Hey everyone,

What a month it's been! We spent it looking back at the five year history of Vagrus and its development with you through the Revisited series, the anniversary update, and the team's retrospective. Seeing your memories shared as well, from your first comitati to hard-won endings, was the best part of the celebration.

If you have been following our updates, you might have noticed the mention of Exploration Encounters receiving vignettes. What are they? In this context, vignettes are small pieces of lineart (in an ink-on-paper style) that accompany bits of text to invoke a certain atmosphere. Vignette sets are assigned to Exploration Encounters based on their location, environment, and foes. For instance, the districts of Dum Garok have their own sets of these illustrations to invoke the place’s unique character. A whole other set of them appear in Exploration Encounters in the Ember Mines.

Since World Art Day is today, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on something at the very heart of Vagrus: the works of visual and audio art through which the game’s world manifests. From the first sketches to the final brushstrokes, from the quietest ambient tones to the swelling notes of discovery, the Riven Realms exist because of the people who built them—piece by piece.