Avatar Update

Dear Rising Community,

Thanks for joining us! We’ve got a bevy of important details to share for the coming update!

First and foremost, on OCT 22, 2021, Vampires Dark Rising’s partnership with Gravatar will be coming to an end. From everyone on our team, we’d like to thank Gravatar for the fabulous tools they’ve provided us and the VDR community, and we wish everyone on the Gravatar team all the best in their future endeavors.

To account for this change in the game's dynamic, we’re excited to announce that high quality 2D player avatars will be introduced to the game as a new form of customization.

Avatar Shop
To start things off we’ll be introducing 800+ avatars to the Crypt, in the new Avatar Shop! These avatars will be purchasable with a new premium currency called Instinct Points [IP]. Avatar content will vary in artistic medium and content, with genres that plunge through fantasy, horror, necromagic, and more. Included in these genres are numerous characters of all gender and ethnicity, creatures, landscapes and other exciting miscellanea.

Your avatar collections are forever, so once you’ve obtained an avatar they'll always be available to you. Avatars can be changed at your whim and the amount you can collect is unlimited!

For more detailed information on Avatars, please see our new knowledge base article!

Visit our CSD Knowledge Base Article
Avatars: Customize Your Picture

Default Avatars
You’ll find some extras in your collection to start you off on this update. First, we’ve updated the default Bloodline avatars. You’ll find the default bloodline characters are all more vivid and display more crisply. Meanwhile, along with your initial avatar choice at game start you’ll now have access to both male and female avatars—as well as some new additions in other ethnicities.

Please note that you’ll only have access to default avatars based on your bloodline. That’s to say Muroni will only have Muroni defaults, etc.

Last, for those who don’t find the bloodline avatars suit you, we’ve also added a default VDR icon shared by everyone. You’ll find all of those in your gallery immediately after the update!

Instinct Points
A new premium currency called Instinct Points [IP] is coming with this update. Instinct Points will completely replace Sparring Points. Not to worry, your Free Spars will remain intact and any of your purchased spar points will be transferred into IP! As time goes on you’ll find that IP will be a useful currency for extending your gameplay in future features and more.

To make IP more useful for future features, we’ve converted the value to use larger numbers. As an example, what was once 10 Spar Points will now be equal to 100 IP. This will allow us more flexibility and specificity to item values in the future. 

Meanwhile, you’ll find a significant reduction in pricing when purchasing IP compared to spar points. Our lowest package was shaved right in half, but you’ll keep saving on every package thereafter, all the way up to $23.98* versus our original spar point prices!

*Please see a special note to our players on iOS devices in our changelog regarding minor pricing differences

**10/22/21 - Update Day Edit: Due to a technical issue, Instinct Points prices will display on all devices ingame using Apple pricing. Android users will see their correct pricing at checkout. We're sorry for this inconvenience and we'll be looking into a fix.

Sparring
Sparring is still slated for revisions, but for now you’ll find we’ve only converted the feature to use Instinct Points. We’ll have a fuller list of improvements for Sparring during a future feature launch!

Free Avatars
Please know that free-to-play is extremely important to us! Avatars as a crypt-only special is temporary. In a coming feature called Prowling, free avatars will take VDR by storm! With that feature we’ll be adding a massive amount of avatars for you to discover and collect. When this happens, you can expect the same quality and diversity as those you see in the Crypt.

Limited Time: Submit a Custom Avatar 
We understand that some may be disappointed by the loss of Gravatar ingame. To those who have grown accustomed to representing themselves through self-created art, we’d like to do all we can to help.

Between Nov 1 and Nov 5, 2021 we’ll be allowing a one-time only, single submission to the CSD of your own personal avatar for review. Once approved your submission will be added to your personal avatar collection to be used ingame. We do require some specifications to be met on your art, so please head over to our CSD article and read through to be in the know before you submit!

Visit our Dev Announcements Article
VDR Avatar Submission

Update Day
On Oct 22, 2021 VDR will be taken temporarily offline. When it returns, avatars will officially launch. Once you're back in, you'll see everyone in the game will display the same avatar image on their profile, with an additional (4) avatars immediately available via your Profile. These additional four default avatars will be delivered based on your bloodline.

Your Profile screen will now have a new button called “Gallery” where your avatar collection will be housed. Entering the Gallery will display your current avatar collection, where you can choose to apply any that you’ve acquired.

Additionally
You’ll also notice we’ve made many light visual improvements. The majority of these are minor increases to graphical fidelity and small fixes. Please note that these updates do not reflect our plans for the future VDR 2.0 visual overhaul, we just cleaned up some places that were grating at us. You can drop by our Changelog to see the specifics of our fidelity updates and more!

Visit our Updates Article
Changelog | Oct 22 | 2021

Thanks for your time, and we'll see you in the near future as we work towards bringing you more to make VDR all it can be!

— Kwaai Software
VDR Development Team