🧪 The Beta Beat (v28) – Updated Springvale, ROUND 2 Season 3 Heroes, Apr/May/June HOTM – Sharing the Big Picture on What's Going on in Beta

NOTE: Please do not, under any circumstances, share IMAGES OR VIDEOS from Beta in this or any public Forum thread. Violations can cause players to lose their Beta accounts, or threads to be closed down.


:thinking: What’s this all about?

Click Here for Details About This Thread's Intention & Format

Often players on the Forum wonder about what’s going on in Beta.

If you’re a regular reader of the Forum, then you’ll find that there’s actually abundant conversation about what’s going on in Beta at any given time.

And that’s actually allowed!

What’s restricted is images and videos — but discussion is ok:


The challenge is that information is often scattered around the Forum. I’ve created The Beta Beat to help centralize it for those who are interested.

The Beta Beat is a series of threads which are evolving as I get feedback on what’s helpful to players.

My main focus is giving some high-level guidance of what’s going on in current testing, so players outside of Beta can be better informed.

Like Beta itself, this thread is experimental and will evolve based on your feedback.


Information from Beta is frankly often mostly useless, so don’t get too attached.

Details from Beta, especially brand-new Beta content, don’t tend to be very reliable for actual release.

It’s incredibly common that heroes and features are changed during Beta testing, or sometimes even after testing but before release.

That is, after all, the purpose of Beta testing.

So I wouldn’t get too attached to any information from Beta — it’s not unheard of for entire portions of hero skills to be removed or reworked, or for radical changes to hero stats to be made, or for large chunks of new functionality to be completely changed.


Often Incomplete Information Circulates

Many of us have seen screenshots and other information shared on LINE, Discord, Facebook, and other groups — often without context or explanation.

These can lead to confusion and misunderstanding.

Often, early Beta information — the least reliable or useful — is circulated…and then updated information is missed.

I’m hoping centralizing some high-level information on the Forum may help to reduce this as well.



What’s Going on in Beta Right Now

IMPORTANT: I wouldn’t get too attached to any information from Beta — it’s not unheard of for entire portions of heroes or functionality to be removed, reworked, or radically changed beyond recognition.

Updated Springvale

please see above threads for all info and discussion


ROUND 2 Season 3 Heroes

Discussion thread: 🧪 Early Information on ROUND 2 Legendary Season 3 Heroes (Skadi, Baldur) [Part of The Beta Beat V28]

please see above thread for all info and discussion


April, May and June HOTM

Discussion threads:

please see above thread for all info and discussion




:left_speech_bubble: Feedback?

I’d love to hear thoughts on whether this information and format is useful, and how you’d like to see information presented in the future. Any thoughts or ideas?

Thanks! :slight_smile:

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Thanks again @zephyr1 for keeping us all updated!

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Awesome as always, thanks @zephyr1

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@zephyr1, thank you for all this work! Really interesting to see all the new features - this seemed the most appropriate place to express my gratitude for sharing all of that with us.

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@zephyr1 thank you as always for your hard work! Any news on the dates Springvale will run? With new heroes I am guessing we are still 6-8+ weeks out?

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Dear @zephyr1…yours is a monumental work: infinite gratitude! :clap::clap::clap:

Unfortunately, I don’t know that yet.

But historically Springvale has run in the vicinity of Easter, and the new Family is the “Easter Family.”

So I’m going to guess that it’s likely some portion of the event will be around April 12 when Easter is this year.

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Beta Update

Clarissa, Raffaele, Skadi, Killhare, and Squire Chick have received balance updates, which are reflected in their respective Beta Beat threads.

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Hero academy or SH24 not yet, I see

I seriously don’t expect anything on HA until the second half of the year.

If it was going to be earlier, they would have made that obvious in the 2020 message.

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Beta Update

Apologies for having forgotten to post on Tuesday that Beta closed.

The Small Giant Staff have indicated that a further round of Beta testing is expected to open early next week, and will be the final Beta before release of the update.

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@zephyr1, some guys from my alliance brought a rumour, that SH24 & 25 would be released with the nearest update. However, I find it not very probable as SH24/25 haven’t been in beta yet, or I missed the information?

They’re wrong, but I know where the rumor is coming from.

An incomplete version of Hero Academy was very briefly in Beta by accident, and was removed by the game developers as soon as they realized.

I’m aware of the details of what it included, but am not publishing them as we’ve been told by Small Giant Staff that they weren’t finished or ready for review, so we know the information is extremely likely to change.

We definitely won’t see Hero Academy in the next release, but I do expect to see it in Beta for actual testing soonish. But the release likely still won’t be for a while.

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Stronghold levels 24 & 25 are in some sense independent of Hero Academy, and they don’t need much testing, do they? If SGG decide to release SH 24 and 25 before HA they probably can do it now, but I expect that - unfortunately - SH 24 & 25 will be released together with HA.

I’ve been campaigning for the early release of SH24 for months in Beta, without much apparent effect, other than an acknowledgment that it’s under discussion.

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Early release of SH24 would be nice, letting us start building the next storage buildings and farms.

No reason to release SH25 before the hero academy.

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This will be the first Springvale event for me since beginning last May. I look forward to how it will be in the next version along with any new heroes for S3.

An official sneak peek of Springvale has been posted:

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Aren’t they all so cuuuuuuuute, as Rudolph would say :wink:

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Beta Update

Beta will be closing shortly, as Version 28 is prepared for release.

The next time Beta reopens, I’ll create a new Beta Beat thread for what will presumably be Version 29.

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