What is it?
It's a new game called
V Rising, created by
Stunlock Studios.
Steam Page:https://store.steampowered.com/app/1604030/V_Rising/
Gameplay is isometric 3rd person aRPG in which you play the role of a vampire. There is crafting, looting, a talent tree, and castle building. This game looks to borrow elements from games such as Diablo, Hades, Valheim, Minecraft, and Conan Exiles. (And probably others too). It is described as having "skillshot combat" meaning you move with WASD and aim and shoot with the mouse controlling your skillshots. So in that aspect combat should be very familiar to anyone who has played Hades. It also appears to have quite a bit of depth for character loadouts and making your own build to suit your playstyle.
Progression looks to follow a Valheim-esque boss path. Each boss gives you a unique power that you can integrate with your character build, plus unlocks new recipes for crafting. Play at your own pace, and progress through the game by building your castle, creating better weapons and armor to tackle harder bosses. Work your way through the boss progression to unlock all abilities and crafting options.
I'll fill in some details on the gameplay systems, features, and etc when I get home from work tonight. But for now I'll drop a few videos to get the discussion started.
If you're interested in a very good overview of the game, start here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LV6NXc-VWoA
Here's Skill-Up's First Impressions Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-J3X3r2jDwA
And here's some official trailers:
Early Access Launch Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9aaaHhajv0
Castle Building Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iex7DFvJx6M
And official Gameplay Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7KTI94LzI8
Needless to say, I have gone from "haven't even heard of it" to full fanboy after watching a bunch of videos on it this morning. Cannot wait for Early Access to begin tomorrow. I am ready!
Posts
I was concerned about this too. But from that screenshot, I can infer that there will be public servers available, and also private locally hosted servers, as well as servers hosted by 3rd party hosting companies. In fact, I can confirm that "Survival Servers" are already setup to host V Rising servers, because I got an email advertisement from them this morning stating as much.
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
For those wondering, the base price is $20 US, which is a pretty good price for early access.
I enjoyed it quite a bit. The game does a good job of early hand-holding to get you on your feet and then after the first boss they scale back and leave it up to the player to explore, experiment, and discover, which I like. Figuring something out on your own, even something small, feels better than being told by a tutorial how to do it. I think they have struck a good balance so far. I'll play more tonight after work.
1) Solo play on a locally hosted "server" on your PC. This is essentially singleplayer mode
2) PVE Official Servers
3) PVP Standard Servers (open PVP, looting of resources from player corpses but not gear, has base "raids" during scheduled times. Bases are damaged but never fully destroyed.)
4) PVP Hardcore Servers (open PVP, full looting of resources AND gear, bases are fully destroyable)
5) Custom/Private servers - Set your own server rules, can be password protected
It's also going to depend on if I can get any of my friends to play. If I can get 3-4 friends into it, I will probably host a private server.
I started on a specific server with no idea what I was doing and just wandered around until I figured out the basics. Didn't even get to build a castle because it was so crowded there was no available space.
Logged out to have dinner and when I came back G-Portal had spun up another dozen servers that only had a handful of people on them so I restarted there. With my prior knowledge I was able to build a base pretty quickly (for me anyway) and got reasonably established. Still figuring out many things but a nice solid start.
Day 2, the server that I was playing on was offline so I re-started -again- on an established (full) server but this one actually had space to build and so I found a less advantageous area and actually advanced further in the game than my prior two attempts.
Whilst my "time played" on steam is around a dozen hours, the server that I've got the most advancement on I've only invested maybe 2-1/2 to 3 hours.
I'm now on the next step which requires a whole lot of stone bricks and no idea how to craft them and there's literally no way to figure it out without spoiling the game by doing google research. Which after doing, I've learned that I need to make a Grinder... which requires Whetstones... which can only be randomly dropped by some specific bandits (until you can later make them). Without googling this, there is NO WAY this could have been sussed out from information presented within the the game.
Still, whilst that's "annoying", the short term gameplay loop is quite fun.
Eh, the story missions could stand to be more directive but the information you’re looking for is mostly all in-game in one place or another. For example, if you were looking at your different refinement options in the base building menu you’d see the grinder is one of the available options and that it makes bricks (it’s in the description). The tannery is listed as a reward for that boss in the Blood Altar. The map itself shows camps as yellow blobs and also lists the materials you can get there (e.g. whetstones). The info is all a little off the critical path but it’s there.
Also worth noting you technically don’t need the tannery before upgrading your heart because leather can drop from enemies. I don’t think it’s listed as a camp reward but if you kill enough things you will eventually see it.
I’ve honestly been pretty impressed by the level of QOL and polish the game has on day 1 of early access, not to mention the amount of content/depth at this point. They have a ways to go but it’s certainly a great start. This game wasn’t on my radar at all until I saw the trailer pop up on a discord and saw that it was a Stunlock game. You can clearly see the iteration on their core systems from Bloodline Champions to here, it’s kind of awesome.
Same. I just have so many games. Has anyone started a server? Are any PA people playing together?
Though I will say that I would really rather movement be typical ARPG mouse move instead of WASD. Combat can get a bit finicky because of it.
Otherwise I do like the idea of sucking blood and getting various bonuses based on what type of enemy it was.
Going out and killing fancy enemies to unlock powers I also like.
Presently I am playing on an Official PvE server. Got myself a solid castle, a couple of servants and an industry that is humming along.
edit- My official word on the game is that if this is a gameplay style you enjoy then you'll probably like V Rising. If you are only curious about it I'd say keep an eye on the game. It has a solid foundation and the Devs have been very proactive from what I've seen.
edit 2- What the map could use is potentially two starter zones. Having a Castle is a critical part of progression so people build them as soon as they can. . . in the starter zone. In terms of build spots the world map actually has more than enough to accommodate 50 players, as I understand it, but the starting zone of course does not.
Are the official servers pretty active? How many are in a server?
The default cap seems to be 50. So far on my server I've seen anywhere from 13-38 depending on the time of day. The chat is always bumping with people talking. I can't speak for other servers, but I'd imagine it is similar.
You can play the game solo on a "private" server or host your own unoffical server. In either case you can change the game's server settings, but I'm unsure what options there are.
You can change mob hp/damage, sunlight, resource gain, build costs, night/day cycle, get larger item stacks, and more
The pvp where you don't lose gear or your castle sound ok, but the one where you can literally have your entire base destroyed sounds not fun at all.
me too
at first I was like, "I should restart with resource needs reduced"
but then sunk cost fallacy sunk in
Yeah I mean maybe but I've barely put an hour into the game and I feel like I see the engine and cycle too clearly already. I don't know if the game has any surprises for me.
In other games I would just go work on other advancement and come back with a bigger/better/faster gearset, but that seems to be gated behind the exact same achievements. So essentially, it feels like I need to kill the bosses in order to get the gear needed to kill the bosses. Maybe I'm missing something???
For what’s it’s worth you can also break that gate with bear form. Though I ended up going the explosives route first. I think I was 39-40ish gear score before doing the path to iron though, mostly merciless stuff.
You can do that, but also, progression spoilers below
Yeah I saw that he just seems like a bit more than I could tackle solo right now.
If your gear level is too low to beat up what the blood altar is pointing you at, figure out what parts of your kit can be upgraded and upgrade them. Fill out your researches, the actual books are annoyingly rare to drop, but the random research tickets are pretty plentiful if you go around raiding camps and killing their dudes and breaking all their boxes.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
edit: also that werewolf was on a killing spree, I came across a bunch of free stuff laying around on the ground and was wondering what was murdering all these militia patrols
I'm far from an expert, but it seems like you can kite a lot of enemies (the ones without a bunch of fancy special attacks at least) with the sword pretty easily. You can attack while moving and keeping them at max range seems to minimize damage taken -- I killed a skull guy (substantially higher level) doing that without taking much damage at all.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
Just creatures. But I find it a useful weapon against everything. It has nice range and its Q ability can do a lot of damage very fast.
Spear is good at single target, but it's got no arc for when you're mulching a crowd. I kind of bounce between weapons a little bit, if you can catch a group, it is very satisfying using axe's E and hearing that ping when it lands.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt