This week we wanted to confirm that the second cosmetic supporter pack for Vagrus is coming along nicely, and also provide a little peak into said progress. These supporter packs are ways to further aid the development of Vagrus and our studio in general, and they provide a cosmetic for every Companion in the game as a “thank you”.

Today’s lore post is focused on the Dwarven kingdom of Dvendar Tharr, and it’s connected to At the Heart of Ruin’s release thematically, which has seen players venturing deep into the Mountains of Fire. A place which, long before the Calamity struck, was a bastion of brilliance, ingenuity, and innovation. Perhaps most importantly, Dvandar Tharr is not a place so easily shown in one expansion, as much as we would like to. It is an entire region with a rich history of ascendance and, subsequently, peril. Moreover, it is easily among the most difficult places to traverse due to its terrain and insane natural conditions.

Varnurud, the stage that most of At the Heart of Ruin plays out on, is a varied realm of ruin, past glory, and faded splendor. The kingdom of Dvendarr Tharr, now mostly referred to as the Mountains of Fire, has a great deal of Dwarven infrastructure; ruins of stone are most plentiful. Although most of it has crumbled to rubble or dust in the wake of the Calamity, there are those jutting edifices that yet endure – old watchtowers, cracked roads, small forts, great staircases, and massive walls only a few among them. One does not have to look far and wide.

Hey everyone,

This update not only brings another round of fixes and tweaks, but also adds a lengthy quest called “The Gangs of Varnurud”, changes a location in the expansion, and introduces Fog of War to certain parts of At the Heart of Ruin.

Shoutout to Trese Brothers on Cyber Knights: Flashpoint

Before getting into 1.260, we’d look to mention our good friends at Trese Brothers, who’ve just hit a big milestone for their tactical RPG, Cyber Knights: Flashpoint, released earlier this year, while also running a sale. This deep tactical RPG puts you in charge of cyberpunk mercenaries, sending squads on tense heights amidst the megacorps and crime syndicates of the 23rd century. Like Vagrus, it’s a challenging, complex game. It’s not an open world experience or narrative-focused, instead mixing hand-crafted content with clever procedurally generated systems and a huge variety of character build options, for extreme replayability. If you like games like XCOM or Shadowrun, this one’s worth a look!

Since At the Heart of Ruin’s release, we’ve been honored to receive press from a variety of outlets, on YouTube, and be promoted by fellow developers who are kind enough to give the expansion a shout-out.

While the studio is still trying to recover from the exertion of the last couple of weeks (or months, really) leading up to the release of At the Heart of Ruin, we are patching and updating the game with hotfixes to iron out any outstanding issues. A detailed list of updates and fixes are below at your perusal, but we’ve also started to conceptualize our next cosmetic pack because of how popular the first one turned out to be – go check it out!

‘I say: Dwarves! I’ve seen ‘em pass through ‘ere. Folks say they went up the way of the old fort inside the mountain, they did. Whass their business – nobody knows. Maybe in cahoots wif the Elves there? Aye, armor black as night, eyes aglow with malice, I tell ya. Murka said so, ‘fore he died. Poisoned, the poor wretch. Told ‘im not to go to Dum bloody Garok, but he was starvin’. Or uh… might’ve been the spiders, you see. Maybe them Dwarves are in cahoots wif ‘em? Anyhoo, are ya eatin’ that?’

Every week brings us a step closer to the release of our At the Heart of Ruin Expansion, and this week, we’d like to progress in a similar vein to last week’s post – we’re going to continue talking about Dwarves!

In the long lead-up to the release of our At the Heart of Ruin expansion, we’ve spoken at length about Dvendar Tharr and the perils there – the horrifying creatures, the utterly inhospitable weather, and the countless other hazards that await the bold who venture there. Most denizens of the Riven Realms know the realm of Dvendarr Tharr to be largely uninhabitable.

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.