Community Update - January 2023

[Majora]

Happy new year, Skylords!

A new year; a new Community Update! It's time to bring you up to speed with everything going on in Skylords Reborn!

• 2nd Anniversary Stream

The 18th of December marked the 2nd Anniversary of Skylords Reborn! Two years ago, after many years of internal development and open stress tests, BattleForge was playable once again. We are very grateful for all your continued enthusiasm and support! 

On the anniversary, we hosted a celebration stream. If you missed it, you can view it on our YouTube channel. We will also cover most of the announcements in this Community Update.

Please note: The Anniversary Card Creation Contest ends today. If you want to participate, do so now! 
 

• Upcoming Content Patch

Sadly, our upcoming Content Patch which was planned for December didn't make it in time. The combination of many things to review (including our new feature Cosmetics) and the busy holidays proved to be a bit too ambitious. 

Since the upcoming patch will break replays due to the many balance changes deployed alongside it, we know it's far from ideal for events to not have a set patch date. We are doing our best to release the patch as soon as possible in early January, but sadly can't lock in a concrete date yet.

Please keep an eye on the Discord and the forum for more information in the coming days. 


• Upcoming Feature: Cosmetics

For our first anniversary patch, we had Reforging as our big new feature, focusing on improving the economy. 
For our second anniversary, Cosmetics will be introduced as a way to provide more challenges and collectibles. 

Players will be able to collect new borders, banners and titles, further customizing their experience. Here is a look at the new borders:  
 

 

Borders are the part of your profile that surround your character portrait. With the patch release, there will be two borders to choose from for each of the different elements/factions in the game. The first border is a simple but clean colour scheme, where the second level expands on the theme of the faction a bit more, like more vines for Nature or infestation for Twilight. 

Borders can be combined with Banners, here is an example: 
 

 

Banners, borders, and profile pictures can be freely combined to make unique combinations. There will also be new titles to unlock. An example of a title can be seen in the picture, above the name, in this case "Game Master". 

Your cosmetics will show up in the lobby, and when hovering over players in the chat list.   
 

 

Those new banners, borders, titles (and a few new profile pictures), are tied to new Achievements, which provide a variety of new challenges. Some will be rewarded simply by playing games with your favourite action, while others might ask you to complete the campaign using only cards from the Twilight Edition. 

We hope you are looking forward to a bunch of new challenges to explore, and new bling to show off! 

 

• Upcoming New Promo: Worldbreaker Gun

While our new cards Sanctuary and Raven Walker had already been announced in previous Community Updates, we had one more surprise in store in our stream: our next promo card and the first promo building: Worldbreaker Gun! 

In this year's feedback survey, people let us know loud and clear they would like to see buildings get the promo treatment. The newly buffed Worldbreaker Gun felt like the perfect candidate for being the very first promo building. 

You will be able to unlock this new promo by completing the upcoming achievement Urban Planner.

-- Please note: this achievement is not yet live! --
Urban Planner
Win the 2-player scenario The Sunbridge and the 1-player scenarios Mo and Ocean on expert difficulty, with all players in your team playing only building and spell cards
-- Please note: this achievement is not yet live! --

As with Mana Wing Promo, the promo will not drop from boosters, but will be tradeable. If you don't want to do the challenge yourself, you can buy the card on the market, or trade it with other players. 

 

• Advanced Filtering

We greatly expanded the search function in both the inventory and marketplace during the time of our first anniversary, which was probably overlooked by a lot of players in the new-patch-hype. Our developer Kubik wrote an in depth document about the way the new (and old) function worked, with handy shortcuts to find just the cards you need. 

But even the players who were aware of the new tools at their disposal, had a hard time remembering the search commands. Our UI designer Ult and Skylord of Honour Kapo worked together to provide a handy new ingame tooltip that should make searching for cards a lot easier for everyone. 
 

 

• Future Development Focus

We spend the last two years on improving and balancing many, many cards. We currently feel the balance of the game, while not perfect, is in the best place it has ever been. The campaign and rPvE are playable with every faction right now, and while PvE changes will continue, we intend a major pivot next patch cycle to map/game content with many of our balance developers and team members. 

This means we will put more focus on providing more map-based content, like our alternative Halloween map Spooky Encounters, the upcoming Nature rPvE faction, Defensive rPvE, tweaks to the difficulty levels of rPvE and new campaign maps. Basically, we want to focus on creating content that will lure back old players, and invite new ones in. 

This has proven challenging. While every player automatically has access to the map editor, map making is a long and patient process. We are very aware people are looking forward to new campaign maps, but their design is a huge undertaking, and due to the volunteer nature of the project, mapmakers don't always stick it out till the end. 

If you want to help out in the map department, please take a look at our open positions:
• Map Designer
• Map Developer
• Map Artist

We are also looking for an Audio Editor to help us with processing voice acting takes. Want to help out in another area? Check out our open positions.

 

• Tournaments / Events

Since Community Updates are posted on a monthly schedule, events might come and go in between them. Be sure to keep a close eye on the ingame event-tab and the forum calendar to not miss any events! 

• CLOSING SOON – Official Card Design Contest - UNTIL 01.01.2023 23:59 CET
A contest like this has often been suggested: create your own card! Entries will be judged by a jury of Designers and there are tiered prizes, including boosters and promos. Maybe your design will even make it into the game! Today is the last day to join: More information.

• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event yourself? Please reach out to our Event Organizer, Metagross! 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.

• Newsletter

While we do our best to make it easy to follow Skylords Reborn by providing monthly news through these Community Updates, we are limited to the Forum and our Social Media channels to reach you. You can now sign up to our newsletter, which we will use to give you a heads-up about a new patch release or Community Update. Don't worry, we hate spam as much as you do and won't use your data in any other way. 

 If you provided your e-mail during our summer survey to stay up to date, you are automatically subscribed. 

 

• In Conclusion

And that's it for this Community Update, thanks for reading! 

As is tradition, this community update comes with a scratch code. 
The code will reward you with a General-booster: HAPP-YNEW-YEAR-2023

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

As always, we are open to feedback, so please let us know if you have any questions, suggestions, or comments! 

Archive
• Skylords Reborn Documents (Deep Dives, Behind the Scenes, PvP Guide)  
• Overview Community Updates
• Community Update #30

[Hrdina_Imperia]

       

Oh, and happy new year you all!

[Kapo]

Happy new year, eagerly awaiting the patch 😃

[Deadman]

cool

[DDrazard]

Happy New Years! And pretty cool updates as always. ^^

[Dutchy]

On 12/28/2022 at 3:23 PM, Majora said:

This picture looks so good!
The team did an awesome job the past 2 years in creating such awesome new cards! 

My favorite among them has to be either the Bandit Sniper or the Evil Eye. My favorite artwork is Coat of Protection. The most played card is probably Bandit Minefield. 

[Kapo]

Favourite Art: Coat and Transcendence

Favourite Card to play: Bandit Minefield

... but my heart always goes out mainly to the Snappies.

Edited January 2, 2023 by Kapo

[Volin]

Goes in the same direction for me.

Coat artwork is just suuuuper awesome, and also like how the card plays.
Banzai voice lines are super awesome too, damn what a cool voice.
Also the gameplay is a bit underwhelming and tho it is a bit anti-meta due to how the game works, I have much love for the Wasteland Terror too. Just love dragons!
Evil Eye goes boom, who does not like it?!
And ofc, Bandit Minefield, just the best card in the game! @Hirooo 😉  (can't tag you here, cause I don't know whats your forums name, but perhaps you see it by chance)

Yeah, the Reborn edition is already a masterpiece, great job guys and girls!!


EDIT-PS: Patch when? 😛

Edited January 2, 2023 by Volin

[Venomlord]

I agree the overall balance was never in an better state but im still impatient for your next balance changes in your upcoming update.
My favourite cards you made are defently Bandit Minefield, Banzai Lord and Bandit sniper. Most beautiful artwork in my opinion has Sanctuary.

Great work the team did in this year, im really impressed. 

[Hrdina_Imperia]

All the artworks are amazing.. but I guess the upcoming promo Worldbreaker Gun is just goddamn awesome. 

Promo Juice Tank when? 

[Ironshaduw]

Worldbreaker gun value is gonna tank hard after the promo releases.