Star Knightess Aura 0.26.0-prerelease-1

ITCH | MEGA | ITCH-DELUXE

And here's the second part of today's release train. Like I mentioned, most stuff got released in the public patch but we got a couple minor additions for the prerelease as well. The most visually impactful one is probably the new mental change in the Instincts Room...

... where you can now modify Aura's default standing image expression. If you have been early raising your Vice you can technically unlock it quite early into Chapter 1 as you otherwise only need the makeup mental change. But with the latest two scenes that both raised Vice, it's of course a bit easier in case you had troubles finding sources for raising vice.

Then on the lewd side, you have already seen the new H-CG for the Sexy Times With George event chain, which now also concludes the illustration of the "happy" lewd George lewd scenes. We will revisit the H-CGs when we come back to this event chain but then Aura won't be done with just briefly displaying the disappointed expression.

In Roya, there I have replaced Matthia's training of Lightning Sword I with the next rank Lightning Sword II. I wanted to save plenty of spells for the Magic Academy but I think we still have a huge bunch leftover so we can spend this 1 spell here just to make finishing the Fortress Of Wrath arc a little bit more rewarding. Lightning Sword II boosts you damage further and lets you apply NUMB using your melee attacks.

And then finally we have one mechanical rule change: If Aura is in a party and has her Star Knightess available, then if everyone is KOed, instead of getting a Game Over, Aura will now as a last ditch effort to save her comrades, automatically remove her collar and activate SK. In other words, as long as you have SK and don't mind getting some corruption, you now no longer need to spam save in dungeons fearing that you could get a Game Over. 

I believe this should also further facilitate role play corruption playthroughs and generally provide some QoL improvement to everyone. The feature itself is still a bit experimental, I have tested it quite a bit, but I can imagine that there are some scenarios where it could break, which is why I added it to the prerelease instead of the public patch.

Finally, it seems that something isn't too well with our Composer. He told me he has having issues in his life and based on the availability he has showed over the past 2 months, I will probably decided to spend the money elsewhere.

Which is easier said than done with also the mapper being gone :'D. Combined with the art delay last month, and also Trihan having some delay in the Combat UI rework we have some 800€ budget leftover. In general, ever since we finished the major part of the UI overhaul, I currently have more issues spending the money on our freelancers. When I have time next year and am done with the transititioning from part time to full time work, I need to look into ways to improve this.

Aaaand that's it for this week. Next week, as announced in the project plan, I will be working on building some foundations in the Memories Room. 

Below is as usual the full changelog including the changes from today's patch below. If you are interested in the reasoning behind some of the balancing changes, I recommend checking out the patch blog post.

Changelog 0.26.0-prerelease-1 (02.12.2022)

• Integrated Sexy Times With George 2 H-CG 
• Scripted Aura auto-activating Star Knightess instead of getting Game Over in party
• Added skill Lightning Sword II and have Matthias teach it 
• Scripted mental change for mean expression 
• Integrate Rosemond story maps (Thanks to Terekov)
• Integrate Maid Job 2 CG consistency lighting consistency improvement 
• Increased max mental changes to 98 
• Added number of collected Hydrangea Herbs into quest log tracking
• Triggered Objective Updated message when progressing Slimy Oils quest
• Redesigned LUCK stat

Balancing

• Decreased corruption costs of Smash Glass, Unbraid Hair and Plain Shoes to 2
• Decreased costs of relationship levers of Rose and Alicia by 1 each
• Decreased corruption cost of Going Home Relationship with Alicia to 3
• Increased Maid Job reward from 250 to 500 Gold and 400 to 750 Gold
• Decrease lewd guard gold progression to 25 Gold
• Increased base workshop enhancement cost to 125
• Increased But It's So Cute! Willpower reduction to 25
• Increased ATK gain from How To Distract With Your Female Charms ATK to +3
• Increased Corruption gain from Maleficum by 1
• Increased Workshop Job salary increase to 20 Gold per Star Metal
• Decreased Shadow ATK by 1
• Increased Hard mode enemy buff by 5%
• Increased value of Avian Feather to 1200 Gold
• Reduced Blessed Water loot at Riverflow Forest to x1 and Northern Forest to x2
• Shortened trigger time for Late To School 1 by 3 days
• Replaced Stasis Bomb loot in upper right refugee camp cave with Bomb+
• Decrease Young Avian ATK by

Bugfixes

• Fix typos
• Fixed minimum lewdness calc using Cursed state instead of Cursed passive skill
• Fixed possibility of Rose Seduced By Richard 2 playing before Library Club 8
• Fixed direction glitch for Trader 3 in Boar Hut
• Fixed remaining phantom after killing phantom lord
• Fixed missing skill type of If It's Free Why Not Take It
• Fixed incomplete end of day costume reset
• Fixed passability issues
• Prohibited selling of Blue Sugar formulas to normal merchant
• Fixed missing skill category of Hidden Desires
• Fixed missing message for Implanted Lewd Knowledge
• Fixed incorrect sensitivity focus check for John Sex 1 and 2
• Fixed Ugliness 2 drain being shown as enabled before Chapter 2
• Fixed incorrect timestamp usage for calculating Edwin investment payoff date
• Fixed being able to liquidate stats below 0 during Star Knightess
• Fixed Lack Of Willpower To Study checking on all books