Star Knightess Aura Release 0.50.0

ITCH | MEGA | ITCH-DELUXE | MEGA-DELUXE

The Final Battle is done. You can kill Richard. I am not sure how we did it, but we did it in time for the Friday release! With Christmas in-between I was not sure if it was gonna happen, but here we are.

Now, I will preface this post with the following: It's very likely there will be bugs in the Final Battle! I did quite some testing today but I am 100% positive I'm gonna get like 5 critical bug reports about some crashes, deadlocks or the battle being straight up impossible because I didn't consider some specific game scenario. For those who have been following the game since the early days, maybe you remember the month the Festival of Greed released. It's kind of like that. :'D Expect hotfixes. Multiples. Also probably tons of typos

And it's not just the Final Battle, our assistant developer Trihan also finished the Clockwork Forest quest in the nick of time. Well, actually this time with enough time for me to give it a look and at least superficially play it and give feedback, but with the Christmas days being in-between we are really just talking about a very iteration.

So! Let's get into the update. As usual: For those who are new, in this monthly release update post I will focus on summarizing the important additions as well as the work done this week, for a more detailed devlog, we have the weekly prerelease posts.

For starters, let's begin with the usual review of the update in terms of numbers. We have: 1 new H-CG, 1 new Character Artwork, 1 new quest, 2 quests finished, 4 new bosses (well depending how you count some more...... hahaahahahahaha), and a tail of bunch that goes along with all those!

 So, to dive into the summaries, let's start off with theten side-content. All quests are now complete! First of all, I added a small new mini-quest when you reach the 5th Workshop Level in Verdeaux, and then we have the big contribution from Trihan, which is the completion of Clockwork Forest. Here you can fight the new superboss the Artificer.

I have not yet tested the actual balance of the quest and mostly followed on giving feedback on the more general flow and mechanical balance, so I'm myself curious to see how the new boss racks up compared to Dragon Firestorm.

Together with the new boss fight, there is also a bunch of new loot including a super powerful new material that you can either sell for big cash, infuse into Aura or perhaps feed your slime for both lots of stats and massive EXP gain.

Then, on the art side, we have a new character artwork for corrupted Rose. I already used this screenshot in the devlog but since these posts are public I can't use one for the new H-CG that we also added in this update. The Corruption Ending now has the beginning corruption scene illustrated, meaning we are now only lacking 1 more artwork to finish the full art milestone for the purpose of 1.0.

Finally, the third massive contribution of this update is the completion of the Final Dungeon's final segment - the Final Battle. I won't post too much about that here to avoid spoilers, but I will just say that it turned out quite long x_X. 16k words. That is 1.5 the length of the Intro or about as long as the entirety of Nothing But The Truth. I hope it isn't too long, but I wanted a lot of things come into play and get their moment of screentime. Curious here to see where the balance ended up since it's one of those events which are incredibly difficult to predict.

(Once again I will refer to the first release of the Festival which was all over the place hahaha :'D)

Okay, anyways, since I don't really want to talk abou the Final Battle itself to avoid spoiling it, I will end this section here. Note that I finished the Final Battle but not the actual ending itself! We still need the epilogue for that to be really finished, which is basically the last main item on the development roadmap to 1.0. For the full set of changes, I refer as usual to the changelog below.

Changelog 0.50.0 (27.12.2024)

• Added Corruption Ending 4 H-CGs

• Added Demonic Rose Character Artwork

• Added mini quest in Magic Workshop: Orb Charge

• Finished quest Final Battle

• Finished quest Clockwork Forest

• Added map Clockwork Tower F3

• Added map Clockwork Tower F4

• Added map Richard Domain 8

• Added map Richard Domain 9

• Added boss Artificer

• Added boss Luciela

• Added boss Hi-Demon King

• Added boss Demon King

• Added skill Star Shine III

• Added skill Bestow Skill

• Added skill Bestow Mana

• Added material Heart of the Artificer

• Added artifact Drowse Guard

• Added workshop artifact level 6: Magic Enhancer+

• Expanded Nephlune Clerk to offer fake Novice and Intermediate Rank quests to advance towards rank-up in exchange for Bloodshot Eyes Drugs

• Overengineered Artificer Tower elevator

• Added enable and disable labels to trap options on Clockwork Tower console

• Added Clockwork Tower entry event to F2 in case player enters via vines

• Implemented back-up party member swapping in when battle member is defeated

• Added construct options to Clockwork Tower F2 console

• Added visual effect to Clockwork Tower barrier

• Set up music for Clockwork Forest areas

• Added teleport shrine to Clockwork Forest

• Added first Star Knightess transformation closeup sequence with matching effects to closeup sequence in corruption ending

• Added Shatter effect to Corruption Ending Scene 4 and Labyrinth of Happiness

• Integrate CutIn plugin to cover over SK Costume switch mid-battle

• Added Luciela Cut In when she uses Nightmare Claw on a DROWSY target

• Added customized pixel chars for Goblin Shaman, King and Empowered Avian

• Integrated greenworks and steam achievement API

• Increase max killed bosses to 126

Balancing

• Changed Clockwork Forest quest to unlock upon Expert-Rank unlock

• Decreased Belphegor AGI to 15

• Reduced Magic Mastery Club joining fee from 10000 to 5000 Gold

• Increased Patentia MATK buff to Drastic buff

• Increased Edwin base level by 1

• Added Fireinfused and Fire DRAIN Resistance but also Water WEAKNESS traits to Sathanas

• Increased SK drain in Richard Domain 9 by 1 per drain

• Increased Rene HP to 240 and AGI to 16 for better consistency

Bugfixes

• Fixed typos

• Fixed Slash of the Tiger not being added when using SK

• Fixed broken jump point in Richard Domain 8

• Fixed Dolus having tags in the compendium before that information is revealed

• Fixed overlap with Aura and Thunder Golem if she enters via vines and leaves via F1 door

• Fixed passability issues in Clockwork Tower F3

• Fixed world fog option defaulting to off when starting a fresh game

EDIT: Well that was quick.

Changelog 0.50.0a (27.12.2024)

• None

Balancing

• None

Bugfixes

• Fixed Rogue characters missing magic skills

• Fixed visual movement glitch on final battle game over

• Fixed backup swap applying to leader if leader is Aura

• Fixed Prepare Impact lacking condition for Flying

• Fixed broken stock variable for Programmable Forcefield

• Fixed being unable to see skill help when using select skill command in battle

• Fixed visual character spawn glitch in Final Battle