Community Update - April 2024

[Majora]

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!

Click below to view our April Fools joke for 2024. 

Spoiler

• Skylords Reborn - VR Edition

Every year, we take a look at our options of providing Skylords Reborn to a wider audience in unique new ways. Today we have a very special announcement. 

Please take a look at the trailer below. 

 

Skylords Reborn VR is available today! To download, please click here. 

 

 

• Upcoming Patch - April

While we continue working on our significant Summer patch (which will include our new campaign missions), we are nearly ready to release another patch to bridge the gap until you can get your hands on the Echoes of the Amii patch. In this smaller patch, planned for release in April, we will introduce two new cards, Map-of-the-Day, our new Rebirth booster, as well as some minor balance changes. Stay tuned for the full patch notes later this month.

The two new cards included in this patch will be the long-awaited Stonekin turtle, Bedrock, and a new build-around tool for Lost Souls players in Gate of Akylos.

As you can see, these cards will mark the introduction of the first new Ultra Rare cards to the game. If you're curious about the basis for our rarities, please check out our rarity design philosophy.

While maintaining a consistent logic for rarities is important to us, we also want to ensure that players can actually experience our newly created content. These new cards will be obtainable in their respective boosters as usual, but introducing an Ultra Rare without additional measures would likely make them unattainable for the majority of the player base.

We have received feedback from the community regarding the availability of the new cards in the Rebirth Edition in general, and set out to find a solution. Introducing: the Rebirth booster.

This booster will differ from the other boosters currently in the game. It will not be available in the store and can only be obtained through special events and a new reoccurring achievement. This new achievement rewards you for interacting with our new Map-of-the-Day feature. Every day, a random multiplayer Campaign Map will be selected for the Map-of-the-Day. They will be easy to spot, with an effect around their icon on the world map similar to the PvP-happy hour. For every completed Map-of-the-Day on a different day, players will receive 50 BFP. Additionally, for every 10th map, they will receive a Rebirth booster.

Each Rebirth booster contains 3 cards, all from the Rebirth Edition. Additionally, there will be an increased chance for cards of a higher rarity to drop.

We hope that Map-of-the-Day will encourage players to play both fan-favorite and lesser-played campaign maps. This should also help in assisting new players who are seeking to complete the full campaign. We will be monitoring the prices of our new cards and the impact the Rebirth booster is having on the economy, and might adjust accordingly in the future. We are also planning to distribute some Rebirth boosters through various events.

 

While we are unable to announce a specific release date yet, we feel quite comfortable announcing that this patch will go live in April. We hope you look forward to it!

 

• New Card Reveal - Skydancer

During our Anniversary Stream we announced there would be three new Amii units coming to Skylords Reborn in 2024. We will be revealing those cards in the upcoming Community Updates. Last month we revealed Amii Sentinel. Today we are ready to reveal Skydancer!

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

 

Spirit Blade
Every 1.6 seconds, unit casts a lance of elemental power that deals 222 damage to enemies in a 5m radius around its target, up to 333 in total.

 

Spirit of Anguish - Mode Change, Cost: 50p
Activate to call forth an ancient Shadow spirit draining the enemy’s will to fight. While an enemy unit is within 40m of Sky Dancer, it deals 20% less damage. After being affected for 10 seconds, the debuff increases, causing enemies to deal 50% less damage. Effect lasts for 10 seconds after an enemy leaves range. Lasts until deactivated. Reusable every 30 seconds.

 

Spirit of Hope - Mode Change, Cost: 50p
Activate to call forth an ancient Nature spirit that bolsters the life of allies. While an allied unit is within 30m of Sky Dancer, its maximum life points are increased by 20% and it regenerates 1% of its life points every second. Effect lasts for 10 seconds after units leave the area of effect. Lasts until deactivated. Reusable every 30 seconds.

 

Elusive
Units with Elusive have the duration of the immobilizing effects of Freeze and Paralyze reduced by 10%.

 

 

Design notes: Last month, we revealed Amii Sentinel. The card itself was well received and its design led to a lively discussion in our card balancing discord about potential synergizes and the types of strategies people thought it would create. The design of Amii Sentinel, while interesting in itself, becomes more so when considered alongside its intended support unit, Skydancer. Skydancer is an L-sized flying unit with two powerful support abilities. The first is Spirit of Anguish, a kind of anti-rage effect which scales in strength as the enemy remains in range. The other is Spirit of Hope, which introduces a new mechanic allowing for players to increase the maximum life points of their own units. This second ability is the one intended to directly synergize with Amii Sentinel. Amii Sentinel can turn health into damage through its reflect mechanic, and by adding more total life points to its pool of health, the total damage available through reflection also increases. 

Our goal for Skydancer goes beyond being a summon-once support for Amii Sentinel. In general, XL-sized melee units rule T4, particularly in random PvE, with there being a lot of structural reasons why this is true. While we love XL-units as much as everyone else, we as a team want to start diversifying the unit experience by bolstering other types of strategies. With a solid damage-to-power ratio, a large amount of survivability via both Spirit abilities, and a natural synergy with Transcendence, we hope to see flying armies of Skydancers become a viable strategy in T4, both with and without Amii Sentinel. 

Skydancer is currently planned to release alongside our next major content patch in the summer, including brand-new campaign maps. We are not yet able to announce an exact release date. Please stay tuned for more information, and check in next month for another Amii card reveal!

 

• Input requested: Elemental Mastery

Skylords Reborn can be a daunting game, given the large variety of cards and mechanics. With so many options to explore, there is always more to learn. We want players to get a sense of which faction they play the most, what kind of interactions they have with the faction, and to complete tasks that give them a sense of having achieved mastery with said faction. To support both the learning and mastering process for each faction, we would like to introduce a new category of mini-achievements known as Elemental Masteries. These achievements will be tailored to each faction and divided into two categories:

Individual - these will track specific card actions, such as the number of spawns erupted to death.
General - these will will track player progress with the overall faction, such as how many maps a player has completed with Pure Fire.

Each category will reward minor rewards along the way, mostly in the form of faction-specific cosmetics.

The goal is for each faction to track 5 interactions per tier, as well as 5-10 general faction progress trackers. We are interested in the community's ideas for what types of card actions they would like to track, with focus on things which are commonly repeatable. Focus can be either PvP or PvE, though the final choices will be a mix of both.
 

Examples of Trackable Actions
Due to recent advancements in our understanding of the game, we can track most internal and external card interactions. Below are a list of some of these trackable events, all of which have been taken from Fire cards.  

• Number of units charged by Enforcer
• Enemy spawn buildings erupted to death
• Buildings suppressed (Sunstriders + Suppression)
• Enemies knocked back with Lava Field
• Total time Batariel has spent in his stage 3 burning phase
• Total damage dealt by Fire Dragons
• Void returned with Shrine of War
 

Join our brainstorm
You can share your idea's in this thread on the Forum. Brainstorming is also taking place in our official discord dedicated to discussion of card balancing in Skylords Reborn. Please join us there if you would like to see more elemental mastery suggestions or if you would like to participate in discussions relating to proposed changes to the game before they happen.

 

• 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 - Returning Easter Event
Complete any match during the Easter season to collect a free Promo Easter Egg. Additionally, you can collect a special Easter-themed border by completing the community map "The Easter Tree". 

 

 • SECOND PHASE STARTED - 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.

 

• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our Event Organizer @Metagross31. We can help you out with various topics and are glad to discuss potential ideas. We can also sponsor the prize pool for your event. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you.

 

• Team changes

We are happy to announce that both a new and a returning member have formally joined the Skylords Reborn team. ElementG is our new 3D artist, assisting the art team with model adjustments. His latest work, Skydancer, has turned out very nicely, so stay tuned for that. Additionally, Chibiterasu has re-joined the team as a Card Implementor. We are delighted to have him return, as his experience with the tools is a welcome addition to our work output.

Minashigo Hiko has concluded his role as an Event Manager. We would like to thank him for his contributions over the years.

As our team continues to grow, Dutchy has taken on the role of HR Coordinator alongside his Lead Moderator duties. Are you interested in helping out with the project but not sure how? Feel free to send him a message!

 

• Contribute to Skylords Reborn

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

We are especially looking for some more proofreaders (English), to read over stuff like the Community Update and Event posts before they go live. We are also looking for translators (French, Russian) to help with our new campaign maps and more. 

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

 

• In Conclusion

That's all for this Community Update! We appreciate you taking the time to read through it.

As is tradition, we're including a scratch code as a small token of our appreciation for your support.
The code will reward you with a General booster: SKYL-ORDS-REBO-RNVR

The code is valid until May 1st, when we will bring you another Community Update. 

We're always looking for ways to improve and value your feedback. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please don't hesitate to share them with us. We'll be back next month with more updates on our ongoing projects and upcoming features. You can also sign up to our e-mail newsletter here. 

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

 

[Metagross31]

[Dutchy]

That new unit looks amazing! 

[Riviute]

I might not be playing this game as much right now as I used to, but the dedication and work you guys put into this still amazes me. Looking forward to all the new stuff thats coming, Everything looks super interesting. Big shoutout to the devs, i really appreciate all of this :D

[JH24]

That was an amazing update. Thank you so much for all the hard work you guys are putting into this! What you are doing is simply amazing. 

The new updates look great (Nice April Fools joke, by the way), I've recently come back to the game again and I've been thinking about Lost Souls or Stonekin; these new cards look fantastic. I'm really excited for the upcoming Amii faction too.

I'm also excited about the PvP AI; I always felt a bit intimidated by the prospect of playing multiplayer battles. I want to go into that one day, but the addition of an AI would lower the treshold. 

Thank you again for the update.

Edited April 1 by JH24

[Ggoblin]

First mobile support and now VR.

Battleforge keeps getting better and better!!

[Kubik]

🤔who else was trying it on phone? Because I think I did not make any videos of it.

[Pulsar]

Thanks alot to the team.

 

A small annotation to the "Easter Tree" text:

Quote

[...] you can collect a special Easter-themed border [...]

But wasn't it this texture with colored eggs) - not a border?

(I re-played the "The Easter Tree" this year, and had fun again. Anyway - no price. So i assume, i won it already last year.)

 

[Creampopz]

Love the work, I will be logging in and playing some map of the days but I have a semi off topic question.

Any ETA or new on when tower defense mode will be coming out? been looking forward to it for a really long time now, maybe I missed the update where it released or news about it came out. Thanks and keep up the good work :)

[WindHunter]

2 hours ago, Creampopz said:

Any ETA or new on when tower defense mode will be coming out? been looking forward to it for a really long time now, maybe I missed the update where it released or news about it came out. Thanks and keep up the good work 🙂

Defensive random PvE has been on hold while we work on campaign maps. We plan to get back to it once we release our first set of maps, hopefully sometime in the summer. 

[Creampopz]

14 hours ago, WindHunter said:

Defensive random PvE has been on hold while we work on campaign maps. We plan to get back to it once we release our first set of maps, hopefully sometime in the summer. 

Cool, thanks for the update!

[This Is Halloween_2]

Quote

This new achievement rewards you for interacting with our new Map-of-the-Day feature. Every day, a random multiplayer Campaign Map will be selected for the Map-of-the-Day. They will be easy to spot, with an effect around their icon on the world map similar to the PvP-happy hour. For every completed Map-of-the-Day on a different day, players will receive 50 BFP. Additionally, for every 10th map, they will receive a Rebirth booster.

Just to be clear about the "effect" about the Map-of-the-Day, it's the same one as the PvP, with the small flamme dancing around the circle icon of the map ?

And again guys, it's an amazing work you've done on the game. As a new player this year to BattleForge (I watched some replay on the old BF, it's a game that always interested me, but I never rejoin) I'm amazed by the work you've done. Looking at the patch history since 2022, you've added so much content, and upgraded so much stuff that was uninteresting before, it's incredible.

Keep the good work guys 💪.

[WindHunter]

25 minutes ago, This Is Halloween_2 said:

Just to be clear about the "effect" about the Map-of-the-Day, it's the same one as the PvP, with the small flamme dancing around the circle icon of the map ?

And again guys, it's an amazing work you've done on the game. As a new player this year to BattleForge (I watched some replay on the old BF, it's a game that always interested me, but I never rejoin) I'm amazed by the work you've done. Looking at the patch history since 2022, you've added so much content, and upgraded so much stuff that was uninteresting before, it's incredible.

Keep the good work guys 💪.

It is the same dancing flame, yes. And glad to hear you are enjoying the game, that is really why all of us continue to do this. 

[S1ndicate]

The client does not start. I click on the game icon, and after confirming the administrator rights, nothing happens.

[Hrdina_Imperia]

19 hours ago, S1ndicate said:

The client does not start. I click on the game icon, and after confirming the administrator rights, nothing happens.

I guess try asking someone in support/on Discord. 

[Majora]

On 4/21/2024 at 11:41 AM, S1ndicate said:

The client does not start. I click on the game icon, and after confirming the administrator rights, nothing happens.

Please try starting the game through the launcher, instead of the game exe itself. 

[This Is Halloween_2]

Quote

It is the same dancing flame, yes. And glad to hear you are enjoying the game, that is really why all of us continue to do this. 

Do you know went the change will go live ? Currently I don't see any map of the day.

[Volin]

3 hours ago, This Is Halloween_2 said:

Do you know went the change will go live ? Currently I don't see any map of the day.

In the upcoming patch (no exact date yet)