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.

Vagrus’s At the Heart of Ruin expansion introduces many new enemies – both bestial and humanoid – and this week we’re happy to bring you one particular favorite: the Charred Shambler. These scorching Undead can be found almost anywhere in the confines of old Dvendar Tharr. When the Calamity tore the Mountains of Fire asunder, Dwarves perished by the thousands, a lot of them warriors. Later, the twisted magic that bore down on these lands reanimated their remains so that those would walk the world again and lash out toward the living. Charred Shamblers are thus destined to roam the mountains, taking their rage out on any who chance their domain. To call them predatory would be an understatement.

It’s no secret that At the Heart of Ruin, our upcoming expansion, features a veritable cornucopia of scorching locales. Death by exhaustion, flame, or combustion is likely to be a frequent occurrence. Yet perhaps more than any location above ground, the subterranean depths of Dvendar Tharr are the worst; rivers of lava cut through rock, frequently blocking the way, making exploration a tenuous and perilous notion.

As we ramp up the teasers for At the Heart of Ruin’s release, some of Varnurud’s most perilous landscapes come to the fore. While the mountainous realm’s northernmost reaches are a far cry from the red-hot, scorching locales closer to the volcanos, they pose a different kind of threat  – one emanating immense dread. In so many respects, this is no man’s land.

This week’s article introduces not just another scalding locale where perilous heat is a given, but it is also held by one of Varnurud’s most determined scavenger gangs, the Hollow Men. Dubbed “the Bastion” by its current occupants, the ruin itself is ancient and of Dwarven origin. Following the Calamity and subsequent catastrophes on the mountain, half of its stone buildings were consumed by lava, yet at least for the time being, the rest of the scorched stone structures remain accessible. There is no telling today what the purpose of the ancient Dwarven settlement was but it had sturdy buildings and tall towers that commanded a large swathe of the area.