Vagrus - The Riven Realms News

[h3]Hey everyone,[/h3]

a few weeks ago we published a long post on the changes coming. Today, we are happy to share that the changes are live as of posting this! Better yet, we have included two additional features that we managed to implement in the meantime.


(Skip ahead to see the bonus additions)
[h2]New Content:[/h2]

• The Deven region with one major settlement, Deven, and a smaller one, Sun Rock, as well as a lot of new ground to explore.
  
• The Church of Ahskul faction is fleshed out in all its macabre glory.
  
• Try your luck at tomb robbing in the Valley of Sleepers - if you dare.
  
• The Ratharnak Alliance's headquarters were extended and moved to the Mines of Plenty.
  
• Your journey with the Dread Reavers continues!
  
• A lot of new (shorter and longer) storylines you can follow through.
  
• The Dark Elf companion Renkailon can now also be recruited through story progression.
  

[h2]Crew Combat Improvements:[/h2]
[h3]Looting in crew combat[/h3]

• Destroy the enemy or make it flee and get all their valuables
  
• Gather/Harvest items, money, and goods from fallen enemy units
  
• Catch - with a small chance - the surviving mounts of your Outriders who fell in battle
  
• Extract supplies from mounts that did not survive
  

Of course, the Riven Realms remains a dog-eat-dog place, so none of this loot is available if you lose or are forced to flee. Also, 'immersion is king' even when it comes to looting. Do not expect desperate lowlife tugs attacking your comitatus carrying heaps of valuables. Now, in case you are the aggressor and ambush their camp with all their possessions... that is another story. Provided that you are okay to prey on the weak. Will your companions approve? Will you provoke the Empire's ire?



[h3]Combat preparations[/h3]

• You can mount Fighters or dismount Outriders right before crew combat (except if you are ambushed)

[h3]Goal (objective) selection changes[/h3]

• Now you select a goal on the defensive side as well, so you can choose what you defend the most (crew, beasts, cargo)
  
• The main target of the enemies is only revealed in the second round
  
• You can change your objective at the end of each round
  
• Added the option to flee or retreat even during ongoing crew combat (albeit at potentially heavy losses)

[h3]New 'defense' stat introduced[/h3]

• It better reflects how easy or hard it is to take out certain enemies and characters (ie: Outriders are much harder to damage for example)
  
• You can improve your crews' combat strength and/or defense stats with equipment and properties separately

[h3]'Actions' in crew combat (tactical commands)[/h3]
Giving more tools to the vagrus, we are now enabling 'Actions' in crew combat. These can significantly influence the outcome of crew level combat encounters. Our ultimate goal is to enable entering Companion combat directly from Crew Combat but even until then, players can choose from a number of actions (more to come), like:

• 'Launch a mounted attack' that increases the effectiveness of Outriders for the round
  
• Form a 'Shield Wall' to increase the defense of your Fighters
  
• 'Insult' the enemy to increase the chance of them making a mistake

[h3]Impervious crew combat enemies[/h3]
Specters, Haunts, Living Shadows. Horrors that are immune to mundane weapons. Improve your companions, gain the blessing of Gods, gather rare magical items to defeat them. Alternatively, do the only thing you can if you come across these deadly enemies... FLEE!

• Impervious enemies are marked with purple borders and their defense stat is colored as such, too
  
• Only your Enchanted companions and/or crew can damage Impervious enemies in crew combat. Enchanted combat strength is highlighted - the axe and the CS value are colored purple.

[h2]Miscellaneous Changes:[/h2]

• Event UI performance updates to ease the jittering
  
• Higher Authority now reduces Companion loyalty penalties
  
• Outriders now automatically dismount to create cargo space in case the throw-out screen is (or would be) triggered

[h2]And the additional changes we managed to squeeze in:[/h2]

• With the game growing, so did loading times but finally, we got around to add a loading screen that also gives tips to new players.🎉
  
• Made a massive number of smaller performance improvements, which together - hopefully - have a tangible effect on how the game runs.
  
• Implemented the Command leadership perk that opens up advanced Crew Combat Actions.
  

Let's dive into the detailed list of changes:

[h2]Patch 0.5.20 - Codename: Plunder![/h2]

New/Updated Features

• Crew Combat changes
  - Looting added
  - Goals on the defender side added & option to change your goal between rounds
  - Defense stat introduced
  - Actions & Advanced Actions with the Command Leadership perk added
  - Impervious enemies now appear
  - Mount/Dismount at start of combat added
  - Retreat/Disengage/Flee options mid-fight now possibel - they take a full round to execute
  
• Load Screens added with tips
• Updated mechanics
  - Outriders auto-dismount to free up cargo space if needed
  - Keeping an 'army-sized' comitatus got a little harder
  

New/Updated Content

• Deven region added with the settlements Deven and Sun Rock and a ton of new content
  
• Renkailon can be now recruited normally (without Braxius' involvement)
  
• Ratharnak HQ moved to Mines of Plenty; Church of Ahskul more prominent in Deven (their new HQ)
  
• The Dread Reavers hit the road again and get into all kinds of shenanigans
  

UI Improvements

• Progress Counter shown on certain Quality journals
  
• Animation and decal refinements
  
• Various smaller UI changes & Tooltip updates
  

Bug Fixes 🤞🏽

• Sorcerer's Apprentice background is back
  
• Shedload of smaller fixes
  

Known Issues

• We will explore options to reduce the initial loading time
  
• Scouting result crash - still unable to reproduce
  
• The visual presentation of companion combat skills with two phases are 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

P.s.: If you like the game and/or the direction it's heading, consider nominating Vagrus for a Steam Award. Originally we meant to recommend the Story Rich category but people kept referring us to the Games you suck at award which is for hard games. 😂 What do y'all think?

[h3]Hey Folks,[/h3]

we just wanted to give you all a quick development update. We are pushing hard to publish the next big release still this year. Here's what's coming if all goes according to plan:

[h2]New Content:[/h2]

• The Deven region with one major settlement, Deven, and a smaller one, Sun Rock, as well as a lot of new ground to explore.
  
• The Church of Ahskul faction is fleshed out in all its macabre glory.
  
• Try your luck at tomb robbing in the Valley of Sleepers - if you dare.
  
• The Ratharnak Alliance's headquarters were extended and moved to the Mines of Plenty.
  
• Your journey with the Dread Reavers continues!
  
• A lot of new (shorter and longer) storylines you can follow through.
  
• The Dark Elf companion Renkailon can now be recruited through story progression.
  

[h2]Crew Combat Improvements:[/h2]
[h3]Looting in crew combat[/h3]

• Destroy the enemy or make it flee and get all their valuables
  
• Gather/Harvest items, money, and goods from fallen enemy units
  
• Catch - with a small chance - the surviving mounts of your outriders who fell in battle
  
• Extract supplies from mounts that did not survive
  

Of course, the Riven Realms remains a dog-eat-dog place, so none of this loot is available if you lose or are forced to flee. Also, 'immersion is king' even when it comes to looting. Do not expect desperate lowlife tugs attacking your comitatus carrying heaps of valuables. Now, in case you are the aggressor and ambush their camp with all their possessions... that is another story. Provided that you are okay to prey on the weak. Will your companions approve?



[h3]Combat preparations[/h3]

• You can mount fighters, dismount outriders right before crew combat (except if you are ambushed)

[h3]Goal (objective) selection changes[/h3]

• Now you select a goal on the defensive side as well, so you can choose what you defend the most (crew, beast, cargo)
  
• The main target of the enemies is only revealed in the second round
  
• You can change your objective at the end of each round
  
• Added the option to flee or retreat even during ongoing crew combat (albeit at potentially heavy losses)

[h3]New 'defense' stat introduced[/h3]

• It better reflects how easy or hard it is to take out certain enemies and characters (i.e.: outriders are much harder to damage)
  
• You can improve your crews' combat strength and/or defense stats with equipment and properties separately

[h3]Actions in crew combat (tactical commands)[/h3]
Giving more tools to the vagrus, we are now enabling 'Actions' in crew combat. These can significantly influence the outcome of crew level combat encounters. Our ultimate goal is to enable entering Companion combat directly from Crew Combat but even until then, players can choose from a number of actions (more to come), like:

• 'Launch a mounted attack' that increases the CS of Outriders for the round
  
• 'Form a Shield wall' to increase the Defense of your Fighters
  
• 'Insult' the enemy to increase the chance of them making a mistake

[h3]Impervious crew combat enemies[/h3]
Specters, Haunts, Living Shadows. Horrors that are immune to mundane weapons. Improve your companions, gain the blessing of Gods, gather rare magical items to defeat them. Alternatively, do the only thing you can if you come across these deadly enemies... FLEE!

• Impervious enemies are marked with purple borders and their defense stat is colored as such, too
  
• Only your Enchanted companions and/or crew can damage Impervious enemies in crew combat. Enchanted Combat Strength is highlighted - the axe and the CS value are colored to purple.

[h2]Miscellaneous Changes:[/h2]

• Event UI performance updates to ease the jittering (still not 100% but we are committed to fix it as soon as we are able)
  
• Higher Authority now reduces Companion loyalty penalties
  
• Outriders now automatically dismount to create cargo space in case the throw-out screen is (or would be) triggered

We are looking forward to all of you getting your hand on the new update and hearing about your experience. In case you like the game and/or the direction we are taking with it, please consider leaving a review. It's a huge help. Thanks and see you around, vagri!

The Lost Pilgrims Team

One of the most requested additions by our Early Access players has been Companion progression for a while now, and it's no surprise. Being a party-based RPG at its heart, Vagrus has a roster of unique Companions that are your most trusty lieutenants with their own backstories, skills, and personalities. It is only natural that they can become stronger with time and effort - and we have naturally designed this progression system in the beginning, but we held off on adding it because there were a lot of specifics to work out and the EA experience functioned fairly well without it.

Now, however, the time has come to introduce the progression system to see what our players and fellow vagri think about it.



Prowess and Insight

Character levels (exclusive to Companions) in Vagrus are called Prowess. You unlock new levels of Prowess by spending Insight - the same Insight you can spend on your vagrus. Once you gain a level, you can spend Proficiency points on your Attributes, Professions, Combat Traits... and now the all-new Companion Traits and revised Combat Skills, too. These round out progression with the ability to make your Companions much stronger in combat.

The Prowess cap will be 5 for the time being, as we are still testing higher-end progression (and mostly lack high-end content), but it is more than enough for a significant rise in power.



Combat Skills

You have seen them already but the Combat Skills now have fully developed second and third (maximum) levels. These level ups potentially change the Damage, Accuracy, Critical Chance, and effects of the Skills, often quite drastically. A good example is Garrik's Gas Bomb that covers more and more ground with level ups.



Additionally, several of the Companion Skills were revised to be more desirable in certain situations. A ton of enemy Combat Skills are also now working as intended, but more on that in another post.



Companion Traits

Each Companion now has a set of unique Traits that raise several baseline stats like Vitality, Armor, Resistances, base Accuracy, Power, and more. This is the only way to change these stats apart from Gear, so you will have to think hard about what to pick. Especially because most of the Trait levels - as well as Skill levels - have requirements.

Requirements

We've planned to include Attributes (Mighty, Savvy, Tough, etc.) one way or the other in the progression from the beginning but we did not want to assign incremental stat increases to them directly. The way it works now, most Combat Skill levels and all Companion Traits have Attribute requirements you need to unlock before being able to purchase them. This means that with each Prowess level, you need to consider what build you are going for, what your desired Trait is, and plan accordingly when it comes to purchasing Attributes.

This also means that no Companion will be able to unlock all their Traits and Skills by reaching Prowess 9 (the absolute maximum), so you'll have to plan builds.



As ever, we are very excited to see how the community reacts to the progression system. We hope that we can build on this system from now on and we'll be able to round out Companions fully in the future based on this. Even now, though, the system's depth is intriguing, and every Companion can focus on certain things ahead of others to specialize according to your needs.

Let us know what you think!

The Lost Pilgrims Team

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

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 everyone,[/h3]

and first of all let us thank all of you who shared their views regarding our planned priorities. We took that to heart and worked tirelessly to implement Companion Progression, which includes raising the Prowess cap from two to five, introducing Companion-specific traits that increase stats, and much more.

It is important to mention that the Companion loyalty storylines that will in the final game open up Prowess 3 and 6, are not yet in the game and not planned any time soon either. Our plan is to add those once all the planned regions are added first, so those questlines can be placed to their ideal location rather than crammed into the currently available territory.



We have also made various other improvements that make Companion combat more interesting:

• Diminishing returns will help against enemies with high Block or Evade stats, and though it is applied on the player side as well, some of the Companions have access to the Resolute perk now that allows them to ignore diminishing returns, meaning they can Evade or Block without getting a debuff.
  
• Thanks to some AI improvements, the enemies will now be much better at using complex skills instead of spamming a unit's base attack or even just skipping turns or swapping when out of position somewhat.
  
• The mechanics of many combat perks, like Channeling or Life Leech, that are available through companion progression or as gear effects, have been implemented giving even more Companion upgrade options.
  

Beside changes on the code side, we are opening up a new subregion in this patch for the first time, the salt basins above the Mines of Plenty. The area includes Salum, the headquarters of the Scythichnis Covenant as well as the Auguros Work Camp, a prison colony of the Empire.

[previewyoutube][salt mvideo or image][/previewyoutube]

Let's dive into the detailed list of changes:

[h2]Patch 0.5.16 - codename: Salty![/h2]

New/Updated Features

• Companion progression
  - Prowess cap raised from 2 to 5 ⬆️
  - Second level skill upgrades enabled (and can be boosted to third)
  - New companion-specific Traits added that raise baseline stats such as VIT, ARM, ACC, etc.
  - For an interim period, companions can be 'reset' during camping (via the 'brain' button on camp/rest screens)
  
• Companion Combat
  - Diminishing returns on Evade and Block introduced
  - New 'Resolute' combat trait available for certain companions; this trait makes the companion unaffected by diminishing returns
  - AI improvements - enemies can now use complex skills and are less likely to skip their turn
  - Skills involving movement or two phases now work as intended (their animation is split into two so that is still not final)
  - Enemies may now seem to have gotten new skills whereas in truth, those just started to work properly 😅
  - Initiative order altered to accommodate enemies with multiple actions per round; also to properly remove/add characters losing or gaining actions (i.e: Stunned or Aided)
  
• New combat traits implemented: Arcane Leech; Blood Magic; Channeling; Durable Spells; Frenzy; Life Leech; Siphon; Spell penetration
  

New/Updated Content

• The salt basins region added with settlements, events, and a questline
  
• Gor'Goro has a new fourth combat skill
  

UI improvements

• Camp UI 'X' button added (the most requested feature ever :smile: ) - goes inactive if any camp action is started, like banter, etc.
  
• Companion combat decal flips finally work for enemies used as allies, as well as some other decal effects fixed
  
• Animation and decal refinements
  
• Various smaller UI changes & Tooltip updates
  

Bug fixes 🤞🏽

• A bunch of Resourcefulness/Authority/Perk base/effect related bugs/potential exploits resolved
  
• Save/Load issues around camping resolved
  
• Companion combat skill effect resists against Impervious enemies now properly work (no Bleed status vs Specters, sadly)
  
• DOT damage kills now trigger companion combat victory when defeating the final enemy
  
• Wrong node-path taken bug fixed
  
• Various smaller fixes
  

Known issues

• Scouting result crash - still unable to reproduce
  
• Crew combat looting does not work yet
  
• The visual presentation of companion combat skills with two phases are 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.

We are eager to hear how you find these new changes. With Companion Progression added, we are refocusing on the most critiqued area - well actually two areas - of the game: crew combat and companion combat. Our first priority will be to implement our planned Crew combat looting design and depending on how long that takes, we might take a crack at Crew combat Actions, too, soon afterward. While Companion combat has received a number of feature updates, the visual representation is still far from what we imagined. Beside the generic goal of making it 'better paced and more impactful', we are planning to improve specifically how we visualize targeting and complex skills, and also explore adding turn/round announcements and initiative order animations - the list goes on. This may take a while, so no promises on the deadline but we thought it was important to share that we are working on it. In terms of content, our eyes are set on Deven and the surrounding area already. It's coming.

Stay tuned, stay alive, conquer the wasteland!

- The Lost Pilgrims Team

P.s.: We are still receiving a high number of messages, bug reports, and improvement ideas via the various channels so we might not be able to respond to everyone but we're trying our best. ✌️

Lately, we have been working on Crew Combat to further enhance its mechanics and the latest improvement is the 'Flee' feature. Let's check it out!



Flee!

Fleeing will now be added to a selection of Crew Combat encounters with the following considerations:

• You do not always have the option to flee. It depends on the encounter.
  
• While trying to flee, your combat strength is significantly reduced.
  
• Your Flee value comes from your crew composition, equipment, and crew combat attributes among other things, resulting in a percentile chance.
  
• The enemy's Chase modifier further alters the chance of fleeing.
  
• Flee chances represent how successfully you can flee from combat. You will suffer damages even in case of a successful flee, albeit much less than you would by staying in a fight where you are outmatched.
  

Appease

Appease is an option that further changes fleeing when you can use it.

• Sometimes you have the option to try to appease your enemies. Again, this is dictated by the combat encounter.
  
• When you choose to appease, you offer to leave behind a variety of things for the enemy but depending on your foe's type and motivation (crew combat attributes), they may or may not appreciate them equally or at all. Some Perks increase the effectiveness of appeasing your opponents.
  
• If you offer enough things to satisfy their craving, the appeased opponents will not chase you at all. In case of a partial offering, some of them might still do but the damage caused by them will be comparatively less.
  

You can see a demonstration of these mechanics in the video below.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

No need to die against a horde of Jhakrae or a throng of Undead (or to load your game...). Run away and live to fight another day! :)

We hope that these changes will significantly improve the WIP Crew Combat experience, making it less of a Load Game fest. Let us know what you think once you have tried it.

The Lost Pilgrims Team

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

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