This week marks the addition of Leader Status and Perk Summary panes to the Leader UI. And although it might seem a superfluous gain, these will round out the status effect AI as well as the information provided about Perks, so it is indeed a very important milestone in our march towards completing the game.

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).

TL;DR: A new, extended Demo is coming to Steam and GOG so that those on the fence can take Vagrus for a spin and see what we've been cooking for a while now. This all comes at the tail end of over a month of hard work with the freshly released Open-World prototypes.

Now, let us see in more detail all the things that happened recently around the game.

According to players currently testing the open-world, it is hard to make a living as an independent comitatus in the Empire. That was an intended design choice, because almost all the trade is controlled by factions on the continent, be they Trading Houses, religious organizations or criminals. With their Imperial trading monopoly licenses or their raw negotiating power, factions buy and sell at significantly better prices. With that in mind, we have planned to include a Task-system from the beginning and we are now getting closer and closer to implementing it.

We have started almost every single project update with 'A lot has happened since our last update' but now the 'lot' of the past seems kind of tiny compared to the 'LOT' of today.

The Pandemic

Corona hit hard and unexpected. What we looked at with blissful ignorance and naivety in the early days turned our lives upside down in mere weeks.  Luckily, everyone from the team is safe and sound as of now, though being in the middle of the flu season we cannot be certain whether we've been exposed to the virus already or not. Either way, we  stay home to keep everyone around us safer.

Hey everyone,

we wanted to provide an update on Vagrus as we come close to releasing the first Open World build. We've been talking about it for a long time now, we know, but we hope you will appreciate the ambition of this small team, along with all the effort and heart poured into the game when you get your hands on it.

There were a number of project milestones that we managed to unlock recently over at fig. Some of these are quite big and we are very excited to be able to work on them as they make the game better and deeper by what they bring to the table. Let's take a quick look at what is being developed currently:

One of the last big additions to Vagrus' Open World Campaign that is now coming very close to being released is the character creation sequence at the start of the game. That is the feature that allows you to customize and set up your own vagrus by selecting a variety of options in subsequent steps. To give a quick idea of the many amazing options, here's a little rundown:

• MS 6: Crew Combat Alpha
• MS 14: Unrest and Obedience Mechanics (Partial delivery): Liberate or Discipline Slaves to gain Obedience. Unrest will be added in a later update.
• Butcher beasts or mounts for supplies
• Warning triggers if an action would result in cargo loss

• MS 10: Chart Exploration
• MS 11: Companion Select during Events
• MS 13: Hidden Stash and Smuggling Contraband

• New sound effects for a number of creatures
• Camping without guards decreases Obedience
• Radial menu icons automatically pop up on the campaign map
• Node sizes increased for Point of Interests to better indicate them
• Goods tooltips now show more trade information
• Merged a few perks to make them more impactful

• Passenger destinations are now generated correctly in new games (thanks for catching and reporting this!)! Old saves remain bugged.
• New Day save now works after combat encounters in the Fighting Pit event
• Cargo slot changes are now applied immediately
• Fixed tutorial pins for closing the Journal and the Codex
• Fixed a bug causing Companion conversation portraits to be empty
• Healing companions no longer triggers the incorrect Event result text
• Fixed the Journal entry order for The Black Knight chapter V, Eliminating the Abolitionist Camps
• Clicking on the Journal or Codex during "Hold space..." tutorial/narration is up now does not open them

• More Sound Effects
• Vagrus Creation for the Main Campaign
• Companion Combat tweaks and additions
• Factions UI
• Animations for all characters

• Open World Prototype