Vagrus - The Riven Realms News

[h3]Hey everyone,[/h3]

we have a new patch for Vagrus, which is incidentally the first to add sizable new content - namely, the faction leader NPCs and interactions for the Loaders' and Carpenters' Guilds, something that has been lacking compared to other factions. Each of them can give you a new quest to further get into their good graces (and get a little something-something for yourself in the process, of course). Below are the detailed patch notes.

Important Note: Considering the extent of the improvements, there is little to no chance that we broke nothing in the process. Assume that we did not want to make anyone's life harder. If you see something amiss, please flag it to us using the usual channels, like the inbuilt reporting tool (F1 button), forums, and our Discord server.

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[h2]Patch 1.0.20 - Codename: Guilder [/h2]

[h3]New/Updated Content :gift:[/h3]

• Carpenters' and Loaders' Guild bases of operation, their Faction Leaders, and a faction quest each were added
  

[h3]New and Tweaked Features :shiny:[/h3]

• Loyalty feedback: the game log and Event results now show what companions like and dislike (but deliberately do not expand on how much they like or dislike the choice)
  
• Dissonance mode difficulty was further lowered in several ways:
  - Simply trading Goods on the Market is now slightly more profitable
  - Faction Tasks now pay slightly more
  - Supplies now cost less in certain regions
  - The chance of running into Crew Combat encounters is now slightly lower
  - Working and defending crew requirements got a bit lower
  

[h3]User Interface Improvements :pencil:[/h3]

• New, unique Deputy art assets on the Deputy screen for each role
  
• Added "and" and "or" in event dependencies to clarify them
  
• "Not" dependency tooltips have been added
  
• Mercenary/Trade Task tooltip on Chart was added
  
• Faction descriptions were streamlined
  
• Chart default position added when opening for the first time
  
• Keyboard zoom on Chart was implemented
  
• Overlapping Markers now shuffle
  
• Added a new button in the Codex that opens the Chart for Point of Interest entries
  
• Vagrus creation text lengths altered to fit boxes
  
• Deputy tooltip now shows the available characters for that role
  
• Relevant Camp UI tooltips also show up on the Crew UI
  
• Leadership Perk tooltips now indicate the Resourcefulness cost of use Renown gained from reaching
  
• Faction standing thresholds are now indicated in the game log
  
• Cargo throw-out visual was polished
  
• Companions screen visual was polished
  
• Crew Details box visual was polished
  
• Deputy screen buttons were improved
  
• Campaign map radial menu buttons now react to hover and clicking
  
• Main menu options colors were adjusted
  
• Journal visual was polished
  
• Market Buy and Sell buttons were improved
  
• Camp UI's End Day button was improved
  
• Chart text outline was tweaked to be more legible
  

[h3]Bug Fixes :bug:[/h3]

• Incorrect Ward (defense) calculation in Crew Combat was fixed
  
• Beast Swap and Slave Sell buttons' tooltips are updated and indicate the real reason when inactive
  
• Various Proficiency-spending-related bugs have been fixed
  
• Chart text corrections
  
• In restricted settlements, hotkeys will not open Mansio/Market anymore
  
• Force Shield III now grants buff to Finndurath as it supposed to
  
• Perks going negative after Gear swap issue fixed
  
• The stickyUI stuck on the screen (pun intended) issue resolved
  
• Wind shaman icon asset resolution fixed
  
• Criminality feedbacks are now hidden everywhere as was always intended
  
• Fixed some broken Codex links in events
  
• Broken Crew Combat enemy and comitatus mini-flags fixed
  
• Avernum smelting yield was rebalanced
  
• Average price shows up on Goods tooltips in settlements on both the Market and Cargo sides
  
• Sell button tooltip fixed
  
• Grit calculation has been fixed
  

Known Issues:

• Companion Combat performance drops
  
• Escort Task-related anomalies
  
• Occasional disappearence of the slides from Equipment and Item lists
  

[h2]Coming Up Next[/h2]

• User Interface improvements and bug fixes
  
• New Comapnion Free-LC
  

As you can see above, next up is a whole new Companion, so expect news about him soon. Stay tuned and conquer the wasteland!

The Lost Pilgrims Team
https://store.steampowered.com/app/909660?utm_source=steam&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=website&utm_content=footer
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If you like Vagrus, please consider sharing our pages and posts with your friends through your favorite social media channel(s). It is much appreciated!

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Hey everyone,

we are happy to share that Vagrus has been included in the Big Adventure Event (#theBAE) on Steam organized by Hitcents. The event will be running between January 20 -24 with 100 demos and games.

As part of #theBAE and with our schedules finally lining up with our dear content creator friend, KormakrTv, we recorded a special Vagrus session for you all. While showing off the game, Kormakr have had a little chat with Sztaszov, Lost Pilgrims' co-founder and game designer on Vagrus - The Riven Realms. Check out the event if you missed the actual livestream!

The event will be on air here on Steam from 12:00am CST/7:00am CET, 22st of January.

We hope you will enjoy the show. Conquer the wasteland,

The Lost Pilgrims Team

https://store.steampowered.com/app/909660?utm_source=steam&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=website&utm_content=footer
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If you like Vagrus, please consider sharing our pages and posts with your friends through your favorite social media channel(s). It is much appreciated!

Fig | Website | Youtube | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Patreon | Discord

Hey everyone,

we are happy to share that Vagrus has been included in the Big Adventure Event (#theBAE) on Steam organized by Hitcents. The event will be running between January 20 -24 with 100 demos and games.

As part of #theBAE and with our schedules finally lining up with our dear content creator friend, KormakrTv, there will be a special Vagrus Let's Play on his twitch channel. While showing off the game, Kormakr will chat with Sztaszov, Lost Pilgrims' co-founder and game designer on Vagrus - The Riven Realms. It's a great opportunity to ask any questions during the stream, so come along and watch it if you can.

The event will be on air from 8:30am CST/3:30pm CET, 21st of January.

We're looking forward to talking about the game and our future plans as well. See you around,

The Lost Pilgrims Team

https://store.steampowered.com/app/909660?utm_source=steam&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=website&utm_content=footer
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you like Vagrus, please consider sharing our pages and posts with your friends through your favorite social media channel(s). It is much appreciated!

Fig | Website | Youtube | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Patreon | Discord

[h3]Hey everyone,[/h3]

we've had a final patch for this year in the works for a while now. This one also includes fixes and tweaks primarily before we move on to adding chunks of new stuff next year. Still, rounding these glitches out first was more important than rushing headlong into creating new stuff, so we hope you appreciate the work we put in this one.

We would hereby like to express our appreciation and gratitude to the awesome people who have been active on our social media platforms, sharing articles and links, voting on Vagrus in award shows, giving advice to people on our discord and other platforms, or helping us by reporting a lot of large and small things that could be tweaked or fixed in Vagrus. It would be difficult to list you. But you know who you are. :)

Now let's jump into the patch details:

Important Note: Considering the extent of the improvements, there is little to no chance that we broke nothing in the process. Assume that we did not want to make anyone's life harder. If you see something amiss, please flag it to us using the usual channels, like the inbuilt reporting tool (F1 button), forums, and our Discord server.

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[h2]Patch 1.0.17 - Codename: Bombus Magnificus[/h2]

[h3]Content Tweaks[/h3]

• House Venari faction rewards have been reworked
  
• Various faction reward tweaks (Only reclaimables, not Enduring Effects. The new rewards are claimable in addition and will not replace the old ones. We are uncharacteristically generous in this regard... but the Holidays are coming up, so enjoy!)
  
• Some Equipment and Gear stats were tweaked
  
• Explorer starter item changed to be more in line with other Callings
  
• You can get a second Heat Shielding Crystal in case you accidentally sell the first one (it might not be easy, however)
  
• Hollow Eyes are now silent in combat, as they should be
  
• Killing tax collectors will have more severe consequences: Bounty hunter attacks start on a slightly lower Imperial Criminality rate (as a warning) while on higher criminality, the legionaries try to apprehend you
  
• Small economy tweaks so that the rumors do not contradict actual market prices
  

[h3]User Interface Improvements :pencil:[/h3]

• Loyalty tooltip has been updated to indicate the order of Loyalty levels
  
• Authority and Resourcefulness tooltips have been updated to be more precise and informative
  
• Companion background texts and Faction descriptions were tweaked (fixed length and polished texts)
  
• Blessing of Unbinding description now refers to a more generic source of the effect
  

[h3]Event Fixes :shiny:[/h3]

• Several journal inconsistencies were fixed
  
• Choices leading to the wrong step in several Events were fixed
  
• A lot of Event text has been polished across the board
  
• Garrik is no longer recruitable twice (sorry)
  SPOILERS AHEAD
• The final showdown in Garrik's questline was tweaked not to spoil a surprise ahead of time by applying a certain buff too soon
• Eylani's loyalty adjustments in events have been revamped and some gift-related choices are now visible in her banter
• You can no longer ask about ingredients from Thadraz during Gor'Goro's questline when you've already delivered them
• Skornar's stealthy prison break now does not refer to fighting patrols if it was successful
• Eylani's personal quest progression related to Tectum Carvos was rewritten a bit not to refer to the town's current state so much (seeing that it could be vastly different depending on the time of doing her quest)
• Finndurarth-related story inconsistencies have been fixed in Salum
• Agoram now blesses the party with Unbinding in Finndurarth's last quest step (if you called him to the Conclave)
• The Source of Discord quest was tweaked so that you can complete the (optional) dream-catching step even if all the required sub-objectives are already completed (this makes it so that patient players are unlikely to miss this optional objective)
• The description of the forum of Tectum Carvos - as well as its initial description - now reflects the town's state better in relation to the major questline there
• The shamans are always back at Kotrar when you return the trial contingent
• A Terathion's Fall event softlock when there were no choices is now fixed
• There are now no rumors about Wyrms after their final defeat

[h3]Bug Fixes :bug:[/h3]

• Camp UI soft-lock related to the throw-out UI resolved
  
• AOE attack Skills now hit all intended targets
  
• Fixed the bug where Companions could occupy the same position
  
• Various Acrobatics-related positioning bugs have been fixed
  
• Jhakra Alpha's Roar accuracy has been nerfed further
  
• Morgarthan's strange glow should be gone now
  
• Victory screen texts were improved where they were a bit wonky
  

Known Issues:

• Combat performance
  
• Various Escort tasks related anomalies
  

[h2]Coming Up Next (in early 2022)[/h2]

• Faction leaders for the two criminal syndicates (with a faction quest each)
  
• A new companion as a Free-DLC
  
• Criminal system tweaking
  
• Continued bug fixes and tweaks
  
• UI improvements
  

Stay tuned and conquer the wasteland!
- The Lost Pilgrims Team

https://store.steampowered.com/app/909660?utm_source=steam&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=website&utm_content=footer


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If you like Vagrus, please consider sharing our pages and posts with your friends through your favorite social media channel(s). It is much appreciated!

Fig | Website | Youtube | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Patreon | Discord

Hey everyone,

this last month has been slow but we managed to push out new builds for both the main game and our demo last week, so that's a relief.
Throughout November, most of our team members were either on sick leave or vacation, while the rest of us were trying to finish tasks related to our physical Vagrus products or were busy formulating plans for the future of Lost Pilgrims. Bear with us though, as we are getting closer to realizing these plans. For now, let us look at what we are working on in more detail.

[h3]Producing Merchandise is Hard[/h3]

When you have a game full of content, you might think that it's easy to "pull together stuff" and produce merchandise from it but in reality, anything you want to use needs some rework to fit for that new purpose. Still, that was within our domain. What came as a bigger shock was how hard it was to find partners for the actual production. No one wants to deal with small order numbers or produce on the level of quality we aimed for. Just as an example, we tried four suppliers to produce our Emperor's Edition boxes but in the end, we ended up giving the job to a creator who makes them by hand because that was the only way that the final product would meet our expectations. But hey, at least now we can say they are truly "handcrafted".

With the little delays eating into our timeline and due to the game's rocky launch, we had to pause our merch production for October but once our hotfixes were rolled out, we got back to it and everything seems to be on track. So expect some new posts about the ready products soon.

Overall, it also means that we will only be able to start merchandise deliveries this month (December 2021).

[h2]Planning Our Future[/h2]

We promised to share our plans soon after launch, but to do that, we needed to make said plans first: assess options and decide where and how we would like to get to with the game and with our studio.

Video games, especially indie games, often earn half of their lifetime revenue in the first month of their release. From that perspective, the launch of Vagrus was satisfactory. Not bad but not particularly amazing either. We have enough runaway to continue but we also need to find and create additional revenue sources within a reasonable time to ensure our long-term financial stability, especially considering our debt payments in the future.

[h3]Continuing with Vagrus[/h3]
With Vagrus, being short on content- and improvement ideas has never been an issue. The challenge we face now is how to split our resources between improving the base game and creating new revenue sources like DLCs, ports, and so on.

We received tons of great insights from our players. That helps us in prioritizing our endless improvement-idea list. So we would definitely like to implement some of those sooner rather than later. The question is how far we can go with those before switching to porting and other endeavors. We are a tiny team, you see, with a single coder, so presently that is a bottleneck we have to account for.

[h3]Hedging long term[/h3]
The solution to the above conundrum would be to grow the team (aka: hire more people), so improvements and other development areas could run parallel. It's a risk but one we are leaning toward taking, hoping that our community will appreciate those efforts and supports us on the way.

Of course, hiring and onboarding new folks take time too, so if we do that, it will slow down things even more for a period of time. But then, afterwards, the new speed can be higher, so naturally, it's an investment into the future.

[h2]The Next Months and Beyond[/h2]

There is little left of 2021 but we do hope to get some work done and then build on that in early 2022.
So here's a vague outline of what to expect (subject to change of course, due to a number of unforeseeable reasons):



[h3]Plans for PC:[/h3]

• Continue with general bugfixes
  
• UI design improvements based on community feedback
  
• Smaller content bits (stories, NPCs, additional options, portraits, etc.)
  
• DLCs
  

As for the latter, we are currently considering three DLCs by the end of 2022 on top of smaller content additions:

• DLC1 (Free) - A new Companion [yes, a Supercargo ːsteamthumbsupː]
  
• DLC2 (unsure if Free or Paid) - Additional major storyline(s) within the currently available playable area
  
• DLC3 (Paid) - A new region with new stories

[h2]Opening New Revenue Sources[/h2]

The above-mentioned DLCs can be one new source we could count on (naturally, only the paid DLCs). Their creation requires a significant investment, though, so they are not exactly a surefire way to drum up money for the future. Thus, we are trying to come up with other avenues as well. For example, once the game is fairly stable, we will be looking into potentially releasing it on other, smaller platforms (like Humble, Epic, etc.). Their potential is tiny compared to Steam but maybe the effort is low enough to release on them and get access to a new audience.

[h3]Porting to handhelds[/h3]
While Nintendo Switch and iPads seem like two good candidates, there is a lot to be reworked on the UI to make it usable on their smaller screens, not to mention controller support, if we can solve it, otherwise, we will just need to stick to touch controls. Porting would certainly require a higher investment (time and effort) but one that looks promising enough to explore further as an option.
Update: - thanks Rusty Dragon for pointing out - we forgot to mention Steam Deck which comes into play here too, requiring all the UI re-work but not extra porting effort, hopefully.

[h3]Merchandise[/h3]
Having gone through the pain of creating our merchandise portfolio, it would be great to leverage that better and make it into a revenue-generating thing.

[h3]Reinvent our Patreon presence[/h3]
With the game released, we need to revisit our content pipe anyways, so it's also a great time to consider how we could offer other and better things on Patreon that would be appealing to more people to pitch in. We'd love to hear your input on what you think we could do, like offering Tiers that include physical merch rewards, perhaps? Would you see more, exclusive posts about the world of the Riven Realms or perhaps about the creation of the game? Let us know.

[h3]Partner up[/h3]
Perhaps there are mutually beneficial partnerships out there for indiedevs that could enable us to upscale our team. We are exploring this avenue too.

As always, thanks a lot for your continued support, it means a lot to us!

Stay tuned and conquer the wasteland!
- The Lost Pilgrims Team

https://store.steampowered.com/app/909660?utm_source=steam&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=website&utm_content=footer
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you like Vagrus, please consider sharing our pages and posts with your friends through your favorite social media channel(s). It is much appreciated!

Fig | Website | Youtube | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Patreon | Discord