Star Knightess Aura Internal Release 0.40.0 (Patreon)

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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

Early release months like February always make me feel like the last major release just happened and here we are already at the next one. Alright, we will be doing the usual in this post. I will be summarizing the changes for 0.40.0, for the details check the devlog posts, and for the most recent changes I worked on this week, I will give some more detailed insights.

To begin, as usual, let's look at the summary in numbers. We have 1 new H-CG, 1 new character artwork, 2 new dungeon maps, 3 new lewd scenes, 5 new corrutpion scenes on Earth, and a lot of minor other additions.

The main content contribution is the completion of the Maid Academy. Both on the dungeon side, allowing to you fight the first major Chapter 3 boss - Demon General of Lust, Asmodeus, and on the corruption side. The lewd events are now fully illustrated with Maid Training 4 receiving the new original H-CG drawn this month. And there is one more Vice decision to completely sell Paulina out, triggering 2 new of her lewd events.

But be careful with selling her out! This one has actual consequences. While the first vice decision will only make Paulina stay as a girl even if you kill Lillim together with Asmodeus, the second one has sever consequences on her in all perspectives. She will become too clumsy to use Pierce, her class will shift to Maid and she will similarly to Aura be forced into a permanent  Seductive Stance. Leave her in Claude's hands until her maid training finishes and she will submit to him to the point where she leaves the party! You have been warned. :'D

The probably biggest impact is probably on the dialogue side, all events where she is involved in got alternate dialogue, some of it just with minor variations, others completely replaced / added. Try meeting Roland with a fully corrupt Paulina! (Who gets forcefully summoned into the Reverse Summong Ritual even after leaving the party)

Dealing with all the state updates took quite some time, but that's also one of the reasons (together with Chapter 3 thematically focusing on Aura moving more into the role of a corruptor instead of just being the victim, as opposed to the previous chapters) why this event happens so late into the game. Even though I had to touch up all the events, Paul being a quiet character by construction made the complexity still rather overviewable.

Then onto the scenes I was working on this week! The main addition this week were the new corruption scenes on Earth focusing on (kind of) finishing the Laura bullying storyline. I had to rewrite it quite a bit into the context of a Chapter 3 scene, but the old application scene out assistant writer Absurdity wrote alllll the way back got integrated into into the new lewd scene - a double blow job involving Aura, Laura and the Rowdy Student who has come back for revenge after an arduous training regiment. However, instead of being scared, Aura has a bit of a different reaction...

The scene got a bit longer than expected as it also connects into the whole story of Aura trying to forget about her sex with Richard and trying to find other males who can replace him, to which degree she is successful with this, I leave that much for the reader to find out.

While this concludes the Laura bullying storyline, it's not like she's suddenly going to disappear with her makeover. And neither does bullying. She will reappear in the future in the Library Club corruption scenes.

Finally, on the final dungeon side, you can now challenge the second layer and in the case Sathanas beat you in Draknor Fortress, you will recounter him here, blocking your way with an absurdly powerful form. I mentioned this in the devlog post already, I'm not sure if the second layer will remain the Wrath one, as I feel like the difficulty jump is a bit big. But we can shuffle around layers once we have more and it turns out the next one is easier. Not much else to say about this level, except that I also took care this week of the edge case of challenging/slaying Sathanas inside Richard's Domain before doing so in Draknor Fortress.

And finally, we also have a couple new balancing changes introduced this weak. There are also a couple I added in the previous weeks, but I will only go in here over the new ones from this week. Most of these changes deal with the issue that ATK oriented builds suffer a bit of a backdraw in the late game and on the other hand, MATK oriented builds tend to be a bit too strong, clearing even the big end game bosses on Nightmare with relative ease. I will just mentioned the most impactful ones and give some description to my reasoning for them.

The price increase in the workshops now only applies to Enhancements. Sword Sharpening/Armor Improvement no longer have their costs doubled, to help ATK oriented players from completely falling in the late game. 

Lightning Jam Coating provides less MATK boost. The most important perk of this coating should be the THUNDER resistance, but the MATK increase proved a bit too valuable.

Reduced MATK bonus from CONCENTRATION to 75%. Stone Mind was just a little bit too good. I already nerfed Stone Mind II some time ago by making it lose 1 turn every time you are hit, but the MATK bonus itself is just a bit too good. Especially together with the +POWER improvements for spells. While stacking all these SHOULD be good, it kind of escalated a bit in the end game.

There are some more balacning changes, but you can read about them yourself in the changelog. And that covers most of it! Besides the stuff I mentioned, we also have a huge batch of bugfixes accompanying the release and also some minor QoL improvements. 

Have fun with the update then and I will be posting on Sun or Monday the plan for the next month. As usual, I have attached the full changelog below, where you can read up more closely on what's new.

Changelog 0.40.0 (23.02.2024)

Added Maid Training 4 H-CGs 

Added Gyaru Laura Character Artwork 

Added lewd scene Hallway Bullying 6 

Added lewd scene Paulina Training 3 

Added lewd scene Paulina Training 4 

Added scene Laura Rebirth 1 

Added scene Laura Rebirth 2 

Added scene Hallway Bullying 7 

Added scene Sexual Harrassment 3 

Added map Maid Academy Upper Floor 

Added map Richard Domain 2 - Wrath 

Added boss battle Demon General Asmodeus

Added boss Sathanas reencounter 

Implemented sneak mini puzzle Maid Academy North Wing 

Implemented Maid Academy Graduation 

Improved Magic Academy teachers to only enable options the player can select 

Added minor text extensions to Paulina Training 3 and 4 

Implemented generic logic to handle updating active enhance or stance skills when learning the next rank 

Changed stance and enhance skills activate from the list like autospells without requiring actor selection 

Handle case of killing Sathanas before meeting him at Draknor Fortress 

Implemented gaining more Magic Thread after initial graduation 

Updated Paulina location after Paulina submission 

Updated Hermann wedding based on Paulina submission

Updated Reverse Summoning Ritual based on Paulina submission 

Updated Paulina Adventurer Guild world state after Graduation / Curse Removal 

Updated Paulina Albrecht Speech world state after Graduation / Curse Removal 

Updated Paulina Hermann Marriage world state after Graduation / Curse Removal 

Updated Paulina Reverse Summoning Ritual world state after Graduation / Curse Removal 

Updated Paulina Hunting a Demon King world state after Graduation / Curse Removal 

Handled case of ending patronage when Paulina returned to being Paul 

Added obstacle in Maid Academy to enter Upper Floor from Hidden Room 

Turned Library 1 Schrödinger's Cat punishment joke into bullying foreshadowing 

Added special clear state for recollection room crystals indicating that they have been done in the current playthrough

Removed page up and page down buttons in save menu when using a mobile device 

Increased max killed bosses to 112 

Balancing

Added perk to destroy minor obstacles with Rampage II to at >= 60 ATK 

Reduced obstacle level for greed chests to 25 

Added Infamy to Paulina corruption decisions 

Added HP cost to Break Bondage skill and make Libidas give MDEF, DEF buffs as well as HP regen

Gave Lilim+ Tenacity I and have Overpollination give Resistance to Light like Obscurum 

Reduced Lightning Jam Coating MATK boost to +4 and Blessed Lightning Jam Coating MATK boost to +6 

Added +2 ATK to Draconic Scales 

Increased HEAL RATE reduction from POISON from 50% to 75% 

Limited Workshop cost increase on Hard+ to Enhancements

Reduced MATK boost from CONCENTRATION to 75% 

Bugfixes

Fixed typos

Fixed variant drugs not being usable in John Rising 

Fixed status scene causing a stack overflow with multiple party members 

Fixed z-ordering issues from * tile and event character interactions 

Fixed save menu showing variable IDs instead of values for stats 

Fixed game crash when ExtraWindows plugin is turned off 

Fixed Passion getting Exhausted instead of Animated Robe in troop 447 

Fixed skill text in compendium being able to overlap traits 

Fixed John Rising incense lure not removing drugs 

Fixed viewed scene script lines being in the wrong part of their events 

Fixed battle crash when pressing left on skill list

Fixed blue crystal appearing instead of white under some circumstances in recollection rooms

Fixed Lewd Streaming 3 having incorrect variable assignments in recollection room 

Fixed Roland forced quests not leading to lewd scene afterwards 

Fixed infinite lewd scene loop in some circumstances 

Fixed Paulina still being interactable in adventurer guild when invisible 

Fixed duplicate Letter of Recommendation if killing Asmodeus after graduating maid academy 

Fixed missing speaker portraits in intro 

Fixed Jelly Jam not restocking at Verdeaux merchant 

Fixed detection check in Trademond Congregation 

Fixed Aura portrait remaining after Nothing But The Truth evidence check 

Fixed Bondage Fibers remaining after Asmodeus fight

Fixed remaining minor missing Paulina dialogue variations in Reverse Summoning Ritual

Stats

Estimated play time: 32-43h

Word Count: 683k

Lewd Scenes: 100

Real World Scenes: 257

CGs: 41 (+1 Bonus CG)