The time has come to sharpen your quills, dust off your scrolls, and return to your studies. Or, if you happen to live in the Riven Realms, perhaps also to sharpen your blades, inspect your beasts, and make sure your supplies will last until the next statio.

While there may not be a universally recognized academy capable of preparing someone for the life of a vagrus, surviving the wasteland requires a surprisingly broad education. A successful leader must be part explorer, merchant, commander, diplomat, warrior, and even historian. So, with the season of learning upon us, we thought we'd put together a rather unconventional curriculum.

In this series of “Revisited” articles, we’re taking a look at iconic or interesting locations in the playable part of the Riven Realms and invoke their unique atmosphere. Music plays a key role in building the game’s ambiance, and so we’ve decided to prepare short videos to get the vibe across.

In this series of “Revisited” articles, we’re taking a look at iconic or interesting locations in the playable part of the Riven Realms and invoke their unique atmosphere. 

This time around, we’re taking a look at the Great Stairs, a location we first introduced a year ago. Many once-mighty edifices of an age long past still dot the volcanic landscape of Varnurud, the ravine-ridden, broken ridges of the northern Mountains of Fire. Among the most impressive such structures is what the savage inhabitants of the region simply call “the Great Stairs”, although it was once known as the Stairs of Baldar. In the ancient days of the Third Age, the kingdom’s Dwarves used these to ascend to the tall ranges of Norrgadar, or down to Varnurud – often with cargo. By present day, the stairs have crumbled so badly that it is difficult to believe they were ever safe to traverse. Rumor has it that many scavengers found their deaths trying to reach the highest point, if only to gaze outward and take in the magnificent view of the valleys below.

Deep beneath the broken earth of the Mountains of Fire, there exists a subterranean realm where amber crystalline growths, fungal forests, ancient Dwarven roads, lava-rivers, and long-abandoned mines await intrepid explorers. It is a perilous world full of secrets, wrapped in near-boundless gloom, and it leads every which way one can imagine. And yet, dear traveler, these things are not all that await interlopers.

Today’s lore post is focused on the Dwarven kingdom of Dvendar Tharr, and it’s connected to At the Heart of Ruin’s release thematically, which has seen players venturing deep into the Mountains of Fire. A place which, long before the Calamity struck, was a bastion of brilliance, ingenuity, and innovation. Perhaps most importantly, Dvandar Tharr is not a place so easily shown in one expansion, as much as we would like to. It is an entire region with a rich history of ascendance and, subsequently, peril. Moreover, it is easily among the most difficult places to traverse due to its terrain and insane natural conditions.

Like most years, 2025 has been a year of ups and downs, but certainly at Lost Pilgrims, it’s been a satisfying year full of releases and interactions with our community. We’re happy to put the year behind us and welcome 2026, but today we’re going to do a bit of a retrospective on the past 12 months or so. If that sounds like your bag, stick around. We’re going topic by topic, and there’s a lot to talk about!

We’re excited to announce that At the Heart of Ruin, the second expansion of Vagrus – The Riven Realms, is now available on Nintendo Switch!

We’re excited to finally reveal that At the Heart of Ruin will arrive on Nintendo Switch on December 22. It is the last platform to receive the expansion due to its longer approval process, but that extra time worked in everyone’s favor. Drawing on the wealth of feedback from players across all other platforms, we’ve been able to refine, tweak, and polish the experience even further.

Hey everyone,

This update not only brings another round of fixes and tweaks, but also adds a lengthy quest called “The Gangs of Varnurud”, changes a location in the expansion, and introduces Fog of War to certain parts of At the Heart of Ruin.

Shoutout to Trese Brothers on Cyber Knights: Flashpoint

Before getting into 1.260, we’d look to mention our good friends at Trese Brothers, who’ve just hit a big milestone for their tactical RPG, Cyber Knights: Flashpoint, released earlier this year, while also running a sale. This deep tactical RPG puts you in charge of cyberpunk mercenaries, sending squads on tense heights amidst the megacorps and crime syndicates of the 23rd century. Like Vagrus, it’s a challenging, complex game. It’s not an open world experience or narrative-focused, instead mixing hand-crafted content with clever procedurally generated systems and a huge variety of character build options, for extreme replayability. If you like games like XCOM or Shadowrun, this one’s worth a look!

Players’ reactions to At the Heart of Ruin are coming in hard and fast, and we’re delighted to see how our community is interacting with the expansion, providing praise, feedback, and articulate criticism, as well as reporting the bugs they find. Apart from tackling these, we’ve already started planning what follows – more on that later – and tying up some loose ends.