We are absolutely stoked to announce that our expansion, At the Heart of Ruin, is finally OUT! As usual for us, the project’s scope was vast, and after putting as much as we could into it, be they stories, features, locations, factions, artwork, enemies, or rewards, we’re proud of what we’ve achieved and excited to see what you make of it!

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.

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.

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.

Since our console launch, we have received a lot of love and support from our community, as well as some interesting questions. We have collected the most common ones – along with answers to them – in this post. Hopefully, players looking for something can find it here.

Q: What kind of game is this exactly?

Great news, everyone: Vagrus - the Riven Realms and all of its DLCs are now live on Xbox, Nintendo Switch, PS4, and PS5! It’s been a long, hard road getting the game into a ready state for consoles, offering the features necessary that allow it to play well on these platforms, but we got there, and we can’t wait for console players to sink their teeth into the experience.

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.

Our aim at Lost Pilgrims is not just to create memorable gaming experiences, but also to introduce you to people who contribute to building our cozy community. Therefore, we have interviewed Ben the Human, who has been streaming Vagrus for a while now and recently arrived at a major milestone by concluding a run with over 250 episodes. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to ask him about his gaming journey and his experience with Vagrus:

New or Updated Features

• You can now double-click to move on the campaign map.
• Revamped key bindings: defaults have been changed to be more intuitive and grouped by topics or UI categories, and new hotkeys have been added.
• The Leadership Perk “Command” has been reworked: it now unlocks all advanced Crew Combat actions passively and when Resourcefulness is spent, it raises Combat Strength and Defense by 15% as well as turns Critical Failure rolls to Failure.
• The effects of multiple “Terrifying” Perks no longer stack. Stacking caused Skills that target multiple positions with characters with the Perk to be close to useless.
• You can now butcher Beasts and Mounts directly at your Outpost instead of having to move them to the comitatus.
• You no longer lose Mounts when Fighters leave you during Events (ie. Outriders do not take their Mounts) for narrative reasons.

Having deployed Old Acquaintances’ first hotfix, the team at Lost Pilgrims Studio has moved on to our next project: the regional DLC. The beginning of this process is iterative and requires intense coordination; it begins with the design phase, planning locations, and an overarching narrative. We need to understand what unique gameplay elements the DLC will bring to the table, which narrative beats we want to focus on, and finally, which characters or NPCs will drive that narrative.