V RISING AMA (With Community Manager Jeremy)

[SLSJeremyBearson]

Hello Jeremy, got a couple questions here but really great AMA so far thanks for all the insight so far. Love you pookie bear.

HELLO. Thank you, love you too.

Ok so first off,

1) There seems to be a lack of endgame content , you've previously mentioned that there is a clear end goal -which is beating Dracula. Will there be any form of endgame content ie Dungeons , Raids , etc? That players can participate in after beating dracula? If 1.1 is the final update it would be really cool if there was an option for players to continue playing after they've finished the game!

From our point of view, V Rising is a complete journey as it is. It doesn't really aim to provide strictly PvE content after you've killed Dracula. After that there's PvP options to explore, or if you want to experiment with castle building and decorating there's that. One way we tried to offer more content was creating Brutal Mode to give a greater and more interesting challenge for people who had already played the standard mode. Beyond that I don't think we're looking to expand the game past where we felt like we put a pretty definitive end.

2) You guys added in chess board with 1.0. However, I can no play chess? Why this be Jeremy? It would be so fun and cool to 1v1 my friends in chess in my awesome castle.

We really just don't have any systems that support a chess minigame right now. It was a funny idea to add it, and maybe we will some day if someone can put the time in to making it work! For now though it's very low priority, haha.

3) There is a prevalent theme that goes along with V rising. Obviously the game is rooted in gothic media but I'm curious as to if the team had any inspirations from other pieces of media , be that - movies , video games or books? I recently watched the movie Van Helsing and was suprised by how similair it felt to the game - with Gloomrot and Ruins of Mortium later on. Would you be able to speak about inspirations?

There's a lot of inspiration that initially came from classic gothic literature like Dracula, films like Nosferatu, and some modern media like Netflix's Castelvania series that had just started getting popular around the office around the time they were looking for inspiration!

Last question -

4) With 1.0 you guys introduced in difficulty levels for the game. This was great! For the hardcore players - will there ever be a form of hardcore mode similair to diablo ie , if you die you start over?

That's something that we've been talking about for a while, at least as long as I've been here (About 3 years, though the game was in development for about 2 years before I joined) actually, and it kind of came up again semi-recently when hardcore WoW got popular, haha. I think the main reason we haven't done it yet is there are a few critical design concerns that we'd have to address with it and we haven't really determined what we'd have to do to make it happen in a way that would meet our standard for quality. No plans for it right now, but anything is possible. Just don't get your hopes up ;P

Thank you!

NO THANK YOU

 

[SLSJeremyBearson]

Hey, love the game but I would like to be able to sleep during the day and wake up at night in my pve private server, can we have that ?

Thanks for loving it!

For the sleeping through the day thing, that is something that has been discussed. We've got some concerns around it that are pretty important to get into.
We want to encourage players to interact with the day and night system, so making it so easy to skip past it would encourage them to skip it. If you don't like dealing with the daylight, however, there are server settings that can put you into pretty much perpetual night!

Look at it this way, we consider there to be a difference between giving you the tools to do what you want like with server settings, and making the 'default' of the game guide you into making certain decisions. If there's a very readily accessible method to skipping the day time in the 'default' state of the game, in a way that's the game telling you that you should be skipping ahead to the night time and ignoring the daylight hours. As it is now the daylight discourages certain activities, but might encourage you to do things aside from exploring like organizing and decorating your castle, doing resource gathering nearby, tending your garden, attending your servants, etc before taking advantage of the night time to go hunting again.

However, if you don't like doing that sort of thing at all and you want the game to be ALL hunting and barely any resource gathering and organizing or decorating, you can do things like adjust your server settings to make resource gathering faster and easier, kill the daylight, and hunt to your heart's content.

There's also the basic design questions, one of which you mention in your question like:

• How will people utilize something like this?
• Will this remove the effect of the day and night system?
• How would this be possible on a Dedicated Server with lots of players?
• Should it only be available for solo / coop?
• Would the game experience be very different?

Things we're planning to discuss! It's interesting how such a small change could have such a major effect on the way players generally experience the game, and we're always taking these into account when we decide what features we should and shouldn't add. I hope this is a fun little glimpse into the day-to-day decision making in game design!

Last question. How can we conquer vardoran after defeating dracula?

I personally achieve this by killing Solarus a few times when I'm having a rough day.

 

[Kmui]

Hi Jeremy o/ Hope you're having a good day

Hope my english won't be too bad

Couple of questions here :

- With V Rising Boss Encounters (V Bloods), we've seen more and more similarities with MMO Boss Encounters (In the way they feel to play, with no mechanics but hey they're fun nonetheless). Is it something you had planned from the start ? And is it something that we can hope to see more of in the future ?

- With the 1.0 release came difficulty settings, which I really enjoyed ! Would it be possible to see a new difficulty in the future ? (By that I mean above Brutal mode) and if not would you consider custom settings to come back (Boosting Boss HP, DMG etc) ?

- SLS did an amazing job "perfecting" old areas and bosses, is it something we will continue to see in the future even after 1.0 ? (Reworked parts of areas, reworked some bosses arena, new event like cratridge, new bosses earlier in the progression, etc) ?

- For gems, will you consider adding a larger pool of effects each gems can choose from ? (basically instead of having 10 possible effects you now have 15) ?

- We know a new area is coming and you probably won't talk about it ... but I'll try
Is a new level cap on the horizon ? New tier of gear ?

- With SLS's Vision of V Rising "achieved" and with the game being generally praised, is SLS cooking either more of V Rising after 1.1 or a completely new project that is similar to V Rising ? V Rising coop RPG ? (If you're locked in your crypt and can't talk blink twice with a smiley face)

- The world of V Rising is incredibly interactive (all factions interacting passively or aggressively with each other), that add a lot of immersion to the game. Have you consider adding more interaction to the game (like the base being raided by angry humans from time to time) ? Any other interactions ?

- [EDIT]This one is more of a personnal one but would you consider changing or adding an option for the control of the camera on a controller ? (Basically a right analog stick camera without any other input) Same for right click on Mouse and Keyboard ? Carpal tunnel hurts

- Last question : The team at SLS must be proud of themselves, Do they consider this a financial success ? Are they done with the vampire theme after all those years ? Or are they angry for more ? New game ? New theme ? More of V Rising ? (Ok, I lied that's 6 questions)

Thank you in advance if you have time to answer some of these o/
Kudo to the SLS team aswell, hope they're having a good time and are angry for more (while taking care of themselves)

Hope to see more adventures in V Rising, this game really is something special
o/ Good Night

 

[SLSJeremyBearson]

MODS SPARE ME

Question from stun on discord:
Mounted enemies when

It is actually really funny how difficult this is to answer. Probably in 1.1, but knowing Stun, not exactly what he means by mounted enemies. Unfortunately I can't get more specific than that

Insert a huge block of questions that it is a little cumbersome, visually, to quote, but please know that I did read through all of them.

So first off I would like to remind you that this is an AMA, but I do appreciate the suggestions, I just can't respond to most of these because they're not really questions. The implicit question would be, I guess, why we are or are not going to act on these suggestions, but I really can't do that right now. Sorry!

We really do value communication and try to be as communicative as we can to the measure that it makes sense for us as a studio, and taking time to talk with you does have an impact on development. There's a little joke around community managers that I think is extremely funny:



Because of course me taking time to talk to you guys doesn't take time from the devs, we can do both!

However, if I have to grab each designer responsible for these decisions (When there were often multiple) and ask them to break down the individual decisions that lead to each one of these suggestions either not being implemented, or talk about their concerns with them, or why they think they're a good idea, actually very quickly adds up to a lot of time talking to design asking them to explain their decisions that takes away from them actually sitting down and designing!

So while I am happy to answer questions, I can't really go into the kind of depth you're asking for so many individual interactions. I hope you understand where I'm coming from there.

It might be fun to do for a handful though, especially if they help you understand where we're coming from on a broader level from a design standpoint. I passed a few questions off to our design team in hopes of getting an answer. It's pretty short notice with the AMA ending soon, but even if it does I'll report back with answers!

 

[SLSJeremyBearson]

Hi Jeremy o/ Hope you're having a good day

Hope my english won't be too bad

Couple of questions here :

- With V Rising Boss Encounters (V Bloods), we've seen more and more similarities with MMO Boss Encounters (In the way they feel to play, with no mechanics but hey they're fun nonetheless). Is it something you had planned from the start ? And is it something that we can hope to see more of in the future ?

Hello hi!

I don't think there's any deliberate crossover with MMO boss encounters. We are constantly pushing to do different things and provide new experiences with our V Blood fights, and that might lead to some familiar styles of fight because a lot of our devs have a lot of experience with MMOs! Maybe some common inspiration?

- With the 1.0 release came difficulty settings, which I really enjoyed ! Would it be possible to see a new difficulty in the future ? (By that I mean above Brutal mode) and if not would you consider custom settings to come back (Boosting Boss HP, DMG etc) ?

Custom settings are still there! More than ever, in fact. For creating another higher difficulty setting, I think it's unlikely. As it stands right now Brutal Mode is already so difficult for the majority of players!

- SLS did an amazing job "perfecting" old areas and bosses, is it something we will continue to see in the future even after 1.0 ? (Reworked parts of areas, reworked some bosses arena, new event like cratridge, new bosses earlier in the progression, etc) ?

I can't really speak to this right now, but I will say that we're always open to adding new content to old areas.

- For gems, will you consider adding a larger pool of effects each gems can choose from ? (basically instead of having 10 possible effects you now have 15) ?

We'd consider it, sure, but a lot of the feedback we're getting right now is that players have favorite effects on jewels that they want to see more of and aren't as enamored with the randomness. Adding more randomness to their jewels might actually increase frustration. So it's not a no, but there are serious considerations! Also, just having a higher volume of equally good and interesting effects that you want to get is a challenge at that scale. You don't want to add a bunch of effects that people are sad to get.

- We know a new area is coming and you probably won't talk about it ... but I'll try
Is a new level cap on the horizon ? New tier of gear ?

Can't talk about this at the moment, sorry!

- The world of V Rising is incredibly interactive (all factions interacting passively or aggressively with each other), that add a lot of immersion to the game. Have you consider adding more interaction to the game (like the base being raided by angry humans from time to time) ? Any other interactions ?

We've talked about PvE raids, for instance, basically since the game's inception. The main problem we've run into with implementing them is finding a level of interactivity, warning, etc., that works with the flow of the game and feels good and rewarding. We're very well aware that it's something players are really interested in, but the challenge would be solving a few really big problems we have with how it would practically play out and feel for the player, as well as issues with its ties to progression and just the overall place in the game.

- [EDIT]This one is more of a personnal one but would you consider changing or adding an option for the control of the camera on a controller ? (Basically a right analog stick camera without any other input) Same for right click on Mouse and Keyboard ? Carpal tunnel hurts

Like a camera toggle? There are a ton of issues with aiming spells and ability if the camera works that way, unfortunately.

- Last question : The team at SLS must be proud of themselves, Do they consider this a financial success ? Are they done with the vampire theme after all those years ? Or are they angry for more ? New game ? New theme ? More of V Rising ? (Ok, I lied that's 6 questions)

We're really proud of V Rising, and I don't think it's a stretch to say we consider it to be a success. I can confidently say we're not done with the Vampire theme. Right now we're working on 1.1, and I can't exactly speak to our plans after that. We're very focused on the now.

Thank you in advance if you have time to answer some of these o/
Kudo to the SLS team aswell, hope they're having a good time and are angry for more (while taking care of themselves)

Hope to see more adventures in V Rising, this game really is something special
o/ Good Night

Thank you so much for all the kind words! I don't want to be too cheesy, but we really do take them to heart. Have an amazing weekend buddy

 

[Jesus Christ's Right Nut]

No worries I appreciate you guys indulging me so far, I've hogged the forum a bit too long. If you do ask a handful though can those be 3rd 4th and 6th. No worries if you can't I appreciate the answers so far.

 

[T7Anthont]

Thanks for loving it!

For the sleeping through the day thing, that is something that has been discussed. We've got some concerns around it that are pretty important to get into.
We want to encourage players to interact with the day and night system, so making it so easy to skip past it would encourage them to skip it. If you don't like dealing with the daylight, however, there are server settings that can put you into pretty much perpetual night!

Look at it this way, we consider there to be a difference between giving you the tools to do what you want like with server settings, and making the 'default' of the game guide you into making certain decisions. If there's a very readily accessible method to skipping the day time in the 'default' state of the game, in a way that's the game telling you that you should be skipping ahead to the night time and ignoring the daylight hours. As it is now the daylight discourages certain activities, but might encourage you to do things aside from exploring like organizing and decorating your castle, doing resource gathering nearby, tending your garden, attending your servants, etc before taking advantage of the night time to go hunting again.

However, if you don't like doing that sort of thing at all and you want the game to be ALL hunting and barely any resource gathering and organizing or decorating, you can do things like adjust your server settings to make resource gathering faster and easier, kill the daylight, and hunt to your heart's content.

There's also the basic design questions, one of which you mention in your question like:

• How will people utilize something like this?
• Will this remove the effect of the day and night system?
• How would this be possible on a Dedicated Server with lots of players?
• Should it only be available for solo / coop?
• Would the game experience be very different?

Things we're planning to discuss! It's interesting how such a small change could have such a major effect on the way players generally experience the game, and we're always taking these into account when we decide what features we should and shouldn't add. I hope this is a fun little glimpse into the day-to-day decision making in game design!



I personally achieve this by killing Solarus a few times when I'm having a rough day.

That's right. I also think is important for the players to interact with the day and night system. But still having the option to enable/disable sleeping in the coffin in the server settings would be great. There are moments when you have everything set up and the only thing you have to do is wait til night to go hunting. Time skip would be more immersive.

Is there any plans to add an auto sorter chest or something? . Like, you drop all the ítem you have and it automatically sends the items to its respective storages?

Also i think it would be great if we could specify the day and night hours in the server settings, like: day starts at 6am and night starts at 7pm.

Lastly, i think a blood ritual could be intetesting or at least be able to set the frequency of the blood moon

But anyway my whishlist is this short.
The only thing i really hope for this game is to get an endgame loop to keep playing it with my friends.

Thank you very much SLS for this gem of a game

 

[spinalsyrup]

Hey Jeremy , got a couple more questions here. Similair to other people who've suggested skipping by - your welcome to skip me if there are other questions you need to answer first. Friggin loving the AMA though, and very grateful that your going through and answering all these questions!

Really quickly I'll comment on the day and night system - As I personally can understand the tediousness of having to wait for night but I agree with your team from an immersion perspective and think it should stay the same as it is.

Ok so onto the questions ,

1) Clarification around my previous question -- around end game content. I'd like to rehash this to ask if there will be replay able content. not nessicarly end game content. I can understand that the team wants Dracula to be the final boss and end of the game but there seems to be a large community that would adore any form of repayable content - whether that be a dungeon system or looped combat that you could take part in after beating Dracula. You mention that "After that there's PvP options to explore, or if you want to experiment with castle building and decorating there's that." This is true but I feel that it predominantly is advertised to PVP players, often PVE players tend to stay away from PVP. With the addition of arenas in 1.1 maybe that will satisfy end game content but I'm very curious as to if there's any form of replayibility being considered for the future as I know alot of people tend to drop the game after finishing the core content and then come back for the new expansions. Sorry that this is a bit of a rehash question - just curious to any other details you could give us!

2) Fishing! The fishing system is pretty cool but I feel like theres alot of room for extra options and a more integrated fishing system - is this something that could be possible?

3) Question involving story - With one of the recent updates, you guys added in lore descriptions that fleshed out the V Blood bosses and provided a little more insight involving the lore around the world. Are there any plans to add further lore / story / cutscenes into the world to create further narrative aspects to the game?

4) In alot of MMO games there are options for pets! Is this something we might see in the future of V Rising ? Could we have our own personal vampire cat to aid us in our journey?


5) Are there any plans to make the ruins of mortium zone habitable by players? It's such a open space but there aren't any habitable land plots.

Last question,

6) With the shard bosses acting as essentially the "next level " of V blood bosses - they are still solo-able by yourself and are subjectivlly easy to veteran players. Are there any plans for a boss that provides a true challenge for multiple vampires at once ? Ie a boss you physically couldn't beat by yourself but require friends?

Thanks pookie bear!!!!!


BONUS QUESTION : Out of all the bosses in V Rising - who do you think is the most difficult?

 

[CT-013]

Hello and good day to you Mr Bear Man.

Got a few questions (and maybe suggestions) i'd like to send your way, here goes:

1. I noticed that for a Vampire game, there's a distinct lack of neck-biting. The only instance of neck bite is when you use "expose vein" which requires the presence of another vampire. Which means that most solo players technically never got a single neck bitten. Is it possible to expand this feature so a solo player can also get some neck biting action.
   
   Possible suggestion: Maybe enable it as feed animation only for a few specific humanoid mobs of equal height? (Like villagers / nuns?)
   Reasoning: Unlike bosses only one Vamp can feed on a mob anyway & enabling it only for a few specific mobs because not all mobs have regular sizes which can cause problems (like Militia Brutes)
   ​
2. Will we get Advanced Sawmill? Since it's the only missing "advanced" station.
   Maybe with a boss utilizing that unused Dunsley Lumber Mill?
   
   
3. Adding on to previous one, will the currently unused Sacrificial Site in Dunsley finally be used for something?
   
   
4. Will the throne of darkness be used for something instead of just a biiig fancy chair? Maybe something involving the "Shadow realm"?
   
   
5. Expanding on previous one, are we ever going to explore other instances of the shadow realm?
   Based on Drac's castle shadow realm mechanics, it could technically be useful for randomized, repeatable dungeon...
   
   
6. Regarding lore, the world's story is quite rich however it's scattered around piece-by-piece in several devblogs. Would it be possible to make collectibles out of them so they can be accessed in-game?
   One possible implementation: Rare book drops from Gold Chest / Caravans / Bosses which contains area-based lore like: Tales of Farbane part 1 - 3, etc
   
   
7. You mentioned in previous replies that PvE raids problems are: "finding a level of interactivity, warning, etc, that works with the flow of the game and feels good and rewarding"
   My suggestion is: How about taking a page from Conan Exile's updated purge mechanics? making the raid an opt-in mechanic accessible through castle heart menu (lore-wise, kinda like a vampire provoking the humans by intentionally lowering defenses)
   
   Raid difficulty according to heart Level, Raid spawns only if there's a valid path from outside to the heart (not walled off), Raid spawns in waves, Raid targets your castle heart, Raid will break doors, Raid will shave blood essence from heart, Raid ends if enough blood essence is depleted / Raid Boss defeated, Raid Boss drops tiered resources (Books? Mats? Weapons? etc).
   This way, raids are based on your progress, drops tier-appropriate resources, and the one that do gets raided are those that specifically "ask" for it.
   

I think that will be all.
Thank you for your time, Mr Bear Man.

 

[SLSJeremyBearson]

That's right. I also think is important for the players to interact with the day and night system. But still having the option to enable/disable sleeping in the coffin in the server settings would be great. There are moments when you have everything set up and the only thing you have to do is wait til night to go hunting. Time skip would be more immersive.

Is there any plans to add an auto sorter chest or something? . Like, you drop all the ítem you have and it automatically sends the items to its respective storages?

Also i think it would be great if we could specify the day and night hours in the server settings, like: day starts at 6am and night starts at 7pm.

Lastly, i think a blood ritual could be intetesting or at least be able to set the frequency of the blood moon

But anyway my whishlist is this short.
The only thing i really hope for this game is to get an endgame loop to keep playing it with my friends.

Thank you very much SLS for this gem of a game

We're planning to look at some things with the day and night system to explore if there's anything we want to do there for 1.1, so no promises, but we are looking at it!

Auto sorter chest is something we've considered, like having your servants sort your stuff for you. I'm not sure if it's something we'll find time for for 1.1 though, or if we're sure we want to do it.

Appreciate the suggestions, take care!

 

[SLSJeremyBearson]

Hey Jeremy , got a couple more questions here. Similair to other people who've suggested skipping by - your welcome to skip me if there are other questions you need to answer first. Friggin loving the AMA though, and very grateful that your going through and answering all these questions!

Really quickly I'll comment on the day and night system - As I personally can understand the tediousness of having to wait for night but I agree with your team from an immersion perspective and think it should stay the same as it is.

Ok so onto the questions ,

1) Clarification around my previous question -- around end game content. I'd like to rehash this to ask if there will be replay able content. not nessicarly end game content. I can understand that the team wants Dracula to be the final boss and end of the game but there seems to be a large community that would adore any form of repayable content - whether that be a dungeon system or looped combat that you could take part in after beating Dracula. You mention that "After that there's PvP options to explore, or if you want to experiment with castle building and decorating there's that." This is true but I feel that it predominantly is advertised to PVP players, often PVE players tend to stay away from PVP. With the addition of arenas in 1.1 maybe that will satisfy end game content but I'm very curious as to if there's any form of replayibility being considered for the future as I know alot of people tend to drop the game after finishing the core content and then come back for the new expansions. Sorry that this is a bit of a rehash question - just curious to any other details you could give us!

Yeah, I understand! I think there IS a direction we could go with trying to add replayable content or combat challenges. Right now I don't think we're moving to add anything along those lines, but please keep letting us know what sounds good to you. It is extremely helpful for us in how we determine what we're doing next to know what players are asking for, and the more people that ask for something, the more likely we are to seriously consider it even if it's something we didn't initially think would be possible. A great example of this is second floors in castles.

2) Fishing! The fishing system is pretty cool but I feel like theres alot of room for extra options and a more integrated fishing system - is this something that could be possible?

Maybe! I think we want to avoid spending TOO much time on fishing because it might take away from more vampirey activities.

3) Question involving story - With one of the recent updates, you guys added in lore descriptions that fleshed out the V Blood bosses and provided a little more insight involving the lore around the world. Are there any plans to add further lore / story / cutscenes into the world to create further narrative aspects to the game?

This is a bit tough because there are currently very limited avenues to express the lore. We've considered some options to add more lore elements to the world, but I think right now, we're fairly dedicated to expressing it mostly through environmental storytelling, voice lines, and the descriptions that can be found around the game. If there are any parts of the narrative that really grab you and that you think would be cool to expand on, you should let us know! I actually work very closely with that stuff, so I find it really interesting what players are connecting to and what we can do to make the game feel more immersive and make the narrative more engaging.

4) In alot of MMO games there are options for pets! Is this something we might see in the future of V Rising ? Could we have our own personal vampire cat to aid us in our journey?

There were ideas very early on to give you a kind of raven familiar. It's not out of the question, but we'd want it to have some kind of important gameplay element.

5) Are there any plans to make the ruins of mortium zone habitable by players? It's such a open space but there aren't any habitable land plots.

Nah, Mortium is supposed to be the home of the enemy and extremely unfriendly. Letting people settle there would go against the purpose of the zone, and also provide a huge advantage in farming Mortium events!

Last question,

6) With the shard bosses acting as essentially the "next level " of V blood bosses - they are still solo-able by yourself and are subjectivlly easy to veteran players. Are there any plans for a boss that provides a true challenge for multiple vampires at once ? Ie a boss you physically couldn't beat by yourself but require friends?

Thanks pookie bear!!!!!

This is actually a great question! We want the game to be possible solo, and as it stands V Rising is already extremely difficult even solo. I can comfortably say that Dracula, especially on Brutal, is an extremely difficult experience. In the beta I remember seeing some of the best players in the world struggle for days to get there. That being said, to meet that level of REQUIRING multiple players it would have to be pretty much impossible, and we want the game to always be possible to solo!

BONUS QUESTION : Out of all the bosses in V Rising - who do you think is the most difficult?

I think Dracula is probably the most difficult. Adam is a strong contender, but for me it's a lot easier to get Adam's patterns down than it is for Draccy boi. I know a lot of people have the opposite opinion, though, I think it's just a matter of personal taste and reflexes.

 

[SLSJeremyBearson]

Hello and good day to you Mr Bear Man.

Got a few questions (and maybe suggestions) i'd like to send your way, here goes:

1. I noticed that for a Vampire game, there's a distinct lack of neck-biting. The only instance of neck bite is when you use "expose vein" which requires the presence of another vampire. Which means that most solo players technically never got a single neck bitten. Is it possible to expand this feature so a solo player can also get some neck biting action.

Possible suggestion: Maybe enable it as feed animation only for a few specific humanoid mobs of equal height? (Like villagers / nuns?)
Reasoning: Unlike bosses only one Vamp can feed on a mob anyway & enabling it only for a few specific mobs because not all mobs have regular sizes which can cause problems (like Militia Brutes)​

Hello! It seems like you pretty much nailed why this is the case, haha, animations! It lets us have a lot more diverse enemies to not have a neck-biting animation without adding a ton of animation overhead to having to bite all of their necks, or in the case of spiders' thoraxes? Or something? At this point I think it might be an issue of consistency to just keep it across all blood-having creatures in the same method, but I can definitely see there being a boost in immersion to add more neck-biting in more situations. I'll pass on the feedback at least!

2. Will we get Advanced Sawmill? Since it's the only missing "advanced" station.
Maybe with a boss utilizing that unused Dunsley Lumber Mill?

Good question! Unfortunately, I can't really get into future content that we haven't announced.

3. Adding on to previous one, will the currently unused Sacrificial Site in Dunsley finally be used for something?

Good question! Unfortunately, I can't really get into future content that we haven't announced.

4. Will the throne of darkness be used for something instead of just a biiig fancy chair? Maybe something involving the "Shadow realm"?

Right now it's just a trophy for beating Dracula! I can't really speak to any future plans for it, though.

5. Expanding on previous one, are we ever going to explore other instances of the shadow realm?
Based on Drac's castle shadow realm mechanics, it could technically be useful for randomized, repeatable dungeon...

Good question! Unfortunately, I can't really get into future content that we haven't announced. I'll keep the suggestion in mind, though.

6. Regarding lore, the world's story is quite rich however it's scattered around piece-by-piece in several devblogs. Would it be possible to make collectibles out of them so they can be accessed in-game?
One possible implementation: Rare book drops from Gold Chest / Caravans / Bosses which contains area-based lore like: Tales of Farbane part 1 - 3, etc

I don't think we would provide those books in the game, largely because the specifics of a lot of this are lost to time and only really known by some of the few people who were living at the time, like Solarus and... well, you. The Vampires. So it really wouldn't make sense for you to be able to get a lot of that info in the game through people who wouldn't really know it. Some of the more area-specific lore, like the bandits' exile and things like that, might be something we would get into if we decided to go that route narratively, but right now, we're keeping it very reading-light and implied! Hearing people express an interest in more lore in the game does motivate me, though.

7. You mentioned in previous replies that PvE raids problems are: "finding a level of interactivity, warning, etc, that works with the flow of the game and feels good and rewarding"
My suggestion is: How about taking a page from Conan Exile's updated purge mechanics? making the raid an opt-in mechanic accessible through castle heart menu (lore-wise, kinda like a vampire provoking the humans by intentionally lowering defenses)

Raid difficulty according to heart Level, Raid spawns only if there's a valid path from outside to the heart (not walled off), Raid spawns in waves, Raid targets your castle heart, Raid will break doors, Raid will shave blood essence from heart, Raid ends if enough blood essence is depleted / Raid Boss defeated, Raid Boss drops tiered resources (Books? Mats? Weapons? etc).
This way, raids are based on your progress, drops tier-appropriate resources, and the one that do gets raided are those that specifically "ask" for it.
I think that will be all.
Thank you for your time, Mr Bear Man.

I can say that these are ideas we've considered when it comes to PvE raiding, but there are a lot of complications to make it work in V Rising in a way we'd be happy with and wouldn't worsen the experience of the parts of the game that work really well. Still, happy to take any suggestions, and I appreciate the creative energy!

 

[SLSJeremyBearson]

I think that just about wraps things up, folks! THANK YOU SO MUCH for your questions and thank you EXPUTER for hosting us!