V Rising is getting a free expansion this spring

The developer of Early Access vampire survival game V Rising has revealed new details about the major free expansion coming this year, including some welcome news about its expected release date – it’s not all that far off, arriving in May rather than later in the year, despite the major additions and changes it’ll be introducing.

The latest V Rising dev blog focuses on some alterations the team has made to the jewels system discussed late last year. The original design had jewels slotting into individual weapons and magic gear, the developers found that this was too restrictive for players.

“It discouraged vampires from being adaptive and from exploring all of the deadly possibilities afforded to them,” the developers write. “It’s important to us that this system offers more freedom in spell choice and variety to satisfy your dark desires.”

Instead, jewels will fit into each spell, and while they’re equipped, you won’t drop them when you die. You only get to use one jewel per ability, but they’ll stay there until you pop them out to swap them for another bonus.

The update will also apply a major rework to V Rising’s five prime schools of magic, giving spell subdivision a stronger identity and better cohesion by adding effects that stack with each other. Stunlock says it wants to encourage “leaning into the individual magic archetypes” without making it overly beneficial – there should still be room for mixing and matching spells from different schools.

Since everyone’s playing as vampires, it makes sense that Stunlock is upgrading blood magic with an automatic leech effect. Each of the other magic schools has gotten some attention too, so be sure to check out the blog post for the full rundown.

The studio says it’s also experimenting with a new system that allows players to claim plots of land rather than expanding their castles tile-by-tile from the initial heart. The details for this are still a bit up in the air, as the new concept means you’ll only be able to build on current points of interest rather than wherever you want.

Finally, Stunlock says the May update will not mean that V Rising is complete – the full launch is still scheduled for launch sometime in 2024.

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V Rising is getting a free expansion this spring
Source: Maharot News