Vagrus: The Riven Realms – Delivered Milestones

Lost Pilgrims Studio’s turn-based post-apocalyptic fantasy RPG Vagrus: The Riven Realms is being funded through a Fig campaign based around a series of incremental milestones. And seeing how it can be tricky to keep track of all these milestones, we now get a couple of Steam announcements (part 1 and part 2) packed with brief videos showcasing the recently-implemented features. Here’s what you’ll find behind the links above:

Dear future vagri,

we’ve been busy implementing the milestones backers unlocked on Fig in the last few months but thought to give a heads-up to those of you primarily following us here on Steam. In the following collection of short videos we demonstrate some of the many recently added features to the game. Stay tuned, for we’ll soon return with another round of short vids about a whole other set of features.

Chart Exploration

Your chart is one of your most important tools in Vagrus, and we keep adding to and expanding on it with subsequent builds. Milestone 10 unlocked what we referred to as ‘chart exploration’, which really means that from now on, Rumors, Passengers, and Codex entries you gain of locations also reveal them on your Chart, adding a whole new depth to hunting for information and mapping out the region.

The short video above shows how the player purchases a Rumor on a certain quarry and gains its location on the Chart afterwards.

Companion Select

This video showcases the feature we refer to as ‘heroselect’, though the people you are selecting from are rarely heroes. Rather, they are your Companions, and you will often be asked to select a certain number of them to take on ventures or on segments of missions.

In the video, you can see the arena fight Event ask you to select four Companions you take into the fighting pit. After selecting your Companions (and before rejoining the others), Perk tests, combat deployment, and all other effects only calculate with the selected Companions’ stats.

Hidden Stash and Contraband

This video demonstrates the difference between showing up to the gates of a major city with contraband in your cargo hold and contraband hidden in your stash. In the first case, you can try to bribe or con the guards but it’s a difficult (and often expensive) venture, which can end in fines, faction reputation loss, or worse.

Contraband tucked away in the hidden stash – a piece of equipment you can get from certain places – hides the goods from the inspection however, and you can safely take them into cities and hope to find buyers.

Hope this gave you a rough idea what we’ve been working on. We’ll soon be back with more!

[…]

Here’s another bunch of videos that showcase some of the milestones we have recently delivered. We’ve been quite busy.

Enduring Effects

In this short video we demonstrate Enduring Effects (long-lasting attributes that help or hinder your comitatus), with the Blessing of Sergorod now appearing on the (redesigned) crew UI. Sharp-eyed viewers can spot other UI differences as well.

Obedience

In this video we demonstrate the workings of the Obedience mechanic, which represents how well-behaved your slaves are. A slave is liberated first in the video, which immediately raises Obedience (by the indicated number in the action popup). This is quite expensive however, as slaves cost a lot of money.

Then slaves are punished several time to demonstrate how that mechanic works. You can pick how many slaves you punish, which can raise the Obedience bonus or penalty. There are also diminishing returns to pacifying them so, and you can end up losing Obedience just like at the end of the video.

Workforce

This short video shows where the ‘workforce’ stat appears on the crew pane. Selling slaves and sending away workers results in a severe drop in generated ‘workforce’ and so the comitatus becomes more and more understaffed, incurring serious penalties.

Butchering

Beasts of burden and mounts that a comitatus uses are large animals. They are the lifeblood of a traveling company, carrying people, cargo, and supplies on long journeys through desolate wastelands. Sometimes, however, they can literally become sustenance – in cases when you run out of supplies or when there are not enough workers to tend to them. Still, these creatures are usually very valuable but sometimes butchering them can be the difference between life and death out in the wasteland. The video here shows how a depleted caravan gains a lot of rations by using this simple but important new feature.

Hope you enjoyed these quick delves into some of the recent features.