We’re bringing you another locale this week, and this time it’s one of the many sites of grim ostentation that can be found throughout our upcoming At the Heart of Ruin expansion.

But what do we mean by grim ostentation? The answer can be found with the Wasteland Stalkers and their strict hierarchy. Stalkers’ ranks within the brood depend on the beasts they have slain, and most of their trophies can be found within the forum itself. Here, there are skulls of beasts and men alike, an unnerving offering of grim-faced reptiles, deadly serpents, and terrifying foes.

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As you may have noticed, this last month was exceptionally busy for us on the virtual storefronts, especially on Steam, where Vagrus was featured in the Daily Deal program on May 30 (at a staggering 50% discount, the lowest price as of yet), then took part in the annual TurnBasedThursdayFest between June 2 and 9 (with a similarly attractive discount). The festival received a “featured” spot on the platform, which was a fantastic milestone for everyone involved.

Today we have another teaser for you in the form of character art – an essential component of our upcoming At the Heart of Ruin expansion, where many new humanoids, beasts, creatures, and anomalies are set to be introduced. And yet, this one is hardly ostentatious; it does not aim to dazzle or inspire fear, but simply to show you one of the various factions of authority that exist in Scrapheap, the focal point of many coming adventures.

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While work on the upcoming DLC (or rather, expansion: At the Heart of Ruin) is ongoing, the team at Lost Pilgrims is also busy fixing bugs and adding performance improvements. This patch includes several of both, with some added love to controller support. We’ve also thoroughly optimized our asset handling, freeing up a whopping 1.5 Gigabytes of hard drive space.

This week’s location showcase for our At the Heart of Ruin expansion reveals the Ember Mines, a highly contested site that once belonged to the Dwarves of Dvendar Tharr, but has recently become a den for the numerous scavenger gangs that plague Varnurud. Whether it's sacrificial burnings or the enjoyment of human flesh, these savages are hardly the kind you’d be happy to encounter in the Ember Mines’ depths. No wonder that few go near the site – to do so is to invite death – though the resources within are said to be plenty, and there is talk of far more down the shaft than mere scrap.

In the northwestern reaches of Varnurud, a monument to Dwarven splendor rises from a stone platform, a vestige of ruined Dvendar Tharr – its immense size and state of preservation are testaments to the craftsmanship and skillful architecture of the ancient Dwarves of the faded kingdom.

Though none who dwell in these forsaken lands now know its origin, some theorize that the statue was erected to honor a thane or king whose name was lost to time in the millennium since the Calamity. As for its name, “the Hollow King”, it is unknown if it is a metaphor for the king that once was or simply a descriptor; indeed, its interior has been hollowed out and the cavernous gullets that bore inside the mountain from its base share the characterization.

Since Vagrus’s console release on the 31st of March, life at the studio has been hectic. We’ve been fixing bugs and trying to keep up with the deluge of coverage on offer. It’s almost proven too much! In this article, we’ve put together some of said coverage for your perusal.

First and perhaps most poignantly, Playstation and Xbox elected to support us by featuring the game’s trailer on their wide-reaching platforms, helping the release to reach a lot of potential new players. Then, there are the sites that cover specific platforms – NintendoEverything, GoNintendo, XboxEra, TheXboxHub, and CompleteXbox – all of whom dedicated an article to our release.

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We return to you with another round of updates, this time the focus being on performance improvements and save game files. Controllers received some love as well, fixing inconsistencies, updating UI, and squashing bugs that pertained to them specifically. We also reworked the Extras Menu due to requirements on certain other platforms, though admittedly, its functions are much better now, allowing you to listen to tracks of the OST there and check out other extra content you own.

Excitement builds steadily as Vagrus's console release draws closer, and at the studio, the mood is elated. We cannot wait to introduce the game to an entirely new segment of the player base, which, according to the feedback we’ve received thus far, can hardly wait for the release. Thus, as we march onward to the 31st of March release date (for Xbox, Nintendo Switch, PS4, and PS5), we thought it’d be fitting to share some of the features that we think make the game play well on consoles. It’s certainly not your typical console release, though, if not for anything else, then for the mix of genres that is Vagrus.

This week’s article introduces not just another scalding locale where perilous heat is a given, but it is also held by one of Varnurud’s most determined scavenger gangs, the Hollow Men. Dubbed “the Bastion” by its current occupants, the ruin itself is ancient and of Dwarven origin. Following the Calamity and subsequent catastrophes on the mountain, half of its stone buildings were consumed by lava, yet at least for the time being, the rest of the scorched stone structures remain accessible. There is no telling today what the purpose of the ancient Dwarven settlement was but it had sturdy buildings and tall towers that commanded a large swathe of the area.