V Rising News

A ravishing new year to you all, my Vampires! It is our first check-in for the new spin around our most feared enemy, the Sun, and an ideal time to discuss our plans for the coming year. We at Stunlock Studios have been spending the most enjoyable endless Swedish nights preparing for the coming year, and what a year it will be.

Tonight, on this most thirsty of nights, we will share with you our visions of the future. We will unveil a massive overhaul to spellcasting and magic progression, as well as a few other things we’re experimenting with.

Be sure to check towards the bottom of the blog, where we discuss an experimental feature we’re working on. We want to know what you think about it, and this is another opportunity to directly affect the development of V Rising, so please give us your feedback in the survey toward the end of the blog!


[h2]Our Upcoming Free Expansion[/h2]





Our next step on the road to full release is the Free Expansion, our first major content release in May.

This update will primarily be about strengthening our foundations with new ways to live out the Vampire fantasy. To us, this means enhancing the way you already play by giving you more of what you already love, but it also means adding more layers of depth and complexity to the world to masterfully tie things together. We’re taking this time to build the game out and prepare it for a satisfying endgame, where we can build up to an apex moment that lets you fully realize your potential.

That journey should be dense with memorable and diverse experiences. By creating new layers of enrichment, like Multiple Floors and Jewels, we’ll be able to build a game that creates more of those moments. The Free Expansion will let you build bigger and better lairs with more control than ever, wield new weapons and magic, explore new areas, and encounter new bosses and factions. Vardoran will get grander, darker, and deeper.

So to whet your appetite, Vampires, how about a little bit of magic?


[h2]Magic Schools, Jewels, and New Tools[/h2]


Let’s talk sorcery.

Like many of our kin, you might remember that we’ve sent out a few feedback surveys between the beta tests and the period after the Early Access launch. One common theme that surfaced was that our ever-clever vampire community imagined a world of greater spell variety and more in-depth interactions between them.

Our aim is to update spells holistically, adding layers with stronger type identity, individual spell modification, and improving the connection between spell types to allow for many more combinations of techniques. With these changes, our kits should be more exciting and put the tools to create more unique, focused, and intentional builds in the hands of our most devious tacticians.

To begin, let’s talk about our most magical overhaul to date, starting with Jewels.


[h2]Introducing Jewels[/h2]

Jewels are a new item type used to strengthen and modify spell powers individually. We want to give players the ability to specialize how they like but also get the opportunity to experiment and try out many different kit combinations. We want you to become the dark warlock of your dreams, whether that means turning your surroundings into hell frozen over, ripping the life essence out of anyone who dares to challenge you or moving through the battlefield shrouded in illusions like a phantom assassin.

To acquire Jewels in our current vision, they’re something Vampires will begin to find around the time they’re killing Clive the Firestarter and similar tiers of V Bloods. They can be dropped by standard units, V Bloods, and chests but will most often be found in the more extravagant treasure chests, which you can identify by their eye-catching gold detailing. When you loot a jewel from an area, it will be tailored to the progression level of that area, so you’ll only be finding jewels you can currently use or will be able to use soon. As you progress, the number of spells you can find jewels for will increase.


Give me your spell jewels, Clive!


While our original design had jewels slotting into weapons and magic sources, it was found to be inflexible to swap out different spells. It discouraged Vampires from being adaptive and from exploring all of the deadly possibilities afforded to them. It’s important to us that this system offers more freedom in spell choice and variety to satisfy your dark desires. For this reason, jewels now slot into each individual spell, and as long as they’re equipped, they cannot be dropped on death. You will only be able to equip one jewel for each ability. Still, not to worry, an extra spell jewel can always be a valuable bargaining chip with a potential ally or a gift for a less fortunate clanmate.

The modifications available on every jewel found will be randomized, and each spell has many different gameplay-altering options that can manifest in these magical treasures. Some effects are unique to that spell, but others will be shared between others of the same spell school. The earliest jewels you find will only have one modification on them, but in later areas, you’ll be finding ones infused with up to three different effects.

These changes to your spell will unlock a new level of customization and interaction between the various magical workings you can employ. With so many possibilities, we’ll be watching closely to see what kind of tweaks we’ll need to make the system as freeing and exciting as possible.


Values are still being adjusted.


[h2]My Villain Academia: Spell School ReVamp[/h2]

We’re taking you Vampires back to school.

There are currently five prime schools of magic in V Rising: Blood, Unholy, Illusion, Chaos, and Frost. Not counted among those core magics are your Vampire Powers, abilities such as mind control to charm weakened humans and make them into servants, and your various shapeshifting abilities.

Each of the main spell subdivisions has been refocused to have a stronger identity. We’ve created better cohesion within specialized schools by adding debuffs that benefit from stacking. This will encourage leaning into the individual magical archetypes but shouldn’t be so beneficial that they discourage a smart Vampire from mixing techniques for other strategies. To act as an adjustable counterweight to balance out any overpowered debuff spamming, we’ll also be experimenting with diminishing returns on stacking debuffs to give us a tool to even them out if it’s too much.

The sheer amount of changes means that every individual spell has had some kind of tweak. Some have only had minor changes, like being rebalanced around the added debuff, while others are almost entirely redone. There are also a few who have been rebranded and moved into different categories where they now fit in better, with their visual effects and theme reconstructed to fit their new place in the new arcane taxonomy.


Placeholder animation for the newly rehomed illusionary mosquito.


Some recognizable archetypes have also been reworked, such as the various shield spells now having a recast to send out a projectile. For instance, Chaos Barrier now lets you toss a chaos bolt, Ward of the Damned sends out a wave of unholy energy, and Frost Barrier bursts out into a cone of cold. Overall, the number of abilities has increased, and each group now has five standard spells, one veil(movement ability), and two ultimate abilities.

We’ll also be seeing a brand new sixth spell school in the Free Expansion, but let’s leave you pondering that mystery a little while longer.


These are about to become a bit more important.


[h2]For All You Bloodsuckers Out There[/h2]

Blood Magic has become the center of vampiric healing and represents a Vampire controlling raw life essence. Blood spells now inflict a leech effect on your enemies, allowing you to attack an afflicted foe and replenish your life force much like, well, a leech. Blood has acquired a little gift from the Unholy branch. The “area of effect” spell Purgatory, which sets down an explosive magic circle to heal your allies and harm your enemies, is now exactly where it belongs.


The Blood Magic page, still in development.


[h2]Let’s Raise Some Hell[/h2]

We haven’t forgotten about the necromancers, of which there are many. More ways to summon an army of the undead is a frequent request, and we’re happy to deliver. The unique debuff for Unholy inflicts an effect that amplifies damage on the target but also has a ghoulish secondary effect. If an enemy dies under the effect of the Unholy amplify, a skeleton will rise from its corpse to aid you in battle for a short time. Unholy will be all about striking down bloodied enemies using their remains to serve you.

There will be other ways to get the most out of your undead army using the Jewel system, such as exploding skeletal minions or summoning up some of those aim-hacking skeletal mages.


Who wouldn’t want this handsome lad on their side?

Unholy emphasizes its summoning nature by conjuring up a trick from the Illusion school. Our favorite spinny fellow, the Spectral Assassin, has found a new home as the unholy Death Knight.


The Unholy Magic page, still in development.


[h2]Feel the Burn, Bring on the Chaos[/h2]

Where else would you expect to dish out colossal damage than the home of our beloved friend, the Chaos Bolt? Chaos magic will be all about aggression, damage, and wreckage. The familiar ignite debuff is making a comeback as a staple of this branch of arcana, and some of the more supportive spells are going to be tweaked to focus on offensive stats instead of defensive ones.

There will be more focus on causing damage to large groups and increasing your ability to put enemies in a position to take a hit. For example, the area of effect spell Void no longer pushes enemies away but instead draws them towards the center.


The Chaos Magic page, still in development.


Now You See Me, Now You Don’t

Illusions are more elusive than ever, being reimagined to let you fulfill your fantasy of being a slippery trickster. This is the magical technique of support and defense and the only spell type so far imbued with two unique mechanics. This specialty will inflict a weakening effect on foes, making them deal less damage with their attacks.

Casting an Illusion won’t just cause a debuff. It will also provide a buff to the caster. The ‘Phantasm’ buff will stack with each cast. With each stack, it will increase your chance to bypass your standard spell cooldowns and give the user a free ability cast. This is similar to a benefit currently available from the scholar blood type. Upon getting this free cast, your Phantasm stacks will clear and begin the process again.

With Phantasm, your dedicated illusionist makes up for their defensive nature by casting more often, so don’t think that you'll have it easy just because you’ve run into a “support” themed Vampire. There will also be some new crowd control abilities, like a fear effect to scramble and punish an overly aggressive opponent.

In addition to these changes, Illusion has proven its playful nature by stealing not one but two spells from other specialties. Unholy’s Mosquito and Blood’s Crimson Aegis have been reworked to fit their new shrouded siblings.


The Illusion Magic page, still in development.


[h2]Batty, It’s Cold Outside[/h2]

The spell school we all love to hate is being horrifically petrified by Frost Magic. There have been major changes to how the chilling debuff works, which no longer freezes outright. If you think you’ve escaped the freeze, think again! There will be methods of consuming the chilled debuff to freeze your foes; it will just require a bit of specialization with spell jewels.

Chill effects also now affect V Blood units, making the effect much stronger in boss fights.


The Frost magic page is still in development, and the text is inaccurate.


[h2]New Spell Looks For Your Spellbooks[/h2]

As another small note, you may have noticed that we’ve made improvements to the spell book’s general look and layout to fit its new, more intricate needs better. Equipping spells, vampire techniques, and emotes have been updated to make each spell category easier to understand and make room for fitting jewels into your ability slots.


[h2]To Be Legendary[/h2]

To add additional layers of depth and complexity to your spell kit and make your build unique, we’re experimenting with Legendary Weapons. Legendary Weapons will be rare weapons you can find in the world, and much like jewels will have randomized benefits related to your physical abilities. It may even include an additional way to implement some of the debuffs otherwise only accessible through spell schools, albeit in a more limited way.

Should it survive the fires of testing, we’ll be able to share a bit more on Legendary Weapons later on!


[h2]Experimental Feature: Territories[/h2]

We’re going to be experimenting with a feature internally that we’re calling ‘Territories’ that allow Vampires to claim individual plots of land instead of placing a castle heart and expanding single tile by single tile.

[h3]In brief, the goals of this system are[/h3]

• To fit more players in the world in a more balanced way, which we believe will benefit the lifetime of a populated server.
  
• Reduce player friction. This will prevent players from blocking each other’s bases from reaching the road, whether accidentally or intentionally. It will also prevent players from settling on the same ‘plateau’ or pre-defined space and learning eventually that they don’t have enough space to build properly.
  
• Prevent various technical issues, like vampires being able to land on unclaimable ledges, clans building castles just to buffer their main castle, or building armies of servants to defend.
  
• Will make detecting and communicating how full or active a server is easier.
  

This may also set the stage for us to build a lot of interesting systems much more easily. We’ve discussed using this to implement a mechanic to move your castle between two territories. This would open up possibilities for servant-to-player interactions and missions like infiltrations, invasions, and spy missions. There could be mechanics like PvE territory holders that you have to defeat to take over an area, preventing players from rushing the best spots on a new server. And more!



No matter what, we’re building bigger.


The drawback is that it will remove players’ ability to build freely in any location outside the currently restricted points of interest. To us, there is some debate over how much this tradeoff is worth it. In an open-world game, we’re trying to understand how important that feeling is compared to the benefits of the Territory system.

The only way to know how you feel is to ask. So we in the darkest crypts of Stunlock Studios would like to reach out to you, our beloved kin, to hear your opinions.

[h3]ANSWER THE SURVEY HERE![/h3]

[h2]Beyond the Free Expansion[/h2]

As we build away in our crypts at Stunlock Studios, we aim to see well beyond the next milestone. Black magic is in full effect, and we’ve got our attention focused well into the future. There are many roads forward, and it’s important to be ready to take a detour if needed, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to plan your adventure the best you can.

To clarify our current strategy, the future expansion of the game is not the full release of V Rising, as there will be more things we wish to improve on and more work to finalize our vision for the complete game, currently set for 2024.

Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves, though! There’s still so much to know and prepare for right in front of our noses. In only some months' time, you will be drinking deep the fruits of our labors!

2023 is a glorious year to be a Vampire.


… with new mysteries to uncover.

We want to hear you out! What do you think of the new spell ability overhaul? What do you think about territories? What ARE legendary weapons? What is the mysterious glowing object?

Let us know on Twitter, Discord, and the Steam forums! We’re very curious to see where your imagination takes you. We’ve already seen some very prescient Vampires here and there. Maybe you’re one of them.

Join the conversation in our socials below!


Subscribe to our newsletter: https://www.stunlock.com/newsletter

Join The V Rising Discord Server: https://discord.gg/VRising


V Rising Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@stunlockstudios

V Rising Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VRisingGame

V Rising Twitter: https://twitter.com/VRisingGame

V Rising Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vrisinggame/


Lots of love and a pint of blood,

/The Marketing Team

V Rising emerged from its coffin into early access in May last year and found an audience ravenous for a bit of survival-tinged bloodsucking. Developer Stunlock Studios has now announced that the game has sold over 3 million copies, pretty incredible figures for a PC-only indie title that isn't even fully released, and thanks to such success the ambitions for the future are high...
Read more.

Hey there, Vampires!

While we’re carving away at our projects for the Free Expansion later this year, we’ve decided to take the knife to a few bugs that we’ve been getting some complaints about on the live build. No longer will these pesky bugs and unintended interactions darken your doorstep.

We hope that this makes your Vampire journey a bit more to your liking and that you look forward to our new upcoming dev blog just around the corner, where we’ll be diving into some of the juicy details of what you’ll be sinking your fangs into later this year!

The hotfix will be going live on January 26th, 2023, at 11:30 UTC with the following changes:

• Fixed an issue where using a dash spell sometimes caused unintended behavior, lengthening the movement and significantly lowering the cooldown.
  
• Fixed an issue where timing a dash spell to interrupt a standard weapon attack would cause the dash spell’s on-hit effect to trigger both before and after the dash.
  
• Adjusted the unstuck feature so that it now causes you to lose durability and triggers the respawn timer if done while in PvP combat.
  
• Adjusted PvP protection so that it is instantly dropped by players that are present on territory that is breached during a raid.
  
• Adjusted the range on ally buff spells so that they can no longer travel over very high distances under certain conditions.
  

REMINDER! You can report any issues after the patch here. Please include the patch number in the title so we can easily identify it.

ADDITIONAL REMINDER! Make sure to make backups of your server saves regularly!
How to backup saves.

See you in Vardoran, Vampires!

//The V Rising Development Team

Welcome, Vampires, to another peek inside the Stunlock Studios crypts! Today we drag to light a bit of what we’re working on and give you a taste of some of the patchwork creations we’re assembling for our first big content update, a free expansion that will be released in 2023. No date has been set, and we still have many months of work as some of these features require major re-works. We know your hunger for new blood and content is strong, and we want to thank everyone for being patient and believing in us. Your trust in V Rising will be well rewarded! Further down, we get into some game design talk, directly addressing some community suggestions we’ve observed over the Early Access so far.




Keep in mind these are only going to be some of what we’re working on, not everything! Also, know that all of what you read is subject to change. We feel it’s crucial to remain flexible and have the ability to let go of our precious pet projects in favor of ones that will ultimately be better for the game and the players.


An idea bubbling away, hoping to be born.


[h2]Multiple Castle Floors[/h2]

By far, the most requested feature in the game has been multiple floors. The vision of a dark silhouette on the cliff-side, tall and spearing the sky with towers, easily takes a Vampire’s imagination to an entire world of possibilities. One cannot help but dream of a mansion, a maze of rooms stacked atop a maze of rooms, opulent and seemingly endless.

A dream, certainly, but a difficult one to achieve in Vardoran! The technical limitations have proven challenging, and as a result, Vampires are confined to sprawling castles that get their height from building uphill, but it isn’t quite the same. The vertically challenged nature has also led to some design issues. If every castle needs to be spread flat and wide, they take up quite a lot of room. This makes it harder to fit more castles into the map and also populates the landscapes so that it’s more choked with castles.

If castles could be a bit taller instead of wider, it would allow more castles; or maybe it could let us set up castles to have a bit more distance between them, allowing them to feel more unique and secluded. This would better meet the vampire fantasy and allow players to grow just that much closer to making the stronghold of their dreams. It would allow for more creative building, variation, and ways to make your castle unique from your contemporaries. With this in mind, we’ve been dreaming of a future with a bit more verticality.

Or, well. We’ve been experimenting.


Those experiments have been… fruitful so far. Early prototyping of Castle floors.


It’s taken a lot of hard work, dark sorcery, human sacrifices, animal sacrifices, and the third kind of sacrifice that I am not legally allowed to disclose, but we’ve made a lot of progress in making this vision tangible.

The castle is such an important part of the V Rising experience and, in so many ways, reflects our journey in their quest to conquer Vardoran. Adding a new axis to this system offers a radical change to building and spending time in your dark domain. We’re excited to keep pushing the bounds of what we’re capable of in V Rising so that we can put it in your hands so you can unleash your creativity.

Will we see multiple floors in the upcoming expansion? That’s our goal, and we’re doing our best to make that happen! Even if it’s still a bit too early for promises, we’re now much more confident that you will be able to build the castle of your dark dreams in 2023.


[h2]The Growing World[/h2]

Our vision of Vardoran is greater than its current incarnation, and there’s plenty to do in terms of expanding the current world and player journey. We’re excited to give some love to the areas you’re already familiar with, bringing them to life by adding things like new enemy types, visual updates, and interesting variations to the terrain.


Visual updates! The Quartz is shining stronger than ever.


New areas with heavy Quartz deposits.


Work in progress: A master glassmaker artisan in her shop.


We want the areas to feel more distinct and alive, and there’s plenty of room to keep iterating to make them better and more interesting in ways that are both cosmetic and tied to gameplay. On your journey to the new biome, you will also stumble into a couple of newly arrived and highly dangerous V Blood bosses in existing areas.


New V Blood to hunt! New powers to grow!


New mysterious enemies are luring behind the corner.


New challenges await. Concept of a new foe.


We’re making changes to the current zones, some in smaller ways, some very noticeable. One concept we’re working on and hoping to introduce is the “Marketplace,” which will be a series of trading stations present throughout the settled zones that serve as hubs for Vampires to spend their hard-earned coins.


A first idea and early concept of a Wagon Vendor.


Expanding on trade functionally and adding markets gives an option for players to be able to spend their coins on a host of ever-changing goods, allowing them to find other avenues for acquiring rare goods. This could be something as simple as gems that haven’t been dropping or something as rare and complicated as a weapon recipe. Or maybe you just really want drapes! Who doesn’t love a good drape?

While the function of these marketplaces serves the same purpose, you need to approach them differently as a creature of the night. In Farbane, nobody cares how strangely pale you are as long as you don’t start any trouble, while in Dunley, you need to disguise yourself to get a deal done.


[h2]Jewels[/h2]

We’re also working on a very exciting system, currently called “Jewels,” to improve our gameplay depth and combat. Players will be able to find or craft Jewels to unlock new perks for their spells, making ability customization even more personal. Jewels will allow players to create stronger combos when pairing spells by allowing you to apply and consume various spell-school-specific effects into even stronger effects or triggering explosions, novas, forking projectiles, and more.

With the addition of jewels, we are also updating and working on all spell schools. Every school will have a unique effect that is more consistently tied to the school - Blood spells will be able to place a life-leech debuff, Unholy will allow you to summon more undead creatures in various ways, and so on.

You can expect updates and tweaks across the board on all spell schools. Our ambition is to create a more dynamic and varied spell system allowing for more combos and different play-styles while also adding a slice of randomization to new item types to make equipment more dynamic and varied - and thus creating more incentive for looting, trading, and raiding! Not only are we adding customization options for existing spells, but we’re also adding a brand new spell school, more about this in a future dev blog!



Work in progress Jewel system and UI updates!


Maybe you are more of an adventurous Vampire. Maybe you’re interested in exploring something totally new. Something unique that we’ve not even seen a hint of yet in Vardoran?






[h2]……



…..



….[/h2]




Power.


Knowledge.


Hidden secrets.


Through the wilderness, ways are being opened to new lands! In the expansion, we will be enlarging the world and giving you new soil to tread, unlike anything you’ve seen in the world of V Rising. Prepare to be tested in new ways, explore new technology, and tap into the blood memory of a whole new area to add to your vampiric repertoire of talents, magics, and so much more. We will reveal more about this region and its wicked secrets in the coming months!




V Rising is a large game with many overlaying systems. With a combination of player feedback and our observations, we’ve set sights on a plethora of improvements for the upcoming expansion. From quality of life to quality of unlife to raw gameplay, we’re doing our best to cover as much as possible, making sure this will be a massive update more than worth the wait.

There are still ideas and concepts we’re unsure will make it into the game. Some of these we’re taking steps towards implementing already, but others are still very much in the incubation stage. With that in mind, we’re more than happy to crack open our heads so you can get a little glimpse into what we’re thinking about…

One of the things we’re targeting is inventory and inventory management within your castle. There has been a lot of feedback regarding frustrations and ideas around what you can carry on you and how to efficiently store your goods, especially in relation to crafting stations. This is completely natural for a survival crafting game and a huge part of the gameplay.


I know I put my potions in one of these.


We’re now looking at a host of improvements! Still, it’s important that we not simplify or dumb down the sorting and organization of your inventory to the point of making it irrelevant. For many players, it feels great to arrange everything into the perfect place and create elaborate and extensive systems to organize it all.

We do have a long list of “wishlist features,” things we wish to resolve with time but not sure if it will make it into the first content patch. Things like seeing your clock in your coffin or giving more benefits to the coffin-like health recovery! Not being able to see through enemy walls with the fade-out system is on the fix list, as well as reworking the way servers tell time so that time can pass while your private servers aren’t running, allowing vampires to log off while their servants go on fetch missions.

There are also lots of smaller improvements on our wishlist to add to the immersion of the game, little feel-good things like being able to sit in chairs, turn your lights on and off, name your castle, place signs, and being able to interact with your servants in more casual ways. We also hope to look into fun things like interesting building diversity, secret doors, and passageways! There’s a heck of a list, and we’re adding to it all the time! We’re always looking for opportunities in production to slip them in where we can around the larger-scale content we’re focused on.



I will make you KNEEL, Gerald.


[h2]The Welcome Apocalypse[/h2]

Everyone must understand that with such a massive swath of changes to the world of Vardoran, it will be impossible to update an old save with the upcoming patch and remain consistent. For this reason, we want to make sure it’s understood that to play on the newest version of V Rising after a huge content update like the one we’re planning for 2023, it will require being played on an entirely fresh world.



A New Dark Beginning.


This means that regardless of PvE or PvP, Official V Rising servers will have to wipe and reset to apply the new patch. Servers that did not wipe before will continue to only do so for major patches, but it needs to happen at least once to update the new map and all the changes that come with it. This will be the case for your private servers as well if you want to play on the latest version of the game.


[h2]The New Age Is Coming[/h2]

We hope you enjoyed a little taste of what’s in the works and planning for the future. With multiple floors revolutionizing the way building work in the game, a new and expansive biome to explore, improvements and new experiences in every region, a horde of new enemies to slay, more weapons and abilities to master, and more systems to enhance and advance the way you play, 2023 is looking like an excellent year to be a Vampire!

Let us know what you think about what’s coming, as your feedback has been essential to fine-tuning our vision for the future of V Rising. To keep up to date with V Rising and our ongoing development, as well as share your thoughts with us, follow us on our socials below!



Subscribe to our newsletter: https://www.stunlock.com/newsletter

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V Rising Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@stunlockstudios

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V Rising Twitter: https://twitter.com/VRisingGame

V Rising Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vrisinggame/


Lots of love and a pint of blood,

/The Marketing Team