aura-dev

Star Knightess Aura Internal Release 0.46.0

Added 2024-08-30 18:40:40 +0000 UTC

Note that the public release will be in 3 weeks. You can also skip the waiting time by buying Star Knightess Aura on itch.

https://aura-dev.itch.io/star-knightess-aura

And here it is! The release containing the first ending! I already talked a lot about in the devlog posts so I assume anyone who's reading this and hasn't read about them alreay doesn't want to get spoiled so I won't talk too much about this main contribution.

As usual, this is mostly a summary post where I will go over the main contributions of this update and a bit more into detail regarding the content we worked on this week. For more details I refer to the devlog posts.

Let's start as usual with a short summary in terms of numbers. Here we have a new metric: Epilogue (or Ending) Scenes that you can trigger in the ending. Didn't quite fit to count them to Earth Scenes and since they got their own ending room I figured they can get their own stats as well.

In total we have 2 new H-CGs, 16 Epilogue Scenes, 4 new books, 1 new quest, 1 new dungeon/minigame, 1 new quest+dungeon stub, 3 new maps, 2 new pixel art characters, and lots and lots of other stuff minor stuff.

The main contributions of the update are:

The Corruption Ending + Epilogue Scenes
New Gambling Minigame quest "Slay the Demon"
Various improvements to Demon-Crazy
First setup of Clockwork Forest

As for the Corruption Ending, as I said, I believe there is nothing more to add in this post. Maybe that over the course of the development of 0.46.0 I bumped up the Submission gains so I hope no one will be left at just barely above 0 Idealism, unable to trigger the ending.

Keep in mind that the epilogue scenes all may vary based on various decisions, most prominently major vice choices, and your progress through the Roya main storyline.

Then, this week I worked on the up till now very barren Entertainment Den, where I added a new gambling minigame with a related quest, "Slay the Demon". Sadly the place is still pretty barren overall as I managed to complete the minigame + quest and also added several minor NPCs in the area, but overall I was mostly busy with the core logic and didn't have too much time for the fluff part. I will be revisiting the place in the future, especially since we are still missing some more content in the slavery area and also more penalty contracts for the Entertainment Mage.

As for the new Minigame...... it's uh complicated to put it in words but basically you will be playing a roguelike subgame of Star Knightess Aura within Star Knightess Aura - starting with a weak character and a New Game Plus like menu you can traverse the board, grow stronger and eventually fight an end boss. There are two players you can play against, one will play you casually, you won't lose any resources and challenge the game as often as you like. The other is part of the related quest to this minigame and will force you into a Soul-Contract gamble. If you win, you can obtain one of the rare skills Fast Items Stance II, Rock Armor II or Splash I.

If you thought this is weird, it gets weirder. As usual, there is a lot of cheating on the opponent side involved and you can countercheat as of now! If you have the spell Tailwind II, you can now learn The Art of Tailwind from a prisoner in the Order of the Knights to freely manipulate the result of dice throws.

Outcheat your opponents!!!

We have a bunch of further minor additions on my side such as new books in the Magic Academy Library, minor level design and mapping improvements and other small stuff I had added during my "free" "vacation" "week", but this summary mostly covers my side.

On the side of our assistant developer Trihan, it turned out there was more to do on Demon-Crazy than we expected so Clockwork Forest basically only got added as a minor stub. You can explore the first forest area while interacting with a bunch of [NOT IMPLEMENTED] messages!!!! But yeah, you can pick up the quest, learn some more lore, prep by reading a book, mine some Pyromantium, meet the enemy types, so even though it's just a stub, Trihan got a bunch of setup (literally today :'D) done.

For Demon-crazy I hope we are finally close to finally closing that book. I had a lot of requests on improving and reworking the fight against Shadow and also did a bunch of balancing passes on the fight myself. I think we are now really close to something I like, although there seem to be still some lingering technical issues we need to tackle hopefully next week.

There's a lot more that could be said about this massive but I would be getting lost in the details. Have fun playing and see you next month where we will be starting the quest for the final demon general - Judgement of Pride.

Changelog 0.46.0 (30.08.2024)

Added Fighting Over Richard 6+7 H-CGs
Added Fighting Over Richard 5 H-CGs
Added mental change Shatter Idealism Crystal
Added ending scene "Corruption Ending 1"
Added ending scene "Corruption Ending 2"
Added epilogue scene Capture of Trademond
Added epilogue scene Unification of Nephlune
Added epilogue scene Fall of Verdeaux
Added epilogue scene Paulina Partial Maid
Added epilogue scene Bandit Kingdom
Added epilogue scene Earth Invasion
Added epilogue scene Fixing Alicia
Added epilogue scene Maid Academy
Added epilogue scene John. (Resistance)"
Added epilogue scene Slime Club
Added epilogue scene Fate of The Resistance
Added epilogue scene James
Added ending lewd scene "Corruption Ending 3"
Added final lewd epilogue scene Corruption Ending
Added Fall of Verdeaux Variation for Knight-Commander Lorraine
Added updated Cursed Aura Roya pixel art
Added updated Patricial pixel art
Added map Gamble Board Game Dungeon
Added map Order of the Knights prison
Added map eastern Clockwork Forest
Added quest stub Clockwork Forest
Added quest Slay the Demon
Iterated demon-crac
Improved narrative design of some Demon-Crazy interactions/scenes
Added book "Expert Theory Of Magic"
Added book "The Art Of Heat Up"
Added book "The Art Of Pacify"
Added book "Tales of The Artificer"
Added skill The Art of Tailwind
Added skill Fast Item Stance II
Added Ending Recollection Room
Demon-cracy: Adjusted Lord Nephlune's dialogue to alter core quest objective
Demon-cracy: Removed ability to fail quest
Demon-cracy: Added dialogue to Liliana after slavery ending
Added costume Dark Star Knightess
Setup basic epilogue scene manager
Added option for Deluxe console to unlock the ending room
Added Dark Star Knightess option to Costume Selection of Deluxe Console
Demon-cracy: Allowed player to make minion vice choices later if unlocked
Added Bunny Girl variations for Fleura, Aria and Liria
Expanded epilogue with demon-craczy results
Expanded Demon Invasion 2 No Influential Ally with Rescued Sophie variation
Moved Aura portrait to right side when talking to Shadow minion
Added pink hearts to Liliana dialogue during Voting Encouragement H-scene
Improved flow of Voting Encouragement ending
Changed Shadow reason for teleporting Aura to shadow realm
Added missing vice checks to corruption actions in Demon-cracy
Registered epilogue variables and switches for NG+ carry over
Added unique quest variable values for losing to Shadow depending on whether player backed him initially
Added choice for picking up individual items in A Just Reward
Added replacement enemy in Richard's Domain in case Sathanas is defeated outside
Saved party formation before fighting Claire and Dolus and restore it afterwards
Expanded Eligoss Domain with backattack route
Implemented analytics for NG+ bonuses
Added difficulty tag to Learned Skill Analystics and Lewd Scene Analystics
Added Nephlune Church marking after opening the Church
Integrated minor tileset improvements into Richard Domain and Artist maps
Increase max killed bosses to 117
Increased max mental changes to 156

Balancing

Increased Demon-cracy experience to 75
Gave mental change count a 0.25 multiplier on Victory Score computation
Improved balancing of Shadow fight
Decreased potency of Legs of Sloth 0 Willpower effect to only trigger every 10 steps
Increased DEF bonus from Defensive Stance II from 10% to 25%
Increased Reading Proficiency II Reading Speed increase from +1 to +2
Changed Useless Knowledge so instead of disabling all reading speed increases it reduces them by 50%
Increased submission gain from Infiltrating Cheerleaders 6 and Tan 1 by 5 each

Bugfixes

Fixed typos
Fixed shattering idealism crystal causing a freeze if interacting from the left
Fixed extraction of Fleura logic causing multiple messages to show
Fixed being able to continue Fleura corruption mission after election is over
Fixed Paulina capture event triggering when curse got removed
Fixed incorrect/missing paulina training checks in Lady Charlotte 1
Fixed missing transparency restoration after Hermann variation of Capture of Trademond
Fixed version number mismatch in migration script from
Fixed various minor large sprite issues in forest and vulcanic areas
Fixed incorrect enemy IDs for Shadow occupying a minion on death
Fixed crash in James epilogue scenes if never interacted with Drug Dealer
Fixed Extra Corruption gain from Orgasms from triggering in Earth scenes
Fixed Shadow being given immortal by mistake
Fixed Recall not turning off fog and wind skill switches
Fixed portrait remaining when inserting orbs in Northern Mines
Fixed carry over skills not being carried over
Fixed Call of the Shadows minion limit value not differentiating between who won the election
Fixed Fleura event in Nephlune not taking Demon-cracy status into account for duelist branch
Fixed wrong choice ID being disabled in maid trainee tea drugging event
Fixed Invest: Concentration having outdated description
Fixed Shadow getting Phase Shift