The Bloodline News

Harbingers,

The time is finally come and your – and our – journey is just at the beginning. The Bloodline launches today via Steam Early Access!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

(A huge thanks to our community member JuanCupO'Juice for providing some of the footage!)

Developed by solo developer Miles Whittaker at Shieldbearer Studio, The Bloodline is an open, freeform Adventure RPG that lets you play your way. Reforge bonds between kingdoms, explore the wilds, craft and plan adventures and wield mighty weapons or magic as you prepare for what is to come…



The Bloodline is available now via Steam Early Access for $19.99/€19.99/£15.99 but you can grab it now with a 33% discount as a part of our launch celebration!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1159290/The_Bloodline/



The Bloodline is now in Early Access, so this means that the game is still in active development.

Early access will allow the further development of The Bloodline and open up opportunities that would otherwise be impossible to achieve. It will also allow the dev to balance, tweak, fix and perfect the game with a large playerbase to provide detailed data.



The Bloodline is an Open World Fantasy Action RPG where you take the role of a descendant of the Harbinger bloodline - a lineage gifted the power of foresight by an ancient god to protect Eudros from the Unforgiven. A legend that seemed faded in time… but your visions show The Unforgiven marching, the Harbinger defeated, and the land devastated.

• A journey not written in stone, but in blood - The adventure is yours. Follow questlines and help the people of Eudros, or roam the world freely at your own pace, allowing organic opportunities to arise. Reform bonds between kingdoms, construct your village, and prepare the world for the return of The Unforgiven.
  
  
• Explore the world - Join various guilds, hunt magical creatures or become a bard at the local tavern – the world is yours to enjoy and experience how you desire.
  
  
• Be rewarded by playing how you want – nearly every action you do has a level associated with it. From jumping, climbing and running to ragdolling, wall-running and swimming. Craft gadgets and equipment, catch rare fish, cook exotic dishes, brew potions, transform yourself into a beast…
  
  
• Plan your adventures by using your foresight – the ability to see events that will transpire in the near future. From meteor storms, goblin attacks and even ghostly pirate ships!
  
  
• A vast world to explore - There are different biomes with distinctive flora & fauna filled with impressive landmarks: blooming towns, magnificent castles, mysterious lakes, dangerous dungeons… and much more.
  
  
• Define your own play style - With over 500 skills to unlock and hundreds of different weapons and equipment at your disposal, your character is truly your own. Will you be a silent assassin or a paladin adorned with plate mail? Or perhaps you’d rather do something more unique - a necromancer who uses martial arts, or an engineer who can transform into animals using druidic magic? The choice is yours entirely.
  

if you want to share your adventures with your fellow Harbingers, don’t hesitate to join our Discord and follow Shieldbearer Studios ( TikTok | Twitter ) & HOOK ( Twitter | Facebook | TikTok ) to be always updated about what’s happening in Eudros 🏰

Steel your heart, and may your journey be written in blood. ⚔️

HOOK x Shieldbearer

Greetings fellow Harbinger

It’s been a while, right? Well, the latest dungeon was deeper than we thought! Aaanyway... It’s time to unveil some juicy news 📜

We are excited to announce a partnership between Shieldbearer Studios and the indie publishing label HOOK to bring The Bloodline to life... sooner than ever.

The Bloodline will be available in Early Access starting October 5th! 📯

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]ABOUT THE BLOODLINE
[/h2]

• A vast world to explore! There are different biomes with distinctive flora & fauna filled with impressive landmarks: blooming towns, magnificent castles, mysterious lakes, dangerous dungeons… and much more.
  
  
• Follow questlines and help the people of Eudros, or roam the world freely at your own pace, allowing organic adventure opportunities to arise - reform bonds between kingdoms, construct your village, and prepare the world for the return of The Unforgiven.
  
  
• Be rewarded by playing how you want.
  
  ○ Join various guilds, hunt magical creatures or become a bard at the local tavern – the world is yours to enjoy and experience how you desire. Nearly every action you do has a level associated with it. From jumping, climbing and running to ragdolling, wall-running or swimming.
  
  ○ Craft gadgets and equipment, catch rare fish, cook exotic dishes, brew potions, transform yourself into a beast…
  
  ○ Plan your adventures by using your foresight – the ability to see events that will transpire in the near future. From meteor storms, goblin attacks and even ghostly pirate ships!
  
  
• Define your own play style! With over 500 skills to unlock and hundreds of different weapons and equipment at your disposal, your character is truly your own. The choice is yours entirely.

Lastly for today, if you want to share your adventures with your fellow Harbingers, don’t hesitate to join our Discord!

Steel your heart, and may your journey be written in blood. ⚔️

HOOK x Shieldbearer

Hello once again everyone!

This is another one of those update posts that I held off just because I wanted to pile a bunch of stuff into one post. Hope that's alright! (:

I've spent a lot of time lately working on various guild functionalities. Mostly in regards to their randomly generated assignments! I really want guilds to have a sense of identity that is reflected in the kinds of quests you can pick up from them. From exciting stuff like going to a location to destroy goblin outposts to more simple and unique stuff like doing house calls as a priest, or handing out food for the poor. I want players to be able to actually roleplay in the game, something I feel lots of modern RPG's lack.
Here's a look at how you pick up these assignments, if you're a member of the associated guild. And here is an example of the sort of roleplaying I want to build upon. This one is specifically for the Church of Arosa! And, not to worry - if you don't want to ever touch the more laid back quests, you are *never* required to. Its just there for people like me who enjoy feeling like I'm part of the world (:
Another peaceful example of a Church of Arosa assignment - Putting lost spirits to rest. While some may spawn hostiles, most are just wanting to pass on to the afterlife.


Other than guild systems, I also expanded upon a few status effect combos, specifically for Electromancy and Necromancy. Let's start with Electromancy!

The new debuff for Electromancy is called Capacitive Surge - a status effect that needs to reach 20 stacks before triggering being activated. Upon activation, a thunderbolt strikes the enemy! You can easily stack Capacitive Surge by electrocuting groups of enemies - once electrocuted, they will continuously arc damage to one another, which stacks capacitive surge each time arc damage is recieved. Essentially, you can create thunderstorms by simply electrocuting enemies! Here are a couple examples of the combo:
Early Tests of Capacitive Surge Refined VFX and less text update

Now for the Necromancy combo!
Whenever you slay an enemy with a Nero spell, they have a chance at dropping Residual Spirit Essence, which you can absorb. If you absorb 3 of these, you'll automatically summon a floating companion that shoots at nearby hostiles! I wanted a way for necromancers to essentially be actively "reaping" souls and wreaking havoc. This will eventually be a customizable spell that is automatically triggered when you reach 3 stacks of Residual Spirit Essence, I just wanted to get a good combat flow down for Necromancers to build upon.
Check it out!

Other than that, I also made a few new enemy types.
The first one (shown in one of the clips above - this one right here) is a Crypt Targe!
The Crypt Targe is a heavy Undead that uses a grave as a shield and buffs nearby allies with health and stamina boosts!

Next is the Stonesplitter - a Dwarven troop with an unbreakable shield. You'll need to drain their stamina or time your attacks carefully to take them down!


Other than that, I mostly worked on bug fixes and optimizations (as always). Oh! And some cool staff abilities that I think you'll all enjoy:

Bubble Shield

Staff Gameplay

MORE staff gameplay

That's all I got for now. Thank you all for sticking around! Have a fantastic and safe weekend! And feel free to drop by the Discord and have a chat with me and the community - we have some fun conversations in there!
DISCORD LINK
https://discord.gg/ewtnqCYwDv

Since last week was pretty bare-bones in terms of flashy updates, I decided to lump that week together with this week!

Let's start off by showing off the new Action Cam!
I needed a camera that would work well for showing off your character while also being fully functional as a dynamic camera. I went for the cinematic "off-to-the-side" perspective, which I think works pretty darn well. Here's a good showcase of the camera using the sweet energy blast martial arts move. (;
I tested it out with various bow and arrow skills as well, and I'm really happy with the results.
I should also mention that you can turn off the action cam if you want a fully first person experience! (:

Along with the new action cam, I also made some substantial improvements to enemy movement capabilities. Before, enemies had a hard time finding the best place to jump to make it to you if you were on a distant platform, or just in an awkward position that wasn't connected via the nav mesh. They'd *eventually* make it to you, but it'd be pretty wonky lol
Now they have vastly improved their jumping capabilities, allowing them to keep up with you pretty well even if you're grappling, climbing, wall running, etc.
Here's a good showcase of not only the improved AI movement, but the action cam as well!

(The action cam also works for some melee abilities as well!)

Next, I started expanding upon the old assignment system! Assignments are fully randomly generated quests that are (usually) gotten from the various guilds across Eudros!
I want these assignments to allow players to essentially have an endless supply of quests for any of the guilds. Not only typical run-of-the-mill quests like "Kill X Gobs" or "Retrieve X from dungeon" - I want these assignments to have a huge array of dumb, fun, unique objectives. Like handing out flyers for the Church of Arosa. Sure, it might not be the most exciting quest out there, but it adds variety and life to the world! It'll allow players to roleplay their characters to the fullest extent!
Also, thank you to everyone in the Discord who contributed to the Assignment Quest Suggestion Thread! (Still going on until Sep. 12 if you have any good ideas you want to throw into the mix!)
Here's a Discord invite if you're interested: https://discord.gg/ewtnqCYwDv

That's all I've got this week. Hopefully I'll have enough stuff done for next weeks recap! If not, I'll just do what I did with this update again.

Have a safe and fantastic weekend, everyone! (:

This week I was laser-focused on adding a ton of quests and life to the world, while also working on bug fixes and optimizations.

I mostly had my focus on Elderglen, likely the first city players will visit. The city was expanded to include the castle gardens, which are beautiful during the nighttime!
I also improved the local tavern, The Drunken Bard. There are now several quests involving the tavern workers and a couple tavern patrons. I really want to have every city filled to the brim with quests and characters.

Beyond that, I really don't have much else that is super interesting to showcase! So, again, I hope a couple random clips of some exciting and fun moments will keep you satisfied for the time being! (;

Reclaiming a stolen lute, and kicking some poor loser down the Steps of Esros lol.

Hope that satisfies you all for now, despite it being a smaller weekly update than usual.
I'll see you in the next update. Enjoy your weekend and stay safe! (: