V Rising Announces First Major Expansion, And Its Free

It is no secret that here at Tracker Network we love V Rising, when it first launched we spent weeks building, fighting, and crafting our way through all it had to offer. If you don't already know, for V Rising we even built our first ever Guide site that was purely dedicated to a non-stat tracking focused game, you can see that here. But as V Rising continued in Early Access, Stunlock was more focused on bug fixes and quality life changes than anything else. However, May 2o23 will change that as V Rising will receive its first Major Expansion.

Stunlock says this free update in May will focus on what players love most about being a blood-sucking fiend and embrace the fantasy aspects that come with being a Vampire. This update is set to focus more on building the game out and preparing it for what Stunlock envisions as the engame.

There will also be a highly requested feature added to V Rising with this update, the ability to make multiple floors in a castle. This will allow players to finally live out their most gothic dreams... or nightmares. Jewels, more weapons, magic changes, new areas, new bosses, will also make Vardoran more vast than it already was.

Jewels:

Stunlock states that Jewels will be a new item type used to strengthen and modify spell powers individually. Jewels will apparently flesh out your power to allow you to turn your surroundings into hell frozen over or even rip the life essence out of anyone while you move like a "phantom assassin."

Jewels will be able to be acquired once you start defeating bosses like Clive The Firestarter and the V Blood enemies that are in the same or above category. After that they will be found in chests where they will be tailored to the level area you are in.

Jewels will have modifications that will be randomized and offer different bonuses for your spells. Stunlock says the earlier Jewels you find will have one modification while as you progress and find better Jewels, you will find they have up to three bonuses to use.

Magic:

Magic will be getting a rework in the new update where you will see the five primary schools of magic reshaped and more focused than before. Stunlock says that every single spell was trweaked and while some may have minor changes, many have been entirely redone.

Blood Magic:

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.

Unholy Magic:

Necromancers will be getting a big change with the new update that gives players more ways to summon armies of the undead. The biggest change will be the Unholy effect that will not only amplify damage on a target but also raise a corpse from their dead body if they die under the effect. There will also be ways to explode these minions or utilize the new Jewels to create ranged skeletons.

Chaos Magic:

Chaos Magic will now have a larger focus on damaging big groups and  controlling their movements. Whereas before Chaos would push enemies away from you, Stunlock says you can now bring foes in to unleash some damage.

Illusion Magic:

Stunlock has refocused illusion magic to be more of a support and defense tree where you work to weaken foes and cause them to deal less damage.

The new "Phantasm" buff is set to increase dyour chance to bypass standard spell cooldowns to ultimately give you the ability to freely cast spells. This buff will stack with each cast you do and when you get your free cast it will reset. Stunlock states they have also moved the Unholy Magic Mosquito and Blood Magic's Crimson Aegis into illusion magic.

Frost Magic:

Frost Magic has been reworked to be more useful than it was before. Frost Magic will now affect V Blood Bosses aand there will be ways to consume the chilled debuff to freeze foes. This will be an offset to the change where Frost Magic will no longer freeze enemies outright.

Territories:

The biggest change mentioned for the update is one that is not entirely set in stone yet with Stunlock: Territories. Territories will fundamentally change the way vampires claim and hold territories for ownership.Territories will allow Vampires to claim individual plots of land instead of placing a castle heart and expanding single tile by single tile. Stunlock states the goals of the new system are:

• 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.

Stunlock is employing a ratger cool tactic to decide this change before they seem themselves completely unearthing how their game funcitons and that is a player feedback survey before the change goes live. You can click on the survey link and vote directly with how you feel that will affect the game, hopefully player responses will help Stunlock decide with enough time before the update in May.

There are a lot more fine details to the update and if you want to check it all out you can do so here. While you wait for May you can also check out our guides over on our Official V Rising site where you can gear up before the big launch.

Will you be checking out the new update? Let me know in the comments below or on Twitter @Suttledge