Dear Tacticians,
The day is finally here: the 1.0 launch of Skygard Arena! Craft your strategy, dive into the Arena and lead your squad of Champions to victory in turn-based tactical skirmishes.
What's new in the 1.0 update:
The new Champion Seraphine, Angelic Queen of the Silver Kingdom;
8 new relics with lots of synergies to discover;
A new Arena: Seraphine's Throne Room;
Major performance improvements;
A lot of new AI teams to beat;
The game is now playable on Steam Deck with dedicated default controls.
Earlier during Early Access, we added Steam Achievements, a new opening cinematic, additional localization support (now available in Chinese, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, French and English), the final campaign missions and 26 challenging secondary quests.
If you’re a returning player: Welcome back! Thank you so much for your support and for helping us shape the Early Access version into the game you are opening today. Your help has been invaluable.
If you're a new player: welcome and enjoy the best version of Skygard Arena yet!
See you in the Arena,
Team Gemelli
Full Patch Notes - 1.0 Update
New Champion: Seraphine👼
The Angelic Queen of the Silver Kingdom joins the Arena!
Will you play her Celestial Persona, a long-range mage with many tools to support her team?
Or would you rather go to battle with her Avenger Persona, a melee character who becomes more threatening as she loses health?!
Check out the full preview of both personas in our latest dev blogs: Seraphine Celestial and Seraphine Avenger.
New Arena: Seraphine's Throne Room👑
Battle other players or the AI on a new map in Arena mode: Seraphine's Throne Room!
Performance Optimization 📈
Reduced load times, both at game launch and at the start of each battle.
The game is now 57% smaller on disk (from 12.9 GB to 5.4 GB).
Improved overall performance in battle by reducing RAM and VRAM usage through asset compression and by prewarming shaders.
Improved overall performance in battle when showing previews and movement areas thanks to object pooling.
Improved performance in Arena lobby by reducing texture size.
Steam Deck🎮
The game is playable on Steam Deck now! We've set up default controls that fit with the Steam Deck.
Arena Mode - vs. AI 🤖
Players can now face both of Seraphine's Personas when playing against all types of AI.
When playing against Classic AI, the enemy team will be able to play 39 different relics (previously: 12).
We've significantly increased the number of different teams that players can face when playing against the Experimental AI level 1 & 2. The AI can now play all 20 Personas (previously: only 12) and 39 relics (previously: 12).
Players can now face 20 different teams when playing against the Experimental AI Level 3 (previously: 12). These teams have been created by us and include powerful synergies between Champions. We have updated all of them to reflect the latest gameplay and balancing changes, to include teams with Seraphine and to ensure they're highly competitive.
Improved the decision tree of Bu Shin Thunder Warrior and Jorn Predator.
Improved the overall behavior of the Experimental AI, which should focus a bit less on trying to take your Major Pillar and more on scoring points through taking kills and controlling minor pillars.
Arena Mode - PvP ⚔️
The leaderboard has been reset! Will you be able to climb to the top?
Your current rank (Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond or Master) is now displayed on your player banner, once you have completed 5 placement games.
Visual improvements to the matchmaking screen.
Campaign Mode🗺️
You can reset your campign progression now! Just go to the Save section in the Settings menu.
Added a dark background to improve readability of the subtitles in the opening cinematic.
Removed some tutorial dialogues related to camera controls from mission #1.
Reduced difficulty:
Removed one starting unit from mission #7.
Removed two starting units from mission #10.
Champions - Balancing⚖️
Bu Shin Thunder Warrior⚡
Rending Bolt (Relic): when equipped with this Relic, Bu Shin now deals 30 base damage to Pillars and applies Bleed tokens to units.
User Experience Improvements👀
Players are now able to rebind controls in the settings menu.
The game can be played on ultrawide screen.
Improved the visual treatment of Pillars in the line of sight tool (press TAB to access it).
Reduced the delay before tooltips appear on screen when hovering on an action or a relic.
Added a visual effect on Pillars protected by the Undying status from Vallya Vanguard's ultimate action.
Bug Fixes🔧
Fixed a bug preventing the Alerted status from triggering in certain instances.
When an ally walks on an ally glyph (Sentry, Relay Beacon or Shadow Trap), it is now destroyed as intended.
Fixed a bug that would prevent players from loading a mission if they had lost internet connection during the previous mission.
Fixed a bug with the Back button in Arena mode.
Fixed a bug causing inaccurate campaign progression when completing a mission, using the quick start button and completing the same mission again.
Fixed a bug that could cause the game to crash when exiting the game in certain scenes.
