Community Update May 2026

[Bini Inibitor]

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!

 

This one is filled to the brim with new things!

Whispers of the Void is reaching its final stretch, and as the final set of challenges unlock today. We will go over them in this Community Update.
Also, we worked on some quality of life changes as well and showed off one of our initial attempts at designing defensive rPvE.
And finally, as teased a few months ago, our new campaign map, The Shifting Temple, releases today with a challenge accompanying it! Read more to find out what you can broadly expect.

 

New seasonal challenges 

With the third month of our season, Whispers of the Void running, the final set of seasonal challenges unlocks.
Let's take a closer look at them.

General challenges:

4.1 - Win different campaign maps or featured community maps on advanced difficulty or higher. All units played must be medium or large units. No flying units are allowed. Only Shadow cards are allowed. These restrictions apply to all team members.

 

4.2 - Win the 1-player featured community maps, The Easter Tree and Town in Need on advanced difficulty or higher. Only Shadow, Lost Souls, or Neutral cards are allowed.

 

4.3 - Win the 2-player scenario, The Shifting Temple on standard difficulty or higher. Only Shadow cards are allowed. These restrictions apply to all team members.

 

4.4 - Win the 2-player scenario, The Shifting Temple on standard difficulty or higher. All cards in your deck must not contain more than one orb of each element. These restrictions apply to all team members.

 

4.5 - Win the 2-player scenario, The Insane God and the 4-player scenario, Bad Harvest on advanced difficulty or higher. All enemy buildings on the map must be destroyed. Only Shadow or Lost Souls cards are allowed. These restrictions apply to all team members.

 

4.6 - Kill enemies while playing the 4-player featured community map, Random Wall Defense on any difficulty. All cards except Enlightenment are allowed. These restrictions apply to all team members. Killing enemies on higher difficulties awards more mission progress.

 

Nightmare challenges:

6.1 - Be among the 100 fastest times at the end of the season on the 1-player scenario Heart of Trouble on advanced difficulty. Only Shadow or Lost Souls cards are allowed.
 

 

6.2 - Win the 2-player scenario Nightmare Shard on standard difficulty or higher. No spells or flying units are allowed. Only Shadow or Lost Souls cards are allowed. These restrictions apply to all team members.
 

 

6.3 - As a solo player, win the 4-player scenario Blight on standard difficulty or higher without losing a Monument. Only Shadow cards are allowed.
 

 

6.4 - Win random PvE scenario Map of the Season presets against 5 different factions on Adv (4) difficulty or higher. All units played must be extra large. Cards from any faction are allowed. These restrictions apply to all team members. Completing the challenge on higher difficulties awards progressively more points.

 

• New Campaign map - The Shifting Temple

 

Today, after being teased in February's Community Update, we release our next two-player campaign map along with a seasonal challenge - The Shifting Temple. 

Story Introduction

"The Twilight have unearthed an ancient Shadow temple and even now fight to overwhelm its defenders. What the Twilight’s purpose is, or how they found the temple is unknown, but what is clear is that they must be stopped from gaining whatever they came to find."

About the map:

The map continues the story of the Church of the Twilight, previously introduced in Behind Enemy Lines. As we arrive at the mystical Shifting Temple, we find Twilight already attempting to breach its defenses, their purpose - unknown. We need to get inside the temple and keep the Twilight at bay while navigating one of four randomly chosen paths through the temple to prevent the Twilight from getting whatever they came for.

Like Empire, Behind Enemy Lines left us with a similar taste. The Ragged King left the limelight just as fast as he was introduced in Empire all those years ago. We felt the need to expand upon his lore, along with the aftermath of defeating Blight's squadron.

The Church of the Twilight is no different. The story surrounding this cult starts and ends in said map, and it felt incomplete with potential left on the table. Our idea was to continue this sub-plot and introduce the Church of the Twilight as a counterpart to the Church of the Rifle, the latter of which also has a lot of potential lore-wise.

While we do not want to spoil anything, to give you an idea of what to expect: if you like the general structure of Crusade with some Dwarfen Riddle sprinkled in, you should feel right at home.

 

We would also like to give a special thank-you to our map testers, who provided significant feedback and ensured the map will be an enjoyable experience for all skill levels. And of course a huge thank-you to Dreamlord and Vox once again who lended their voices as story narrator and Gaeron respectively!

 

• Art spotlight: The Shifting Temple Loading Screen

The artwork for the loading screen was created by our talented artist Spirit Alpha.

 

Exploration and sketching

Concept:

"I was thinking there would be some kind of Shadow boss, and I thought Shadow having Ironclad made by the cult of rifle could be cool and plausible. Additionally, I wanted to show the contrast of Shadow having some sort of magic tech versus the Twilight attacking as a swarm."

The sketch was already off to a great start, since the event depicted is something actually happening on the map. So the exploration stage concluded right away. However, a Shadow version of Ironclad is not present and, as such, had to be changed.

 

Iterating on and refining the concept

Refining the concept:

The Ironclad has been changed to a Death Ray, laying waste to the Twilight. Additionally, the Hulk was made more prominent to further emphasise its imposing presence and Twilight's relentless attempt at attacking the temple.

 

Locking in and working on the details

Shading and putting the scene together:

The scene comes along nicely, and some details have been added. The Stone of Torment has been exchanged for a certain individual.

"The tower didn’t look very good when I started detailing it. I just didn’t like how it was turning out. Him standing there in the moonlight felt better."

 

Challenges and finishing touches

Representation and source material:

 

In the current version the Hulk looked too humanoid and a reference from that angle was missing.
Also, Ashbone Pyro's artwork depicts the Nightfire Jet as an orange-red flamethrower, whereas the in-game unit shows the stream in a gray-purple colour. It was decided to stay faithful to the original artwork.

Applying the reference and adding more detail:

Ashbone Pyro's stream was given its appropriate colour and Hulk became less humanoid.
More entities were added and the whole fight is now a lot dirtier and more chaotic.

 

Finishing touches and high resolution version:

Lastly, some fog and finer details like debris on the impact of the Death Ray shot were added.

 

• An update regarding defensive rPvE

We think it's to nobody's surprise that announcing a defensive version of random PvE all those years ago was a grave mistake. Since then, we've been asked regularly what the progress is and when it will be released. It was answered in this Q&A Stream several months ago and long story short: we still have no release date. The mode in question is particularly difficult to design, because not only is defense challenging to design in a game like this but everybody has a different idea of how the game mode is supposed to look and play like.
 

Our initial attempt:

But after all this time we thought about showcasing our very first fleshed-out attempt at defensive rPvE, which is playable right now on the Community Map section called Random Wall Defense along with a seasonal challenge. It received some changes in order to be more playable and enjoyable. Feel free to give it a try!

 

• Quality of Life changes

Since our last Community Update, we have implemented some quality of life updates, which some of you players have already seen. But to those who haven't been active lately let us introduce you to the following:

Updated Launcher with improved technical
options and an integrated news tab:

The Updater for the game has been equipped with additional features. Namely, an integrated news feed, so you can immediately see if there are any news like this very important Community Update and a new sub menu with technical options like resolution or what DirectX version you want to run this game on, which should make troubleshooting a bit easier. The Verify Files button has also been moved there.
In addition to this, we added the SMJ.cards website for quick access as well - a nice website with neat tools provided by our great team member Maze!
 

Repair all buttons:

On some maps you will repair your buildings frequently. In certain cases, like Passage to Darkness, this can become tedious. There is a dedicated repair button below the minimap. However, this button didn't serve a practical purpose, because a player would rather click the respective building and repair it that way. So we repurposed the button to repair all damaged buildings with a single click instead. The default shortcut for this is CTRL + B.

 

• Team changes

After being part of the community for a while and regularly presenting herself in questionable lighting conditions, Min joined the team as a Trial Discord Moderator. Last month, we released her from the role of Trial Discord Moderator and made her a full-on Discord Moderator.  Congratulations, and good luck on your moderation journey!

R4bitF00t decided to step down as a Community Manager, with me (Bini_Inibitor) being his successor. He will still retain his former position within the map-making team. We want to thank R4bitF00t for his contributions as such. May he still bless us with his map-making craftsmanship.

 

• 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!

• Replay Old Events!
Our event organiser Ultralord made it possible to replay old events. You can upload your replays and see how you fared against other participants. While this gives no rewards, it can be a cool little task to challenge yourself with while waiting for other events to start.
Read the details on how to replay old events here.
 

Recent events:

• FINISHED Twilight Hunt
The tradition of the faction hunt continues once again!
You can watch the stream recording here.

• FINISHED 1v1 PvP Rookie Tournament #3
A 1v1 PvP tournament intended for lower-ranked players.
You can watch the stream recording here.

Upcoming events:
 

• Skylords Reborn Spring Cup 2026 -> Starts 10th May 2026
New year, new Spring, new 1v1 PvP Spring Cup!
Read the details here. Sign up here.

 

• Host your own tournament/ event
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our Event Organizers @Metagross31 or @Ultralord. 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: TEMP-LEMA-PREL-EASE

This code is valid until June 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 April 2026

[sylvix95]

fire

[Nagrach]

Thanks and keep up the good work!

Highly interested in the new campaign map - but can´t find it on the worldmap?

[Krapper]

4 minutes ago, Nagrach said:

Thanks and keep up the good work!

Highly interested in the new campaign map - but can´t find it on the worldmap?

It will be available very soon once the patch is deployed 

[SpiritsOfMayhem]

Nice one

[Nagrach]

2 hours ago, Krapper said:

It will be available very soon once the patch is deployed 

ah, thanks - thought the patch was already deplpyed since a few files were updated today. But that was cause of the short downtime yesterday?

[Hrdina_Imperia]

Wooooo. Long time in the making, I'm glad to see the map is out - and in such an awesome state. Lot's of hard work from many people. 

[Heros5k]

you guys cooked with the map!

[Draconnor]

New map starts with so good looking forest area that each time im amazed... how this game can be maxed - it really looks great.