Star Knightess Aura Internal Release 0.29.0 (Patreon)

ITCH | MEGA | ITCH-DELUXE | MEGA-DELUXE

Note that the public release will be in 2 weeks. You can also skip the waiting time by buying Star Knightess Aura on itch.

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

Looking back at this month it feels like we some things that got added this month were already a release to go. Despite taking a week off, this is probably one of the - if not the largest - monthly releases. Lets start off with the usual number recap! This month we have 2 new dungeon areas, 12 new corruption scenes, 1 new H-CG, 1 new memory, 2 new quests, 2 new mental changes, 5 new boss fights, and a bunch of new items, skills, npcs and so on.

For the detailed changes, I refer as usual to the weekly devlog posts. Lets take a look at a summary of the new additions.

First, we have two new areas for the dungeon crawling content. The way north has been completed with the remaining Far Eastern Caves area. At the same time, the first area of the Mount Firestorm side area has been added. The latter being the fire counterpart of the Underwater dungeons. Of course the areas also contain new boss fights, including a new superboss awaiting you at the end of the Far Eastern Caves dungeon.

Also in Roya, Verdeaux has received its second expansion. This time focusing on the brother area where you can find a lot of new interactions such as the new brothel job or the lewd bookstore with various new lewd books, lewd skills and fitting trainers. 

For the lewd content, please don't get too excited from the number of 7 new lewd scenes. Most of these are just minor scenes such as the brothel job or the new lewd books. In terms of lewd content, we also have progressed by by illustrating more event in the Homewrecking Lewd quest line, leaving only the last event unillustrated.

It's not just lewd content that got added to Verdeaux though! Talk to the Knight-Duelist Francis at the Knight's Barracks to start the new duelist quest with the first duelist being implemented. Also you can find the Verdeaux version of the Trademond workshop, this one providing services for strengthening Aura's defenses. Also, you can buy new Artifacts in this workshop to improve not just Aura, but your entire party.

Besides that we have various minor cosmetic improvements such as a bunch of minor NPCs. Speaking of cosmetic NPC improvement, this week Trihan and me also setup a bunch minor animal improvements. Find some cats and dogs resting on various places in the cities. The first three areas of the Forest of Runes are also now a little bit more forest like with butterflies, squirrils, birds and mice giving the whole area  bit more life --- especially after you have experimated all of the local monsters.

And then finally we have a huge bunch of new content in the real world. Continuing the trend of George and Aura's relationship's slow deterioriation, we have new events that finally get even the very open minded George to decide that something is definitely wrong. Most of the scenes this time focus on the studying side, Aura's future aspirations and then finally we also have a minor return to George's family where Aura applies her enthusiasm to helping George's older sister. It will be some time before I revisit this event line probably, but I think everyone can see where this will be going. :'D

And that covers most of it. Of course, there are also new mental changes to trigger the new scenes, and besides that we also have stuff such as the shop menu getting another iteration, the Nephlune Priestess finally opening up her church and teaching you some skills in return, and bunch of other further additions. You can read all about them in the below changelog!

Moving a bit away from the game development, I have also started out searching for a secondary artist. I got a looooooooooot of applications and managed to process them by now. Sadly, there were only few that qualified. Most artists wrote that they were confident in emulating our lead artist's style, but their porfoltios didn't exactly look promising... In the end, I ended up with 2-3 candidates and I have initiated test commissions with them to redraw Charlotte in Emubi's style. Once I have received their works, I will create a poll to gather patron input in choosing a secondary artist. 

Besides the option of a secondary artist, Emubi has also presented me with the option of him re-hiring an older assisstant of his. On the upside, that would make everything easier on my side since he would be completely managing his own assisstant. On the other hand, that would still mean that if Emubi gets sick or somehow takes a leave of absence, we don't have a proper backup since this assistant would help out with some parts of the workflow.

I have also given various pieces of feedback to the trailer to our producer, he's currently rendering an update to it and I will put up the updated version out somewhen later today or tomorrow.

Okay, I think that's about all. Honestly, a lot happened this month, so I feel like there's some more stuff that I might have forgotten to report on. :'D Let's see if we need a hotfix, I hope that since nothing major changed this week and some people played the last week's prerelease, we won't be needing one.

Then, as I said, I will be posting an update to the trailer somewhen later. Also Emubi is on the finishing lines for the Homewrecking 3 CG so there will probably be an update post for this incoming soon. Otherwise, the next time I will be posting about the April Project Plan.

Changelog 0.29.0 (31.03.2023)

Added Homewrecking 2 H-CGs

Added dungeon "Forest of Runes: Far Eastern Caves"

Added dungeon "Mount Firestorm Entrance"

Added scene "Gossip About George 3" 

Added scene "Tutored By George 2" 

Added scene "Tutored By George 3" 

Added scene "Dating George 3" 

Added scene Cheerleading Practice 8 

Added scene "Wanting to Be A Model 1" 

Added scene "Tests Are Out 6" 

Added scene "Richard Tutoring Aura 1" 

Added scene "George and Rose Meetup 2" 

Added scene "Hooking Up Elizabeth 1" 

Added scene "Hooking Up Elizabeth 2"

Added scene "Streaming 1" 

Added memory "George Confession" 

Added mental change "Accepted Confession out of Pity" 

Added mental change Dreamjob Model 

Added Brothel 

Added Erotic Bookstore 

Added Artifact Workshop 

Added quest "Journey Of A Hero"

Added quest stub "Duelists of Verdeaux"

Added boss fight Mature Spider Queen

Added boss fight Medium Earth Slime + Medium Thunder Slime

Added boss fight Behemoth 

Added boss fight Greater Salamander

Added boss fight Cockatrice

Added item "Blessed Water+"

Added lewd scene Soap Job 1 

Added lewd scene Soap Job 2

Added lewd scene Full Service Job 1

Added lewd scene Full Service Job 2

Added lewd book "The Art of Lewd Horror"

Added lewd book "101 Prostitution Tips"

Added lewd book "How To Use Your Female Charms Defensively"

Added lewd knowledge trainer to Erotic Bookstore

Added lewd skill trainer to brothel

Added skill Flashing Crotch Kick II

Added skill Seductive Stance II

Added skill "Fast Items Stance I"

Added skill "Divine Guard I" 

Added skill "Peaceful Mind I" 

Added artifact Orb of Light

Added artifact Orb of Air 

Added artifact Magic Enhancer

Added Clemence duel

Added option to learn Fast Item Stance I from duelist 

Added item Lumerian Bread

Updated shop menu to include number of owned items column

Implemented Nephlune White Priestess founding Church

Gave Mana Skin II ability to negate minor damage from HOT areas

Added prototypes for cosmetic fish, dog and cat sprites in major cities

Added prototypes for cosmetic wildlife to first three Forest of Runes areas 

Expanded Verdeaux with various minor NPCs

Reduced copy & paste in flavor events #3497

Restructured menu image folders

Refactoring pass of all active plugins

Updated Homewrecking 2 CGs with fixes

Improved pixel positioning of various cosmetic events

Increased max killded bosses to 84

Increased max mental changes to 118

Balancing

None

Bugfixes

Fixed typos

Fixed missing money return for accepting Special Study after enrollment 

Fixed fog not getting removed after defeating Behemoth

Fixed incorrect plugin command for registering boss kill at Behemoth

Fixed broken mineable Ether in Far Eastern Caves 

Fixed missing boss counts for Belphegor/Luciela/Phantom Lord

Fixed mapping glitches in Far Eastern Caves

Fixed missing shadows in Far Eastern Caves 

Fixed Clemence passability after defeat in duel

Fixed The Art Of Lewd Horror unlocking incorrect scene

Fixed incorrect replay of Homewrecking 3 if Homewrecking has not been done yet

Fixed incorrect standing image costume for Alicia in Cheerleading Practice 8

Fixed World Map teleport point of Far Eastern Forest Of Runes 

Fixed various glitches due to missing logic elements on Diving/Ascending 

Fixed repeated Alicia dialogue in corrupted confession memory

Fixed impassable vines in refugee caves stairway 

Fixed chronicle fragments showing incorrect numbers

Fixed music note balloon showing on wrong event when selling Star Metal to Verdeaux tinkerer

Fixed scrolling battle windows issue introduced by last fix 

Fixed Remove Collar negating command restrictions in duels 

Fixed luck effect applying to debuffs incorrectly

Fixed Streaming 1 triggering if Happiness Room has not been opened

Fixed missing bridge flag controls on ropes in Mount Firestrom

Fixed passability issues in Mount Firestorm 

Fixed starting new game with intro skip setting incorrect facet for Aura 

Stats

Estimated play time: 25-32h

Word Count: 460k

Lewd Scenes: 72

Real World Scenes: 196

CGs: 31 (+1 Bonus CG)