This week we’re keen to discuss one of the newest and most exciting features we’re adding to the upcoming expansion of Vagrus: Exploration Encounters.

How They Came To Be

While it would not be entirely truthful to say that the game’s development has always followed a carefully curated path, it is not exaggeration to mention that our imaginations have run boundless thanks to that, leading to a myriad of ideas and, occasionally, feature creep. We have, however, always felt that more Events to cover simpler matters – mining salt, random encounters, or procuring scrap, for example – would have a place in the game, even if their creation may not be the best use of our writers’ time.

During the development of our At the Heart of Ruin expansion, we reached a crucial decision point, one where we decided it was time to create an Exploration Encounter prototype, not so different from the one you see above. Thus, Exploration Encounters were born. You can expect Exploration Encounters to ship along with this ever-growing expansion. It’s just one more thing in a sea of new content we’re frothing at the bit to get out the door! While we sometimes think that we should tone down the amount of content we’re releasing, it can be pretty difficult when we’ve got such a supportive community that we want to deliver for again and again.

What Are Exploration Encounters

On a basic level, Exploration Encounters are a series of procedurally generated Companion Combat encounters, obstacles, and chances to get loot. In essence, they are shorter, more gameplay-focused bits of encounters and challenges grouped by location or theme. They are meant to provide resources if you overcome the risks, and break up traveling and reading a bit. Each location tailors its challenges specifically to what characterizes it. Launching a foray into a fiery cavern filled to the brim with Salamanders is, naturally, quite different than descending into the depths of an old mine, especially one occupied by gangs in a bloody war of dominance. Similarly, fighting oversized arachnids in a labyrinth of webbed gossamer provides markedly different rewards than those found among Varnurud’s (more) delusional gangs – of which there are many!

Encounters In More Detail

Getting started will be easy. One simply needs to find the right point of interest, go to the Story Pane, and select an Event that leads to an Exploration Encounter (you’ll find these fairly easily). This Event will provide some reference about what the player should expect from the Exploration Encounter(s) at this location, and then, typically, they’ll have to select a group of Companions if they choose to tackle one. Once started, Exploration Encounters generate challenges (combat, obstacles, loot) procedurally along certain rules tailored to the location.

After each challenge, test, or obstacle, you may decide to turn back or continue pushing, which creates a sort of risk versus reward gameplay segment where you need to evaluate your resources and capabilities in a dynamically changing gauntlet. Suffice to say, this is just the beginning. We’ve plenty of ideas to make this more interesting, and as always, we look forward to your feedback on changing it further in the future. Our primary focus is the expansion currently, but as things evolve, we’ll be able to better support or iterate upon what we’re building on the side, and we’re thrilled to see what you’ll think of it.

Either way, you can rest assured that we’ll be listening intently to your feedback and waiting to hear your insights. We’ll do the best that we can to accommodate our players in whichever way we are able.

We look forward to sharing more with you soon. Until then, stay safe, stay insightful, and conquer the wasteland!

– The Lost Pilgrims Team

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