If you're a V Rising fan, it is time to rise once again from your coffin, as the scent of a new dev update is in the air. Stunlock has revealed more info on the upcoming free V Rising expansion: it's launching in May, and it sounds like it's bringing some pretty big features with it.
Over on the official Stunlock blog, the studio reveals the May release window for the upcoming V Rising expansion, as well as going into detail regarding what's coming in said expansion. First up, we get a look at the new Jewels system, which is intended to help you "experiment and try out many different kit combinations". You'll slot Jewels into spells, and they'll modify those spells to add new effects and make them more interesting.
All of V Rising's magic schools (Blood, Unholy, Illusion, Chaos, and Frost) have been "refocused to have a stronger identity" in the expansion, too. Each school now has a debuff that "benefit[s] from stacking", which Stunlock hopes will encourage specialization without removing the option to mix and match spells. Every spell in the game has been tweaked to some degree, with some receiving bigger changes than others.
In brief, the Blood school now revolves around vampiric healing, and its debuff inflicts a Leech lifesteal status effect on your enemies. Unholy is all about killing enemies and then resurrecting skeletons from their corpses, while Chaos will use the familiar Ignite debuff. Illusion weakens enemies and gives you a stacking chance for a free spell cast, and finally, Frost won't outright freeze enemies anymore, although with careful use of Jewels, you can still achieve this effect.
One rather exciting new experimental feature that Stunlock says it's working on is called Territories. This feature will let you claim a whole plot of land rather than just a castle; Stunlock says it hopes to "reduce player friction" and fit more players in a world using this system. If you want to know more about Territories, you can read it all on the Stunlock dev update, and when you're done, you can answer a quick survey to tell Stunlock what you think about this feature.
The new free expansion for V Rising is due sometime in May. Stunlock is emphasizing that this isn't the game's 1.0 release; that will look rather different and is currently scheduled to land in 2024. If you decide to head back into the world of V Rising for the expansion or even before, check out our guides, where you'll learn how to be a true childe of the night.
