Majora

I would recommend reading this if you are interested in our approach to rarities: SkylordsRebornDesign_Rarities.pdf

As regards the ratio, the original ratio between the various rarities is 3-3-3-1, and based on that ratio, the number of rare cards in the game is substantially less than it is supposed to be. While it is unlikely we can ever properly fix the ratio due to the overabundance of ultra-rares, many of which do not justify their own rarity, we do intend to equalize the disparity between common/uncommon/rare. 

It is also important to differentiate between the amount of a certain rarity in the entire game and the amount of a certain rarity within a faction. In terms of Lost Souls, if we do not account for affinities: there are 7 common cards, 6 uncommon cards, 4 rares, and 2 ultra-rares. So even within Lost Souls itself, there are a lack of rare cards. 

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

 
• Skylord Reborn 3rd Anniversary

The 3rd anniversary of Skylords Reborn is almost here! After returning to the world of Nyn on the 18th of December 2020, our volunteer team has worked tirelessly to expand upon the original BattleForge with new content, quality-of-life changes, and new features. Skylords Reborn has expanded upon the original game by adding quests, achievements, cosmetics, reforging, new enemy factions for rPvE, overhauls of the community map sections, UI improvements, brand-new cards, new voice-lines, many balance changes, and much more!
We are grateful that we were not only successful in bringing the game back, and are now able to celebrate its 3rd anniversary with this lovely community. For this occasion, we would like to give you a sneak peek of an upcoming new campaign map, planned for release in 2024.
To do so, we invite all of you to join us on Monday, the 18th of December, at 20:00 CET for a special anniversary stream on our official Twitch channel. Alongside some information about our upcoming content, there will also be giveaways and a Q&A. So come chill with us!

Whether you have been with us all this time, or only recently stumbled upon the project, thank you! We hope you celebrate both the past and the future with us on the 18th!
 
• Changes to the recommended system requirements

BattleForge is an old game; it released all the way back in 2009. As Skylords Reborn continues its development, we are having a look at its system requirements. We have decided to remove our minimum system requirements, and increase our recommended requirements. Of course, removing a minimum system requirement does not automatically mean anything lower than the Recommended will not work.
We are dropping the Minimum system requirements
• CPU: Single Core 1.8Ghz
• CPU Speed: Core 1.8Ghz
• RAM: Windows XP - 512MB, Vista and Windows 7+ - 1GB
• OS: Windows XP (with service pack 2) Vista, Windows 7 or higher.
• Video Card: 128MB NVIDIA GeForce 6 Series+ / ATI Radeon 9500+
• Disk Space: At least 13GB. 
Instead, these are now the Recommended system requirements:
• CPU: Core i3 7400T / Ryzen 3 1200 (X86 compatible)
• RAM: at least 6GB
• OS: Windows 10 or higher.
• Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 / ATI Radeon HD 7770 (Direct X 11 compatible)
• Disk Space: 14GB of free space.
Notes and reasoning
While we don't want to exclude potential players, constantly keeping old and outdated systems in mind is increasing the chance for issues and delaying development. Even so, we'd like to take a moment to explain our reasoning for increasing each requirement.
Skipping over 16 years of CPU might seem like too big of a jump. However, people will default to maximum details on 10+ years old game, and they will play it on significantly bigger resolutions. Back then, 1024x768 was considered big screen, while these days 1920x1080 is considered entry level resolutions, which have 2.64 times more pixels. The same reasoning applies for the GPU. 
A recommendation of 6GB of RAM might seem like an overkill, but we are adding features that consume RAM, and it shouldn't be a problem for most modern PC's to meet this requirement. Rest assured this will never increase again, because the game can't use more than 4GB of RAM (the remaining 2GB are for OS and other applications running alongside Skylords Reborn). 
We are also dropping support for Windows 7. Technically, Windows 7 should still work just fine, but due to the very low % of players running this operating system, we will not be rolling back major updates for it anymore. Lastly, the Disk Space increase. We are currently at 13.3 GB for game files, and community maps, logs, etc. can easily be in 100's of MB. Its likely this requirement will further increase in the future. 
 
• New Card Reveal - Lost Manabeast

A while ago, we showcased some upcoming changes and reworks coming to the Lost Souls faction. We are happy to announce we are nearing completion on this faction rework. Alongside implementing those changes, we have also been working on a new card to add to the faction to further enhance its playstyle. Introducing: The Lost Manabeast as a player card!
 

Design notes: Lost Souls has an odd T3 in that it has two ground XL-units and one flying L-unit with conditional siege range. Of these, only Lost Horror is widely used in PvE, Lost Grigori sees some PvP play, and Lost Vigil is mostly unused except in niche situations. Most factions have a wider variety of viable options in PvE at this point, and Lost Souls lacks a low-cost ground L-unit, forcing players to rely on cards like Ashbone Pyro to fill the gap. We therefore wanted to provide a Lost Souls unit to fit this role for those players who want to play a purely Lost Souls deck, while also adding something to synergize with Lost Souls's unique revenant mechanic. Our first thought was to add in Lost Manabeast, since it has an existing model and artwork. Because the unit was primarily designed for PvE usage, we decided to make it a ranged unit as a player card. From here, we thought about how to make it work with Revenant's Doom without directly stepping on the toes of Revenant's Blessing. Revenant's Blessing extends the lifespan of all revenant units, similar to how Ice Age works with Ice Shields, but once it ends, the timer continues to run down as it did previously. For Lost Manabeast, we decided to create an ability called Immortalize that would refresh the lifespan of a revenant back to 25 seconds. This should allow players to alternate between using Manabeast's free ability and Revenant's Blessing. Immortalize is also usable while Lost Manabeast is a revenant, which should enable players to maintain fully revenant armies more easily and efficiently.
 
 
 
Let's break down the card: 
 
Ectoplasmic Shock
Every 3 seconds, the unit launches deadly ectoplasm that deals 230 damage to enemies in a 10m radius around its target, up to 345 in total. The ectoplasm lingers for 5 seconds, absorbing the life essence of any enemy that dies in the area. Additionally, enemies in the area are slowed and may only move at normal walk speed.
 
Immortalize
Active to refresh the duration of every Revenant's lifetime in a 25m radius. Needs to have gathered the life essence of 7 enemy units first. Reusable every 15 seconds.
 
Revenant's Doom
Activate to bestow the unit with a curse that will make it resurrect in case it dies. The resurrected revenant will only be a shadow of its former self, but it will be endowed with the same abilities and equal in strength. After 25 seconds, the revenant will then die once and for all. May only be triggered once.
 
For the artwork, our artist Tweeto made some adjustments to the NPC-artwork currently in the game, mostly adding that classic Lost Soul flame to the look. Lost Manabeast will be a rare, drop from boosters, and can be reforged into. It will not have different affinities. It is planned for a release in our next content patch. We hope you are looking forward to it!
 
• How to Help - a Community Guide


Kapo made a lovely overview of things a community member can do to help out the project. Ranging from something as simple as giving a like to our official trailer, all the way up to joining the team and helping out as staff. Due to the nature of this volunteer project, community members can make a huge difference for both new and current players. Hopefully some of these suggestions speak to you, and inspire you to take some action: find out more.
HOW TO SUPPORT

Skylords Reborn is truly by the fans for the fans, so we hope we can count on you to make this the best community it can be!
 
• Events

In between our monthly Community Updates, we host various events and tournaments, so be sure to keep a close eye on the in-game event tab and the forum calendar to stay informed and not miss out on any exciting events!
 
• NEW - Battle of Tactics #5: Show Me What You Got - 10-12-2023
Battle of Tactics is trying something new: Time for a Tactical-Tome-Tournament! Every player gets a selection of boosters (how many depending on your ELO-rating!) and has to build a PvP deck to compete for prizes! More information.
 
 • FIRST PHASE - PvP AI programming contest
We are gathering players for a new type of event. Get ready for an AI Programming Tournament, where the submitted programs will face off in an epic showdown to find the ultimate AI strategist! More information.
 
• FINISHED - Official 1p rPvE Contest - Resurrection of the Lost Soul
Our official PvE contest has concluded and prizes have been sent out, including the new Soulstone cards. Ultralord also showcased the winners in a video. 
 
In between our monthly Community Updates, we host various events and tournaments, so be sure to keep a close eye on the in-game event tab and the forum calendar to stay informed and not miss out on any exciting events!
 
• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our other Event Organizers, @Metagross31or @Minashigo Hiko. We can help you out with various topics and are glad to discuss potential ideas. We can also sponsor the prize pool for your event. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you.
 
• Community Spotlight - Masters of the Forge

In this podcast-like series, Kapo interviews various staff members to discuss the project and personal stories about their interaction with BattleForge and Skylords Reborn. There are currently 7 episodes to watch:
• Episode 1: Dutchy, Lead Moderator - Watch now.
• Episode 2: Majora, Project Coordinator - Watch now.
• Episode 3: Volin, Testing Coordinator -  Watch now.
• Episode 4: RadicalX, Faction Designer - Watch now.
• Episode 5: Ult, Server Developer - Watch now.
 
• New: Episode 6: Ultralord, Video Editor - Watch now.
In this episode, Kapo and Ultralord talk about his numerous videos he made for the Skylords Reborn Team, as well as his other projects like the Battle of Tactics or his streaming efforts.
• New: Episode 7: Zyna & Ladadoos, Admins - Watch now.
In this episode, Kapo is joined by both Ladadoos and Zyna, Developers and Project Leads who have been stuck around with Skylords Reborn since a very, very long time. They discuss what it's like to lead such a big volunteer team, old and new changes to the core systems of the game, and take a look what the future may bring in the upcoming months and years.
Episode 8 will be hosted live on the 2nd of December and feature Maze, Web Developer. Tune in live on Twitch, or watch back on YouTube the day after.  
 
• Contribute

Skylords Reborn is a community-driven project fuelled by the passion and dedication of over 45 volunteers. We are always on the lookout for like-minded individuals. If you have a passion for gaming, programming, design, or marketing, we invite you to have a look at our open positions!


We are especially looking for an active and passionate outreach coordinator, helping us reach new Skylords by contacting streamers, influencers, media, and other potential parties. This role can make a drastic impact for Skylords Reborn, so please consider applying.
• Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator
As a Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator, you are responsible to spread the word and create awareness about Skylords Reborn, attracting veteran and new players alike. 
Your tasks will include actively researching and reaching out to potentially interested streamers, YouTubers, Discord channels, game magazines, among others. You will be responsible for the communication to and from interested parties and for any promotion deals (for example involving scratch codes). Please note that Skylords Reborn cannot do any paid promotions. 
More information. 
 
• 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: LOST-ANDF-OUND-MANA
The code is valid until January 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 November 2023

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

 
• Skylord Reborn 3rd Anniversary

The 3rd anniversary of Skylords Reborn is almost here! After returning to the world of Nyn on the 18th of December 2020, our volunteer team has worked tirelessly to expand upon the original BattleForge with new content, quality-of-life changes, and new features. Skylords Reborn has expanded upon the original game by adding quests, achievements, cosmetics, reforging, new enemy factions for rPvE, overhauls of the community map sections, UI improvements, brand-new cards, new voice-lines, many balance changes, and much more!
We are grateful that we were not only successful in bringing the game back, and are now able to celebrate its 3rd anniversary with this lovely community. For this occasion, we would like to give you a sneak peek of an upcoming new campaign map, planned for release in 2024.
To do so, we invite all of you to join us on Monday, the 18th of December, at 20:00 CET for a special anniversary stream on our official Twitch channel. Alongside some information about our upcoming content, there will also be giveaways and a Q&A. So come chill with us!

Whether you have been with us all this time, or only recently stumbled upon the project, thank you! We hope you celebrate both the past and the future with us on the 18th!
 
• Changes to the recommended system requirements

BattleForge is an old game; it released all the way back in 2009. As Skylords Reborn continues its development, we are having a look at its system requirements. We have decided to remove our minimum system requirements, and increase our recommended requirements. Of course, removing a minimum system requirement does not automatically mean anything lower than the Recommended will not work.
We are dropping the Minimum system requirements
• CPU: Single Core 1.8Ghz
• CPU Speed: Core 1.8Ghz
• RAM: Windows XP - 512MB, Vista and Windows 7+ - 1GB
• OS: Windows XP (with service pack 2) Vista, Windows 7 or higher.
• Video Card: 128MB NVIDIA GeForce 6 Series+ / ATI Radeon 9500+
• Disk Space: At least 13GB. 
Instead, these are now the Recommended system requirements:
• CPU: Core i3 7400T / Ryzen 3 1200 (X86 compatible)
• RAM: at least 6GB
• OS: Windows 10 or higher.
• Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 / ATI Radeon HD 7770 (Direct X 11 compatible)
• Disk Space: 14GB of free space.
Notes and reasoning
While we don't want to exclude potential players, constantly keeping old and outdated systems in mind is increasing the chance for issues and delaying development. Even so, we'd like to take a moment to explain our reasoning for increasing each requirement.
Skipping over 16 years of CPU might seem like too big of a jump. However, people will default to maximum details on 10+ years old game, and they will play it on significantly bigger resolutions. Back then, 1024x768 was considered big screen, while these days 1920x1080 is considered entry level resolutions, which have 2.64 times more pixels. The same reasoning applies for the GPU. 
A recommendation of 6GB of RAM might seem like an overkill, but we are adding features that consume RAM, and it shouldn't be a problem for most modern PC's to meet this requirement. Rest assured this will never increase again, because the game can't use more than 4GB of RAM (the remaining 2GB are for OS and other applications running alongside Skylords Reborn). 
We are also dropping support for Windows 7. Technically, Windows 7 should still work just fine, but due to the very low % of players running this operating system, we will not be rolling back major updates for it anymore. Lastly, the Disk Space increase. We are currently at 13.3 GB for game files, and community maps, logs, etc. can easily be in 100's of MB. Its likely this requirement will further increase in the future. 
 
• New Card Reveal - Lost Manabeast

A while ago, we showcased some upcoming changes and reworks coming to the Lost Souls faction. We are happy to announce we are nearing completion on this faction rework. Alongside implementing those changes, we have also been working on a new card to add to the faction to further enhance its playstyle. Introducing: The Lost Manabeast as a player card!
 

Design notes: Lost Souls has an odd T3 in that it has two ground XL-units and one flying L-unit with conditional siege range. Of these, only Lost Horror is widely used in PvE, Lost Grigori sees some PvP play, and Lost Vigil is mostly unused except in niche situations. Most factions have a wider variety of viable options in PvE at this point, and Lost Souls lacks a low-cost ground L-unit, forcing players to rely on cards like Ashbone Pyro to fill the gap. We therefore wanted to provide a Lost Souls unit to fit this role for those players who want to play a purely Lost Souls deck, while also adding something to synergize with Lost Souls's unique revenant mechanic. Our first thought was to add in Lost Manabeast, since it has an existing model and artwork. Because the unit was primarily designed for PvE usage, we decided to make it a ranged unit as a player card. From here, we thought about how to make it work with Revenant's Doom without directly stepping on the toes of Revenant's Blessing. Revenant's Blessing extends the lifespan of all revenant units, similar to how Ice Age works with Ice Shields, but once it ends, the timer continues to run down as it did previously. For Lost Manabeast, we decided to create an ability called Immortalize that would refresh the lifespan of a revenant back to 25 seconds. This should allow players to alternate between using Manabeast's free ability and Revenant's Blessing. Immortalize is also usable while Lost Manabeast is a revenant, which should enable players to maintain fully revenant armies more easily and efficiently.
 
 
 
Let's break down the card: 
 
Ectoplasmic Shock
Every 3 seconds, the unit launches deadly ectoplasm that deals 230 damage to enemies in a 10m radius around its target, up to 345 in total. The ectoplasm lingers for 5 seconds, absorbing the life essence of any enemy that dies in the area. Additionally, enemies in the area are slowed and may only move at normal walk speed.
 
Immortalize
Active to refresh the duration of every Revenant's lifetime in a 25m radius. Needs to have gathered the life essence of 7 enemy units first. Reusable every 15 seconds.
 
Revenant's Doom
Activate to bestow the unit with a curse that will make it resurrect in case it dies. The resurrected revenant will only be a shadow of its former self, but it will be endowed with the same abilities and equal in strength. After 25 seconds, the revenant will then die once and for all. May only be triggered once.
 
For the artwork, our artist Tweeto made some adjustments to the NPC-artwork currently in the game, mostly adding that classic Lost Soul flame to the look. Lost Manabeast will be a rare, drop from boosters, and can be reforged into. It will not have different affinities. It is planned for a release in our next content patch. We hope you are looking forward to it!
 
• How to Help - a Community Guide


Kapo made a lovely overview of things a community member can do to help out the project. Ranging from something as simple as giving a like to our official trailer, all the way up to joining the team and helping out as staff. Due to the nature of this volunteer project, community members can make a huge difference for both new and current players. Hopefully some of these suggestions speak to you, and inspire you to take some action: find out more.
HOW TO SUPPORT

Skylords Reborn is truly by the fans for the fans, so we hope we can count on you to make this the best community it can be!
 
• Events

In between our monthly Community Updates, we host various events and tournaments, so be sure to keep a close eye on the in-game event tab and the forum calendar to stay informed and not miss out on any exciting events!
 
• NEW - Battle of Tactics #5: Show Me What You Got - 10-12-2023
Battle of Tactics is trying something new: Time for a Tactical-Tome-Tournament! Every player gets a selection of boosters (how many depending on your ELO-rating!) and has to build a PvP deck to compete for prizes! More information.
 
 • FIRST PHASE - PvP AI programming contest
We are gathering players for a new type of event. Get ready for an AI Programming Tournament, where the submitted programs will face off in an epic showdown to find the ultimate AI strategist! More information.
 
• FINISHED - Official 1p rPvE Contest - Resurrection of the Lost Soul
Our official PvE contest has concluded and prizes have been sent out, including the new Soulstone cards. Ultralord also showcased the winners in a video. 
 
In between our monthly Community Updates, we host various events and tournaments, so be sure to keep a close eye on the in-game event tab and the forum calendar to stay informed and not miss out on any exciting events!
 
• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our other Event Organizers, @Metagross31or @Minashigo Hiko. We can help you out with various topics and are glad to discuss potential ideas. We can also sponsor the prize pool for your event. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you.
 
• Community Spotlight - Masters of the Forge

In this podcast-like series, Kapo interviews various staff members to discuss the project and personal stories about their interaction with BattleForge and Skylords Reborn. There are currently 7 episodes to watch:
• Episode 1: Dutchy, Lead Moderator - Watch now.
• Episode 2: Majora, Project Coordinator - Watch now.
• Episode 3: Volin, Testing Coordinator -  Watch now.
• Episode 4: RadicalX, Faction Designer - Watch now.
• Episode 5: Ult, Server Developer - Watch now.
 
• New: Episode 6: Ultralord, Video Editor - Watch now.
In this episode, Kapo and Ultralord talk about his numerous videos he made for the Skylords Reborn Team, as well as his other projects like the Battle of Tactics or his streaming efforts.
• New: Episode 7: Zyna & Ladadoos, Admins - Watch now.
In this episode, Kapo is joined by both Ladadoos and Zyna, Developers and Project Leads who have been stuck around with Skylords Reborn since a very, very long time. They discuss what it's like to lead such a big volunteer team, old and new changes to the core systems of the game, and take a look what the future may bring in the upcoming months and years.
Episode 8 will be hosted live on the 2nd of December and feature Maze, Web Developer. Tune in live on Twitch, or watch back on YouTube the day after.  
 
• Contribute

Skylords Reborn is a community-driven project fuelled by the passion and dedication of over 45 volunteers. We are always on the lookout for like-minded individuals. If you have a passion for gaming, programming, design, or marketing, we invite you to have a look at our open positions!


We are especially looking for an active and passionate outreach coordinator, helping us reach new Skylords by contacting streamers, influencers, media, and other potential parties. This role can make a drastic impact for Skylords Reborn, so please consider applying.
• Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator
As a Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator, you are responsible to spread the word and create awareness about Skylords Reborn, attracting veteran and new players alike. 
Your tasks will include actively researching and reaching out to potentially interested streamers, YouTubers, Discord channels, game magazines, among others. You will be responsible for the communication to and from interested parties and for any promotion deals (for example involving scratch codes). Please note that Skylords Reborn cannot do any paid promotions. 
More information. 
 
• 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: LOST-ANDF-OUND-MANA
The code is valid until January 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 November 2023

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

 
• Skylord Reborn 3rd Anniversary

The 3rd anniversary of Skylords Reborn is almost here! After returning to the world of Nyn on the 18th of December 2020, our volunteer team has worked tirelessly to expand upon the original BattleForge with new content, quality-of-life changes, and new features. Skylords Reborn has expanded upon the original game by adding quests, achievements, cosmetics, reforging, new enemy factions for rPvE, overhauls of the community map sections, UI improvements, brand-new cards, new voice-lines, many balance changes, and much more!
We are grateful that we were not only successful in bringing the game back, and are now able to celebrate its 3rd anniversary with this lovely community. For this occasion, we would like to give you a sneak peek of an upcoming new campaign map, planned for release in 2024.
To do so, we invite all of you to join us on Monday, the 18th of December, at 20:00 CET for a special anniversary stream on our official Twitch channel. Alongside some information about our upcoming content, there will also be giveaways and a Q&A. So come chill with us!

Whether you have been with us all this time, or only recently stumbled upon the project, thank you! We hope you celebrate both the past and the future with us on the 18th!
 
• Changes to the recommended system requirements

BattleForge is an old game; it released all the way back in 2009. As Skylords Reborn continues its development, we are having a look at its system requirements. We have decided to remove our minimum system requirements, and increase our recommended requirements. Of course, removing a minimum system requirement does not automatically mean anything lower than the Recommended will not work.
We are dropping the Minimum system requirements
• CPU: Single Core 1.8Ghz
• CPU Speed: Core 1.8Ghz
• RAM: Windows XP - 512MB, Vista and Windows 7+ - 1GB
• OS: Windows XP (with service pack 2) Vista, Windows 7 or higher.
• Video Card: 128MB NVIDIA GeForce 6 Series+ / ATI Radeon 9500+
• Disk Space: At least 13GB. 
Instead, these are now the Recommended system requirements:
• CPU: Core i3 7400T / Ryzen 3 1200 (X86 compatible)
• RAM: at least 6GB
• OS: Windows 10 or higher.
• Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 / ATI Radeon HD 7770 (Direct X 11 compatible)
• Disk Space: 14GB of free space.
Notes and reasoning
While we don't want to exclude potential players, constantly keeping old and outdated systems in mind is increasing the chance for issues and delaying development. Even so, we'd like to take a moment to explain our reasoning for increasing each requirement.
Skipping over 16 years of CPU might seem like too big of a jump. However, people will default to maximum details on 10+ years old game, and they will play it on significantly bigger resolutions. Back then, 1024x768 was considered big screen, while these days 1920x1080 is considered entry level resolutions, which have 2.64 times more pixels. The same reasoning applies for the GPU. 
A recommendation of 6GB of RAM might seem like an overkill, but we are adding features that consume RAM, and it shouldn't be a problem for most modern PC's to meet this requirement. Rest assured this will never increase again, because the game can't use more than 4GB of RAM (the remaining 2GB are for OS and other applications running alongside Skylords Reborn). 
We are also dropping support for Windows 7. Technically, Windows 7 should still work just fine, but due to the very low % of players running this operating system, we will not be rolling back major updates for it anymore. Lastly, the Disk Space increase. We are currently at 13.3 GB for game files, and community maps, logs, etc. can easily be in 100's of MB. Its likely this requirement will further increase in the future. 
 
• New Card Reveal - Lost Manabeast

A while ago, we showcased some upcoming changes and reworks coming to the Lost Souls faction. We are happy to announce we are nearing completion on this faction rework. Alongside implementing those changes, we have also been working on a new card to add to the faction to further enhance its playstyle. Introducing: The Lost Manabeast as a player card!
 

Design notes: Lost Souls has an odd T3 in that it has two ground XL-units and one flying L-unit with conditional siege range. Of these, only Lost Horror is widely used in PvE, Lost Grigori sees some PvP play, and Lost Vigil is mostly unused except in niche situations. Most factions have a wider variety of viable options in PvE at this point, and Lost Souls lacks a low-cost ground L-unit, forcing players to rely on cards like Ashbone Pyro to fill the gap. We therefore wanted to provide a Lost Souls unit to fit this role for those players who want to play a purely Lost Souls deck, while also adding something to synergize with Lost Souls's unique revenant mechanic. Our first thought was to add in Lost Manabeast, since it has an existing model and artwork. Because the unit was primarily designed for PvE usage, we decided to make it a ranged unit as a player card. From here, we thought about how to make it work with Revenant's Doom without directly stepping on the toes of Revenant's Blessing. Revenant's Blessing extends the lifespan of all revenant units, similar to how Ice Age works with Ice Shields, but once it ends, the timer continues to run down as it did previously. For Lost Manabeast, we decided to create an ability called Immortalize that would refresh the lifespan of a revenant back to 25 seconds. This should allow players to alternate between using Manabeast's free ability and Revenant's Blessing. Immortalize is also usable while Lost Manabeast is a revenant, which should enable players to maintain fully revenant armies more easily and efficiently.
 
 
 
Let's break down the card: 
 
Ectoplasmic Shock
Every 3 seconds, the unit launches deadly ectoplasm that deals 230 damage to enemies in a 10m radius around its target, up to 345 in total. The ectoplasm lingers for 5 seconds, absorbing the life essence of any enemy that dies in the area. Additionally, enemies in the area are slowed and may only move at normal walk speed.
 
Immortalize
Active to refresh the duration of every Revenant's lifetime in a 25m radius. Needs to have gathered the life essence of 7 enemy units first. Reusable every 15 seconds.
 
Revenant's Doom
Activate to bestow the unit with a curse that will make it resurrect in case it dies. The resurrected revenant will only be a shadow of its former self, but it will be endowed with the same abilities and equal in strength. After 25 seconds, the revenant will then die once and for all. May only be triggered once.
 
For the artwork, our artist Tweeto made some adjustments to the NPC-artwork currently in the game, mostly adding that classic Lost Soul flame to the look. Lost Manabeast will be a rare, drop from boosters, and can be reforged into. It will not have different affinities. It is planned for a release in our next content patch. We hope you are looking forward to it!
 
• How to Help - a Community Guide


Kapo made a lovely overview of things a community member can do to help out the project. Ranging from something as simple as giving a like to our official trailer, all the way up to joining the team and helping out as staff. Due to the nature of this volunteer project, community members can make a huge difference for both new and current players. Hopefully some of these suggestions speak to you, and inspire you to take some action: find out more.
HOW TO SUPPORT

Skylords Reborn is truly by the fans for the fans, so we hope we can count on you to make this the best community it can be!
 
• Events

In between our monthly Community Updates, we host various events and tournaments, so be sure to keep a close eye on the in-game event tab and the forum calendar to stay informed and not miss out on any exciting events!
 
• NEW - Battle of Tactics #5: Show Me What You Got - 10-12-2023
Battle of Tactics is trying something new: Time for a Tactical-Tome-Tournament! Every player gets a selection of boosters (how many depending on your ELO-rating!) and has to build a PvP deck to compete for prizes! More information.
 
 • FIRST PHASE - PvP AI programming contest
We are gathering players for a new type of event. Get ready for an AI Programming Tournament, where the submitted programs will face off in an epic showdown to find the ultimate AI strategist! More information.
 
• FINISHED - Official 1p rPvE Contest - Resurrection of the Lost Soul
Our official PvE contest has concluded and prizes have been sent out, including the new Soulstone cards. Ultralord also showcased the winners in a video. 
 
In between our monthly Community Updates, we host various events and tournaments, so be sure to keep a close eye on the in-game event tab and the forum calendar to stay informed and not miss out on any exciting events!
 
• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our other Event Organizers, @Metagross31or @Minashigo Hiko. We can help you out with various topics and are glad to discuss potential ideas. We can also sponsor the prize pool for your event. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you.
 
• Community Spotlight - Masters of the Forge

In this podcast-like series, Kapo interviews various staff members to discuss the project and personal stories about their interaction with BattleForge and Skylords Reborn. There are currently 7 episodes to watch:
• Episode 1: Dutchy, Lead Moderator - Watch now.
• Episode 2: Majora, Project Coordinator - Watch now.
• Episode 3: Volin, Testing Coordinator -  Watch now.
• Episode 4: RadicalX, Faction Designer - Watch now.
• Episode 5: Ult, Server Developer - Watch now.
 
• New: Episode 6: Ultralord, Video Editor - Watch now.
In this episode, Kapo and Ultralord talk about his numerous videos he made for the Skylords Reborn Team, as well as his other projects like the Battle of Tactics or his streaming efforts.
• New: Episode 7: Zyna & Ladadoos, Admins - Watch now.
In this episode, Kapo is joined by both Ladadoos and Zyna, Developers and Project Leads who have been stuck around with Skylords Reborn since a very, very long time. They discuss what it's like to lead such a big volunteer team, old and new changes to the core systems of the game, and take a look what the future may bring in the upcoming months and years.
Episode 8 will be hosted live on the 2nd of December and feature Maze, Web Developer. Tune in live on Twitch, or watch back on YouTube the day after.  
 
• Contribute

Skylords Reborn is a community-driven project fuelled by the passion and dedication of over 45 volunteers. We are always on the lookout for like-minded individuals. If you have a passion for gaming, programming, design, or marketing, we invite you to have a look at our open positions!


We are especially looking for an active and passionate outreach coordinator, helping us reach new Skylords by contacting streamers, influencers, media, and other potential parties. This role can make a drastic impact for Skylords Reborn, so please consider applying.
• Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator
As a Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator, you are responsible to spread the word and create awareness about Skylords Reborn, attracting veteran and new players alike. 
Your tasks will include actively researching and reaching out to potentially interested streamers, YouTubers, Discord channels, game magazines, among others. You will be responsible for the communication to and from interested parties and for any promotion deals (for example involving scratch codes). Please note that Skylords Reborn cannot do any paid promotions. 
More information. 
 
• 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: LOST-ANDF-OUND-MANA
The code is valid until January 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 November 2023

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

 
• Skylord Reborn 3rd Anniversary

The 3rd anniversary of Skylords Reborn is almost here! After returning to the world of Nyn on the 18th of December 2020, our volunteer team has worked tirelessly to expand upon the original BattleForge with new content, quality-of-life changes, and new features. Skylords Reborn has expanded upon the original game by adding quests, achievements, cosmetics, reforging, new enemy factions for rPvE, overhauls of the community map sections, UI improvements, brand-new cards, new voice-lines, many balance changes, and much more!
We are grateful that we were not only successful in bringing the game back, and are now able to celebrate its 3rd anniversary with this lovely community. For this occasion, we would like to give you a sneak peek of an upcoming new campaign map, planned for release in 2024.
To do so, we invite all of you to join us on Monday, the 18th of December, at 20:00 CET for a special anniversary stream on our official Twitch channel. Alongside some information about our upcoming content, there will also be giveaways and a Q&A. So come chill with us!

Whether you have been with us all this time, or only recently stumbled upon the project, thank you! We hope you celebrate both the past and the future with us on the 18th!
 
• Changes to the recommended system requirements

BattleForge is an old game; it released all the way back in 2009. As Skylords Reborn continues its development, we are having a look at its system requirements. We have decided to remove our minimum system requirements, and increase our recommended requirements. Of course, removing a minimum system requirement does not automatically mean anything lower than the Recommended will not work.
We are dropping the Minimum system requirements
• CPU: Single Core 1.8Ghz
• CPU Speed: Core 1.8Ghz
• RAM: Windows XP - 512MB, Vista and Windows 7+ - 1GB
• OS: Windows XP (with service pack 2) Vista, Windows 7 or higher.
• Video Card: 128MB NVIDIA GeForce 6 Series+ / ATI Radeon 9500+
• Disk Space: At least 13GB. 
Instead, these are now the Recommended system requirements:
• CPU: Core i3 7400T / Ryzen 3 1200 (X86 compatible)
• RAM: at least 6GB
• OS: Windows 10 or higher.
• Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 / ATI Radeon HD 7770 (Direct X 11 compatible)
• Disk Space: 14GB of free space.
Notes and reasoning
While we don't want to exclude potential players, constantly keeping old and outdated systems in mind is increasing the chance for issues and delaying development. Even so, we'd like to take a moment to explain our reasoning for increasing each requirement.
Skipping over 16 years of CPU might seem like too big of a jump. However, people will default to maximum details on 10+ years old game, and they will play it on significantly bigger resolutions. Back then, 1024x768 was considered big screen, while these days 1920x1080 is considered entry level resolutions, which have 2.64 times more pixels. The same reasoning applies for the GPU. 
A recommendation of 6GB of RAM might seem like an overkill, but we are adding features that consume RAM, and it shouldn't be a problem for most modern PC's to meet this requirement. Rest assured this will never increase again, because the game can't use more than 4GB of RAM (the remaining 2GB are for OS and other applications running alongside Skylords Reborn). 
We are also dropping support for Windows 7. Technically, Windows 7 should still work just fine, but due to the very low % of players running this operating system, we will not be rolling back major updates for it anymore. Lastly, the Disk Space increase. We are currently at 13.3 GB for game files, and community maps, logs, etc. can easily be in 100's of MB. Its likely this requirement will further increase in the future. 
 
• New Card Reveal - Lost Manabeast

A while ago, we showcased some upcoming changes and reworks coming to the Lost Souls faction. We are happy to announce we are nearing completion on this faction rework. Alongside implementing those changes, we have also been working on a new card to add to the faction to further enhance its playstyle. Introducing: The Lost Manabeast as a player card!
 

Design notes: Lost Souls has an odd T3 in that it has two ground XL-units and one flying L-unit with conditional siege range. Of these, only Lost Horror is widely used in PvE, Lost Grigori sees some PvP play, and Lost Vigil is mostly unused except in niche situations. Most factions have a wider variety of viable options in PvE at this point, and Lost Souls lacks a low-cost ground L-unit, forcing players to rely on cards like Ashbone Pyro to fill the gap. We therefore wanted to provide a Lost Souls unit to fit this role for those players who want to play a purely Lost Souls deck, while also adding something to synergize with Lost Souls's unique revenant mechanic. Our first thought was to add in Lost Manabeast, since it has an existing model and artwork. Because the unit was primarily designed for PvE usage, we decided to make it a ranged unit as a player card. From here, we thought about how to make it work with Revenant's Doom without directly stepping on the toes of Revenant's Blessing. Revenant's Blessing extends the lifespan of all revenant units, similar to how Ice Age works with Ice Shields, but once it ends, the timer continues to run down as it did previously. For Lost Manabeast, we decided to create an ability called Immortalize that would refresh the lifespan of a revenant back to 25 seconds. This should allow players to alternate between using Manabeast's free ability and Revenant's Blessing. Immortalize is also usable while Lost Manabeast is a revenant, which should enable players to maintain fully revenant armies more easily and efficiently.
 
 
 
Let's break down the card: 
 
Ectoplasmic Shock
Every 3 seconds, the unit launches deadly ectoplasm that deals 230 damage to enemies in a 10m radius around its target, up to 345 in total. The ectoplasm lingers for 5 seconds, absorbing the life essence of any enemy that dies in the area. Additionally, enemies in the area are slowed and may only move at normal walk speed.
 
Immortalize
Active to refresh the duration of every Revenant's lifetime in a 25m radius. Needs to have gathered the life essence of 7 enemy units first. Reusable every 15 seconds.
 
Revenant's Doom
Activate to bestow the unit with a curse that will make it resurrect in case it dies. The resurrected revenant will only be a shadow of its former self, but it will be endowed with the same abilities and equal in strength. After 25 seconds, the revenant will then die once and for all. May only be triggered once.
 
For the artwork, our artist Tweeto made some adjustments to the NPC-artwork currently in the game, mostly adding that classic Lost Soul flame to the look. Lost Manabeast will be a rare, drop from boosters, and can be reforged into. It will not have different affinities. It is planned for a release in our next content patch. We hope you are looking forward to it!
 
• How to Help - a Community Guide


Kapo made a lovely overview of things a community member can do to help out the project. Ranging from something as simple as giving a like to our official trailer, all the way up to joining the team and helping out as staff. Due to the nature of this volunteer project, community members can make a huge difference for both new and current players. Hopefully some of these suggestions speak to you, and inspire you to take some action: find out more.
HOW TO SUPPORT

Skylords Reborn is truly by the fans for the fans, so we hope we can count on you to make this the best community it can be!
 
• Events

In between our monthly Community Updates, we host various events and tournaments, so be sure to keep a close eye on the in-game event tab and the forum calendar to stay informed and not miss out on any exciting events!
 
• NEW - Battle of Tactics #5: Show Me What You Got - 10-12-2023
Battle of Tactics is trying something new: Time for a Tactical-Tome-Tournament! Every player gets a selection of boosters (how many depending on your ELO-rating!) and has to build a PvP deck to compete for prizes! More information.
 
 • FIRST PHASE - PvP AI programming contest
We are gathering players for a new type of event. Get ready for an AI Programming Tournament, where the submitted programs will face off in an epic showdown to find the ultimate AI strategist! More information.
 
• FINISHED - Official 1p rPvE Contest - Resurrection of the Lost Soul
Our official PvE contest has concluded and prizes have been sent out, including the new Soulstone cards. Ultralord also showcased the winners in a video. 
 
In between our monthly Community Updates, we host various events and tournaments, so be sure to keep a close eye on the in-game event tab and the forum calendar to stay informed and not miss out on any exciting events!
 
• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our other Event Organizers, @Metagross31or @Minashigo Hiko. We can help you out with various topics and are glad to discuss potential ideas. We can also sponsor the prize pool for your event. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you.
 
• Community Spotlight - Masters of the Forge

In this podcast-like series, Kapo interviews various staff members to discuss the project and personal stories about their interaction with BattleForge and Skylords Reborn. There are currently 7 episodes to watch:
• Episode 1: Dutchy, Lead Moderator - Watch now.
• Episode 2: Majora, Project Coordinator - Watch now.
• Episode 3: Volin, Testing Coordinator -  Watch now.
• Episode 4: RadicalX, Faction Designer - Watch now.
• Episode 5: Ult, Server Developer - Watch now.
 
• New: Episode 6: Ultralord, Video Editor - Watch now.
In this episode, Kapo and Ultralord talk about his numerous videos he made for the Skylords Reborn Team, as well as his other projects like the Battle of Tactics or his streaming efforts.
• New: Episode 7: Zyna & Ladadoos, Admins - Watch now.
In this episode, Kapo is joined by both Ladadoos and Zyna, Developers and Project Leads who have been stuck around with Skylords Reborn since a very, very long time. They discuss what it's like to lead such a big volunteer team, old and new changes to the core systems of the game, and take a look what the future may bring in the upcoming months and years.
Episode 8 will be hosted live on the 2nd of December and feature Maze, Web Developer. Tune in live on Twitch, or watch back on YouTube the day after.  
 
• Contribute

Skylords Reborn is a community-driven project fuelled by the passion and dedication of over 45 volunteers. We are always on the lookout for like-minded individuals. If you have a passion for gaming, programming, design, or marketing, we invite you to have a look at our open positions!


We are especially looking for an active and passionate outreach coordinator, helping us reach new Skylords by contacting streamers, influencers, media, and other potential parties. This role can make a drastic impact for Skylords Reborn, so please consider applying.
• Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator
As a Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator, you are responsible to spread the word and create awareness about Skylords Reborn, attracting veteran and new players alike. 
Your tasks will include actively researching and reaching out to potentially interested streamers, YouTubers, Discord channels, game magazines, among others. You will be responsible for the communication to and from interested parties and for any promotion deals (for example involving scratch codes). Please note that Skylords Reborn cannot do any paid promotions. 
More information. 
 
• 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: LOST-ANDF-OUND-MANA
The code is valid until January 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 November 2023

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

 
• Skylord Reborn 3rd Anniversary

The 3rd anniversary of Skylords Reborn is almost here! After returning to the world of Nyn on the 18th of December 2020, our volunteer team has worked tirelessly to expand upon the original BattleForge with new content, quality-of-life changes, and new features. Skylords Reborn has expanded upon the original game by adding quests, achievements, cosmetics, reforging, new enemy factions for rPvE, overhauls of the community map sections, UI improvements, brand-new cards, new voice-lines, many balance changes, and much more!
We are grateful that we were not only successful in bringing the game back, and are now able to celebrate its 3rd anniversary with this lovely community. For this occasion, we would like to give you a sneak peek of an upcoming new campaign map, planned for release in 2024.
To do so, we invite all of you to join us on Monday, the 18th of December, at 20:00 CET for a special anniversary stream on our official Twitch channel. Alongside some information about our upcoming content, there will also be giveaways and a Q&A. So come chill with us!

Whether you have been with us all this time, or only recently stumbled upon the project, thank you! We hope you celebrate both the past and the future with us on the 18th!
 
• Changes to the recommended system requirements

BattleForge is an old game; it released all the way back in 2009. As Skylords Reborn continues its development, we are having a look at its system requirements. We have decided to remove our minimum system requirements, and increase our recommended requirements. Of course, removing a minimum system requirement does not automatically mean anything lower than the Recommended will not work.
We are dropping the Minimum system requirements
• CPU: Single Core 1.8Ghz
• CPU Speed: Core 1.8Ghz
• RAM: Windows XP - 512MB, Vista and Windows 7+ - 1GB
• OS: Windows XP (with service pack 2) Vista, Windows 7 or higher.
• Video Card: 128MB NVIDIA GeForce 6 Series+ / ATI Radeon 9500+
• Disk Space: At least 13GB. 
Instead, these are now the Recommended system requirements:
• CPU: Core i3 7400T / Ryzen 3 1200 (X86 compatible)
• RAM: at least 6GB
• OS: Windows 10 or higher.
• Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 / ATI Radeon HD 7770 (Direct X 11 compatible)
• Disk Space: 14GB of free space.
Notes and reasoning
While we don't want to exclude potential players, constantly keeping old and outdated systems in mind is increasing the chance for issues and delaying development. Even so, we'd like to take a moment to explain our reasoning for increasing each requirement.
Skipping over 16 years of CPU might seem like too big of a jump. However, people will default to maximum details on 10+ years old game, and they will play it on significantly bigger resolutions. Back then, 1024x768 was considered big screen, while these days 1920x1080 is considered entry level resolutions, which have 2.64 times more pixels. The same reasoning applies for the GPU. 
A recommendation of 6GB of RAM might seem like an overkill, but we are adding features that consume RAM, and it shouldn't be a problem for most modern PC's to meet this requirement. Rest assured this will never increase again, because the game can't use more than 4GB of RAM (the remaining 2GB are for OS and other applications running alongside Skylords Reborn). 
We are also dropping support for Windows 7. Technically, Windows 7 should still work just fine, but due to the very low % of players running this operating system, we will not be rolling back major updates for it anymore. Lastly, the Disk Space increase. We are currently at 13.3 GB for game files, and community maps, logs, etc. can easily be in 100's of MB. Its likely this requirement will further increase in the future. 
 
• New Card Reveal - Lost Manabeast

A while ago, we showcased some upcoming changes and reworks coming to the Lost Souls faction. We are happy to announce we are nearing completion on this faction rework. Alongside implementing those changes, we have also been working on a new card to add to the faction to further enhance its playstyle. Introducing: The Lost Manabeast as a player card!
 

Design notes: Lost Souls has an odd T3 in that it has two ground XL-units and one flying L-unit with conditional siege range. Of these, only Lost Horror is widely used in PvE, Lost Grigori sees some PvP play, and Lost Vigil is mostly unused except in niche situations. Most factions have a wider variety of viable options in PvE at this point, and Lost Souls lacks a low-cost ground L-unit, forcing players to rely on cards like Ashbone Pyro to fill the gap. We therefore wanted to provide a Lost Souls unit to fit this role for those players who want to play a purely Lost Souls deck, while also adding something to synergize with Lost Souls's unique revenant mechanic. Our first thought was to add in Lost Manabeast, since it has an existing model and artwork. Because the unit was primarily designed for PvE usage, we decided to make it a ranged unit as a player card. From here, we thought about how to make it work with Revenant's Doom without directly stepping on the toes of Revenant's Blessing. Revenant's Blessing extends the lifespan of all revenant units, similar to how Ice Age works with Ice Shields, but once it ends, the timer continues to run down as it did previously. For Lost Manabeast, we decided to create an ability called Immortalize that would refresh the lifespan of a revenant back to 25 seconds. This should allow players to alternate between using Manabeast's free ability and Revenant's Blessing. Immortalize is also usable while Lost Manabeast is a revenant, which should enable players to maintain fully revenant armies more easily and efficiently.
 
 
 
Let's break down the card: 
 
Ectoplasmic Shock
Every 3 seconds, the unit launches deadly ectoplasm that deals 230 damage to enemies in a 10m radius around its target, up to 345 in total. The ectoplasm lingers for 5 seconds, absorbing the life essence of any enemy that dies in the area. Additionally, enemies in the area are slowed and may only move at normal walk speed.
 
Immortalize
Active to refresh the duration of every Revenant's lifetime in a 25m radius. Needs to have gathered the life essence of 7 enemy units first. Reusable every 15 seconds.
 
Revenant's Doom
Activate to bestow the unit with a curse that will make it resurrect in case it dies. The resurrected revenant will only be a shadow of its former self, but it will be endowed with the same abilities and equal in strength. After 25 seconds, the revenant will then die once and for all. May only be triggered once.
 
For the artwork, our artist Tweeto made some adjustments to the NPC-artwork currently in the game, mostly adding that classic Lost Soul flame to the look. Lost Manabeast will be a rare, drop from boosters, and can be reforged into. It will not have different affinities. It is planned for a release in our next content patch. We hope you are looking forward to it!
 
• How to Help - a Community Guide


Kapo made a lovely overview of things a community member can do to help out the project. Ranging from something as simple as giving a like to our official trailer, all the way up to joining the team and helping out as staff. Due to the nature of this volunteer project, community members can make a huge difference for both new and current players. Hopefully some of these suggestions speak to you, and inspire you to take some action: find out more.
HOW TO SUPPORT

Skylords Reborn is truly by the fans for the fans, so we hope we can count on you to make this the best community it can be!
 
• Events

In between our monthly Community Updates, we host various events and tournaments, so be sure to keep a close eye on the in-game event tab and the forum calendar to stay informed and not miss out on any exciting events!
 
• NEW - Battle of Tactics #5: Show Me What You Got - 10-12-2023
Battle of Tactics is trying something new: Time for a Tactical-Tome-Tournament! Every player gets a selection of boosters (how many depending on your ELO-rating!) and has to build a PvP deck to compete for prizes! More information.
 
 • FIRST PHASE - PvP AI programming contest
We are gathering players for a new type of event. Get ready for an AI Programming Tournament, where the submitted programs will face off in an epic showdown to find the ultimate AI strategist! More information.
 
• FINISHED - Official 1p rPvE Contest - Resurrection of the Lost Soul
Our official PvE contest has concluded and prizes have been sent out, including the new Soulstone cards. Ultralord also showcased the winners in a video. 
 
In between our monthly Community Updates, we host various events and tournaments, so be sure to keep a close eye on the in-game event tab and the forum calendar to stay informed and not miss out on any exciting events!
 
• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our other Event Organizers, @Metagross31or @Minashigo Hiko. We can help you out with various topics and are glad to discuss potential ideas. We can also sponsor the prize pool for your event. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you.
 
• Community Spotlight - Masters of the Forge

In this podcast-like series, Kapo interviews various staff members to discuss the project and personal stories about their interaction with BattleForge and Skylords Reborn. There are currently 7 episodes to watch:
• Episode 1: Dutchy, Lead Moderator - Watch now.
• Episode 2: Majora, Project Coordinator - Watch now.
• Episode 3: Volin, Testing Coordinator -  Watch now.
• Episode 4: RadicalX, Faction Designer - Watch now.
• Episode 5: Ult, Server Developer - Watch now.
 
• New: Episode 6: Ultralord, Video Editor - Watch now.
In this episode, Kapo and Ultralord talk about his numerous videos he made for the Skylords Reborn Team, as well as his other projects like the Battle of Tactics or his streaming efforts.
• New: Episode 7: Zyna & Ladadoos, Admins - Watch now.
In this episode, Kapo is joined by both Ladadoos and Zyna, Developers and Project Leads who have been stuck around with Skylords Reborn since a very, very long time. They discuss what it's like to lead such a big volunteer team, old and new changes to the core systems of the game, and take a look what the future may bring in the upcoming months and years.
Episode 8 will be hosted live on the 2nd of December and feature Maze, Web Developer. Tune in live on Twitch, or watch back on YouTube the day after.  
 
• Contribute

Skylords Reborn is a community-driven project fuelled by the passion and dedication of over 45 volunteers. We are always on the lookout for like-minded individuals. If you have a passion for gaming, programming, design, or marketing, we invite you to have a look at our open positions!


We are especially looking for an active and passionate outreach coordinator, helping us reach new Skylords by contacting streamers, influencers, media, and other potential parties. This role can make a drastic impact for Skylords Reborn, so please consider applying.
• Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator
As a Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator, you are responsible to spread the word and create awareness about Skylords Reborn, attracting veteran and new players alike. 
Your tasks will include actively researching and reaching out to potentially interested streamers, YouTubers, Discord channels, game magazines, among others. You will be responsible for the communication to and from interested parties and for any promotion deals (for example involving scratch codes). Please note that Skylords Reborn cannot do any paid promotions. 
More information. 
 
• 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: LOST-ANDF-OUND-MANA
The code is valid until January 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 November 2023

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

 
• Skylord Reborn 3rd Anniversary

The 3rd anniversary of Skylords Reborn is almost here! After returning to the world of Nyn on the 18th of December 2020, our volunteer team has worked tirelessly to expand upon the original BattleForge with new content, quality-of-life changes, and new features. Skylords Reborn has expanded upon the original game by adding quests, achievements, cosmetics, reforging, new enemy factions for rPvE, overhauls of the community map sections, UI improvements, brand-new cards, new voice-lines, many balance changes, and much more!
We are grateful that we were not only successful in bringing the game back, and are now able to celebrate its 3rd anniversary with this lovely community. For this occasion, we would like to give you a sneak peek of an upcoming new campaign map, planned for release in 2024.
To do so, we invite all of you to join us on Monday, the 18th of December, at 20:00 CET for a special anniversary stream on our official Twitch channel. Alongside some information about our upcoming content, there will also be giveaways and a Q&A. So come chill with us!

Whether you have been with us all this time, or only recently stumbled upon the project, thank you! We hope you celebrate both the past and the future with us on the 18th!
 
• Changes to the recommended system requirements

BattleForge is an old game; it released all the way back in 2009. As Skylords Reborn continues its development, we are having a look at its system requirements. We have decided to remove our minimum system requirements, and increase our recommended requirements. Of course, removing a minimum system requirement does not automatically mean anything lower than the Recommended will not work.
We are dropping the Minimum system requirements
• CPU: Single Core 1.8Ghz
• CPU Speed: Core 1.8Ghz
• RAM: Windows XP - 512MB, Vista and Windows 7+ - 1GB
• OS: Windows XP (with service pack 2) Vista, Windows 7 or higher.
• Video Card: 128MB NVIDIA GeForce 6 Series+ / ATI Radeon 9500+
• Disk Space: At least 13GB. 
Instead, these are now the Recommended system requirements:
• CPU: Core i3 7400T / Ryzen 3 1200 (X86 compatible)
• RAM: at least 6GB
• OS: Windows 10 or higher.
• Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 / ATI Radeon HD 7770 (Direct X 11 compatible)
• Disk Space: 14GB of free space.
Notes and reasoning
While we don't want to exclude potential players, constantly keeping old and outdated systems in mind is increasing the chance for issues and delaying development. Even so, we'd like to take a moment to explain our reasoning for increasing each requirement.
Skipping over 16 years of CPU might seem like too big of a jump. However, people will default to maximum details on 10+ years old game, and they will play it on significantly bigger resolutions. Back then, 1024x768 was considered big screen, while these days 1920x1080 is considered entry level resolutions, which have 2.64 times more pixels. The same reasoning applies for the GPU. 
A recommendation of 6GB of RAM might seem like an overkill, but we are adding features that consume RAM, and it shouldn't be a problem for most modern PC's to meet this requirement. Rest assured this will never increase again, because the game can't use more than 4GB of RAM (the remaining 2GB are for OS and other applications running alongside Skylords Reborn). 
We are also dropping support for Windows 7. Technically, Windows 7 should still work just fine, but due to the very low % of players running this operating system, we will not be rolling back major updates for it anymore. Lastly, the Disk Space increase. We are currently at 13.3 GB for game files, and community maps, logs, etc. can easily be in 100's of MB. Its likely this requirement will further increase in the future. 
 
• New Card Reveal - Lost Manabeast

A while ago, we showcased some upcoming changes and reworks coming to the Lost Souls faction. We are happy to announce we are nearing completion on this faction rework. Alongside implementing those changes, we have also been working on a new card to add to the faction to further enhance its playstyle. Introducing: The Lost Manabeast as a player card!
 

Design notes: Lost Souls has an odd T3 in that it has two ground XL-units and one flying L-unit with conditional siege range. Of these, only Lost Horror is widely used in PvE, Lost Grigori sees some PvP play, and Lost Vigil is mostly unused except in niche situations. Most factions have a wider variety of viable options in PvE at this point, and Lost Souls lacks a low-cost ground L-unit, forcing players to rely on cards like Ashbone Pyro to fill the gap. We therefore wanted to provide a Lost Souls unit to fit this role for those players who want to play a purely Lost Souls deck, while also adding something to synergize with Lost Souls's unique revenant mechanic. Our first thought was to add in Lost Manabeast, since it has an existing model and artwork. Because the unit was primarily designed for PvE usage, we decided to make it a ranged unit as a player card. From here, we thought about how to make it work with Revenant's Doom without directly stepping on the toes of Revenant's Blessing. Revenant's Blessing extends the lifespan of all revenant units, similar to how Ice Age works with Ice Shields, but once it ends, the timer continues to run down as it did previously. For Lost Manabeast, we decided to create an ability called Immortalize that would refresh the lifespan of a revenant back to 25 seconds. This should allow players to alternate between using Manabeast's free ability and Revenant's Blessing. Immortalize is also usable while Lost Manabeast is a revenant, which should enable players to maintain fully revenant armies more easily and efficiently.
 
 
 
Let's break down the card: 
 
Ectoplasmic Shock
Every 3 seconds, the unit launches deadly ectoplasm that deals 230 damage to enemies in a 10m radius around its target, up to 345 in total. The ectoplasm lingers for 5 seconds, absorbing the life essence of any enemy that dies in the area. Additionally, enemies in the area are slowed and may only move at normal walk speed.
 
Immortalize
Active to refresh the duration of every Revenant's lifetime in a 25m radius. Needs to have gathered the life essence of 7 enemy units first. Reusable every 15 seconds.
 
Revenant's Doom
Activate to bestow the unit with a curse that will make it resurrect in case it dies. The resurrected revenant will only be a shadow of its former self, but it will be endowed with the same abilities and equal in strength. After 25 seconds, the revenant will then die once and for all. May only be triggered once.
 
For the artwork, our artist Tweeto made some adjustments to the NPC-artwork currently in the game, mostly adding that classic Lost Soul flame to the look. Lost Manabeast will be a rare, drop from boosters, and can be reforged into. It will not have different affinities. It is planned for a release in our next content patch. We hope you are looking forward to it!
 
• How to Help - a Community Guide


Kapo made a lovely overview of things a community member can do to help out the project. Ranging from something as simple as giving a like to our official trailer, all the way up to joining the team and helping out as staff. Due to the nature of this volunteer project, community members can make a huge difference for both new and current players. Hopefully some of these suggestions speak to you, and inspire you to take some action: find out more.
HOW TO SUPPORT

Skylords Reborn is truly by the fans for the fans, so we hope we can count on you to make this the best community it can be!
 
• Events

In between our monthly Community Updates, we host various events and tournaments, so be sure to keep a close eye on the in-game event tab and the forum calendar to stay informed and not miss out on any exciting events!
 
• NEW - Battle of Tactics #5: Show Me What You Got - 10-12-2023
Battle of Tactics is trying something new: Time for a Tactical-Tome-Tournament! Every player gets a selection of boosters (how many depending on your ELO-rating!) and has to build a PvP deck to compete for prizes! More information.
 
 • FIRST PHASE - PvP AI programming contest
We are gathering players for a new type of event. Get ready for an AI Programming Tournament, where the submitted programs will face off in an epic showdown to find the ultimate AI strategist! More information.
 
• FINISHED - Official 1p rPvE Contest - Resurrection of the Lost Soul
Our official PvE contest has concluded and prizes have been sent out, including the new Soulstone cards. Ultralord also showcased the winners in a video. 
 
In between our monthly Community Updates, we host various events and tournaments, so be sure to keep a close eye on the in-game event tab and the forum calendar to stay informed and not miss out on any exciting events!
 
• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our other Event Organizers, @Metagross31or @Minashigo Hiko. We can help you out with various topics and are glad to discuss potential ideas. We can also sponsor the prize pool for your event. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you.
 
• Community Spotlight - Masters of the Forge

In this podcast-like series, Kapo interviews various staff members to discuss the project and personal stories about their interaction with BattleForge and Skylords Reborn. There are currently 7 episodes to watch:
• Episode 1: Dutchy, Lead Moderator - Watch now.
• Episode 2: Majora, Project Coordinator - Watch now.
• Episode 3: Volin, Testing Coordinator -  Watch now.
• Episode 4: RadicalX, Faction Designer - Watch now.
• Episode 5: Ult, Server Developer - Watch now.
 
• New: Episode 6: Ultralord, Video Editor - Watch now.
In this episode, Kapo and Ultralord talk about his numerous videos he made for the Skylords Reborn Team, as well as his other projects like the Battle of Tactics or his streaming efforts.
• New: Episode 7: Zyna & Ladadoos, Admins - Watch now.
In this episode, Kapo is joined by both Ladadoos and Zyna, Developers and Project Leads who have been stuck around with Skylords Reborn since a very, very long time. They discuss what it's like to lead such a big volunteer team, old and new changes to the core systems of the game, and take a look what the future may bring in the upcoming months and years.
Episode 8 will be hosted live on the 2nd of December and feature Maze, Web Developer. Tune in live on Twitch, or watch back on YouTube the day after.  
 
• Contribute

Skylords Reborn is a community-driven project fuelled by the passion and dedication of over 45 volunteers. We are always on the lookout for like-minded individuals. If you have a passion for gaming, programming, design, or marketing, we invite you to have a look at our open positions!


We are especially looking for an active and passionate outreach coordinator, helping us reach new Skylords by contacting streamers, influencers, media, and other potential parties. This role can make a drastic impact for Skylords Reborn, so please consider applying.
• Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator
As a Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator, you are responsible to spread the word and create awareness about Skylords Reborn, attracting veteran and new players alike. 
Your tasks will include actively researching and reaching out to potentially interested streamers, YouTubers, Discord channels, game magazines, among others. You will be responsible for the communication to and from interested parties and for any promotion deals (for example involving scratch codes). Please note that Skylords Reborn cannot do any paid promotions. 
More information. 
 
• 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: LOST-ANDF-OUND-MANA
The code is valid until January 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 November 2023

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

 
• Skylord Reborn 3rd Anniversary

The 3rd anniversary of Skylords Reborn is almost here! After returning to the world of Nyn on the 18th of December 2020, our volunteer team has worked tirelessly to expand upon the original BattleForge with new content, quality-of-life changes, and new features. Skylords Reborn has expanded upon the original game by adding quests, achievements, cosmetics, reforging, new enemy factions for rPvE, overhauls of the community map sections, UI improvements, brand-new cards, new voice-lines, many balance changes, and much more!
We are grateful that we were not only successful in bringing the game back, and are now able to celebrate its 3rd anniversary with this lovely community. For this occasion, we would like to give you a sneak peek of an upcoming new campaign map, planned for release in 2024.
To do so, we invite all of you to join us on Monday, the 18th of December, at 20:00 CET for a special anniversary stream on our official Twitch channel. Alongside some information about our upcoming content, there will also be giveaways and a Q&A. So come chill with us!

Whether you have been with us all this time, or only recently stumbled upon the project, thank you! We hope you celebrate both the past and the future with us on the 18th!
 
• Changes to the recommended system requirements

BattleForge is an old game; it released all the way back in 2009. As Skylords Reborn continues its development, we are having a look at its system requirements. We have decided to remove our minimum system requirements, and increase our recommended requirements. Of course, removing a minimum system requirement does not automatically mean anything lower than the Recommended will not work.
We are dropping the Minimum system requirements
• CPU: Single Core 1.8Ghz
• CPU Speed: Core 1.8Ghz
• RAM: Windows XP - 512MB, Vista and Windows 7+ - 1GB
• OS: Windows XP (with service pack 2) Vista, Windows 7 or higher.
• Video Card: 128MB NVIDIA GeForce 6 Series+ / ATI Radeon 9500+
• Disk Space: At least 13GB. 
Instead, these are now the Recommended system requirements:
• CPU: Core i3 7400T / Ryzen 3 1200 (X86 compatible)
• RAM: at least 6GB
• OS: Windows 10 or higher.
• Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 / ATI Radeon HD 7770 (Direct X 11 compatible)
• Disk Space: 14GB of free space.
Notes and reasoning
While we don't want to exclude potential players, constantly keeping old and outdated systems in mind is increasing the chance for issues and delaying development. Even so, we'd like to take a moment to explain our reasoning for increasing each requirement.
Skipping over 16 years of CPU might seem like too big of a jump. However, people will default to maximum details on 10+ years old game, and they will play it on significantly bigger resolutions. Back then, 1024x768 was considered big screen, while these days 1920x1080 is considered entry level resolutions, which have 2.64 times more pixels. The same reasoning applies for the GPU. 
A recommendation of 6GB of RAM might seem like an overkill, but we are adding features that consume RAM, and it shouldn't be a problem for most modern PC's to meet this requirement. Rest assured this will never increase again, because the game can't use more than 4GB of RAM (the remaining 2GB are for OS and other applications running alongside Skylords Reborn). 
We are also dropping support for Windows 7. Technically, Windows 7 should still work just fine, but due to the very low % of players running this operating system, we will not be rolling back major updates for it anymore. Lastly, the Disk Space increase. We are currently at 13.3 GB for game files, and community maps, logs, etc. can easily be in 100's of MB. Its likely this requirement will further increase in the future. 
 
• New Card Reveal - Lost Manabeast

A while ago, we showcased some upcoming changes and reworks coming to the Lost Souls faction. We are happy to announce we are nearing completion on this faction rework. Alongside implementing those changes, we have also been working on a new card to add to the faction to further enhance its playstyle. Introducing: The Lost Manabeast as a player card!
 

Design notes: Lost Souls has an odd T3 in that it has two ground XL-units and one flying L-unit with conditional siege range. Of these, only Lost Horror is widely used in PvE, Lost Grigori sees some PvP play, and Lost Vigil is mostly unused except in niche situations. Most factions have a wider variety of viable options in PvE at this point, and Lost Souls lacks a low-cost ground L-unit, forcing players to rely on cards like Ashbone Pyro to fill the gap. We therefore wanted to provide a Lost Souls unit to fit this role for those players who want to play a purely Lost Souls deck, while also adding something to synergize with Lost Souls's unique revenant mechanic. Our first thought was to add in Lost Manabeast, since it has an existing model and artwork. Because the unit was primarily designed for PvE usage, we decided to make it a ranged unit as a player card. From here, we thought about how to make it work with Revenant's Doom without directly stepping on the toes of Revenant's Blessing. Revenant's Blessing extends the lifespan of all revenant units, similar to how Ice Age works with Ice Shields, but once it ends, the timer continues to run down as it did previously. For Lost Manabeast, we decided to create an ability called Immortalize that would refresh the lifespan of a revenant back to 25 seconds. This should allow players to alternate between using Manabeast's free ability and Revenant's Blessing. Immortalize is also usable while Lost Manabeast is a revenant, which should enable players to maintain fully revenant armies more easily and efficiently.
 
 
 
Let's break down the card: 
 
Ectoplasmic Shock
Every 3 seconds, the unit launches deadly ectoplasm that deals 230 damage to enemies in a 10m radius around its target, up to 345 in total. The ectoplasm lingers for 5 seconds, absorbing the life essence of any enemy that dies in the area. Additionally, enemies in the area are slowed and may only move at normal walk speed.
 
Immortalize
Active to refresh the duration of every Revenant's lifetime in a 25m radius. Needs to have gathered the life essence of 7 enemy units first. Reusable every 15 seconds.
 
Revenant's Doom
Activate to bestow the unit with a curse that will make it resurrect in case it dies. The resurrected revenant will only be a shadow of its former self, but it will be endowed with the same abilities and equal in strength. After 25 seconds, the revenant will then die once and for all. May only be triggered once.
 
For the artwork, our artist Tweeto made some adjustments to the NPC-artwork currently in the game, mostly adding that classic Lost Soul flame to the look. Lost Manabeast will be a rare, drop from boosters, and can be reforged into. It will not have different affinities. It is planned for a release in our next content patch. We hope you are looking forward to it!
 
• How to Help - a Community Guide


Kapo made a lovely overview of things a community member can do to help out the project. Ranging from something as simple as giving a like to our official trailer, all the way up to joining the team and helping out as staff. Due to the nature of this volunteer project, community members can make a huge difference for both new and current players. Hopefully some of these suggestions speak to you, and inspire you to take some action: find out more.
HOW TO SUPPORT

Skylords Reborn is truly by the fans for the fans, so we hope we can count on you to make this the best community it can be!
 
• Events

In between our monthly Community Updates, we host various events and tournaments, so be sure to keep a close eye on the in-game event tab and the forum calendar to stay informed and not miss out on any exciting events!
 
• NEW - Battle of Tactics #5: Show Me What You Got - 10-12-2023
Battle of Tactics is trying something new: Time for a Tactical-Tome-Tournament! Every player gets a selection of boosters (how many depending on your ELO-rating!) and has to build a PvP deck to compete for prizes! More information.
 
 • FIRST PHASE - PvP AI programming contest
We are gathering players for a new type of event. Get ready for an AI Programming Tournament, where the submitted programs will face off in an epic showdown to find the ultimate AI strategist! More information.
 
• FINISHED - Official 1p rPvE Contest - Resurrection of the Lost Soul
Our official PvE contest has concluded and prizes have been sent out, including the new Soulstone cards. Ultralord also showcased the winners in a video. 
 
In between our monthly Community Updates, we host various events and tournaments, so be sure to keep a close eye on the in-game event tab and the forum calendar to stay informed and not miss out on any exciting events!
 
• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our other Event Organizers, @Metagross31or @Minashigo Hiko. We can help you out with various topics and are glad to discuss potential ideas. We can also sponsor the prize pool for your event. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you.
 
• Community Spotlight - Masters of the Forge

In this podcast-like series, Kapo interviews various staff members to discuss the project and personal stories about their interaction with BattleForge and Skylords Reborn. There are currently 7 episodes to watch:
• Episode 1: Dutchy, Lead Moderator - Watch now.
• Episode 2: Majora, Project Coordinator - Watch now.
• Episode 3: Volin, Testing Coordinator -  Watch now.
• Episode 4: RadicalX, Faction Designer - Watch now.
• Episode 5: Ult, Server Developer - Watch now.
 
• New: Episode 6: Ultralord, Video Editor - Watch now.
In this episode, Kapo and Ultralord talk about his numerous videos he made for the Skylords Reborn Team, as well as his other projects like the Battle of Tactics or his streaming efforts.
• New: Episode 7: Zyna & Ladadoos, Admins - Watch now.
In this episode, Kapo is joined by both Ladadoos and Zyna, Developers and Project Leads who have been stuck around with Skylords Reborn since a very, very long time. They discuss what it's like to lead such a big volunteer team, old and new changes to the core systems of the game, and take a look what the future may bring in the upcoming months and years.
Episode 8 will be hosted live on the 2nd of December and feature Maze, Web Developer. Tune in live on Twitch, or watch back on YouTube the day after.  
 
• Contribute

Skylords Reborn is a community-driven project fuelled by the passion and dedication of over 45 volunteers. We are always on the lookout for like-minded individuals. If you have a passion for gaming, programming, design, or marketing, we invite you to have a look at our open positions!


We are especially looking for an active and passionate outreach coordinator, helping us reach new Skylords by contacting streamers, influencers, media, and other potential parties. This role can make a drastic impact for Skylords Reborn, so please consider applying.
• Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator
As a Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator, you are responsible to spread the word and create awareness about Skylords Reborn, attracting veteran and new players alike. 
Your tasks will include actively researching and reaching out to potentially interested streamers, YouTubers, Discord channels, game magazines, among others. You will be responsible for the communication to and from interested parties and for any promotion deals (for example involving scratch codes). Please note that Skylords Reborn cannot do any paid promotions. 
More information. 
 
• 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: LOST-ANDF-OUND-MANA
The code is valid until January 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 November 2023

Interesting i personally had the feeling that there was more PvE Events this year then PvP.
Thats why i choose after 4x PvE-Battle of Tactics and PvP based idea 
But no worries im sure there will be more PvE Events in the upcoming months 👍

I wanted to inform all participants, that I just have send out all rewards!

Please notify me, if you think anything is missing.

Skylords and Skyladies;
Masters of the Forge will shine a light on all those people working so tirelessly on Skylords Reborn - for the average Skylord, [Game Masters] are elite, mythical creatures too many know nothing about, and we will hopefully change that. So, in this dev-talk-like podcast series we will meet several Masters of the Forge in person, and hopefully I will be able to ask them questions that are interesting to you. And, you will also get the chance to ask them some questions! The series will be streamed on Twitch and afterwards uploaded on YouTube.
Please note that while the content created is supported by the SR Team and will be all about Skylords Reborn, this is no official dev-talk. The focus will be around the guest, what their duties are, how they feel about the game and its development - we will not elaborate future changes in depth or announce anything fancy. But hopefully we will know more about the guest and how It's like to be part of the SR Team.
In the seventh episode, I will present you a duo: [GM] @Ladadoos and [GM] @Zyna, both Project Lead; who are both steering the project through all ups and downs for a very long time now.
Quick Overview:
Guest                         [GM] Ladadoos and [GM] Zyna Date                           19. 11. 2023 Time                          19:30 CEST Link                            www.twitch.tv/kapostream
If you got any questions you would want to see asked, you are very welcome to drop me a DM here on the forums (@Kapo) or on Discord (#kapojones).
Kapo
 
Previous Episodes:
#1 [GM] Dutchy, Lead Moderator
#2 [GM] Majora, Project Coordinator
#3 [GM] Volin, Testing Coordinator
#4 [GM] RadicalX, Faction Designer
#5 [GM] Ult, Server Developer
#6 [GM] Ultralord, Video Editor

Great greetings, people of the Sky
Battle of Tactics is trying something new: Time for a Tactical-Tome-Tournament!

Different to a normal Tome-Tournament?
1. Public visible boosters
The content of all Boosters of each player will be visible publicly
2. Booster Types
Players have multiple general booster but also Wild-Boosters.
With these they can open all types of boosters, like a Pure-Fire-Booster to increase the chance of a key fire card for their planed deck.
3. Boosters per Player
The number of boosters is linked to their ELO. A higher experienced player has to work with a lower amount then a beginner:
S-Tier 139k-999k ELO  -->  9 General Boosters + 1 Wild-Booster
A-Tier 124k-139k ELO  -->10 General Boosters + 2 Wild-Booster
B-Tier 112k-123k ELO  --> 11 General Boosters + 3 Wild-Booster
C-Tier 100k-112k ELO  --> 12 General Boosters + 4 Wild-Booster
D-Tier 000k-100k ELO  --> 13 General Boosters + 5 Wild-Booster

Managed via Website
To support this event and future Tome games ,I have made a new website:
https://tome.t1421.de
On this website, players can open their boosters and have a public view on all opened ones.
There is also a filter code which can be added to your "custom_filter_extensions.json" for easier deckbuilding in game.
I have made a video about the features of the page, as well on how to use it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMLBZydTQPE

Rules
The tournament will be on the testserver, so all players have all cards.
To start the testserver, use the "LauncherTest.exe" in your BattleForge folder. The match format is Best Of 3 with no looser bracket. There is a group phase with a max of 8 players per group.
Only the best of each group will go into the final rounds. Disconnection during a game results in a default loss. If both sides agree, it is possible to have a remake. Not showing up to your match after 15 minutes results in a default loss. The plan is to play a round of matches every ~30 mins. After your match, go to Challonge and insert the result. That is done by clicking on your match and selecting the winner/stats.
The brackets will be updated automatically. The Map Pool is: Haladur, Simai, Elyon, Lajesh, Uro and Yrmia. The map of round one will be Haladur, after that its losers choose.
Against the second opponent, you start with Simai. third Elyon, etc.
(I will make notes in Challonge) First deck lock is done by a coin flip. (/roll 1) 
After that, the winner has to lock in first.
How to join and schedule
The event starts on                            10.12.2023 12:00
You can join till                                  10.12.2023 11:00
I will stream the event starting at      10.12.2023 11:20 Here is my twitch.tv/ultralord_t1421
Player can start opening boosters at 10.12.2023 11:30
You can join the tournament by messaging me directly over
Discord
Forum  

There is a maximum of 32 players for this tournament.
If we end up with with fewer players, we might reduce the groups or the players per group.
I will have a discord server of easier communication. You still need to have a Challonge account!
https://challonge.com/de/xejiknwu

Prizes
There are prizes for everyone that joins and participates in the event. (if you don't show up - you won't get anything)
Group Prizes:
Group Place 4: If you lose your first set of matches (max 4 players per group) you will receive:
                      1 random rare or ultra rare card
20.11.2023   + A split of 5.000BFP
Group Place 3: If you lose your second match (max 2 players per group) you will receive:
                      1 general booster + 1 random rare or ultra rare card
Group Place 2: If you lose the group final (max 1 players per group) you will receive:
                      2 general booster + Wheel of Gifts
Group Place 1: If you win the group final (max 1 players per group) your go into the final and receive final Prizes
Final Prizes:
Final Place 3: If you lose your first finale round you will receive:
                      4 general boosters + Amii Monument
Final Place 2: If you won the first match of the final, but lost in the final match you will receive: 
                      6 general boosters + Firedancer
Final Place 1: If you win the tournament you will receive: 
                      8 general boosters + Promo Lyrish Knight
 
So in total the prize pool is:
     24x Rare and Ultra Rare cards
       4x Wheel of Gifts
       2x Amii Monument
       1x Firedancer
       1x Promo Lyrish Knight
     38x General boosters

Thankyou:
@Maze                                                  For providing the SMJ-API and providing feedback on the webpage
@RadicalX                                              For giving a lot of input to the rules like ELO-System and Wild-Boosters
@Metagross31  &  @Minashigo Hiko For input, feedback and finalizing the event
Anonymous                                               For sponsoring Firedancer, Amii Monuments, Wheel of Gifts and a lot of the Rare and Ultra Rare cards
@triggz                                                  For helping as Co-Admin on the Tournament day
SLR-Team                                                   For the 38x General boosters
@Vysnia                                                 For 5.000 BFP
 

Closing words:
You want to host an event or tournament of your own as well? Contact our Event Organizers, they will be happy to support your event:
@Metagross31 (metagross31), @Minashigo Hiko (minashigohiko)
I hope you all will have fun playing or watching the new type of Battle of Tactics. See you in the Forge!
Ultralord

FAQ:
 

Greetings Skylords,
Over the years we have released quite a bit of reading materials and it can be hard to keep track. Below you can find them all!

• Community Updates 

Every month we provide an update to the community sharing information about what we are working on, and what you can expect in the future. Community Updates release on the 1st of each month.
• Community Updates overview
 
• Skylords Reborn Design Philosophy 

In our design philosophy, we explore and explain how Skylords Reborn handles development and changes compared to the original BattleForge. 
SkylordsRebornDesignPhilosophy.pdf
 
• Skylords Reborn Design Rarities

What makes a card common, uncommon, rare or ultrarare? By analyzing the original BattleForge, we have set up a framework which we use to determine what rarity our new cards should have. 
SkylordsRebornDesign_Rarities.pdf
 
• Deep Dive: Frost
In our Deep Dive documents, we share our thoughts and plans for a faction, as well as give you some insight into our balancing process. This is the Deep Dive for the Frost faction. 
DeepDive_PureFrost.pdf
 
• Deep Dive: Nature

In our Deep Dive documents, we share our thoughts and plans for a faction, as well as give you some insight into our balancing process. This is the Deep Dive for the Nature faction. 
Nature_Deep_Dive.pdf
 
• Deep Dive: Bandits

In our Deep Dive documents, we share our thoughts and plans for a faction, as well as give you some insight into our balancing process. This is the Deep Dive for the Bandit faction. 
DeepDive_Bandits.pdf
 
• Deep Dive: Towers

In our Deep Dive documents, we share our thoughts and plans for a faction, as well as give you some insight into our balancing process. In this Deep Dive, we explore the various towers of Skylords Reborn. 
DeepDive_Towers.pdf


• Deep Dive: Stonekin

In our Deep Dive documents, we share our thoughts and plans for a faction, as well as give you some insight into our balancing process. This is the Deep Dive for the Stonekin faction. 

Stonekin_Deep_Dive.pdf
 
• Behind the Scenes: Advanced Filtering

In our Behind the Scenes, we give you a detailed look at a specific topic. In this Behind the Scenes, we explain the changes made to filtering, and how they came to be. 
BehindTheScenes_AdvancedFiltering.pdf
 
• Behind the Scenes: Minefield

In our Behind the Scenes, we give you a detailed look at a specific topic. In this Behind the Scenes, we dive into the progress of balancing a new card; in this case, Bandit Minefield. 
BehindTheScenes_Minefield.pdf
 
• PvP Guide

This PvP guide is a helpful tool for both veteran and new players alike, containing information about decks and match-ups for each of the free PvP decks you can find in the game. 
• BattleForge PvP Guide - By Hirooo & RadicalX
 
• Map Editor

Every download of Skylords Reborn comes with the Map Editor, allowing Skylords to create their own maps and creative ideas. Split into several parts, this tutorial will guide you on how to work with the BattleForge Map Editor. 
• Official Map Editor Guide - By R4bitf00t
 
• Yearly recaps

During our anniversary streams, we take a look back at all the changes we implemented during the past year, reflecting on both our past accomplishments and plans for the future. 
• 2021 - 1st Anniversary
• 2022 - 2nd Anniversary
• 2023 - 3rd Anniversary
 
• Interviews: Masters of the Forge

In this podcast-like series, Kapo interviews various staff members to discuss the project and personal stories about their relationship with BattleForge and Skylords Reborn. 
• Episode 1: Dutchy, Lead Moderator - Watch now.
• Episode 2: Majora, Project Coordinator - Watch now.
• Episode 3: Volin, Testing Coordinator -  Watch now.
• Episode 4: RadicalX, Faction Designer - Watch now.
• Episode 5: Ult, Server Developer - Watch now.
• Episode 6: Ultralord, Video Editor - Watch now.
• Episode 7: Zyna & Ladadoos, Admins - Watch now.
• Episode 8: Maze, Web Developer - Watch now.
• Episode 9: Windhunter, Lead Designer - Watch now.
• Episode 10: Emmaerzeh & Hodron, Map Departement - Watch now.
 
• Social Media Channels

The main communication channel for Skylords Reborn is Discord. While there are various discord channels for specific topics, here are the two main channels:
• Skylords Reborn
The main Skylords Reborn Discord. If you need any help, or have any general questions about the project, ask here!
• Skylords Reborn Balance Changes
The Skylords Reborn Discord for discussing balancing changes. All card and map balancing changes can be discussed here. 
• Facebook
We also post our monthly Community Updates on Facebook.
• YouTube
We share various video's and trailers on our YouTube channel. Be sure to follow us and like our video's to increase the reach of Skylords Reborn!
• Twitch
We use our Twitch channel for Official Events Streams and our Anniversary Stream. 
• Wiki
The Skylords Reborn Wiki (not to be confused with the old BattleForge one) contains a lot of up-to-date information about the game. 

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!

 
• Halloween Patch

Happy Halloween Skylords! Last weekend, we released a surprise Halloween patch. This patch contains various bugfixes and quality of life changes. Additionally, we have implemented some balance changes, including the previously announced Stronghold changes. 
We have also added the Fire-themed Forge. Keep yourself warm this month with this special themed Forge (active as a featured Forge till the end of November), or complete the achievement ''Never Thought of Him'' to permanently unlock the Forge in addition to 100.000 gold. This reward is retroactive, meaning those who already completed the achievement in the past automatically have the Fire-forge. 
Skylords might remember our Spooky Encounters Halloween Event from last year. We have now implemented a returning achievement, where you can earn a Lost Souls booster and a special Pumpkin-avatar for beating the map during the Halloween season. 
For those looking for a more classic event, we also have a Halloween event that went live earlier today. 
We hope you enjoy this special Halloween patch. You can find the full patch notes here. 
 
• New Card Reveal - Soulstone

This patch also contained the surprise reveal and release of Soulstone!
Today we would like to dive a bit deeper into its design, and how the release is both sudden and overdue.  
 

 
Soulstone is the very first building card we have introduced in the Rebirth Edition (if you don't count our Promo Worldbreaker Gun). It is a Frost card requiring only a single Frost orb, but with a unique twist: Skylords are able to upgrade the card to tier 2 once they have a second orb available. This allows the card to transition throughout the game, powering up alongside the other tools at your disposal. 
Upgrading the card reduces the cost for its memorial ability, and increase its lifepoints. Soulstone is a rare card and can drop from boosters or be reforged into. We also have a special Halloween event where you have a chance to earn it, more about that later in this Community Update.
 
 
 

Let's break down the card: 

Frozen Ward
Activate to trigger a global shielding spell that enchants every friendly structure to grant friendly units within a 20m radius an Ice Shield that absorbs up to 120 damage for 10 seconds. Units that already have an Ice Shield are unaffected. Each unit can only be affected once every 10 seconds. Lasts for 30 seconds. Also affects structures that are still under construction. Has a 60 seconds cool-down after the building was built. Reusable every 60 seconds.  
 
Memorial (mode change)
Activate to regenerate the full power of the Soulstone. After 2 seconds, the building gains Soul Armor and loses Frozen Ward. Requires 2 orbs to activate. Has a 60 seconds cool-down after the building was build. 
 

Soul Armor
Activate to trigger a global shielding spell that enchants every friendly structure to grant friendly units within a 20m radius an Ice Shield that absorbs up to 180 damage for 10 seconds. Units that already have an Ice Shield are unaffected. Each unit can only be affected once every 10 seconds. Lasts for 30 seconds. Also affects structures that are still under construction. Reusable every 60 seconds.
 
Soulstone has been in the making for quite a while now, and we would like to share some behind the scenes' information about its road to release. To do so, Lead Designer Windhunter will take you all the way back to 2021.
 
• Soulstone Design Notes

The release of Soulstone is a testament to how far the Skylords Reborn team has come in its development capacities. The original design concept for Soulstone dates back to June 2021, where it was one of the first cards ever designed by the faction design department. Soulstone's initial design pattern was very closely on the Soulstone players encounter in Defense of Hope, similar to how Banzai Lord is patterned closely on its eponymous mini-boss in Mo. The idea was that the player Soulstone would achieve its full its strength upon reaching T2 just as the Soulstone in Defense of Hope regenerates its strength partway through the mission, summoning Skyelfs to defend itself. We did not think that Frost needed a Skyelf spawner, but we did believe that Frost needed early game sustain and that providing shields would fit well with Soulstone's existing identity. In terms of initial vision and final design, the Soulstone we released a few days ago and the Soulstone we originally designed 28 months ago are highly similar. So why did it take so long?
The challenge of creating a card like Soulstone that could transform into a stronger version of itself upon reaching a higher tier was riddled with technical hurdles. Despite how much we have achieved, it is important to remember that we do not have the source code for BattleForge. Much of what we do is a slow process of reverse engineering and subsequent tool development to allow ourselves to make use of that reverse engineering. Many of our new cards and major redesigns to existing cards have required at least one new mechanic to be successfully reverse engineered before they could proceed. It is a frequent occurrence for our team's faction designers to put forward an idea, have it be accepted as worthwhile to pursue, only for development to hit a wall while we wait for our developers to play Marco Polo with the game engine until they can isolate the correct variable that then allows our card implementers to make the card a reality.
For Soulstone, the primary challenge was the description length. Embedding the functionalities of two cards would result in an exceedingly lengthy description, unprecedented in the game. When we run into major issues like this, we ask ourselves, can we design around it? The best idea we had was to make the Memorial ability self-destruct the existing Soulstone and summon a new, better Soulstone in its place. Altar of Chaos and Portal Nexus both summon new buildings, so this was clearly possible. A little janky, but a promising workaround nonetheless, except that both Altar of Chaos and Portal Nexus' summon abilities are hardcoded, meaning that if we add the ability to a different building, it will always and only summon the building from the original ability. Additionally, even the ability icons were hardcoded, so even if we got it to work, Soulstone would have had an Altar of Chaos icon on it. For regular followers of our Community Updates, you may have pieced together that this same issue would seem to be true for our upcoming card Bedrock, which summons its own Stone Launcher, and if so, you would now have a better understanding of one reason for why said card is not yet released. Anyway, the workaround also proved impossible, so we decided to adjust the design so both the T1 and T2 version could reasonably fit into a single card.
While lacking its originally intended evolution mechanic, Soulstone would have still made a good addition to the game. We implemented the global shields and found that it worked fine. Then we started designing a slightly frostier texture for the building, the original is quite gray, only to find that when we tried to construct the Soulstone in-game that the building got stuck under the ground. It was there, but completely buried. With no knowledge of how to fix this issue, we had to abandon the possibility of using the Soulstone building itself. What we knew we could do was retexture existing buildings with functioning build animations, so we decided to change the name and use a different building instead. Our most promising attempt was trying to retexture Fountain of Rebirth, turning its roots into icicles in the process.
After a half dozen aborted tries leading to more and more frustration from the art team, and in light of the ongoing implementation struggles, we made the decision to shelve the development of Soulstone for the time being. This, while the right decision, became very awkward for us as a team because we justified several changes to Frost T1 cards with the reasoning that a new "Frost T1 sustain option" would be releasing next patch. Obviously, this was no longer true, so we scrambled to make changes to Northern Keep as compensation. Instances like this one are one reason we are careful not to announce things until we are sure they are possible.
For nearly two years, Soulstone sat untouched and largely forgotten until early this summer one of the team members pointed out that the original Soulstone design was now fully possible. We did a few preliminary tests and discovered that the team member was correct. In the course of two years, we had advanced our understanding of the game to the point that what was previously impossible was now relatively simple. Once the various card and ability artworks were finished, the building retextured, and the 3D FX crafted, the card implementation took a little under a week. At long last, on Oct. 28th 2023, Soulstone made its way into the Forge.
 
• Events

If you want to get your hands on the brand-new Soulstone card, be sure to participate in our official Halloween event! We will distribute the card among 50% of the participants, and there are also Lost Souls boosters to be won! 
 
• NEW - Official 1p rPvE Contest - Resurrection of the Lost Soul
The Bandits have disturbed our rest for too long! It is time for the Souls to hunt the Soulhunters, show the Power of Lost Souls in this rPvE 1p Contest. The more participate, the more Soulstones we will Raffle! More information.
 
 • FIRST PHASE - PvP AI programming contest
We are gathering players for a new type of event. Get ready for an AI Programming Tournament, where the submitted programs will face off in an epic showdown to find the ultimate AI strategist! More information.
 
• FINISHED - PvP Rookie Tournament
Last weekend, Triggz hosted a special Rookie 1vs1 Tournament. 22 inexperienced players entered the ring and battled it out. The tournament was streamed live, and can be rewatched on the YouTube-channel of Eirias. More information. 
 
In between our monthly Community Updates, we host various events and tournaments, so be sure to keep a close eye on the in-game event tab and the forum calendar to stay informed and not miss out on any exciting events!

• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our other Event Organizers, @Metagross31or @Minashigo Hiko. We can help you out with various topics and are glad to discuss potential ideas. We can also sponsor the prize pool for your event. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you.
 
• Community Spotlight - Masters of the Forge

In this podcast-like series, Kapo interviews various staff members to discuss the project and personal stories about their interaction with BattleForge and Skylords Reborn. There are currently 5 episodes to watch:
• Episode 1: Dutchy, Lead Moderator - Watch now.
• Episode 2: Majora, Project Coordinator - Watch now.
• Episode 3: Volin, Testing Coordinator -  Watch now.

• New: Episode 4: RadicalX, Faction Designer
In this episode, Kapo and RadicalX talk about Radicals fame as one of the best players in speedrunning and PvP, but also about design (decisions) and loads of topics submitted by user questions. Watch now.

• New: Episode 5: Ult, Server Developer
In this episode, Kapo and Ult talk about the server side of the game, especially about systems like the achievements or cosmetics, as well as future projects like map modifiers. Watch now.
Episode 6 will be hosted live on the 4th of November and feature Ultralord, Video Editor. Tune in live on Twitch, or watch back on YouTube the day after.  
 
• Team changes

During the past month, WaterMelonLord, Nukie and Dallarian have moved on from the team for various reasons. All three of them helped us out with moderation. Additionally, Nukie managed the Event Department, where Dallarian helped the Map Department set the first step into new campaign maps. We appreciate their contributions and wish them well in their future endeavors!
Meanwhile, Noah.K has joined the team as our second Audio Editor. He is helping us out with adding new voicelines into the game by providing editing and advice regarding the recorded takes we have received from our voice-actors. In the moderator department, Linkz has been promoted to Global Moderator. 
 
• Contribute

Skylords Reborn is a community-driven project fuelled by the passion and dedication of over 45 volunteers. We are always on the lookout for like-minded individuals. If you have a passion for gaming, programming, design, or marketing, we invite you to have a look at our open positions!


We are especially looking for an active and passionate outreach coordinator, helping us reach new Skylords by contacting streamers, influencers, media, and other potential parties. This role can make a drastic impact for Skylords Reborn, so please consider applying.
• Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator
As a Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator, you are responsible to spread the word and create awareness about Skylords Reborn, attracting veteran and new players alike. 
Your tasks will include actively researching and reaching out to potentially interested streamers, YouTubers, Discord channels, game magazines, among others. You will be responsible for the communication to and from interested parties and for any promotion deals (for example involving scratch codes). Please note that Skylords Reborn cannot do any paid promotions. 
More information. 
 
• 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 Lost Souls booster: SOUL-STON-ENOW-LIVE
The code is valid until December 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 October 2023

Thanks for your work, im gratefull that you keep updating this unique game, it makes me really happy.

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!

 
• Halloween Patch

Happy Halloween Skylords! Last weekend, we released a surprise Halloween patch. This patch contains various bugfixes and quality of life changes. Additionally, we have implemented some balance changes, including the previously announced Stronghold changes. 
We have also added the Fire-themed Forge. Keep yourself warm this month with this special themed Forge (active as a featured Forge till the end of November), or complete the achievement ''Never Thought of Him'' to permanently unlock the Forge in addition to 100.000 gold. This reward is retroactive, meaning those who already completed the achievement in the past automatically have the Fire-forge. 
Skylords might remember our Spooky Encounters Halloween Event from last year. We have now implemented a returning achievement, where you can earn a Lost Souls booster and a special Pumpkin-avatar for beating the map during the Halloween season. 
For those looking for a more classic event, we also have a Halloween event that went live earlier today. 
We hope you enjoy this special Halloween patch. You can find the full patch notes here. 
 
• New Card Reveal - Soulstone

This patch also contained the surprise reveal and release of Soulstone!
Today we would like to dive a bit deeper into its design, and how the release is both sudden and overdue.  
 

 
Soulstone is the very first building card we have introduced in the Rebirth Edition (if you don't count our Promo Worldbreaker Gun). It is a Frost card requiring only a single Frost orb, but with a unique twist: Skylords are able to upgrade the card to tier 2 once they have a second orb available. This allows the card to transition throughout the game, powering up alongside the other tools at your disposal. 
Upgrading the card reduces the cost for its memorial ability, and increase its lifepoints. Soulstone is a rare card and can drop from boosters or be reforged into. We also have a special Halloween event where you have a chance to earn it, more about that later in this Community Update.
 
 
 

Let's break down the card: 

Frozen Ward
Activate to trigger a global shielding spell that enchants every friendly structure to grant friendly units within a 20m radius an Ice Shield that absorbs up to 120 damage for 10 seconds. Units that already have an Ice Shield are unaffected. Each unit can only be affected once every 10 seconds. Lasts for 30 seconds. Also affects structures that are still under construction. Has a 60 seconds cool-down after the building was built. Reusable every 60 seconds.  
 
Memorial (mode change)
Activate to regenerate the full power of the Soulstone. After 2 seconds, the building gains Soul Armor and loses Frozen Ward. Requires 2 orbs to activate. Has a 60 seconds cool-down after the building was build. 
 

Soul Armor
Activate to trigger a global shielding spell that enchants every friendly structure to grant friendly units within a 20m radius an Ice Shield that absorbs up to 180 damage for 10 seconds. Units that already have an Ice Shield are unaffected. Each unit can only be affected once every 10 seconds. Lasts for 30 seconds. Also affects structures that are still under construction. Reusable every 60 seconds.
 
Soulstone has been in the making for quite a while now, and we would like to share some behind the scenes' information about its road to release. To do so, Lead Designer Windhunter will take you all the way back to 2021.
 
• Soulstone Design Notes

The release of Soulstone is a testament to how far the Skylords Reborn team has come in its development capacities. The original design concept for Soulstone dates back to June 2021, where it was one of the first cards ever designed by the faction design department. Soulstone's initial design pattern was very closely on the Soulstone players encounter in Defense of Hope, similar to how Banzai Lord is patterned closely on its eponymous mini-boss in Mo. The idea was that the player Soulstone would achieve its full its strength upon reaching T2 just as the Soulstone in Defense of Hope regenerates its strength partway through the mission, summoning Skyelfs to defend itself. We did not think that Frost needed a Skyelf spawner, but we did believe that Frost needed early game sustain and that providing shields would fit well with Soulstone's existing identity. In terms of initial vision and final design, the Soulstone we released a few days ago and the Soulstone we originally designed 28 months ago are highly similar. So why did it take so long?
The challenge of creating a card like Soulstone that could transform into a stronger version of itself upon reaching a higher tier was riddled with technical hurdles. Despite how much we have achieved, it is important to remember that we do not have the source code for BattleForge. Much of what we do is a slow process of reverse engineering and subsequent tool development to allow ourselves to make use of that reverse engineering. Many of our new cards and major redesigns to existing cards have required at least one new mechanic to be successfully reverse engineered before they could proceed. It is a frequent occurrence for our team's faction designers to put forward an idea, have it be accepted as worthwhile to pursue, only for development to hit a wall while we wait for our developers to play Marco Polo with the game engine until they can isolate the correct variable that then allows our card implementers to make the card a reality.
For Soulstone, the primary challenge was the description length. Embedding the functionalities of two cards would result in an exceedingly lengthy description, unprecedented in the game. When we run into major issues like this, we ask ourselves, can we design around it? The best idea we had was to make the Memorial ability self-destruct the existing Soulstone and summon a new, better Soulstone in its place. Altar of Chaos and Portal Nexus both summon new buildings, so this was clearly possible. A little janky, but a promising workaround nonetheless, except that both Altar of Chaos and Portal Nexus' summon abilities are hardcoded, meaning that if we add the ability to a different building, it will always and only summon the building from the original ability. Additionally, even the ability icons were hardcoded, so even if we got it to work, Soulstone would have had an Altar of Chaos icon on it. For regular followers of our Community Updates, you may have pieced together that this same issue would seem to be true for our upcoming card Bedrock, which summons its own Stone Launcher, and if so, you would now have a better understanding of one reason for why said card is not yet released. Anyway, the workaround also proved impossible, so we decided to adjust the design so both the T1 and T2 version could reasonably fit into a single card.
While lacking its originally intended evolution mechanic, Soulstone would have still made a good addition to the game. We implemented the global shields and found that it worked fine. Then we started designing a slightly frostier texture for the building, the original is quite gray, only to find that when we tried to construct the Soulstone in-game that the building got stuck under the ground. It was there, but completely buried. With no knowledge of how to fix this issue, we had to abandon the possibility of using the Soulstone building itself. What we knew we could do was retexture existing buildings with functioning build animations, so we decided to change the name and use a different building instead. Our most promising attempt was trying to retexture Fountain of Rebirth, turning its roots into icicles in the process.
After a half dozen aborted tries leading to more and more frustration from the art team, and in light of the ongoing implementation struggles, we made the decision to shelve the development of Soulstone for the time being. This, while the right decision, became very awkward for us as a team because we justified several changes to Frost T1 cards with the reasoning that a new "Frost T1 sustain option" would be releasing next patch. Obviously, this was no longer true, so we scrambled to make changes to Northern Keep as compensation. Instances like this one are one reason we are careful not to announce things until we are sure they are possible.
For nearly two years, Soulstone sat untouched and largely forgotten until early this summer one of the team members pointed out that the original Soulstone design was now fully possible. We did a few preliminary tests and discovered that the team member was correct. In the course of two years, we had advanced our understanding of the game to the point that what was previously impossible was now relatively simple. Once the various card and ability artworks were finished, the building retextured, and the 3D FX crafted, the card implementation took a little under a week. At long last, on Oct. 28th 2023, Soulstone made its way into the Forge.
 
• Events

If you want to get your hands on the brand-new Soulstone card, be sure to participate in our official Halloween event! We will distribute the card among 50% of the participants, and there are also Lost Souls boosters to be won! 
 
• NEW - Official 1p rPvE Contest - Resurrection of the Lost Soul
The Bandits have disturbed our rest for too long! It is time for the Souls to hunt the Soulhunters, show the Power of Lost Souls in this rPvE 1p Contest. The more participate, the more Soulstones we will Raffle! More information.
 
 • FIRST PHASE - PvP AI programming contest
We are gathering players for a new type of event. Get ready for an AI Programming Tournament, where the submitted programs will face off in an epic showdown to find the ultimate AI strategist! More information.
 
• FINISHED - PvP Rookie Tournament
Last weekend, Triggz hosted a special Rookie 1vs1 Tournament. 22 inexperienced players entered the ring and battled it out. The tournament was streamed live, and can be rewatched on the YouTube-channel of Eirias. More information. 
 
In between our monthly Community Updates, we host various events and tournaments, so be sure to keep a close eye on the in-game event tab and the forum calendar to stay informed and not miss out on any exciting events!

• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our other Event Organizers, @Metagross31or @Minashigo Hiko. We can help you out with various topics and are glad to discuss potential ideas. We can also sponsor the prize pool for your event. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you.
 
• Community Spotlight - Masters of the Forge

In this podcast-like series, Kapo interviews various staff members to discuss the project and personal stories about their interaction with BattleForge and Skylords Reborn. There are currently 5 episodes to watch:
• Episode 1: Dutchy, Lead Moderator - Watch now.
• Episode 2: Majora, Project Coordinator - Watch now.
• Episode 3: Volin, Testing Coordinator -  Watch now.

• New: Episode 4: RadicalX, Faction Designer
In this episode, Kapo and RadicalX talk about Radicals fame as one of the best players in speedrunning and PvP, but also about design (decisions) and loads of topics submitted by user questions. Watch now.

• New: Episode 5: Ult, Server Developer
In this episode, Kapo and Ult talk about the server side of the game, especially about systems like the achievements or cosmetics, as well as future projects like map modifiers. Watch now.
Episode 6 will be hosted live on the 4th of November and feature Ultralord, Video Editor. Tune in live on Twitch, or watch back on YouTube the day after.  
 
• Team changes

During the past month, WaterMelonLord, Nukie and Dallarian have moved on from the team for various reasons. All three of them helped us out with moderation. Additionally, Nukie managed the Event Department, where Dallarian helped the Map Department set the first step into new campaign maps. We appreciate their contributions and wish them well in their future endeavors!
Meanwhile, Noah.K has joined the team as our second Audio Editor. He is helping us out with adding new voicelines into the game by providing editing and advice regarding the recorded takes we have received from our voice-actors. In the moderator department, Linkz has been promoted to Global Moderator. 
 
• Contribute

Skylords Reborn is a community-driven project fuelled by the passion and dedication of over 45 volunteers. We are always on the lookout for like-minded individuals. If you have a passion for gaming, programming, design, or marketing, we invite you to have a look at our open positions!


We are especially looking for an active and passionate outreach coordinator, helping us reach new Skylords by contacting streamers, influencers, media, and other potential parties. This role can make a drastic impact for Skylords Reborn, so please consider applying.
• Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator
As a Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator, you are responsible to spread the word and create awareness about Skylords Reborn, attracting veteran and new players alike. 
Your tasks will include actively researching and reaching out to potentially interested streamers, YouTubers, Discord channels, game magazines, among others. You will be responsible for the communication to and from interested parties and for any promotion deals (for example involving scratch codes). Please note that Skylords Reborn cannot do any paid promotions. 
More information. 
 
• 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 Lost Souls booster: SOUL-STON-ENOW-LIVE
The code is valid until December 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 October 2023

I was able to reproduce it. Make a deck with 4 cards and put them on slot 1-4. Make card 3 icon card. Pick a fifth card and drop it between slot 2 and slot 3. This will move card number 3 and 4 to slot 4 and 5 and it will break the icon.

Thank you all for the constant updates. 🙂

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!

 
• Halloween Patch

Happy Halloween Skylords! Last weekend, we released a surprise Halloween patch. This patch contains various bugfixes and quality of life changes. Additionally, we have implemented some balance changes, including the previously announced Stronghold changes. 
We have also added the Fire-themed Forge. Keep yourself warm this month with this special themed Forge (active as a featured Forge till the end of November), or complete the achievement ''Never Thought of Him'' to permanently unlock the Forge in addition to 100.000 gold. This reward is retroactive, meaning those who already completed the achievement in the past automatically have the Fire-forge. 
Skylords might remember our Spooky Encounters Halloween Event from last year. We have now implemented a returning achievement, where you can earn a Lost Souls booster and a special Pumpkin-avatar for beating the map during the Halloween season. 
For those looking for a more classic event, we also have a Halloween event that went live earlier today. 
We hope you enjoy this special Halloween patch. You can find the full patch notes here. 
 
• New Card Reveal - Soulstone

This patch also contained the surprise reveal and release of Soulstone!
Today we would like to dive a bit deeper into its design, and how the release is both sudden and overdue.  
 

 
Soulstone is the very first building card we have introduced in the Rebirth Edition (if you don't count our Promo Worldbreaker Gun). It is a Frost card requiring only a single Frost orb, but with a unique twist: Skylords are able to upgrade the card to tier 2 once they have a second orb available. This allows the card to transition throughout the game, powering up alongside the other tools at your disposal. 
Upgrading the card reduces the cost for its memorial ability, and increase its lifepoints. Soulstone is a rare card and can drop from boosters or be reforged into. We also have a special Halloween event where you have a chance to earn it, more about that later in this Community Update.
 
 
 

Let's break down the card: 

Frozen Ward
Activate to trigger a global shielding spell that enchants every friendly structure to grant friendly units within a 20m radius an Ice Shield that absorbs up to 120 damage for 10 seconds. Units that already have an Ice Shield are unaffected. Each unit can only be affected once every 10 seconds. Lasts for 30 seconds. Also affects structures that are still under construction. Has a 60 seconds cool-down after the building was built. Reusable every 60 seconds.  
 
Memorial (mode change)
Activate to regenerate the full power of the Soulstone. After 2 seconds, the building gains Soul Armor and loses Frozen Ward. Requires 2 orbs to activate. Has a 60 seconds cool-down after the building was build. 
 

Soul Armor
Activate to trigger a global shielding spell that enchants every friendly structure to grant friendly units within a 20m radius an Ice Shield that absorbs up to 180 damage for 10 seconds. Units that already have an Ice Shield are unaffected. Each unit can only be affected once every 10 seconds. Lasts for 30 seconds. Also affects structures that are still under construction. Reusable every 60 seconds.
 
Soulstone has been in the making for quite a while now, and we would like to share some behind the scenes' information about its road to release. To do so, Lead Designer Windhunter will take you all the way back to 2021.
 
• Soulstone Design Notes

The release of Soulstone is a testament to how far the Skylords Reborn team has come in its development capacities. The original design concept for Soulstone dates back to June 2021, where it was one of the first cards ever designed by the faction design department. Soulstone's initial design pattern was very closely on the Soulstone players encounter in Defense of Hope, similar to how Banzai Lord is patterned closely on its eponymous mini-boss in Mo. The idea was that the player Soulstone would achieve its full its strength upon reaching T2 just as the Soulstone in Defense of Hope regenerates its strength partway through the mission, summoning Skyelfs to defend itself. We did not think that Frost needed a Skyelf spawner, but we did believe that Frost needed early game sustain and that providing shields would fit well with Soulstone's existing identity. In terms of initial vision and final design, the Soulstone we released a few days ago and the Soulstone we originally designed 28 months ago are highly similar. So why did it take so long?
The challenge of creating a card like Soulstone that could transform into a stronger version of itself upon reaching a higher tier was riddled with technical hurdles. Despite how much we have achieved, it is important to remember that we do not have the source code for BattleForge. Much of what we do is a slow process of reverse engineering and subsequent tool development to allow ourselves to make use of that reverse engineering. Many of our new cards and major redesigns to existing cards have required at least one new mechanic to be successfully reverse engineered before they could proceed. It is a frequent occurrence for our team's faction designers to put forward an idea, have it be accepted as worthwhile to pursue, only for development to hit a wall while we wait for our developers to play Marco Polo with the game engine until they can isolate the correct variable that then allows our card implementers to make the card a reality.
For Soulstone, the primary challenge was the description length. Embedding the functionalities of two cards would result in an exceedingly lengthy description, unprecedented in the game. When we run into major issues like this, we ask ourselves, can we design around it? The best idea we had was to make the Memorial ability self-destruct the existing Soulstone and summon a new, better Soulstone in its place. Altar of Chaos and Portal Nexus both summon new buildings, so this was clearly possible. A little janky, but a promising workaround nonetheless, except that both Altar of Chaos and Portal Nexus' summon abilities are hardcoded, meaning that if we add the ability to a different building, it will always and only summon the building from the original ability. Additionally, even the ability icons were hardcoded, so even if we got it to work, Soulstone would have had an Altar of Chaos icon on it. For regular followers of our Community Updates, you may have pieced together that this same issue would seem to be true for our upcoming card Bedrock, which summons its own Stone Launcher, and if so, you would now have a better understanding of one reason for why said card is not yet released. Anyway, the workaround also proved impossible, so we decided to adjust the design so both the T1 and T2 version could reasonably fit into a single card.
While lacking its originally intended evolution mechanic, Soulstone would have still made a good addition to the game. We implemented the global shields and found that it worked fine. Then we started designing a slightly frostier texture for the building, the original is quite gray, only to find that when we tried to construct the Soulstone in-game that the building got stuck under the ground. It was there, but completely buried. With no knowledge of how to fix this issue, we had to abandon the possibility of using the Soulstone building itself. What we knew we could do was retexture existing buildings with functioning build animations, so we decided to change the name and use a different building instead. Our most promising attempt was trying to retexture Fountain of Rebirth, turning its roots into icicles in the process.
After a half dozen aborted tries leading to more and more frustration from the art team, and in light of the ongoing implementation struggles, we made the decision to shelve the development of Soulstone for the time being. This, while the right decision, became very awkward for us as a team because we justified several changes to Frost T1 cards with the reasoning that a new "Frost T1 sustain option" would be releasing next patch. Obviously, this was no longer true, so we scrambled to make changes to Northern Keep as compensation. Instances like this one are one reason we are careful not to announce things until we are sure they are possible.
For nearly two years, Soulstone sat untouched and largely forgotten until early this summer one of the team members pointed out that the original Soulstone design was now fully possible. We did a few preliminary tests and discovered that the team member was correct. In the course of two years, we had advanced our understanding of the game to the point that what was previously impossible was now relatively simple. Once the various card and ability artworks were finished, the building retextured, and the 3D FX crafted, the card implementation took a little under a week. At long last, on Oct. 28th 2023, Soulstone made its way into the Forge.
 
• Events

If you want to get your hands on the brand-new Soulstone card, be sure to participate in our official Halloween event! We will distribute the card among 50% of the participants, and there are also Lost Souls boosters to be won! 
 
• NEW - Official 1p rPvE Contest - Resurrection of the Lost Soul
The Bandits have disturbed our rest for too long! It is time for the Souls to hunt the Soulhunters, show the Power of Lost Souls in this rPvE 1p Contest. The more participate, the more Soulstones we will Raffle! More information.
 
 • FIRST PHASE - PvP AI programming contest
We are gathering players for a new type of event. Get ready for an AI Programming Tournament, where the submitted programs will face off in an epic showdown to find the ultimate AI strategist! More information.
 
• FINISHED - PvP Rookie Tournament
Last weekend, Triggz hosted a special Rookie 1vs1 Tournament. 22 inexperienced players entered the ring and battled it out. The tournament was streamed live, and can be rewatched on the YouTube-channel of Eirias. More information. 
 
In between our monthly Community Updates, we host various events and tournaments, so be sure to keep a close eye on the in-game event tab and the forum calendar to stay informed and not miss out on any exciting events!

• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our other Event Organizers, @Metagross31or @Minashigo Hiko. We can help you out with various topics and are glad to discuss potential ideas. We can also sponsor the prize pool for your event. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you.
 
• Community Spotlight - Masters of the Forge

In this podcast-like series, Kapo interviews various staff members to discuss the project and personal stories about their interaction with BattleForge and Skylords Reborn. There are currently 5 episodes to watch:
• Episode 1: Dutchy, Lead Moderator - Watch now.
• Episode 2: Majora, Project Coordinator - Watch now.
• Episode 3: Volin, Testing Coordinator -  Watch now.

• New: Episode 4: RadicalX, Faction Designer
In this episode, Kapo and RadicalX talk about Radicals fame as one of the best players in speedrunning and PvP, but also about design (decisions) and loads of topics submitted by user questions. Watch now.

• New: Episode 5: Ult, Server Developer
In this episode, Kapo and Ult talk about the server side of the game, especially about systems like the achievements or cosmetics, as well as future projects like map modifiers. Watch now.
Episode 6 will be hosted live on the 4th of November and feature Ultralord, Video Editor. Tune in live on Twitch, or watch back on YouTube the day after.  
 
• Team changes

During the past month, WaterMelonLord, Nukie and Dallarian have moved on from the team for various reasons. All three of them helped us out with moderation. Additionally, Nukie managed the Event Department, where Dallarian helped the Map Department set the first step into new campaign maps. We appreciate their contributions and wish them well in their future endeavors!
Meanwhile, Noah.K has joined the team as our second Audio Editor. He is helping us out with adding new voicelines into the game by providing editing and advice regarding the recorded takes we have received from our voice-actors. In the moderator department, Linkz has been promoted to Global Moderator. 
 
• Contribute

Skylords Reborn is a community-driven project fuelled by the passion and dedication of over 45 volunteers. We are always on the lookout for like-minded individuals. If you have a passion for gaming, programming, design, or marketing, we invite you to have a look at our open positions!


We are especially looking for an active and passionate outreach coordinator, helping us reach new Skylords by contacting streamers, influencers, media, and other potential parties. This role can make a drastic impact for Skylords Reborn, so please consider applying.
• Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator
As a Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator, you are responsible to spread the word and create awareness about Skylords Reborn, attracting veteran and new players alike. 
Your tasks will include actively researching and reaching out to potentially interested streamers, YouTubers, Discord channels, game magazines, among others. You will be responsible for the communication to and from interested parties and for any promotion deals (for example involving scratch codes). Please note that Skylords Reborn cannot do any paid promotions. 
More information. 
 
• 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 Lost Souls booster: SOUL-STON-ENOW-LIVE
The code is valid until December 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 October 2023

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!

 
• Halloween Patch

Happy Halloween Skylords! Last weekend, we released a surprise Halloween patch. This patch contains various bugfixes and quality of life changes. Additionally, we have implemented some balance changes, including the previously announced Stronghold changes. 
We have also added the Fire-themed Forge. Keep yourself warm this month with this special themed Forge (active as a featured Forge till the end of November), or complete the achievement ''Never Thought of Him'' to permanently unlock the Forge in addition to 100.000 gold. This reward is retroactive, meaning those who already completed the achievement in the past automatically have the Fire-forge. 
Skylords might remember our Spooky Encounters Halloween Event from last year. We have now implemented a returning achievement, where you can earn a Lost Souls booster and a special Pumpkin-avatar for beating the map during the Halloween season. 
For those looking for a more classic event, we also have a Halloween event that went live earlier today. 
We hope you enjoy this special Halloween patch. You can find the full patch notes here. 
 
• New Card Reveal - Soulstone

This patch also contained the surprise reveal and release of Soulstone!
Today we would like to dive a bit deeper into its design, and how the release is both sudden and overdue.  
 

 
Soulstone is the very first building card we have introduced in the Rebirth Edition (if you don't count our Promo Worldbreaker Gun). It is a Frost card requiring only a single Frost orb, but with a unique twist: Skylords are able to upgrade the card to tier 2 once they have a second orb available. This allows the card to transition throughout the game, powering up alongside the other tools at your disposal. 
Upgrading the card reduces the cost for its memorial ability, and increase its lifepoints. Soulstone is a rare card and can drop from boosters or be reforged into. We also have a special Halloween event where you have a chance to earn it, more about that later in this Community Update.
 
 
 

Let's break down the card: 

Frozen Ward
Activate to trigger a global shielding spell that enchants every friendly structure to grant friendly units within a 20m radius an Ice Shield that absorbs up to 120 damage for 10 seconds. Units that already have an Ice Shield are unaffected. Each unit can only be affected once every 10 seconds. Lasts for 30 seconds. Also affects structures that are still under construction. Has a 60 seconds cool-down after the building was built. Reusable every 60 seconds.  
 
Memorial (mode change)
Activate to regenerate the full power of the Soulstone. After 2 seconds, the building gains Soul Armor and loses Frozen Ward. Requires 2 orbs to activate. Has a 60 seconds cool-down after the building was build. 
 

Soul Armor
Activate to trigger a global shielding spell that enchants every friendly structure to grant friendly units within a 20m radius an Ice Shield that absorbs up to 180 damage for 10 seconds. Units that already have an Ice Shield are unaffected. Each unit can only be affected once every 10 seconds. Lasts for 30 seconds. Also affects structures that are still under construction. Reusable every 60 seconds.
 
Soulstone has been in the making for quite a while now, and we would like to share some behind the scenes' information about its road to release. To do so, Lead Designer Windhunter will take you all the way back to 2021.
 
• Soulstone Design Notes

The release of Soulstone is a testament to how far the Skylords Reborn team has come in its development capacities. The original design concept for Soulstone dates back to June 2021, where it was one of the first cards ever designed by the faction design department. Soulstone's initial design pattern was very closely on the Soulstone players encounter in Defense of Hope, similar to how Banzai Lord is patterned closely on its eponymous mini-boss in Mo. The idea was that the player Soulstone would achieve its full its strength upon reaching T2 just as the Soulstone in Defense of Hope regenerates its strength partway through the mission, summoning Skyelfs to defend itself. We did not think that Frost needed a Skyelf spawner, but we did believe that Frost needed early game sustain and that providing shields would fit well with Soulstone's existing identity. In terms of initial vision and final design, the Soulstone we released a few days ago and the Soulstone we originally designed 28 months ago are highly similar. So why did it take so long?
The challenge of creating a card like Soulstone that could transform into a stronger version of itself upon reaching a higher tier was riddled with technical hurdles. Despite how much we have achieved, it is important to remember that we do not have the source code for BattleForge. Much of what we do is a slow process of reverse engineering and subsequent tool development to allow ourselves to make use of that reverse engineering. Many of our new cards and major redesigns to existing cards have required at least one new mechanic to be successfully reverse engineered before they could proceed. It is a frequent occurrence for our team's faction designers to put forward an idea, have it be accepted as worthwhile to pursue, only for development to hit a wall while we wait for our developers to play Marco Polo with the game engine until they can isolate the correct variable that then allows our card implementers to make the card a reality.
For Soulstone, the primary challenge was the description length. Embedding the functionalities of two cards would result in an exceedingly lengthy description, unprecedented in the game. When we run into major issues like this, we ask ourselves, can we design around it? The best idea we had was to make the Memorial ability self-destruct the existing Soulstone and summon a new, better Soulstone in its place. Altar of Chaos and Portal Nexus both summon new buildings, so this was clearly possible. A little janky, but a promising workaround nonetheless, except that both Altar of Chaos and Portal Nexus' summon abilities are hardcoded, meaning that if we add the ability to a different building, it will always and only summon the building from the original ability. Additionally, even the ability icons were hardcoded, so even if we got it to work, Soulstone would have had an Altar of Chaos icon on it. For regular followers of our Community Updates, you may have pieced together that this same issue would seem to be true for our upcoming card Bedrock, which summons its own Stone Launcher, and if so, you would now have a better understanding of one reason for why said card is not yet released. Anyway, the workaround also proved impossible, so we decided to adjust the design so both the T1 and T2 version could reasonably fit into a single card.
While lacking its originally intended evolution mechanic, Soulstone would have still made a good addition to the game. We implemented the global shields and found that it worked fine. Then we started designing a slightly frostier texture for the building, the original is quite gray, only to find that when we tried to construct the Soulstone in-game that the building got stuck under the ground. It was there, but completely buried. With no knowledge of how to fix this issue, we had to abandon the possibility of using the Soulstone building itself. What we knew we could do was retexture existing buildings with functioning build animations, so we decided to change the name and use a different building instead. Our most promising attempt was trying to retexture Fountain of Rebirth, turning its roots into icicles in the process.
After a half dozen aborted tries leading to more and more frustration from the art team, and in light of the ongoing implementation struggles, we made the decision to shelve the development of Soulstone for the time being. This, while the right decision, became very awkward for us as a team because we justified several changes to Frost T1 cards with the reasoning that a new "Frost T1 sustain option" would be releasing next patch. Obviously, this was no longer true, so we scrambled to make changes to Northern Keep as compensation. Instances like this one are one reason we are careful not to announce things until we are sure they are possible.
For nearly two years, Soulstone sat untouched and largely forgotten until early this summer one of the team members pointed out that the original Soulstone design was now fully possible. We did a few preliminary tests and discovered that the team member was correct. In the course of two years, we had advanced our understanding of the game to the point that what was previously impossible was now relatively simple. Once the various card and ability artworks were finished, the building retextured, and the 3D FX crafted, the card implementation took a little under a week. At long last, on Oct. 28th 2023, Soulstone made its way into the Forge.
 
• Events

If you want to get your hands on the brand-new Soulstone card, be sure to participate in our official Halloween event! We will distribute the card among 50% of the participants, and there are also Lost Souls boosters to be won! 
 
• NEW - Official 1p rPvE Contest - Resurrection of the Lost Soul
The Bandits have disturbed our rest for too long! It is time for the Souls to hunt the Soulhunters, show the Power of Lost Souls in this rPvE 1p Contest. The more participate, the more Soulstones we will Raffle! More information.
 
 • FIRST PHASE - PvP AI programming contest
We are gathering players for a new type of event. Get ready for an AI Programming Tournament, where the submitted programs will face off in an epic showdown to find the ultimate AI strategist! More information.
 
• FINISHED - PvP Rookie Tournament
Last weekend, Triggz hosted a special Rookie 1vs1 Tournament. 22 inexperienced players entered the ring and battled it out. The tournament was streamed live, and can be rewatched on the YouTube-channel of Eirias. More information. 
 
In between our monthly Community Updates, we host various events and tournaments, so be sure to keep a close eye on the in-game event tab and the forum calendar to stay informed and not miss out on any exciting events!

• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our other Event Organizers, @Metagross31or @Minashigo Hiko. We can help you out with various topics and are glad to discuss potential ideas. We can also sponsor the prize pool for your event. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you.
 
• Community Spotlight - Masters of the Forge

In this podcast-like series, Kapo interviews various staff members to discuss the project and personal stories about their interaction with BattleForge and Skylords Reborn. There are currently 5 episodes to watch:
• Episode 1: Dutchy, Lead Moderator - Watch now.
• Episode 2: Majora, Project Coordinator - Watch now.
• Episode 3: Volin, Testing Coordinator -  Watch now.

• New: Episode 4: RadicalX, Faction Designer
In this episode, Kapo and RadicalX talk about Radicals fame as one of the best players in speedrunning and PvP, but also about design (decisions) and loads of topics submitted by user questions. Watch now.

• New: Episode 5: Ult, Server Developer
In this episode, Kapo and Ult talk about the server side of the game, especially about systems like the achievements or cosmetics, as well as future projects like map modifiers. Watch now.
Episode 6 will be hosted live on the 4th of November and feature Ultralord, Video Editor. Tune in live on Twitch, or watch back on YouTube the day after.  
 
• Team changes

During the past month, WaterMelonLord, Nukie and Dallarian have moved on from the team for various reasons. All three of them helped us out with moderation. Additionally, Nukie managed the Event Department, where Dallarian helped the Map Department set the first step into new campaign maps. We appreciate their contributions and wish them well in their future endeavors!
Meanwhile, Noah.K has joined the team as our second Audio Editor. He is helping us out with adding new voicelines into the game by providing editing and advice regarding the recorded takes we have received from our voice-actors. In the moderator department, Linkz has been promoted to Global Moderator. 
 
• Contribute

Skylords Reborn is a community-driven project fuelled by the passion and dedication of over 45 volunteers. We are always on the lookout for like-minded individuals. If you have a passion for gaming, programming, design, or marketing, we invite you to have a look at our open positions!


We are especially looking for an active and passionate outreach coordinator, helping us reach new Skylords by contacting streamers, influencers, media, and other potential parties. This role can make a drastic impact for Skylords Reborn, so please consider applying.
• Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator
As a Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator, you are responsible to spread the word and create awareness about Skylords Reborn, attracting veteran and new players alike. 
Your tasks will include actively researching and reaching out to potentially interested streamers, YouTubers, Discord channels, game magazines, among others. You will be responsible for the communication to and from interested parties and for any promotion deals (for example involving scratch codes). Please note that Skylords Reborn cannot do any paid promotions. 
More information. 
 
• 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 Lost Souls booster: SOUL-STON-ENOW-LIVE
The code is valid until December 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 October 2023

@Fundus I encourage you to make a bug report in the proper forum section rather than posting in old patch note threads:
 
https://forum.skylords.eu/index.php?/forum/41-report-a-bug/
 
In that bug report we also need replays which demonstrate the issue, otherwise it is hard for us to investigate this. Thanks!

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!

 
• Halloween Patch

Happy Halloween Skylords! Last weekend, we released a surprise Halloween patch. This patch contains various bugfixes and quality of life changes. Additionally, we have implemented some balance changes, including the previously announced Stronghold changes. 
We have also added the Fire-themed Forge. Keep yourself warm this month with this special themed Forge (active as a featured Forge till the end of November), or complete the achievement ''Never Thought of Him'' to permanently unlock the Forge in addition to 100.000 gold. This reward is retroactive, meaning those who already completed the achievement in the past automatically have the Fire-forge. 
Skylords might remember our Spooky Encounters Halloween Event from last year. We have now implemented a returning achievement, where you can earn a Lost Souls booster and a special Pumpkin-avatar for beating the map during the Halloween season. 
For those looking for a more classic event, we also have a Halloween event that went live earlier today. 
We hope you enjoy this special Halloween patch. You can find the full patch notes here. 
 
• New Card Reveal - Soulstone

This patch also contained the surprise reveal and release of Soulstone!
Today we would like to dive a bit deeper into its design, and how the release is both sudden and overdue.  
 

 
Soulstone is the very first building card we have introduced in the Rebirth Edition (if you don't count our Promo Worldbreaker Gun). It is a Frost card requiring only a single Frost orb, but with a unique twist: Skylords are able to upgrade the card to tier 2 once they have a second orb available. This allows the card to transition throughout the game, powering up alongside the other tools at your disposal. 
Upgrading the card reduces the cost for its memorial ability, and increase its lifepoints. Soulstone is a rare card and can drop from boosters or be reforged into. We also have a special Halloween event where you have a chance to earn it, more about that later in this Community Update.
 
 
 

Let's break down the card: 

Frozen Ward
Activate to trigger a global shielding spell that enchants every friendly structure to grant friendly units within a 20m radius an Ice Shield that absorbs up to 120 damage for 10 seconds. Units that already have an Ice Shield are unaffected. Each unit can only be affected once every 10 seconds. Lasts for 30 seconds. Also affects structures that are still under construction. Has a 60 seconds cool-down after the building was built. Reusable every 60 seconds.  
 
Memorial (mode change)
Activate to regenerate the full power of the Soulstone. After 2 seconds, the building gains Soul Armor and loses Frozen Ward. Requires 2 orbs to activate. Has a 60 seconds cool-down after the building was build. 
 

Soul Armor
Activate to trigger a global shielding spell that enchants every friendly structure to grant friendly units within a 20m radius an Ice Shield that absorbs up to 180 damage for 10 seconds. Units that already have an Ice Shield are unaffected. Each unit can only be affected once every 10 seconds. Lasts for 30 seconds. Also affects structures that are still under construction. Reusable every 60 seconds.
 
Soulstone has been in the making for quite a while now, and we would like to share some behind the scenes' information about its road to release. To do so, Lead Designer Windhunter will take you all the way back to 2021.
 
• Soulstone Design Notes

The release of Soulstone is a testament to how far the Skylords Reborn team has come in its development capacities. The original design concept for Soulstone dates back to June 2021, where it was one of the first cards ever designed by the faction design department. Soulstone's initial design pattern was very closely on the Soulstone players encounter in Defense of Hope, similar to how Banzai Lord is patterned closely on its eponymous mini-boss in Mo. The idea was that the player Soulstone would achieve its full its strength upon reaching T2 just as the Soulstone in Defense of Hope regenerates its strength partway through the mission, summoning Skyelfs to defend itself. We did not think that Frost needed a Skyelf spawner, but we did believe that Frost needed early game sustain and that providing shields would fit well with Soulstone's existing identity. In terms of initial vision and final design, the Soulstone we released a few days ago and the Soulstone we originally designed 28 months ago are highly similar. So why did it take so long?
The challenge of creating a card like Soulstone that could transform into a stronger version of itself upon reaching a higher tier was riddled with technical hurdles. Despite how much we have achieved, it is important to remember that we do not have the source code for BattleForge. Much of what we do is a slow process of reverse engineering and subsequent tool development to allow ourselves to make use of that reverse engineering. Many of our new cards and major redesigns to existing cards have required at least one new mechanic to be successfully reverse engineered before they could proceed. It is a frequent occurrence for our team's faction designers to put forward an idea, have it be accepted as worthwhile to pursue, only for development to hit a wall while we wait for our developers to play Marco Polo with the game engine until they can isolate the correct variable that then allows our card implementers to make the card a reality.
For Soulstone, the primary challenge was the description length. Embedding the functionalities of two cards would result in an exceedingly lengthy description, unprecedented in the game. When we run into major issues like this, we ask ourselves, can we design around it? The best idea we had was to make the Memorial ability self-destruct the existing Soulstone and summon a new, better Soulstone in its place. Altar of Chaos and Portal Nexus both summon new buildings, so this was clearly possible. A little janky, but a promising workaround nonetheless, except that both Altar of Chaos and Portal Nexus' summon abilities are hardcoded, meaning that if we add the ability to a different building, it will always and only summon the building from the original ability. Additionally, even the ability icons were hardcoded, so even if we got it to work, Soulstone would have had an Altar of Chaos icon on it. For regular followers of our Community Updates, you may have pieced together that this same issue would seem to be true for our upcoming card Bedrock, which summons its own Stone Launcher, and if so, you would now have a better understanding of one reason for why said card is not yet released. Anyway, the workaround also proved impossible, so we decided to adjust the design so both the T1 and T2 version could reasonably fit into a single card.
While lacking its originally intended evolution mechanic, Soulstone would have still made a good addition to the game. We implemented the global shields and found that it worked fine. Then we started designing a slightly frostier texture for the building, the original is quite gray, only to find that when we tried to construct the Soulstone in-game that the building got stuck under the ground. It was there, but completely buried. With no knowledge of how to fix this issue, we had to abandon the possibility of using the Soulstone building itself. What we knew we could do was retexture existing buildings with functioning build animations, so we decided to change the name and use a different building instead. Our most promising attempt was trying to retexture Fountain of Rebirth, turning its roots into icicles in the process.
After a half dozen aborted tries leading to more and more frustration from the art team, and in light of the ongoing implementation struggles, we made the decision to shelve the development of Soulstone for the time being. This, while the right decision, became very awkward for us as a team because we justified several changes to Frost T1 cards with the reasoning that a new "Frost T1 sustain option" would be releasing next patch. Obviously, this was no longer true, so we scrambled to make changes to Northern Keep as compensation. Instances like this one are one reason we are careful not to announce things until we are sure they are possible.
For nearly two years, Soulstone sat untouched and largely forgotten until early this summer one of the team members pointed out that the original Soulstone design was now fully possible. We did a few preliminary tests and discovered that the team member was correct. In the course of two years, we had advanced our understanding of the game to the point that what was previously impossible was now relatively simple. Once the various card and ability artworks were finished, the building retextured, and the 3D FX crafted, the card implementation took a little under a week. At long last, on Oct. 28th 2023, Soulstone made its way into the Forge.
 
• Events

If you want to get your hands on the brand-new Soulstone card, be sure to participate in our official Halloween event! We will distribute the card among 50% of the participants, and there are also Lost Souls boosters to be won! 
 
• NEW - Official 1p rPvE Contest - Resurrection of the Lost Soul
The Bandits have disturbed our rest for too long! It is time for the Souls to hunt the Soulhunters, show the Power of Lost Souls in this rPvE 1p Contest. The more participate, the more Soulstones we will Raffle! More information.
 
 • FIRST PHASE - PvP AI programming contest
We are gathering players for a new type of event. Get ready for an AI Programming Tournament, where the submitted programs will face off in an epic showdown to find the ultimate AI strategist! More information.
 
• FINISHED - PvP Rookie Tournament
Last weekend, Triggz hosted a special Rookie 1vs1 Tournament. 22 inexperienced players entered the ring and battled it out. The tournament was streamed live, and can be rewatched on the YouTube-channel of Eirias. More information. 
 
In between our monthly Community Updates, we host various events and tournaments, so be sure to keep a close eye on the in-game event tab and the forum calendar to stay informed and not miss out on any exciting events!

• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our other Event Organizers, @Metagross31or @Minashigo Hiko. We can help you out with various topics and are glad to discuss potential ideas. We can also sponsor the prize pool for your event. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you.
 
• Community Spotlight - Masters of the Forge

In this podcast-like series, Kapo interviews various staff members to discuss the project and personal stories about their interaction with BattleForge and Skylords Reborn. There are currently 5 episodes to watch:
• Episode 1: Dutchy, Lead Moderator - Watch now.
• Episode 2: Majora, Project Coordinator - Watch now.
• Episode 3: Volin, Testing Coordinator -  Watch now.

• New: Episode 4: RadicalX, Faction Designer
In this episode, Kapo and RadicalX talk about Radicals fame as one of the best players in speedrunning and PvP, but also about design (decisions) and loads of topics submitted by user questions. Watch now.

• New: Episode 5: Ult, Server Developer
In this episode, Kapo and Ult talk about the server side of the game, especially about systems like the achievements or cosmetics, as well as future projects like map modifiers. Watch now.
Episode 6 will be hosted live on the 4th of November and feature Ultralord, Video Editor. Tune in live on Twitch, or watch back on YouTube the day after.  
 
• Team changes

During the past month, WaterMelonLord, Nukie and Dallarian have moved on from the team for various reasons. All three of them helped us out with moderation. Additionally, Nukie managed the Event Department, where Dallarian helped the Map Department set the first step into new campaign maps. We appreciate their contributions and wish them well in their future endeavors!
Meanwhile, Noah.K has joined the team as our second Audio Editor. He is helping us out with adding new voicelines into the game by providing editing and advice regarding the recorded takes we have received from our voice-actors. In the moderator department, Linkz has been promoted to Global Moderator. 
 
• Contribute

Skylords Reborn is a community-driven project fuelled by the passion and dedication of over 45 volunteers. We are always on the lookout for like-minded individuals. If you have a passion for gaming, programming, design, or marketing, we invite you to have a look at our open positions!


We are especially looking for an active and passionate outreach coordinator, helping us reach new Skylords by contacting streamers, influencers, media, and other potential parties. This role can make a drastic impact for Skylords Reborn, so please consider applying.
• Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator
As a Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator, you are responsible to spread the word and create awareness about Skylords Reborn, attracting veteran and new players alike. 
Your tasks will include actively researching and reaching out to potentially interested streamers, YouTubers, Discord channels, game magazines, among others. You will be responsible for the communication to and from interested parties and for any promotion deals (for example involving scratch codes). Please note that Skylords Reborn cannot do any paid promotions. 
More information. 
 
• 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 Lost Souls booster: SOUL-STON-ENOW-LIVE
The code is valid until December 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 October 2023

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!

 
• Halloween Patch

Happy Halloween Skylords! Last weekend, we released a surprise Halloween patch. This patch contains various bugfixes and quality of life changes. Additionally, we have implemented some balance changes, including the previously announced Stronghold changes. 
We have also added the Fire-themed Forge. Keep yourself warm this month with this special themed Forge (active as a featured Forge till the end of November), or complete the achievement ''Never Thought of Him'' to permanently unlock the Forge in addition to 100.000 gold. This reward is retroactive, meaning those who already completed the achievement in the past automatically have the Fire-forge. 
Skylords might remember our Spooky Encounters Halloween Event from last year. We have now implemented a returning achievement, where you can earn a Lost Souls booster and a special Pumpkin-avatar for beating the map during the Halloween season. 
For those looking for a more classic event, we also have a Halloween event that went live earlier today. 
We hope you enjoy this special Halloween patch. You can find the full patch notes here. 
 
• New Card Reveal - Soulstone

This patch also contained the surprise reveal and release of Soulstone!
Today we would like to dive a bit deeper into its design, and how the release is both sudden and overdue.  
 

 
Soulstone is the very first building card we have introduced in the Rebirth Edition (if you don't count our Promo Worldbreaker Gun). It is a Frost card requiring only a single Frost orb, but with a unique twist: Skylords are able to upgrade the card to tier 2 once they have a second orb available. This allows the card to transition throughout the game, powering up alongside the other tools at your disposal. 
Upgrading the card reduces the cost for its memorial ability, and increase its lifepoints. Soulstone is a rare card and can drop from boosters or be reforged into. We also have a special Halloween event where you have a chance to earn it, more about that later in this Community Update.
 
 
 

Let's break down the card: 

Frozen Ward
Activate to trigger a global shielding spell that enchants every friendly structure to grant friendly units within a 20m radius an Ice Shield that absorbs up to 120 damage for 10 seconds. Units that already have an Ice Shield are unaffected. Each unit can only be affected once every 10 seconds. Lasts for 30 seconds. Also affects structures that are still under construction. Has a 60 seconds cool-down after the building was built. Reusable every 60 seconds.  
 
Memorial (mode change)
Activate to regenerate the full power of the Soulstone. After 2 seconds, the building gains Soul Armor and loses Frozen Ward. Requires 2 orbs to activate. Has a 60 seconds cool-down after the building was build. 
 

Soul Armor
Activate to trigger a global shielding spell that enchants every friendly structure to grant friendly units within a 20m radius an Ice Shield that absorbs up to 180 damage for 10 seconds. Units that already have an Ice Shield are unaffected. Each unit can only be affected once every 10 seconds. Lasts for 30 seconds. Also affects structures that are still under construction. Reusable every 60 seconds.
 
Soulstone has been in the making for quite a while now, and we would like to share some behind the scenes' information about its road to release. To do so, Lead Designer Windhunter will take you all the way back to 2021.
 
• Soulstone Design Notes

The release of Soulstone is a testament to how far the Skylords Reborn team has come in its development capacities. The original design concept for Soulstone dates back to June 2021, where it was one of the first cards ever designed by the faction design department. Soulstone's initial design pattern was very closely on the Soulstone players encounter in Defense of Hope, similar to how Banzai Lord is patterned closely on its eponymous mini-boss in Mo. The idea was that the player Soulstone would achieve its full its strength upon reaching T2 just as the Soulstone in Defense of Hope regenerates its strength partway through the mission, summoning Skyelfs to defend itself. We did not think that Frost needed a Skyelf spawner, but we did believe that Frost needed early game sustain and that providing shields would fit well with Soulstone's existing identity. In terms of initial vision and final design, the Soulstone we released a few days ago and the Soulstone we originally designed 28 months ago are highly similar. So why did it take so long?
The challenge of creating a card like Soulstone that could transform into a stronger version of itself upon reaching a higher tier was riddled with technical hurdles. Despite how much we have achieved, it is important to remember that we do not have the source code for BattleForge. Much of what we do is a slow process of reverse engineering and subsequent tool development to allow ourselves to make use of that reverse engineering. Many of our new cards and major redesigns to existing cards have required at least one new mechanic to be successfully reverse engineered before they could proceed. It is a frequent occurrence for our team's faction designers to put forward an idea, have it be accepted as worthwhile to pursue, only for development to hit a wall while we wait for our developers to play Marco Polo with the game engine until they can isolate the correct variable that then allows our card implementers to make the card a reality.
For Soulstone, the primary challenge was the description length. Embedding the functionalities of two cards would result in an exceedingly lengthy description, unprecedented in the game. When we run into major issues like this, we ask ourselves, can we design around it? The best idea we had was to make the Memorial ability self-destruct the existing Soulstone and summon a new, better Soulstone in its place. Altar of Chaos and Portal Nexus both summon new buildings, so this was clearly possible. A little janky, but a promising workaround nonetheless, except that both Altar of Chaos and Portal Nexus' summon abilities are hardcoded, meaning that if we add the ability to a different building, it will always and only summon the building from the original ability. Additionally, even the ability icons were hardcoded, so even if we got it to work, Soulstone would have had an Altar of Chaos icon on it. For regular followers of our Community Updates, you may have pieced together that this same issue would seem to be true for our upcoming card Bedrock, which summons its own Stone Launcher, and if so, you would now have a better understanding of one reason for why said card is not yet released. Anyway, the workaround also proved impossible, so we decided to adjust the design so both the T1 and T2 version could reasonably fit into a single card.
While lacking its originally intended evolution mechanic, Soulstone would have still made a good addition to the game. We implemented the global shields and found that it worked fine. Then we started designing a slightly frostier texture for the building, the original is quite gray, only to find that when we tried to construct the Soulstone in-game that the building got stuck under the ground. It was there, but completely buried. With no knowledge of how to fix this issue, we had to abandon the possibility of using the Soulstone building itself. What we knew we could do was retexture existing buildings with functioning build animations, so we decided to change the name and use a different building instead. Our most promising attempt was trying to retexture Fountain of Rebirth, turning its roots into icicles in the process.
After a half dozen aborted tries leading to more and more frustration from the art team, and in light of the ongoing implementation struggles, we made the decision to shelve the development of Soulstone for the time being. This, while the right decision, became very awkward for us as a team because we justified several changes to Frost T1 cards with the reasoning that a new "Frost T1 sustain option" would be releasing next patch. Obviously, this was no longer true, so we scrambled to make changes to Northern Keep as compensation. Instances like this one are one reason we are careful not to announce things until we are sure they are possible.
For nearly two years, Soulstone sat untouched and largely forgotten until early this summer one of the team members pointed out that the original Soulstone design was now fully possible. We did a few preliminary tests and discovered that the team member was correct. In the course of two years, we had advanced our understanding of the game to the point that what was previously impossible was now relatively simple. Once the various card and ability artworks were finished, the building retextured, and the 3D FX crafted, the card implementation took a little under a week. At long last, on Oct. 28th 2023, Soulstone made its way into the Forge.
 
• Events

If you want to get your hands on the brand-new Soulstone card, be sure to participate in our official Halloween event! We will distribute the card among 50% of the participants, and there are also Lost Souls boosters to be won! 
 
• NEW - Official 1p rPvE Contest - Resurrection of the Lost Soul
The Bandits have disturbed our rest for too long! It is time for the Souls to hunt the Soulhunters, show the Power of Lost Souls in this rPvE 1p Contest. The more participate, the more Soulstones we will Raffle! More information.
 
 • FIRST PHASE - PvP AI programming contest
We are gathering players for a new type of event. Get ready for an AI Programming Tournament, where the submitted programs will face off in an epic showdown to find the ultimate AI strategist! More information.
 
• FINISHED - PvP Rookie Tournament
Last weekend, Triggz hosted a special Rookie 1vs1 Tournament. 22 inexperienced players entered the ring and battled it out. The tournament was streamed live, and can be rewatched on the YouTube-channel of Eirias. More information. 
 
In between our monthly Community Updates, we host various events and tournaments, so be sure to keep a close eye on the in-game event tab and the forum calendar to stay informed and not miss out on any exciting events!

• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our other Event Organizers, @Metagross31or @Minashigo Hiko. We can help you out with various topics and are glad to discuss potential ideas. We can also sponsor the prize pool for your event. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you.
 
• Community Spotlight - Masters of the Forge

In this podcast-like series, Kapo interviews various staff members to discuss the project and personal stories about their interaction with BattleForge and Skylords Reborn. There are currently 5 episodes to watch:
• Episode 1: Dutchy, Lead Moderator - Watch now.
• Episode 2: Majora, Project Coordinator - Watch now.
• Episode 3: Volin, Testing Coordinator -  Watch now.

• New: Episode 4: RadicalX, Faction Designer
In this episode, Kapo and RadicalX talk about Radicals fame as one of the best players in speedrunning and PvP, but also about design (decisions) and loads of topics submitted by user questions. Watch now.

• New: Episode 5: Ult, Server Developer
In this episode, Kapo and Ult talk about the server side of the game, especially about systems like the achievements or cosmetics, as well as future projects like map modifiers. Watch now.
Episode 6 will be hosted live on the 4th of November and feature Ultralord, Video Editor. Tune in live on Twitch, or watch back on YouTube the day after.  
 
• Team changes

During the past month, WaterMelonLord, Nukie and Dallarian have moved on from the team for various reasons. All three of them helped us out with moderation. Additionally, Nukie managed the Event Department, where Dallarian helped the Map Department set the first step into new campaign maps. We appreciate their contributions and wish them well in their future endeavors!
Meanwhile, Noah.K has joined the team as our second Audio Editor. He is helping us out with adding new voicelines into the game by providing editing and advice regarding the recorded takes we have received from our voice-actors. In the moderator department, Linkz has been promoted to Global Moderator. 
 
• Contribute

Skylords Reborn is a community-driven project fuelled by the passion and dedication of over 45 volunteers. We are always on the lookout for like-minded individuals. If you have a passion for gaming, programming, design, or marketing, we invite you to have a look at our open positions!


We are especially looking for an active and passionate outreach coordinator, helping us reach new Skylords by contacting streamers, influencers, media, and other potential parties. This role can make a drastic impact for Skylords Reborn, so please consider applying.
• Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator
As a Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator, you are responsible to spread the word and create awareness about Skylords Reborn, attracting veteran and new players alike. 
Your tasks will include actively researching and reaching out to potentially interested streamers, YouTubers, Discord channels, game magazines, among others. You will be responsible for the communication to and from interested parties and for any promotion deals (for example involving scratch codes). Please note that Skylords Reborn cannot do any paid promotions. 
More information. 
 
• 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 Lost Souls booster: SOUL-STON-ENOW-LIVE
The code is valid until December 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 October 2023

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!

 
• Halloween Patch

Happy Halloween Skylords! Last weekend, we released a surprise Halloween patch. This patch contains various bugfixes and quality of life changes. Additionally, we have implemented some balance changes, including the previously announced Stronghold changes. 
We have also added the Fire-themed Forge. Keep yourself warm this month with this special themed Forge (active as a featured Forge till the end of November), or complete the achievement ''Never Thought of Him'' to permanently unlock the Forge in addition to 100.000 gold. This reward is retroactive, meaning those who already completed the achievement in the past automatically have the Fire-forge. 
Skylords might remember our Spooky Encounters Halloween Event from last year. We have now implemented a returning achievement, where you can earn a Lost Souls booster and a special Pumpkin-avatar for beating the map during the Halloween season. 
For those looking for a more classic event, we also have a Halloween event that went live earlier today. 
We hope you enjoy this special Halloween patch. You can find the full patch notes here. 
 
• New Card Reveal - Soulstone

This patch also contained the surprise reveal and release of Soulstone!
Today we would like to dive a bit deeper into its design, and how the release is both sudden and overdue.  
 

 
Soulstone is the very first building card we have introduced in the Rebirth Edition (if you don't count our Promo Worldbreaker Gun). It is a Frost card requiring only a single Frost orb, but with a unique twist: Skylords are able to upgrade the card to tier 2 once they have a second orb available. This allows the card to transition throughout the game, powering up alongside the other tools at your disposal. 
Upgrading the card reduces the cost for its memorial ability, and increase its lifepoints. Soulstone is a rare card and can drop from boosters or be reforged into. We also have a special Halloween event where you have a chance to earn it, more about that later in this Community Update.
 
 
 

Let's break down the card: 

Frozen Ward
Activate to trigger a global shielding spell that enchants every friendly structure to grant friendly units within a 20m radius an Ice Shield that absorbs up to 120 damage for 10 seconds. Units that already have an Ice Shield are unaffected. Each unit can only be affected once every 10 seconds. Lasts for 30 seconds. Also affects structures that are still under construction. Has a 60 seconds cool-down after the building was built. Reusable every 60 seconds.  
 
Memorial (mode change)
Activate to regenerate the full power of the Soulstone. After 2 seconds, the building gains Soul Armor and loses Frozen Ward. Requires 2 orbs to activate. Has a 60 seconds cool-down after the building was build. 
 

Soul Armor
Activate to trigger a global shielding spell that enchants every friendly structure to grant friendly units within a 20m radius an Ice Shield that absorbs up to 180 damage for 10 seconds. Units that already have an Ice Shield are unaffected. Each unit can only be affected once every 10 seconds. Lasts for 30 seconds. Also affects structures that are still under construction. Reusable every 60 seconds.
 
Soulstone has been in the making for quite a while now, and we would like to share some behind the scenes' information about its road to release. To do so, Lead Designer Windhunter will take you all the way back to 2021.
 
• Soulstone Design Notes

The release of Soulstone is a testament to how far the Skylords Reborn team has come in its development capacities. The original design concept for Soulstone dates back to June 2021, where it was one of the first cards ever designed by the faction design department. Soulstone's initial design pattern was very closely on the Soulstone players encounter in Defense of Hope, similar to how Banzai Lord is patterned closely on its eponymous mini-boss in Mo. The idea was that the player Soulstone would achieve its full its strength upon reaching T2 just as the Soulstone in Defense of Hope regenerates its strength partway through the mission, summoning Skyelfs to defend itself. We did not think that Frost needed a Skyelf spawner, but we did believe that Frost needed early game sustain and that providing shields would fit well with Soulstone's existing identity. In terms of initial vision and final design, the Soulstone we released a few days ago and the Soulstone we originally designed 28 months ago are highly similar. So why did it take so long?
The challenge of creating a card like Soulstone that could transform into a stronger version of itself upon reaching a higher tier was riddled with technical hurdles. Despite how much we have achieved, it is important to remember that we do not have the source code for BattleForge. Much of what we do is a slow process of reverse engineering and subsequent tool development to allow ourselves to make use of that reverse engineering. Many of our new cards and major redesigns to existing cards have required at least one new mechanic to be successfully reverse engineered before they could proceed. It is a frequent occurrence for our team's faction designers to put forward an idea, have it be accepted as worthwhile to pursue, only for development to hit a wall while we wait for our developers to play Marco Polo with the game engine until they can isolate the correct variable that then allows our card implementers to make the card a reality.
For Soulstone, the primary challenge was the description length. Embedding the functionalities of two cards would result in an exceedingly lengthy description, unprecedented in the game. When we run into major issues like this, we ask ourselves, can we design around it? The best idea we had was to make the Memorial ability self-destruct the existing Soulstone and summon a new, better Soulstone in its place. Altar of Chaos and Portal Nexus both summon new buildings, so this was clearly possible. A little janky, but a promising workaround nonetheless, except that both Altar of Chaos and Portal Nexus' summon abilities are hardcoded, meaning that if we add the ability to a different building, it will always and only summon the building from the original ability. Additionally, even the ability icons were hardcoded, so even if we got it to work, Soulstone would have had an Altar of Chaos icon on it. For regular followers of our Community Updates, you may have pieced together that this same issue would seem to be true for our upcoming card Bedrock, which summons its own Stone Launcher, and if so, you would now have a better understanding of one reason for why said card is not yet released. Anyway, the workaround also proved impossible, so we decided to adjust the design so both the T1 and T2 version could reasonably fit into a single card.
While lacking its originally intended evolution mechanic, Soulstone would have still made a good addition to the game. We implemented the global shields and found that it worked fine. Then we started designing a slightly frostier texture for the building, the original is quite gray, only to find that when we tried to construct the Soulstone in-game that the building got stuck under the ground. It was there, but completely buried. With no knowledge of how to fix this issue, we had to abandon the possibility of using the Soulstone building itself. What we knew we could do was retexture existing buildings with functioning build animations, so we decided to change the name and use a different building instead. Our most promising attempt was trying to retexture Fountain of Rebirth, turning its roots into icicles in the process.
After a half dozen aborted tries leading to more and more frustration from the art team, and in light of the ongoing implementation struggles, we made the decision to shelve the development of Soulstone for the time being. This, while the right decision, became very awkward for us as a team because we justified several changes to Frost T1 cards with the reasoning that a new "Frost T1 sustain option" would be releasing next patch. Obviously, this was no longer true, so we scrambled to make changes to Northern Keep as compensation. Instances like this one are one reason we are careful not to announce things until we are sure they are possible.
For nearly two years, Soulstone sat untouched and largely forgotten until early this summer one of the team members pointed out that the original Soulstone design was now fully possible. We did a few preliminary tests and discovered that the team member was correct. In the course of two years, we had advanced our understanding of the game to the point that what was previously impossible was now relatively simple. Once the various card and ability artworks were finished, the building retextured, and the 3D FX crafted, the card implementation took a little under a week. At long last, on Oct. 28th 2023, Soulstone made its way into the Forge.
 
• Events

If you want to get your hands on the brand-new Soulstone card, be sure to participate in our official Halloween event! We will distribute the card among 50% of the participants, and there are also Lost Souls boosters to be won! 
 
• NEW - Official 1p rPvE Contest - Resurrection of the Lost Soul
The Bandits have disturbed our rest for too long! It is time for the Souls to hunt the Soulhunters, show the Power of Lost Souls in this rPvE 1p Contest. The more participate, the more Soulstones we will Raffle! More information.
 
 • FIRST PHASE - PvP AI programming contest
We are gathering players for a new type of event. Get ready for an AI Programming Tournament, where the submitted programs will face off in an epic showdown to find the ultimate AI strategist! More information.
 
• FINISHED - PvP Rookie Tournament
Last weekend, Triggz hosted a special Rookie 1vs1 Tournament. 22 inexperienced players entered the ring and battled it out. The tournament was streamed live, and can be rewatched on the YouTube-channel of Eirias. More information. 
 
In between our monthly Community Updates, we host various events and tournaments, so be sure to keep a close eye on the in-game event tab and the forum calendar to stay informed and not miss out on any exciting events!

• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our other Event Organizers, @Metagross31or @Minashigo Hiko. We can help you out with various topics and are glad to discuss potential ideas. We can also sponsor the prize pool for your event. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you.
 
• Community Spotlight - Masters of the Forge

In this podcast-like series, Kapo interviews various staff members to discuss the project and personal stories about their interaction with BattleForge and Skylords Reborn. There are currently 5 episodes to watch:
• Episode 1: Dutchy, Lead Moderator - Watch now.
• Episode 2: Majora, Project Coordinator - Watch now.
• Episode 3: Volin, Testing Coordinator -  Watch now.

• New: Episode 4: RadicalX, Faction Designer
In this episode, Kapo and RadicalX talk about Radicals fame as one of the best players in speedrunning and PvP, but also about design (decisions) and loads of topics submitted by user questions. Watch now.

• New: Episode 5: Ult, Server Developer
In this episode, Kapo and Ult talk about the server side of the game, especially about systems like the achievements or cosmetics, as well as future projects like map modifiers. Watch now.
Episode 6 will be hosted live on the 4th of November and feature Ultralord, Video Editor. Tune in live on Twitch, or watch back on YouTube the day after.  
 
• Team changes

During the past month, WaterMelonLord, Nukie and Dallarian have moved on from the team for various reasons. All three of them helped us out with moderation. Additionally, Nukie managed the Event Department, where Dallarian helped the Map Department set the first step into new campaign maps. We appreciate their contributions and wish them well in their future endeavors!
Meanwhile, Noah.K has joined the team as our second Audio Editor. He is helping us out with adding new voicelines into the game by providing editing and advice regarding the recorded takes we have received from our voice-actors. In the moderator department, Linkz has been promoted to Global Moderator. 
 
• Contribute

Skylords Reborn is a community-driven project fuelled by the passion and dedication of over 45 volunteers. We are always on the lookout for like-minded individuals. If you have a passion for gaming, programming, design, or marketing, we invite you to have a look at our open positions!


We are especially looking for an active and passionate outreach coordinator, helping us reach new Skylords by contacting streamers, influencers, media, and other potential parties. This role can make a drastic impact for Skylords Reborn, so please consider applying.
• Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator
As a Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator, you are responsible to spread the word and create awareness about Skylords Reborn, attracting veteran and new players alike. 
Your tasks will include actively researching and reaching out to potentially interested streamers, YouTubers, Discord channels, game magazines, among others. You will be responsible for the communication to and from interested parties and for any promotion deals (for example involving scratch codes). Please note that Skylords Reborn cannot do any paid promotions. 
More information. 
 
• 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 Lost Souls booster: SOUL-STON-ENOW-LIVE
The code is valid until December 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 October 2023

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!

 
• Halloween Patch

Happy Halloween Skylords! Last weekend, we released a surprise Halloween patch. This patch contains various bugfixes and quality of life changes. Additionally, we have implemented some balance changes, including the previously announced Stronghold changes. 
We have also added the Fire-themed Forge. Keep yourself warm this month with this special themed Forge (active as a featured Forge till the end of November), or complete the achievement ''Never Thought of Him'' to permanently unlock the Forge in addition to 100.000 gold. This reward is retroactive, meaning those who already completed the achievement in the past automatically have the Fire-forge. 
Skylords might remember our Spooky Encounters Halloween Event from last year. We have now implemented a returning achievement, where you can earn a Lost Souls booster and a special Pumpkin-avatar for beating the map during the Halloween season. 
For those looking for a more classic event, we also have a Halloween event that went live earlier today. 
We hope you enjoy this special Halloween patch. You can find the full patch notes here. 
 
• New Card Reveal - Soulstone

This patch also contained the surprise reveal and release of Soulstone!
Today we would like to dive a bit deeper into its design, and how the release is both sudden and overdue.  
 

 
Soulstone is the very first building card we have introduced in the Rebirth Edition (if you don't count our Promo Worldbreaker Gun). It is a Frost card requiring only a single Frost orb, but with a unique twist: Skylords are able to upgrade the card to tier 2 once they have a second orb available. This allows the card to transition throughout the game, powering up alongside the other tools at your disposal. 
Upgrading the card reduces the cost for its memorial ability, and increase its lifepoints. Soulstone is a rare card and can drop from boosters or be reforged into. We also have a special Halloween event where you have a chance to earn it, more about that later in this Community Update.
 
 
 

Let's break down the card: 

Frozen Ward
Activate to trigger a global shielding spell that enchants every friendly structure to grant friendly units within a 20m radius an Ice Shield that absorbs up to 120 damage for 10 seconds. Units that already have an Ice Shield are unaffected. Each unit can only be affected once every 10 seconds. Lasts for 30 seconds. Also affects structures that are still under construction. Has a 60 seconds cool-down after the building was built. Reusable every 60 seconds.  
 
Memorial (mode change)
Activate to regenerate the full power of the Soulstone. After 2 seconds, the building gains Soul Armor and loses Frozen Ward. Requires 2 orbs to activate. Has a 60 seconds cool-down after the building was build. 
 

Soul Armor
Activate to trigger a global shielding spell that enchants every friendly structure to grant friendly units within a 20m radius an Ice Shield that absorbs up to 180 damage for 10 seconds. Units that already have an Ice Shield are unaffected. Each unit can only be affected once every 10 seconds. Lasts for 30 seconds. Also affects structures that are still under construction. Reusable every 60 seconds.
 
Soulstone has been in the making for quite a while now, and we would like to share some behind the scenes' information about its road to release. To do so, Lead Designer Windhunter will take you all the way back to 2021.
 
• Soulstone Design Notes

The release of Soulstone is a testament to how far the Skylords Reborn team has come in its development capacities. The original design concept for Soulstone dates back to June 2021, where it was one of the first cards ever designed by the faction design department. Soulstone's initial design pattern was very closely on the Soulstone players encounter in Defense of Hope, similar to how Banzai Lord is patterned closely on its eponymous mini-boss in Mo. The idea was that the player Soulstone would achieve its full its strength upon reaching T2 just as the Soulstone in Defense of Hope regenerates its strength partway through the mission, summoning Skyelfs to defend itself. We did not think that Frost needed a Skyelf spawner, but we did believe that Frost needed early game sustain and that providing shields would fit well with Soulstone's existing identity. In terms of initial vision and final design, the Soulstone we released a few days ago and the Soulstone we originally designed 28 months ago are highly similar. So why did it take so long?
The challenge of creating a card like Soulstone that could transform into a stronger version of itself upon reaching a higher tier was riddled with technical hurdles. Despite how much we have achieved, it is important to remember that we do not have the source code for BattleForge. Much of what we do is a slow process of reverse engineering and subsequent tool development to allow ourselves to make use of that reverse engineering. Many of our new cards and major redesigns to existing cards have required at least one new mechanic to be successfully reverse engineered before they could proceed. It is a frequent occurrence for our team's faction designers to put forward an idea, have it be accepted as worthwhile to pursue, only for development to hit a wall while we wait for our developers to play Marco Polo with the game engine until they can isolate the correct variable that then allows our card implementers to make the card a reality.
For Soulstone, the primary challenge was the description length. Embedding the functionalities of two cards would result in an exceedingly lengthy description, unprecedented in the game. When we run into major issues like this, we ask ourselves, can we design around it? The best idea we had was to make the Memorial ability self-destruct the existing Soulstone and summon a new, better Soulstone in its place. Altar of Chaos and Portal Nexus both summon new buildings, so this was clearly possible. A little janky, but a promising workaround nonetheless, except that both Altar of Chaos and Portal Nexus' summon abilities are hardcoded, meaning that if we add the ability to a different building, it will always and only summon the building from the original ability. Additionally, even the ability icons were hardcoded, so even if we got it to work, Soulstone would have had an Altar of Chaos icon on it. For regular followers of our Community Updates, you may have pieced together that this same issue would seem to be true for our upcoming card Bedrock, which summons its own Stone Launcher, and if so, you would now have a better understanding of one reason for why said card is not yet released. Anyway, the workaround also proved impossible, so we decided to adjust the design so both the T1 and T2 version could reasonably fit into a single card.
While lacking its originally intended evolution mechanic, Soulstone would have still made a good addition to the game. We implemented the global shields and found that it worked fine. Then we started designing a slightly frostier texture for the building, the original is quite gray, only to find that when we tried to construct the Soulstone in-game that the building got stuck under the ground. It was there, but completely buried. With no knowledge of how to fix this issue, we had to abandon the possibility of using the Soulstone building itself. What we knew we could do was retexture existing buildings with functioning build animations, so we decided to change the name and use a different building instead. Our most promising attempt was trying to retexture Fountain of Rebirth, turning its roots into icicles in the process.
After a half dozen aborted tries leading to more and more frustration from the art team, and in light of the ongoing implementation struggles, we made the decision to shelve the development of Soulstone for the time being. This, while the right decision, became very awkward for us as a team because we justified several changes to Frost T1 cards with the reasoning that a new "Frost T1 sustain option" would be releasing next patch. Obviously, this was no longer true, so we scrambled to make changes to Northern Keep as compensation. Instances like this one are one reason we are careful not to announce things until we are sure they are possible.
For nearly two years, Soulstone sat untouched and largely forgotten until early this summer one of the team members pointed out that the original Soulstone design was now fully possible. We did a few preliminary tests and discovered that the team member was correct. In the course of two years, we had advanced our understanding of the game to the point that what was previously impossible was now relatively simple. Once the various card and ability artworks were finished, the building retextured, and the 3D FX crafted, the card implementation took a little under a week. At long last, on Oct. 28th 2023, Soulstone made its way into the Forge.
 
• Events

If you want to get your hands on the brand-new Soulstone card, be sure to participate in our official Halloween event! We will distribute the card among 50% of the participants, and there are also Lost Souls boosters to be won! 
 
• NEW - Official 1p rPvE Contest - Resurrection of the Lost Soul
The Bandits have disturbed our rest for too long! It is time for the Souls to hunt the Soulhunters, show the Power of Lost Souls in this rPvE 1p Contest. The more participate, the more Soulstones we will Raffle! More information.
 
 • FIRST PHASE - PvP AI programming contest
We are gathering players for a new type of event. Get ready for an AI Programming Tournament, where the submitted programs will face off in an epic showdown to find the ultimate AI strategist! More information.
 
• FINISHED - PvP Rookie Tournament
Last weekend, Triggz hosted a special Rookie 1vs1 Tournament. 22 inexperienced players entered the ring and battled it out. The tournament was streamed live, and can be rewatched on the YouTube-channel of Eirias. More information. 
 
In between our monthly Community Updates, we host various events and tournaments, so be sure to keep a close eye on the in-game event tab and the forum calendar to stay informed and not miss out on any exciting events!

• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our other Event Organizers, @Metagross31or @Minashigo Hiko. We can help you out with various topics and are glad to discuss potential ideas. We can also sponsor the prize pool for your event. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you.
 
• Community Spotlight - Masters of the Forge

In this podcast-like series, Kapo interviews various staff members to discuss the project and personal stories about their interaction with BattleForge and Skylords Reborn. There are currently 5 episodes to watch:
• Episode 1: Dutchy, Lead Moderator - Watch now.
• Episode 2: Majora, Project Coordinator - Watch now.
• Episode 3: Volin, Testing Coordinator -  Watch now.

• New: Episode 4: RadicalX, Faction Designer
In this episode, Kapo and RadicalX talk about Radicals fame as one of the best players in speedrunning and PvP, but also about design (decisions) and loads of topics submitted by user questions. Watch now.

• New: Episode 5: Ult, Server Developer
In this episode, Kapo and Ult talk about the server side of the game, especially about systems like the achievements or cosmetics, as well as future projects like map modifiers. Watch now.
Episode 6 will be hosted live on the 4th of November and feature Ultralord, Video Editor. Tune in live on Twitch, or watch back on YouTube the day after.  
 
• Team changes

During the past month, WaterMelonLord, Nukie and Dallarian have moved on from the team for various reasons. All three of them helped us out with moderation. Additionally, Nukie managed the Event Department, where Dallarian helped the Map Department set the first step into new campaign maps. We appreciate their contributions and wish them well in their future endeavors!
Meanwhile, Noah.K has joined the team as our second Audio Editor. He is helping us out with adding new voicelines into the game by providing editing and advice regarding the recorded takes we have received from our voice-actors. In the moderator department, Linkz has been promoted to Global Moderator. 
 
• Contribute

Skylords Reborn is a community-driven project fuelled by the passion and dedication of over 45 volunteers. We are always on the lookout for like-minded individuals. If you have a passion for gaming, programming, design, or marketing, we invite you to have a look at our open positions!


We are especially looking for an active and passionate outreach coordinator, helping us reach new Skylords by contacting streamers, influencers, media, and other potential parties. This role can make a drastic impact for Skylords Reborn, so please consider applying.
• Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator
As a Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator, you are responsible to spread the word and create awareness about Skylords Reborn, attracting veteran and new players alike. 
Your tasks will include actively researching and reaching out to potentially interested streamers, YouTubers, Discord channels, game magazines, among others. You will be responsible for the communication to and from interested parties and for any promotion deals (for example involving scratch codes). Please note that Skylords Reborn cannot do any paid promotions. 
More information. 
 
• 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 Lost Souls booster: SOUL-STON-ENOW-LIVE
The code is valid until December 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 October 2023