Developer of Early Access vampire survival game V Rising has revealed new details about a major free-to-play expansion coming this year, including some good news about an estimated release date - it's not too far away, coming in May rather than the end year, despite the major additions and changes it will make.
The latest V Rising dev blog focuses on some of the changes the team has made to the jewel system discussed late last year. In the original design, jewels were inserted into individual weapons and magic equipment, but the developers felt that this was too limiting for the players.
“This prevented vampires from being adaptive and from exploring all the deadly possibilities available to them,” the developers write. "It's important to us that this system offers more spell freedom and variety to satisfy your dark desires."
Instead, gems will be inserted into every spell, and as long as they are equipped, you won't lose them on death. You can only use one jewel per ability, but they will be there until you pull them out to trade for another bonus.
The update will also see significant overhauls of V Rising's five main schools of magic, giving spell units a more vibrant personality and improving their integrity by adding effects that stack with each other. Stunlock says he wants to encourage "relying on individual magical archetypes" without making them too profitable - there should be room for mixing and matching spells from different schools.
Since everyone is playing as vampires, it makes sense that Stunlock improves blood magic with an automatic leech effect. Each of the other magical schools has also received some attention, so be sure to check out the blog for complete summary.
According to the studio, it is also experimenting with a new system that will allow players to claim plots of land rather than expand their castles tile by tile from a starting heart. The details of this system are yet to be specified, as the new concept means that you can only build on the current points of interest, and not where you want.
Finally, Staunlock says that the May update won't mean V Rising is over - a full launch is still scheduled for 2024.
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