Ah, yes, the Ghouls. Are they Undead? Not quite. But they are equally disgusting and very, very dangerous. This one is about to leap at a tasty target.

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With the previous large update (Codename: Bandage), we have introduced some changes to Scouting on the campaign map and we thought that we should give you a more detailed change log of what exactly happened. These alterations all appear on the Scouting Result UI.

• A set of colored chevrons now indicate the success or failure state of your scouting in each direction instead of text saying how things went.
• For each successful scouting, a set of icons appear that indicate what to expect there with chances for each of these outcomes next to the icons. The scroll icon indicates an Event, the axe icon means a crew combat encounter, the compass shows an exploration Task destination (but we'll implement this feature in the future), and the crossed-out circle indicates that nothing happens.
• For each critical success, you will now get more precise percentages and more detailed information in the case of Events. The blue scroll indicates a priority Event (story-related or fixed local Event), while the golden scroll means a random Event (general or region-specific).
• Scouting now also provides information about the viability of hunting and foraging on the scouted nodes. Percentages represent the expected chances of such activities on the nodes. The less successful the scouting, the less  accurate the percentages are (with critical success being perfectly accurate).

As you can see, we have been working on making Scouting more desirable for players, as we feel that in its current form it is rather under-used. This is but a first step - we have many more ideas and will hopefully be able to implement them as we go along. Thank you for all the amazing feedback and improvement suggestions you all gave us!

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.

With the relatively recent arrival of Factions to Vagrus, you guys finally got your hands on a new way to specialize your comitatus. Up until now, this meant some obscure (albeit very welcome - I'm looking at you, road tax) boons and perks but now, with the addition of claimable rewards, Factions are going to become your best friends.

The murmillo is a heavily armored gladiator with a large scutum (shield) and a gladius (short sword). Modeled after the ancient Roman arena fighters of the same name, these enemies are among the strongest specialized encounters.

Sturdy and resilient with a high Block value, these guys can tough it out in the front lines for long unless you find a way to break their defenses. They are also great at defending their fellow fighters standing next to them due to their Defender combat trait (which provides armor to these allies). The Murmillo combat Skills are as follows:

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.

Animation showcase time! Imagine pestering his little ant-like fellows and then this dude shows up, all business. Yikes.

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Our crowdfunding campaign is LIVE at Fig.co. Get instant access to the Alpha build now!

This, too, has come to pass: we entered Early Access with Vagrus on Steam and GOG.com over a week ago. It has been an emotional roller-coaster since, to say the least, and a very exciting experience altogether. In this post, we thought to give you our thoughts on the whole shebang and look into what comes next.

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.

Patch 0.5.14 - codename: Bandage

- Almost all crash bugs fixed (still chasing one in the companion combat)

- A massive number of performance improvements