Vagrus - The Riven Realms News

The Riven Realms, the setting of Vagrus, is a harsh, violent place. Up until now, many players have felt that their ventures are the primary targets of this cruelty but with Mercenary Tasks, you will have the opportunity to return the favor. This facet of gameplay has been in the works since we began developing Vagrus, and it not only adds a ton of variation and replayability but also goes a long way in softening up story content. Along with the branching story and trading, we consider mercenary work as one of the three pillars that hold up the game. Of course, we leave it to players which facet they want to concentrate on at times in each playthrough. Mercenary Tasks even allow for a completely combat-oriented gameplay, concentrating on forging a warband from your comitatus.

Mercenary Tasks are received from factions. Their orientation influences the ratio of Trade versus Mercenary Tasks with a given faction and also the type of mercenary contracts they hand out. Enemies in these missions can be almost any kind, from beasts to outlaws and Undead - even the mercenaries of other factions.


[h3]Eliminate[/h3]
The simplest, most common type. You have to reach a location indicated on your chart, find the right node, then defeat the enemies, sometimes once, other times in a series of Crew Combat encounters. Victory and crushing the enemy is all that matters.

[h3]Defend[/h3]
You have to reach a location and defend it against the enemy. An option to reinforce the location with fighters from your own crew is always present in this type. The cunning vagrus plans ahead and brings extra forces to be able to reinforce, of course, for weakening yourself before a battle might prove disastrous even though the number of warriors given thusly lowers the fight's difficulty somewhat.

After the decision of reinforcing or not, there is some waiting, since the enemy you have to defend against takes some time to arrive. This also makes planning ahead with supplies important. Just like with Eliminate, there can be a single enemy wave or several.

[h3]Conquer[/h3]
This type is a sort of a combination of Eliminate and Defend: first you reach the location, then defeat the enemies already present there, then organize the defense (you can reinforce it similarly to Defend), wait for the enemy to arrive and beat it back. Should you fail the first time, you can attempt to complete the Task again until the deadline is reached.

Alternatively, you can move on after defeating the enemies the first time and hope that the place defends itself. In this case, you must reinforce it with fighters, however.


[h3]More To Come[/h3]
As you can see, Mercenary Tasks mix things up in the best way possible and add a huge amount of variation. In Part II. we are going to discuss the rest of the types: Escort, Abduct, Rescue, and Capture. And who knows, in the long run, we might be able to add even more Mercenary Task types.


Mercenary Tasks are coming to Vagrus soon so stay tuned and let us know what you think once you give this new feature a spin.

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
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wanna see the full game released as early as possible with even more content? Please share our pages and posts with your friends through your favorite social media channel(s). Appreciate it!

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

There has been a number of Quality of Life changes to the game in the last couple of months and we wanted to collect them in one post.



[h3]Comitatus UI[/h3]
The comitatus UI on the top left over the campaign map is one of the most frequently used interfaces in the game and we wanted to add several stats to make it more informative. To save space, we changed text to icons and now it also displays Nutrition and Obedience, as well as Combat Strength and Defense for Crew Combat.

[h3]Traverse[/h3]
Another addition to the comitatus UI is the button to use the Traverse Leadership Perk - the last one missing from that category. Activating it converts 3 March Movement Points to regular Movement Points, which can be done every 3 days for 4 Resourcefulness.


[h3]Deployment Autofill[/h3]
When deploying your companions in Companion Combat, now you have the option to autofill the positions using the new button. The order in which they are deployed depends on their health (Wounded entities come later).


[h3]Formations[/h3]
Similar to Autofill, this improvement helps with Companion Combat deployment. You can save and load three different formations. Especially since you can enter Companion Combat from Crew Combat, players have come up with their preferred setups so using Formations, they can access them very easily.

[h3]Chart Node Cards[/h3]
These cards unify settlement and POI cards with quest and Task markers. Button mechanics are the same now and there is a significant visual tune-up, too. For settlements, Codex, Price History, and Mark buttons are available, while quest and Task markers have buttons opening the relevant Journal entry as well as Mark options.


[h3]Chart Markers[/h3]
These were improved to show how many nodes fall into the area designated by the marker. They are color-coded to be easier to differentiate even at a cursory glance. Better yet, preview versions of these same markers are available for Tasks and Passengers (if the destination is unknown for your character), so you can better calculate travel times and risks.

We hope you'll enjoy these changes - we have put a lot of work into them.

[h3]Also great news[/h3]
Vagrus has made it into the finalists in the Digital Dragons Indie Celebration competition!

Besides the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places awarded based on the votes of the jury, there is also a Community Vote you can participate in here. The list is in alphabetical order, so Vagrus is the last one. ;)



By the way, the voting for Untold Games Awards' community award is still on, so if you haven't, head over there, too, and have your voice heard.

Words can not express how much we appreciate your continued support. Stay tuned, stay safe, 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
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wanna see the full game released as early as possible with even more content? Please share our pages and posts with your friends through your favorite social media channel(s). Appreciate it!

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

In this short article we've collected the recent changes to the Event UI in a more detailed format. This is something that's been a long time coming and we believe that it improves the playing- and reading-experience considerably.



[h3]Choice Boxes[/h3]
There is a frame around each choice now, and the whole box thus created is clickable while also providing visual feedback when hovered over, too. These choice boxes help differentiate the various choices better and contain everything you need to make the choice.

[h3]Dependencies[/h3]
What you have and what you need to make choices are called dependencies (a fancier name for 'requirements' really) and from now on, these are much better differentiated. Each category has its own icon and detailed tooltips. Optional dependencies are now signified as such, and many hidden, story-related dependencies at least show up to inform players that they are lacking something for that choice.


[h3]Tooltips[/h3]
A great number of improvements were added to tooltips in Events, which mostly deals with the clean-up of dependency tooltips.

[h3]Buying and Selling[/h3]
Specialized shops or ad hoc deals are often encountered in Events. From now on, the choices that lead to buying or selling are better marked, with more information on the price (and its relation to prices elsewhere). You can also see the right icon for items, equipment, goods, and gear in these choice boxes.


[h3]Enhance[/h3]
Last but not least, we have implemented the 'Enhance' Leadership Perk, which can be used to raise your choices in Tests presented in some Event choices. This has been planned for a long time and we hope that it will lessen the impact of the somewhat more arbitrary Tests and give you a measure of agency.



The team has done a lot of awesome work on the Event UI and we hope you'll like these improvements when you get your hands on them in the next build! Until then, take care, 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
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wanna see the full game released as early as possible with even more content? Please share our pages and posts with your friends through your favorite social media channel(s). Appreciate it!

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

We are immensely honored, happy, and proud to share that Vagrus has been nominated for two awards in the upcoming Unfold Games Awards show. It feels like quite an achievement for a game still in Early Access, especially since over 400 high-quality games entered the contest. The nominees were selected by a panel of 20 judges comprised of top industry professionals. The two categories are:

- Audience Award - Vote for Vagrus
- Best Game Design Award

We cannot express how much these mean to the whole team, how their love for the game and dedication to turn it into something truly special got recognized in the form of these nominations.

The Audience Award is, of course, one that will be awarded on the votes by players so we would very much appreciate your show of support for Vagrus under the link here:



We are also grateful to You, our players, for having made it possible for Vagrus to get here. Your continued support, constructive criticism, and dedication to the game keep pushing us to deliver more and better.

Stay tuned, stay safe, 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
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wanna see the full game released as early as possible with even more content? Please share our pages and posts with your friends through your favorite social media channel(s). Appreciate it!

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

This time, we come to you with a double feature of sorts, combining two topics into a single devlog post: changing the types of the beasts of burden of a comitatus and the mechanics of Trade Offers.



[h3]Beast Types[/h3]

The vagrus's ability to change the type of beasts their comitatus uses has been planned to be added to the game from the beginning but it had to wait until recently for a couple of reasons. The first being that there were a number of other - more important - things to be added before and also because changing between only two types would have been a bit lackluster, but the third type was locked behind content that we got around to just lately (and is available since the addition of Larnak).

Of the three types of beasts, two are accessible in most settlements in-game. Mammals are slightly more common, which means that you can buy them in greater number in mansios, except in the deep deserts where reptiles are more common. Neither of these two types are better than the other in all respects. For example, reptile beasts of burden carry more cargo and move a tad faster but march less effectively and have a much larger consumption. Reptile mounts are slightly better at combat but less effective on long journeys than horses. Mammals are cheaper and so make it easier to scale up your comitatus but require more animal care, thus more work. The third type, insectioids, work as an upgrade in basically every aspect and cost a lot to obtain. This type is meant for high-end comitati in general.

Changing the beast type of your comitatus happens in the mansio and it changes both your beasts of burden as well as mounts to the selected type at once. From then on, you buy beasts and mounts for the new, active beast type, meaning you can never have mixed beast types in your comitatus.



[h3]Trade Offers[/h3]

Commerce in the Riven Realms is held in the iron grip of Trading Houses through official monopolies or the control of locations that produce valuable goods. A simple merchant who deals in smaller quantities of wares can not begin to imagine what profit these factions work with, especially compared to what the actual manufacturing or harvesting costs. Yet there are considerable expenses involved in these operations, too. If the hardships of travel over the accursed wastelands were not enough by themselves, factions regularly wage bloody wars for resources, mostly in the shadows but often openly as well out on the frontier - and these are astonishingly expensive.

In accordance with the above outline, we have always wanted players to only have access to large quantities of wares through factions. We had a lot of the feature in place, including UI elements, but we needed dynamic pricing to work before being able to add Trade Offers. Until it could be implemented properly, the temporary solution was to control stocks through the market of settlements, but it was less transparent in many ways - a lot of players neglected to check back to depleted or markets with a seemingly low goods density, believing that it will never change.

The concept of Trade Offers is not complicated: factions that have presence in a settlement post bulk offers for buyers and sellers alike. The content and quality of these offers depend on a variety of factors, including the faction's interest in and the supply-and-demand of the wares in question, the extent of their presence, as well as the player's unlocked Trade Offer tiers (from I. to III.).

Trade Offers can only be bought and sold in full stacks, and beside the normal price, vagri can get a better deal when spending faction reputation. Although factions do not sell their wares cheaper (except at higher standing with them on the source nodes of the goods), each unit of the offered stack costs the same, which is a great advantage over the dynamically changing market price even though it may seem that the initial couple of units cost less at the market than the offered ones. The result is that large scale trading is mostly viable through faction Trade Offers.

Apart from fitting the setting of the game, the point of this design is to keep smaller comitati more viable through normal market trading while to upkeep larger ones you would have to progress through factions. This is only true of course if the player wishes to delve into the trading aspect. Trade Tasks remain for those who mostly care about a fixed, certain profit without risking their coins.

We hope you will like these new additions - they certainly add new levels of depth and strategy when it comes to comitatus management.

The Lost Pilgrims Team

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

Wanna see the full game released as early as possible with even more content? Please share our pages and posts with your friends through your favorite social media channel(s). Appreciate it!

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