RUNE II December 2020 Monthly Update

Originally posted at https://www.rune2.com/december20update/

01 / 04 / 21

This past month on RUNE II, we duplicated.

Welcome back to the RUNE II Monthly Update series. Whether this is the first monthly update you’re reading or your twelfth, our monthly updates are a place for us to reflect on what we did this month and what’s to come.

Lots to cover in today’s update. Sales, free DLC, winners, a community interview, memories, and more! Fasten your seatbelt and put your tray table up. It’s go time.

SAVE MONEY, LIVE BETTER

For a very limited time, you can get RUNE II 50% off on Steam and the Epic Games Store! These deals are going away very quickly, so move fast!

FILL MY EYES WITH THAT DOUBLE VISION

Earlier this month we released The Duplicity Update. This free update brings a new Goblin Mine dungeon, new PvP modes, 21 new Steam Achievements, 4 new dual wielding weapon sets, and more to RUNE II! You can read the full list of changes on our patch notes page and in-game. 

BARK AT THE MOON

As a special thanks for all the feedback and reviews you’ve given us since launch, all players can now claim the FREE Wolf Armor and Gear set DLC. Please keep the steam reviews and feedback coming! We are actively looking at them and improving RUNE II daily!

WINNER WINNER, LIZARD DINNER

Many clips have entered to be judged by the harshest eyes: yours. Three clips have emerged victorious.

In third place, RascalKG combines memes with RUNE II. https://youtu.be/p1S3G5joHq8 

In second place, TheDevCalledBen displays masterful combat abilities. https://youtu.be/00b_ta5UZwQ 

And in first place, 5hizzle learns the lesson that all RUNE II players know well: Do not stand under falling trees.  https://youtu.be/mv9T10Hv_l0 

We held a separate contest with our friends at Vast.gg that finished earlier this month. And the winners are…

Congratulations to all of our winners and a thank you to everyone that entered both of these!

ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: TORULF MCBEARD

Mitch: Hey there! Let’s kick this off and introduce you to our RUNE II community. For those that don’t know you yet, can you tell me a bit about yourself and what got you into gaming?

Torulf McBeard: Well, I don’t know what there is to know. I’m just an extremely opinionated bastard who’s spent far too much time on the RUNE II Discord and forums writing suggestions and ranting about stuff I don’t like about the game and would prefer to see changed. And that simply stems from the fact that I fell in love with the original game way back when I tried the demo that came on a PC Gamer CD, in ye olden days.

As for what got me into gaming, I suppose that was when I was something like ten years old and played Super Mario Bros on the NES at a cousin’s place. Super fascinated ever since, for better or worse. These days I’m slightly less interested in playing the games and more interested in the creation and design of them. 

Mitch: Lurkers of our Discord will know that you’re a master in Norse mythology. What are your favorite parts of Norse mythos? 

Torulf McBeard: Haha, hardly a master! I know a thing or two about it I suppose. Hmm, this is a tough question. There is a hell of a lot, but I’m gonna try and be brief here and say that I really like how complex the characters, especially the gods are. Loki in particular is a very complex character. The gods are all flawed, and there is no “good” or “evil”. There is “order” and “chaos”, however. Loki is frequently accompanying Asa gods who represent “order”, while Loki himself and his giant nature represents “chaos”. Loki is always the one who makes things happen. Even though his chaotic nature gets the gods into really bad trouble time and again, it seems that in the end they always come away with something really valuable. It’s a really interesting dynamic.

Mitch: Chaotic nature is good and all, but what parts (if any) of Norse mythology do you think are overlooked or under-represented?

Torulf McBeard: That’s much easier! Quite a lot. But to name one specific thing I’d say the shamanistic aspects. Things such as the various kinds of “spirits”. Just to make an example of this, the Norse believed there were land spirits, among many other kinds.. When a longship was about to approach a shore they would remove the dragonhead so the land spirits wouldn’t be frightened or otherwise angered. At least this was the case if it was a friendly shore. When raiding or landing somewhere for violent reasons it would make more sense to keep the dragonheads up, obviously.

Another example is the so-called “Nidstang” or “Nithing pole” – a means to place a curse on an enemy. This consisted of a wooden pole, usually with a recently slain horse’s head placed on top, facing whatever direction the curse is to be cast. Then the curse is carved in runes upon the pole. I just looked it up again, and turns out these Nidstangar, although very rare, are still in use back home in Scandinavia now and again, to my surprise!

Mitch: How do you feel about the way that Norse mythology is represented in RUNE II? 

Torulf McBeard: It’s an interesting spin on it, though of course there are a few things that irk me and I’d prefer to see changed. But there are also some things I think both the original RUNE as well as RUNE II does better than most other Norse-themed games. One such thing is how the dwarves are portrayed. Too often you see them represented as typical fantasy dwarfs straight out of Lord of the Rings or Dungeons & Dragons. The dwarfs in RUNE, however, are much darker. They are untrustworthy, wicked, even. And they look far more like something like goblins. I really love that, and I think it’s actually more fitting than Tolkienesque dwarfs.

Mitch: Just so we’re clear, you’re cool with us taking a few side-steps with the mythology to make our video game more fun?

Torulf McBeard: Yeah, fun trumps all when it comes to games. I actually like seeing how developers might put different spins on the theme to better fit their games. I may not always agree with what they do, but it’s interesting to see regardless.

Mitch: Good to know you’re cool with it. Let’s switch gears and talk about your creative side. What got you into art and 3D modeling?

Torulf McBeard: I’ve always liked drawing since I was no age. In my late teens I sort of stopped doing it though, for many years. It’s only in the past year or two that I really decided to go back to it and actually focus on it and my creative side overall. It was around the same time I decided to take the plunge and attempt to learn 3D art. Whenever I played games in the past like RUNE, Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, Jedi Outcast or whatever, I always wanted to try making my own models or skins. I thought it would be far too complex and impossible for me to learn, so I never genuinely tried back then. But about two years ago, like I said, I learned a little about Blender and decided to actually try to learn it at long last. And I’m glad I did, because while I’m not particularly advanced yet, making half decent looking models turned out to be much easier than I thought. So now I’m just going to try to expand my skills as much as I can into other areas too. Next will be rigging and animation, since that’s something I’ve always been really interested in as well.

Mitch: Tell me more about how you created these two weapons. Take me through your process from initial thoughts to the last polishing touches.

Torulf McBeard: Once I got the message from Studio 369 about what type of weapons you wanted I simply started thinking about what I felt was currently missing. I started with the sword, and I felt that even though RUNE II had dwarfs, they didn’t really have any weapons of their own. Any fan of the first game knows how awesome the dwarf weapons are in that game!

I didn’t want to make a copy of the sword, but I wanted it to have a similar overall look and vibe. Studio369 wanted one-handed weapons, so already that would be different from the dwarf weapons in the first game, since those are all two-handed.

As I was working on the sword, bit by bit I tweaked the shape to feel more distinct and striking. I also wanted to give it a pretty unique look, so I was inspired by some naval sabres which had a kind of metal “back” on the grip. I think that helped to make the sword look really distinct and give it a strong character.

Once it came to the axe I felt I should just make it a companion weapon in the same style. I wanted the axe head to have a very bold shape, so I gave it a downward curve which would also serve to focus all energy into the top spike of the axe edge, or the horn. This would enable it to deliver devastating blows against armor. That felt like something dwarfs would appreciate in their axes.

Now, when it came to sculpting details for these two weapons, that’s where I really feel I could have done a lot better. Part of that is how the sculpting works in Blender. It’s very hard to get hard, and in particular SHARP surfaces to look good when using Blender’s sculpting tool. I’m sure there are ways to do it, but since I’m not that advanced yet, I haven’t figured out how to really make that look exactly as I want yet. I’m also not entirely happy with the ornamental pattern I sculpted on the axe head. It looks ok I guess, but I really feel I should have been able to make that look a lot better.

But regardless, I’m overall really happy with how they both turned out. I wanted to design and create two visually interesting but also functional weapons, and I feel I accomplished that pretty well.

Mitch: These two weapons are awesome and a great fit for our new dual wielding weapons system! Where can we find you and your growing portfolio on the internet?

Torulf McBeard: DeviantArt, which still holds most of my stuff for now. There’s my Instagram though I’m still really bad at posting there. I’ll be using Sketchfab now and again. My new ArtStation page will be my main portfolio site going forward though.

MEMORY, ALL ALONE IN THE MOONLIGHT

For this section, I’m gonna turn it over my amazing co-workers on the development team. I asked them about some of their favorite memories and their favorite piece of content from the past year of working on RUNE II: Decapitation Edition. 

In the order that they responded, these are their stories:

James Arbaje – Game Designer

My favorite RUNE II memory from 2020 is probably watching streamers play the game, enjoy the campaign, and get excited about all the updates we’ve made!

Ricky Boronat – Character Artist

My funnest memory was watching the end of a Last Viking Standing where you (I think it was you – not 100% on that tho) dropped meteors on the narrowed death circle thing with everyone in the middle – FTW – epic shenanigans. The funnest thing I got to work on was Batman-inspired Bomb Goblin.

Greg Weeks – AI Engineer

I really enjoyed working on the goblin sapper enemy. As a programmer, I’m rarely given the opportunity to design something with that degree of creative liberty. After working on the enemy ability system, it was nice to actually utilize it to create a fun and explosive enemy.

Scott Lopez – Environment Artist

My favorite content that I’ve had the pleasure working on have been the dungeons. I was given a lot of freedom with designing the overall flow of the dungeons, and of course arting them up to create some visually appealing set pieces. Out of the ones I made, Skadi’s Cavern and the Goblin Mine are my favs

Jason Brice – Sound Designer, Engineer and Cinematics

My favorite RUNE II content I worked on was the Headhunter quotes video and updating our key art earlier this year.

Daniel Felts – Producer

My favorite memories are the friends I made along the way.

Will Kowach – Senior Environment Artist 

My favorite memory is first testing pvp with our community and hearing everyone’s reactions. My favorite RUNE II content I worked on this year is Valkyrie Isle, our new large-scale PvP map. 

CLOSING TIME

And with that, we’ve come to the end of 2020’s RUNE II Monthly Updates. As this will be the last monthly update that I write, I’d like to end it on a personal note. 

My favorite memories from working on RUNE II in the last year involve the amazing community members I’ve been able to get to know and interact with. In no particular order, shoutouts to: Torulf McBeard, Dankina, Simonus Igorhunter, Fugana, Eisberg, RememberingNever, dark, Stormcrow, phaz0r, and many others. Whether it’s a positive comment in response to our patch notes or just someone talking in our Discord’s off-topic section to share something cool, I will always treasure the memories of the RUNE II community. The community’s positive comments have been a bright light in my 2020 and have kept me going through tough days. 

Thank you for everything. For playing RUNE II, for reading these monthly updates and blogs, for viewing our patch notes, for posting in our forums, for tweeting at us, for joining our discord, and so much more. 

James will be taking over the bulk of communications from here. Let’s not say goodbye, you’ll still see me around the community as a fan of RUNE II and Studio 369. 

Be excellent to each other.

Mitch, out!

RUNE II November 2020 Monthly Update

Originally posted at https://www.rune2.com/november20update/

12 / 01 / 20

This past month on RUNE II, we shipped RUNE II: Decapitation Edition.

Welcome back to the RUNE II Monthly Update series. Whether this is the first monthly update you’re reading or your eleventh, our monthly updates are a place for us to reflect on what we did this month and what’s to come.

RUNE II: Decapitation Edition IS NOW AVAILABLE!

RUNE II: Decapitation Edition is now available on Steam and Epic Games for $29.99. If you’re reading this before December 3rd at 11am EST, we’re on sale as part of Epic Games’ Black Friday sale for 20% off!

If you purchased RUNE II before May 2019 via rune2.com and Xsolla, we have already sent you your keys. If you’re missing that email, please email Runekeys@reverbinc.com with a copy of your Xsolla receipt and we’ll get you sorted.

We’ve extended the free Dragon Armor DLC until December 31, 2020. The Dragon Armor offers top-notch combat stats that match the impressive look of this legendary set.

As a special thanks for all the feedback you’ve given us since RUNE II: Decapitation Edition’s launch, all players will be able to claim the FREE Wolf Armor and Gear set DLC. 

GIVEAWAYS AND TOURNAMENTS

We’re running a $1500 RTX 3070 Gaming PC Giveaway with our friends at Vast! Three lucky winners will be drawn and contacted via email. No purchase necessary to enter or win. 1 Grand Prize winner will win a $1,500 Gaming PC and 4 RUNE II: Decapitation Edition Keys. 2 Runner Up Winners receive 4x RUNE II: Decapitation Edition Keys Hit up https://vast.gg/rune-2-1500-pc-game-key-giveaway/ for more details. 

Our Clips of Awesome tournament voting will conclude on Thursday, December 3rd.! Head over to the #clips-round-2 channel on the RUNE II Discord and vote for your favorite clips before voting ends. 

THE STEAM AWARDS

It is time again to convene the Steam Award Selection Committee, whose sole task is to nominate the best and brightest of the year. This esteemed committee is composed of those most qualified to judge: you! You must determine who elevated the medium of games with metrics as unique as the field of contenders.

The BETTER WITH FRIENDS award is for games that just aren’t the same when you play by yourself. Maybe you need to have a friend to watch your back. Maybe you need to have a friend that you can stab in the back. Either way, fun is awaiting those who gather friends together to play this game. Whether it’s synergizing Thor’s lightning hammer with Hel’s frost shards skills, or gearing up at Heimdall’s village to search for the Gjallarhorn pieces together and trading loot, we think RUNE II: Decapitation Edition shines the brightest during co-op with your friends.

On behalf of everyone on our indie development team, thank you for nominating us for the BETTER WITH FRIENDS Steam Award.

IF YOU COME TO A FORK IN THE ROADMAP…TAKE IT.

As we mentioned previously, we at Studio 369 are committed to supporting RUNE II: Decapitation Edition post-launch. Already we’ve shipped update 2.0.18568, update 2.0.18750, and update 2.0.18785. 

Let’s turn our attention to what’s coming next. We’ve gone through as many forum posts, reviews, tweets, discord messages, survey feedback responses as possible. Here’s a more detailed look into what we’re working on right now and what we’ll be working on next: https://rune2.com/roadmap

As mentioned in our roadmap, our highest priority items we’re working on are:

• Performance and Optimization

• Steamworks Multiplayer Integration

• Universal characters that you can take between local and co-op games

• Combat Improvements

• Audio improvements

• Key rebindings

Look for a more detailed post about how we’ll be improving combat and addressing your feedback later this week.

GOTTA PATCH EM ALL

Our next update will include the following highlights…

☆ Universal Characters

• Pre-Existing Campaign characters will be automatically converted to UNIVERSAL CHARACTERS which you can bring into your friend’s hosted games.

• Characters that you have created on a friend’s hosted session will be available to COPY into a universal character slot when you join your friend’s session.

• When you join your friend’s hosted session, RUNE II will ask you if you want to use this legacy character as one of your universal characters. This is a one time process.

• If you have no free slots, you must replace an existing character.

• In PvP modes, you will use your universal character’s appearance ONLY. No levels, gear, or skills will carry over.

☆ Keybindings and Controller Remapping

• Added the ability to remap gamepad buttons

• Added a system that restores missing input values automatically so users no longer need to manually delete their input.ini files to reset inputs.

• Fixed inputs that could not be remapped

• Fixed resetting defaults inputs would corrupt input axis values

• Free Wolf Gear and Weapons DLC

• As a special thanks for all the feedback you’ve given us since RUNE II: Decapitation Edition’s launch, all players will be able to claim the FREE Wolf Armor and Gear set DLC.

As always, look for the full patch notes to be posted when our newest update goes live.

I feel like I say it every month, but I can’t believe that November is already over. It’s been a busy month for us. A game launch, lots of patches, I got to play D&D for the first time ever in our Raredrop Vikings of Valhalla campaign, and a lot of meetings leading up to our public roadmap. We’ll have a small update dropping later this week. See you then.

Mitch, out!

P.S. I loved playing D&D. Send me all your favorite D&D show recommendations, like Critical Role or The Adventure Zone.

RUNE II October 2020 Monthly Update

Originally posted at https://www.rune2.com/october20update/

11 / 07 / 20

This past month on RUNE II, we started crossing off our pre-flight checklist.

Welcome back to another jam-packed monthly update that I’m writing in between giving press demos. You can read more about those demos here, here, here, or scroll down a bit. 

On today, October 39th, we have just a few more days until RUNE II: Decapitation Edition launches. Our team is very hard at work getting everything polished nicely and ready for you when RUNE II: Decapitation Edition launches on Steam and updates automatically on Epic Games.

Buckle up and let’s just jump into it.

DRESSED TO IM-PRESS

As mentioned above, we’ve been in the news a ton recently! Here’s what the press and media have been saying about RUNE II: Decapitation Edition:

It’s almost like a completely different game for the better. …  In a world of massive corporate greed, sometimes steering our favorite franchises into the ground, the team behind Rune II: Decapitation Edition deserve your hard earned gaming dollars. -Dustin Orgill, Game Tyrant

In less than a year, they [Studio 369] have created a game that is head and shoulders above what we saw last year -Rosh Kelly, wccftech

Rune II is reborn, and where once it was a broken dream, it is now a six-foot Viking warrior screaming with the fury of the gods. I have to say I’m excited about this upcoming release of Rune II Decapitation Edition, and you should be too!! -Andrew Vaughan, Nerd Stash

DECAPITATIOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!

In case you missed it, we put together a pretty long list of everything that we’ve done in the last year of working on RUNE II since our original launch on November 12, 2019. If you’re just joining us, welcome! Here’s what you can expect when RUNE II: Decapitation Edition launches on Steam on November 13, 2020: A vast open world with 250+ new main and side quests, 50+ new voice acted NPCs, a brand new skill tree and the 29 skills that go with it, 6 dungeons to crawl, many new villages with fully destructible buildings, infinite unique boss fights based on a randomized AI Abilities system, and a lot more. Head on over to our Decapitation Updates page to familiarize yourself with all that new new.

Which brings me to the next topic…

FREQUENTLY ANSWERED QUESTIONS

We’ve seen a lot of the same question pop up in the last couple months, so let’s run through the answers:

1. Yes, there is a Steam launch discount! When RUNE II: Decapitation Edition releases on November 13 the price will be 15% off for the first week (November 13 – November 20, 2020.)

2. Yes, you can crossplay in multiplayer with your friends that own RUNE II on different PC storefronts. As long as you and your friend are on the same version number (found in the lower right corner on the menu) you’ll be able to connect to each other.

3. Yes, you can play the entire campaign in offline Single Player. We have spent a lot of time testing, tuning and balancing the Single Player and Co-op and both modes really shine. You’re going to have a great time in either mode.  

4. Anyone that pre-purchased RUNE II on our website via Xsolla before May 2019 will receive their Steam key when RUNE II: Decapitation Edition launches on November 13, 2020. If you’re having issues locating your key after that, email runekeys@reverbinc.com with a screenshot of your Xsolla receipt and we will make sure you receive your key.

5. RUNE II: Decapitation Edition releases on November 13, 2020. You can wishlist it (or purchase it if you’re reading this in the future!) on Steam here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/821290/RUNE_II_Decapitation_Edition/ 

6. ALL existing RUNE II versions that were bought on the Epic Games Store will be upgraded to the Decapitation Edition on Nov 13, 2020. This means that everyone, no matter what storefront, will be playing on the Decapitation Edition starting November 13, 2020. Decapitation Edition version numbers will start with 2.0.XXXXX

7. RUNE II: Decapitation Edition will not have mod support at launch. If you’d like to customize your RUNE II experience, we have exposed a great number of modifiers at the engine level to control variables such as attack speed, block timings, parry windows, move speed, and more. Check our Engine Dials post for more details.

8. We will be updating RUNE II: Decapitation Edition with post-launch support. Check out our existing Roadmap for more details on what’s coming post-launch.

9. Everyone will be able to claim the FREE Dragon Armor DLC from November 13, 2020 – November 30, 2020. Previously we had said this was Steam exclusive. After coming to our senses this armor is available for free for all players for a limited time only. After that, the Dragon Armor will be available as a paid DLC option.

• It’s gorgeous.

• It makes you look like you just killed a dragon.

• It’s metal AF.

• It looks like this:

Got more questions for us? Join our Official Discord or ask me anything on our Steam Forums.

THE GOD OF HAMMERS

First introduced in the RUNE II Campaign update, our God-themed Aesir Skill System lets you unlock, upgrade and master a suite of 29 powerful and versatile God-themed skills, in addition to their intrinsic move-set. Check our skills page for more info about why Thor* is the best god to pledge to within RUNE II: Decapitation Edition.

*Producer’s note: Weird way to spell HEL but ok.

**Odin, the one-eyed sees all

FINAL DESTINATION, 3 STOCK, NO ITEMS, FOX ONLY.

With the launch of RUNE II: Decapitation Edition on November 13, 2020, we’ll be re-enabling RUNE II’s PvP modes: Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch. We have PvP functionality working and RUNE II’s PvP is much more fun now with the improved combat systems. 

In Deathmatch, it’s a free-for-all of Kill or Be Killed. Find the nearest weapon and fight for your life in this winner take all mode. 

In Team Deathmatch, join allies as you take up arms to be the winning team. 

We’ll be putting up official PvP servers over the weekend and throughout next week to get feedback. Keep an eye on our social channels and Discord for upcoming focus testing times. Want a shot at getting an early key for the Steam friends and family preview? Join our Official Discord! 

We’ll be watching carefully how players react to us turning these modes back on and we’ll be listening to your feedback on how you’re enjoying the new PvP combat experience. 

WEAPON WHEEL IN THE SKY KEEPS ON TURNING

For those of you with access to the RUNE II: Decapitation Edition friends and family Steam preview, you’re now playing on Pre-Decapitation patch 1.2.18175. This update includes prologue reintegration, a brand new hotbar wheel, visible weapons on your back (You are welcome, Dankina!), further controller support, and more! Hit up the patch notes to see everything that’s new in this patch.

By the time you’re reading this, Pre-Decapitation Edition Patch 2.0.18372 may be live as well! This update includes a fix to progression items, gear falling through the world, god statues getting more health, experience changes, updated credits, and more! Here’s the highlights for this new update:

• Enabled multiplayer cross play between Steam and Epic Games versions of RUNE II on the same version number.

• Fix to Progression Items.

  • This prevents show stopper issues if your inventory was full or you missed the item.

• Undo pickup spline fix that causes things to fall through terrain at times.

  • Now it floats, which we think is an acceptable alternative to items falling completely under the map forever.

• God Statues have more health

• Arrows now hit the dead center of the reticle at shorter ranges and have gravity in longer ranges

• Fixed archer towers having wall hacks and aimbots.

• Updated co-op revive to give 70/50/30/10% HP on Easy/Normal/Hard/Ragnarok, with an 8/6/4/3s invulnerability window.

• Enemy XP is now divided up among players in co-op instead of awarding total XP

• Increased boss difficulty from VP1-3 based on community feedback

• Added error messages when UPNP isn’t working as intended, your password is wrong, or the player you’re trying to connect to doesn’t have their ports open.

  • Read more details in our multiplayer FAQ.

• Updated Credits

As always, read the full patch notes here or in-game.

For everyone else not on the Steam friends and family preview, we’ll be updating the Epic Games version of RUNE II shortly with these changes. 

TO THE VICTOR GO THE SPOILS

Our Clips of Awesome tournament voting has begun! Head over to the #clips-round-1 channel on the RUNE II Discord and vote for your favorite clips. Voting will continue until we have our Top 3 winners! Here’s a quick reminder of what’s up for grabs: 

LAST ONE OUT, HIT THE LIGHTS

We’re closing in on the final stretch. The daily builds have stopped building 3x a day, the daily standup is getting shorter, and my time played in RUNE II: Decapitation Edition has been increasing dramatically. We’re less than a week away from our Steam launch and everyone else getting to play the new 2.0 update. I’m looking forward to defending my title as “best PvP player internally” against the world. Keep your co-op lobbies open, you might find myself or another developer joining your adventures. 

Oh, and one more thing…

How can you get your hands on the exclusive Gold Dwarven Work Sword and Gold Dwarven Work Axe? You’ll just have to stay tuned to find out.

Mitch, out!

RUNE II September 2020 Monthly Update

Originally posted at https://www.rune2.com/september20update/

10 / 02 / 20

Last month on RUNE II, we shipped a new Campaign.

Welcome back to the monthly update series. Although I’m getting a sense of Deja Vu from last month’s Monthly Update, we’ve done a TON more work on RUNE II over the last month. 

Let’s talk about that.

NEW CAMPAIGN, WHO DIS?

After months of development from all of us on the Studio 369 team, The Campaign Update is NOW AVAILABLE! The RUNE II Campaign Update brings the dungeons of Midgard, the new skill tree system, updated horde events, and additional mythical creatures. An all-new main narrative will replace the old RUNE II storyline, introducing new characters, quests, and an ending sequence fit for a legendary Viking saga. The brand new Campaign Update is a free update for all RUNE II players.

Check out the full Campaign Update page with patch notes, videos, GIFs, and more!

DOWN WITH UPNP? YEAH YOU KNOW ME!

We just shipped a new PTR patch, patch 1.2.17420. Here’s a quick preview of what’s inside and will be coming to everyone on October 5, 2020:

• SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASED OPTIMIZATION AND PERFORMANCE.

  • Thank you community members Namaslay, Eisberg, Jus7Jon, Andreasus, Meatpopsicle, Kasca, The Everchosen, and others!

• Added UPNP support so we can automagically add port forwarding options without players needing to open them manually.*

  • This will try to open router ports using UPNP when the user first indicates a desire to host a match by entering a hosted game name.

• Fixed several crash related issues.

• Fixed an issue where players could spawn and fall through the world.

• Mouse wheel now zooms the camera in and out

• Added more gibs.

The RUNE II PTR is available to all RUNE II players for no additional cost. You can learn how to access the RUNE II PTR on this page. 

*Unless you have a router that doesn’t support UPNP. 

THE KEY OF AWESOME

Our RUNE II Clips of Awesome Tournament is in full swing and we’ve partnered up with Medal.tv! Use Medal to grab a clip from RUNE II and post it with #RUNEIIClips to be entered to win a brand new Gaming Chair, Custom Streaming PC, and more! For the full details, check out this page. 

ENGINE-IOUS DIALS

We’ve heard that you want more options to customize your RUNE II experience. In response, we’ve exposed a lot of dials at the engine level for you to play with. You can modify variables such as player attack speed, stamina costs, movement speed, AI attack speed, and more! 

Find the full list of what can be modified as well as step-by-step instructions on how to modify your dials on this page. 

We’ll be adding support for co-op tether distance to this in a future update. Be sure to let us know on our Discord what future dials and customizations you’d like to see added.

GETTING INTO SHIP SHAPE

Earlier last week we were alerted of an issue that was preventing the Berserker Rage and God Slayer bonuses from showing up correctly in inventories. This is now resolved internally and will be fixed in the next live patch on October 5, 2020. 

Additionally, all God Slayer edition owners will get an in-game Ship of the God Slayer for free as a token of goodwill. No action is required to claim this item, it will be automatically added to your account when you login to RUNE II after our next live update on October 5, 2020. For the more technical minded that enjoy a peek behind the curtain, we put out an article about how this happened and what we’re doing to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

THE SILENT CARTOGRAPHER

We turn now to our attention for the next few months. Here’s what we have on deck for the foreseeable future:

• Stability, optimizations, and performance improvements.

• PvP

• Co-op quality of life upgrades

• Voice overs for all dialogue to put in with a brand new cast of voice actors

• Full gamepad controller support

• NAT punching to make co-op seamless

• Steam support and integration

• Bug fixes, polish, and tuning

• and more!

We’ll be putting up a longer post next week with more details about what each of the above will entail. 

I normally start writing every monthly update in Google Docs with the question of “What did we do this month?” I look back at the announcements channel on our Discord, our social media, and our updates blog. Looking back on our September, we did a TON. New campaign, a clips tournament, engine dials, new God Slayer ship, a PTR patch, and more. It’s no wonder that this month has flown by and we’re not done yet. We’re just under two months away from our Steam launch. You can wishlist RUNE II on Steam and Ask Me Anything on our Steam Forums! 

See you next week for our Fall Roadmap and our October 5th patch. Spooky season Mitch, signing off.

Oh and one more thing… Who wants to guess what this will be for? 

RUNE II August 2020 Monthly Update

Originally posted at https://www.rune2.com/august20update/

09 / 01 / 20

This last month on RUNE II, we learned some new skills.

Welcome to the August monthly update, on this day…August 32nd. We’ve done a ton of work on RUNE II over the last month and we’re ready to show and tell you all about it.

Let’s get into it.

THE CAMPAIGN UPDATE

After months of development from all of us on the Studio 369 team, The Campaign Update will be making its way from the PTR to the RUNE II live client September 9, 2020. The RUNE II Campaign Update will debut the DUNGEONS OF MIDGARD, the SKILL TREE SYSTEM , HORDE EVENTS , and Additional Mythical Creatures. An all-newmain narrative will replace the old RUNE II storyline, introducing new characters, quests, and an ending sequence fit for a legendary Viking saga. The brand new Campaign Update is a free update for all RUNE II players.

SELF ES-STEAM

RUNE II will arrive on Steam in November 2020!

We’ve just refreshed and updated our Steam page! If Steam is your gaming platform of choice, check out our updated page and wishlist us on Steam! http://rune2.com/wishlist 

I’m holding an ongoing Ask Us Anything on our Steam Forums. Hop in and ask me about RUNE II! https://steamcommunity.com/app/821290/discussions/0/3932159940151814190/ 

GAMESCOM AT ME, BRO.

In case you missed it, this last weekend we premiered a brand new RUNE II trailer at Gamescom 2020! Watch our new Dungeons trailer on IGN’s YouTube channel or below:

We were also part of GamesRadar’s Future Game Show. Check out the segment they put together about everything new that’s coming to RUNE II!

SKILLZ THAT PAY THE BILLZ

We added a brand new skill tree to RUNE II as part of the Campaign Update. You can check it out on PTR now, or wait until September 9th when the Campaign Update is live. Here’s a quick preview of what you can do…

We look forward to watching the builds that our players will theorycraft and create!

MULTIPLAYER CH-CH-CHANGES

As part of the Campaign Update, we are working on overhauling our multiplayer experience. Here is what players should expect on September 9, 2020:

We have completely rewritten how our quest system interacts with players. For multiplayer campaigns, quests now advance based on a global server questline. We recommend that anyone renting or hosting a campaign server password protects it. 

Based on the new global questlines, we are removing all official RUNE II Co-op servers and associated save files. The only official servers that will be offered will be PvP servers.

Additionally due to the incompatibility with the old repeatable Agefall quest and our new narrative experiences, all existing save files will be unable to be used starting September 9. We expect that this will be the only time that we will need to wipe save files.

RUNE II will still have hostable, rentable, and joinable campaign servers. When you click “CAMPAIGN”, you’ll have a box at the bottom that asks if you want to “HOST A GAME” and put in a password. For games to be joinable by others, players that wish to host a game will still need to open their ports and firewall by following the instructions in our server hosting guide. 

As of writing, the only way to join another player is by using the direct connect option. Our goal is to have co-op multiplayer sessions joinable from the server browser by the time the Campaign Update is in your hands. 

This is just the first step in our overhauled multiplayer experience. Our end goal is to integrate RUNE II fully with Epic’s and Steam’s online services so you have a seamless multiplayer experience.

WAKE ME WHEN YOU NEED ME

Our art team has been kicking ass on updating visuals for Chapter 1: Awakening. We’ve also added a ton more landmass to the world of Midgard to make it feel more like a real world, instead of just a series of islands. Check out the before and  after comparison images below!

WELCOME TO THE DUNGEON, WE’VE GOT FUN AND GAMES…

Deep below Midgard, mazes of subterranean levels hide treasures and artifacts of power… as well as an ancient evil. Requested by the community and inspired by classic RUNE levels, the dungeons will challenge the most hardened Viking warriors as they encounter a gauntlet of enemies, challenging platform sequences, and vile monster bosses. Beware what lies below!

There’s only 8 more sleeps between now and the Campaign Update. We’re excited to get the months of hard work into your hands and to see all the ways that you use our new skill tree to make combinations of builds that we’ve never thought of.

We’ll see you soon.

Mitch, out!

One last thing, before I forget. We’ve been streaming our internal development builds on the RUNE II Discord Server. If you’re reading this today (Sept 1, 2020) we’ll be streaming co-op later today. Come hang out and watch us get rekt by Ragnarok difficulty! If you’re reading this after today, howdy from the past! You should join our official RUNE II Discord regardless and say hello! Our development team is on there and loves interacting with the community.

Okay, Mitch out! (For real)

RUNE II July 2020 Monthly Update

Originally posted at https://www.rune2.com/july20update/

07 / 31 / 20

This last month on RUNE II, we opened the gates and showed you what we’ve been working on.

$ave Dat Money (feat. Fetty Wap and Rich Homie Quan)

Buy your copy of RUNE II here: http://rune2.com/buy 

RUNE II is back on sale for up to 50% off and discounted even further when you use your Epic Coupon on us! As part of the Epic Summer Sale we have raised all Support-A-Creator payouts, so make sure you use your favorite creator code at checkout. Don’t know what creator code to use? Here are some of our favorites: 

• SKINNEDTEEN

• SKETCH

• RETROKRYSTAL

• MEJASH

• MAVADOSEY

• LIGHTITUPDAN

• FUZZYFREAKS

• FGSQUARED

• EXELLION

The Epic Summer Sale ends on August 6 at 11:00am Eastern, so be sure to make your purchase before then! 

Smash That Sub Button

As we continue to update RUNE II, we are partnering with a number of streamers. Be sure to follow the RUNE II Twitch directory and watch RUNE II streamers for a chance to win a free copy of RUNE II!

Destroy Rebuild Until God Shows

It’s no easy task to take a bunch of buildings that were never meant to be destroyed and convert them into structures that players can break apart. To tell us about the process, I chatted with our Environment and Destruction Artist, Scotty Lopez:

Thanks for talking with us, Scott! You can find more of Scott and his work on his Artstation, Twitter, and Twitch. 

PTR: Periodic Teleporting Ripostes

Our revised tutorial and Chapter 1: Age of Awakening are now live on the RUNE II Public Test Realm. We’ve already received some really good feedback from our community members and external partners on our latest update. As you read this (unless you’re from the future), we’re hard at work on Chapters 2, 3, and 4 of the RUNE II narrative update. Read on to see what we’ve been working on for the last month!

The RUNE II PTR is available to all customers of RUNE II. You can learn more about how to download the RUNE II PTR in this post.

What comes next?

Chapter 1 was only the first part of our Narrative update. Here’s what you can look forward to in a future update:

PTR Patch note previews:

• Added a CHAPTER SELECTION to the main menu for testing purposes.

  • This will be removed in the cumulative patch from PTR to Live

• Added Chapter 2: Age of Fire

• Removed the day / night cycle and artifact collecting UI from the player HUD

• Streamlined all player notifications in the UI.

Market-ing

Midgard now has a marketplace!

We’ve hidden some secrets around the marketplace. If you’re the first one to find them, tweet us @PlayRune with screenshots of all 14 of them. We’ll reward the first person that finds all of them!

New Enemies and Critters

Our art team has been hard at work adding new enemies and critters to make the world of RUNE II feel alive and varied. This is a first look at our new werewolves, bears, goblins and spiders (oh my!). 

Werewolves

Bears

Goblins

Spiders

It’s Unreal

We’ve upgraded under the hood from Unreal Engine 4.22 >> Unreal Engine 4.25. As part of this upgrade, our team is now able to access…

• Chaos destruction system

• Niagara particle system

• Brand new UE4.25 audio system

• Virtual texturing

• Screen space global illumination

• Major landscape system improvements

• New sky system

• Networking optimizations

• Major workflow improvements

• Ready for Unreal Engine 5

You can read more about Unreal Engine 4.25 on their website here: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/unreal-engine-4-25-released

Look for all of these updates and more throughout the world of Midgard in a future update to RUNE II.

Jeremy Bearimy

Somehow it’s August already? Seems like last week we were entering the first letter of Jason Derulo. RUNE II is on sale again, our next PTR update is on the horizon, and our resident Destruction Artist showed us how he likes to explode buildings in RUNE II. 

That’s a wrap on this month. We’ll see you soon.

Mitch, out!

Oh, one more thing…

Anyone know what this is?

RUNE II June 2020 Monthly Update

Originally posted at https://www.rune2.com/june20update/

07 / 01 / 20

This last month on RUNE II, we’ve been hard at work on bringing a new narrative experience to RUNE II’s campaign. It’s one thing for us to tell you about it, but I’d rather tell you when you can play for yourself.

Coming Soon to a PTR Near You

The revised tutorial for RUNE II and Chapter 1 of our narrative update will be landing on the RUNE II Public Test Realm later this week. The PTR is available to all customers of RUNE II. You can learn more about how to download the RUNE II PTR in this post. As with previous PTR updates, we are looking for detailed feedback to ensure that we are on the right track. 

Any feedback that starts with “I had / did not have fun with Chapter 1 of the narrative update because __________” or “I feel that the tutorial doesn’t do a good enough job to teach ________, and this is why I feel that way: _________” is immensely helpful to us. For example “I feel that the tutorial changes are good, because it taught me that I could craft runes at a Rune Forge. The best place to give us feedback is on our official forums in the PTR Discussion Section or on our official Discord.

We ask that you make an effort as you’re playing to distinguish between needed fixes and tweaks vs core concepts that just aren’t working correctly.

At this time, the only Age that has been updated is Chapter 1: Age of Awakening. We are hard at work on the remaining chapters and we expect them to be available on the PTR in the future.

Order Up!

As we’re expecting our latest update to hit the PTR later this week, I thought it would be cool to give y’all some patch note previews. In no particular order…

• Added Chapter 1: Age of Awakening of the overhauled story to RUNE II.

• Each Age will have a different boss to fight within the VP (for now they are all still Loki).

• Removed Agefall quest in Chapter 1: Age of Awakening.

• All buildings have been overhauled and can now be destroyed!

• Added new Heimdall village with additional villagers.

• All “toast” and “feedback” events now use the same UI widget popup system as item pickups

• Dying in the Loki encounter will now send you back to the previous age.

• Fast travelling to another Bifrost Gate now costs 1 Teleport Rune.

• Added Bifrost Gate Attunement.

Tune your Bifrost Gate To Drop C

Let’s talk about that last one a bit more in depth. What the heck is “Bifrost Gate Attunement”?

We have removed the ability for players to choose which Bifrost Gate they spawned at upon dying from the death map in favor of an attunement system.

• If you are not attuned to a Bifrost Gate, you will spawn at the Chapter specific player start.

• Interacting with a gate that you’re not attuned to will “attune” you.

• “Attuned” gates show up highlighted in yellow on the map and become your active respawn point.

• When dying or relogging, you automatically respawn at attuned gate

• Fast travelling to a gate will not automatically attune you, you can choose to do so upon arrival.

• When losing a fight in the VP, you are specifically attuned and respawned at Heimdall’s Tower Bifrost Gate.

• When winning a fight in VP and causing the Age of change successfully, your attuned gate is reset and you spawn at the next Chapter-Specific player starts

We think this new system is a lot more fun while rewarding good play and exploration. Give it a try and tell us what you think!

The Keys To The Universe

You might have seen some articles floating around or heard some rumblings on the internet. Our development team has a new name, Studio 369. We’re the same development team that you’ve come to know and appreciate that has been handling Rune II since January. We formed Studio 369 to put a face to the team, support the game, and keep delivering.

You can read more about Studio 369 here:

• https://gamedaily.biz/article/1773/studio-369-picks-up-the-rune-ii-torch

• https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-06-15-studio-369-formed-out-of-rune-2-launch-disaster

20/20 Vision

Although we’re looking to the future, it’s important for us to reflect back on the past. To tell you about the original vision for RUNE II (known as RUNE: Ragnarok in 2017), I’d like to introduce you to a man of many titles and important words. He is the President of Studio 369 as well as one of the Managing Partners for ESDF and Ragnarok Game LLC, Matt Candler. This is his original and unedited statement about how RUNE II came to be:

here’s how Rune: Ragnarok got started. HH’s agent, Rob Edgar was aware that ESDF was looking to produce and finance games. Rob and HH approached me and said they wanted to work with me again, we’d worked on another project and we felt the partnership would be strong. We discussed what kind of game to make, it was jointly decided to make an open world RPG and be the ‘spiritual successor’ to Rune 1 – but at this time there wasn’t consideration into a ‘Rune 1 Remaster’. HH had the agency to determine the game design, scope and feature set – ESDF’s job (my job) was to evaluate that design and perform a market evaluation and financial model – basically to justify the business. An Open World Action RPG built in Unreal by an experienced and proven Developer should be a pretty good business with minimized risk – that was our thought process at the time. IIRC we didn’t even have a discord channel yet, and the comms with the Rune 1 fans were pretty minimal. We understand the importance of the OG Rune has and we’re working within our means and rights to find a solution. We appreciate all the comments and feedback, we are committed to delivering a good gameplay that is fun and satisfying. thank you for your help and support.

We’re very close to the first public release of Chapter 1 and I’m very excited about it. We finally get to show you what we’ve been working on. It’s been incredible to watch this new update come together from initial conception to final public implementation. On behalf of all of us, we hope you enjoy Chapter 1: Age of Awakening. We’ll be listening louder than ever before. Talk to you soon. 

Mitch, out!

RUNE II May 2020 Monthly Update

Originally posted at https://www.rune2.com/may20update/

This past month on RUNE II, we moved the needle. 

As we mentioned in our Summer Roadmap and April 2020 Update, the noodle baking continues. Today I want to tell you more about our plans for a new tutorial, announce our RTX 2060 Giveaway winners, talk about our upcoming update schedule, and more!

Epic Mega Sale

I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you that RUNE II is on sale for up to 50% off and discounted even further when you use your Epic Coupon on us! The Epic Mega Sale ends on June 11 at 11:00am Eastern. As part of the Epic Mega Sale we have raised all Support-A-Creator payouts, so make sure you use your favorite creator code at checkout. Get your copy of RUNE II today! 

Baking The Noodles

As we were designing our new tutorial, we looked at a ton of feedback from the community and external partners. What they knew, what they didn’t know, and what they wished they were taught in the tutorial. Throughout the last few months we have seen an explosion of players that need a bit more explanation than is currently provided. 

The current tutorial in single player is great once you can combine all the concepts that you’ve learned together, but right now it feels like being thrown to the deep end without knowing how to swim. Our plan is to keep what’s there as a part two, and create a PART ONE that teaches everything you need to know. Playing this tutorial is highly suggested on first launch. If you’re a good player and know what you’re doing, you should speed through it in under 30 minutes.

All About That Bass

One of the most fun things about being the Lead Community Manager is getting to assist with all aspects of production. Some days that involves designing marketing plans, writing the monthly update, creating patch notes, digesting actionable feedback, assisting our server hosting partners, working with our web team, asking our artists if we can publicly use their cool stuff, or recording temporary voiceover so our designers can get the pacing of in-game events dialed in. 

Making games is a significant investment in time, talent, and financials. We’re a small but mighty indie studio, so we’re always trying to make the most of what we have, especially when it comes to working with voiceover artists. It’s better for us if we only ask them to read one take as opposed to several.

Here’s an example of just that where I’m reading (temporarily) as Heimdall. Worry not, we’ll have our amazing voice over talent record these lines as part of the next major update.

Be gentle. 

Whether it’s temp Voice Over or raw professional VO, our audio designer will take those files and then: 

• Bring the files into Pro Tools

• EQ and compress the files so they give proper normalized levels

• Add environmental reverb (if needed)

• Break the recorded files files up into individual lines

• Export those individual lines out of Pro Tools

• Bring those exported individual lines into Unreal Engine 4

• Hooking them up into the correct audio tables.

• Our designers can start calling those voice lines to play at specific scripted events (or vice versa)

This process repeats for every character and every line that plays.

RTX 2060 Giveaway Results

To celebrate The Lazarus Update, we launched a month-long giveaway with our friends at Vast.gg to give away an RTX 2060 and RUNE II God Slayer game keys. Over 10,000 people entered, but only 5 can win. Today, we’re announcing the winners.

RTX 2060 and 4x RUNE II God Slayer Game Key Winner: https://twitter.com/Houdinator 

RUNE II God Slayer Game Key Winner: https://twitter.com/HiddenNinjaX 

RUNE II God Slayer Game Key Winner: https://twitter.com/aellessi 

RUNE II God Slayer Game Key Winner: https://twitter.com/cpgraham5 

RUNE II God Slayer Game Key Winner: https://twitter.com/ZuBei_ 

All winners will be contacted by email with their game keys.

Thank you to everyone who entered! Should we do another giveaway after our Summer Roadmap is completed? Let us know on our usual social channels: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Discord, Twitch, YouTube.

Website Updates

If you’ve visited our homepage in the last week, you might have noticed our web team has released some important updates to coincide with our vision that RUNE II is an evolving game. Thanks to our partners at Xsolla, we are able to sell RUNE II more like a traditional e-commerce product. We’ve given a larger spotlight to our Updates section and added a newsletter sign up form.

Make sure you sign up for our email newsletter, as we plan on doing exclusive newsletter-only promotions in the future.

Subscribe to our newsletter!

* indicates required

Email Address *

First Name

Last Name

Upcoming Updates Schedule

For the last month and a half, we’ve been in a reactive mode. In mid-April we pushed out update 1.0.919, on May 1 we pushed out The Lazarus Update and update 1.1.14177, a week later we dropped update 1.1.14285, a few days after we dispatched update 1.1.14394, two weeks later we released update 1.1.14691. 

Two days ago, we shipped RUNE II Update 1.1.14731. This update fixes an issue causing main and side quest data to be reset after every time you go to the Vigrid Plain, as well as containing performance optimization improvements.

Today, we’re shifting gears. While we’ll still continue to monitor feedback to the retail version of RUNE II, our focus is shifting from reactive to proactive. We are continuing to work on additional quests, narrative content, boss fights, and more as part of our Summer Roadmap. We will be a little quieter while we’re all heads down, making the next major update to RUNE II as amazing as it can be.

Keep an eye on the RUNE II PTR. When it’s time, you’ll find the first part of our next major update there. In the meantime, we invite you to speculate what role the below screenshots might play in a future update. 

We’ll see you next month. Mitch, out!

RUNE II April 2020 Monthly Update + Summer Roadmap

Originally posted at https://www.rune2.com/summer-roadmap/

This past month on RUNE II, the world saw us come back to life. This past month in the world, time lost all meaning. In these strange and weird times, I hope you’re staying safe and healthy.

First of all, thank you for playing and giving us feedback on the RUNE II Lazarus Update. We’re very pleased with how it’s been received so far. In response to community feedback, we’ve released two patches to address the top critical issues. You can see the patch notes for those updates here and here. 

Today, we want to check off the Spring Roadmap and provide our Summer Roadmap. We are planning on baking some noodles….

Core Loop and Content

We are continuing to discuss internally the best way to improve RUNE II’s overarching story and Critical Path. Here is what we are working on:

• More quests and narrative content.

• Updated story and dialogue.

• Artifacts as quest rewards.

• Hide, and eventually remove, The Ragnarok Timer.

• Non-repeatable Ages of Ragnarok

We have big plans here. Stay tuned.

Loki

We have 3 specific points we are focused on: 

1. No one enjoys being kicked out of the Vigrid Plane when your lives are gone in CO-OP, even if there are more players still alive fighting Loki.

2. The first time you drop Loki’s shield and he teleports away, it’s cool. After that, it is frustrating. Leading to…

3. We’ve heard your feedback that you don’t like fighting Loki 8 or more times before being able to beat the game.

Look for all of these to change in a future update.

New Tutorial

We’re making lasagna! We’re going to implement a new Tutorial to support all of the new features we have layered onto RUNE II since launch. As we develop for additional platform support, we feel it’s important that every first time user experience with RUNE II is positive.

Combat

After months of iteration, we feel that Combat for RUNE II is in a MUCH better place. A few highlights of the updates:

• New Animations, and cleaned up animations

• Weapon model adjustments

• Stats and Numbers Tweaks

• Block and Parrying adjustments to enemies

• You can read the full list of combat changes as part of our Lazarus update.

We’re continuing to work and tune Combat. Feeling is only half the battle, combat needs to look good too. We’re working to update combat animations to look more natural and give you finer control of your character.

User Interface and User Experience

We have made a lot of UI and UX improvements, such as:

• Exposing more stats.

• Adding a visual representation of your character.

• Moving the building widget

• Increasing visual clarity on health and stamina bars

We are evaluating internal and community feedback on what other changes we can make to improve RUNE II’s user interface and experience. THIS IS SUPER IMPORTANT TO US!

Ages of Ragnarok

We tuned the Age of Night, Age of Frost, and Age of Fire to have a ton more visual and gameplay polish. The below GIF doesn’t do it justice. Hop in game and experience the updated Ages of Ragnarok for yourself!

We will continue to tune the Ages of Ragnarok in future updates.

Bug Fixing, Optimization, and Quality of Life Updates

I’ll just copy/paste from what we said previously, as it remains true:

We’re constantly working on fixing bugs and optimizing RUNE II. We want as many people as possible to be able to run RUNE II on PC and not have to worry as much about system specs. This will be an always-ongoing effort. Similarly, Quality of Life updates are always at the forefront of our minds. When you interact with these systems on a minute-by-minute basis, all the little tweaks and improvements add up to make the experience that much better. 

Here are just a few of the improvements we have made over the past few months:

• Dramatically optimized engine, graphics, and audio for better performance.

• Fixed several fatal error crash issues.

• Updated support for ultrawide monitors.

• Split roll dodge (space + ASD) and hop dodge (Double tap WASD)

• Added the ability for players to pick up all materials, consumables, and ammo in the area around them by holding E for 1 second.

And more!

It’s been a very interesting 6 months since we launched RUNE II:

• We’ve put out (and now updated) a roadmap.

• We launched a Public Test Realm where we could deploy updates and iterate rapidly on feedback.

• We shared a long development FAQ showcasing our vision for the future of RUNE II.

• We shipped the Lazarus Update covering 4+ months of work, 15 pages of patch notes and all.

• We issued two more updates in response to community feedback and high priority issues.

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: We’ve got a long way to go, and a short time to get there.

I want to take a moment to address the OG RUNE Classic community. We’ve heard you, RUNE Classic community. You want a remastered RUNE Classic and an Arena mode. We do not own the RUNE Classic IP, and we will refrain from any statements about the RUNE Classic IP owners. However, we are planning to deliver continued updates to Rune II that we believe you will enjoy.

We are always listening to feedback and using it to help us inform our decision making. If you have Tweeted at us, left a Facebook or Instagram comment, made a Forum post, chatted in our Discord, or talked with us about RUNE II at any point, I want to personally thank you for helping us to make the best version of our vision for RUNE II. 

On behalf of everyone on the team, thank you for playing our indie game, RUNE II. We can’t wait to show you what comes next. See you next month.

As part of the Epic Mega Sale, RUNE II is on sale for up to 50% off. Get your copy here!

RUNE II March 2020 Monthly Update

Originally posted at https://www.rune2.com/mar20update/

This past month on RUNE II, we headed East Bound and Down. March was a big month for us for RUNE II’s development. Let’s get to it.

PTR Updates

Last Friday, the RUNE II Public Test Realm received a major update:

• Villages and Friendly AI Villagers

• Major loot and stats changes

• Co-op gameplay enemy scaling, and more

If you’d like to see the changes instead of reading about them below, hop into the PTR and start playing now!

Full 1.0.643 Patch Notes are available here. 

The RUNE II PTR is available to all players of RUNE II. Find instructions on how to download the PTR on this page.

Villages and Villagers

It was foretold that once Loki attacked Midgard, villages and villagers would never come back to reclaim their lands. Well, we’re gonna do what they say can’t be done. In the Southeast Corner of Austri Midheim, you’ll find a bunch of new building plots including:

• Forge

• Longhouse

• Meadery

• Neer tent

• and more to come…

As you start rebuilding this destroyed village, more and more villagers will come back to Midgard in search of a community to rally around. They may need some help fighting off Loki’s horde…

At the moment, all buildings are set up to only take 5 wood to construct and build instantly so they can be seen easily for testing purposes. Expect these values to change and increase in future builds. 

In the future, building a full village will grant you bonuses. Here’s where we need your help:

 What kind of bonuses do you want to receive from a full village?

• Automatic resource collection?

• 20 mead waiting for pickup?

• Gold ore easier to craft?

Tell us on our forums, and you might just see your ideal bonus in game at a later date.

Loot Updates

Previously all weapons and armor could be equipped at all levels, and progression was dependent on when you found new gear. Usually you would start finding really good gear after the 4th or 5th age. This didn’t make loot very fun, so we’ve re-designed how Loot works in RUNE II.

First off, loot drops directly into the world from all chests and enemies ala Loot Pinata! 

Secondly, weapons and armor may have Level Requirements.

Thirdly, All item material types now have a level that they start and stop dropping at.

• At levels 1-5, Wooden, Leather, and Rusty gear will drop. Stops dropping after level 10.

• At levels 3-10, Copper and Bronze gear will begin to drop. Stops dropping after level 15.

• At levels 11-15, Steel gear will begin to drop. Stops dropping at level 30

• At levels 16-20, Gold gear will begin to drop. Stops dropping at level 40

• At levels 21-25, Obsidian gear will begin to drop.

• At levels Level 26-30, Blessed gear will begin to drop.

• At levels Level 31+, Realm gear will begin to drop

Although we’re still working on these values, we’ve gotten great community feedback that this is absolutely the right direction. 

Not able to find the item you want? You can always craft your own version and take a chance on the random mods that come with it. 

To craft an item, you’ll need to have used the recipe stick to learn the recipe and bring the required materials to an anvil inside a longhouse or village. 

With thousands of possible combinations, the perfect weapon is a drop or craft away!

Stacks on stacks of stats

We’ve added base stat categories for strength, dexterity, wisdom, and constitution

• Strength: Increases attack damage

• Dexterity: Increases speed and critical chance

• Wisdom: Increases defense and god power

• Constitution: Increases health and stamina

When you create a character, you’ll receive a pool of starting skill points to assign. 

REMEMBER TO ALLOCATE YOUR POINTS WHEN STARTING A NEW GAME!

As you level up, you will also get one skill point to assign. As you skill up, you’ll affect all derivative stats in that category. Currently all base stat categories cap out at 20. While we think that 20 is a good place for right now, we may increase or decrease that number in the future. 

We’ve also exposed more stats in the User Interface. Newly uncovered stats include: 

• Attack damage

• Critical hit damage

• Critical hit chance

• Attack speed

• Falling damage reduction

• Stamina recovery rate

• And more!

Inventory Updates

When you open the inventory screen for the first time, you’ll see a brand new section on the right side of the screen. We’ve added a basic player “paper doll”, which lives in the same location as the crafting menu with an option to toggle back and forth in the top right.

Other UI Improvements:

• We’ve updated the inventory UI to make rarity colors stand out more

• The UI is updated for rarity highlights in the gear slot’s tooltip for modded items

• We added a red visual lockout filter when the Level Requirement has not been met

• The crafting menu now shows the level and skill requirements on an item prior to crafting

We’ll continue to update your inventory to make the user experience the best it can be. 

Ages of Ragnarok Updates

Loki’s Ages of Ragnarok grow more extreme… 

In the Age of Fire, we’ve added 300% more fire just southwest of Heimdall’s tower at the Midheim Forest Gate. 

In the Age of Frost, the oceans have frozen over and become an ice sheet for the players and their enemies to walk on.

Artifact and Progression Changes

Last month, we talked about how we were looking at changing the core loops and rebalancing the world to have a level range that enemies will spawn at. As we’ve been playtesting internally, one of the issues that kept coming up was the order and randomized locations that Artifacts would spawn at. Through meticulous planning and a healthy amount of spreadsheet usage, we’ve set all Artifacts to only spawn in a specific location, only in a certain order, and only in a certain age. With this one change, we’ve resolved the major progression issues that came up when you were level 5 and the artifact you had to retrieve was in a level 30 zone. 

As we work on player progression and RUNE II’s core gameplay, we will continue to optimize the Artifact locations, spawn order, and age requirements. 

Main Game Update…when?

With all of these changes that we’ve made over the past month, we’ve talked a lot about when the best time to update the RUNE II live client. We don’t want to rush out an update that could have showstopping bugs, like the bug that we found and fixed preventing players from aligning to a god in Single Player. The RUNE II live client will receive an update after we have gone through a rigorous testing, bug fixing, and polish phase. 

Server Condensing

As part of our ongoing commitment to always provide the best online RUNE II experience, we will be condensing a number of official cooperative servers. The full details, including what will happen to save games, can be found here.

As a reminder, you can always host your own RUNE II server for free on your computer, or rent your own RUNE II server from one of our server hosting partners at G-portal, Nitrado, or Survival Servers. 

We’ve got a long way to go, and a short time to get there. Look for a lot more information coming from us about the future of RUNE II in April.

Remember what tomorrow’s date is. Stay vigilant. Don’t believe anything you see on the internet.

Mitch, out!

RUNE II February 2020 Monthly Update

Originally posted at https://www.rune2.com/feb20update/

Greetings, Vikings! In the last month working on RUNE II, we laid the foundation for what’s to come.  

February was a busy month for our small but mighty team. At the beginning of the month, we published the RUNE II Spring Roadmap. We’ve put a ton of time into revamping RUNE II’s combat, and we think it’s in a better place than before. Our high level goal with combat is to replace the mindless hack-and-slashing with more meaningful fighting. 

On Valentine’s Day, we put out the RUNE II Public Test Realm (PTR) for all current and new owners of RUNE II on the Epic Games Store. Our goal with the PTR is to make larger changes, gather feedback, iterate, and repeat until we feel that we’re in a good place to patch the retail version of RUNE II. Hop on and try the combat changes for yourself, then give us feedback on our forums and Discord!

Speaking of iterating, our artists have been doing a ton of iterating on the Ages of Ragnarok. These screenshots are taken from the same vantage point with different Ages and weather patterns turned on:

We’ll be tuning the art and feeling for the remaining Ages of Ragnarok (Awakening, Renewal, War and Chaos, Treachery, Fire) in the future. Stay tuned for updates!

This month, we’re talking about changes to the core loop of RUNE II. By core loop, we mean what you’re doing from minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour, and game session to game session. We want to address the repetitive grind that exists in the campaign: Look on your map, go to place, kill dude/walk in right spot, turn in artifact, repeat. 

We don’t think this is fun, so we’re going to change it. 

Another major area that we’re looking at is player progression.There is a lot of work that we want to address within the Damage Formulas, Enemy Scaling, and how the Open World Environment (OWE) system’s work. Our goal is to address the math ‘under the hood’ which will greatly improve the feel of the game. For example, here’s how damage is currently calculated:

• For each damage type (base, blunt, sharp, pierce, etc): (attack * attack) / (attack + defense).

In the current system, any defense with a small order of magnitude would trump the attack value. When we looked at our player progression data per each level, we found that defense capped out somewhere around the 100-130 point range around level 15, with no meaningful way to boost your defense stat. This leads to situations where players either feel entirely overpowered, or completely underpowered against enemies. Both situations are frustrating, which leads us to our new damage formula.

• New damage formula: attack / (1 + defense/100)

In this new formula, if your defense value is 100, you take half damage. If your defense value is 200, you take 1/3 damage, etc. In this new system, defense can scale endlessly but each point of defense is less valuable than before. Additionally, we are rebalancing all attack and defense values for all gear. At level 15, we now expect players to have around 100 attack and 100 defense, which leaves plenty of room for those values to grow as you obtain more powerful gear. We’re still tweaking these values as we play internally, all numbers are subject to change.

As we adjust player progression, we’ll also be adjusting how enemies scale to fight you. For instance, we now have the overworld set up where every island of Midgard has a level range that enemies and Open World Events (OWEs) will spawn at. With the exception of a few islands, expect the world to get harder as you get further from Heimdall’s tower in the center of the map.

Last but not least, we’ve been giving away full game and PTR keys to RUNE II on our Facebook, Twitter, Discord server, and right here on this blog. Make sure you’re following us so you don’t miss a surprise giveaway! 

– The RUNE II Development Team

RUNE II January 2020 Monthly Update

Originally posted at https://www.rune2.com/jan20update/

It’s hard to believe that January has already gone by. It seems just last week that we were all celebrating finally having 2020 vision. At the same time, January has felt like 90 days longer than usual. In this always online world that we live in, it’s really easy to constantly get caught up on what’s coming next. These monthly updates will serve as a chance for us to stop, take a breath, and reflect on everything RUNE II that our team has accomplished in the past month.

This month, we (Ragnarok Game LLC) restarted development on RUNE II and on January 15, update 1.0.73 was released. This brought improved localization text translations for Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Russian languages.

Yesterday, January 30, we released our first Quality of Life patch. We will continue to patch and improve Rune II. While meant to address top critical issues that we’ve seen, we also wanted to resolve as many pain points as possible. Specifically:

Two of the top pain points that we have seen from players trying to beat RUNE II’s campaign are that there’s no reason to fight Loki since he drops the same things every time, and that fire giants are too hard to find in Midgard. With yesterday’s patch, we have updated Loki’s loot pool from 4 items to 19 items, including Fire Giant Blood, Gold Ore, Allmetal, and more.

Our small team was able to accomplish more in January then we originally expected. We are carefully and methodically bringing on additional team members as we work to build our vision for what we want RUNE II to become. We want to make sure that this vision aligns with what the community and fans want RUNE II to become, as well.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/uZyLHM68kR09mP4MJV-Bm3fdc-Ws-3u6T7Hq1eKZbY807ljpIbenMNSj8UB7y3U7CbDptXdrUrmIlb8lUaYTcsaLJRFX_fRu90SSfo_ufcPHQ9WF9k8lcnrmx4VTv1n17cK2fIby

Earlier this month, we let the community decide what items we need to be working on in what order for our first Quality of Life patch to update RUNE II. We’re very pleased with how the RUNE II community helped us prioritize what items to work on first, and we will be continuing to use this method in the future.

In case you haven’t seen them yet, make sure you check out the full patch notes here: /topic/rune-ii-update-jan-30-2020/. Our small but mighty team is watching feedback closely, so please make your voice heard on how you feel about these changes on our social channels, forums, or official Discord!

As we head into February, we’re looking to resolve more pain points, address top community feedback, and talk further about the bright future that RUNE II has ahead of it.

Thank you for your continued support on RUNE II.

-The RUNE II Dev Team