Affinity System Changes

[SunWu]

3 hours ago, Twinson said:

[...] that an early t3 cannot be defend vs. an agressive t2 attack with deep one, spikeroot or vileblood any longer. Since this was the only way for shadow to block such single unit attacks somehow to hinder heal after heal with a lower power setup.

Befallens? Aura?

On topic: 99% of the changes seem very worthwhile to me...will miss purple matter mastery on maps like treasure fleet, but balance wise this might make sense i guess.

Edited Tuesday at 10:56 PM by SunWu

[WindHunter]

Some cards will need further adjustments, and not all of these adjustments have been included here as we have been soliciting feedback from the community to see what they think needs to change to make the card viable as a single affinity. Northern Keep, for example, has been brought up in the Discord discussion as needing some adjustments to it alongside the affinity consolidation.

As I mentioned in the opening post explaining the changes, more charges is not a good reason for an affinity to exist in most cases, as the standalone card can just have its charges rebalanced. We need to think more about the future than just the present state of a card's balance.

As per the comments related to gameplay diversity, I already offered some thoughts on this in the opening post. The big thing is that most affinities do not actually increase the diversity within the game, rather they destroy it. There are only a few limited effects which can realistically be affinity effects on most cards and these soon become boring. Slapping the same effects on cards of every faction, and even giving factions abilities which ought to be exclusive to other factions, makes the entire game feel samey. The ideal is that each faction has a unique and distinct identity that attracts players to it; factions should be more than reskins. Additionally, Skylords Reborn is simply not a game with an infinite design space. If cards overlap, the better one will be used and the other ignored, meaning we want to open up some of the space being blocked by affinities to make room for new cards which can full embody the niche that many affinities only partially fill.

40 minutes ago, PlainVenom said:

One thing though, Core Dredge feels like it had a reason for infused affinity, you had the choice between Siege or more damage to frozen units? - Doesn't that mean that the infused affinity succesfully has an identity?

A question as well regarding upgrades. I currently only own Ice Age (Blue affinity), do I then get the new Ice Age fully upgraded or gold refunded?

Core Dredge was one card which many people in the Discord discussion raised concerns about, so we are considering pulling back that change. Per your other question related to upgraded, please check out the clarifications in the opening post, where this question is answered.

[Stavenson]

I believe most the assessments on why changing affinities is important for game balance are very true and should be acted upon, from a game design perspective.

You certainly have enough data to support most of the purposed changes, even thou player feedback for niche uses should be taken into account. From a not-so-active player perspective, I appreciate the simplification of some cards, choices that felt pointless, particularly ones where we get to keep both perks.

[Bini Inibitor]

On 9/1/2026 at 8:03 PM, Fimion said:

Im really starting to feel bad for poor Northern Keep just remove it completely if you hate it that much but dont make it die a slow and painful death by slowly nerfing it into obsolescence. 

At rPvE Expert+ Ice Shield Tower combined with Imperials and Landship is such a good combo that you dont even need Northern Keep anymore anyway. I just dont understand the point of nerfing Northern Keep is it so OP on Campaign maps or PvP that you absolutely have to nerf it or do you just hate it for some reason?

I do agree that Northern Keep feels a bit lackluster now compared to Ice Shield Tower.