Community Update - April 2025

[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!

• Skylords ReBOOM

Today, we have a very exciting announcement to share! After introducing new cards, campaign maps, features, and even new game modes, we feel it's time to branch out even further. Please check out the trailer below.

That’s right—Skylords Reborn is entering the first-person shooter genre! Join Bandit Sniper Guy on his adventure as he faces familiar foes from the world of Nyn. While we will continue releasing new content for Skylords Reborn, the majority of our development focus will shift to Skylords ReBOOM. We hope you'll join us on the battlefield!

Pre-orders are up now, so get your copy!  

 

• New Card Reveal - Hellhound

Back in 2023 we held a card-creation contest, inviting the community to share their ideas for potential new cards, which were then judged anonymously by our designers. While many great designs were submitted—some of which have already made their way into the game, like Energy Core and Gate of Akylos—we might have saved the best for last. The highest-rated entry was Hellhound, an upcoming L-sized unit for Pure Fire. Let’s break down the card!

 

Magma Armor
Takes 25% less damage from ranged and magical attacks. After 5 seconds in combat, damage reduction increases to 40% less damage, and after 10 seconds in combat, the damage reduction increases to 60% less damage from ranged and magical attacks. Resets after 10 seconds out of combat.
 

Pyroclastic Flow
Cause Magma Armor to explode, dealing 660 damage to enemies in a 15m radius, up to 1980 damage in total. Magma Armor is reset to 25%. Requires Magma Armor to be fully charged. Reusable every 20 seconds.

Design notes:
Hellhound was the overall winner of our first ever Card Creation Contest, where we asked members of the community to submit ideas for new cards. The original design has seen little change since then. Hellhound is an L-sized T3 Pure Fire unit. Similar to Moloch, it has resistance to ranged and magical damage, though in Hellhound's case this resistance begins at 25% and scales up to 60% the longer the unit remains in combat. Once the armor fully scales, Hellhound can activate Pyroclastic Flow, exploding its Magma Armor to deal up to 1980 damage to nearby enemies.

The general concept behind Hellhound is to have a Fire unit that slowly scales in durability as it fights, but which can then transform that durability into damage. This will allow Hellhound to quickly clean up camp remnants, including flying units, using Pyroclastic Flow when Magma Armor is no longer needed.

Hellhound will be released in a future content patch—details to be announced!

 

• Art Spotlight - Hellhound

Hellhound started out as a trial task for Psyagita, who was interested in joining our art team. Unfortunately, they ended up being too busy to continue, but were kind enough to let us move forward with the work. We dove into our archives and found some early sketches from the art process!

 

 

Psyagita first provided us with these three sketches. Our lead artist at the time, Tweeto, had this to say about the initial batch:

"I think I prefer the 3/4 view of the face over the profile version and am interested in seeing a more dramatic and imposing angle of the creature itself. Could you try sketching it from a lower perspective to highlight its intimidating presence?" 

 

Psyagita came back with two new attempts. We preferred the second one, as it had more of an action pose—which tends to look better in a card frame. Work then began on finalizing the pose and adding color.

  

 

At this point, Psyagita unfortunately became too busy, so our artist SpiritAlpha took over the task. Since we were working on the model simultaneously, we made a few adjustments that were reflected in the updated artwork—most notably, a new color for the flames and fur.

 

 

The piece was coming along nicely, but we felt it stood out a bit from other Fire cards, particularly due to the grey background. We also wanted to make sure the card felt cohesive in the deck bar alongside other Fire cards, so we looked to other units in the faction for inspiration.

 

 

By adding purple elements to the cave background, the artwork popped more and felt more in line with the rest of the Fire faction. After several rounds of feedback with our art group, we finalized the artwork for Hellhound.

 

 

We’re very happy with the result and hope you’re excited to play the card yourself in the future! A big thank you to Psyagita for laying the groundwork for this unique piece, and to SpiritAlpha for bringing it across the finish line!

 

• Team Changes

We’re excited to announce a new addition to our art team—Elkondo has joined us as a 2D artist! We hope you'll get to see some of his card artwork in the near future. Welcome, Elkondo!

We’re also happy to introduce Sabri as our new audio designer. Sabri has joined the team to support various audio-related tasks, including creating the sound effects for the recently released card Spirit Gate. We really appreciate the help!

Meanwhile, Prof_Emezy has stepped down from the team. He contributed as a Discord Moderator, Proofreader, and supported some exploratory work in marketing. We'd like to thank him for his efforts and dedication during his time with the team.

• 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!
 

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.
 

• 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!
 

Current events:

• NEW - Rookie Tournament - 12.04.2025 at 16:00 CET
Interested in PvP, but intimidated by the veterans? We got you covered! Join this Rookie tournament, where only rookies can join and there are prizes for all participants! The tournament will be hosted and livestreamed by Ultralord, please sign-up in advance. 

 

• NEW - Battle of Tactics #8: Maximum Support - Until 13.04.2025 23:59 CEST
Battle of Tactics returns in 2025 with another tricking and exciting challenge! Play a modified version of the map Oracle, including a special pre-game twist, allowing you to scale the difficulty up and down! More information. 

 

• COMING UP - Skylords Reborn Mega Quiz - 03-05-2025 at 20:00 CEST
Win prizes with your knowledge of BattleForge! Join the Mega Quiz live on Twitch for a chance to win BFP and boosters. Come hang out with us, win some prizes, and perhaps learn a new thing or two! More information. 

 

• FINISHED - Skylords Reborn Winter Cup
The first PvP tournament has been completed! You can rewatch the action with commentary by Ultralord and special guest Toggy, with this highlight video. 

 

• 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.

 

• 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: WARM-FIRE-CATS-PURR

This 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

[Hrdina_Imperia]

Hype! Cannot wait for the fabled Survival MMO of Skylords Reborn, that is in the oven too, I'm sure :^)

[Flawebako]

Hellhound looks really cool and interesting, will it have a completelly new ingame modell?

[Majora]

2 minutes ago, Flawebako said:

Hellhound looks really cool and interesting, will it have a completelly new ingame modell?

We are unfortunately not able to add new models to the game. It will use the forest elder model, but as L size. Our 3D-artist spend a lot of time making sure it looks great though! 

[Flawebako]

2 minutes ago, Majora said:

We are unfortunately not able to add new models to the game. It will use the forest elder model, but as L size. Our 3D-artist spend a lot of time making sure it looks great though! 

Oh I forgot about the Forest Elder modell! I could't think of any existing modell that would fit, but yeah it will probably work really well.

[Cikibarikonei]

Great card and an amazing artwork and process. Can't wait to try it out!

[Metagross31]

I can't wait to finally see Hellhound come to live ingame! I've been waiting for so long now 🙂

 

In case you are interested in my initial thoughts when coming up with the card idea, here is the original text I wrote with the submission to the contest:

 

Spoiler

Hello card-creation-contest-jury,
here is my suggestion for this contest, a new fire T3 unit named "Hellhound".
I will explain my thoughts about this card below its effects.

Name: Hellhound
Model: Fiery retexturing of Forest Elder
Tier & Orbs: T3, Pure fire
Type: Unit
Power: 170

HP (size): 2400 (L)
Dmg (type): 3200 (melee, special)

Passive ability:
Magma Armor:
    - While the unit is in combat, its skin hardens, making it less susceptible to ranged and magical attacks.
      For each ranged or magical attack the unit gets hit by, it will take less and less damage, up to a 70% damage reduction.
      When the unit is no longer being attacked, its armor gradually melts away, making it more susceptible to ranged and magical attacks again.
      The armor will have fully melted away after 5 seconds of not taking a ranged or magical hit.

Active ability:
Outburst:
    - Activate to shatter the Hellhound's fully hardened Magma Armor, damaging surrounding units.
      It will deal 666 damage to enemy units in a 15m radius (maximum of 2000).
      Knocks back small and medium units.
      Reusable every 20 seconds.

Explanation:
When designing this card, I had some PvE, as well as PvP considerations in my head.

Let's start with PvE:
In pure fire (in the following abbreviated with PF) T3, there are 9 different units to play (including affinities).
Most of those don't see any form of play in PvE.
Giant Slayer, Magma Spore, Sunreaver, Virtuoso and to a certain extend Vulcan, are very rare nieche picks at best.
Spitfire is sometimes used to snipe buildings from far away or even for some cheesy tactics.
Juggernaut is similarly mostly used to snipe away key buildings.
This leaves Magma Hurlers (MHs) as by far the most popular option for a fighting unit.
Since MHs are not tanky by nature, they are usually supplemented by Unity to artificially increase their tankyness to a solid level.
Hellhound is supposed to fill three roles here.
First of all, it gives another incentive, which is not designed towards building sniping, to go PF in T3 as supposed to splashing in a Nature or Shadow orb.
Second, it gives PF T3 another (melee) unit, that is mainly designed towards fighting.
Lastly, it give PF T3 a more dedicated tanking unit, which can also be linked to a backrow of MHs with Unity and is less of a power investment than a Juggernaut.
Speaking of power, with a cost of ~170 it is supposed to fit in between the typical L and XL power levels (100~120 and 200+).
The Magma Armor ability is supposed to work a bit like a Rage effect.
The more it is in combat, there harder its anti magic shell gets (ideally per hit taken, if that is not possible to implement, per hit dealt or per time in combat would also work).
This means, that it starts out rather squishy for its power cost, but it will get very tanky once in combat, until it becomes a sort of "budget Moloch" with an effective HP of 8000 vs ranged units.
The Dmg and HP values have been tuned to be similar to existing fire units in terms of value/power.
The Dmg/Power is around 18.8, which is even slightly below Magma Hurler (19.3) and Vulcan(20), but more than a Giant Slayer with 100% rage (17).
The HP/Power is at around 14.1, which is around the same as Virtuoso, more than MH (12.7), Vulcan (10.7) and Giant Slayer (12.3), but less than Sunreaver (16.5) or Juggernaut (16.1).
I thought this is appropriate, considering it will have more time to deal damage than other units due to its tankyness (dmg/power), and its effective HP against ranged units is gigantic (8000, slightly less than Spore Launcher (8300), ehp/power of 47.1).
In total, the unit still has more Dmg than HP, which seems fitting to a fire card in my eyes.
The active ability can be used in two ways.
Either to finish off the remainder of a camp before going on to the next objective.
Since the armor would run out between camps anyways, this can make it a bit more efficient.
Alternatively, the ability can be used mid fight to maximize DPS midfight, risking to loose your Hellhound in the process, because it turns squishy again.
Assuming the unit stays in combat, attacking constantly, and it has its ability ready every 20 seconds and it always casts it with full efficiency (dealing 2k damage flat), this would allow for a total DP20 of 5200.
If this turns out to be too much, a cooldown increase to 30 seconds might be appropriate, allowing only for a total DP20 of ~4500.
The damage has been designed to be around the same as a Backlash at ~500 void (465 to be precise).

Now towards PvP:
Here PF T3 faces a similar problem as in PvE.
The only real incentive to go Fire in T3 is Juggernaut, which is mainly used to snipe bases and not to win fights.
Oftentimes, it even ignores enemy units completely and just goes for a Charge against an orb to try and quickly win the game.
In 2v2 there is also Spitfire, but I am not a good 2v2 player at all, so I cannot really judge that situation properly.
The only unit, that is typically used for unit trades in 1v1 is (as far as I know) Giant Slayer.
Hellhound is supposed to give PF players another option in T3 to go for a more combat focused playstyle.
In open field trades, it is supposed to win against most ranged unit attacks by means of its Magma Armor.
It is supposed to have two main weaknesses in a) getting nuked by strong ranged attacks, that take it down before its armor forms, and b) Melee attacks, that outperform it (mainly L counters).
The first of those is rather a feature of PvE maps than PvP games.
For the second, the most prominent example of this in T3 PvP scenarios is probably Silverwind Lancer, which Hellhound can knock back with its active ability to have a chance to fight back.
If the Hellhound is left unchecked, it can also be very threatening to Orbs/Power Wells too, especially when supported with Ravage and Disenchant.
In order to not make it too oppressive in that regard, I decided to not make the Outburst ability damage buildings.

Finally, here are a few possible balance levers I thought of, that could be used to make the card stronger or weaker, depending on how it currently is.
- Orb Requirements of Fire, Fire, Neutral - Gives Fire Frost and other fire splashes a new Tool in T3. Might be too strong when combined with nature though (heals, CC, transformation buffs...)
- Power cost of 150~160. I would not change it too far to not mess with the units nieche as a medium cost unit.
- Counter - I left the unit without a counter thus far, since it already has a rage-like effect and an additional way of attacking. It could get a counter (probably M (only Vulcan thus far) or L (Same as MH and Virtuoso)) to increase its fighting potential without making it too oppressive against buildings.
- Tweaks in Dmg/HP efficiency - should be obvious.
- Make Magma Armor slow the unit down gradually with Outburst restoring its full speed - this way it becomes more Moloch-like; and more kite-able.
- Make Outburst deal damage/no damage against flying units - should be only a minor concern for PvP, but important for PvE. I would currently tend to make it hit flyers.
- Make the unit more susceptible to ranged/magical damage after using Outburst. - Makes using the active ability more of a risk/reward calculation.
- Speed of Magma Armors generation/degeneration - I was thinking about a similar build up rate to Rage effects, where it depends on the number of ranged/magical attacks taken. The 5 second meltdown phase was also taken to be the same as for some Rage effects (Giant Slayer, Rageclaws). Could also be set to 10 seconds (Fire Dragon) or something in between. Ideally, it would also display a yellow bar, similar to Mountaineer or Harvester, but I am not sure, if this is possible
- Possible Affinities:
- Infused Outburst:
    - Also damages buildings. - Either more efficient base clears in PvE or another thread against wells/orbs in PvP.

- Tainted Outburst:
    - Additionally, the affected units will be set on fire, causing them to take 30 damage per second.
      75% of this damage can not be warded off with the help of damage reducing abilities because it is able to circumvent every buff or protective shield.
      Lasts for 15 seconds. - Even more DPS. Not quite enough to kill an Avatar of Frost though.

- Blessed Outburst:
    - Additionally, the unit will become limber after shedding the armor, making it unaffected by unit collisions for 10 seconds. - Similar to the redesign of its bigger, greener cousin :). Makes it easier to get in and out of camps.

- Gifted Outburst:
    - Additionally, the unit will be lighter without its armor, allowing it to move with higher movement speed for 10 seconds. - When the enemy spawns a lot of units to defend against your Hellhound -> Knock them Back and run away to the next base!

Anyways, this concludes my """short""" description of the Hellhound card.
I really hope you liked this design because let's be honest - its biggest trait is that it looks freaking awesome!
Who wouldn't want such a model ingame (-:

 

[Majora]

Right after this Community Update went live, we had an onboarding call, and I have edited the CU. 
We’re excited to announce a new addition to our art team—Elkondo has joined us as a 2D artist! We hope you'll get to see some of his card artwork in the near future. Welcome, Elkondo!

[shaulani]

On 4/1/2025 at 10:20 AM, Majora said:

We are unfortunately not able to add new models to the game. It will use the forest elder model, but as L size. Our 3D-artist spend a lot of time making sure it looks great though! 

Why not? Do they use some non-open-source models and you don't have the editor? Or is it a x86 problem? Or something different? I'm just curious.

[Metagross31]

17 hours ago, shaulani said:

Why not? Do they use some non-open-source models and you don't have the editor? Or is it a x86 problem? Or something different? I'm just curious.

We do not have the source code of the game (particularly of the BattleForge.exe), so it takes a lot of reverse engineering effort to learn how everything in the game works, like loading models and animations, and do changes to the game. The changes and additions that have been made so far, like adding new cards, are the product of years of work in that regard, but there is just so much we do not know (yet) about the game's inner workings, that some things just are currently impossible to implement.

[onedaxter]

@Metagross31

Long time ago (2015) i had contact with @Pesmontis who shared his editor for viewing the 3d models outside of the game :

 

I don't know if this helps you at all. Probably not, because as i understand you need to know how the .exe works and not how the models are structured. But I just wanted to post it, maybe it helps.

P.S.

thx for your work and dedication for this project ! Even if i don't have the time to play it anymore i still watch your announcments on discord and read this blog posts and i'm overwhelmed what you have accomplished.

[Kubik]

58 minutes ago, onedaxter said:

I don't know if this helps you at all. Probably not, because as i understand you need to know how the .exe works and not how the models are structured.

If you check the last 3 posts, you will notice, that it is not capable of exporting the models fully with everything...

So knowing the exact structure of the models would be enough to add new, but the emphasis is on exact for a reason, because a single bit incorrect might mean it will not work.

[Majora]

While most understood Skylords ReBOOM was an April Fool's joke, most of you seem to have missed the scratch code you can find by pressing the pre-order button 🙂 

[Stippy]

On 4/5/2025 at 11:17 AM, Majora said:

While most understood Skylords ReBOOM was an April Fool's joke, most of you seem to have missed the scratch code you can find by pressing the pre-order button 🙂 

HAHA, thanks for that hint - indeed missed that one.

I really love what you guys are doing to this game! After some games the last month, I just wanted to let you know huch much of an enhancement the color change for the affinities is. So much easier to chose which one to use. In the past I had to read every affinity multiple times, as some texts are only different in details. This makes it SO much better!

[Majora]

13 hours ago, Stippy said:

HAHA, thanks for that hint - indeed missed that one.

I really love what you guys are doing to this game! After some games the last month, I just wanted to let you know huch much of an enhancement the color change for the affinities is. So much easier to chose which one to use. In the past I had to read every affinity multiple times, as some texts are only different in details. This makes it SO much better!

Glad to hear it! That Quality of Life change was on our wish-list for a long time! 

[fShark]

The Hellhound will be a great addition to the game, even though it is not for Lost Souls LoL