Foul-mouthed, easy-going, hearty, and chatty, the creature now known as 'Vorax' (meaning 'ravenous' in Imperial) is an undead abomination who can become one of your companions. He woke up one day in this bloated unliving form with no memory whatsoever of who he was or what he had done to deserve this fate. Yet his will is free, unbound to dark magicians (a rarity for undead), so he decided not to worry about it and get about his new 'life' with great enthusiasm.

A lot has happened since our last project post where we looked back on 2018 as a sort of a year assessment.

Prologue

We finished the year with releasing the Prologue section of Vagrus just around Christmas. Our hopes were high and the results were... even better! Let's delve into the details.

Superb news! Vagrus has been picked as one of the Top 10 upcoming itch.io #indiegames by 'ClemmyGames - The Best Of Indie Games'!

The Empire has been strewn with ruined fortresses and keeps since the Calamity. Additionally, the brutal wars and conflicts ever since the catastrophe have done considerable damage to the reclaimed and rebuilt forts, leaving many in disrepair or outright abandoned. Fort Larius, Fort Teltulis, Fort Tirnos, one of the Twin Towers - the list goes on and on.

Another crucial game mechanic that is being added to Vagrus as we are writing this is a system of Rumors. Rumors are short entries in your Journal that are meant to guide players to content and unlock locations on their Chart in order to help them plan journeys and find places. We have come to the conclusion during playtesting that not only do we need to differentiate these Rumor entries from your Objectives in the Journal but we also need to separate them entirely and move them to a different pane. As evident from this, Rumors have undergone quite a lot of change since their original conception.

The images above are from one of the starting regions of the main game, shedding some light on parts of the huge campaign map the player can traverse in Vagrus.

We can already hear you ask: 'But guys... why don't you show off the whole map?'

This time we would like to introduce a brand new game mechanic to you that you will see quite a lot in Vagrus: the acquiring and delivering of news across vast tracts of wasteland. Carrying news between settlements not only makes sense from a gameplay perspective but has its foundations in-world, too, that is, comitati are known to have a vital role in distributing news and taking messages all over the continent of Xeryn.

The wretched animated beings that plague the desolate Riven Realms have many names, even the general, rotting raised dead such as the ones on the image: shamblers, unliving, awakened, undead, corpsemen, and many more. Travelers who died on the road and came back as undead are typically referred to as 'Forsaken', however, and these unfortunate creatures are often drawn to living travelers, seeking to extinguish their lives at the command some unfathomable curse.

In the last part of the Combat Guide we took a look at defenses and their importance. This time, we'll delve into effects that involve movement or its restriction in one way or another. 

In the last part of the Combat Guide we took a look at Companion Actions, including moving, Skills, and their combinations. This time, we'll delve into defensive stats and their importance.