'No way in Tartaris that we go toward the damned Vortex. Not a year has passed since a small part of it broke off and eradicated half the camp. No, we take a different route. Over the flats. Wait. Wait! Listen! I know what you have heard but it's all lies to keep us from going that way. Think about it. From a distance, we'll look to patrols as any other slave miner brigade. And once we make it over to the other basin, we're free! The Dragons are the key to our liberation. It's just a few days over the salt, boys.'

Specters are a relatively common phenomenon in Vagrus's dark, cruel setting but that does not take away from how dreaded they are. Angry, insane souls stuck between life and the afterlife, these sad creatures roam the forsaken places of the world - often locations where they were slain, haunting the abandoned reaches of the Empire. The initial challenge in encounters with Specters is finding ways to harm them: by nature, these entities are between worlds and thus can not be damaged by normal means. Once you find the means, they are less of a danger but must still be taken seriously.

Hi Folks,

Thank you for all the feedback you shared with us in the last few weeks! This was immensely useful from the smallest bug reports to the super-ambitious ideas on how to turn Vagrus into a AAA title [thanks for crediting so grand a potential to our tiny team], and we appreciate you taking the time to help us with your insights.

In a long line of non-location-specific artwork, we have a version of the 'tunnels' to show you, which we use with many underground ruins, building interiors, mazes, and so on. Variants include lit corridors as well as dark, abandoned ones. This particular location artwork was done by Attuss Varga along with a whole lot of others of this type. These illustrations are key to the game's thick, dark atmosphere and luckily for us, Attuss has always done a great work with them.

Day 26 - Disaster struck today. We were making good progress up until last night. The Plains of Bone are a desolate place if I've ever seen one but at least we've got to some of the richer ivory piles. No Scortaur in sight as of yet, which is a boon already. As it was getting darker yesterday, we could see something large over the horizon, like a dark hill - something very uncharacteristic of this flat, empty expanse. But due to the worsening dust and wind we could not make out what it was and struck camp before night fell.

Lost Pilgrims had an AMA session over on discord where players asked us questions about the game and the studio alike. We had a great time talking to people and decided to compile the questions and answers into a single AMA article for posterity. We also added some very frequently asked questions to the beginning that players or those looking up information on the game might find informative.

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).

'You know the saying: Only and idiot looks directly at the sun. Now, just so you know, only the king of the land of the greatest idiots looks directly at the calerus in daylight.'

- Valkhor, local guide of Lumen, to a group of newcomers

Nestled at the border of the South Calerus, the town of Lumen sprung up many decades ago when the Empire decided to try and emulate the successful crystal harvesting operations of the Kalani people of the east. To date, the settlement is indeed the most successful such operation outside of Sargot Kala.

Tor'Zag's Shelter is a vast, dark city in the belly of the Blackblood Mountains, carved out mostly by Imperials after obsidian became scarcer in the region and the fleeing armies of Warleader Tor'Zag, an Orc general, capitulated, leaving the tunnels beneath the mountain at the end of the Orc War. People who lost everything came here to share respite from the scorching sun of the Jagged Waste with traders who were looking to establish a way-station between Deven in the north and the Province in the south. Now, a couple of hundred years later, the Shelter is among the five greatest cities of the continent.

'What draws them to this place, I wonder. Is it the utter sadness that permeates this forsaken expanse? Does it call to them when they begin to feel the chill breath of death? Perhaps there is a wordless language spanning all species that speaks as the realm of Ahskul starts to beckon.'