Hodron

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. 
 

I may be wrong but Neutral Swamp Grake have same bug as unfixed neutral windhunter - in term of Mind Controll (spell is cast but witout effect).
 
*there is small chance that i missclicked MC on other unit that died scecond after casting 😉

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

Patch #400035
Welcome to our newest patch. This update contains our sixth balance patch for the game, brand-new cards, and many other changes, enjoy!

Patch Preview
 - Three new cards are now available! Jump in-game to collect Twilight Slayers, Twilight Crawler, and Tranquility.
 - Our initial balance pass on towers, a large number of buffs to well-designed but underperforming cards, our first PvE nerfs, and a substantial amount of changes to Fire, Nature, and Twilight cards.
 - Changed several PvE maps to improve player experience.

General Changes
Updated in-game player banner colors for GM accounts to represent the current roles. Added a search bar to the community map and sparring PvP map selection screens, which can be used to search for map names as well as map creators' names. Added a dropdown menu to the community map and sparring PvP selection screens to filter for player count.  Added a "reset all filters" button to the filtering widget in the deck control window. Added a "search in marketplace" option in the right click menu of cards in the inventory. All-time PvE rankings have been reset due to many times no longer being possible.  Made changes to the Shadow/Nature, Nature/Shadow, Fire/Nature, and Nature/Fire decks free PvP decks to keep them up to date with the new cards and balance changes. 
New Cards
Twilight Slayers - 75p T3 Twilight  (Fire and Shadow Affinity)
You will find the upgrades for this card on the maps Crusade (fire affinity) and Defending Hope (shadow affinity). 

Twilight Slayers are our first ever T3 S-archer unit. Like their NPC cousins, they deal less damage if enemies are nearby. In exchange, they sport a very high attack value for use with Nature's plentiful crowd control. One affinity deals increased damage to elementals, making them an ideal counter for Stonekin, while the other deals increased damage to humans and ogres, making them a good choice against Bandits. For more information, check out Community Update 26.
 
Twilight Crawler - 80p T2 Twilight  
You will find the upgrades for this card on the map Encounters with Twilight.
A new M-sized S-counter for Twilight T2. Since changing Ghostspears to , Twilight has been reliant on Scythe Fiends as an S-counter in PvP. This opens up a Twilight specific S-counter which takes reduced damage from ranged attacks and spells, just like the NPC version. 

 
Tranquility - 40p T2 Amii Spell 
You will find the upgrade for this card on the map Nightmare's End.
Like Transcendence before it, Tranquility has a different effect depending on whether it is cast on an ally (buff) or an enemy (debuff). The card's flexibility should help it fill a much-needed role in Amii's T2, particularly in PvP, as well as remain relevant in T3. For more information, check out Community Update 27.  
 

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).

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. 

Hello Skylords, Skyladies and other Skybeings; and welcome to CCC #6 – the sixth Crappy Community Contest!
 
THE CONTEST HAS ENDED.
To see the winners, CLICK HERE. If you are just here to grab the booster code, there you go:  CCC6-TUTO-RIAL-DECK

 
 
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: there will be no stream, video or event announcing the winners. What's special about these contests is a participation price for the whole Skylords community.
While the first CCC was a small event, some CCCs have developed into a quite laborious undertaking - and this one especially. @LEBOVIN has poured dozens and dozens of hours into this contest's map, so we are at a point where the "crappy" is undeserving.
 
What, when, where, how?
While the last CCC was with unlimited amounts of resources, this CCC will be about a very special map with a harsh deck limitation:
 
Back to the Roots

New Skylords have conquered these lands to learn from Moon about the powers of the Forge.
Now it is upon you to take the forces of Nature and Shadow to these lands to bring peace once more.

This challenge is to win the Custom 1-player-map “CCC #6 - Back to the Roots”
on Standard difficulty with a predetermined deck as fast as you can.

This custom map is a copy of the Introduction map with a few new jumps and turns. To participate, you will have to use the following mirrored tutorial deck:
Forsaken Skeleton Warriors Surge of Light Burrower Stone of Torment Thornbark Mutating Frenzy Fear not - we removed as many ultra-long explanations as possible from the map. But, if you have some spare time, it is nice to check out the original tutorial before diving into this one - you will enjoy and appreciate the map a lot more if you can see what has been altered. Playing a disallowed card or playing it on any other difficulty than Standard will result in disqualification. Upgraded cards are allowed, you don't need to make a real tutorial deck out of it.
The contest has started with the release of this post – submit your entry through Discord (DM to Kapo#0116) or the Skylords Forum (DM to @Kapo) until 24.07.2022 23:59 CET  (= 9 days time total). You can submit multiple times, but only the fastest will count. Please note that your submitted replay may be posted here in the forums.
Battleforge automatically saves a replay file of the last match you play, named autosave.pmv.  After playing the contest map, rename this file, so it doesn't get overwritten. You can find your replays here: Documents => Battleforge => replays. To reduce my workload, you may rename your file to CCC6_<Time>_<IGN>.pmv (e.g. CCC6_15.53.9_Kapo.pmv).

There is some minor, unavoidable problem that it might appear in the lobby as a two-players-map - of course you have to play it alone.
 

 
Community Maps
How to access the map:
 
 
What's the price pool?
Since this is not just a Crappy Contest, but a Crappy Community Contest, you may help with your participation to earn a price for the whole Community. If we reach more than 20 participants (unique players, not entries), we will unlock a Mini-Booster code for the entire Skylords Community. If more than 35 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 fastest Skylords will get prices too, sponsored by myself, the Community and the Skylords Reborn Team:
1st place               5 General Boosters + Promo Mana Wing + Juice Tank (x4)
2nd place              4 General Boosters + Promo Rogan Kayle + Nether Warp (B)
3rd place              3 General Boosters + Promo Fallen Skyelf + Grinder (R)
4th place              2 General Boosters + Dreadnought + Matter Mastery (P)
5th place              1 General Booster + Avatar of Frost + Gravity Surge (B)
6th place              Primeval Watcher + Banzai (P)
7th place              Nether Warp (G)+ Banzai (G)
8th place              Cluster Explosion (R) + Bloodhorn (P)
9th place              Amii Monument + Bloodhorn (R)
10th place            Skycatcher (G) + Shrine of Memory
11th place            Forest Elder (P) + Grinder(P)
12th place            Church of Negation
13th-16th place   Bandit Minefield (x1 each)

Last place              Juice Tank (x5) + 500BFP
For participation, there is a random chance to win one of the following cards:
Random Draws          5x1 General Booster, Ironclad (R), Dreadnought, Wheel of Gifts, Core Dredge (R), Church of Negation, Moloch, Timeshifter Spirit, QueekQueek, Disenchant (P), Backlash, Disenchant (P), Gravity Surge (P), Oracle Mask (G), Shrine of War, Infect, Enlightenment, Abyssal Warder(R)
This CCC has a new feature for beginners, the Newbie Card Pool. By participating, players of Bronze or Silver Rank will automatically receive an uncommon random card sponsored by @THE_BIG_WET. Of course, you may also win other random draws additionally if you are lucky. The Newbie Card Pool contains the following cards:
 

Should we get more entries than 15 Bronze/Silver, the pool will be expanded, so every newcomer will receive a card. Those expansion cards will be rare cards (instead of more uncommons) sponsored by @Vysnia, so tell your fellow beginner to participate!
 
Sponsors
If one or more mighty Skylord(s) decides to sponsor this event, please contact me. I would be more than happy to beef up or expand the prize pool beyond the 10th place, add additional random draws, special bounties or any other upgrades to the prize pool. 
The following prices have been sponsored so far:
Skylords Team          General Boosters (x20), Community Booster Code
@Kapo                Promo Mana Wing, Promo Fallen Skyelf, Promo Rogan Kayle
@Simplifying*       Skycatcher (B), Nether Warp (G), Primeval Watcher, Cluster Explosion (R), Ironclad (R), Forest Elder (P), Church of Negation, Moloch, Timeshifter Spirit, QueekQueek
@THE_BIG_WET     Newbie Card Pool (see above)
@Metagross31     Grinder(R), Matter Mastery (P)
@Donaar             Juice Tank (x9)
@Trando             Dreadnought, Core Dredge (R), Gravity Surge (P), Gravity Surge (B), Oracle Mask (G), Backlash, Disenchant (P), Nether Warp (B)
@Sylar                Avatar of Frost, Dreadnought, Wheel of Gifts, Bandit Minefield (x4), Bloodhorn (P), Bloodhorn (R), Banzai (P), Banzai (G), Shrine of War, Shrine of Memory
@Kemek             Infect, Enlightement, Amii Monument
@Prajoss            Church of Negation, Abyssal Warder (R), Grinder(P)
@Vysnia             5000 BFP (Last Place BFP + Newbie Card Pool Rare Cards)

* Simplifying, a player who stopped playing, also donated his complete account. This is the fourth (and last) contest his collection is sponsoring - he expressed how nice the community is, and he wanted to give something back through the CCC.
 
Special thanks and Conclusion
My very special thanks goes out @LEBOVIN, who created this awesome map and introduced many surprising new features never seen to Battleforge before, also @Hodron who helped with the special camera sequence, and the Skylords Team in general who really went out of their way to support the creation of the map.
I hope you are having fun with the map, and I hope to see some awesome replays from our many Skilllords that have to work and think hard with the limited possibilities due to the deck.
Good luck, I hope you enjoy this twisted version of the Introduction!
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 beloved Event Managers @Minashigo Hiko and/or @Metagross31 on the forums or discord. They are happy to assist you with upcoming events and with sponsoring your prize pool!
If you especially like this small-scale-format, and you have an idea for it, you may also contact me directly to discuss your idea and host your own Crappy Community Contest.

Greetings Skylords!
This community update is a bit different to what you are used to. We would like to take a bit of time to communicate to you all, the player base, about the state of the project, and give you the opportunity to communicate to us as well. 

 
• Share your feedback, get two boosters!

Last month, we released our latest patch: "Force of Nature". We hope you are all enjoying it, and are curious to hear how you feel about Skylords Reborn in general.  
It has already been a year since our feedback survey, so it is time for some reflection and feedback. What do you like about Skylords Reborn? What could be better? We want to keep improving the game and growing our player base, and your feedback is crucial for us. 
As a thank you, there will be two boosters for everyone who fills in the survey. Your feedback will be anonymous.
 

• State of the Project

We are very proud of everything we have accomplished with Skylords Reborn so far. Not only are fans able to play BattleForge again, but over the last two years we have added many new features and content. However, a lot of effort is required behind the scenes to create these new features.
Skylords Reborn has a very loyal and consistent player base, but has been struggling to find new players. This also results in less potential contributors, resulting in a few individuals doing a ton of work. There is only so much we can do as volunteers, and at the current rate it is becoming unsustainable to keep the same feature output rate.
 
Without additional contributors, Skylords Reborn will only get card and balance updates moving forward.
This means new cards and adjustments on existing cards, but not features like Reforging, improvements to the UI, Happy Hours, etc. While we are currently working on a couple of new and existing cards, to improve the game, we would really like to add new features as well. 
To give you an idea of what we are currently missing out on, below are some features highlighted that we feel would really improve Skylords Reborn. This is a game with so much potential, and we would love to bring it to you! 
 
• What could be: potential features for Skylords Reborn

 
Before we dive into them, please note:
- The following features are currently not in development, due to a lack of game client developers, game server developers, and fullstack developers.
- You can directly help create this features by applying for a staff role.
- You can indirectly help by spreading the word.
- Images shown are very early mock-ups.
 
PvE Map Modifiers
Map modifiers are global effects that can be applied to matches. These can be chosen before the start of a match, and different modifiers can be combined for limitless replayability. Examples of modifiers are: all enemy units regenerate 3% of their health every second, all enemy units move 25% faster, all enemy units spawn a hostile Nether Crawler on death, or cards return less power to the void pool. The more modifiers are active, the higher the reward from the match. The following is a mockup of a UI to choose the modifiers before lobby creation.

 
New Reward Distribution System
Do you dislike receiving achievement and quest rewards through the in-game mail? What about your auctions? Isn't it also a bit boring to see your scratch code rewards in a small static window? This feature is a new way to make it more exciting to open rewards. Imagine the following mockup with nice animations and sound effects, showing you what you received and actions to take with the items. The idea would be to move away from the lackluster interface and user experience of the in-game mail.
 

 
Cosmetics
Currently, the player can only express themselves through their character avatar. This feature would add numerous cosmetics like character borders, character banners (textured and colored), player titles and more avatars in general. The following image shows a Christmas themed border, and a green character banner. Instead of `Master of the Forge`, the player can also own and change their title and other cosmetics in a cosmetic management screen. We already started on this with the Cosmetics window currently found in-game, although it is currently limited to avatars. The idea is to add more tabs to the right of the Cosmetics page for the different cosmetics. Achievements, events and even leaderboard positions can also reward special cosmetics.
 


 
Compare Profiles
Amassing many cards, becoming the richest player, completing all the achievements and collecting all the different cosmetics is rewarding, but showcasing and comparing your accomplishments with others is also part of the fun. With the compare profiles feature, players would be able to manage what they share publicly, and easily compare their profiles with those of other players, either globally or specifically with one player. The following image is a very early concept of a screen to compare achievements with a specific player.


Map Progression Indicators
Map progression indicators is a feature for the world map that indicates, through the usage of stars above each campaign map, what difficulties you have completed for each map. This allows you to quickly have a glance of what you have already completed, and what you have not.

 
New Campaign Maps
While rPvE is arguably the most played game mode, we know players would really like to continue the story and/or experience new campaign maps. While we already have some of the resources to make this happen, we are lacking in the map department to make the push to get this done in a way that fits the quality you can expect from an official campaign map. Please consider applying as Map Artist, Map Designer or Map Developer. 

 
New Community Map Experience
The experience of creating, sharing, finding and managing community maps has always been very cumbersome. Currently, it is a unmanageable list that leaves much to be desired. This feature would completely overhaul how the community maps screen looks like, for both PvP and PvE. More filters, more sorting, public upvoting and private downvoting, highlighting of frequently played maps, deleting maps you have uploaded, viewing when a map was last edited and viewing the minimap of community maps without having to download them are a few features that could be included.
Another option to improve the accessibility of Community Maps would be adding a second world map, where the best community maps would be found, similar to the campaign maps. 
 

 
rPvE Deck Builder Mode
Quite popular in other card games is a mode where you face challenges while your starting deck is slowly expanding by picking a card from a random selection. We think this could be a great new way to play Skylords Reborn, with every run being unique and allowing you to experiment with different cards and combinations. This would require quite a bit of UI work though, which is why this mode has not been developed yet. 


Seasons
Seasons are a broad topic that could include many features that reset or adjust based on the start of a new season. Some examples are Seasonal Leaderboards that reset at the end of each season and automatic events that occur throughout the season. But also seasonal objectives and/or objective trees to complete, similar to a battle pass in other games, are topics that have been discussed in the team quite often. We feel seasons would help make the game feel more fresh, and reward players for playing through each season, giving older players a reason to return. 
Seasons are a broad feature that would probably require other features mentioned above to be included first, like the improved reward system, modifiers on maps to create new challenges, and additional cosmetics to be rewarded.  
 
As you can see, there is still a lot of potential for Skylords Reborn, and we would love to add them to the game. 
As mentioned before, these features are currently not in development due to a lack of people to work on them.
 
• Help us make these features happen
So get your friends to join, or have them return to check out the new content and achievements, give us suggestions (through the survey) on how to improve the player base, or apply for a staff position yourself. We really can't do this without you! 
 
  
  

• Team Changes

Due to personal reasons, Friendly Firefly sadly had to resign from the team. We are grateful for his help with Burning Spears and wish him all the best!
While not technically a team change, we would also like to take a moment to thank Kapo for his contributions to Skylords Reborn. You might know him from hosting the CCC events, but Kapo has been doing a ton of work for the team behind the scenes as well. From helping out with the recent Force of Nature trailer, to proofreading and providing feedback, we can always count on him. Due to his contributions to Skylords Reborn, we have awarded him with the rare Skylord of Honor title. 
 
• In Conclusion

Thank you for reading this Community Update. We hope you will consider helping us out. 
As is tradition, this community update comes with a scratch code. 
The code will reward you with a general booster: NEWL-EGEN-DARY-WHEN
And remember: By doing our survey, you can grab an additional two boosters! 
The code is valid until August 1st, when we will bring you our next 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 #24
 

Super exciting features! Great work everyone ❤️

Greetings Skylords!
Every three weeks, we give an update on the things going on behind the scenes of Skylords Reborn. Welcome to another Community Update!

• Soon™

Last Community Update we revealed our upcoming new achievements and ever since we get daily questions when those (and the patch in general) will hit the live server. We are currently hard at work finalizing the upcoming patch, but aren't able to reveal a concrete release date just yet.
We expect to share more information with you regarding its release in the coming weeks, so stay tuned for that. 
In the meantime, we are excited to reveal a new card today! 

• New Card Reveal: Burning Spears

Burning Spears is a new tier 2 fire unit, requiring two fire orbs. Upgrading the card reduces its power cost and increases its stats. The values noted here are for U3. It will be an Uncommon and won't have an affinity. 

Burning Spears is an S-sized squad unit that contains a weapon-switch similar to Ghost Spears. They will also have the Steadfast passive ability, meaning they can't be knocked back. 
 
Weapon Change
Type: mode-switch
Makes unit more effective against large units instead of extra-large ones. Lasts until deactivated.
 
Weapon Change
Type: mode-switch
Makes unit more effective against extra-large units instead of large ones. Lasts until deactivated.
 
Burning Lance / Scorching Injury (passive ability)
Enemies hit by Burning Spear's attacks will be set on fire and take additional damage that steadily increases the longer they burn. The burn deals 2 damage per second and stacks up to 25 times. Attacked units may only walk at walk speed for 15 seconds.
 
Design Goals
Burning Spears are designed as a new tool to increase deck building options in pure Fire. The faction currently has a limited pool of pure cards in PvP, leading to a very M-unit centric deck design with a limited amount of deck building options and balancing levers to change specific matchup behaviors.
The addition of Burning Spears will add a versatile small sized unit into the faction, that is supposed to help with some of the factions counter issues against L and XL units in T2, while demanding a deck slot investment in return. The passive ability enables very high backloaded damage potential to punish players that try to ignore them, whereas the slow and steadfast ability allow Burning Spears to stick to their priority targets while enabling further spell synergies with cards like Wildfire.
Please note: We are still testing the card. While we are generally happy about it and feel comfortable revealing it, numbers and effects might still change before release.
 
• Artwork Spotlight

Now that our art team has grown, we tried a different approach for our creation process. The card was already play tested, so we knew its effects and that it would use the Ghost Spears model, but there were no other hard restrictions for the art. 
Our artist Spirit Alpha worked together with Tweeto to explore some ideas, which resulted in multiple concept arts. They settled on a barbaric look. 


The next step was to visualize the design in-game, and make sure what we had in mind would actually be possible to implement, preventing a mismatch between art and model.

Once the theme, colors and general appearance were fleshed out, it was time to start working on the artwork. Different compositions were explored again.



 
Spirit Alpha then handed in this artwork. While we were generally happy with how this design turned out, there were still some things to be done. While the Deep One claw was a nice touch, we found it did make the artwork more cluttered and distracted the viewer's eye. With the help of Tweeto, adjustments were also made to the background, contrast and skin, left arm anatomy, right arm shape and the spear. 
 

After a couple of extra iterations (and lots of discussion about flames with our art critique), we finally settled on the current design. A big thanks to our artists Spirit Alpha and Tweeto for drawing the artwork, to Friendly Firefly for working on the ability icons and to our art critiques for their support and comments. 
As you can see, a ton of work went into this, and we haven't even showed you half of the iterations. 
We are very happy with how it turned out, and hope you like it as well!
 
• Upcoming PvP changes

While PvP has a very passionate community, the game mode currently has certain flaws that prevent players from getting into it. We hope to tackle these in our upcoming patch. Here are some of the changes we will implement:

Queue will drain the BFP reserve
PvP often enters a "Spiral of Death" when too few players are online. It takes too long to find a match, so players stop queuing, which results in it taking longer to find a match... We want to give players an incentive to wait in the ranked lobby for more than a few minutes, resulting in the lobby no longer being empty and the next person who wants to play finding an opponent quickly. If you queue for at least 5 minutes, even if you don't find an opponent, you will earn BFP as if you were ingame, meaning you get BFP not just for playing, but also while searching for matches. 

Hide Player Names
We have seen that some players tend to dodge certain high ranked players while playing ranked, not queuing up when they see higher skilled opponents in the lobby. To prevent this behavior, we will hide player names in the ranked lobby. To not impact casual play, we have separated the sparring and ranked lobbies, allowing you to still invite players into your lobby and make things like tournaments and Toggy's Fightclub still possible.

Hide Losses
Another reason that prevents players from queuing up is the fear of messing up their win/loss ratio, or even feeling shame to have their losses publicly shown on the ladder. It has been proven in other competitive games that showing losses results in demotivation and higher entry barriers. We hope this change encourages players to focus on what matters (playing the game and improving yourself) instead of stats that might not even represent your current skill level.

New Player Protection
To protect new players from facing top players when they are just getting started, we will prevent players with <102.000 base ELO from getting matched with players at >135.000 base ELO. 

Changes to Free PvP Decks
With upcoming balance adjustments and new cards, we will update our free PvP decks to compete with the new meta. Additionally, we have made changing these decks more flexible; resulting in no longer having to reset all the free PvP decks when we make these changes.
If we update one of the free PvP decks you have currently selected, you will now have the option to either swap to the new cards, or keep your current set up. We are currently planning to make the following changes:

Pure Nature:
+ Parasite
- Shrine of Memory

Fire/Nature
+ Twilight Minions (G)
- Ghost Spears

Pure Shadow
+ Executor
- Nightguard

Rebalanced 2vs2 Maps
While we mostly balance the game around 1vs1, we know players really enjoy 2vs2 as well. We are very happy with how our rebalanced 1vs1 maps turned out, and we want to give 2vs2 the same treatment. 

Changes include removal (or adjustments) of walls, wells, slight changes to the layout, and making certain area's immovable for flying units. This should result in a better play experience and more balanced maps. 

These maps will also have observer versions, meaning it will now be possible to host 2vs2 tournaments again! We also updated the minimaps to be accurate. 


PvP Happy Hours
A feature long in the works and finally nearing release is Happy Hours. Happy Hours are specific time periods where players will receive additional gold and BFP for playing PvP. 
We have noticed PvP is currently quite scattered, with a lot of players wanting to play, but going offline again when they can't find opponents. While rewarding to queue is one incentive to have players stay online longer when the lobbies are empty, we also want to help players find opponents in general. We hope that by clustering players together during certain time frames, players will have an easier time finding matches more frequently. 
Happy Hours will take place during the following times:
- 1vs1 happy hours: 7pm-9pm CET
- 2vs2 happy hours: 9pm-10pm CET
- 1vs1 happy hours: 4am-5am CET

These times were decided upon by going over our available data and keeping different time zones in mind where possible. During Happy Hours, there will be an in-game announcement and the icon on the world map will indicate Happy Hours are active. 

We hope to release all these features with our next patch, though Happy Hours is currently still in active development. We hope to finish it in time to be included as well. 

• Team Changes

We have a new teammember in Nukie, who has joined the team recently as a Global Moderator. Welcome, and thanks for your help!

• Open Positions Rework

We have made some changes to our open positions and spotlighted them in their own forum section. It is now easier than ever to see the current open positions, and we also added some extra information to each role, better showcasing what you will be doing. 

Skylords Reborn is always looking for motivated volunteers to help out the project. You can currently help out in multiple areas, ranging from artwork to development, map design and much more. 

Want to help out but don't want to join the staff? No problem! We also have positions like proofreader and map tester where you can more easily drop in and out, helping out when you have time. Lastly, we also have open-source projects and our Skylords Bounty (see below). Please take a look!

 
• Active Bounty

While we already have some nice contenders, our current Bounty to create a Spring Forge is still open. A Skylords Bounty is an open-source task for the community to create something needed in one of the departments of Skylords Reborn. If your entry gets chosen, you can win a great prize, and we will reward everyone who applies with a serious attempt with a participation reward as well. View more information on Active bounties.

• OPEN - Spring Forge Bounty
Spring Forge Bounty is an opportunity for the community to have full engagement with the next upcoming Forge. This allows everyone to submit a possible design for how they would like the Forge to look! The winning design will be rewarded with a Promo Razorleaf!
A tutorial video has been provided to assist and help the community take its first steps for doing so!

• Tournaments / Events

• NEW - Toggys Tome Tournament #4 17.05.22 
A midweek tournament held on Tuesday May 17th, at 18:30 CEST (Berlin time). The format will be Tome, meaning you will build your decks for this tournament out of a booster pool Toggy provide to you. Tome tournaments always result in crazy decks and cards you dont see very often, so be sure to join the action or watch the tournament on Twitch. The tournament will be played on the Testserver. More information and sign-up. 


• STREAM - Official 2p rPvE Contest#3 Last Resort - 25.05.2022 16:30 CEST
In this event, players were only allowed to use units, not spells or buildings. We will host a stream revealing the winners of this contest on Wednesday 25rd of May, 16:30 on our official twitch channel. 

• FINISHED - CCC #4
Kapo hosted another successful Crappy Community Contest© on the map Mo. Players were encouraged to play as few cards as possible to complete the map. As one of the first events to not focus on speed, this resulted in some interesting strategies. As with all CCC, the more players attend, the better the prizes are, in this case resulting in a free booster for the whole community. 
 
• FINISHED - Skylords Open 14
The Skylords Open returned with a blast! We saw some of the best players battle it out, with some match results that would surprise you. You can rewatch the matches here. 

• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our Event Organizers Hiko and/or Metagross to have your event prizes sponsored by us. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you. 
 
• 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 mini-booster: FIRE-CARD-HYPE-TIME
The code is valid until June 4th, 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 #22

Hello Skylords, Skyladies and other Skybeings.
Welcome to the third official rPvE event!
We hope you will have a lot of fun with this event!

THE CONTEST HAS ENDED

If you want to see the winners click here, the replays wil be cast on our twitch channel.



Everything you need to know:
 
Event            - rPvE 2player, Map of the Month Difficulty      - Choose your own! Date             - 16.04.2022 - 30.04.2022 Rules            - Only units allowed! (No Spells, Arcanes, Enchantments or Buildings) Prizes           - Boosters for top 50% players Stream         - 25.05.2022 16:30 CEST at Twitch Replays        - Through DM to me on Discord (Minashigo Hiko#1126) or through PM on the forum (@Minashigo Hiko).
Sign-up
Send in your fastest replay, including the player names,your reached time And your difficulty 
For example: "Hiko_Majora_Time_00h20m30s_Diff6"

You can send in your replays until the 30.04.2022. 
You can find your replays here: Documents=>Battleforge=>replays

Please note: 
You are allowed to send in different replays, but only the fastest one with the highest difficulty will count. Difficulty>time
Meaning that if you compete with multiple teams, the team that has the best time will also be your personal best time. 
Prize pool
The following prize pool will be adjusted according to the amount of participants.
The prices are per person. If you compete with multiple teams, only your highest place will be rewarded :
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1st place                        10 general Booster packs
2nd place                       9 general Booster packs
3rd place                        8 general Booster packs
4th-8th place                 5 general Booster packs
9th-50% place               1 general Booster pack

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rules
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The team with the fastest time wins. Use only cards that are units. Only Map of the month Any difficulty, starting with 2 and up to 6 is allowed, the higher the better. The entry has to be a victory Have fun! --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


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
 

I just uploaded my personal testing map. In this you can test the live version of every fire rpve boss.

I just uploaded my personal testing map. In this you can test the live version of every fire rpve boss.

I just uploaded my personal testing map. In this you can test the live version of every fire rpve boss.

I just uploaded my personal testing map. In this you can test the live version of every fire rpve boss.

Greetings Skylords!

It's been two weeks already since our last community update so it's time to bring you up to speed with everything going on in Skylords Reborn!
State of the Project
It has been a while since we have released an update to the live server. We'd like to take this opportunity to mention a lot of work is going on behind the scenes to bring you some cool stuff in the future. New card development is going well, although it will still take quite a while for them to be ready. We are also making great progress on our balancing patch on the test-server and hope to bring this to live servers soon, resulting in a ton of changes for both PvP and PvE. Our new game modes are also steadily progressing; we are currently working on bosses for our new Defence rPvE mode, and are still working on adding the mono-factions to rPvE. The BattleArena fun PvP mode is currently being fine-tuned and will probably be the first of those to be complete. We are not able to give you release dates on any of these features yet, but we do want you to know we are still working on them for many hours each week and Skylords Reborn is still going strong.

Here are some other things we are working on:
 
Map Editor: clean-up
We are doing a big clean-up in the Map Editor that will make it easier to work with.
All the units have been organized in a way that if you use these squads or buildings for making your own maps, you can be sure that your map won't be broken by future balance changes. All the upgrade levels are now also available in the map editor.
We will give a more detailed explanation of all the changes when they go live. We expect to release this in August.
Interested in making maps yourself? Please check out these tutorials! 

 
Map Editor: new extended map settings
In our next test server patch, we will add more options which map makers can use for their custom PvP maps.
This can affect the predefined goals for PvP maps. So far this feature is only useful if you want to define non-standard win conditions for your fun PvP maps. However, we do plan to expand this configuration with more options in the future!
Please note that this new feature is only on the test server so far, and will hit the live servers within the next months! This is an experimental feature, and might break the game in some rare cases.
So far it seems to work, however, please inform us if you encounter any issues after playing a map which uses these new options. Please also let us know if there any other variables we should add to this new configuration!
 
Community Maps User Interface
A common complaint for the community maps is the map section UI. Currently, it's hard to find a specific map and it does not really invite you to look for cool maps. We are interested in working on this, but are currently a bit understaffed for the job. If you are interested in helping out with this and similar tasks (progression on worldmap, marketplace rework, etc.), please apply as a client developer and help out the project!
 

PvP QoL feature: view lobbies while in a ranked queue
PvP players will know this scenario all too well: you see players in the PvP lobby and queue up for ranked. After a while of searching you start to wonder if there are perhaps unranked games being hosted instead. You cancel the queue to look. At that very moment, the host probably had the same idea and cancelled their game to start the ranked queue.
No more we say! We have developed the option to allow a queuing player to browse the lobbies while waiting for an opponent. Change your mind and want to join that Bad Harvest game that just got hosted instead? Well soon you can!
The feature seems to work, but we want to do some final testing to prevent it from breaking games if you cancel and find an opponent at the very same moment. You can expect this feature to hit the live server soon though! 
 
Upcoming Tournaments
Last week we announced the winners of our official PvE contest on Twitch. If you missed the fun, you can still rewatch the stream there. 
We definitely plan to do more events like this, and will take your feedback into account for the next one. Please look forward to announcements on a later date. 
• NEW: Skylords Open #9
Next week (11th of July) marks the return of the Skylords Open! Battle it out in the Skylords Open #9, a 1vs1 community tournament hosted by Toggy, open for everyone, and with prizes! If you want to participate, it helps a lot if you sign-up in advance!
 
New Team Members / Team Changes
We are happy to announce Carofex has joined the team as a Balance Developer. He will be helping out the project by implementing balance changes, new cards, new enemies in PvE maps, bug fixes for cards, etc. 
We are currently in need of a Russian translator. If you can help, please reach out to us!
And as always; if you want to see Skylords Reborn succeed, please take a look at how you can help. There are still some open positions in our team.
 

In conclusion
Thanks for reading! 
Is there anything you wish us to cover in upcoming community updates? As always, we are open to feedback so please let us know!
Here is a scratch code you can redeem in-game for 100bfp. COMM-UNIT-YUPD-ATE6
The code is valid till July 17th. 
Archive
Community Update #3
Community Update #4
Community Update #5