As the day’s heat settles over the deserts and arid wastelands of Xeryn, travel becomes even more treacherous. In Vagrus, several game systems represent or contextualize this – Vigor loss, Movement Point costs (that include difficulty from “climate”), and even Events that deal with the hardships or challenges presented by scorching weather. In our upcoming At the Heart of Ruin expansion, the heat will be turned up even more. The Mountains of Fire might not be beaten by the cruel sun all day due to the blanket of ash obscuring the skies, but volcanic activities take care of raising temperatures to even greater extremes.

One of the best things about our upcoming expansion is the sheer number of fearsome foes one will be able to bump into. So this week, we’re going to show you one of our favourites: the Basilisk.

The fearsome Basilisk is a creature of legend that exists across countless worlds and mythologies, evoking dread in even the staunchest of warriors and adventurers. In the Riven Realms, these reptiles began to make their appearance in Xeryn’s Fourth Age, some time after the Calamity tore the realms asunder. Found only in the Mountains of Fire, some say that they are sluggish lizards, yet the truth is that they can be both cunning and lightning-fast when under threat.

This week we’re coming to you with another teaser, this time of the elemental variety. As you might know, the elements, specifically fire and earth, are closely tied to our At the Heart of Ruin expansion, and the proliferation of elementals that personify these elements comes about largely because of the spirits of these lands, destined to suffer and be consumed by rage. This is the sad legacy of the Calamity.

This week, we’re revealing something that we hope you’ll never have to visit in game: the village the Cleansing Conflagration – the gang of pyromaniacal, murderous scavengers – call home. Though it may not look much, it is a place of terror, sacrifice, and depravity, where there are artifacts and effigies aplenty to remind you of what goes on here.

Great news, everyone: Vagrus - the Riven Realms and all of its DLCs are now live on Xbox, Nintendo Switch, PS4, and PS5! It’s been a long, hard road getting the game into a ready state for consoles, offering the features necessary that allow it to play well on these platforms, but we got there, and we can’t wait for console players to sink their teeth into the experience.

This week we’re gracing your web browsers and social media feeds with another teaser of our upcoming DLC. These characters belong to another gang that will attack you outright, for the Raptors are hardly a sane bunch. Most follow a descendent of their mysterious leader, who stumbled upon a rogue Wyvern and believed it to be the remains of a divine creature of the skies. In their quest for meaning and purpose, the followers of this founder – considered by many to be blessed – sought to imitate these creatures and themselves become ascendant and escape their earthbound existence.

This week’s post covers the creation of our painted Campaign Map and the interactive Chart, starting from their humblest beginnings in our creative director’s tabletop role-playing game materials to their eventual manifestation in-game, covered by a node grid and expanded with interactive options.

Beginnings

To kick it off, let’s start by taking a look at how it all began for Vagrus.

For this week’s post, we’d like to draw attention to several pieces of artwork by our wonderful painter, Bence, or Benmonor. Bence is always ready to create multiple iterations of environmental paintings, filling Xeryn with awe-inspiring art. Here we have included a few of his works that quietly made it into the game’s main campaign.

Today we are sharing some of our newest art related to the upcoming DLC: Old Acquaintances. We’ll not tarry here with wasteful words, dear reader, take a look for yourself.

This week we’re getting down to brass tacks: our first upcoming DLC this year and the Companions therein. Development is coming along smoothly, and we thought we’d share the highlights by delving into some details – without giving much away this early.