Developer Raez Games has announced a public playtest for their AI-powered Viking survival MMO, Vallarok, and anyone can sign up for it for a chance at gaining early access in order to help with the game’s early development.
How to Participate
Anyone can sign up for this test session by heading to the game’s official website and leaving your email address. This also means you’re signing up to their newsletter, and is how you’ll be notified you end up getting picked. No specific info on any features is available at the time of writing, but as this is referred to as a concept build, what you get to experience here could likely end up being far different from the full release. The first playtest took place last month and only 25 players with a minimum RTX 3060 and a Runa NFT were given access via a raffle. This new playtest doesn’t require an NFT and will probably accept a bigger number of playtesters, with the CEO of Raez Games teasing that “soon we want to give everyone the chance to play Vallarok!”
Runa NFT
If you’re a Runa NFT holder though, then you don’t need to sign up for anything, but will instead get guaranteed access to this playtest and probably future sessions as well. Runa NFTs are AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) that can be staked to earn VALOR, a kind of currency that is said to be important in the studio’s ecosystem. For every 25 VALOR you’re awarded 1 skill point that you can add to a skill tree not connected to the game itself. There are 3 skill groups to add points to, and completing a skill tree gives you a 5% boost to your daily VALOR earnings.
Aside from staking Runa NFTs, they will also have in-game utility as well too, as they not only provide holders with alpha, beta, and full game access, but also the ability to play and earn tokens that will determine your allocation of the game’s upcoming $VAL token. I’m assuming the Runa section in the official documentation is referring to VALOR here, for which they also state will help you earn an airdrop of $VAL tokens, so the more VALOR you have and the longer you hold, the better chance of claiming a bigger share. Holders need to have the NFT unlisted though to continue earning. At the time of writing, the floor price on OpenSea for a Runa NFT on the Ethereum network is 0.0178 $ETH (~$49).
A Runa NFT acts as your in-game AI-driven sci-fi companion that you can command with your voice and have it do various actions such as explore the environment ahead, tell you about important resources, and more. As you play alongside this AGI, the floating companion will react to the way you play, even responding to “in-game emotions” to add more storytelling depth. Runa can analyze your gameplay performances, so you can also use it to track your progress to help you form better combat tactics.
What Is Vallarok?
Vallarok is an upcoming open world survival crafting game set in a post-apocalyptic Viking MMO world. Tailor your character build to your playstyle as you make use of in-depth character customization and enjoy open world exploration in third-person view while gathering resources and crafting tools to survive the post-Ragnarok landscape inhabited by various mythological creatures. Go solo or join guilds and complete cooperative quests while forming alliances, building your home, and engaging in action-packed real-time dynamic combat with RPG elements in PvE and PvP battles.
The game has been listed on the Epic Games Store since June this year, so you can wishlist it there ahead of its Windows PC alpha launch planned for later this year. It doesn’t seem like this will be a free to play title though, as the documentation for Runa mentions “guaranteed access to the full game” as one of its in-game utilities. The official store page lists a demo alongside the main game, so perhaps there will be a way to experience some of the game for free. In the meantime, you can check out some of the gameplay through this trailer down below.
