Campfire warmth, jump and crouch, one contract at a time
- Campfires restore you.
- How: stand within about 3.6 m of a campfire (the Cursed Forest's, the Sanctuary's) and, once you've gone 3 seconds without being hurt and nothing close by is hunting you, it restores 6% of your health a second, stamina 45 a second on top of the usual regen, and mana 30 a second.
- Feedback: "The fire's warmth restores you" when you step up, and a warm "Warmed by the fire" line pulses over your bars while it works.
- Cost: fires register themselves, and you're checked against them six times a second.
- New controls:
- Space jumps: about 0.85 m, costing 10 stamina. You can still jump a moment after stepping off an edge.
- Shift + Space is the dodge roll, so sprinting into a roll is one motion. No rolling in mid-air: a roll pressed just before you land happens as you touch down.
- Ctrl (hold) crouches: hips sunk, knees deep, the weapon held low. You creep at 2.1 m/s, the camera sinks with you, and enemies notice you at 55% of their usual range (and not behind them). Sprinting stands you up.
- Gamepad: A jumps (unless there's something to interact with), B rolls (keep holding it to sprint), L3 crouches.
- Feel: landing dips the body and plays a footstep. Other players see you crouch and jump.
- The prompts, the controls hint and the pause menu's controls list all show the new keys.
- One contract at a time:
- Taking one: each trader still posts four offers. You choose one with Accept contract; taking another gives up the first, after a second click to confirm. You can also Give up your contract at its stall.
- The tracker: your contract shows as a slim panel with a progress bar, under the minimap in a run and in the top-left corner in the Sanctuary. It shows the trader, the job, the count, and "1000 gold on completion", "Met: get out alive to be paid" or "Ready: take it to the Bone Merchant". The bar eases and flashes when it moves.
- Progress:
- Kills, marks and chests are banked each time you get out alive and add up over expeditions; die and that expedition's count is lost.
- Delve contracts are met by reaching the depth and extracting.
- Fetch and deliver contracts are handed in at the stall.
- Rerolls: your contract stays put while the other offers are rerolled after every expedition. Only your contract counts toward material tooltips and "!" markers.
VAEL is a co-op dark fantasy extraction dungeon crawler for PC, in active development. Get playtest news by email, or read the wiki.