Greetings, Tacticians!

Skygard Arena just received its 12th update since the start of Early Access!

This update brings lots of general user experience improvements, some performance optimization, several balancing changes for Raine, Aiden, Bu Shin and Aerica, and a bunch of bug fixes.

Enjoy the new patch and see you in the Arena!

The Skygard Arena Dev Team

PATCH NOTES - v0.8.2

General User Experience Improvements

• Optimized the game to reduce vRAM usage.

• Added a sound effect when selecting a Relic in the Champion editor.

• In Relics’ descriptions, improved the font colour of the ultimate action when it is referenced.

• Adjusted the speed of the camera rotation when rotating the camera with the mouse wheel.

• Improved and clarified the description of several Spells and Tokens.

• Improved the visuals for the Champions’ portraits in the teambuilder.

Improvements to the Single-Player Campaign

• Improved the intro dialogues of mission 2.

• Once you have gone through the teambuilder tutorial before mission 3 once, this tutorial will no longer appear when launching mission 3.

• Added a tutorial dialogue about Teleporting between Ally Pillars in mission 3.

• The model of Na Jima Skirmisher persona is now used in the Camp through Act 2 of the Campaign.

• Improved the intro and outro scenes in mission 8.

• Fixed a bug that could cause weird UI elements to appear on the loading screen of campaign missions.

• Fixed the description of a couple of Quests which were using “turns” instead of “rounds” and conversely.

• Re-balanced the volume of the music in intro scenes, the teambuilder and outro scenes.

• On the Rewards screen, when you unlock a Persona, the first Relic unlocked with this Persona now appears immediately below the Persona.

• When you complete a mission for the first time, you will now see an animation with a moving golden start next to the Quests button to let you know that you can pick up stars in the Quests section.

• In the teambuilder of a campaign mission and during dialogue scenes, clicking on Quit in the options menu will now properly lead you to the Home screen instead of closing the game.

• Improved the user experience when coming back into the game to play the Campaign mode.

System Changes

• When an action both consumes and applies tokens, consumption happens first and application happens second.

  • Example: using Earth Squash with Champei equipped with Resonant Gong on a target who already has an Exposed token will consume the Exposed token, increase damage dealt and then apply another Exposed token.

• Impact tokens now deal regular damage instead of pure damage.

• Tweaked the damage formula, which is now:

  • \[Spell base damage x Attacker Damage Multiplier (Critical Strike, Dazed token, any relic boosting spell damage…) + Additional Flat Damage (from Impact tokens)] x Defender Damage Multiplier (from Exposed token, Barrier token…)

  • In particular, Impact tokens are now affected by both Exposed and Barrier.

• Dealing damage with Aerica's sentry is now counted as a separate effect. In particular, using Switcheroo on a Champion to displace them into the sentry's surveillance line now first consumes the Barrier token with Switcheroo and then applies the full damage from the sentry's surveillance attack.

Balancing & gameplay changes for Champions

Aiden - Inquisitor Persona

• Word of Penance (secondary) : this action no longer has a different effect on allies and enemies. The effect is now: Deals 25 damage and applies 3 Regeneration tokens to target.

• Inquisition (secondary): can be cast on an enemy holding any token → can be cast on an enemy holding a negative token.

• Inquisitorial Rosette (Relic): +15% → +10% damage per charge.

Aiden Inquisitor could feel oppressive to play against with few options to counter him. We are reducing his scaling power so that he does not one-shot enemy Champions too early in the game. We are tweaking his teleport ability so that he won't be able to jump on your carry as long as you they don't have negative tokens on them.

Raine - Life Mage Persona

• Renewal (secondary) : can no longer be cast on enemies. Applies Unhealable for 3 rounds instead of 2. Still heals by 50 HPs.

• Twin Roses (ultimate): ultimate charges cost = 6 → 8.

  • The Bond effect no longer copies Statuses, except when it’s clearly stated otherwise (for only one status at the moment: unhealable).

  • The color of the Bond VFX is now Blue if it was applied by one member of your team, and Red if it was applied by a member of the enemy team.

• Sceptre of Overheal (Relic) → Sceptre of Vitality (new Relic): Damage dealt by the spells of each Champion on Raine's team are increased by 10% for each Regeneration token on them.

The downside from using Renewal and healing for 50 HPs was too small, especially when used on Raine, so we are increasing the duration of Unhealable. We don't think it was healthy that Raine could easily counter a composition relying on healing, so we removed her ability to target enemies with Renewal.

Twin Roses is one of the most interesting and powerful ultimate actions of the game: we are aligning its cost with its power.

Sceptre of Overheal was causing many balancing issues, especially combined with Aerica Artificer. Teams could generate an insane amount of ultimate charges and shield points (with no real counterplay), which resulted in frustrating matches. We looked at different options and decided to change the Relic for a new one, which brings a new scaling option and synergies with other Champions who can apply Regeneration tokens.

Bu Shin - Shadow Assassin Persona

• Shadow Trap (secondary) - Reworked:

  • Summons a Shadow on target cell.

  • At the start of his next turn, Bu Shin teleports on the Shadow.

  • If a unit steps on the Shadow, it is destroyed. When the Shadow is destroyed, Bu Shin gains Impact 2.

• Smoke Bomb (secondary): token applied to enemies: 2 Blind tokens → 1 Blind token. He still gains 1 Impact token for each enemy hit and regains his movement action.

• Tormentor (Relic) → Looter Dagger (new Relic): When Bu Shin slays an enemy Champion, he gains 3 ultimate charges and 1 Impact token.

• Night Fang (Relic): now increases by 30% both damage from Bu Shin's spells and Bu Shin's Impact tokens.

Bu Shin Shadow was not quite fulfilling his fantasy as an assassin who can go in, get a kill, go out. Shadow Trap was also quite complex to grasp with multiple effects. So we are simplifying this secondary action and turning it into a reliable tool to teleport and generate Impact tokens.

The Tormentor Relic (which applied Poison and Bleed tokens) did not fit with the assassin, bursty fantasy of this Persona. The new Looter Dagger Relic rewards Bu Shin for getting kills and should make him more reliable in the mid-game, after getting his first kill.

Aerica - Artificer Persona

• Elvish Boots (relic): Whenever Aerica or an ally teleports through a Pillar or the Relay Beacon they also gain 3 → 2 ultimate charges.

Teams using this Relic could generate an absurd number of ultimate charges by teleporting and gain a massive advantage in the early game. We believe the Relic is still powerful and playable with 2 charges per teleport.

Daerio - Duelist Persona

• Final Hour (relic): Daerio's ultimate action slays the enemy target -> deals 9,999 pure damage.

The goal of this change is to clarify which is stronger between Final Hour and the Undying status: Final Hour does not enable to kill a target who has the Undying status.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug that prevented Daerio from capturing a Pillar with his refunded Primary Action after eliminating an enemy with his primary action.

• Fixed a bug that prevented a Champion from fully disappearing when eliminated by Daerio Duelist equipped with Final Hour.

• Fixed a bug that could cause the game to soft-lock when playing against the Experimental AI, if the AI was considering using the Teleport action or Champei’s Switcheroo action.

• Fixed a bug that could cause the game to crash when using Bond against the Experimental AI.

• Fixed a bug that could cause ultimate orbs not to respawn if Aerica, Champei or Bu Shin were being played.

• Fixed a bug that could prevent your team from spawning at the start of a PvE mission in certain circumstances.

• The Ascending Bow relic now properly shows up as a relic which influences Na Jima's primary action and ultimate action when you hover on one of these actions.

• When Vallya Vanguard is equipped with Judgement Hammer, the prompt correctly says Choose a Champion instead of Choose an Ally.

• Fixed a bug that prevented the camera from moving when using the mouse while auto-focus was on.

• Hovering on the Night Fang Relic (Bu Shin Shadow) no longer shows the tooltip for Impact tokens.

• Fixed a bug that would delay the update of the spells’ description when changing Personas quickly in the teambuilder.

• Fixed a bug that would cause a zone on the right-hand side on the screen to be unclickabke during battle.