Patch #400044 - 28 October 2023

🎃👻 Welcome to the Spoooooky Halloween Patch! 🦇🕷️

Skylords, gather 'round as the shadows lengthen and the nights grow cold! We're thrilled to present our ninth balance patch, teeming with delightful treats and perhaps a trick or two.

Dive deep into the abyss to discover a mysterious new card, unveil chilling new achievements that await the brave, and embrace the night as you light up the forge with a hauntingly beautiful new theme.

Happy Halloween in the Forge, Skylords!

Achievement Updates

• [New] Happy Halloween! Rewards: Halloween Pumpkin (Avatar) + 1x Lost Souls Booster
  Win the PvE community map Spooky Encounters on expert difficulty during the Halloween season. (One week from Oct. 28th)

• [Updated] Never Thought of Him
  Now rewards a brand new Fire Forge theme in addition to the 100,000 gold. Reward is retroactive.

• Corporate Downsizing
  Added 2 additional levels to the achievement with 2 additional progressive avatars.

General Changes

• The deck limit has been raised to 500 total decks, inclusive of PvP, Tutorial, and General decks. Please note: Performance issues may occur at higher deck counts. A warning for this will be displayed once you reach 100 decks.
• Players using a deck level below 100 will now receive a notification encouraging them to check out the free PvP decks.
• High-res textures are now used for "Flightblocking" objects.
• Completed goals in maps will now be stored in replay files.
• The "Seasonal" forge theme has been renamed to the "Featured" forge theme. The new Fire Forge will be the featured theme until the end of November 2023.
• The game's file system logic has been updated to use UTF-8 paths for enhanced support. This feature is experimental and may be rolled back if necessary.
• Profile comparison section has been improved with filters allowing sorting by achievement group, achievement type, and locked achievements.

General Fixes

• The 'Show Upgrades' button has been repositioned, creating more space between it and the 'Create Game' button.
• The brown background issue that occurred when clicking on the leaderboard entry in 2 player scenarios has been fixed.
• Leaderboard filters no longer reload incorrectly after choosing the map from the dropdown.
• Flying units are now restricted from opening gold chests. This rectifies an issue introduced by a previous change.
• Issues related to entities like power wells, monuments, and walls not updating their position correctly when teleported via map scripts have been fixed.

Achievement Fixes

• The tooltip for the forge spring theme locked achievement now correctly displays (8 maps) instead of (10 maps).
• Corrected faulty achievement descriptions with missing placeholder values in the profile comparison section.
• Resolved issues with the type filter not functioning properly in the profile comparison section.
• Chat commands in the chat menu will remain visible when switching chat regions.

Community Map Fixes

• Removed misleading error messages that appeared after downloading a community map when joining an open game.
• Resolved issues related to rapidly switching between community map entries which affected the minimap load.
• Private maps will now be deleted after 3 hours as intended.
• Downloaded maps will now properly replace older map versions on the filesystem.
• The "Local" map type filter will from now on display all locally available community maps, including those downloaded and already on the server.
• Fixed the issue of daily quests not progressing when playing featured community maps.
• Rectified the error where maps were counted multiple times for the 'complete different featured community maps' achievement.
• Resolved inaccuracies in the text for hardcoded local community maps.

 

New Cards

Soulstone  - 70p T1 Frost ()
You will find the upgrades for this card on the map Defending Hope.

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

Card & NPC Balance Changes

Global Changes

Standardize Basic Class Types:

• Added missing faction & affinity class tags to all player buildings.
• Fixed wrong affinity class type on dozens of units.
• Added missing class type to dozens of units and buildings. 

While technically a balance change as it fixes several card inconsistencies, such as some affinities not working with the correct elemental crystal card, this change also improves the accuracy of the card filtering function.

Description Fixes:

•   Cleaned up the descriptions of dozens of player cards and NPCs for improved clarity in each language.  
•   Introduced a new standard description for rage on all cards with the ability.

Bug Fixes:

• Shrine of Martyrs:
  • Fixed a bug preventing alive units from being affected by a shrine if they had already been affected and the current one was destroyed.
• Sun Reaver:
  • Fixed various faulty interactions with linked fire.

PvE Balance Changes

 Earthen Gift:
1. Charges: 8 ➜ 12

 Frontier Keep:
1. Power cost: 250p ➜ 125p

In truth, we have little idea how strong Frontier Keep is as a card, merely that it is overpriced for its current effect. As such, we are cutting its price in half and seeing what happens. 

 Grinder(r):
1. Infused Provoke (r): The damage buff is now stackable with external effects. 

Grinder's built-in damage buff after using provoke will now stack with effects like Earthen Gift(r) and Wheel of Gifts. 

 Mindweaver:
1. Fixed a bug where the population cap would be permanently increased beyond the 120 limit if a controlled unit died.
2. Edict of Command range: 30m ➜ 40m
3. Added a 40m radius indicator for Edict of Command on card play-out.

 Parasite Swarm:
1. Can now takeover T3 units on upgrade 2 instead of upgrade 3. 

Make Parasite Swarm more accessible to new players by reducing the total gold investment to reach T3 takeovers. 

 Sleet Storm:
1. Radius: 15m ➜ 20m
2. Spell delay: 5 seconds ➜ 4 seconds

Sleet Storm released below the power level we wanted for the card. We have increased the effect radius and decreased the time it takes for the root and gravity surge effects to activate to ensure the player can ensnare faster moving L and XL-units more consistently. 

 Stone Launcher:
1. Orb cost: 1 Frost, 1 Nature, 1 Neutral ➜ 1 Frost, 1 Nature, 1 Hybrid
2. Power cost: 70p ➜ 100p
3. Life points: 1700 ➜ 2200
4. Rock shot
   A. Splash radius: 5m ➜ 8m
   B. Now damages both air and ground units
5. Pulldown power cost: 80 / 80 / 75 / 70p ➜ 50 / 50 / 45 / 40p

Stone Launcher is now a normal tower. We think that T3+ AA-only towers are largely a bad design, and, on top of that, we needed a normal T3 Stonekin tower for our upcoming card Bedrock to be able to summon and Tectonic Shift to teleport.

 Stronghold:
1. Power cost: 150p ➜ 200p
2. Displayed attack value: 2850 dp20 ➜ 4950 dp20
3. Life points: 3600 ➜ 4500
4. Cannon Turrets: 
   A. Splash radius: 5m ➜ 10m
   B. Turret firing arc: Allow up to 3 turrets to attack a target at a time.
   C. Damage: 74 damage, up to 110 in total ➜ 164 damage, up to 246 in total
5. Bombardment:
   A. Now an active ability
   B. New description: Activate to shoot a mortar shell that deals 800 damage to enemies in a 15m radius around its target, up to 3200 in total. Knocks back small, medium, and large units. Has a range of 40m. Reusable every 30 seconds.
6. New passive, "To the Last!" 
   A. Description: If the fortress has equal to or less than 3000 life points left it will deal 25% more damage and take 25% less damage. If the fortress has equal or less than 1500 life points left it will deal 50% more damage and take 50% less damage.
7. New passive, "Slowed Construction:" Construction time is increased by 50%.

Stronghold has been reworked from the ground up and is finally worthy of being an Ultra-rare card. We encourage players to experience the card for themselves and we hope that we have done the card sufficient justice so that it will live up to its name and model. 

NPC Balance Changes

[ Existing NPC Changes ]

The changes discussed in this section pertain to the non-player versions of these entities which players encounter in campaign and random PvE.

 Flame Crystal:
1. Can now be frozen and disintegrated.

 Howling Shrine (rPvE variant):
1. Root Network connection radius: 25m ➜ 40m

 Mindweaver (rPvE variant):
1. Added small and medium knockback.
2. Splash radius: 5m ➜ 8m

 Nature Random PvE Boss Units:
1. Removed the "Nature" class to prevent unintended interactions with player cards (such as Protector's Seal)
2. Boss Tier: T5 ➜ T4

 Primal Defender (rPvE variant):
1. Orb cost: 3 Nature ➜ 2 Nature
2. Power cost: 150p ➜ 100p 

Now able to be overtaken by both affinities of Matter Mastery.

 Root Network Units (Nature rPvE Variants):
1. Fixed an issue where Treespirit, Thornbark, and Guardian of Nature would not aggro against flying units.
2. Increased ranged at which these units root to attack enemies from 20m to 28m.  

 Root Nexus:
1. No longer provides 2 support. 
2. Removed from Nature rPvE and replaced by the new Earth Crystal.

 Stranglehold:
1. Tower range: 30m ➜ 40m

[ New NPCs ]

These new NPCs are available to map makers to use for community maps. 

New NPC Units:
   1. Pest Creepers: A permanent version of the nature affinity Pest Creepers spawned by Sunken Temple. 
   2. Earth Crystal: Provides 2 support to root network entities within a 20m radius, replaces Root Nexus in Nature rPvE. 
   3. Fortress of Nature: Boss variant of Howling Shrine with 50m range.
   4. Bramblethorn: New Nature variant of Stonekin Rockstorm which roots on-hit. 
   5. Amii Phantom: Ranged-only with swift. 

 

more power for my Stonekin yes!

Frontier Keep... Frontier Keep... oooh *that* card, I never even noticed the price, it just never seemed worth using due to the effect.

 

...Give it a little shield and have it automatically cast when it takes damage.

Very sick patch. The Stronghold is now literally STRONG.
Quick questions though...:
Does this Stronghold buff affect the one in cPvE Guns of Lyr?
Does Amii Phantom NPC also have Elusive?

33 minutes ago, Chimaka( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) said:

Does this Stronghold buff affect the one in cPvE Guns of Lyr?

Afaik not as it is a different entity and seperate from the player card. This would also affect balancing of the whole map.

ive always wanted an evolution mechanic, thatll open up a lot more interesting options for future changes. also interested to see how this soulstone card works out and compares to ice shield tower and its proposed changes

GREAT DEVS!

Nice Fire forge

🧟‍♂️Hype for the Lost Souls Booster... jk, all work are appreciated.  

15 hours ago, Zyna said:

The deck limit has been raised to 500 total decks, inclusive of PvP, Tutorial, and General decks.

The dream!

Happy for this, new card is always nice. And Stronghold is finally viable!

Also, Stone Launcher is damn good now. 

Hotfix - 30 October 2023

General Changes

• Adjusted the ordering of cosmetics. They will now be ordered by
  • the Legacy avatars (purchasable with gold) and then achievement avatars.
  • the cosmetic unlock description.
  • the cosmetic name.

General Fixes

• Fixed a regression that prevented ground units from opening gold chests while in combat.
• Fixed an issue in the cosmetics paging logic that caused entries to be displayed twice in some cases.
• Fixed replays displaying the wrong date and time in the replay selection menu.

Card Fixes

• Soulstone:
  • Fixed the cooldown of Soul Armor (T2 Shielding ability) to actually work.
• Stronghold:
  • Improved EN/DE description of Cannon Turrets to be more consistent.
  • Improved non-EN description of Bombardment to be more consistent.
  • Improved EN description of To the Last! to be more consistent.

On 10/28/2023 at 7:28 PM, Chimaka( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) said:

Very sick patch. The Stronghold is now literally STRONG.
Quick questions though...:
Does this Stronghold buff affect the one in cPvE Guns of Lyr?
Does Amii Phantom NPC also have Elusive?

The Amii NPC does not have elusive. The faction abilities (Revenant 's Doom, Elusive, Lifestealer, etc.) are exclusive to the player versions of those units or buildings. 

Additionally, many NPCs are equivalent to U2 player cards in terms of stats, though this is not a hard and fast rule as some are different tiers entirely (i.e. Bandit Sniper or Stone Tempest vs. Stonekin Rockstorm).

We have been trying to fill in the various missing NPCs from each faction, both for ourselves but also to give our community mapmakers more options. 

Stronghold is great now but Stone Launcher is still pretty weak it should have at least high range or maybe only cost 50 energy but in its curent state its still not worth a deck slot.

10 hours ago, Fimion said:

Stronghold is great now but Stone Launcher is still pretty weak it should have at least high range or maybe only cost 50 energy but in its curent state its still not worth a deck slot.

As announced in previous Community Updates, there are some new Stonekin cards in the making, which will help to make Stone Launcher, or Stonekin buildings in general, better.