Cerelea redesign + Devlog #110 + Monstergirl poll #37 is on! (Patreon)

Cerelea again...? With her actual outfit this time.

Here are the ranks (differences between original outfit (this one) and alt outfit (the previous one) stop after Rank 3):

Rank 1

Rank 2

Rank 3

So I'm cheating a bit this month. As you might remember from the last devlog, I had some trouble looking for artists in March. I finally got some leads this time and am now in talks with two other artists. We'll have to see how things turn out, but if everything goes well I should finally have a stable character reveal rate from next month on. I could have drawn one myself of course, but as you'll see below the many changes required my full attention. I'm really sorry about that, but I do think that was for the best overall in this particular case.

Although at the very least, here is a new chibi sprite:

Mimic girl has been implemented! I'll go into a bit more details about what she does later.
First, here is a changelog for the latest build:

The Mimic traveler has been added! She can now be found like Liv. She also has a small cutscene introduction.

Travelers now stay in the room they appeared in until their services are used. A traveler cannot be in several rooms at once!

Revival prices now have an upper limit to reduce grinding, in the demo at least

The alchemy bug has finally been fixed! The cause turned out to be incredibly simple: Selecting and unselecting a block incorrectly left it in a selected state, meaning it wouldn't fall or be cleared if left as is. Really happy about this one ^^

Added a Moribund graphic

Added an overkill mechanic. Killing a witch at -30% HP now counts as an overkill, which guarantees her soul to spawn after the fight. Souls can only be obtained that way.

Added a sprite limit in fights so really big witch sprites don't overlap on the other side of the screen, like Myasine's fingers.

Improved the enemy AI:

Limit using the same spell in a row through spell specific cooldowns

Better DPS management: witches will now use spells depending on how much damage they have already dealt (More aggressive if the DPS is too low, less if it's too high)

A lot of AI conditions and other values have been cleaned up and improved (will help development in the future)

Combo spells can now be be stocked by middle mouse clicking them. Stocked spells will appear above normal spells and can be used at any time at no fei cost, allowing for better combo spells related strategies and more spell experimentation. Up to 3 spells can be stocked at once.

Opponents can now be stunned for a short amount of time. A stunned opponent's summon and cast circles won't fill.

Destroying a Shape now deals less damage to the opponent, but can stun them for a short duration. The higher the combo, the longer the stun duration. Additionally, Shapes now drop Fei when destroyed.

Unique skills are now charged through receiving Fei/Sun. Skill charge is now conserved when switching to a different character.

Vuu, Rose and T now have a unique skill

Attack and Defense buffs/debuffs power is now shown on the buff/debuff icon.

Attack bound and Hit bound buffs/debuffs now have a unique graphic to distinguish them from normal timed buffs/debuffs

Damage number in combat now shows a small remaining HP gauge below it instead of a remaining HP number (very good)

Witch amount defeated requirements related to info discovery in the almanach have been updated. Color resistances are now revealed in the almanach once tested in combat.

The UI pixelisation bug has finally been fixed! Texture transition between exploration mode to pre battle menu has been improved.

Some Shape SFX keep playing after fights > fixed

Various map icon improvements

Improved almanach location system for monsters

Improved Gravitar's Entropic Pull spell

Improved Yoyo Heartpower. It's now a lot easier and more fun to use!

Improved Swatter heartpower. Somewhat of a nerf overall since it was way too powerful. You now need to right click when the swatter and the fly meet for the big splash attack to occur.

Improved Heartpower color grahic process (optimization)

Improved mine and bomb Shape explosions graphics

The BGM now stops as the last hit is dealt, not after.

Veomea charge SFX wouldn't play if right click was already being held as the Heart would be moved into the Veomea symbol > fixed

Created a damage calculator tool (accessible through debug mode with F10)

Rebalanced all player stats!

Rebalanced all monster stats!

the first spell (leftmost) causes the character card and monster spell category icons and name to flash white > fixed

Rebalanced level up required EXP & EXP gains

Rebalanced encounter rates and stealth effectiveness (encounter rates lowered overall, stealth nerfed)

Made unique skills unavailable until Vuu is rank 2

Centipede shapes count as several shapes, stopping shape summoning when it shouldn't > fixed

Damage count when hit/healed now shows the amount of damage/heal caused by the last spell for a brief moment.

Fixed a bug that would let a character keep some EXP even if the max level for the current rank was reached

Improved trinket descriptions system

Balanced trinket stats

Stretchy bra isn't sold in Sablee anymore

Updated combat Fei sprites

Added unique skill sprites (Vuu, Rose, T)

A LOT of new stuff! Most of it is combat related as you might have noticed. Rebalancing all the stats was especially tough. I mostly went with my gut before, but I now have a clean process for doing so, which will help tremendously in the future.

First of all, the Traveler related stuff! Liv used to be the only one, but Mimic girl can now be encountered randomly now, too. She's actually introduced before you enter the forest, and lets you access storage! Item management used to be tough since you had to go through a big stretch of dungeons without any access to the storage menu, but this won't be a problem anymore ^^
And as mentionned above, Travelers will now stay in the room they appear in until their services are used! Or until the floor / area is left.

Then come all the fight related changes. There actually isn't a whole lot I can add here that wasn't said in the devlog... There's been some optimization, some mechanical changes with the new overkill system, the Yoyo and Swatter Heartpowers, the stocked combo spells and the unique skills. The enemy behavior has been improved, destroying shapes is less OP but still rewarding, discovering enemy resistances and weaknesses is now instantly registered in the almanach. Then come all the stat rebalances: Leveling up, ranking up, the amount of EXP required to level up and given by enemies, enemy stats, trinket stats, encounter rates... All of that has been reworked, plus various other improvements. It was a lot of work, and I'm really glad it's done! I'm sure there will need to be some other adjustments over time, but this is still a really good step ^^

Because there have been so many changes, new bugs popped up here and there which I of course fixed as I found them. As always though, there is a chance that I missed some. I couldn't find any through my own testing, but you never know! I figured that I'd leave the previous version up for now, just in case. Doing so would have helped in the past, so I'll be doing that from now on ^^

The next big step after that would be to work on exploration related changes, with some updated rooms, harvestable items, NPCs, quests, party events, the hint system, stuff like that. That might have to be another full month of coding though, and I don't think I can stomach that right now. So instead, I'll shift my attention to designing a few more monstergirls for now and then focus on various smaller (but still important) tasks. In particular, I'm thinking about item descriptions, better spell descriptions, and improved inventory, spellcard and character select menus. Maybe an easy mode setting as well, and more if there's time!

Once again, some great progress! I don't feel great about not having a new character to show this time, but I'm starting to believe that I actually got extremely lucky that both Bee and Helm were ready to start working with me so fast, so I'm very thankful. I'm hopeful though since as I mentioned earlier, I'm currently talking with 2 other artists! Progress is also being made on new tracks, so I'm happy ^^

And now, the Monstergirl poll stuff!

The next monstergirl poll has begun! You can now vote for the monstergirl you want to be included in BE Witches in the Discord server if you are a 2$+ patron!

The poll will be active until the 12th of this month. After this, you will be able to change your submitted modifier until the 15th. Finally, the two rounds of the modifier poll will take one week each afterwards.

Monstergirl poll rules

Poll submissions

Also, now is a good time to submit a monstergirl and/or modifiers if you haven't already as a patron! If you can't think of anything to submit, here is a list of ideas you can choose from. You'll need to join the server to submit anything!

And that's all for now! Sorry again about the lack of new monstergirl this time around... I'll have something to show next time, 100%!