What’s up Outlanders! Post-war Norway has been quite the ride over the last months. The announcement of Vigor going free-to-play at Gamescom has been the god send the game required. New outlanders have started to flow and populate the game. The games developers have been humbled by the number of players who have embraced Vigor.
There were already over 2.5 million players who tried Vigor since the start of Xbox Game Preview, which means over 1.3 million players jumped in within the first month after the full release. The numbers far exceeded Vigor’s creators’ expectations and, sincerely, they held their hands up and admitted they weren’t prepared enough for it. The dust has settled, and the team have regrouped and now plan to update the game more on a regular basis. Having biding their time to find and fix the most pressing issues (so called “ghost bullets” and impenetrable bushes, for example), as well as adding one big thing we were working on for a long time.
New Map
Brodalen Bridges. A new area for your encounters – a huge map with new approaches to verticality. If you considered Fjellkanten vertical, wait for the bridges on the new map. Still, keep in mind bridges aren’t the only thing about the new map. It’s a distinctive setting with rural areas for long-range firefights, combined with eerie woods and sparse houses providing some close quarters engagements. It’s the valley along the meandering river with waterfalls and hidden caverns. And indeed, it has a ton of places to gather precious loot and fight for the airdrop.
Loot Re-balance
Have I mentioned the loot? There’s more to loot than meets the eye. The team behind the game went through all the maps and made them more distinguishable in terms of which resources you are able to find in each location. Common sense dictates there’s more wires along the Viktorsen Station, or possibly more fertiliser on the fields of Brodalen Bridges, and that common sense should be reflected even more than before. Together with that, loot boosts are even more pronounced to clearly show the difference. As the boosters’ stack, the amount of loot spots, and items in each of them, increase even more than before.
Buried Cache
If you’d prefer to look for some hidden treasure while on the loot run, the new update has you covered. There’s a new event in all the maps – called Buried Cache. For this, you can find photos with clues around the map, and if you’re able to recognise and find the destination fast enough, a nice reward awaits you hidden underground. Keep in mind that while you may be the only one looking for the cache, other Outlanders could still be wandering the area. Stay alert and you’ll get a nice prize.
Weight Influence
You may have noticed that sprinting is rather easy in Vigor. No matter how much you carry, the Outlander is able to sprint easily. This is no longer true as the weight of your inventory reduces your available stamina. Thinking of outrunning others while taking the airdrop crate? Keep in mind that the crate is one of the heaviest items. And stamina isn’t the only thing affected by weight, as your footsteps will now be louder when you’re carrying a lot. On the other hand, the update has made some quality of life improvements – interacting with loot, Shelter improvements, and various other things like using doors and ladders should be more intuitive than ever before. You don’t need to bow down to collect things on the floor anymore and there should not be cases where you need to be at a specific angle.
Threat and Team Killer distinction
The team behind the game are always on the lookout for your feedback, checking your streams and videos on various channels. One of the pressing issues, and often exploited features, was becoming a Threat after killing your teammate. The new update provides answers for this in the form of a Team Killer status. It clearly shows others what cruel deeds someone has done and tracks the Outlander a lot more often compared to the Threat. Also, killing your teammates for challenges will no longer count, which should also help to severely limit this form of grieving.
A word from the games creator’s “We are still vigilant about team killings and observe our data on the subject on a daily basis. The same goes for any other feedback – we are really happy for all of the posts and comments and we plan to evaluate them even more often from now on”.
Game Updates
There are solid plans afoot for regular game updates. Providing something new to the game ideally on a weekly basis; mostly new customisation is the start of that plan in action. You can check the Featured Store every Wednesday for something new and the team behind the game would like to add more weapons along the way to provide more things you can aim for, And generally, while these minor updates should spice up the waiting, they aim to have a major update roughly every two months, the same as they did with Update 1.1: Bridges. Each of these major updates should provide a ton of tweaks and improvements accompanied with some bigger new feature.
Vigor is available now as a free-to-play title for Xbox One on the Microsoft Store, why not check it out if you haven’t done so already.