Aaaand now you can properly continue playing after finishing the reverse summoning ritual. :'D Most of this week was spent on cleaning up after the reverse summoning ritual and also adding a couple of things to better prepare for it. Aside from that a ton of bugfixes, but honestly, I feel like this one here will definitely need a hotfix or two. Since we have so many fixes, I wouldn't be surprised if there are more bugs that were hidden behind everything we fixed. But welp, making a lot of progress also means making a bunch of bugs, I guess. :'D

Anyways, so the main progress this month was finishing up the Reverse Summoning Ritual. So there isn't really much of the usual number summary to do here, but besides the Ritual we did also see some new art content this month in the form of the Elizabeth character artwork and the Roland 6 H-CG I integrated this week. For the usual details, I refer as usual to the devlog posts. Usually, I would also give  a summary here but in this case it's just too many spoilers, so I will just report a bit more on a couple of this week's new changes and leave it at that.

Besides the Royan world state, I have also done some updating in the compendium. As you progress through Chapter 2, more of the relationship status tags will be updated until reaching the point of the above screenshot. I also updated Aura's personal page where you will now find her ? marks for her new hobbies disappearing and also new ones popping up.

In Verdeaux, the Artifact Workshop has finally received some new items that become unlocked as you increase their workshop level through selling of Star Metal. However, there is one major change here: Artifacts no longer automatically appear in the shop, you first have to craft them via materials. Especially Pyromantium and Ether that are aplenty in the world should find some more potential uses in these. As for the new Artifacts, we have one that acts as basically another level of Coating Proficiency (Coating Enhancer), an artifact that allows you to have a major AGI advantage during the first turns of battle, and with that also hopefully has some synergy with Assassinate (Reaction Booster), and finally you can further upgrade your bombs to ignore even more MDEF by upgrading the Bomb Enhancer artifact.

Then we also have two new items at the Alchemist that you unlock at Workshop Levels 7 and 8 respectively. Slime Armor Coating gives you PHYS resistance but WEAKNESS to all other elements and should provide an additional way to counter PHYS heavy attacks without needing to learn Defensive Stance. Liquifiy Weapon Coating main effect is that it gives you WATER element attacks, giving you an additional way to deal with PHYS resisting enemies using melee attacks besides Lightning Sword. It also gives players an additional way to deal with the enemies in Mount Firestorm without needing the spell Splash. They both require some investemnt in terms of materials/gold making them bad permanent solutions, so learning the skills should become obsolete. But on the other hand it should give an additional tactical option that can be helpful in some segments of the game.

Alright, so I will leave it at that for this post. Regarding the actual content of this update, as I said, not much point to report on it due to the spoilery nature, so I will just leave it to the players to explore. Regarding the next chapter, after the next project plan post, either in the same week or the week after that, I will be giving another update post on the main roadmap. In general, next month will most likely be a setup month, doing some concept work, setting up new locations, setting up the next mind rooms, etc. Then, I will probably post again tomorrow for the 99% probably necessary hotfix. :'D

As usual, the full changelog for the update can be found  below.

Changelog 0.36.0 (27.10.2023)

• Added Roland 6 H-CGs 
• Added Elizabeth character artwork 
• Added boss fight Roland 
• Added Souldust Mage spells
• Added meeting Claire after Second Divine Gate 
• Added quest Labyrinth of Happiness 
• Added Cheerleading Club labyrinth room happiness content 
• Added Library Club labyrinth room happiness content 
• Added map labyrinth of memories part leading to Dolus 
• Added boss fight dolus and claire parallel battle 
• Added after parallel battle scene Alicia side
• Added after parallel battle scene aura side 
• Added boss fight Clairedolus 
• Added post Clairedolus battle scene
• Updated world state to post reverse summoning ritual 
• Updated Compendium to end of Chapter 2 state 
• Added Alicia memories on Heavenly Path 4 
• Added scene for Alicia temporarily regaining her memories 
• Added scene Dolus and Claire discussing progress of Aura and Alicia and taking action 
• Added scene Claire and Dolus confronting Alicia
• Refactored and unified vice event logic into a tag based common event analogous to the lewd logic
• Added item Slime Armor Coating at workshop level 7
• Added item Liquify Metal Coating at workshop level 8 
• Added intermdiate step to provide ingredients for creating new artifacts at Artifact Workshop 
• Added item "Coating Enhancer" at artifact workshop level 2 
• Added item "Reaction Booster" at artifact workshop level 3 
• Added item "Bomb Enhancer+" at artifact workshop level 4 
• Added skill Star Shine II 
• Added class True Hero 
• Added skill Open Domain III 
• Configured Nightmare Sorceress class 
• Added a "-deluxe" suffix to the version for deluxe version 
• Set default option for Dash to true, may need to tweak tutorial dialogue to say press shift to move slowly instead of dash 
• Improved audio options to use 10 step increments instead of 20 
• Increased max killed bosses to 106 

Balancing

• Increased Souldust of human encounters to 1 per enemy 
• Increased corruption gain for absorbing souls to 2 
• Moved Poison Coating Formula to Workshop level 6 
• Replaced Draknor Fortress Exorcist drop of Blessed Water x 3 with Blessed Water+ x 1 
• Changed Magic Enhancer price to 5 Ether but only 3000 Gold 
• Added Tenacity X to Clairedolus and slightly increased stats 
• Moved John Rising to Intermediate Adventurer Rank 
• Removed LUCK boosting effect from Star Shine 

Bugfixes

• Fixed typos
• Fixed new version map reloading resetting events during cutscenes 
• Fixed class name in menus overlapping level text 
• Fixed passabilities in library club map 
• Fixed switching between Aura and Alicia breaking if HUD is turned off 
• Fixed incorrect walking speed and stepping animation after completing reverse summoning ritual 
• Fixed companion stats breaking when using Star Shine II + Star Knightess
• Fixed auto-sk not triggering when fighting clairedolus 
• Fixed aura and slime having items sealed after returning from memory world 
• Fixed mixups in resistance granting effect from souldust mage 
• Fixed passability issues 
• Fixed Aura having access to Recall skill during Labrying of Happiness 
• Fixed crash in quest format detail 
• Fixed incorrect variable check in post-lysander battle dialogue 
• Fixed Collar Removal not being reenabled after parallel battle 
• Fixed empty array crashes for crafting and blessing items 
• Fixed incorrect restock bar fill in Black Priestess shop 
• Fixed Paul(ina) turning into Desmond during Star Shine II scene 
• Fixed Stasis Bomb messing up Clemence's attack pattern 
• Fixed Hermann date 2 giving 1 fewer Corruption than it should 
• Fixed 1 Corruption gain from non-lewd Underground Pub job
• Fixed Clairedolus boss defeat not being added to compendium 
• Fixed Luciela being able to use drugs
• Fixed actors learning lower-ranked skills on level up if learnable by their class 
• Fixed bunny ears cutting off in shops 
• Fixed inability to learn Peaceful Mind I if Emerald Tea+ unlocked 

Stats

• Estimated play time: 30-39h
• Word Count: 591k
• Lewd Scenes: 90
• Real World Scenes: 240
• CGs: 39 (+1 Bonus CG)