Then, besides the usual bugfix batch, this update has a couple of balancing changes. I hope you aren't someone writing a guide on this game cause this could hurt a bit otherwise :'D

The main balancing change I actually logged in the features and not the Balancing section - the Luck stat redesign. Before talking about the individual changes, I will be diving into this one. In general, even though all this looks like a lot, for most builds and playthroughs, it will probably not have major effect. The main effects of the balancing changes are to make roleplay corruption playtroughs (trying to realistically corrupt Aura) and to enable more interesting startegies and stat developments that utilize the new effects of the Luck stat.

Luck Stat Redesign

Initially, I had the left the luck stat to work exactly as the default from RPGMaker which in SKA basically only affects the probability to either inflict probability based ailments (such as poison) or negate receiving them. Each stat in luck would increase/decrease the probability by a nearly not noticable margin.

Usually, luck also effects on criticals and triggering surprise encounters, however, since crits are purely predetermined by the conditions such as the Tactical Advantage state and surprise encounters by back attacking or being back attacked, the luck stat lost a lot of utility compared to the default RPGMaker use case.

Before I dive into the new effects of the luck stat, I would briefly like to talk about how I numerically rebalanced it in this redesign. In contrast to other stats, the luck stat now only increases very lowly with level ups. In fact, for most characters - including enemies - the luck stat lies in the range of 10 - 20 with high level or lucky characters being in the 20+ range and low level or unlucky characters being in the 10- range. 

I believe the second luck stat for Aura is only gained at level 28 with the new balancing, so effectively if you don't increase it externally, Aura is pretty much stuck at 11 luck. And in contrast to other materials which have a lot of ways to increase them, the only way to increase luck are still the Avian Feathers (and effects such as Herman's ring or Star Shine for NPCs).

The rarity of increasing luck should also fit well lore wise with stuff like the Luck book having no effect :'D

The new effects of the luck stat (you can also check this out in the adventurer guild book) increases/decreases the probability/effect of an outcome relatively by 5% per luck stat difference. This affects evasion, ailments, damage variance and to a very limited degree (not relevant for Aura's stat regions) the turn order.

Increases are capped at +100% and the decreases are capped at -50%. This has various impliations of which I will list a few below:

• The increase effects cap out at a 20 luck difference, the decrease effects at 10.
• It is possible to achieve 100% EVA when having Tactical Advantage at 20 luck difference
• The probability of overcoming Tactical Advantage dodge can be lowered to 25%
• The probability of receiving ailments such as SUFFOCATE can be at most halfed
• Having more luck than your opponent will make it unlikely that the default +-/20% damage variance will decrease your damage.
• Having less luck than your opponent will make it likely that the default +-20% damage variance decreases your damage.
• Hard mode enemies profit quite a lot from this due to the % buff
• ...Probably a lot more

These just some example effects. I hope that being able to mitigate damage reliably with a high luck character will be situational (only works against low luck enemies) and difficult to setup (needs rare luck increasing materials) so that it won't suddenly break the game.

In general, if you neither liquidated all of your luck in the Festival, nor infused a bunch of Avian Feathers, you will most likely not really notice any of the above effects. You might notice an effect during battles with demons, though, which have rather little luck (I imagine that's what all the negative energy does :'D) missing you more often when you have advantage. However, if you infused all Avian Feathers and went down the Hermann marriage route you might now be able to perfect dodge a bunch of enemies.

Despite testing it quite a bit, I bet there are a bunch of interactions I didn't think about, so I bet there will be another balancing patch working out more details in the future. Let's move on before this post becomes too long, haha.

Minor Balancing Changes

I will be going over some of the minor balancing changes. Like I explained in the beginning, most of these actually don't have too much of an effect. They are mostly just number fine tunings to better support roleplay runs. Purity runs and full corruption / lewdness runs will probably not notice these too much.

Corruption cost decreases for various mental changes in Chapter 1

A couple of mental changes from Chapter 1 had their corruption costs decreased by 1. I wanted to improve the sense of progression a bit more and found that some of the Chapter 1 changes were a bit too expensive and felt like they were treated the same as major changes. For example Smashing Glasses I reduced from 3 to 2 Corruption, as a lot of the major Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 mental changes are costed at 3 Corruption and I feel something like this should be a bit cheaper. The same goes for Unbread Hair and Plain Shoes. Likewise each level in the relationship levers got cheaper by 1 Corruption. They were some of the first mental changes added to the game and were heavily overcosted back then, I have been continuously reducing their cost from time to time. I think now we have the right values. The only other mental change that got cheapened otherwise is the Going Home Relationship one which went from 4 -> 3 Corruption, as a 4 Corruption felt a bit too major.

Overall, Chapter 1 takes 10 Corruption less. I don't think this will make it likely for more people to Soul Break, but should make it easier for people trying to roleplay a bit to reach the Main Chamber a bit earlier from where they then have the option to modify the corruption speed to their liking.

To be safe, I did some analysis on which events block a lot of the progression and identified Late To School 1 to be a major choke point. The delay for it to trigger got reduced by 3 days in order to prevent it from unlocking the next mental changes for spending Corruption.

Minor Money Tweaks

There are a bunch of minor money tweaks that mostly aim to put the money a bit better into relation and also to raise the tempation for lewd actions just a little bit in some cases. Usually, I just drop the changelog and leave it at that, but since there are so many this week, I would like to provide some more insights on them individually.

For the lewd guards, the increment has been decreased to 25 Gold, so for example flashing your privates now only gives 150 Gold. I found the 200 Gold a bit much, since that's also what Hermann, who's a wealthy merchant, is initially offering for the dinner. 

On the other hand, the Maid Job gold rewards got increased to 500 (Maid Job 1) and 750 (Maid Job 2) to compensate for the added Addiction traits that got added during the year. The 500 Gold was also chosen because it's the same price Aura receives as a reward for clearing Arwin's mines. I think dirty work in the monster extermination business is probably a bit less worth to Arwin than attracting girls to his maid job.

The lewd ATK book How To Distract With Your Female Charms also went up to +3 ATK making it better than a weapon sharpening. Just a little raise in temptation.

But It's So Cute! had it's willpower reduction increased to -25. The -10 were a nice flavor but didn't feel impactful at all. I don't want to raise it too high, since it's an early debuff passive, but its increased willpower decrease now can be felt a bit more distinctively.

Avian Feather went to 1200 Gold because the luck stat now provides more value, so to keep the option to sell it relevant, it's price has been increased. Also related to Avians, the ATK of the Young Avian has been reduced by 1. Young Avian was always a bit of a very early heavy hitter and in the luck redesign, Avians also got to have a high luck stat, making so that they are very likely to always hit with max damage. To counteract these, the ATK has been reduced by 1, which should have a fairly strong effect without making it too weak.

Blessed Water loot in Riverflow Forest and Northern Forest got reduced by 1 each. Back when I added these, Blessed Water only reduced the Corruption by 1, which is why just putting 1-2 there felt a little weak. However, now it's also a useful willpower recovering item by resetting Womb of Lust. Even with just 1-2 I feel like there is a lot of umpf in finding it and it makes the 3 Blessed Water from the church missions a bit more impactful in relation.

A Statis Bomb loot in the Refugee Camp got replaced with a Bomb+ loot. It's the one near the Minotaur, where you can also find another 3 Stasis Bombs. I found 2 Stasis Bomb loot spots so close to each other a bit boring and decided to exchange one of them. I believe having 1 early Bomb+ available pre-Festival I think is a lot of more interesting and it opens up some tactical options.

The Hard mode enemy debuff got increased by 5% to 30% because I found Hard mode got a bit easier with the reduced Corruption increase. I can practically hear the eye rolling for making hard mode even harder :'D In conjunction to this the basic Shadow fragment enemy had it's ATK reduced by 1 because apparantly you could now otherwise randomly die in the intro. Finally the workshop job got a little power up to 20 Gold salary increases per sold Star Metal. At one point, it used to be 25 Gold, but I found that a bit much. The 15 Gold I lowered it too, after some time now, I find it a bit low. The job should be inefficient as you are encouraged to earn your money by solving quests, doing lewds, and so on, but it could be a bit less inefficient. So let's meet at the middle.

Also in the workshop, the initial enhancement cost got increased to 125 Gold. Just a minor side effect of inflation and having done a lot of minor money increases over the time pre-Festival. It also serves to make the larger sums of money from lewd opportunities stick out just a little bit more. Especially on Hard mode where the effect is doubled, it just helps a bit to motivate doing some more lewds a bit more in a roleplay playthrough.

Aaaand that's it for the week---- no wait, the prerelease is still coming tonight. There isn't much as most changes have been included in this patch release, but there's still a bit more to look forward!

Changelog 0.25.1 (02.12.2022)

• Added number of collected Hydrangea Herbs into quest log tracking
• Triggered Objective Updated message when progressing Slimy Oils quest 
• Redesigned LUCK stat 

Balancing

• Decreased corruption costs of Smash Glass, Unbraid Hair and Plain Shoes to 2 
• Decreased costs of relationship levers of Rose and Alicia by 1 each
• Decreased corruption cost of Going Home Relationship with Alicia to 3
• Increased Maid Job reward from 250 to 500 Gold and 400 to 750 Gold
• Decrease lewd guard gold progression to 25 Gold 
• Increased base workshop enhancement cost to 125
• Increased But It's So Cute! Willpower reduction to 25 
• Increased ATK gain from How To Distract With Your Female Charms ATK to +3 
• Increased Corruption gain from Maleficum by 1 
• Increased Workshop Job salary increase to 20 Gold per Star Metal 
• Decreased Shadow ATK by 1 
• Increased Hard mode enemy buff by 5% 
• Increased value of Avian Feather to 1200 Gold 
• Reduced Blessed Water loot at Riverflow Forest to x1 and Northern Forest to x2 
• Shortened trigger time for Late To School 1 by 3 days 
• Replaced Stasis Bomb loot in upper right refugee camp cave with Bomb+
• Decrease Young Avian ATK by 

Bugfixes

• Fix typos
• Fixed minimum lewdness calc using Cursed state instead of Cursed passive skill 
• Fixed possibility of Rose Seduced By Richard 2 playing before Library Club 8 
• Fixed direction glitch for Trader 3 in Boar Hut
• Fixed remaining phantom after killing phantom lord 
• Fixed missing skill type of If It's Free Why Not Take It 
• Fixed incomplete end of day costume reset
• Fixed passability issues 
• Prohibited selling of Blue Sugar formulas to normal merchant 
• Fixed missing skill category of Hidden Desires
• Fixed missing message for Implanted Lewd Knowledge
• Fixed incorrect sensitivity focus check for John Sex 1 and 2 
• Fixed Ugliness 2 drain being shown as enabled before Chapter 2 
• Fixed incorrect timestamp usage for calculating Edwin investment payoff date 
• Fixed being able to liquidate stats below 0 during Star Knightess 
• Fixed Lack Of Willpower To Study checking on all books