As the days of the pandemic continue to drag on, we thought about showing you guys how we've acclimated ourselves to the current situation and have a little tour of each team member's home office space.

First thing first, let me introduce the MVP of the team, Stitch, without whose supervision Szonja's art station would not be the same.

'You know the saying: Only and idiot looks directly at the sun. Now, just so you know, only the king of the land of the greatest idiots looks directly at the calerus in daylight.'

- Valkhor, local guide of Lumen, to a group of newcomers

Nestled at the border of the South Calerus, the town of Lumen sprung up many decades ago when the Empire decided to try and emulate the successful crystal harvesting operations of the Kalani people of the east. To date, the settlement is indeed the most successful such operation outside of Sargot Kala.

Sand Wyrms are a race of huge, worm-like creatures that burrow in sand. Thought to have been extinct, they resurfaced a few decades ago, albeit exclusively in remote desert regions and in small numbers only, so the Empire and its allies do not need to fear another destructive war against their kind. Or do they?

In combat, Sand Wyrms try to overwhelm their opponents with their numbers, but they are not pushovers alone, either: high Vitality and Evade stats make them difficult to kill, as is their armored carapace. Their Skills are ideal to cause serious damage and weaken opponents:

TL;DR: A new, extended Demo is coming to Steam and GOG so that those on the fence can take Vagrus for a spin and see what we've been cooking for a while now. This all comes at the tail end of over a month of hard work with the freshly released Open-World prototypes.

Now, let us see in more detail all the things that happened recently around the game.

A new combat idle animation we wanted to show off is right here! Slings are deadly and these guys know it.

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We have always planned a fairly elaborate system of healing mechanics but when creating 'Pilgrims of the Wasteland', we first focused on getting the main features ready and implemented a more streamlined, placeholder set of healing rules.

Out with the Old

The PotW system simply had you use a relatively valuable resource - medical supplies - to fully heal one Companion at a time during camp. This is not only too 'gamey' but also very obtuse and not what we intended for the game or the setting.

'We do not worship the Dragons like you do your false Imperial Gods. We do not sacrifice to them or beg for their fickle blessings. Our Dragonlords are our paragons; a testament to what every being can aspire to and the source of the Flame that lives in all of us. That same Flame can burn your ass to crisp if you dare slander their name again.'

According to players currently testing the open-world, it is hard to make a living as an independent comitatus in the Empire. That was an intended design choice, because almost all the trade is controlled by factions on the continent, be they Trading Houses, religious organizations or criminals. With their Imperial trading monopoly licenses or their raw negotiating power, factions buy and sell at significantly better prices. With that in mind, we have planned to include a Task-system from the beginning and we are now getting closer and closer to implementing it.

Grufta are disgusting creatures that dwell in the darkest, filthiest, and most humid places, usually deep underground. Their nests are often found in city sewers and adult specimen hunt people with deadly efficiency. Their stench alone makes fighting these large worms extremely difficult - it renders the air around them poisonous. Grufta attack in numbers, are quite sturdy, and can avoid attacks with their fast movement. Their skill set includes a powerful attack and an ability to stun opponents:

Initially, we built Companion Combat without too much focus on the combat AI, knowing full well that it would be a massive task to code and having most of the combat features locked before we do so would make it overall a more efficient undertaking.