Patch #400051 - 2 March 2025

[WindHunter]

Patch #400051 - Spring Cleaning

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

 

Patch Preview

• Four new cards are now available! Jump in-game to collect Gate of Akylos, Power Shrine, Spirit Gate, and Bandit Hut!
• Many long awaited quality of life changes have been added to the game.
• Major reworks to several underperforming cards such as Ice Shield Tower, Mountaineer, Strikers, and Altar of Nihil. 
• Reworked Empire and fixed two other campaign maps to streamline the player experience.

General Changes & Fixes

• When using Twilight Transformation, transformed units now inherit the original unit's group, selection, and commands.
• Increased the maximum number of visible buff icons on units and buildings to 8.
• Fixed global effects not applying to units spawned by abilities. For example, this fixes Ravenheart's Ravenships not being affected by Wheel of Gifts or The Incredible Mo. 
• Fixed an issue with Bedrock's Sculptor ability that caused its ability tooltip to disappear when multiple Bedrocks were selected at the same time.
• Affinity differences are now highlighted in each card's description. Each affinity has colored text corresponding to the color of the affinity element which highlights only those words and abilities which are different than its alterative affinity. Players who hover over cards with affinities in-game will immediately notice the changes. This featue can be disabled by setting "enable_affinities_highlighting" to "false" on the section "gui" of the file "Documents\BattleForge\config.json".
• New maps script: - "MapAudio": Audio files (flac, mp3, wav, ogg) can now be played directly from the community map folder. Reference can be viewed on https://skylords-reborn.fandom.com/wiki/Script_Information_-_Full_Reference.

New Updater - Version v0.15

• Added support for game channels, you can select the channel on the top left, it will only check updates for the selected channel (main server, test server, etc.). 
• Improved performance and added caching to update checking.
• Added config settings to `Documents\BattleForge\updater-config.json`.
• Added logging to `Documents\BattleForge\Diag\log_updater.log`.
• Updated Skylords Reborn logo on the top left.
• Improved error handling and messages.
• Small UI improvements.

Modifiable parameter on`updater-config.json`:

•  `fileIntegrityCheckMaxDegreeOfParallelism`: Users can set it to 1 on HDD or slower PCs, default is Processor Count / 2.

If you are using Wine on Linux or MacOS, additional dependencies are required:

1. `sudo apt-get install winbind`
2. `WINEPREFIX=~/.wine32/ winetricks dotnet48 d3dcompiler_47 vkd3d`

New Cards

Bandit Hut - 120p T3 Bandit Building 
You will find the upgrades for this card on the maps Blight (U1) and Into the Jungle (U2/U3).

The enemies of the Skylords have long made use of spawn buildings to reinforce their armies, and this power is now also available to Bandit loving Skylords. Bandit Hut can spawn the previously unavailable units Bandit Vanguards (Bandit Strikers) and Alpha Skyrakes (Bandit Mana Wings), up to a population cap of 150. This will allow the player to quickly spawn in an army of weaker Bandit units to supplement their main army. Now Skylords can give their enemies a taste of their own medicine with their own attack waves! 

 

Gate of Akylos - 200p T3 Lost Souls Building 
You will find the upgrades for this card on the maps Empire (U1) and Unexpected Visitors (U2/U3).

Similar to Soulstone, Gate of Akylos was a card that got stuck in development hell as we faced substantially more implementation issues than initially expected. We are excited to finally share it with our players. Gate of Akylos is a global revenant support building. Its abilities focus around lengthening revenant duration and extracting revenants from existing Lost Souls units. We hope that Gate of Akylos, as well as the changes to other revenant support cards in this patch, help to make the revenant playstyle more accessible to the general playerbase.  

 

Power Shrine - 140p T2 Amii Building 
You will find the upgrades for this card on the maps Convoy (U1) and Into the Jungle (U2/U3).

Ever since we nerfed Shrine of War to require 2 Fire orbs, similar to all other void shrines, rainbow decks have been without a source of consistent void return. Power Shrine fixes this issue. Power Shrine is a T2 global Amii void shrine that allows players to play cards directly out of their void power. With each activation, each member of the Amii player's team will be able to use void power to play their next 3 cards. This card-based approach means Power Shrine will scale well into the later game as player card costs increase in higher tiers. 

 

Spirit Gate - 70p T2 Amii Spell 
You will find the upgrades for this card on the maps Sunbridge (U1) and Unexpected Visitors (U2/U3).

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

 

Game Balance Changes

[ Tier 1 Card Changes ]

 Ice Shield Tower:
1. Power cost: 50p ➜ 80p
2. Ice Bolt damage: 66, up to 100 in total ➜ 72, up to 108 in total
3. Ice Shield:
   A. Change from active to auto-cast (30m range).
   B. Ice Shield strength: 880 → 660
   C. New Description: "Every 20 seconds, tower applies an Ice Shield to a friendly unit that absorbs up to 660 damage for 30 seconds. Has a range of 30m."
4. Ice Field (new passive ability): Ice Shields within a 25m radius of the tower do not run out. Cannot be disabled by spellblocking abilities.

Frost T1 has a lot of building options and Ice Shield Tower has long struggled to find its place. We are reworking the card to make its Ice Shield ability into an auto-cast as well as adding a new passive ability that prevents Ice Shields from expiring in the area around the building. This should hopefully make it a compelling choice in defense situations where you have lots of time to build up shields for defending units. 

 Soul Splicer (r):
1. Infused Necromancy (r) damage boost: 50% ➜ 70%

 Snapjaws:
1. Power cost: 75p ➜ 65p

 Strikers:
1. Power cost: 90p ➜ 75p
2. Damage: 780 dp20 ➜ 600 dp20
3. Life points: 600 ➜ 420
4. Unit counter: M-counter ➜ S-counter
5. Charge damage: 30 ➜ 20 damage per squad member
6. New passive ability “Bloodthirsty”: Unit regenerates 15 life points per second over the next 4 seconds per every 150 damage it deals.

Ever since their looter nerf, Strikers have been languishing without much use in either PvP or PvE. We are therefore completely reworking them. On maps where hit-and-run tactics are favorable and where there is a lack of early flying enemies, our testing has shown the new Strikers to have a comparable or even superior performance compared to Nomads. The new Strikers will give Fire T1 players yet another starting unit option. 

[ Tier 2 Card Changes ]

 Altar of Nihil:
1. Orb cost: Shadow, Neutral, Neutral (T3) ➜ Shadow, Shadow (T2)
2. Power cost: 110p ➜ 50p
3. Life points: 990 ➜ 670
4. Complete Rework, Nihilation:
   A. Description: Activate to create a corrupted zone of 25m around the building where summoning friendly units requires 85% less of the usual power costs but causes all summoned units to irrevocably die after 20 seconds. Does not affect flying units. Lasts for 30 seconds. Reusable every 60 seconds.

Altar of Nihil was originally designed to support cards like Wrathgazer or Cultist Master in PvP. It was a niche strategy in the past until Voidstorm got moved to T3. A global map reset paired with void removal created arguably the the most uncounterable and overpowered late game PvP combination the game has ever seen. As a result, we had to remove the strategy entirely by nerfing Altar of Nihil into the ground. Since then, the card has maintained a 0% play rate in every game mode.

As the previous ability was not salvageable due to the interaction mentioned above, we redesigned Altar of Nihil entirely. The new ability is supposed to bring more strategic depth to Shadow's card arsenal by synergizing with its sacrificial elements. We also moved away from a purely harmful effect to open up PvE usage. We will keep a close eye on the card's balancing and adjust numbers in the future if necessary.

 Global Warming:
1. Both affinities now speed up own Fire units by 25% for 20 seconds.

This change will give Global Warming more flexibility, making it better able to justify itself in taking up a deck slot. 

 Mountaineer:
1. Life points: 1350 ➜ 1140
2. Bombard damage: 220, up to 330 in total ➜ 80, up to 120 in total
3. Glacier Shield now refreshes unconditionally every 12 seconds.
4. Icing Up Rework:
   A. Charges: 100, up to 800 in total ➜ 80, up to 400 in total
   B. Charge tick speed: 1000 ms (1 sec) ➜ 3500 ms (3.5 sec) - Aligns with the attack speed, so the unit gains 80 charges every 3.5 seconds.
   C. Charges are now converted into 200% damage.

Mountaineer now generates charges overtime which are then converted into damage, similar to the way Death Ray's corpse mechanic works. This gives Mountaineer more damage at the beginning of combat, but his damage over time drops sharply if he remains in combat for a long period of time. The idea is that the unit should maintain its hit-and-run playstyle but without the buggy shield interaction which would stop the unit from attacking whenever the shield recharged. As regards the Ice Shield, it now recharges unconditionally similar to Avatar of Frost's shield which should help with Mountaineers overall survivability. 

 Portal Nexus:
1. Explosive Death: Friendly entities ➜ Friendly units

This change should make it easier to place and use Portal Nexus without negatively affected the strategies that use the card to kill own and friendly units.

 Shadow Mage:
1. Foul Play health damage percentage: 400% ➜ 500%

 Shrine of Greed:
1. Enemy void return percentage: 50% ➜ 25%

 Revenant's Blessing:
1. Charges: 12 ➜ 20
2. Cooldown: Reusable every 20 seconds ➜ Instantly reusable.

As part of the release of Gate of Akylos, we are touching up a few revenant-based cards to help buff up the playstyle. This change is intended to make it easier to keep unbound revenants alive without bringing both affinities of Revenant's Blessing, saving the player an important deck slot. 

 Tranquility:
1. Soothing Whispers:
   A. Damage buff: 30% more damage ➜ 35% more damage
   B. Healing: 50 life points every 2 seconds ➜ 7% max life points every 2 seconds
2. Foreboding Whispers:
   A. Damage debuff: 30% more damage received ➜ 35% more damage received

With these changes, Tranquility should scale well as a single-target buff even into T3 and T4, giving the player a better reason to include it in Amii decks.

 Twilight Curse:
1. No longer blocked by mind control effects.

Players can now mind control enemies, such as with Amazon, and use Twilight Curse to transform them.

 Twilight Minions:
1. Gifted Incentive (g) damage boost: 30% ➜ 50% more damage by friendly Fire, Nature, and Twilight units
2. Infused Incentive (r) damage boost: 65% ➜ 75% more damage by friendly small units

Encourage use of Twilight Minion's transformation effect, especially alongside the new Twilight Archers card.

[ Tier 3 Card Changes ]

 Healing Gardens:
1. Ritual of Recovery duration: 45 seconds ➜ 60 seconds

Players can now keep Ritual of Recovery active 100% of the time with only one Healing Gardens.

 Lost Grigori:
1. Disintegrating Shock:
   A. Ability power cost: 100p ➜ 70p
   B. Cooldown: 30 seconds ➜ 20 seconds
   C. Can no longer disintegrate XL units
   D. Lost Grigori now regenerates 180 life points per sec while channeling disintegration.

Lost Grigori presently struggles in both PvP and PvE. We are tweaking its disintegration ability in an attempt to breathe some life into the card, especially in PvE. We are removing the ability to target XL-units to prevent PvP abuses, while at the same time giving it a cost reduction and cooldown reduction. Most importantly, Lost Grigori now heals itself while disintegrating enemies, meaning it can self-sustain without a need for other support cards.

 Razorleaf:
1. Damage per leaf: 34, up to 51 in total ➜ 30, up to 45 in total

Despite being a T3 unit, Razorleaf is stronger than most T4 defenses. The card has always been strong and it has received numerous indirect buffs as we have buffed other Nature cards around it. While we want the card to remain a strong endgame defensive option, even into T4, it currently stands too far above its competitors so we are chopping off 10% of its total damage. 

 Twilight Bombard:
1. Damage: 420, up to 630 total (2100 dp20) ➜ 460, up to 690 in total (2300 dp20)
2. Life points: 2660 ➜ 2920

Despite previous buffs, Twilight Bombard is still struggling to find its place among Twilight's T3 defense options. We are giving it a 10% buff to both its damage and life points to make it more efficient for the power cost.

[ Map Changes ]

  Ascension Map 3:

1. Map 3 of Ascension is now playable even when one side of the map has no players. This will allow players to play this map solo.
2. Map 3: Allow players from the respective other side to also take control of the portal devices with nearby ground entities.

 The Insane God:

1. Fixed a bug where a Seeker would instantly turn into a Guardian if it was killed while transforming.
2. Urzach's Seeker: Added an indicator to the visual effect of the transformation ritual and hide both if the ritual is interrupted.

 Empire:

1. Reworked Magic-Devices:
One of the more annoying things in Empire was the clunky Device-logic. Before this patch, only one player (per side) could teleport the Red-King to his timeline. Now every player is able to teleport the Red King back and forth.

2. Reworked Ritual:
We added a few visual indicators to hopefully make the ritual more understandable.

3. Removed Player-Limit:
As soon as one side of the map had no more players, the game ended. This restriction caused games to end, which could have been successful even without the other side of the map present.

4. Minor changes:
We also made a lot of miscellaneous changes. These range from small things such as incorrect map outcries to larger, more game-breaking issues like Jorne's allies blocking his path and thus blocking the game from advancing.

[UltDragon]

Hotfix
02 March 2025

• Extended support for Windows 7.

 

03 March 2025

• Fix some cards having wrong affinity highlighting.
• Bedrock:
  • Active ability Sculptor:
    • Change activation icon resolution from artwork to icon.
    • Fixed an issue that displayed the wrong affinity description.
  • Summoned Stone Launcher:
    • Change card icon resolution from artwork to icon.
    • Fixed the status bar description to correctly reference the summoning spell.
    • Fix an issue that caused the building to construct over time instead of appearing instantly.
• Power Shrine:
  • Fix non-EN U3 upgrade template.
  • Fixed non-EN displayed English name spacing formatting.

 

05 March 2025

General:

• Remove upgrades of the unreleased Treasure Wagon from the respective maps.
• Fix Twilight units ending up in another player selection when transforming.
• Remove maps random generated and Yshia from the ranked pool.
• Fix players getting stuck when comparing profiles sequentially.

Cards:

• Spirit Gate:
  • Active ability Exitus:
    • Add loop effect on the unit affect by the spell.
    • Remove default teleport sound and effect.
    • Increase effects volume.
• Altar of Nihil:
  • Fix its delayed death affect applying to Revenants.
• Gate of Akylos:
  • Ethereal Anchor:
    • Fix interaction with Lost Manabeast, where Immortalize didn't reset the ability to its full duration.
    • Fix interaction with Lost Banestone and Revenant's Blessing, where if a Revenant duration weren't extended if it spawned inside the area of effect.
  • Soul Extraction:
    • Fix interaction with The Incredible Mo debuff immunity, where it was possible to extract multiple revenants from a single unit.
• Lost Dancer (Fire):
  • Add daze immunity to its revenant.
     

10 March 2025

• Fix achievements "Win matches where your first monument is X" not progressing

 

11 March 2025

General:

• Potential fix for crash with message "is not a squad" while using twilight transformation.
• Fix file "custom_filter_extensions.json" having multiple "starter" tags, players will have the clean it up manually.
• Remove multiple logs message about "global_ability_on_entity".

Cards:

• Bandit Hut:
  • Active ability Summon Vanguards:
    • Summoned Vanguards' passive ability Gang up!:
      • Now properly works with itself and other Marauders' Gang up!.
      • Improved description and status bar description to be more consistent in German.
• Thugs, Strikers and Rageclaws:
  • Passive ability Gang up!:
  • Improved description and status bar description to be more consistent in German.
• Altar of Nihil / Fleshbender (Fire) / Fleshbender (Shadow):
  • Active ability Nihilation / Infused Infection / Tainted Infection:
    • Can no longer be activated while Fleshbender or Altar of Nihil is already active.
• Shrine of War:
  • Fix name to be more consistent in French.
• Blood Healing / Soul Shatter / Voidstorm:
  • Improve description to be more consistent in English.
• Lost Horror:
  • Update texture to be semi transparent.
• Lost Archers (NPC) / Lost Orcs (NPC):
  • Update colors and textures to be semi transparent.
• Burrower / Twilight Bug (NPC):
  • Fix texture alignment, should look better now.

 

17 March 2025

General:

• Map script CardBlockAdd:
  • Fix improperly blocking all card when the player tag is not found.
• Twilight:
  • Fix crash when selecting a building while a twilight unit is transforming.

Cards:

• Bedrock (Frost)
  • Active ability Blessed Sculptor:
    • Add building circle preview.
    • Add collision check against other buildings.
    • Summoned Stone Launcher (Frost):
      • Add spawn beam effect.
• Bedrock (Shadow):
  • Active ability Tainted Sculptor:
    • Add building circle preview.
    • Add collision check against other buildings.
    • Summoned Stone Launcher (Shadow):
      • Add spawn beam effect.
• Lost Souls:
  • Add missing daze immunity to the following Revenants: Lost Vigil, Lost Reaver, Lost Manabeast
  • Active ability Revenant's Doom:
    • Move to the end of active ability list on the details UI.
• Spirit Gate:
  • Fix presence check not working on Revenants.
  • Reduce presence check range to 10m.

 

22 March 2025

• Gate of Akylos:
  • Fix being able to activate Revenant's Doom after the Revenant has been extracted.

Edited Saturday at 10:44 PM by UltDragon

[Hrdina_Imperia]

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

[Dutchy]

Some love for Strikers ❤️ 

[Skillz]

Thank you!!

\edit

Now I wanted to open a Booster and my game crashed 😞

And now I dont have a connection? Is it only my problem?

 

\edit

thx for the answer. It works now. I saw in the motd that the lost grigori has a bug and is not shown correctly. Just fyi

Edited March 2 by Skillz

[Venomlord]

Wow, really cool changes here. Seem all really reasonable, defently will try it out again. 🙂

[Majora]

42 minutes ago, Skillz said:

Thank you!!

\edit

Now I wanted to open a Booster and my game crashed 😞

And now I dont have a connection? Is it only my problem?

We had to perform a hotfix, sorry about that!

[Markus34222]

Great job with the new map! I’m really looking forward to part two

[Ggoblin]

The new cards are really cool. Just hope allies will actually use spirit gate if given to an allied unit. Previous experiences with infernal chain make me think they might not use it at all.

I've been waiting a long time for strikers and ice shield tower to he playable. 

Soul splicer is nice but what about bandit waystation? 😢

I'll have to test new mountaineer on pve.

Altar of nihil sounds extremely good with second chance.

Tranquility seems pretty useful with mono unit amii strategies.

[4esan4o95]

and here we go after updating to the newest version anytime , on any server i press Play - it pops this and thats it....

P.S. Itried to manually download the dll and put in game folder - another error appeared , i installled visual c ++ 2013 and did command prompt action - same thing , i reinstalled the game - same thing ..... nothing helps. :)

Edited March 2 by 4esan4o95

[MisterFreeze]

Very happy with almost all of the card tweaks, amazing job as always!

Pretty sad, however, that Lost Grigori can no longer disintegrate XL units. To me, that was the main (and only?) reason to play it in PVE. I can't think of anything worth disintegrating besides XL units that would justify the extra effort.

Altar of Nihil + LS units with Revenant Form activated seems absolutely devastating at first glance - basically (almost) free revenants.

[Hellstter]

game not starting after update

 

[Ggoblin]

I just noticed power shrine is ultra-rare.

I know you guys want more ultra rares to balance the rarities,  but all other shrines are rare so it's pretty weird for this one to be different

[badnerbande]

1 hour ago, 4esan4o95 said:

and here we go after updating to the newest version anytime , on any server i press Play - it pops this and thats it....

P.S. Itried to manually download the dll and put in game folder - another error appeared , i installled visual c ++ 2013 and did command prompt action - same thing , i reinstalled the game - same thing ..... nothing helps. 🙂

 

getting also this error

[UltDragon]

5 minutes ago, badnerbande said:

 

getting also this error

What Windows version are you using

[4esan4o95]

14 minutes ago, UltDragon said:

What Windows version are you using

Im usign win 7 Ultimate SP 1 x64

Edited March 2 by 4esan4o95

[badnerbande]

Windows 7 Home Premium. xD

edit: x64 version

 

Edited March 2 by badnerbande

[WindHunter]

35 minutes ago, Ggoblin said:

I just noticed power shrine is ultra-rare.

I know you guys want more ultra rares to balance the rarities,  but all other shrines are rare so it's pretty weird for this one to be different.

While yes the other void shrines all have a Rare rarity, Power Shrine is a lower tier and uses a more complex mechanic than simply returning void power that we think justifies it being an Ultra-rare. 

Per your other post, units affected by Altar of Nihil cannot be resurrected. That is what the "irrevocably die" portion of the description is meant to convey. 

[UltDragon]

1 hour ago, 4esan4o95 said:

Im usign win 7 Ultimate SP 1 x64

 

1 hour ago, badnerbande said:

Windows 7 Home Premium. xD

edit: x64 version

 

Support for Windows 7 has been dropped since December 2023, read more below.

We will be looking into workarounds, but cant guarantee it will work.

 

Edited March 2 by UltDragon

[4esan4o95]

8 minutes ago, UltDragon said:

 

Support for Windows has been dropped since December 2023, read more below.

We will be looking into workarounds, but cant guarantee it will work.

 

I understand u and youre right that systems should be up to date, but that just hurts so much , like i cant change system rn even if i want to and thousand of hours like 5-6 up to 8 every day spent in the game can be lost cause of this ?! im dying literaly.....

[badnerbande]

16 minutes ago, UltDragon said:

 

Support for Windows 7 has been dropped since December 2023, read more below.

We will be looking into workarounds, but cant guarantee it will work.

 

I would really appreacited, if you guys can make it work.

But if it takes to much effort/time, its understanble

Thanks for keeping this great game so long alive, and even adding new , amazing content 🙂

 

[UltDragon]

31 minutes ago, 4esan4o95 said:

I understand u and youre right that systems should be up to date, but that just hurts so much , like i cant change system rn even if i want to and thousand of hours like 5-6 up to 8 every day spent in the game can be lost cause of this ?! im dying literaly.....

Can you confirm, do you get this error when opening the updater or when launching the game?

[badnerbande]

when pushing the play button

 

Edited March 2 by badnerbande

[4esan4o95]

14 minutes ago, UltDragon said:

Can you confirm, do you get this error when opening the updater or when launching the game?

The launcher (updater) is working properly and its up to date - it happens when i press PLAY.
Btw i donwloaded the dll again after reinstalled the game - new error came in for another dll - i downloaded the other one too manually and put in game directory (it was said by the site to not be in system32 folder , but in game folder) - then it showed 00000x7 or something ERROR , no more dll errorrs. So i re-installed the game AGAIN and im hoping that you will find solution and hotfix for it .. :)

Edited March 2 by 4esan4o95

[UltDragon]

6 minutes ago, 4esan4o95 said:

The launcher (updater) is working properly and its up to date - it happens when i press PLAY.

Try adding compatibility settings on BattleForge.exe in the games folder.

Right click the exe file, then Properties, tab Compatibility, check "Run this program in compatibility mode” and select the mode Windows 7, then try launching the game through the updater.

Edited March 2 by UltDragon