Our third Beta test for OrbusVR: Reborn begins this Friday at Noon US Central Time and lasts until Sunday evening. Here's a quick preview of additional new content and features you can look forward to testing!

Lich's Crypt

Our first Dungeon for Reborn, The Lich's Crypt, will be available for testing in this beta test. We're very excited to share this dungeon with you because we think it's a great reflection of how much Reborn has improved over the current game. This dungeon has been handcrafted especially to feel immersive and visually amazing in VR, and you'll find that there are several cool vantage points as you make your way down. Performance is also massively improved over our previous leveling dungeons. Finally, the design of the dungeon bosses reflects our new approach to combat, where we are focusing much more on providing challenging mechanics for the entire party to engage with; we're also heavily focusing on providing visual cues that should make it easier to communicate about what's happening in the fight and figure out what needs to be done to defeat it.

In addition to the new dungeon itself, the dungeon queue system will be enabled for this test, and you'll also find that there are new dungeon rewards. Now every time you complete a dungeon by killing both of the bosses, everyone in your party will receive a small reward cache (which includes a piece of loot!) No more dungeon runs where only a few people received a drop. Plus, you will receive a nice XP bonus and an additional reward cache for the first dungeon that you do each day using the dungeon queue system.

Additional Public Events and Zones

We've also expanded the new Public Events system with even more content for you to enjoy. Now you'll find a total of 7 public events spread throughout the world, plus two new zones to explore. Some of these events are similar in functionality to the ones from last test, but several of them feature totally new and interesting mechanics, such as a massive crossbow that someone will need to use on top of a fort!

And of course there's new dragon races, enemy groups, and more overworld content as well, so there will be plenty of new things to do on your adventures since the last test.

New Sky

Our sky has been re-worked, and now features some gorgeous sunrises, sunsets, and even a moon at night! In addition to that the weather (including clouds) should now function much more reliably, so you don't end up seeing rain on a perfectly sunny day. You'll also see new subtle enhancements like clouds that drift lazily through the sky and distance fog that better matches the color of the sky behind it to provide a more immersive look.

Selfie Bot

We previously teased this on Twitter, but we've added a Selfie Bot to the game. Just equip it to your toolbelt, then toss it in the air and it will snap a photo of you and your surroundings and save it as a screenshot to your disk. It's great for taking a quick group shot after a boss kill!

via Gfycat

Combat Log

For a while now we've received requests to better expose some of the behind the scenes data in the game. With this test we're introducing two new features. The first is a log which appears above your XP bar, and shows a record of all the notifications you've received (for example, when you gain XP or loot). That gives you a nice handy place to look if you were wondering how much XP that last monster kill was worth, or whether or not you actually received your post-dungeon reward.

In addition, we're introducing a combat.log file which will live on your disk drive and log damage dealt to nearby creatures. It's pretty basic right now, but it should be enough that tools can start to be built around the data for tracking information on damage and healing throughput.

Of course, in addition to all of this there's the new Paladin class available for testing, plus plenty of bug fixes, performance improvements, and more! Be sure to keep an eye on the blog for us to post the information on joining us for Beta 3 tomorrow, and we'll see you in-game on Friday.