Hey everyone,

It’s that time of year again and so we at Lost Pilgrims wanted to wish you all Happy Holidays! Enjoy your well-deserved rest, spend time with your loved ones, or just chill, play your unplayed games, read, eat, or do whatever makes you happy.

We are winding down as well after we take care of a few things and although we’ll monitor the usual channels, we’ll hunker down until early January because the last half a dozen months have been quite exhausting for the Pilgrims.

Hey Folks,

with so many of you well over the hundred hours mark in the game, it was high time for us to add the opportunity to actually win it. The first winning condition we have implemented is the Renown victory. The other two, Wealth and Knowledge will become available in the 1.0 release later this year.

Lately, we've been working on the Abolitionists, a unique faction that is a bit hidden and up until now, their presence was very minor apart from their main base of operations. The next content build will include a new system that you will be able to use to unlock new faction locations for the Abolitionists. This involves getting ciphers from an already unlocked location (initially their main base) and taking it (within a time limit) to a new settlement where it will unlock the faction's presence there.

We have long been talking about improving the experience with factions in Vagrus. They are currently in the game and can be interacted with one way or the other but there is no UI to track your standing with them, nor is it 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). With Tasks being implemented and so intimately intertwined with factions, we thought we'd give you a rundown of what to expect from the next large addition to the game.

Based on the ton of feedback concerning initial difficulty and learning curve, we have listened to you, our players, and implemented Trade Tasks to make the initial experience smoother in the open-world campaign. While there, and because they are deeply intertwined, we also decided to include the brand-new Factions UI and the faction tier system. We were happy to see that everyone who tried it in the preview build loved it and we are also satisfied with the result. To top it off, we also have a long list of adjustments, fixes, and tweaks (see patch notes at the end of this post).

Obedience is a stat describing how disciplined (or disgruntled) the slaves owned by the comitatus are at a given time. It was implemented to give a rather fluid drawback to owning slaves: they might provide free workforce but keeping men and women enslaved does have its risks even if it is 'part of the system'. You typically lose Obedience if you do not guard your slaves well enough (too few fighters to look after them), if you get or buy a lot of new slaves, if you do not feed them enough, if you arm them in Crew Combat, or keep choosing options in Events that endanger or embolden them.

Character Artwork Day!

This time, another enemy that sometimes can appear as an ally: the Sergorodite Priest.

Priests of Sergorod are the lowest ranking but already ordained members of the Church of Sergorod. One of the three new gods of the Triumvirate - the patron gods of the Empire -, Sergorod lords over the spheres of vengeance, anger, curses, grudges, and malevolence. Those who enter the service of the Church usually train as novices to become ordained priests of Sergorod (some of them join the more militant Cult of Retribution or other more obscure sects, though).

This week’s character is another bandit type enemy from the roster of wasteland outlaws. We call him the Slinger, because he… well uses a sling! 

Slings are deadly in combat in the real world when someone knows how to use them. Though they don’t seem much, slings could propel simple projectiles (such as rocks) with power enough to break armor, cut through flesh, and devastate bones.

This week we have another character art for you: the Executor. These unholy men are enemies in the main game, but the Prologue does give players the opportunity to have them on their team, albeit briefly.

But who are these grim individuals?

Executors are the armed enforcers of the Church of Sergorod. As one of the three new gods of the Triumvirate - the patron gods of the Empire -, Sergorod is known as the god of vengeance, anger, curses, grudges, and malevolence.

Our next character reveal - and related artwork - is that of the unfortunate mutant Crifta (literally meaning 'feathers' in Imperial). The player meets the cunning archer in the Prologue, where she debuts as a tough enemy. She can be recruited later in the game, however.

Crifta was born named Navassia Degado in the kingdom of Viran. She became an archer in the army of the northern continent after her brother got killed in earlier battles and she felt compelled to avenge him. Captured during the battles for Santo Lucadas in Viran, she became a slave in the Empire. She was forced to be a prostitute for some time in military camps, but in a year or so she contracted the Taint, and after her transformation she was not so attractive any longer. They moved her to a stone quarry near Deven where she was both a worker and a prostitute. There, she joined some slaves who organized an escape into the wastelands; they became fugitives, escaped slaves, but at least they were free.