The Progression & Relics Update is live!

Dear Tacticians,

We just released the 9th Early Access update for Skygard Arena, with some pretty big changes!

Full patch notes below - here is the TL; DR:

Artifacts are now called Relics!
All players now have access to all Champions, Personas and Relics upfront in Arena mode! No need to spend time unlocking everything before creating mind-blowing team comps.
We reviewed many Relics and implemented some pretty big changes, enabling new potential playstyles for Champions and new team synergies. Ready to play Jorn Juggernaut, Na Jima Cannon or Infectious Aerica?!

And what’s better than testing these new team comps against other competitive players?

We’ve got you covered: we will be hosting the second edition of the Arena Kings Community Tournament on April 26-27! Join the game's official Discord server and stay tuned, we will share more info very soon.

See you soon in the Arena,

Team Gemelli

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PROGRESSION & RELICS UPDATE - v0.7.4 - 18 April 2025

[h2]PROGRESSION & UNLOCKS IN ARENA MODE[/h2]

Players now have access to all Champions, Personas and Relics in Arena mode. Players don’t need to play to earn XP and mastery points and eventually unlock them.
Removed the tutorial missions in Arena mode, which were a bit outdated. The first 3 missions of the campaign provide a better introduction to the game’s mechanics, especially as mission #3 follows the rules of the Arena mode.

The previous progression system could be unclear and frustrating:

Players could not play a Champion that they had met and enjoyed playing in the Campaign when switching to Arena mode: they had to unlock everything again;
Players had no clear idea of how long it would take them to unlock the Champions, Personas and Relics by playing Arena matches;
There were few interesting team compositions available when starting to play in Arena mode, as players had access to a very limited number of Champions & Relics.

Therefore, we decided to simply give access to all the Champions, Personas and Relics upfront in Arena mode. We see many advantages to this change:

We remove the frustration related to not being able to play a cool Champion that you have met in the Campaign;
Players are free to create diverse teams and experiment with synergistic Relics from the very beginning. They don’t have to grind to access the teambuilding experience;
There should be more variety in match-ups;
If you start playing the game and face a team that you really like (AI or PvP), you can take inspiration from it and play a similar one next game, as you have access to it. This should help discover new teams and learn all the potential cool synergies.

[h2]PRE-BUILT TEAMS IN ARENA MODE[/h2]

Added 3 pre-built teams that new players can play in Arena mode: Sniper & Friends, Bleed Poison and Ultimate Shields! They use some of the new Relics.

[h2]RELICS CHANGES[/h2]
First off, Artifacts are now called Relics! Same system, same rules, just a different name: shorter, easier to pronounce and a bit more snappy.

Our objective is to offer Relics which:

Are appealing and make you excited to play them,
Enable team synergies,
and / or twist the gameplay of the Champion to enable them to play a different role.

We’ve been reviewing the Relics of the first four champions of the game: Na Jima, Daerio, Jorn and Aerica with these objectives in mind. We are reworking many of them with some pretty big changes, which should open the door to many new fun team compositions!

[h3]Na Jima Huntress [/h3]

Celestial Great Bow: When an enemy Champion is eliminated the Celestial Great Bow gains one charge. Na Jima deals +15% damage per charge → Na Jima and her allies gain an Impact 2 token.
Echo: after casting an offensive action which hits multiple enemies, Na Jima gains an Impact token for each enemy hit.
Ascending Bow: +10 damage on her primary action is now Reward #1, while her primary action pushes back enemies by 2 cells becomes Reward #2.

We think that having two Relics that scale off the number of kills and boost Na Jima’s power was not the most interesting approach. We are keeping the Ascending Bow and reworking the Celestial Great Bow: it enables Na Jima to play more of a support / damage amplifier role.

For Ascending Bow, +10 damage on her primary action feels like a more exciting and impactful first reward, so we are swapping rewards 1 and 2.

Echo was just too weak with a too restrictive trigger condition. It will trigger much more easily, and Na Jima will still be rewarded for hitting multiple enemies.

[h3]Na Jima Skirmisher[/h3]

Powerful Bow: Increases Na Jima’s range by +1 → Casting Shooting Stars (primary action) grants an Impact token to Na Jima, but no longer refunds her movement action.

We want to move away from Relics which just give +1 range or +1 movement. They don’t enable new playstyles for the bearer, they don’t synergize with other Champions and they are not very exciting to play. So we created a new version of the Powerful Bow, which greatly increases the damage potential of Na Jima Skirmisher. That being said, she loses a lot of mobility, so she will have to be properly positioned, potentially with the help of teammates like Champei, Raine or Jorn and using the rest of her kit!

[h3]Daerio Renegade[/h3]

Ultimate Drinker: When Daerio eliminates an enemy Champion, he gains 3 → 8 Ultimate Charges.
Blood Blade: Daerio gains 25% → 30% life steal.

8 Ultimate Charges on Ultimate Drinker ?!! Yes, you read that right. The trigger condition is hard to pull off, as Daerio specifically has to slay an enemy Champion. Therefore, we want the payoff to be big enough: he gets a kill, he’s guaranteed to be able to cast his ultimate spell right away. We capped it at 8 charges instead of 9, so that he can’t chain cast his ultimate action (which costs 9 charges). We think this can create very interesting high-skill turns, with combos between his primary action, this Relic and his ultimate.

Blood Blade was just a bit too weak compared to Parrying Dagger (20 shield points per turn), so we buff it by a notch.

[h3]Daerio Duelist[/h3]

Just Reward is now called Next!
Pick a Card!: At the end of Daerio's turn, one of the enemy Champions is randomly chosen and becomes Daerio's Rival → this Rival also gains an Exposed token.
Galeblade: When a Champion in Daerio’s team gains a Haste token, increases the value of this token by 1 → 2.

For Pick a Card!, we really like the fantasy of getting a target assigned each turn. We take it one notch further: the Rival has a clear target on their head with this damage-amplifying token. You’ll have to decide carefully which action to cast on them first to maximize the benefits of this Exposed token.

For Galeblade, we buff it to make it more exciting to play and enable hyper mobile teams running around the Arena, grabbing ultimate orbs and playing impactful turns.

[h3]Jorn Siegebreaker[/h3]

Mace of Vengeance → Conqueror’s Mace: When Jorn neutralizes an enemy Pillar, he immediately gains a Conqueror Token.
Titan’s Hammer: When an enemy is eliminated, Jorn gains 30 current and maximum health points → As long as Jorn has more health points than his target, he deals +30% increased damage.
Health Points: 200 → 180.

We are introducing Conqueror’s Mace to enable Jorn to be played as a Pillar sniper, jumping around the Arena to take down pillars left undefended and capture them!

For Titan’s Hammer, we think that the previous reward was not compelling enough: gaining more HPs does not really get you closer to winning a match. Also, we wanted to create a Relic that enables to play Jorn as a Juggernaut: a massive melee Champion, who is tanky but can also deal great damage if well supported by his team. We bring down his HPs to make sure he is not too tanky and that the Relic’s condition is not met too easily.

[h3]Jorn Predator[/h3]
No change! We think that all four Relics are exciting and enable different playstyles and team compositions.

[h3]Aerica Sharpshooter[/h3]

Precision Sight: Increases Aerica’s range by 1 → At the start of her turn, if Aerica has no enemy around her within a 2-cell radius, she and her allies gain a Sight token.
Stunning Core: The Sentry applies Dazed and Blinded 2 to enemies they target→ Recon-Bot also applies Blinded 1 to enemies.
Slowing Ammo: Precision Shot applies Slowed 1 to its target. If Aerica has not used her movement action, it applies Slowed 2 instead → Slowed 2 and Blinded 1 instead.

For Precision Sight, same reasoning as with Na Jima’s old Powerful Bow: +1 range is not exciting and does not enable synergies. With this new Relic, Aerica has to be well positioned, far from enemies (as all good snipers should be!), in order to boost the range of her whole team.

For Stunning Core, we think that having 2 different Relics for the Sentry was not the right call. Storm Core is just too impactful and exciting to play; players who want to play around the Sentry would almost always pick it. So we changed the Relic to impact Recon-Bot and enable Aerica to play more as a hinderer.

We like the hit & run, kiting playstyle enabled by Slowing Ammo. We tune it up with Blinded 1 so that the enemy also loses range on dash / teleport spells, making it harder to catch Aerica.

[h3]Aerica Artificer[/h3]

Elvish Boots : Whenever Aerica or an ally teleports through a Pillar or the Relay Beacon, they also gain 1 ultimate charge → 3 ultimate charges.
Fast Deployment Network: allies can teleport and be redeployed around the Relay Beacon → Malicious Spare Part: Vampi-Bot (primary action) also applies Infected for one round to enemy hit.

Triggering the effect of Elvish Boots requires to invest resources, so we want the payoff to be exciting enough. We think this reinforces a potential support / placer playstyle for Aerica.

The previous version of Fast Deployment Network was complex and gave yet another role to the Relay Beacon, which has already two different use cases. We change directions and add a way to apply Infected. Infected synergizes with Aerica’s own Zap-Bot as well as all sources of pure damage : Poison (Raine, Daerio…), Bleed (Jorn, Raine, Bu Shin…) and Collision damage (Champei, Raine, Na Jima…).

[h2]RULE CHANGE[/h2]

The range of a spell can no longer be decreased below its minimum range.
-- In the previous version, if you played a spell with a 1-2 range and receive a Blind 2 token (which decreases the range of your next action by 2), the range effectively became 0 and you could not cast the spell. We think this could be very frustrating (especially in the 5th mission of the campaign) and our intention was never for the Blind token to prevent players from casting all together.
-- From now on, in this situation the range becomes 1-1 and you can always cast the spell if you’re at minimum range.

[h2]USER EXPERIENCE IMPROVEMENTS [/h2]

Added color codes for primary, secondary and ultimate actions in the description of every Relic.
Added tips on the loading screen of Arena games.
Added a tip explaining how pure damage works: Pure damage ignores shields. Pure damage is dealt by Poison, Bleed and Collision. Some spells can deal pure damage as well.
Added a tip explaining how collision damage works: When a Champion is pushed against an obstacle or another Champion, they suffer 15 pure damage as collision damage.
Clarified the description of the Rival status for Daerio Duelist.
Added different colors on the health point bar for Healing vs. the preview of Healing.

[h2]BUG FIXES[/h2]

Fixed a bug that gave Bu Shin Shadow access to a 5th Relic (Mark of the Crown, which had no effect).
Fixed a bug that caused Critical Strike damage to be off by a few points in certain cases.
Fixed a bug that caused matches to continue when a player would score 26 victory points through Pillar scoring. Reaching 25 points through Pillar scoring now properly grants victory.
Daerio Duelist's Next! item now properly gain charges.