Vagrus - The Riven Realms News

[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

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Fellow vagri,

we thought that this would be a good time to take a look at the recently implemented User Interface changes in Vagrus.

With the Factions tab, you can track your standing with the various factions of the game's world. At a later point in the developement, it will be possible to claim rewards for each unlocked reputation tier (although there are already a lot of implicit benefits and rewards for high reputation with almost every faction).

The Leader Status and Perk Summary UI pages might seem superfluous gains at first, but they round out the status effect UIs, as well as provide vital information about Perks, so it is indeed a very important milestone in our march towards completing the game's interface.

Below you can read about each of them in more detail.

Faction UI

In short, factions are organizations you can gain reputation with. Enough reputation points unlock tiers of faction standing that award the player with all kinds of goodies: discounts, items, equipment, and better paying Tasks, to name a few. Factions are often at odds with each other, so gaining reputation with one might lower reputation with another or two. You can absolutely lose standing, which results in losing the passive benefits of that tier. Most factions also provide quests and other content with the right tier unlocked.

There are several places where you can find factions on already existing UI elements. First and foremost, factions appear as a separate UI tab under the Leader main UI (since faction relations belong to your character the vagrus). You can check your standing with all factions here as well as what each tier provides, read about all the factions, and check on their allies and enemies.

Apart from that, factions also appear on the settlement UI, where Tasks can be taken, turned-in, and rewards are redeemed, provided the faction in question is present in the given settlement. Faction presence is also varied, with headquarters allowing for the most interaction. The majority of factions have a presence in large cities, though.

There are 11 factions currently in game, though several of them are partially implemented and will be fleshed out more with upcoming content patches. Some of them you have already encountered when playing the Open-world campaign, like the Church of Sergorod, the Ratharnak Alliance, the furtive Abolitionists, or one of the Imperial Trading Houses. We'll discuss them in more detail in a future post.

Leader Status

All kinds of long-lasting and temporary status effects can be received that affect the vagrus, your character, and these are listed on this pane. Its addition became especially important with the coming of Faction rewards, many of which provide bonuses borne by the leader of the comitatus (while companion- and crew-related effects get listed on their respective UI elements).



Perk Summary

With this addition, you can check each Perk's cumulative value. These are collated from your vagrus, your companions (including their Gear), equipment, and enduring effects. You can also see the breakdown of these Perks ordered into categories. Naturally, this UI only shows Professions and Attributes, as only these can be gained from multiple sources.



We hope these additions will make your lives in game easier. Stay tuned, for more is to come!

The Lost Pilgrims Team

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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]Hi Folks,[/h3]

Thank you for all the feedback you shared with us in the last few weeks! This was immensely useful from the smallest bug reports to the super-ambitious ideas on how to turn Vagrus into a AAA title [thanks for crediting so grand a potential to our tiny team], and we appreciate you taking the time to help us with your insights.

One of the most commonly flagged missing feature was the option to Flee from Crew Combat encounters, and so after the first bundle of quick-fixes, we shifted our focus to that. Soon after starting to design Flee, we just felt that Appeasing enemies -bribing them to let you go without even having to run for it - was so tied to the Flee mechanic that it only made sense to implement both. And so we did.
We also made a number of tweaks, including the change that Tax collectors no longer factor in cargo from Trade tasks when calculating the tax amount.

It took a little more time than we originally planned and we wanted to make it available as soon as possible, so it has not been extensively playtested. The game might have become a tad too easy with these changes - please share your views about that once you had the chance to play a couple of hours with this new build.



Okay, time to dive into the list of changes:

[h2]Patch 0.5.15 - codename: Flee![/h2]
New/Updated Features

• Crew Combat Flee 🏃 including the first version of Appease
  - In case the Enemy is the attacker, you may choose to Flee instead of fighting
  - Some Enemies are slow and easier to flee from while others are good at chasing and you may be better off fighting them
  - Increase the chance of your Flee by Appeasing the enemy with leaving stuff behind
  - Based on their attributes, enemies accept offerings and appreciate them on a different level
  - Auto-offer does not work for goods yet
  
• Crew combat enemy-demands scale a bit better
  
• Tax collectors no longer factor in Trade Task cargo when coming up with the tax amount. At the same time, tax immunities through Factions also reduced.
  
• The accidentally released Perk Summary Tab properly implemented now 🧮
  
• 'Manual' companion heal phased out by natural healing replacing it completely - as planned
  
• Loads of perk related updates and fixes:
  - Perks granted by gear/etc do not count towards certain requirements (other Gear, Perk prerequisites, etc)
  - Gear/Deputy/Combat perk requirements only consider the companion's base perks now
  - On the Leader and Companion Perk UIs, only the base perks are indicated
  - Perk insight and proficiency costs consider base perk levels only (no overcharge for levels granted by other things)
  

UI improvements

• Companion Perk UI refreshed (still not the final version, though)
  - Split to three columns now instead of the previous four and also added new tooltips
  

Bug fixes 🤞🏽

• Settlement Slave/Mounts sell, also Banter misdirects to the Chart fixed
  
• Dream event script fixed
  
• Fixed disappearing proficiency points on deputy skills
  
• Price tooltip resets when all goods are sold
  
• 'Location ?' bug on the 'Load game' screen fixed
  
• POTW Chapter 9 autosave occasional load-back issue resolved
  
• A number of typos and event script errors fixed
  
• Tooltip improvements
  
• Various smaller fixes
  

Known issues

• Gear & Status bonuses will be added back to the Companion and Leader Perk UIs
  
• Scouting result crash - unable to reproduce
  
• One combat decal crash - unable to reproduce
  

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

Now that we have released Flee, we are moving on to design and implement Companion Progression, which will move the cap on companion Prowess to five from the current two and bring along new combat traits to increase companion stats. It already looks and feels awesome, we think.
We are also changing our approach to content releases and instead of very rare big drops, we plan to open up new campaign map areas in smaller chunks. The first one will most likely be the salt basins above Mines of Plenty, including Salum, the headquarters of the Scythichnis Covenant and the Auguros Work Camp of the Empire.

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 able to respond to everyone but we're trying our best. ✌️

We have always planned a fairly elaborate system of healing mechanics but when creating 'Pilgrims of the Wasteland', we first focused on getting the main features ready and implemented a more streamlined, placeholder set of healing rules.

Out with the Old

The PotW system simply had you use a relatively valuable resource - medical supplies - to fully heal one Companion at a time during camp. This is not only too 'gamey' but also very obtuse and not what we intended for the game or the setting.

The old healing system did have hidden statuses, however they were not used for anything really:

• Hurt: Received after losing 50% Vitality, limits Maximum VIT to 80% until removed.
  
• Wounded: Received after Downed, limits Maximum VIT to 60% until removed.
  
• Mortally Wounded: Received after falling Out of Action, limits Maximum VIT to 30% until removed.
  

In spite of these elaborate statuses, healing remained the same: the use of a medical supplies item healed Companions up to their Maximum VIT right away.

In with the New

When Crew Combat was added, we implemented an elaborate system that was used to heal up your wounded Crew and Companions at the end of each skirmish. It was based on rolls stemming from the Healing Perk. Now that we decided to rework Companion healing, we basically use the same principles for natural healing.

During camping, you roll for natural healing for each Companion that is not at Maximum VIT. The heal roll chance comes together from the following factors:

• Major impact from Heal Perk levels (from Companions, the vagrus, gear, etc.)
  
• Minor impact from Herb Lore Perk levels
  
• Major impact from settlement accommodation if any (second or third Rest tiers only)
  
• Major impact from taking it slow with the comitatus (spending less MPs before camping)
  
• And most importantly: from medical supplies (item) if you choose to use them
  

Even without many impacting factors, Companions recover VIT more often than not, except if the natural healing roll is a Critical Failure and in that case can even lose VIT but only until it reaches 1, so Companions can not die but their condition can worsen.

The statuses from the old system still exist, and if a Companion reaches the temporary limit (for example, 60% of Maximum VIT when Wounded), a successful natural healing roll removes the current status and applies the next 'higher' one (for example, a Wounded Companion then becomes Hurt). A Critical Success results in a two-stage jump.



Using Medical supplies provides a huge advantage, as it removes the status even if the Companion has not reached the associated temporary VIT limit. It also increases the chance of status improvement and VIT recovery greatly.

Previously, one full healing required one medical supplies item with a 100% result. Now, there is a chance on the result and hence these healing items can be lost or retained based on a chance with each usage. Normally, this depends on the roll, like treating a Wounded with a success roll has a 10% chance to use up the item, while rolling a fail increases that chance to 20%, and so on.

We implemented the natural healing part already but left the Event heal option in too for the time being, at least until the changes on the Camp UI can be implemented, allowing the players to decide on the usage of medical supplies each time they strike camp. This new system is much better-suited to what we were planning from the beginning, and is also more fair, although healing will be slower and so you'll have to think twice before jumping into combat too soon.

The Lost Pilgrims Team

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Wanna get the game 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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