Valnir Rok News

Patch notes version 0.6.0.aeaad3606a

• Player: Fixed grounded issue
• Player: Fixed fall damage
• Animals: Reduced health of bear and wolf and changed their damage factor
• World: Bugfixes to Anfort
• Quests: Start quest and shield recipe fixed
• Further minor bugfixes

• Mount: Work on horses
• NPCs: Bugfix hireable guards
• Floating bushes
• etc.

Greetings Vikings,
we rolled out a hotfix patch to address an issue with the starting quests.

• Fixed a bug that prevented the Simple Round Shield to be crafted. This means, the Quest "Arm yourself" can now be completed.
  

Greetings, fellow Vikings! We have been busy in Cologne to bring you the greatest update ever released: Valnir Rok 0.6.0 - or as we call it: The Combat Update, which is available now!



It features a brand-new combat system that we designed completely from scratch. It consists of four core moves, which can be used to counter each other. The Base Attack hits enemies in front of you with a wide swing, while the Heavy Attack will inflict deep wounds, but needs to be charged first and aimed with precision at your foes’ heads. With the Low and High Block, you can protect yourself from lethal attacks. All of the new core moves can be
executed both while standing still and when moving around the enemy, which makes the combat overall more fluent and provides players more variety in maneuvering during a fight.



We also tackled our biggest enemy: The Lag. In the past two months we engineered an entirely new and blazing fast netcode that carries time critical information such as player movement and all combat moves with as little delay as possible. Now, even playing on servers in other regions works like a charm with no noticeable delay.



We also improved the overall game performance drastically. We worked on our rendering code and during all of our tests we saw significantly improved FPS and little to no stuttering.

So we established ideal conditions for rapid PvP battles that are determined by skill, not by luck. But not only that, we also fixed a great number of bugs that were reported by you. Some of them have existed for way too long, so we are happy that we could get rid of them once and for all.



One more thing: Even though we released the greatest update in Valnir Rok‘s history, we decided to keep all existing character data. So hop back into the game now and check out Patch 0.6.0!

Now that the combat update is released, we are already planning what we want to deliver in Patch 0.6.1. We can‘t say much yet, but it will focus on balancing and also one of Valnir Rok‘s most popular features: Quests.

• Various performance improvements that increase the overall FPS as well as drastically reduce FPS drops.
  
• New combat system that is quicker and easier to control, while leaving room for skill based play. (See changes below)
  
• Improved character movement which is less delayed and more controllable.
  
• Overhauled animation system including completely new and handcrafted combat animations.
  
• Completely new networking system that heavily reduces latency and mostly eliminates lag and desyncs.
  
• Jumping and falling now behaves physically correct and feels more natural.
  
• Added a blood stain effect that makes creatures look visibly injured when their health is low.
  
• Added a weapon trail effect, making attacks appear more smooth.
  
• Added a mini map that can bee seen in the top left corner of the screen.
  

• The base attacks are now quicker and can be performed while remaining standing still.
  
• The heavy attack is now performed by holding left click.
  
• The heavy attack now only hits an opponent in a narrow area before the character, requiring to aim it more precisely.
  
• All attacks can be performed while moving.
  
• It is no longer possible to run with a drawn melee weapon.
  
• Evading is now bound to the shift key when holding a melee weapon, reset your keybindings to apply the changes.
  
• Evading can now also be performed by double tapping W, A, S or D.
  
• Evade distance has been increased to 6 meters.
  
• When hit by any attack, the character will now flinch and be locked in place for at least 600ms
  
• Increased the range of the base attacks to 1.7 meters.
  
• Reduced the range of the heavy attack to 1.2 meters.
  
• Ranged attacks are now performed using left click only, right click just zooms the view.
  
• A shield bash can be performed by pressing left click while blocking.
  
• There is now a low and a high shield block. Hold space bar while blocking to cover your head.
  
• The low shield block will only block base attacks, but no heavy attacks.
  
• The high shield block will only block heavy attacks, but no base attacks.
  
• When left clicking with a melee weapon equipped, the character will now perform an unsheath attack.
  
• The stamina cost of evading has been increased to 25.
  
• The stamina cost of the shield bash has been increased to 30.
  
• Jumping is now possible during combat and costs 5 stamina.
  
• The stamina cost of the base attack has been reduced to 15.
  
• The stamina cost of the heavy attack has been reduced to 30.
  
• The stamina cost of base and heavy attacks now vary based on the weapon weight.
  
• The stamina cost of blocking an attack has been reduced to 10.
  
• Stamina regeneration speed has been reduced by 50%.
  
• Stamina is no longer regained while blocking.
  
• Low stamina will now be shown through a screen effect and an "exhausted" animation.
  
• There is now a chance to land a critical hit with melee weapons that inflicts twice the damage.
  
• The primitive bow and the primitive shield can now be crafted without leather.
  
• The NPC health bar has been adjusted to be easier to understand.
  

• Fixed a bug that caused the graphics options for detail density and detail distance to not apply correctly when set to 0%.
  
• Fixed a bug in the hit detection that could lead to a hit not counting when attacking an enemy to the left of the character.
  
• Fixed a bug that lead to the spine of the character not being animated correctly.
  
• Fixed multiple problems that could lead to a character falling below the terrain.
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause a weapon to be invisible when unsheathed.
  
• Fixed a bug with water hindering the interaction of NPCs and objects on the shore.
  
• Fixed a bug that sometimes caused projectiles to inflict no damage to other players.
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented the "Quit" option from working correctly.
  
• Fixed a bug caused heavy attack hits not to register in certain circumstances.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the ocean to be displayed before the loading screen when joing a server.
  
• The player should no longer remain in combat mode when the equipped weapon is unequipped.
  
• Fixed a bug that resulted in no available quests for some new characters.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused a wrong animation to be played when the player character was hit by an attack.
  
• Fixed multiple bugs that prevented the mount from being summoned.
  
• The player is no longer invulnerable when on a mount and does no longer invisible when mounting/dismounting it.
  
• The mount choosing in the menu now works correctly
  
• Fixed a problem that caused the player to clip through the saddle when riding.
  
• The player should no longer be able to move through objects using the mount.
  
• Building damage should now be applied correctly.
  
• Closing windows should no longer trigger an attack.
  
• Fixed a finger positioning problem in the unarmed combat animations.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused map icons to not be displayed the first time the map was opened.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused wrong names to be displayed on the health bar at the top of the screen.
  
• Fixed over 40 display and placement problems all over Valnir Island.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused totems to last shorter than displayed.
  

(November 29th) at 14:00 CET we want to do a STRESS AND CRASH TEST for Valnir Rok We want to invite as many people, stress out the server and gather some data. Are we going to be able to crash the server? Everyone promising to take part will receive a key.

What do they need to do: register at our website, click on activation link via mail (check spam) and send us an e-mail to [email protected] All registered and activated accounts will receive a key the evening before the event starts. The event is limited to max. 150 participants.

Every participant that logs in and plays during the event will also receive a code do redeem a valuable item for the live server. We will also provide a Teamspeak server. Additional information will be sent out as soon as we have you e-mail. People that already have a key can give the key to a friend.

In short: removed all desyncs, removed all lags, completely new combat and netcode.



Greetings, fellow Vikings!It has been a while since we last talked about what’s going on in the studio. It’s time to bring you an update directly from Cologne, and we have exciting news for you!From the first day of early access, we have listened closely to your feedback and added lots of new features to the game. On paper, we now have implemented almost everything we had planned in the beginning. A few weeks ago, we sat down with the team and discussed what parts of the game would need to be worked on in order to improve the game experience as a whole. We decided it would be Valnir Rok’s combat system.

In the brutal and unforgiving world of Valnir Rok, combat is a core component. Whether you enjoy PvP or a PvE, you will always face your enemies with an axe or sword. It is something that should feel right. So, after a lot of brainstorming sessions we came up with a completely new combat system, that we want to introduce to you in this article.



The new combat system consists of 4 core moves that can be used to counter each other:

• The Base Attack, a wide angled sword-swing that hits targets in front of you.
• The Heavy Attack, a strong attack that needs to be charged and strikes your opponent from the top. It has to be aimed carefully, but causes devastating damage when it hits.
• The Low Block, a blocking move that will only block base attacks.
• The High Block, activated by holding Space when blocking. It will only block heavy attacks.

All of these moves can be executed while standing still or walking around. A big drawback of the old combat system was that your character always took a few steps forward when performing an attack, letting you end up behind your opponent. The new system allows free movement at all times, so you can stand still or move around while attacking or blocking however you like.

All these new moves need their own animations. Luckily, Neysha recently joined our team. She is a professional animator and created and fine-tuned over 15 completely new character animations for the new combat system.

The animations are timed precisely and aim to convey as much information as possible so that you as players just know what is happening on screen without even thinking about it.



Neysha isn’t the only new team member. Holger, an experienced Unity Programmer also joined us at the office and is working together with Felix on the game code. In the past, network latency was always a big deal in Valnir Rok. We were always optimizing our systems as much as we could to address lag, desyncs, rubber-banding and other problems. Together with Holger, we’re eliminating these issues once and for all. We developed a brand new netcode that is designed to be as fast as possible from the ground up. The new system transmits information over ten times quicker than the old code, effectively removing any avoidable delays. During our internal tests, we could control our characters perfectly just by looking on other player’s screens, awesome!

All these changes combined are literal game changers. It already feels like a new game and we’re not even done! For this reason, we have decided that we should finally increment the version number. This update will be Patch 0.6.0 of Valnir Rok. We’re planning to release it within the next few weeks.

Do you have questions about the 0.6.0 Combat Update? Great! Post your questions in the forum thread or in our Discord. We’ll collect them and make a Q&A video where we will answer them in person and maybe tell you a little bit more about the future of Valnir Rok.

The update will be released within the next few weeks.