Sunfire and Moonshadow & Season Pass are Live! news - Vagrus - The Riven Realms

Hello everyone,

Xeryn is about to become even more captivating as we proudly announce the release of our highly anticipated expansion: Sunfire and Moonshadow, featuring a vast new region to explore. As of now, it is available to the public on Steam, GOG, and Epic Games and it can be purchased as part of our Season Pass, which includes two future DLCs. Check out the trailer here.

Brace yourselves for adventures filled with treacherous challenges and untold secrets waiting to be unveiled. A swathe of new settlements, new enemies to conquer, new stories to be a part of, a large cast of characters, and new quests to complete through which you can make your mark on the continent await you. That’s not all, however, as the Bronze Desert introduces a central conflict involving three new factions – the Ahari, the Chimera Legion, and the Handjari. The expansion features content approaching half the size of the core game.

It is also important to note that we’ve just done away with the in-game campaign time limit (those elusive 11ish years). This became necessary because there’s just so much to do now (with all the free DLCs and now the expansion) that it would have created a requirement from players we felt would be against the slow and methodical style of Vagrus. Unfortunately, expanding the time limit was not a good option either, especially considering future content. More on this in the article we penned on the issue.

We have also hammered out quite a number of issues in our latest update.

Now let's jump into the 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.

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Patch notes v1.1.50 - Codename: New Realms

New Content (Sunfire and Moonshadow)

• “Sunfire and Moonshadow” Expansion is released at the same time as this update.
• Content and quests that come close to half the vanilla campaign in size.
• The gigantic, seething Bronze Desert and the twilit Lands of Shadow are accessible
• New settlements and points of interest in the added regions, including oil fields, oases, and frontier outposts.
• New faction: the Handjari – work for them to earn their friendship and rewards.
• Nemesis factions: The Chimera Legion and the Ahari are embroiled in a cruel fight for survival. Choose a side and fight for their victory!
• Brand new music to accompany the Expansion, soon to be added to available OST.
• Breathtaking artwork featuring the new regions and locations of the Expansion.
• A great many new NPCs with their own stories and personalities.
• An abundance of new Gear and Equipment.
• Well over a dozen new enemy types, both in Companion and Crew Combat encounters.
• New banners for your vagrus to display proudly.

New Content (General)

• New content related to the Outer Realms was added for everyone (No DLC required). It involves a quest and a new unique location with its own Outpost.
• Some new art assets were added to previous Events in the main campaign.

New and Updated Game Design (Sunfire and Moonshadow)

• The Twilight mechanic was introduced with a new “Lamps” Equipment slot and all sorts of lamps to counter the negative effects of darkness.

New and Updated Game Design (General)

• The main campaign’s in-world time limit was removed entirely for various reasons. You can read about it here.
• Day of the week type of dependencies were added, so you might come across choices that only appear on a certain day of the in-game week.
• Camp defense Fighter requirements were reduced for all voluntary crew members.
• Outposts were reworked in a major way (see below).

Outpost-related Changes

• A brand new Outpost User Interface was added
• Warehouse: you can store your Goods and Equipment at your Outpost
• Statio: your own mansio at your Outpost where you can store your Mounts and Beast, as well as switch between beast types
• The Outpost license fee was reduced by 2000 Bross (upon loading a save where you already paid for it, you get that money back as a reimbursement automatically)
• The Outpost upgrade’s resource requirements were somewhat reduced
• The Outpost production was tuned down to be in line with the cheaper setup
• Mounts are no longer used for salt production
• Certain pieces of Equipment stored in your Warehouse provide bonuses for Outpost activities (e.g. Mining Equipment enhances resource yields)

User Interface Improvements

• The Camp UI now uses a single lock feature that locks all in your current settings for rations, guards, and so on.
• The Price History tab has been improved, offering new sorting options and making it easier to navigate between settlements for easy comparison.
• The Scouting UI has been enhanced to make the available options clearer.
• The Custom Notes UI has been improved, making it easier and more enjoyable to jot down your thoughts.
• Chart legend improvements have been made for clarity, including the introduction of multiple-category Chart entities.
• Giving away Equipment in Events has been improved. Now, you can choose to give away or keep your currently equipped pieces of Equipment and you are warned if you are about to part with your only piece of a type of Equipment.

Bug Fixes

• Breaking camp conditions are now synchronized with the tooltips, providing a clearer understanding of the requirements.
• The process of moving Gear between Companions has been improved. Unequipped Gear of the same type will be equipped first if available. Furthermore, in Events and Tasks, you will offer unequipped Gear to meet conditions first.
• The Insight tooltip is now clearer about the purpose and use of Insight.
• Various elements on the Camp UI have been fixed.
• Passengers are now more willing to indicate their desired destination: before you take them, you can click on the Destination icon to see where they are going on the Chart, and you can also click the new button at the front of each Passenger entry now to see their destination on the Chart.
• Some node background anomalies have been fixed, primarily those related to the day and night cycle in settlements.
• The delay and graphical glitch when the Codex is opening has been fixed.
• Fixed an issue that caused the travel time between settlements in some cases to appear out of place.
• Resourcefulness can no longer overflow.
• Discovered settlement and POI nodes are now consistently displayed on the Chart, whether or not the player has clicked on them or merely moved through them.
• The Loader's Guild storage unit lottery now provides rewards as indicated on the UI. The Guild has been kindly asked not to deceive players any longer.
• If an Event is active, you can no longer use hotkeys to interact with inactive windows.
• Events sometimes caused you to exit settlements when it was not intended, and at other times, you remained within the settlement despite the narrative suggesting otherwise. The entire system has been adjusted to ensure consistency.
• Anomalies in Beast type swapping have been resolved, especially in cases where the settlement did not possess the type of Beast that matched that of your comitatus.
• The text overlapping on Crew Combat buttons has been fixed.
• Fixed an issue that caused unresponsive Camp UI buttons after engaging in Companion Banter.
• At times, it was possible that theme-specific music was not playing in certain regions. The orchestra has been instructed to be more attentive to the surroundings and play the appropriate tunes for each location.

Known Issues:

• There is a rare controller-related bug during the tutorial right before leveling up Morwen
• Allies are not recruitable for the nemesis show-down quests (fix coming very soon)
• A rare Steam Deck-specific navigation issue in the Outer Realms

Coming Up Next

• Bug Fixes and Balancing Tweaks for “Sunfire and Moonshadow”
• Additional Content for “Sunfire and Moonshadow”
• Outpost UI and balance tweaks
• Machine translations for the Expansion

Outpost UI Revamp: the Warehouse and the Statio

Picture this: it’s September 2021 and we’re about to release Vagrus: The Riven Realms, but we want to overhaul the settlement panes and all associated UI. Laci, our lead programmer at the time, is hard at work on its implementation, but it proves a difficult task, especially when considering that we also want to add the Outpost mechanic and have a corresponding UI for it. With release fast approaching, we reach the hard decision that the effort on the Outpost’s UI has to be abandoned, and instead, we would implement the outpost’s construction and management scripting through our event UI. It isn’t ideal, but at least it gives the feature we promised alongside the Wealth victory condition, and we are able to implement it a few weeks after release. It works, yet to this day both our team and some players have felt that there are drawbacks to it and that there was a missed opportunity to do something better – something more intuitive and easier to navigate or use.

Fast forward to now and looking toward the future, we’ve finally had the time to give the Outpost the love it deserves. The UI itself is divided into three key elements: the warehouse, the statio, and the administration pane. The warehouse allows the player to store Goods and Equipment, as can be seen below.

The statio serves as a permanent place where players may set aside their Crew, Mounts, and Beasts of Burden. While the statio allows you to store different mount or beast types, thus allowing you to change between those whenever you are at your Outpost, it comes at the risk of your different kinds of beasts harming one another from time to time. This can, potentially, result in losses to your Beast count, so manage your critters wisely.

Finally, we wanted an easy way for vagri to assess the status of their Outpost; thus, we have created both status and production tabs for it, giving vagri an overview of exactly what is going on, what is required, and any enduring effects associated with the Outpost. Take a look for yourself below.

Please also note that while there is a great deal of new functionality here, these details are subject to change as we draw closer to their release. And, when we do implement them, we welcome any feedback you might have as to how we might improve them in the future. As an additional aside, we should highlight that while you can store any of the above, the Outpost and its statio do have limitations – if you store too much, you will receive negative effects and potentially put your possessions, mounts, beasts, or crew at risk. This is consistent with our overall design philosophy around handling comitati in general.

More Quality of Life Improvements

Here's a quick rundown of what's new and improved:

While you are already able to access additional information about passengers, it used to be available by mousing over them, which resulted in busy tooltips. With the addition of a new crosshair icon, this becomes less uncomfortable: you will be able to click on it and be navigated straight to the settlement on the Chart.

Did you miss the fact that passenger names are clickable? It certainly wasn’t jumping out to many players, so we’ve decided to improve it. Now, a more intuitive icon leads you directly to the corresponding journal with all the details you need. This is way less confusing and it also puts it more in line with other interactable UI elements.

We have kept receiving requests for more lock icons for the Camp UI in order to allow the game to remember your settings in every aspect, for example, the setting of the use of Medical Supplies. Also, forget about multiple lock icons cluttering your screen: now, there's just one lock icon up top. Click it, and all your settings are securely locked. The settings that have requirements (for example, that you have enough supplies for higher rations settings) adjust automatically to the best available option in case those requirements are not met.

When active, the new ‘Reset to Default’ setting resets all the settings to their default each and every morning regardless of where you left them manually the day before, so you can use it to stick to the defaults and manually override them on a daily basis when you see fit. And because the button defaults your settings when clicked, it can also be used to do just that, of course.

We've tackled some pesky issues with Equipment, for instance, on Event choice dependencies. Before our update, if the player owned multiple pieces of the same Equipment, one of which was equipped, the game didn't allow them to sell the unequipped ones. The game will from now on check if there is any unequipped Equipment to be sold, and in instances where that is true, the unequipped one will be sold first. Additionally, a handy new tooltip displays the number of specific Equipment you have in your possession.

Furthermore, in cases where there is only a single instance of Equipment of any kind in your possession, it can still be sold, but the icon will be displayed in red. This will help players to differentiate between Equipment they have in scarce supply and those they can more freely sell off.

Similarly, even if you have multiple pieces of the same Gear but all of them are in use by your Companions, the icon will turn red to call your attention to that fact. In both cases, illustrated by the above screenshot, a tooltip informs you about how many pieces of Equipment or Gear you possess and of those how many are in use.

Factions of the Bronze Desert

Note that this post contains mild spoilers, so if you wish to wade into the expansion completely blind, perhaps postpone reading this until you have done so.

Before we talk about each of the three, we have to make a distinction between the regular factions – the type the ones already in the game belong to – and the new type, the nemesis factions.

Nemesis Factions

Nemesis factions come in pairs and they relate to each other exactly how it sounds like: they hate each others’ guts and will not be reconciled nor tolerate anyone allying themselves with their foe. For this reason, befriending a nemesis faction will ultimately lock you out of befriending their opponent in the given playthrough. Sure, you can play both sides for a while when you begin exploring the new regions but it will come to a decision soon enough.

This is fundamentally different from regular factions where you can essentially tank your reputation by working against them or for their enemies but you will almost never reach a point of no return even if you lower your reputation to the absolute minimum (in theory, that is, because crawling out of such a pit is extremely time-consuming). Not so with nemesis factions. Once a certain threshold is reached with one, their foe will forever be closed off from interactions and they will become your dedicated enemy, too.

Also, due to their nature, nemesis factions are more local and will only have effects, tasks, and interactions in their own areas of interest, not in all regions of Vagrus. They are still powerful, with their own forces, bases, bonuses, boons, and rewards, but they will not have a faction presence or interest outside of their zones.

The Ahari and the Chimera Legion

The first pair of nemesis factions ever to appear in Vagrus are the Chimera Legion of the Bronze Desert’s Legate and the Ahari, Bandul insurrectionists opposing the Imperial occupation.

The Ahari are a faction of Bandul who follow the guidance of Ahar, the Great Sun, whom they worship as their one and only god. The Suncallers, spiritual guides who originally looked after holy oases and can channel Ahar’s devastating magic, have taken up leadership of the secretive group recently. Ever since then, the Ahari have been growing and becoming bolder, not content with resisting Imperial harassment but waging a guerilla war against the Empire, and to hell with collateral damage. When allying yourself with the Ahari, you will have to find them first, as they are a clandestine and elusive organization, hiding in the deep desert, where their kind are masters of misdirection and survival. Rumors are circulated about a new leader emerging recently and taking the Ahari into an even more violent direction but nobody has managed to substantiate those claims yet.

The Chimera Legion, on the other hand, are not at home in the Bronze Desert at all. Having completed their previous assignment by the Imperial Senate, they were stationed in the arid wasteland when their commanding officer was appointed as the Legate of the region. This task might seem like unimportant guard duty but because of the war against the Green Continent beyond the Bronze Desert, Imperial forces making their way across the wasteland require constant supervision. As for the Legate, a decorated career military officer, keeping the locals in check and securing the Path of Glory has been a challenge, but some say that it has also moved her into position to carve out her own fortune in this remote, chaotic region.

One thing is certain: no quarter will be given by either side of this escalating conflict. When pressed and having to take sides, who will you choose the expansion drops?

The Handjari

Handjari are a new faction that we’re adding to the roster of currently existing ones. And, yes, this means that if you own the expansion, their faction presence will show up in the main game areas, too. Competitors to Imperial Trading Houses (but on fairly good terms with them), the Handjari are the alliance of a loosely connected Tarkian trade princes and their substantial commercial empires. Specifically, Prince Faisal al-Turhen, the Coiner, Patriarch of Akena, Victor of the Battle of Garesh, is the leader of the Bronze Desert’s Handjari and he oversees most of the region’s trade – in the name of the Empire, their allies, of course.

The Handjari of the Bronze Desert have their own interest in the conflict between the Ahari and the Chimera Legion but they are rarely directly involved. On paper, they support the Imperials but you might find that their agenda is more complicated than that. In general, staying on their good side unlocks a great number of opportunities for enterprising vagri.

The Geography of the Bronze Desert

Let’s not beat around the bush. The playable area of the expansion has the following borders:

• The Brown Mountains in the west and northwest
• The coast of the Northsea in the north
• The River Lethe in the east
• Voldano’s Shield, the Dead Forest, and the River Umbra in the south and southeast

Of these, some might deserve a short explanation, though we would not want to give away too much too early. The reason for not being able to travel past the Brown Mountains to the north is that the only traversable pass, the Pass of Glory, is kept open only for Imperial legions that are traveling to the frontlines past the continent and back. The lands beyond are either uninhabited or under martial law, so no free commerce is allowed anyway. Then there’s the Dead Forest, an accursed place where simply getting too close to the ailing trees can kill you, but nobody risks going in too deep. Moreover, beyond the forest and the mountain range called Voldano’s Shield lies the Plains of Agony – an ineffable, corrupted, nightmarish wasteland that none have returned from since its formation following the Calamity. And while you could theoretically pass over the Rivers Lethe and Umbra, each of these respective crossings are blocked for different reasons; these you will have to discover yourself.

And so you would have roughly the area below, which is more than a third but less than half of the original playable area of Vagrus’s open-world campaign.

The large majority of that playable area is the Bronze Desert with the foothills and coast surrounding it but down south travelers can descend into twilight made manifest as they reach the benighted Land of Shadows. Last but not least, there is the city of Kabur, Jewel of the North, a rich and diverse metropolis the likes of which can rarely be found in the Riven Realms.

What is the New Region Like?

The Bronze Desert is one of the largest contiguous deserts of a continent notorious for its arid wastelands. That said, it is markedly different from the dry badlands you have already come across in the game. For one, its natives, the Bandul, and their culture, is unique and cannot be found elsewhere on the continent. Then, there are the Tarkians – lots of them – who are not native but have certainly made a home away from home for their people. Imperials round out the list of the most prominent inhabitants, and as ever, their industrious and warlike ways have left their mark on the Bronze Desert. Even now, their war rages in the far north, and their legions are constantly on the march to and fro the frontlines. The three factions we’re adding to the already imposing list of potential allies mirrors these three people in intricate ways (more on them in the next devlog post).

They say that the region was already a desert long before the Calamity and it is true. For that reason, the people, creatures, and phenomena native to the Bronze Desert are much more in tune with the nature of this wind-beaten, sun-scorched realm. And so it would be potentially fatal ignorance to believe that the Bronze Desert is an empty, lifeless place. The many oases, outposts, and oil fields are teeming with nomadic wanderers and traveling opportunists alike, while the deep desert and the cold wasteland nights are stalked by many a strange creature.

And yet, the Bronze Desert is not the only realm of the expansion. As an almost anathema to its sun-drenched, coppery sands and blazing skies, the Land of Shadows is a dark, oppressive, benighted land that has been cursed into eternal twilight by the Calamity’s ruinous fallout. Even though few dare tread these forsaken plans and twilit forests, opportunities such as lumbering and mining draw enough interest to turn this region into a frontier – an extremely dangerous one at that. If the allegedly living shadows and life-draining trees weren’t enough, now a strange skittering echoes through the mountains to the west which brings dire portents to anyone trying to make it in this land of darkness.

So How Does One Get There?

A fair question, considering that hawk-eyed vagri such as you might have already noticed that the region outlined above does not have a direct border with the one in the base game. At this time, we can only say that it will be a unique, never-before-seen method of travel that we have spent a lot of time and love developing, and which – the dark gods willing – will be able to serve as a gateway to future content. For now, however, we shan’t give more away; instead, we hope that when you get to see it, it’ll be as exciting to explore and use as it was creating it.

Stay vigilant as you conquer the wasteland!

- The Lost Pilgrims Team