Another day, another step closer to At the Heart of Ruin’s release date, October 22. And of course, another teaser. Today’s fare showcases largely avoided territory deep beneath the ruined Dwarven city of Dum Garok. It is a territory where few tread and from which even fewer return.

In the leadup to the release of At the Heart of Ruin on the 22nd of October (accompanied by the Ruinous Supporter Pack), we’ve already talked about new mechanics and features, like the updated throw-out or Exploration Encounters, but we thought it’s also time to touch upon the narrative and graphic art side of things.

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.

After over a year of development, the time has finally come to reveal the release date of our most ambitious DLC as of yet: At the Heart of Ruin will arrive on the 22nd of October! Alongside the expansion, our Ruinous Supporter Pack will also be up for grabs from the same day.

What makes a great set of stairs, you might ask? Well, that’s a tough question, we say. In our At the Heart of Ruin expansion, there are many sets of great stairs, but only one is called the Great Stairs – at least that’s what the locals would say. Whether those locals are bloodletting miscreants who worship an unknown entity that demands depraved sacrifice, madmen who delight in the act of burning themselves and others alive, or men who believe themselves to be beasts after discovering a dead Wyvern that they thought was a divine creature of the skies, that’s what they would say. There are other… more cultured locals, of course – even ones that’ll talk to you – but they each share a different brand of insanity. Enjoy, we say.

As the day’s heat settles over the deserts and arid wastelands of Xeryn, travel becomes even more treacherous. In Vagrus, several game systems represent or contextualize this – Vigor loss, Movement Point costs (that include difficulty from “climate”), and even Events that deal with the hardships or challenges presented by scorching weather. In our upcoming At the Heart of Ruin expansion, the heat will be turned up even more. The Mountains of Fire might not be beaten by the cruel sun all day due to the blanket of ash obscuring the skies, but volcanic activities take care of raising temperatures to even greater extremes.

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.

Hey everyone,

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.

Hey everyone,

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.