The Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen producer's letter for July reveals that the team at Visual Realms received an additional funding round from private Investments, and includes details on the updated roadmap to alpha, and a deep dive into what death (and its potential penalties) means.
Since Pantheon was built on crowdfunding, they received most of their initial rounds from the community. There’s even a new, limited-time pledge package coming out next week that will include guaranteed pre-alpha testing.
Now, add $2.4 million dollars from private investment sources to the total that, when added to previous Series A funding, brings their investment total raised to $5.34 million. This is all on top of any crowdfunding money and community support. To mark this, instead of the usual monthly developer roundtable, the team will be doing a special stream on all that this new investment round means for development.
As far as the development roadmap, progress has been made on the network overhaul that is still necessary for continued progress on a number of other features. The team also announced that they've completed the initial implementation of their near-death and death penalty mechanics, though there is much more to add.
Speaking of death in Pantheon, there’s a new deep dive into death and the various choices you’ll have, as well as penalties and options in what is turning into a layered system. The idea is to make death something that you will think twice about risking, so there will be consequences and penalties, and choices.
The near death state is the first step. If you are reduced to 0 HP, you'll be prone on the ground and unable to do almost anything. You’ll lose nearly all threat and monsters may ignore you, and you will effectively bleed out over time if you do nothing or aren’t healed. Crawling is possible but it hastens your bleeding.
If you die, there are penalties. Like other games there will be corpse runs, but you will lose a portion of your experience earned when you die, even to the point of possibly losing levels. There are various layers and options that can affect how bad the penalty is and how compounding it may be. Or if there's a penalty at all.
For more on death in Pantheon, see the deep dive here.
