Hey Folks,

it was amazing to see how our latest patch was received. So many great new reviews and quite a few previously negative ones flipped to positive. We appreciate you all immensely for your vote of confidence! Especially as apparently we left a huge bug in the game that made the late game easier, instead of the early game, as we originally intended. So that's getting fixed but what else comes in this new patch, you might ask? Let's dive in!

This week, we return with new Companion Combat targeting options that suit different play-styles. The changes include a number of options from the main menu that allow the configuration of the way you target your foes and friendlies during the fights in Vagrus:

The greatest thing about running open development is receiving amazing feedback from players that helps improving your game. The hardest thing about open development is identifying what the actual problem is that your players are having an issue with.

The perfect example of all this is Crew Combat in Vagrus, which is an aspect of the game that players complained about fairly regularly. After adding the Flee/Appease option, it got slightly better but not as much as we had hoped. While digging for the reasons, we came to some interesting realizations. Whenever we heard someone getting irked about how they bled out against a much stronger enemy, we asked whether they tried appeasing them and they pretty much all said "No, 'Flee' implied losing big time".

Companion Combat is an important facet of Vagrus even though players have quite a lot of control over how much they want to engage in it. At the same time, it is the most complex part of the game when it comes to code, so whatever changes we make requires more time relative to other parts.

After we added Mercenary Tasks, our focus has moved back to improving Companion Combat, partly because a lot of players opt to enter it from Crew Combat, so it is our goal to keep these fights interesting for as long as possible. The current set of changes are thus aimed at spicing things up a bit: more movement and thus further emphasis on positioning instead of spamming Skill 1 while standing still. The changes include:

Hey Folks,

it's been a long time coming but finally Mercenary Tasks are live in the latest build. These not only add a ton of variation and replayability but also go a long way in softening up story content and allow the running of a combat oriented comitatus for players. Fair warning, though: just like none of the other income sources work by themselves, Mercenary Tasks do not either. Combine them with Trade Tasks, passengers, and stories, with an emphasis on whichever you prefer over the others.

Hey Folks,

we have been a bit busy. Sorry about that! Now we are coming back big time with a patch that is a culmination of all the changes we have made on the main game over the course of the last nine months.

COVID did not help matters for us but overall, we are happy with our progress thus far. Read more about how 2020 went for us in our blog post here: 2020 Year-End Summary.

Hey Folks,

the time has come to revisit the region that featured in Pilgrims of the Wasteland, the tutorial/prelude of Vagrus. We opened up that very zone for the open-world campaign, albeit we are 10 years in the future compared to that prologue story, so expect some changes. There was a bit of a switcheroo involving several patches in the works and eventually the choice fell onto pushing this out in part to fix a game-breaking bug from the previous patch. For this reason, expect a smaller update in the near future that irons out a few things regarding the currently added content, although we might end up merging that with Mercenary Tasks, the next larger addition.

The most recent patch (Codename: Perky) brought with it a major Event UI overhaul but we did want to mention all the other Quality of Life improvements we managed to squeeze into the update, too. So, let's jump in and see what changed!

Comitatus UI

The long awaited rework of the in-game Events' UI is finally here! It brings a number of visual, gameplay, and QOL improvements, so let's have a quick rundown on what these are.

Choice Boxes

There is a frame around each choice now, and the whole box thus created is clickable while also providing visual feedback when hovered over, too. These choice boxes help differentiate the various choices better and contain everything you need to make the choice.

Hey Folks,

this next patch is a bit lean on content but that is because we are gearing up to the next one that has a huge new region with tons of adventures awaiting - and it is coming sooner than you think! That said, this current update contains a pile of new features and Quality of Life improvements that will hopefully make you happy - like a completely reworked Event UI, Test boosting that allows you to use Resourcefulness to improve chances in Events, additions to Chart markers that makes it easier to find things in the wasteland (but still keeps it a challenge most of the time), new Hirelings, combat Skill tweaks, and a lot more!