Devlog #60 | What is happening around the team of Vagrus?
Happy International Women's Day
First of all, on behalf of us at Lost Pilgrims Studio, we would like to thank all the fantastic women in our lives and by extension, commend all women everywhere. Keep on rocking, ladies!
Our New Office
With the new year come new challenges and new momentum as well for Lost Pilgrims. As a part of that we've now moved into a new office space after a long period of working exclusively from home. During the Covid years the studio had to adapt to the unfortunate situation and admittedly, this arrangement was quite hit-and-miss for the majority of the team. Now that we are also recruiting, we decided to move into an office again - at least those of us who have to communicate and iterate on a daily basis.
As fates would have it, the new office is just a block or two away from our previous one and is in an office building that is in a better general condition.
Here's a photo of the empty office on the day of moving. It was a cold day, the first Monday of the new year.
Moving into a new office is a logistical hurdle on its own but due to the general wood shortage and IKEA being literally empty after Christmas, we could only get used desks - at least it's easier on the environment, eh?
The photo below shows phase 2, when we were looking for the screws as well as good places for desks. It was slowly coming together.
Phase 3 (below): desks are in place and a handful of chairs were also deployed. We could not procure used shelves in the desired color and style but we managed to get a Kallax shelf set from the IKEA on the other side of Budapest. Irafons smiled on us!
Phase 4: the Kallax and the rest of the furniture were assembled. Great success!
With that, the new office was conquered and since then, the team's core has been working there every weekday. The personal interactions were sorely missed and we're very excited to be able to hang out and work on Vagrus again.
Just like with game development, while the front end looks good, there are still a few things to be tied off in the back. :D
Pizza Time
Because of your continuous support, we are still up and running and now that we have moved into our new office, we can finally enjoy the pizzas you have bought us via the supporter option. This is the sorta treat that the inhabitants of the wastelands would go to war for! Fortunately, our delivery arrived in time so we haven't had to raid the local pizzerias.
All jokes aside, we are grateful to be able to share these simple, fun moments in the team (and with you with these posts) while working on the game.
All Merch Dispatched & Fig Campaign Closing
We are happy to report that after a long, drawn-out battle with boxes, wrappers, and the employees of the postal services, we managed to send out all the physical rewards we could. All that remains are a handful of rewards where some information is missing (we did not receive a name or an address from the customer) or that wasn't picked up. But the vast majority of the rewards are on their way - if not at their destinations already. (A number of US packages are still held up and waiting for entry at Customs.)
Altogether, the process was quite exhausting but the moments when the various items of merch arrived were great. By the time of penning this post, everyone on the team has received their T-shirts and had a chance to fiddle with the physical rewards.
The artbook turned out to be a fan and team favorite. Picking the finished order up from the printer and moving it around on this tiny cart was quite a funny sight to behold.
They barely fit in the trunk of the car!
Packing for delivery was much less exciting but there is a certain pressure involved: you want to make sure that everything arrives to its destination intact.
Of course, those that have no funds to hire people to handle fulfillment, nor to rent a warehouse, have to face the consequences: no living room for a couple of months!
Luckily, order has returned by now and all that remains is a stack of Collectors' Editions - which, turns out, is quite an amazing sight!
Closing our Fig Campaign in March
Fig is shifting their focus to investments only without the crowdfunding side, so it's time for us to move on as well. With barely a few pledges in the last few months, it was a no-brainer to decide that we are closing our Fig campaign down (on 13th March), and will eventually look for a new place to sell our merch through.
A big Thank You! to everyone supporting us over there - our earliest supporters along with our friends on Patreon. Stay tuned and conquer the wasteland!
Stay tuned and conquer the wasteland! The Lost Pilgrims Team
Wanna help to make the game's launch successful so we can keep expanding and improving it? Please share our pages and posts with your friends through your favorite social media channel(s). Appreciate it!
A New Build is OUT - Patch 1.0.20 - Codename: Guilder
Hey everyone,
we have a new patch for Vagrus, which is incidentally the first to add sizable new content - namely, the faction leader NPCs and interactions for the Loaders' and Carpenters' Guilds, something that has been lacking compared to other factions. Each of them can give you a new quest to further get into their good graces (and get a little something-something for yourself in the process, of course). Below are the detailed patch notes.
Important Note: Considering the extent of the improvements, there is little to no chance that we broke nothing in the process. Assume that we did not want to make anyone's life harder. If you see something amiss, please flag it to us using the usual channels, like the inbuilt reporting tool (F1 button), forums, and our Discord server.
Carpenters' and Loaders' Guild bases of operation, their Faction Leaders, and a faction quest each were added
New and Tweaked Features :shiny:
Loyalty feedback: the game log and Event results now show what companions like and dislike (but deliberately do not expand on how much they like or dislike the choice)
Dissonance mode difficulty was further lowered in several ways: - Simply trading Goods on the Market is now slightly more profitable - Faction Tasks now pay slightly more - Supplies now cost less in certain regions - The chance of running into Crew Combat encounters is now slightly lower - Working and defending crew requirements got a bit lower
User Interface Improvements :pencil:
New, unique Deputy art assets on the Deputy screen for each role
Added "and" and "or" in event dependencies to clarify them
"Not" dependency tooltips have been added
Mercenary/Trade Task tooltip on Chart was added
Faction descriptions were streamlined
Chart default position added when opening for the first time
Keyboard zoom on Chart was implemented
Overlapping Markers now shuffle
Added a new button in the Codex that opens the Chart for Point of Interest entries
Vagrus creation text lengths altered to fit boxes
Deputy tooltip now shows the available characters for that role
Relevant Camp UI tooltips also show up on the Crew UI
Leadership Perk tooltips now indicate the Resourcefulness cost of use Renown gained from reaching
Faction standing thresholds are now indicated in the game log
Cargo throw-out visual was polished
Companions screen visual was polished
Crew Details box visual was polished
Deputy screen buttons were improved
Campaign map radial menu buttons now react to hover and clicking
Main menu options colors were adjusted
Journal visual was polished
Market Buy and Sell buttons were improved
Camp UI's End Day button was improved
Chart text outline was tweaked to be more legible
Bug Fixes :bug:
Incorrect Ward (defense) calculation in Crew Combat was fixed
Beast Swap and Slave Sell buttons' tooltips are updated and indicate the real reason when inactive
Various Proficiency-spending-related bugs have been fixed
Chart text corrections
In restricted settlements, hotkeys will not open Mansio/Market anymore
Force Shield III now grants buff to Finndurath as it supposed to
Perks going negative after Gear swap issue fixed
The stickyUI stuck on the screen (pun intended) issue resolved
Wind shaman icon asset resolution fixed
Criminality feedbacks are now hidden everywhere as was always intended
Fixed some broken Codex links in events
Broken Crew Combat enemy and comitatus mini-flags fixed
Avernum smelting yield was rebalanced
Average price shows up on Goods tooltips in settlements on both the Market and Cargo sides
Sell button tooltip fixed
Grit calculation has been fixed
Known Issues:
Companion Combat performance drops
Escort Task-related anomalies
Occasional disappearence of the slides from Equipment and Item lists
Coming Up Next
User Interface improvements and bug fixes
New Comapnion Free-LC
As you can see above, next up is a whole new Companion, so expect news about him soon. Stay tuned and conquer the wasteland!
The Lost Pilgrims Team https://store.steampowered.com/app/909660?utm_source=steam&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=website&utm_content=footer ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you like Vagrus, please consider sharing our pages and posts with your friends through your favorite social media channel(s). It is much appreciated!
THE BIG ADVENTURE EVENT - Developer Talk with Kormakr
Hey everyone,
we are happy to share that Vagrus has been included in the Big Adventure Event (#theBAE) on Steam organized by Hitcents. The event will be running between January 20 -24 with 100 demos and games.
As part of #theBAE and with our schedules finally lining up with our dear content creator friend, KormakrTv, we recorded a special Vagrus session for you all. While showing off the game, Kormakr have had a little chat with Sztaszov, Lost Pilgrims' co-founder and game designer on Vagrus - The Riven Realms. Check out the event if you missed the actual livestream!
The event will be on air here on Steam from 12:00am CST/7:00am CET, 22st of January.
We hope you will enjoy the show. Conquer the wasteland,
If you like Vagrus, please consider sharing our pages and posts with your friends through your favorite social media channel(s). It is much appreciated!
we are happy to share that Vagrus has been included in the Big Adventure Event (#theBAE) on Steam organized by Hitcents. The event will be running between January 20 -24 with 100 demos and games.
As part of #theBAE and with our schedules finally lining up with our dear content creator friend, KormakrTv, there will be a special Vagrus Let's Play on his twitch channel. While showing off the game, Kormakr will chat with Sztaszov, Lost Pilgrims' co-founder and game designer on Vagrus - The Riven Realms. It's a great opportunity to ask any questions during the stream, so come along and watch it if you can.
If you like Vagrus, please consider sharing our pages and posts with your friends through your favorite social media channel(s). It is much appreciated!
A New Build is OUT - Patch 1.0.17 - Codename: Bombus Magnificus
Hey everyone,
we've had a final patch for this year in the works for a while now. This one also includes fixes and tweaks primarily before we move on to adding chunks of new stuff next year. Still, rounding these glitches out first was more important than rushing headlong into creating new stuff, so we hope you appreciate the work we put in this one.
We would hereby like to express our appreciation and gratitude to the awesome people who have been active on our social media platforms, sharing articles and links, voting on Vagrus in award shows, giving advice to people on our discord and other platforms, or helping us by reporting a lot of large and small things that could be tweaked or fixed in Vagrus. It would be difficult to list you. But you know who you are. :)
Now let's jump into the patch details:
Important Note: Considering the extent of the improvements, there is little to no chance that we broke nothing in the process. Assume that we did not want to make anyone's life harder. If you see something amiss, please flag it to us using the usual channels, like the inbuilt reporting tool (F1 button), forums, and our Discord server.
Various faction reward tweaks (Only reclaimables, not Enduring Effects. The new rewards are claimable in addition and will not replace the old ones. We are uncharacteristically generous in this regard... but the Holidays are coming up, so enjoy!)
Some Equipment and Gear stats were tweaked
Explorer starter item changed to be more in line with other Callings
You can get a second Heat Shielding Crystal in case you accidentally sell the first one (it might not be easy, however)
Hollow Eyes are now silent in combat, as they should be
Killing tax collectors will have more severe consequences: Bounty hunter attacks start on a slightly lower Imperial Criminality rate (as a warning) while on higher criminality, the legionaries try to apprehend you
Small economy tweaks so that the rumors do not contradict actual market prices
User Interface Improvements :pencil:
Loyalty tooltip has been updated to indicate the order of Loyalty levels
Authority and Resourcefulness tooltips have been updated to be more precise and informative
Companion background texts and Faction descriptions were tweaked (fixed length and polished texts)
Blessing of Unbinding description now refers to a more generic source of the effect
Event Fixes :shiny:
Several journal inconsistencies were fixed
Choices leading to the wrong step in several Events were fixed
A lot of Event text has been polished across the board
Garrik is no longer recruitable twice (sorry) SPOILERS AHEAD
The final showdown in Garrik's questline was tweaked not to spoil a surprise ahead of time by applying a certain buff too soon
Eylani's loyalty adjustments in events have been revamped and some gift-related choices are now visible in her banter
You can no longer ask about ingredients from Thadraz during Gor'Goro's questline when you've already delivered them
Skornar's stealthy prison break now does not refer to fighting patrols if it was successful
Eylani's personal quest progression related to Tectum Carvos was rewritten a bit not to refer to the town's current state so much (seeing that it could be vastly different depending on the time of doing her quest)
Finndurarth-related story inconsistencies have been fixed in Salum
Agoram now blesses the party with Unbinding in Finndurarth's last quest step (if you called him to the Conclave)
The Source of Discord quest was tweaked so that you can complete the (optional) dream-catching step even if all the required sub-objectives are already completed (this makes it so that patient players are unlikely to miss this optional objective)
The description of the forum of Tectum Carvos - as well as its initial description - now reflects the town's state better in relation to the major questline there
The shamans are always back at Kotrar when you return the trial contingent
A Terathion's Fall event softlock when there were no choices is now fixed
There are now no rumors about Wyrms after their final defeat
Bug Fixes :bug:
Camp UI soft-lock related to the throw-out UI resolved
AOE attack Skills now hit all intended targets
Fixed the bug where Companions could occupy the same position
Various Acrobatics-related positioning bugs have been fixed
Jhakra Alpha's Roar accuracy has been nerfed further
Morgarthan's strange glow should be gone now
Victory screen texts were improved where they were a bit wonky
Known Issues:
Combat performance
Various Escort tasks related anomalies
Coming Up Next (in early 2022)
Faction leaders for the two criminal syndicates (with a faction quest each)
A new companion as a Free-DLC
Criminal system tweaking
Continued bug fixes and tweaks
UI improvements
Stay tuned and conquer the wasteland! - The Lost Pilgrims Team
If you like Vagrus, please consider sharing our pages and posts with your friends through your favorite social media channel(s). It is much appreciated!
this last month has been slow but we managed to push out new builds for both the main game and our demo last week, so that's a relief. Throughout November, most of our team members were either on sick leave or vacation, while the rest of us were trying to finish tasks related to our physical Vagrus products or were busy formulating plans for the future of Lost Pilgrims. Bear with us though, as we are getting closer to realizing these plans. For now, let us look at what we are working on in more detail.
Producing Merchandise is Hard
When you have a game full of content, you might think that it's easy to "pull together stuff" and produce merchandise from it but in reality, anything you want to use needs some rework to fit for that new purpose. Still, that was within our domain. What came as a bigger shock was how hard it was to find partners for the actual production. No one wants to deal with small order numbers or produce on the level of quality we aimed for. Just as an example, we tried four suppliers to produce our Emperor's Edition boxes but in the end, we ended up giving the job to a creator who makes them by hand because that was the only way that the final product would meet our expectations. But hey, at least now we can say they are truly "handcrafted".
With the little delays eating into our timeline and due to the game's rocky launch, we had to pause our merch production for October but once our hotfixes were rolled out, we got back to it and everything seems to be on track. So expect some new posts about the ready products soon. Overall, it also means that we will only be able to start merchandise deliveries this month (December 2021).
Planning Our Future
We promised to share our plans soon after launch, but to do that, we needed to make said plans first: assess options and decide where and how we would like to get to with the game and with our studio.
Video games, especially indie games, often earn half of their lifetime revenue in the first month of their release. From that perspective, the launch of Vagrus was satisfactory. Not bad but not particularly amazing either. We have enough runaway to continue but we also need to find and create additional revenue sources within a reasonable time to ensure our long-term financial stability, especially considering our debt payments in the future.
Continuing with Vagrus
With Vagrus, being short on content- and improvement ideas has never been an issue. The challenge we face now is how to split our resources between improving the base game and creating new revenue sources like DLCs, ports, and so on.
We received tons of great insights from our players. That helps us in prioritizing our endless improvement-idea list. So we would definitely like to implement some of those sooner rather than later. The question is how far we can go with those before switching to porting and other endeavors. We are a tiny team, you see, with a single coder, so presently that is a bottleneck we have to account for.
Hedging long term
The solution to the above conundrum would be to grow the team (aka: hire more people), so improvements and other development areas could run parallel. It's a risk but one we are leaning toward taking, hoping that our community will appreciate those efforts and supports us on the way.
Of course, hiring and onboarding new folks take time too, so if we do that, it will slow down things even more for a period of time. But then, afterwards, the new speed can be higher, so naturally, it's an investment into the future.
The Next Months and Beyond
There is little left of 2021 but we do hope to get some work done and then build on that in early 2022. So here's a vague outline of what to expect (subject to change of course, due to a number of unforeseeable reasons):
Plans for PC:
Continue with general bugfixes
UI design improvements based on community feedback
As for the latter, we are currently considering three DLCs by the end of 2022 on top of smaller content additions:
DLC1 (Free) - A new Companion [yes, a Supercargo ːsteamthumbsupː]
DLC2 (unsure if Free or Paid) - Additional major storyline(s) within the currently available playable area
DLC3 (Paid) - A new region with new stories
Opening New Revenue Sources
The above-mentioned DLCs can be one new source we could count on (naturally, only the paid DLCs). Their creation requires a significant investment, though, so they are not exactly a surefire way to drum up money for the future. Thus, we are trying to come up with other avenues as well. For example, once the game is fairly stable, we will be looking into potentially releasing it on other, smaller platforms (like Humble, Epic, etc.). Their potential is tiny compared to Steam but maybe the effort is low enough to release on them and get access to a new audience.
Porting to handhelds
While Nintendo Switch and iPads seem like two good candidates, there is a lot to be reworked on the UI to make it usable on their smaller screens, not to mention controller support, if we can solve it, otherwise, we will just need to stick to touch controls. Porting would certainly require a higher investment (time and effort) but one that looks promising enough to explore further as an option. Update: - thanks Rusty Dragon for pointing out - we forgot to mention Steam Deck which comes into play here too, requiring all the UI re-work but not extra porting effort, hopefully.
Merchandise
Having gone through the pain of creating our merchandise portfolio, it would be great to leverage that better and make it into a revenue-generating thing.
Reinvent our Patreon presence
With the game released, we need to revisit our content pipe anyways, so it's also a great time to consider how we could offer other and better things on Patreon that would be appealing to more people to pitch in. We'd love to hear your input on what you think we could do, like offering Tiers that include physical merch rewards, perhaps? Would you see more, exclusive posts about the world of the Riven Realms or perhaps about the creation of the game? Let us know.
Partner up
Perhaps there are mutually beneficial partnerships out there for indiedevs that could enable us to upscale our team. We are exploring this avenue too.
As always, thanks a lot for your continued support, it means a lot to us!
Stay tuned and conquer the wasteland! - The Lost Pilgrims Team
If you like Vagrus, please consider sharing our pages and posts with your friends through your favorite social media channel(s). It is much appreciated!
A New Build is OUT - Patch 1.0.16 - Codename: Lil' Bugger
Hey everyone,
While our team is recovering from Covid/other illnesses, we finally managed to pull together a patch worth of bug fixes. More fixes are coming soon, but for now, let's take a look at what else we're working on.
Merch Shipped Soon
Despite all the hurdles (production issues, massive paper shortage, etc.) our Vagrus-related merchandise is in the last stages of production. Shipping will start as soon as we receive the finalized items from the printing factories. We are sorry about the delays, it has been a difficult road to get here.
Should you be interested in placing a last-minute order, you can do so on our Fig page making a $1 pledge and shop for 'Add-Ons'. Note that considering all the global shipping issues we can hear about on the news, we cannot guarantee delivery before the Holidays.
Now let's jump into the patch details:
Important Note: Considering the extent of the improvements, there is little to no chance that we broke nothing in the process. Assume that we did not want to make anyone's life harder. If you see something amiss, please flag it to us using the usual channels, like the inbuilt reporting tool (F1 button), forums, and our Discord server.
Outpost progress-related bug (image and required crew not advancing properly) in older saves has been fixed
Various Outpost management related tweaks
Longer Journal entries can be scrolled all the way down
Goods placed in Hidden Compartments will stay there after loading the game
Camping during events can not be interrupted
Mercenary Task-related throw-out UI bug has been fixed
When a Perk is unlocked but we have insufficient Proficiency, a tooltip line now indicates how many points you lack to buy that Perk
Some save file exploits fixed
Fixed a few Event script issues
Known Issues:
Combat performance
Various Escort tasks related anomalies
A shed-load of bugs you folks reported but we have not gotten to process yet. On it!
Coming Up Next
Bug fixes and tweaks
UI improvements
Early 2022 - A new companion as a Free DLC
The launch of Vagrus was good enough to give us some runaway to figure out the best way forward. While are still weighing our options on how to make the game and the studio financially stable in the long run and we are planning a post giving you a peek into our thought-process on that soon.
Stay tuned and conquer the wasteland! - The Lost Pilgrims Team
Steam Awards Nomination - Outstanding Story-Rich Game Category
Hey Folks,
Having played decades of tabletop RPG campaigns in the setting and Vagrus' narrative landing north of one million words in the form of stories and codex entries, Story-Rich certainly rings true when it comes to our game.
If you enjoyed the setting and stories of Vargus, it would be an honor to receive your nomination in the Outstanding Story-Rich Game category.
Thank you very much for your support! The Lost Pilgrims Team
If you are one who's into the text-based game, consider following and wishlisting the game, so you won't miss the upcoming news, latest devlogs, and sneak peeks!
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A New Build is OUT - Patch 1.015. - Codename: Wasted
Hey everyone,
We are putting out another round of fixes today. Though the list is shorter than usual, it has some bugs on it that we've been trying to squash for a while now. Hopefully, they won't cause any trouble from now on.
Important Note: Considering the extent of these improvements there is little to no chance that we broke nothing in the process. Assume that we did not want to make anyone's life harder. If you see something amiss, please flag it to us using the usual channels, like the inbuild reporting tool (F1 button), forums, and our Discord server.
"P" hotkey now opens and closes Price History (the Chart remains in the background)
Bug Fixes :bug:
Merging UI glitch (causing several interfaces to merge into a mess) is now fixed
"Less than a stack" drag&drop exploit is no longer possible
The issue causing various New Game related anomalies like ruined Velarias or Fort Larius has been fixed so it should not reoccur in the future
'Cull Their Ranks' now shows the correct number of deployable companions
Withdrawing money from the outpost causing a crash fixed
Mount crew stats not showing up when 'All mounted' is now fixed
Abolitionist-related Tasks now always point to valid destination settlement (with unlocked Abolitionist presence)
Shift + click on the Outrider converting buttons (+/-) now work on the Crew Combat UI
Settlement UI no longer pops up randomly during Crew Combat
Known Issues:
A rare soft-lock when various UI actions follow each other mixing Event, camping, crew, and companion combats in a particular fashion we've not been able to reproduce
AI taking too long in Companion Combat is still being looked at by the team
Coming Up Next
Bug fixing continues. Meanwhile, the team needs to regroup and assess things post-release, so this time we'll just say that our plans will be revealed soon.
Stay tuned and conquer the wasteland! - The Lost Pilgrims Team
