Vault of the Void News

[p]Hey folks – time to come in here with a quick update on how things have gone over the last few months... [/p][h3]I’ll be open to admitting that since our last update, the last few months have been the most challenging for the team here. [/h3][p]Note: Before diving too far into this, I will eventually write a post-mortem article to help other developers who may find themselves in this position. I just need to be very careful with my words. But please feel free to share this story, and if you're a developer fearing the same issues, please reach out to me! [/p][p]Shu and I have spent the last 12-18 months getting the game ready for Mobile and Switch release, opting to bring this in house rather than outsourcing. We wanted the best possible product, and that includes our custom built cross-save system for players. We were proud of what we’d done, and excited to finally release on Switch at the start of April. [/p][p]The first week went really well, and our marketing and release plans seemed to be very smooth! However, at the end of our first week, we received notice that Vault of the Void had been reclassified from the ratings board as a “M” rated game, for Blood, Violence and Gore. [/p][p]The problem with this was, that the game was removed from the store immediately, without warning, and the process of restoration was… long. I can’t go into the internal processes sadly, but the results stand as:[/p]

• [p]Removed from the store in the second week of April [/p]
• [p]Restored to the store last week (second week of June) [/p]

[p]The worst part was, we were powerless to the process. There was no way we could call, email or communicate to get things moving faster. The internal process made us powerless, and forced us to a sit and wait situation. This lead to a massive loss of all marketing budget, momentum and visibility on the New Release charts. [/p][h3]My thoughts are pretty transparent about the "M" rating to start with, but I won’t go into that on this post. [/h3][p]At the end of the day, it was a massive gut punch after working so hard on the project. We both felt horrible and powerless, and quite frankly, defeated. The good news is, things are back on the store now, and hopefully we can start to gather more momentum again, although the effects of the process are very evident when looking at the sales numbers. [/p][p]The byproduct of this was, sadly, that the last 2 months of development time has been caught up in this. We’ve pivoted back to the new expansion class now, and progress has been great. We’ll start development diaries very soon to start showing progress. [/p][p][/p][h3]The Fallout[/h3][p]One of things that isn’t easy to address, is the financial impact this had. I’ve been public in the past about my hopes to release the new class for free to Steam players, and a small DLC cost for Mobile. Our hopes were that the Nintendo sales would help carry that out to be a possibility, but sadly, due to everything outlined above, that isn’t the case anymore. The impact this has had, plus the games current lifecycle, means that the new class will probably need to come tied to a small DLC cost. Our hopes here are that it can carry things on so we can do more classes (and games!) in the future as well. [/p][p]That news isn't great to type – and I hope people can understand. We’re committed to continuing work on Vault, we love the game and the playerbase. We want to continue this journey, but sadly that has to include a small DLC to help support the team here. [/p][p][/p][p]Thank you everyone for your patience as we navigated this difficult time. [/p][p][/p][p]All for now.
- Josh[/p][p][/p][p]Edit: Wow -- I can't thank everyone enough for the love and support shown to this post. It's overwhelming how special the community is around this game, and how much you all genuinely care.

A lot of comments about a Developer Supporter Pack, I just wanted to link the one we have active right now! We will look into the option of another however, prehaps cashing in our new M for Mature rating haha :D [/p][p][/p][p]From Shu, Dabor and I, a massive thank you! We can't wait to showcase more of the new class!! [/p][p][/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p][p][/p]

Hello friends!

I hope you're all having a great start to 2025, and are ready for a great year with Vault of the Void! We had a rapid end to 2024 with our Mobile release and then the Nightmare update. As many of you know, we've been tied up with the Switch release now for sometime, going through many updates to get it across the line. We have good news to share -- but first!

[h2]Spring Sale![/h2]
Thats right -- Vault of the Void is currently 40% to celebrate the Steam Spring Sale! Now is a great time to get any of your friends and family into Vault if they haven't tried it already. Thank you everyone who has shared the game or left a review, it makes a huge difference for us!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1135810/Vault_of_the_Void/

[h2]General Update[/h2]
You'll see a small update come through this coming week, just a few little bug fixes and general UI improvements. This includes some updates to the controller code as well, and some UI work on the Alternative Artwork setup.

[h2]Switch Release Date[/h2]
And finally -- the news we've all been waiting for. May 12, 2023 I announced that we would be releasing on Nintendo Switch, after some amazing support from all our PC Steam players! We'll, nearly 2 full years later, I'm please to announce that :



This is huge news for us, and we’re so very thankful for your patience. Of course, our Cross Save system will work between Steam, Mobile and Switch so you can play however you like, whenever you like!

[hr][/hr]
With that process out of the way as well, it means we can finally unfreeze code and start to push more amazing updates your way. We have a big announcement coming very soon as well, so stay tuned for that as we try to make 2025 as epic as it can be!

Thank you everyone for all your support! Looking forward to the year ahead.

All for now.
- Josh

Hey everyone!

I hope everyone had a great holiday break and New Year! We’re excited for 2025 here, and today we get things started with a small patch that sees Nian back, as we celebrate Chinese New Year. 2025 is the Year of the Snake, and a new deckback reward has been added to reflect this!



[h2]Switch Update[/h2]
Unfortunately, we’re still going through things with Nintendo here. We’re close and could get the all-clear to release any day now, however, at this stage, we don’t have any update as it's still out of our hands. Stay tuned for more updates, I’ll let everyone know as soon as its good to go!

[h2]Bug Fixes [/h2]
A few small bugs and tweaks have been queued up on our local version here for a while now, so these will be bundled in. Thanks to anyone who has reported stuff here on the Discord server. We’ll continue to address things as we go, and strive to make improvements wherever possible!

That’s it for now, sorry theres no news on new content. Our major focus is still on Switch, then we can look ahead at the exciting year to come!

All for now!
- Josh

[h3]Patch Details: [/h3]

• Nian is back! Defeat Nian to claim an exclusive deckback in Year of the Snake event!
  
• Fixed an issue where Everlasting Sapphire can negatively interact with artifacts that force discard effects before the first turn starts
  
• Run history will now show spells when available
  
• Improved Zeal particle effects in battle and in Zeal configuration screen
  
• Deckbacks that are unlocked by entering a code can now be hidden in deckback selection screen
  
• Fixed cards in deck manager being interacted with when filters are active
  
• A couple of card text improvements and a lot of Chinese translations improvements
  

Hey folks!

Sorry for the radio silence on our end, we’ve been deep in the trenches getting things ready for our official Switch launch! Throughout that process, we’ve also made a few bug fixes and balance changes, a few I know have been requested by many. I’ll throw a list down below of all the changes currently implemented in today patch.

[h2]Autumn Sale[/h2]
Just a quick note: Vault of the Void is currently on sale as part of Steam's Autumn Sale! If you haven't already, it's a great time to grab a copy or mention it to a friend! Thank you everyone for your support!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1135810/Vault_of_the_Void/

We’ll be back shorty with more details about the official Switch launch, and more details about our plans for 2025! Thank you, everyone, take care!

All for now,
-Josh

[h3]Balance[/h3]

• Double Time: Normal mobs and Elites now have 50% faster HP scaling (down from 100%); however Floor Guardians, Vault Guardians, and the Void will also gain some extra HP scaling at half of the rate. AP scaling is unchanged.
  
• Dawnbringer encounter: reduced AP, Frenzy, and HP of Corellion Solspear.
  
• Fearshaper encounter: reduced minions starting HP but increase their scaling from Phobos passive.
  

[h3]Bugs[/h3]

• Fixed a problem that prevents tooltips from appearing when hovering on Combo/Corruption/Zen counter
  
• Fixed a rare crash when having specific energy changing artifacts (Crystal Lake Hand-me-down, but may affect others)
  
• Fixed Blood Amulet trigger Block more than once per turn
  
• Fixed Favour of Libra giving 4 energy before spending your energy, causing some energy to be wasted
  
• Fixed Stalwart buff not having effect on the turn it is played
  
• Fixed Master of Elements deckback not showing the correct colorful effects in some screens
  
• Fixed some display issues in daily draft and leaderboards
  
• Improve controller targeting in multiple screens and events
  
• Seed input got a new look and now supports controller input
  
• Massive performance optimisation pass -- a lot of things should be faster or consumes less battery if playing on a phone
  
• Enemy AP and Frenzy value is only red when it's reduced by Weak or Slow. This means when an enemy is slowed at 1 Frenzy it no longer appears red to better help you pick Slow target in some fights.
  

Hey folks -- the wait is over, Vault of the Void: Nightmare is finally here! Thank you all for your patience as we put this together, I hope the wait is worth it! Before I dive into the details, I wanted to give a quick thank you for all the support for the mobile release, and also all the people who helped out making this release smooth by playing on the Beta Branch. This was instrumental in helping us squash as many little bugs as possible before going live. However, as usual, we’re on standby here for the next 48 hours to hotfix any issues we find! So please, if anything shows up, let us know in the Forums or on Discord! Thank you so much!


[h2]Whats New? [/h2]
The goal of Nightmare was to get a smattering of content across several areas of game play, including some stuff we had been wanting to address for some time! Nightmare includes:

• 12 new Cards
  
• 12 new Artifacts
  
• 9 new Spells, including specific Class Spells which can be obtained from the Spell Child!
  
• 5 new Encounters, a new Floor Guardian, Vault Guardian, and a trio of meta-shifting Elites!!
  
• 3 new Challenge Coins
  
• 17 new Achievements
  
• Slight tweaks to some Starter Decks and Spells
  
• Full balance pass across many aspects of the game
  
• Numerous bug fixes and improvements
  

A full list of all the changes will be at the bottom of this post, with specific bug fixes and balance notes included!


[h2]Dawncaster Crossover! [/h2]
Alongside Nightmare comes our portion of the epic crossover between Dawncaster and Vault of the Void! Players from Dawncaster will have noticed the epic Vault of the Void card pack available in game. Players of Vault now have the chance of facing the mighty Corellion Solspear and his devout followers, an epic Elite fight found on Floor 2.

If you haven’t heard about Dawncaster, its a deck building RPG with no microtransactions and frequent updates, available on both Android and iOS. You can join their Discord to learn more! The team over at Wanderlost Interactive have been amazing friends through both our development journeys, and were a massive help getting Vault of the Void, answering my many platform specific questions! We love being able to do this with them, and look forward to more epic content together in the future.


[h2]Whats Next?[/h2]
Our major focus was getting a nice big content update out to celebrate the mobile release, and say thank you to all players for support so far. From here, our next major milestone will be Switch release, hoping by the end of the year. As we continue progressing this, work will be going in alongside on the 5th class. I’ll be sharing dev diaries and development progress as we go on that!

[hr][/hr]

Thats it from us here! Its been a hard working couple of months and as we approach the end of the year, we're excited about the few more things we're keen to check off! Thank you all so much for the support, and a huge thank you to anyone who took the time to leave a review or rating on any of our store fronts -- its a major help for us and some of the best marketing we have!



Hope you all enjoy the patch -- until next time!

All for now!
- Josh

[hr][/hr]

[h2]Full Patch Notes[/h2]
[h3]New Content[/h3]

• 12 new Cards
  
• 12 new Artifacts
  
• 9 new Spells
  
• 5 new Encounters
  
• 3 new Challenge Coins
  
• 17 new Achievements
  

[h3]Balance -- Hidden[/h3]

• Combo is now consumed when the card is played instead of after all card effects are resolved. This means Discard: Combo 1 can properly replenish Combo when playing a Swift card.
  
• Bleed Starter: Perforate (new card) now replaces For the Throat.
  
• Draw Blood: Deal 6 damage on upgrade, up from 4.
  
• For the Throat: Apply Bleed 7(10), up from 6(9), and can appear in card rewards
  
• First Blood: Deal 11(14) damage, down from 15(21), and apply 11(14) Bleed, up from 7(10).
  
• Thousand Cuts: Apply Bleed 15(20), up from 13(17).
  
• Open Up: Set Bleed to 20, up from 19.
  
• Bloody Hell: Apply Bleed 6(8), up from 5(7).
  
• Salt in the Wound: Grant 4 Silent Shivs, up from 3.
  
• Scatter Shot: Apply Bleed 5(7) to all enemies, up from 4(6).
  
• Unrelenting: Upgrade no longer gives +5 Damage but +1 Combo.
  
• Slick Strike: Deal 7(10) damage, down from 8(11).
  
• Light It Up: Deal 8(9) damage, down from 9(10).
  
• Blades Upon Blades: Deal 7(10) damage, down from 9(12), but generate 2 Hidden Blades each trigger, up from 1.
  

[h3]Balance -- Other[/h3]

• Spell Child expanded his book and now you can reroll for more spell selections, and the first spell before reroll is always one of the two new class specific spells.
  
• Void Stone progress now caps at 3200. Pick Praetorian Guard (2) + Void Blessed (3) instabilities might get you an extra void stone now.
  
• Lashing Kick (Enlightened Martial Starter Attack): Block 3(4) when not in Zen.
  
• Leverage (Enlightened Martial Starter Spell): Trigger Future Strike at end of this turn.
  
• Hooked Bo (Enlightened Uncommon Artifact): No longer require Fatigued enemy to apply +1 Slow.
  
• Clawed Chain (Enlightened Common Artifact): Deal 3 Future Strike, once, up from 2.
  
• Unholy Cleansing (Daughter Rare Buff): Deal damage equal to Soultithe, twice, up from once.
  
• Boiled Blood (Neutral Spell): Rage 100%, down from 125%.
  
• Wicked Worshipers Fight (Robed Cultist, Void Effigy, Robed Cultist): Reduce power of Void Effigy abilities.
  
• The Birth Pit Fight (Pinkie, The Birth Pit, Pinkie): +1 AP to Pinkies every 6 cards drawn, down from 10.
  

• Symbol of Despair: Apply Fear 1 and Attack with 1 Frenzy, instead of Apply Fear 2.
  
• Symbol of Nothingness: Apply Hex 1. No longer apply Haunted.
  

[h2]QoL & Bug Fixes[/h2]
[h3]Map[/h3]

• Huge refactor the underlying code of map. Most things should look the same – report a bug if you find something is different in a bad way!
  
• This fix should have addressed the softlock that occured occasionally on the map!
  
• Route Planner: now you can go back on each step if you want to try another route, instead of having to reset the entire route if you click a wrong tile.
  
• Can no longer cheat Fog of War using the minimap!
  

[h3]Deck Manager[/h3]

• Refactor the underlying code of deck manager. Things don’t look the same but it should look better in every way – provide feedback if you feel otherwise!
  
• Drag and drop to add cards to the deck!
  
• Cards in the deck are now larger. Card names should no longer cover Void Stones and they’re properly centered.
  
• Adding a card to deck or removing a card from deck now gets better animations with no screen flashes.
  
• Improved performance when socketing and removing void stones.
  
• Improved tutorials in Deck Manager.
  

[h3]Misc[/h3]

• Mobile will default to having Auto Zoom enabled, increasing readability
  
• Fixed a problem that prevents Community Reward Interactive Battlefield from showing in the battlefield list.
  
• Fixed a problem that prevents purge effects from scrolling to the bottom.
  
• Switched Hidden Blade and Silent Shiv card arts in Developer Support Pack.
  
• Fixed a problem where selecting a random spec in Introduction could random into Trickster and crash the game.
  
• Fixed a crash when you get ALL the void stones in the void stone progress. No, before the patch you seriously really cannot get them all without cheating, but we’re fixing this anyway.
  
• Fixed a problem where the run timer stops ticking when you open a deck viewer.
  
• Changed the text in Introduction to indicate there is no Introduction difficulty for classes other than Hidden.
  
• The Spell Book button now shows an alert icon when you have a new spell available.
  
• Add “Hold to End Turn” in the options. If you would like to check the Discard pile but accidentally clicked on the End Turn, this might be a safeguard.
  
• Added “Compact Enemy Frames” in the options for mobile/tablet players.
  
• Fixed a problem where enemies could show incorrect Death prediction when Shii and Fortitude are involved.
  
• Added missing sound effects when playing Swift cards and when generating Hidden Blades.