Star Knightess Aura Release 0.8.1 (Patreon)

Grab the newest release of Star Knightess Aura at

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

And here's the follow-up to last week's release! As usual, it focuses on bugfixes and technicla work. In addition to that there is also quite some balancing work done and I worked on my backlog of some nice-to-have features.

So first of all, in the plugin department! I usually try to avoid working too much on the UI and options side of RPGM since I plan to switch to some major RPGM UI overhaul plugin in the future --- once it exists. For MZ, the plugin support is still in development, so this is a matter for the future. That being said, with the game shaping up and becoming longer and longer in terms of readable text, I felt that there was a need to take some action to improve here. So first of all, I made a small plugin for managing dialogue name colors. This should make it immediately recognizeable when Aura or Alicia are talking. Then I reworked the configuration of my skip plugin, making it skip text much faster. You can also configure the skip speed in the options menu. Finally, I integrated an Instant Text Plugin, which turns off text crawling. I hope these additions takes off some of the annoyances of replaying the game.

Then, there is now an item for escaping battles, the Flash Bomb. It's directly unlocked at the Alchemist and allows you to blind enemies and then choose to flee combat. Due to technical reasons I restricted it to only work outside of story battles. Once you flee, the enemy on the map will be stunned for some seconds. Besides just straight up fleeing combat, I believe this should open up new tactical possibilities for playing the game.

Moving on! Next we have a couple of minor balancing improvements. To summarize them, I felt there was a bit of an inflation of gold while the reward money from lewd events was comparatively low. In recent updates, I had already increased the money from lewd events and quests, but I think it's still not enough. So this update addresses this a bit more. I reduced the gold from encounters and some treasure chests. Before you panic and think the game suddenly got super hard core in the gold department, don't worry. I only reduced the total amount of gold by the the gold sum I introduced in 0.8.0. And since I increased the money for doing maid jobs you can get the money back there :^) In addition to these changes, you will also find that Bombs now only cost 50 gold and the first enhancement cost at the workshop has been reduced to 100 gold --- but increases now by 25 instead of 10 per enhancement! This should make the early game just a little bit easier while making the game then grow just a bit faster in difficulty as you progress. Combined with the change in bomb prices should make it a bit more viable to invest Pyromantium into them instead of taking the permanent ATK boost. The last balancing change affects the spell shop where learning a spell now takes 1 full extra day. This is more of a lore than a real balancing change, just to model that the NPC is not really a mage and learning from spells from a non-mage should take some more time.

And then, finally, as usual, bugfixes! You can find a breakdown of those and the above changes down below in the changelog!

Changelog 0.8.1 (02.07.2021)

Created colored names plugin

Integrated instant text option plugin

Made skip speed parameter configurable and reworked RPGM configuration of text skip

Added support for text skipping on controller with L2 and R2

Extended detectors plugin to support stunning detectors

Added "Flash Bomb" item

Added alchemist receipt for making Flash Bombs

Battle log for Martials now always uses keyword "does"

Improved visibility of Trademond tunnel entrance in Bandit Hideout

Balancing

Decreased prices of Bomb and Stasis Bomb to 50 each

Replaced gold chest in Bandit Storage Tunnel with Flash Bombs

Various minor reductions of findable gold

Reduction of gold drops from Goblins (6), Ogres (15), Forest Bandits (10), and City Thugs (18)

Increased Barry HP by 50, DEF by 1 and Darry HP by 100, ATK by 1

Reduced price for first workshop enhancement to 100 but increased per enhancement cost increase to 25

Mind Pollination now disables escapes

Increased reward for Maid Job 1 to 250 gold and Maid Job 2 to 400 gold

Increased learning time for spells from spellshop by 1 day

Bugfixes

Fixed typos and editorial improvements

Fixed incorrect checks in mental world trash can

Fixed Trademond passability issues

Fixed movement race condition in Late To School 1

Fixed incorrect view direction of Aura when talking to Liliana

Fixed john character being visible after killing Mutated Hyrangeas

Fixed freeze when talking to Congregation guard from the left

Fixed enemy detecting player on plateau in Northern Forest