Chronicles of Vaeltaja Update Preview

Post news Report RSS Chronicles of Vaeltaja's Next Update Will Bring Immersion and Optimizations

Hardcore Mode, Battle Weather, New Battle Backgrounds, Improved Torch & Lantern System, Lots of Optimization and More!

Posted by WitchgroveGames on Aug 8th, 2026

Chronicles of Vaeltaja's next update is a game changer in many ways: A new more challenging Hardcore Mode, lighter optimized mechanics, such as the Torch & Lantern system, battle weather, new battle backgrounds, starry night skies and more.

The game has no longer to relay on the cpu intensive parallel processes to create certain mechanics. Those parallel processes will be replaced by much lighter plugins, which avoid all the unnecessary per-frame work. This makes the game much lighter, though it still is heavier on cpu than gpu, but that's how the engine is designed to work.

These new optimizations allowed me to add proper dynamic shadows cast by light sources such as town torches and lanterns, and also player's torches and lanterns. There will be Options settings to disable them in case they add too much work on weaker cpus.

The new Torch and Lantern system was created with the new Hardcore Mode in mind, so the player's light sources will be affected by the Hardcore Mode too. For example, torches are affected by the rain, and lanterns will need oil or recharging.

Long and detailed announcement can be found behind the link below, and it has some news about Winter Wilds too.

Chronicles of Vaeltaja is currently 25% off on Steam.

Immersion and Optimization Update Announcement on Steam