Beginners' Guide

Beginner's Guide to Vagrus – The Riven Realms
Welcome to the beginner's guide to “Vagrus – The Riven Realms”; made by fans, for fans. This guide is meant to help you navigate the challenging landscape of the game by explaining some of the most important mechanics of the game, as well as provide you with detailed tips on how to optimize your game play.

Disclaimer
 While we, as players, are in the enviable position of being able to play this game while it is still in development, allowing us to interact with the developers themselves, it also means that the game is in a constant state of change. The game is being updated regularly, new content is added, and the very balance of the game is bound to flip around at any given time. This means that the information provided here may be outdated. We advise you to be observant and learn the game as it evolves. Remember to give feedback to the developers on what you find, such as bugs and balance.

Even though this guide is focused on the mechanics of the game, it is important to remember to enjoy the game as well. There are many things to find and plenty of interesting stories to discover. The developers have gone all-out to provide us with a fully immersive experience. Don't let the initial challenge discourage you, it is all worth it in the end.

Let's get started!

 

Managing your cometatus
Arguably the most important thing regarding your success in the game is managing your cometatus. Traveling the world comes with many dangers, most of which have nothing to do with monstrous creatures or bandits. Moving around unprepared can lead you into unrecoverable situations, where supplies dry up, money runs out and your subordinates leave you.

The three most important aspects of running a successful cometatus:
Optimizing movement

Managing the well-being of your crew (Vigor, Loyalty, Nutrition and Obedience)

Planning ahead

 

Optimizing movement
As you will find out quite soon after starting the game, running your cometatus is expensive. This is mostly because of the cost of supplies, and the wages of your crew. Therefore, it is imperative that you try to minimize the time it takes for you to reach your destination. The less days you spend on the road, the less you have to pay wages and the less supplies you consume. In simple terms, you should always try to travel as far as possible during any given day.

Your daily movement total consists of two types: movement and march.

Movement points make up most of your normal daily movement range, while march points show how far above their limits you can push your cometatus. Using marching points will have negative effects on morale, vigor and obedience, and it is not advisable to overuse them unless necessary.

How often and how much of your march points you should use depends on the way you have chosen to manage the well-being of your crew. There are a few ways to go about this, which will be elaborated in the next section. As a general rule, try not to use more than one march point each day, unless you are able to reach a settlement doing so.

The Well-being of your crew
There are four attributes to manage when it comes to the well-being of your crew: Morale, Obedience, Nutrition and Vigor.

Out of these, Morale and Vigor provide outright bonuses, whether positive or negative.

Morale is probably the easiest of these to uphold. As long as you pay wages on time and don't march your crew for more than one point per day, loyalty should never fall. You should always keep loyalty at 9 (the maximum) because of the impressive bonus it gives. Paying double wages increases loyalty by 2 each time, and it is advisable to do that every time it drops to 7.

 

Obedience determines how willing your slaves are to follow you. Low obedience leads to slaves running away, causing other trouble along the way. Keeping obedience above 3 is enough to avoid problems most of the time. The main ways of increasing obedience are through the liberate slave and discipline slaves actions, as well as keeping nutrition high.

Nutrition affects the recovery rate of your vigor. It also helps keep your slaves obedient. Nutrition naturally gravitates towards 5, so having a high nutrition value is only possible through increasing rations, and resting at settlements.

Vigor is somewhat harder to uphold than Loyalty. Whenever you spend all your movement points (or even most of them) during a given day, vigor gravitates down towards 5. If you also spend more than one point of march, vigor can drop even further down at an accelerating speed the more march points you use. Vigor is recovered through resting mostly (best in settlements), keeping nutrition high, or through certain other settlement interactions.

How to manage these attributes depends on your chosen play style. If you don't have any slaves, you don't have to worry about obedience. If you have plentiful money already, you can afford to increase rations and wages, therefore increasing nutrition and vigor. You may even choose to spend less than the maximum movement in a given day to keep vigor up that way.

Usually, running a small crew is easier than a big one.  

After learning how to manage your crew and movement, the most important thing to do is to plan your travel. You should avoid going to places where you have nothing to do, especially early on. At the start of the game, information is scarce, so following quests is a good way to start. They usually provide good rewards, and you will learn about the different locations while doing them.

Trading
When going to different settlements, try to bring as many goods as possible with you, if you know for sure that they can be sold for a profit. Cheap goods tend to have higher profit margins than expensive ones, often selling for twice the amount in the optimal trade destination. Expensive goods have lower margins, but take up less room in your cargo hold. In the beginning, trading in low to mid priced goods is generally advisable. When you have around 100 bross worth of money, you should consider trading in high value goods, such as silver. Try to make sure that you maximize cargo space and available capital by stocking up on as many goods as your funds/cargo space allows.''' '''

Passengers
If there are passengers going the same way you are, take them with you. But remember that passengers will require you to provide them with supplies, so it may not be worthwhile taking them if you have to make a detour because of it. Different passengers give different levels of payment. Traders are usually good, urchins are more than likely charity work. It is entirely possible to lose money taking passengers, if you are not efficient with your travel.

Crew size
Because of how expensive maintaining a big crew is, you should not be afraid of downsizing. If you are going on a quest to the far reaches of the map, there is no need to bring 5 beasts of burden with you. It is relatively cheap to fire a few scouts and fighters while trading, and hire them back later when you are on a quest that requires them. Always try to keep your crew size to the smallest you can get away with.