Star Knightess Aura 0.13.0-prerelease-2 (Patreon)

Like every week, grab the latest prerelease at:

https://aura-dev.itch.io/star-knightess-aura-prerelease/patreon-access

And another week is over! This week I have gone back to some dungeon crawling content. I think the last time a new "normal" dungeon was added was all the way back in May. With this week, we finally get the for a very long time marked as [NOT IMPLEMENTED] Eastern Forest of Runes.

Technically, this is Eastern Forest of Runes 1, as there will be in the farther futures more areas to the East until you can exit the forest. Anyways, the theme of the dungeon this time is "magical plants". Instead of the usual running around, expect enemies to be more immobile but hidden within the forest's greenery.  Also, the dungeon has a minor gimmick, that buffs all MATK by 100%. A field day for the new Fire Slime form!

The dungeon is technically early on accessible, but practically harder than the northern and southern forests. Among the boss enemies in the dungeon, you can find 4 old fights in new constellations and 2 completely new boss fights.  One of them in particular is quite tough, but his material drop is equally powerful and he might be a good target to kill early on with Star Knightess to power Aura up.

I tested all fights with the new tools (skills and items). I personally fear they might be too easy, but I also feared Arwin/Mammon might be too easy so I already know that I'm disqualified to judge this. :D

Another new addition you can find in the dungeon if you have defeated the demon in the mines, you will be able to charge the rune you found there and finally unlock a teleport mechanism.

Finally, at the end of the dungeon, you have the opportunity to solo fight Low-Demon. A nice chance to see how much your Aura has grown.

In other news, as I announced in the long-term development plan, I reworked some of my initial plans and downscoped the project a little bit. At the same time, I also did some iteration on my chapter 2 plannings and updated the world map accordingly.

Don't be surprised, it's a bit smaller than before, but I believe this should be just the right number of locations to present all the content I want to, while also maintining some room for possibly necessary extensions needed when we go for 2.0.

Other than that, there are a couple more minor bugfixes regarding the new skills that I found when I was testing out the new encounters. Oh, and I started performing preparations to creating a steam page. Don't expect to be able to buy SKA on steam for a long time, but I want to create a steam page to increase project visibility.

That's it! Have fun with dying in the new dungeon. Next week we are going back to corruption content, opening a new room, and a couple more minor common scenes.  If everything goes according to schedule, we will also finally be able to wrap up the main character standing images next week when I integrate Richard's CG into the game.

All changes of the prerelease + public patch can be found below.

Changelog 0.13.0-prerelease-2 (12.11.2021)

• Added Eastern Forest of Runes dungeon
• Added Eastern Forest of Runes: Hidden Cave dungeon
• Added Eastern Forest of Runes: Demonic Domain dungeon
• Added intermediate Central Lake map 
• Added item "Patentia Rune (Charged)"
• Added material "Ancient Wood" 
• Added material "Maleficum"
• Iterated world map 
• Increased max killed bosses score to 39

Balancing

• No changes

Bugfixes

• Fixed FIRE slime form inheriting PHYS resistance
• Fixed back attacks not working on large enemies
• Fixed Shadowcloak giving tactical advantage for first 2 turns on ambushes
• Fixed simultaneus auto-spell activations interefering with each other
• Fixed alchemist lewd scene giving lewd increase twice
• Fixed typos and editorial improvements
• Fixed being able to open Values room without sufficient Corruption
• Fixed being able to go off path in Arwin Money Domain 2 map
• Fixed invisible door blocking path after charging in against Robert