The greatest thing about running open development is receiving amazing feedback from players that helps improving your game. The hardest thing about open development is identifying what the actual problem is that your players are having an issue with.

The perfect example of all this is Crew Combat in Vagrus, which is an aspect of the game that players complained about fairly regularly. After adding the Flee/Appease option, it got slightly better but not as much as we had hoped. While digging for the reasons, we came to some interesting realizations. Whenever we heard someone getting irked about how they bled out against a much stronger enemy, we asked whether they tried appeasing them and they pretty much all said "No, 'Flee' implied losing big time".

Companion Combat is an important facet of Vagrus even though players have quite a lot of control over how much they want to engage in it. At the same time, it is the most complex part of the game when it comes to code, so whatever changes we make requires more time relative to other parts.

After we added Mercenary Tasks, our focus has moved back to improving Companion Combat, partly because a lot of players opt to enter it from Crew Combat, so it is our goal to keep these fights interesting for as long as possible. The current set of changes are thus aimed at spicing things up a bit: more movement and thus further emphasis on positioning instead of spamming Skill 1 while standing still. The changes include:

Contempt personified, the enemy Necromancers are calm and calculating on the battlefield. Few comprehend, however, that most of their mental faculties are used to puppeteer their Undead servants.

The Lost Pilgrims Team

--------------------------------------------------

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

Hey Folks,

it's been a long time coming but finally Mercenary Tasks are live in the latest build. These not only add a ton of variation and replayability but also go a long way in softening up story content and allow the running of a combat oriented comitatus for players. Fair warning, though: just like none of the other income sources work by themselves, Mercenary Tasks do not either. Combine them with Trade Tasks, passengers, and stories, with an emphasis on whichever you prefer over the others.

What is this 'Dissonance Mode', you ask? Essentially, it is a game mode you can select when starting a new game and that shifts the experience toward a more narrative route, easing up on the management and combat mechanics to transform Vagrus into more of a visual novel for those that find the challenge too taxing.

Hey Folks,

we have been a bit busy. Sorry about that! Now we are coming back big time with a patch that is a culmination of all the changes we have made on the main game over the course of the last nine months.

COVID did not help matters for us but overall, we are happy with our progress thus far. Read more about how 2020 went for us in our blog post here: 2020 Year-End Summary.

Great news: Vagrus has made it into the finalists in the Digital Dragons Indie Celebration competition!

Beside the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places awarded based on the votes of the jury, there is also a Community Vote you can participate in here. The list is in alphabetical order, so Vagrus is the last one. ;)

As we teased in our latest devlog post about Mercenary Tasks, we are extending Crew Combat with a new feature: you can deal with the enemy from now on following a victorious battle. This simply means that you can decide the fate of the defeated foe.

The option appears on the Crew Combat UI at the end of the fight opposite your heal options provided that your enemy surrendered (remember, only humanoids can), fled or retreated but you caught some of them while pursuing them.

We are immensely honored, happy, and proud to share that Vagrus has been nominated for two awards in the upcoming Unfold Games Awards show. It feels like quite an achievement for a game still in Early Access, especially since over 400 high-quality games entered the contest. The nominees were selected by a panel of 20 judges comprised of top industry professionals. The two categories are:

The latest content update (Patch 0.5.30 Codename: Brimstone and Bones) brings with it a spacious region to explore, the most prominent part of which are the Smolderbone Flats. Players who took the 'Pilgrims of the Wasteland' standalone story for a spin surely recognize this place, as it was an important location in that story. And yet you will find that much has changed since your last visit, with 10 years passing, allegiances shifting, and new threats rising.