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:

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!