The 3rd of September was a big day for fans of the interactive Fighting Fantasy gamebooks that have brought countless hours of entertainment to so many of us since the 1980s. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the publication of the first Fighting Fantasy gamebook The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, the fourth Fighting Fantasy Fest was held in London. Visitors of the Fest could meet legends like Steve Jackson and Sir Ian Livingstone in person, along with many other prominent gamebook writers like Rhianna Pratchett, Jonathan Green, or Marc Gascoigne, as well as many graphic artists of the book series. We could have our books signed, pick up a bunch of merchandise, mingle with other fans, and watch presentations on various, exciting topics. It was indeed great fun!

Hey everyone,

The new update is here, and with it comes a free DLC Companion! Note that all the features and changes are automatically accessed via the update, while the Undead chef Vorax is available by downloading the new DLC for free. Now let’s see in a bit more detail what each of these additions bring. As ever, you can find the detailed patch notes at the end of the page.

Once the new Companion, namely the corpulent Undead chef called Vorax, gets added into the game, players will find that true to his word, he can indeed cook for the crew. Choices include his famous shroom brew, the dangerous-looking kelp soup, the fabled Dragon egg omelet, and even a mean Tarkian coffee (and more!). All of these provide different bonuses to crew, Companions, or your vagrus. We hope you'll enjoy this aspect of his abilities as much as we enjoyed designing it.

With the release of Vagrus behind us along with the production of the Collectors' and Emperors' Editions, we are getting back into the swing of developing new stuff for the game. We are now concentrating on our first free-LC, which will add the companion called Vorax into the game. He's been shown off before but since then he's received a bit of a visual overhaul. He'll come with his own background, loyalty questline, and unique abilities, providing players a much-needed second option for a Supercargo.

We talked about the Collector's Edition of Vagrus in a previous post and now the time has come to reveal the Emperor's Edition! With all the elements that come in the box having arrived and being prepared for shipping, we can show them off, starting with one of the stars of the show: the Finndurarth miniature.

Necromancy is the arcane art of manipulating life-force, allowing practitioners to communicate with the dead and animate Undead minions. In most of the Riven Realms, this school of magic is associated with the Priests of Ahskul - worshipers of the God of Death - and Necromancers. The majority of the latter either belong to the Church, too, or are otherwise licensed by the Empire. Thus in Vagrus, Necromancer enemies almost always strengthen Imperial rosters, although you can come across some rogue practitioners, too.

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".

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

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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.