It’s been nearly one year since our 1.0 release and in the four free major content updates since then, VAIL has grown and evolved so much that it’s almost unrecognizable.

And now, VAIL 1.5 is here with more ways to play VAIL than ever before. This update sees the release of two new game modes, a whole new FREE matchmaking playlist to allow free players to try VAIL Combat, and much more.

This update adds a new playlist, game mode, and 4 new maps that are available to all free players. These 4 maps, inspired by classic layouts, are designed for non-stop action that will help improve skill with a variety of weapons and overall reaction times. Play these levels and you’ll not only have fun, but become a better player in the process.

• TG-Arena is designed for long-range engagements with the MK418 or AK-12
• TG-Aimk equips all players with the MK23 with a few hard to reach alternatives
• TG-Dayoff is a CQB level where you spawn with no loadout, only weapon pickups
• TG-Commute is also weapon pickups only, designed for long-range engagements

This playlist is available as a limited time event to all free players to give you a small taste of what’s available in VAIL Combat. Simply open the tablet, hit PLAY and select the Training Grounds option to queue up for non-stop action.

Added to all 10 of our Team Deathmatch maps is a brand new game mode: Fiesta. In this mode, each player is equipped with a completely random loadout at each respawn. Each loadout consists of one weapon, one sight, and one tactical. And if you’re unlucky, you might just spawn with only your knife. It’s Team Deathmatch with a roll of the dice to decide your fate.

In addition to the four new Training Grounds levels, this update finally adds the long awaited Artifact variant of Cliffside. This map is still a work in progress on the visual side, but we decided it was time to finally release the map as-is, especially as the VRML gets ready to start VAIL’s season 3 tournament later this month. So go ahead and start practicing on this new Artifact map, and if you want to join VAIL Season 3, head over to vrmasterleague.com/VAIL to sign up.

With this update, we’ve changed all player character models to new optimized versions. Our original character models were made before we had plans to release the game on Quest, so we felt it was important to take the time to optimize these characters, which will significantly improve performance, especially when there’s lots of players on screen.

While remaking these characters to be more optimized, we decided to send them to the gym, and we’re pretty happy with the results of their training.

This is a still a work in progress and you may notice some small visual glitches and bugs with the characters that we’ll continue to address in future updates. Additionally, we had to recreate every single character cosmetic for these new models and since this was a tremendous amount of work, we weren’t able to get a new Prestige character set made in time for this update, but we’ll get it in for the next one.

• Weapon cosmetics now apply to almost all instances of finding or equipping weapons in the game. This includes picking up weapons spawned in the world and when playing Gun Game, ScoutzKnivez, One in the Chamber and the new Fiesta and Training Ground modes.
• Now that there’s four matchmaking playlists, clicking PLAY takes you to a new page where you can select which playlist you want to join.
• Added a “Go To Armory” button in the tablet in the PLAY tab.
• Added a lever for submitting ORE and a fire effect to the smelter in the Citadel.
• Optimizations for most shader effects in the game; this may slightly change how some of them look but we’ll be tuning them to get as close as possible to how they were if not better.
• Custom games will now show the current map, game mode, and password when the host goes to change it.
• Added a message warning players that undeposited ORE will be lost when they select EXIT CITADEL in the Tablet
• TDM now uses global voice chat instead of team-only voice chat

• Fixed various gameplay exploits and visual mistakes on a variety of maps
• Fixed thermite effect sometimes disappearing from underground locations
• Fixed Post Match Rewards showing weapons when the player is already max level with that weapon and other misc. bugs with it.
• Fixed players being able to complete all objectives of Citadel Onboarding by simply shooting the targets