'Disgusting little runts. Eaters of the dead. Pale vermin. I hereby vow to do all in my power to push them out of your neighborhoods and businesses, to bar them from decent citizens of the Empire, and in the end perhaps even rid this city of their filth altogether.'

- Tribune Septimus Votano of Deven in a speech about Wraiths during his campaign for office

'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:

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.

Many Orcs wander the reaches of the Riven Realms and you can come across them in all kinds of encounters, some of them being violent - as expected. There are several Orc enemy variants and the Juggernaut - as the name suggests - is the 'big guy' of the bunch, the one that takes the punches and gives back a lot in return.

As seen in this short video, the option to flee from crew combat encounters has been added to Vagrus' latest build. 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!

Although you have probably already seen Morwen if you played the game, here's a little look at the idle combat animation of this fan favorite. Also, a little heads-up: she is getting a small buff to be of better use during combat encounters in 'Pilgrims of the Wasteland'.

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