Vagrus - The Riven Realms News

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Hirelings

Hirelings are a new kind of ally we have recently added to the game. They are in effect companions but can only be hired for a limited time - and for a steep price. They have no story of their own because they are only meant to represent nameless mercenaries, rounding out the abilities of your companions or making up for something you are missing in your comitatus. You always hire these henchmen from certain Factions.



Types and Use

There are two kinds of hirelings: non-combatants and combatants. The latter can take part in Crew- and Companion Combat encounters, and are quite capable in both, armed with their own Skills and Combat Traits. Non-combatant hirelings do not fight but provide their versatile skills to anyone who can pay them. They will be added in a later content update.

There are stronger variations of each hireling available to those vagri who can pay more.



Abilities and Limitations

Hirelings can not be leveled up, their Prowess is fixed. However, they start at a higher level, which makes them much more powerful than most starting companions. Several hirelings have Deputy Perks, which can make them useful when you want to obtain a character with a specific role. Hirelings' combat skills complement those of your own companions, with most of the mercenaries adept at crowd control, tanking, or support Skills.



Where to Get Them

House Venari is the sole purveyor of hirelings at the moment but you do not have to be on friendly terms with them, only neutral, to be able to make use of this service. Higher standing with the Faction will give you a significant discount on hirelings. If you are interested in these specialized mercenaries, seek out the Venari villa in the city of Larnak in-game!

The Lost Pilgrims Team

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Hey everyone,

2020 has been a challenging year for us at Lost Pilgrims as much as for anyone else but it also brought a number of things that we really appreciate.

One of these is a gingerbread Vagrus fan art. Yes, that's a thing! Besides the Krawag we also received orc marauders and three replicas of the pilgrim with the lamp from our logo. Those have not survived long enough to be part of the final photoshoot, though.


The First Open-World Region

But let's rewind for a bit - to the start of 2020, in fact. It was a year we entered with big hopes, albeit with a lot of uncertainty. In January, we were in a frantic push to share the first open-world region of the game with our Fig and Patreon Backers, finally revealing our true vision for the game. We were all very excited to hear what people thought about it.

On March 26, the time has come to taste the pudding as they say. It was yummy but the crust was a bit too hard: new players struggled with the strategic aspects of Vagrus. After a few weeks, we knew that the game was not ready for an Early Access release in May as we had originally planned. We needed to implement Trade tasks first, along with a number of improvements in other areas.

COVID Impact

Soon after publishing the open-world patch, our team opted to work from home-office. An interim measure, or so we thought at the time. It took some getting used to but eventually, we got the hang of it. The occasional scare that one of us got the virus was not helping our mental health, and we had a storm gathering on the financing side. The private investment round we planned for spring tanked as one by one our candidates pulled out due to the global pandemic. We had to pull our belt in a few notches while working hard to get ready for Early Access and start generating some income. In the end, we held a smaller round of investment the same week that we released the game into EA. It wasn't fun but it bridged the gap until our first revenue share payment.

Early Access on Steam

After some shuffling around due to the Steam Summer Festival and Summer Sale date changes, we set a course to release the game at the end of July. We knew we were developing a niche game with a lot of reading from the start, so we set our expectations accordingly. Compared to that estimate, our debut ended up being a huge success (while remained modest in the grand scheme of things, of course). Most importantly, it was enough to keep us going.

The amount of initial feedback quite frankly overwhelmed us. At a certain point, we were over two weeks behind with processing our bug reports and other forms of communications we received but gradually worked it down to an acceptable threshold.

From all that insight from players, we gleaned new truths on how we should prioritize the upcoming features and fixes. It quickly became apparent that crew combat needed some additional love first. The good news was that there were plenty of people enjoying the game even in its Alpha state, which gave us hope and strength to march forward.

A Growing Team and Game

We got to know Laci, who joined Lost Pilgrims as a programmer, back in February and kept in contact, with the turbulent times of COVID ever-delaying our target-date for joining forces. His commitment to safely hand over his previous project to his replacement was something we admired a lot and proved that we picked the right person to join our team.

We added new content and features one after the other. Most recently, the largest content drop to date opened up the Deven region with a lot of new things to do. Looking at Steam, one can find many players with 60-70 but some over 150 hours of playtime. It's hard to grasp for how long some folks might play Vagrus when all the content will be added and finalized.

At the end of summer, the team decided to make home-office permanent and we canceled our office rent. With the second wave of the pandemic hitting not very long after, it proved to be a wise decision.

Social Numbers

It's been a while since we shared our progress in numbers. The trends have been similar to previous years. Traditional social media platforms grew a little but not significantly while the number of our following on gaming portals has more than doubled - a clear sign that most people follow their gaming news where they play.

The good news is that since Vagrus's Early Access release on Steam and other platforms back in July 2020, the revenues coming from those places cover the cost of our small development team, which means we can safely continue working on the game, adding new features and content with each patch to the great satisfaction of our existing player-base who come back to play and see more of Vagrus.

Perhaps the most significant news of 2020 for our team was that from our Early Access revenues we could expand our crew and so Laci joined us later in the year. He has proven himself an excellent and fitting addition to our team and we have high hopes as to our reinforced ability to deliver a great game during the course of 2021.

We still have a lot to do, of course. First, to add all the regions we plan to include in the final release, then to build on that and develop mid- and end-game content that connects all the places like a web. On the game design and code sides, the biggest ticket will be implementing Mercenary tasks, a feature that is much more complex than the already existing Trading tasks. As it stands, Exploration tasks will likely be added in a post-release patch only but who knows. We have an incredibly long list of other improvements we plan to cover until the 1.0 version, ranging from visual enhancements through complete User Interface revamps to Quality of Life features requested by our players.

We very much look forward to this new year and we'll see what it brings.

Thank you all for everything and cheers,

The Lost Pilgrims Team

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Hey Folks,

so we uh... broke a few things again. Early Access for the win! 😅

If you see something amiss, please flag it to us using the usual channels, like the inbuild reporting tool (F1 button), forums, and our Discord server.

Now let's jump into the details:

[h2]Patch 0,5.27..M - Codename: Luminous - Hotfix![/h2]

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

• Crashes connected to Ashlander and Sand Wyrm variation character resolved
  
• Companion Combat Formations crash if the saved companion is no longer with the comitatus resolved
  
• Formation exploit allowing the deployment of companions not picked during hero select removed
  
• Formation exploit allowing more companions to be deployed than the max limit removed
  
• Gear and Status effects now added even if the companion does not have the given perk [They still do not count toward Combat Trait requirements]
  
• Companions showing as Wounded even on max health fixed (you need to camp one night for the code to recognize the actual health status)
  
• Event scripts related to the Oquo questline in Larnak corrected
  
• Larnak Hive quest line fixed
  
• The rare bug where Nedir could not be fitted out with any Gear resolved
  
• Nedir's Famulus is now always (re)summoned on full health
  
• Larnak is now by default visible on the chart just like the other major cities
  

Known Issues

• Formations are still not perfect. We will improve the logic and its tooltip in a future build.
  
• We will explore options to reduce the initial loading time.
  
• The visual presentation of Companion Combat skills with two phases is not final yet.
  

'Is Vagrus properly balanced now'? - Nope. 'Was it a step in the right direction?' - We think so. Please let us know how you find it.

Stay tuned, stay alive, 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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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

[h3]Hey Folks, [/h3]

this patch is our biggest to date in terms of complexity including a new region and a number of big features, so the tendency of taking on a lot seems to become a tradition for Lost Pilgrims by now.

Important note: considering the extent of these improvements, there is little to no chance that we broke nothing in the process of adding stuff and failed to notice despite extensive testing. 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 inbuild reporting tool (F1 button), forums, and our Discord server.



[h2]New Content[/h2]

Larnak is huge, although somewhat smaller than Deven and Tor'Zag's Shelter. The city has several unique districts, shops, temples, adventure hooks, and more. Larnak is the headquarters of House Venari, as well as home to the embassy of an insectoid people that arrived to negotiate with the Empire. A dark threat is also appearing on the horizon, as the long-disappeared Sand Wyrms are returning in great numbers to prey upon travelers of the scorching deserts that surround the city.

Ash is a small town in the middle of a grey silt desert west of Sun Rock. Run by House Darius, it has become the largest slave market near and far. Unique opportunities await vagri with no scruples about forced labor.

The Forsaken Colony to the southwest of Larnak is a mysterious place. Abandoned along with the mines and an odd Yrg hive nearby, it has been largely avoided for decades. However, something stirs there at the far end of the desert and a new presence might have set up shop in the old colony.

We have also added a proper Oquo headquarters in the Drusian Quarry as well and the Dread Reavers continue their journey. Find these and more hidden stuff in the new build!

[h2]New Companion[/h2]

Nedir the sorceress joins the companion roaster! Without spoiling too much, we can say that she is a spellweaver who specializes in fiery displays of destructive power as well as magic involving... well... Demons. She is completely in control of course! At least if you want to believe her.

[h3]Hirelings[/h3]
To top it off, we have also added Venari Hireling characters who can be hired for a period of time to help out with the toughest of challenges, albeit for a small fortune.

[h2]Factions, Factions, and Factions![/h2]

Dynamic pricing was the first step to our final economy design. The second: Faction Offers is now added with this patch.

As the Factions own sole rights to trading in bigger quantities, finding enough goods to trade from the market can be quite challenging (and expensive with the prices shooting upwards with each bought stack). For the affiliates of the big Trading Houses though, the flow of goods opens up right away. Gain good standing with them and you will find their buy and sell Offers on the now enabled Faction Offers tab [Only in the open-world section]. Use a portion of your accumulated goodwill (reputation) and the deal becomes even sweeter.



Faction Rewards open up with each tier of Faction standing. Some of them you can reclaim at each of their headquarters, others are awarded simply by reaching new tiers (and lost when falling below a tier's threshold). These new rewards include:

• One-time obtainable rewards (like equipment and gear) can be reclaimed for most unlocked faction tiers. Some of these are not attainable anywhere else in the game.
  
• Constant effects, like increased worker efficiency, ambush chance, or Odd Jobs bonus. These are unique for each faction per tier and they have several levels you can unlock on higher tiers.
  
• New vagrus and comitatus customizations in the form of banners. Most factions give you their banner upon reaching a high tier of standing. You will be able to change banners on the leader UI.
  

[h2]Mounted Fun[/h2]

Did we mention the third beast type becoming available for high-end comitati?
How about the option to mount up your whole crew (provided you do not have any beasts and have enough mounts for all your crew including companions, passengers, and yourself)?

Well, it would take too long to describe every fix and improvement in detail, so let's just switch to our traditional Patch notes format. Here goes:

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

[h2]Patch 0.5.27 - Codename: Luminous[/h2]

[h3]New/Updated Features :shiny:[/h3]

• Faction Offers / Access to Faction reserves
  
• Faction Rewards (gained for each tier of standing)
  
• Buy Market info via your Faction connections
  
• The third beast type enabled (attainable via quests)
  
• Mount-Up (though not quite feasible yet, more enablers to come)
  
• Companion Combat formations (save and deploy your fav positionings)
  
• Hero Select autofill and remove (filling order based on health rate)
  
• Venari hireling characters (expensive professionals to hire)
  

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

• The Larnak-Ash region
  
• Venari HQ in Larnak
  
• Oquo HQ in Drusian Quarry
  
• New Companion: Nedir
  
• Dread Reavers on the road again (though technically this time you are on the road for them)
  
• Three new music tracks [Deven, Larnak, and an alternate Jaggest Waste]
  
• Brand new enemies, as well as new versions to existing ones
  

[h3]Updated Game Mechanics :tools:[/h3]

• A great number of changes to the effects of existing and new equipment/gear/statuses
  
• In many cases, changes to the availability of equipment and gear (now often available as Factions Rewards only as opposed to the market)
  
• Stronger versions of equipment added - sometimes the original ones nerfed a bit to make the upgrade noticeable without breaking the balance completely
  

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

• Indicators added on both the Crew Combat and the Companion Combat side to better indicate which unit participates in them, and also if they were Elite or Leader units
  
• Market prices and quantities now shown in stacks when the 'mass trade button' is pressed
  
• Tooltip improvements all across the board
  

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

• The trickling reputation rates were in reverse for Opponents and Adversaries, now corrected which will make it a great deal easier to remain on good terms with opponents
  
• A great number of insight and reputation exploits closed off [sorry, not sorry :P]
  
• Event decisions impacting Faction presence in settlements were not working property - fixed and reconstructed for prior saves as well based on journal entries
  
• All known crash root-causes resolved
  
• Various other smaller fixes
  

Known Issues

• We will explore options to reduce the initial loading time.
  
• The visual presentation of Companion Combat skills with two phases is not final yet.
  

'Is Vagrus properly balanced now'? - Nope. 'Was it a step in the right direction?' - We think so. Please let us know how you find it.

Stay tuned, stay alive, conquer the wasteland!
- The Lost Pilgrims Team

Coming up next... Mercenary Tasks and a return to Avernum. Yes, you read it right! Stay tuned.


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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!

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Hey Folks,

Our concern that we may have broken some things with all the changes stuffed into the Beasty patch was not baseless it seems.😅 We hope that the glitches have not botched the experience much.

Although the game will have fewer bugs with this patch we have certainly not squashed all of them, so if you see something amiss, please flag it to us using the usual channels, like the inbuild reporting tool (F1 button), forums, and our Discord server.

After releasing this hotfix, we will continue working on the next big patch, which will include Ash and Larnak. Stay tuned for that, too!

Now, let's see the list of things we fixed and added:

[h2]Patch 0.5.26 - Beasty Hotfix[/h2]

[h3]New/Updated Features :shiny:[/h3]

• Thee immunity Perks added: Thick Skull (vs Stun), Immovable (vs Push/Pull effects), Fearless (vs Fear effects)
  

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

• Butchering crash solved
  
• Price History UI off the screen on certain screen resolutions fixed
  
• Action Select buttons work again on the Crew Combat UI
  
• The bug that opened an exploit that allowed the instant healing of Wounded companions at the end of crew combat was removed. Now it works just like healing during Camping (as intended)
  
• Corrected the issue when the outcome of the companion combat started from crew combat overrode the results sent back to the encompassing Event (and sometimes the Event got stuck)
  
• Turning off the Open World Tutorials in the Options no longer suppresses the New Game starting-event with Agos
  
• Renkailon throws two daggers instead of one once again
  
• AI triggered Companion turn skips no longer occur in companion combat
  

Known Issues

• We will explore options to reduce the initial loading time.
  
• The visual presentation of Companion Combat skills with two phases is not final yet.
  

'Is Vagrus properly balanced now'? - Nope. 'Was it a step in the right direction?' - We think so. Please let us know how you find it.

Stay tuned, stay alive, 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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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