate, there will be a booster code as prize for the whole community!

• FINISHED - Community event #4: Onslaught on the Ground
Can you finish King of the Giants Solo under 13 minutes - without using flying units? The winner of 'Onslaught on the Ground' was able to pull this off, check out his replay here.
 
• FINISHED - Battle of Tactics #1: Your actions count
How many clicks do you need to finish Encounters with Twilight? See a super-cut of how the participants tried to be as efficient as possible: watch the video. 


• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event yourself? Please reach out to our Event Organizer Metagross! We can help you out with various topics and are glad to discuss potential ideas. We can also sponsor the prize pool for your event. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you. 
 
• Team changes 

A lot has happened in the team behind Skylords Reborn in the past month. 
Sadly nkmol, who worked with Freund and Maze on the web-interface, has left the team due to personal circumstances. We are grateful for his work and wish him all the best.
Luckily, we also have some good news to share! 

Ult has recently joined the team as a client and server developer. He has been working on something exciting we can't wait to show you on in a future community update! 
Katchau also joined the team as a client developer. He will be helping out in adding new features into the game that were previously blocked due to a lack of UI developers.  
Lebovim (one of our Skylords of Honor) has done a ton for the project already, but always worked alongside the team, not in it. He has now formally joined the team, and will be helping out with implementing map and card changes, among other things. 
Maxxxel is also new to the team and working on creating tools and workflows capable of editing and adding new 3D models. We hope we will be able to add new models to the game at some point, but no promises yet. 
Lastly, Dallarian will move from a Global Moderator role into the Map Department. Our survey showed loud and clear that you want more campaign maps, so he is currently exploring the map editor to make that happen.
Welcome, and we are grateful for all of you who spend their free time helping out with Skylords Reborn! 

• Contribute to the Project

As always, we hope you will also consider helping out the project. Please take a look at all our open positions on how you can do so. 
We have also opened the position of Global Moderator, and are currently in need of more Russian Translators.

 
• In Conclusion

And that's it for this Community Update, thanks for reading! 
As is tradition, this community update comes with a scratch code. 
The code will reward you with a Amii-booster: REAL-SOON-THIS-TIME

The code is valid until October 1st, when we will bring you another Community Update. 
As always, we are open to feedback, so please let us know if you have any questions, suggestions, or comments! 

Archive
• Skylords Reborn Documents (Deep Dives, Behind the Scenes, PvP Guide)  
• Overview Community Updates
• Community Update #26

Hello again Skylords, Skyladies and other Skybeings; the jury had its say, and it's time to announce the winners!
First of all, I’d like to thank everyone for making the Crappy Community Contest #7 happen – no matter in what way: developing the idea, making and helping with the map, participation, sponsoring prizes, spreading the word or helping me to organize it. Of course, a special thanks goes to the two other Jurors who carried together with me the burden of deciding the winners, namely @Dutchy and @Prajoss.
In total, I have received 61 entries from 38 different Skylords that were presented in anonymous form to the judges. Thanks to the Skylords Team for sponsoring the code: CCC7-IDEA-SWEL-COME
Before revealing the winners, please remember that judging is always in part a subjective process - on some entries the Jurors themselves had vastly different opinions, so you might find some entries outside the winning tiers are still very interesting. So if you are interested to judge for yourself, here is the content of all entries:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Mg0yjanpOF_fDM90u82WUD6sqRAfSvQigssQBpwkNHY/edit?usp=sharing
Jury duty is quite the unrewarding job, it is quite normal to disagree on criteria and thresholds, so please don't send Rifle Cultists towards their orbs.
 

 
Here are the Winners of the CCC #7:
The idea of the following Skylords made it into the Gold Tier, winning them two Boosters: (sorted alphabetically)
@Donaar
@erkserkserks
@itap
@Sucks
@Ultralord
The idea(s) of the following Skylords made it into the Silver Tier, winning them one Booster: (sorted alphabetically)
@CrazyCockerell
@DuzaBF
@FrozenSins
@itap (2 times)
@Kociula
@Majora
@Metagross31
@Metanolo
@Oumuamua
@Trando
@wanky (2 times)
@Zizizi

Furthermore, the Winner of the Secret Special Prize will be the entry that has been chosen to become Crappy Community Contest #8, so the Promo Mana Wing will be handed out in confidentiality and revealed at the start of CCC#8. The winner of the Weird Special Price (Juice Tanks) is the entry with the longest word count that has not been selected for Gold or Silver Tier.
 
Winners of the Random Draws
The dice gods have determined the fate of the following cards:
Draw 1                       Lyrish Knight Promo      Caeser2000
Draw 2                       Rogan Kayle Promo       Majora
Draw 3                       Avatar of Frost               FrozenSins
Draw 4                       Abyssal Warder (R)         Arenguros
Draw 5                       Gravity Surge (B)            Rapzak
Draw 6                       Santa Claus                    Fortte
Draw 7                       Santa Claus                    Zizizi
Draw 8                       Easter Egg                     Sirydawill91
Draw 9                       Disenchant (P)               erks
Draw 10                     Disenchant (P)               Ultralord
Draw 11                     Inferno (x2)                   Bozzah
Draw 12                     Wildfire (x3)                   Kociula
Draw 13                     Frenetic (G) (x4)             Dallarian
Draw 14                     Hurricane (x3)               Katchau
Draw 15                     Parasite (x3)                  Lebovin
Draw 16                     Revenge (x3)                 WaterMelonLord
Draw 17                     Motivate (x5)                Fernfalej

Some prizes have already been sent out, the rest will follow as soon as possible. Additionally, the Newcomers have received an assortment of eight cards each from the Newcomer Card Pool.
 
In conclusion
Again, I'd like to thank again all those who helped with this event, especially the jurors for spending time to vote and discuss the entries.

As already experienced on CCC#3, non-gameplay events see less activity - but I'm happy that this CCC with 38 participants did quite nicely in comparison. CCC#8 has already been selected from the Gold/Silver tier and should provide a fun experience for a broader audience again.

Of course, I'd like to thank the generous sponsors for all the prizes they gave: @Lightbarrier, @Donaar, @gam3over, @Sucks, @DantheManager and the Skylords Reborn Team.

If you have a crappy idea for future CCC's you may share and discuss that with me, maybe I host your idea, or you can host your own Crappy Contest! Feel free to contact me anytime. If you want to discuss or host a non-crappy contest, contact our Event Managers @Minashigo Hiko and/or @Metagross31. They are super supportive and will help you to organize your event!

I am really hyped for that video!