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After last week's break, we are back in action with content development. This week focusing on finishing the first area of the last infection zone--

1 Darklake

Uhhh... It's intended as the highest difficulty area but it may have ended up a bit too difficult at the moment. :'D It's mostly based on the Underwater dungeons in SKA with many of its local enemies returning, but mostly making them a bit weaker and less numerous so it better fits into Liora's difficulty curve, but even then it's maybe too hard. Although, it may also just be a consequence of missing ways to manipulate the attack element of our party members.

Anyways, with this all first halves of the side infection zones are in the game. The area boss may be too hard, but with the loot and items you can find in this area, the previously hardest boss - the Demonized Warhound in Highwarden Keep - should now move from very difficult to defeat to reasonably difficult to defeat. The dungeon finally also has some ATK and AGI focused boss drops, so it does come with a fitting reward for its difficulty.

While I spent most of the week on the creation of the Darklake dungeon, I also managed to squeeze in a new mechanic:

2 Edgar Projects

Edgar Projects are slow, long-term ways for Edgar to power himself up. The longer Thornefield remains in a desolate state due to the danger of Barbatos and the decay, the more Edgar profits from being able to exploit the situation and build up his business. At the same time, project speed is dependent on the town gaining prosperity / or on his own prestige, making them fit into his profile of wanting a drawn-out fight against Barbatos but also wanting some sort of regular progress.

Currently the following projects are implemented:

• Construct Mine I/II/III
• Advanced Books I

The Mine one being the important one as it provides Edgar a mechanic for gaining base materials independently of Rean and Liora (albeit very slowly). E.g. the first mine level gives 1 Granitite / Week. Edgar will then wait until he has 3, turn it into a Grantitie Plating and then infuse that. So at 5 Town Prosperity, it will take 20 days to finish the project and then another 30+ days until it really has direct impact on his stats. I wanted projects to be something that work slowly in the background and don't threaten the Player by having Edgar outscale them, but rather prevent Edgar from becoming weak relatively to Liora.

Projects unlock on Day 15 and you will see a story scene to notify you about them. When talking to Edgar about Today's Plans, you can find more details on his ongoing project or which he has completed.

As for his new mine, it's also visually represented in the map. Visit the quarry area in Lazarett Street and you will be able to enter it. Hint: When Edgar finished Construct Mine II, get a Mining clause on Ether and take him into the Mine for a special interaction.

3 Ingame "Wiki"

Then we have some technical UI work from our assistant developer Trihan. To further improve the game's transparency and ability to look up mechanics and useful information in the game, we have begun developing a new sub category in the Compendium, currently called the "Wiki" category.

This category will work similarly to the Bestiary, but instead of managing information about enemies, it manages information on game mechanics and or game mechanical objects such as States.

It's currently just a proof of concept and barely filled with informaiton, but I have already moved over some data from the basic mechanics book in the Inn. Currently you just have everything automatically entered in the wiki, we still need to work out a good process for uncovering the data as you play so it's not immediately filled to the brim with data.

4 Infrastructure Improvements & Misc

Finally, what I focused on for the last stretch of this development week was some more infrastructure work for negotiations, this time focusing on "options". Previously, the game only exposed options on the UI level for the player to interact with, but didn't consider internally on the algortihm level.

This had the consequence for example, that if Edgar would offer to pay for Rean's Treatment and the costs are high, he would not propose the Discomfort III debuff, because the default option of this proposal is Discomfort II which may not be valuable enough. So instead, he would then not make this proposal, perhaps if no other proposal is left, then not make any offer at all.

Since the proposal searcher now also considers all option possibility when constructing the list of proposals, it will now properly appear. Also, Edgar will always set the default option to the lowest relevant value, so if he makes, say, a 100 Value offer and then a counter proposal with an option that would fulfill it with the lower option, he will automatically start with the lowest option, saving a bit of clicking in the UI.

Probably sounds a bit boring but the point is, proposals with options have all their properties considered not just in the UI but also by the game when composing a set of proposals.

Outside of that, we just have a couple misc additions, which is

• Giving the Alchemist a Formula now gives +1 Town Prosperity for every 5 Formulas. I made a migration rule so this also applies to old saves, but you need to give him a formula to trigger the +1. The reason I introduced this mechanic is so that finding or buying formulas is more interesting even if you don't plan to use the item you could craft.
• Level 10 Town Prosperity Spells: You can now learn Tremor I, Splash I, Shadowcloak I and Air Bubble I, but I only just added them and only tested Air Bubble I for Darklake so I'm just going to hope everything else works from taking it from SKA x_X

Aaaaand I think that covers everything for this week. Next week: A new quest and some more non-h story events.

Changelog 0.2.0-prerelease-5 (17.10.2025)

• Added Dildo Variations
• Added dungeon Dark Lake
• Implemented prosperity 10 spell unlocks
• Implemented prototype Compendium Wiki
• Added boss encounter Kraken
• Added boss Undine
• Added boss Jellyfish
• Added boss Siren
• Added Formula: Anti-Beast Oil
• Implemented edgar Projects
• Added edgar project Construct:: Mine I
• Added edgar project Construct:: Mine II
• Added edgar project Construct: Mine III
• Added edgar project Trade Deal: Advanced Books I
• Removed lower value proposal options from an already accepted clause in negotiations
• Set all proposal options to min option by default
• Implemented logic for counter proposal searcher to adjust the default option to match a proposal
• Increased Town Prosperity for every 5 Formulas brought to the Alchemist
• Added spell Air Bubble I
• Added scene on Day 15 for project unlock

Balancing

• None

Bugfixes

• Fixed broken decay increase on treatment day
• Fixed crash upon kiling boss
• Fixed switched IDs for Granitite and Emerals Lea in negotiation
• Fixed contract IDs in detail page not matching list page if there are blank categories in between
• Transferred choice background fix from SKA
• Fixed switched conditions for being able to change clothes under contract
• Fixed positioning of choices in window
• Fixed mechanical balance on pleasure generation during early masturbation