It's been a while since we've attended a game show but we are finally back in the - alas virtual - saddle! With none other than DreamHack, in fact. It's a gaming event that we have loved ever since our trip to showcase Vagrus at DH Summer in Sweden back in 2019.

DreamHack Beyond was held between July 24 and July 31 as a fully digital event. What made it unique was that they created an actually video game that you could log into, pick your avatar, and walk around in a world reminiscent of Rick and Morty's. We as developers were invited to participate in the event by customizing our virtual game console so that visitors could walk up and interact with it on the virtual show floor.

'You have taken our herd-brother captive, two-legs. Now you either trade him back to us or face the wrath of my tribe. I would think twice before you answer. When irked, we are not unlike Kal-dai-Ruhk, Great Spirit of the Eternal Wastes, when he summons his calamitous gales to wipe away whole cities.'

- The Kal-rish traveling merchant Ku-ro-Rath bargaining for his kin's life with a soon-to-be destroyed outpost's magistrate

In the long line of UI reworks, our next stop is the crew UI where all the panes will now receive a lot of changes and upgrades. We planned to make these changes earlier but the design was in motion all the time - with new stats and mechanics being added - and so other things were completed and added before these in the end. And so now, so close to 1.0, we finally got around to implement the new crew UI.

Hey Folks,

with so many of you well over the hundred hours mark in the game, it was high time for us to add the opportunity to actually win it. The first winning condition we have implemented is the Renown victory. The other two, Wealth and Knowledge will become available in the 1.0 release later this year.

Lately, we've been working on the Abolitionists, a unique faction that is a bit hidden and up until now, their presence was very minor apart from their main base of operations. The next content build will include a new system that you will be able to use to unlock new faction locations for the Abolitionists. This involves getting ciphers from an already unlocked location (initially their main base) and taking it (within a time limit) to a new settlement where it will unlock the faction's presence there.

'Kindly Sister' is a euphemism that has become a colloquialism throughout the long and bloody centuries of the Fourth Age, denoting the common members of Nosferatis Sisterhood, a coven of furtive dark sorceresses and witches. The religious organization has secretive goals revolving around magical research but beyond that the Sisters support Imperial agenda all over the Realms.

As we are gearing up for the 1.0 release of Vagrus, we are finally coming around to implement the victory mechanics, which means that you will soon be able to complete a playthrough! There are caveats, of course, since we are still in Early Access, but we thought it was time to discuss what to expect (now and later).

Hey Folks,

it was amazing to see how our latest patch was received. So many great new reviews and quite a few previously negative ones flipped to positive. We appreciate you all immensely for your vote of confidence! Especially as apparently we left a huge bug in the game that made the late game easier, instead of the early game, as we originally intended. So that's getting fixed but what else comes in this new patch, you might ask? Let's dive in!

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".

Veles gladiators are mobile, evasive fighters who are best at supporting the sturdy Murmillos in the arena, although they can dish out punishment surprisingly suddenly if the tide turns in their favor. Although they are not the most stalwart front line fighters, their high Block and Evade stats make them actually hard to defeat. That, coupled with their good Armor and their amazing Initiative, gives them enough opportunities to control the flow of battle. Their Skills are not amazing, but dependable, with the kick being able to upset enemy lines and create opportunities for lethal attacks: