'How hasty you are to point out that my people owe allegiance to your Senator. But your petty strife and pitiful intrigues bore us, Imperial, and our allegiance is merely ink on paper, not invoked by blood. We never shared battle, nor feasts, nor kinship. The Senator thought to purchase us with that crude contract but we are Moreldin, descendants of Caladnir Aen Daglunath and the great heroes of the Second Age, the victors of the Forgeheart Massacre, the defenders of the Kavraenar Ziggurath, and scions of Dread Skar'Voran. My kin owes nothing to yours save for the silver already paid as per your sorry little contract. Tell this to your Senator.'

We have hinted at the rehauling of several Combat Skills recently, and we are happy to announce that these improvements made their way into the next build of Vagrus. Moreover, we ended up with many more skills that now work much better or are completely new than we had initially thought. Here are a few of these with some commentary:

Animation sneak peek time! Jhakrae are not known for their great senses or their intelligence. Half-blind and full of attitude, this specimen is sniffing out the next prey it could maul and rip apart.

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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.

Hey everyone,

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.

Specters are malevolent ghosts of the dead that often haunt the forsaken, magically-warped places of the Riven Realms. They are dreaded by most denizens of Xeryn because their ethereal forms are impervious to most damage types and though magic is more abundant than in other settings, it is still beyond the reach of most.

Fellow vagri! In this video, we touch upon one of the (many) improvements we have added to Companion combat: diminishing returns. In essence, Block and Evade will receive stacking penalties with each successful use. This will prevent some enemies to endlessly avoid damage (as well as players to abuse buffs, heh), drawing out some fights too drastically.

'No way in Tartaris that we go toward the damned Vortex. Not a year has passed since a small part of it broke off and eradicated half the camp. No, we take a different route. Over the flats. Wait. Wait! Listen! I know what you have heard but it's all lies to keep us from going that way. Think about it. From a distance, we'll look to patrols as any other slave miner brigade. And once we make it over to the other basin, we're free! The Dragons are the key to our liberation. It's just a few days over the salt, boys.'

This time, we bring you a little teaser about the next area we are about to add to Vagrus, namely the twin salt basins north of the Crimson Gate and the Hills of Plenty. It includes - among other things - the town of Salum, where the Dragonlands is in control of a faltering salt mining operation and seems to be oblivious to certain issues surrounding it. Is someone hiding something? You'll have to dig deeper to find out. Or just harvest salt and try to get rich in the process.

'We may have lost the Krawags but by then the sun was high up in the desert sky and scorched the survivors relentlessly. My comrades fell one by one and we were so weak and thirsty that we just left them behind to die on the scalding sands. Only a handful of us reached those accursed ruins. One of the men recalled having seen the stone walls and broken arches on our march towards Dragmolac. We dragged ourselves atop another dune and there they were below us, like a jumble of rotten teeth sticking out of sick gums. But we still rejoiced upon seeing them because they had cover and shade; and that shade proved to be our undoing.